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On the other hand, maybe the current "high" in sunspot activities will lead to a dramatic solar flare ("sun burps"), with the resultant high velocity expulsion of partially digested, beryllium-infused, greenish-tinted solar matter ("sun vomit"). This material and the associated cosmic rays will engulf the international space station and cause strange genetic mutations to the inhabitants. When they return to earth they will each have unexplained "super" powers:

• Gates will be able to control most of the computers world wide
• Simonyi will develop a strange way of computer programming that makes the lines of source code much, much, much longer so that they slide out the right edge of the monitor and go on forever and make life more difficult for other programmers.

You may jest but Windows already runs on a number of British Submarines so is it to out of the question???

Probably, not even he's that daft.

Cuthbert was found guilty under the Computer Misuse Act of gaining unauthorised access to the Tsunami appeal Web site. He claimed in court that he had made a donation and then became concerned that he'd fallen victim to a phishing scam. To check, he added ../../../ to the URL in an attempt to access the site's higher directories -- an action that triggered an alarm.

These regulations already exist in Britain and France.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308, 39118116,00.htm

I think I read a more recent article, that claimed SAP experts were earning over $160K, but I can't seem to find that article right now.

If you thought the original story was embarrassing, check out the editorial on OneCare http://opinion.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002208,392 86364,00.htm

>Provide references to someone from MS saying all of those as an official representative of his company or STFU.

Ok, i'll bite.

Microsoft license calls the GPL "viral":
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-268889.html

Open source an intellectual property destroyer:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-257001.html

Ballmer calls GPL a "cancer"
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2092 085,00.htm

Ballmer saying Linux infringes MS IP
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/17/ 1324248

Search for the rest yourself, coward.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&q=micr osoft+gpl+cancer+&btnG=Search

With Vista available for downgrading US computers, clueless staff are expected to have a nightmare clicking furiously on UAC prompts... apparently for every Vista sold, one job will be created for supporting the user!

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,3928 5065,00.htm

Millions of Indians were used in the beta testing for Vista, maybe Gates feels he needs them all to improve Vista uptake in the US!

With Dell pushing Vista aggressively, and removing escape routes like Linux or XP; support lines for Vista will soon hog the internet tubes... maybe Gates' idea of Vista support is one Indian sitting next to every American Vista user, advising him / her on the right choice for every alert:

Today is Thursday: Allow / Cancel?

So no, OOo won't replace MSOffice quite yet

You're absolutely right. I agree 100%.
And that's exactly why governments entities and educational institutions in Texas, Massachusetts, Israel, India, Singapore, Germany, France, Brazil, China, Macedonia, Denmark, and from the opendocument fellowship *deep breath*. Australia, Austria, Belgium, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Croatia, Czech Republic, EU bodies, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, and from the USA: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and New York... are NOT all switching or planning to switch to OpenOffice.

Oh wait. They are!

So no, OOo won't replace MSOffice quite yet

You're absolutely right. I agree 100%.
And that's exactly why governments entities and educational institutions in Texas, Massachusetts, Israel, India, Singapore, Germany, France, Brazil, China, Macedonia, Denmark, and from the opendocument fellowship *deep breath*. Australia, Austria, Belgium, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Croatia, Czech Republic, EU bodies, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, and from the USA: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and New York... are NOT all switching or planning to switch to OpenOffice.

Oh wait. They are!

Your post makes no sense, whatsoever

It's how Microsoft usually innovates. Buy in a product and repackage it as MS whatever.

was Re:insert free ad for MS Dynamics here ..

Please go to my pet supply store .. :)

We're operating under the assumption that software is patentable... but we've never held that in this court, ever.

If his goal is to protect ebay users, why doesn't he work with ebay security, privately?

Given what has happened to other people who have found or disclosed vulnerabilities, that is probably more of a risk than attacking the site.

This has been discussed on Slashdot before.

ZDNet UK's got a video interview with Google about Web Apps Premier. In it Google's European enterprise director, Roberto Solimene, promises that the product offers 'seamless integration' between the various applications. He also claims that Google's "hundreds of thousands of servers worldwide" will help it compete against Microsoft.

You can see it here.

/Me thinks you missed your calling as a professional comedy writer.

People who are close to Apple or at least know how company works said they won't rush out untested OS patches/updates just because some idiot file fuzzer (can crash the kernel via broken DMG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzz_testing

In professional World, people already asks AVID, Adobe, Quark before applying any OS updates or they test it on test machine several days to make sure it won't break their work cycle.

I was only bugged about Quicktime issue (which was exploited at Myspace) and Apple released the update taking the issue serious. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,3928 5593,00.htm

"I think that desktop linux is not ready because it still plagued by a problem of text configuration files. I'm perfectly OK configuring my debian box from various files in /etc directory, however most of the users e.g. normal people aren't"

As a confirmed Debian user I find it strange that you don't know about Synaptic a GUI front-end to the debian package manager. Have you mentioned Xandros, Ubuntu or Linspire to the 'normal people', all three based on Debian and not a text config file in sight.

"as long as proper GUI configuration tools, like Control Panel in windows, are absent from KDE/GNOME desktop environments I don't think that majority of people would like to use it"

As a confirmed Linux user I find it strange that you are not aware of any GUI config tools. This Redhat Menu item (april 2003) looks to me, strangly like a GUI config utility. SuSE provides the YaST GUI install and config utility and not a config text file in sight. According to this Linuxconf has a GUI frontend that runs on Redhat or Mandrake.

Linux needs Control Panel (Score:5, Distro FUD)

HR-2517, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2003, instructs the FBI to develop a programme to deter online trafficking of copyrighted material. The bureau would also develop a warning, with the FBI seal, that copyright holders could issue to suspected violators. And the bureau would encourage sharing of information on suspected copyright violations among law enforcement, copyright owners and ISPs (Internet service providers).

Thursday, the FBI allied itself with various US entertainment companies to stop the reported billions of dollars lost to piracy. Now, all forms of digital media including DVDs, CDs, and videogames will carry the FBI piracy warning. The warning will be marked by the FBI seal and will read, "The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000."

And, this isn't the only case where this has happened before (2003)

Story on rumour quoshing:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,3928 5426,00.htm

"One thing that I notices when I read the article is that the distributors were suggesting that for most failures other than an LCD failure the thing would probably just be discarded"

He didn't actually say discarded, what he said they would be repaired at government depots or replaced.

"There is no mention of whether this has been considered, or if these devices may be RoHS compliant"

You're kidding right? .. So projects like Computer Aid International should be banned. Incidentally the cost of these free computers usually works out at around £10,720 per 20ft container.

was: Toss em in the dump? (Score:1)

well , apparently it was more fair to help M$ , and less fair to help anyone else
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308, 2120943,00.htm

They like to use history is this essay, but backward compatability is by far the biggest factor in the history of desktop operating system software.

I've seen several people now switching to Macs, two of them in a work environment where I would presume you'd find the most serious problems with backwards compatibility. They're doing fine. Most of what people are doing nowadays is web-oriented.

Anyway, you may be right, but I suspect by far the biggest things which keeps the Windows monopoly going are the anticompetitive threats and threatened loss of marketing money kickbacks made by Microsoft against any company that dares to ship a computer without Windows on it.

Rich

It depends on how you re-define secure. Even malware from 2004 will still run.

In the UK there is an established emergency services protocol called "Access Overload Control". In "major incidents" the senior police officer on the scene can invoke ACCOLC, specifying the location of the incident, and the mobile phone companies will restrict calls to phones whose SIM cards have been programmed in advance with an authorisation code (ambulance, police, fire, etc, plus phone company techs). Everyone else gets a network busy signal.

Most reports say that on the day of the bombings in London, the mobile phone networks were overloaded, but were not shut down by the security services. Some reports say ACCOLC was invoked only in one 1-km square area, although Vodaphone is cited as saying they invoked ACCOLC across all of London while other network operators said they hadn't done so but had simply been overloaded.

In the UK there is an established emergency services protocol called "Access Overload Control". In "major incidents" the senior police officer on the scene can invoke ACCOLC, specifying the location of the incident, and the mobile phone companies will restrict calls to phones whose SIM cards have been programmed in advance with an authorisation code (ambulance, police, fire, etc, plus phone company techs). Everyone else gets a network busy signal.

Most reports say that on the day of the bombings in London, the mobile phone networks were overloaded, but were not shut down by the security services. Some reports say ACCOLC was invoked only in one 1-km square area, although Vodaphone is cited as saying they invoked ACCOLC across all of London while other network operators said they hadn't done so but had simply been overloaded.

One word:
botnets

Then you can explain how it's actually the closed source OS that is the most damaging.
Hell, just show them some apache logs that are still constantly being hit by things like IIS servers still infected with Sasser, years after it should have been eradicated.

I think the way that Dave Winer characterises Microsoft is accurate; they're a company which only becomes interested in markets once others have proved them viable. After all, that's the safe bet. Microsoft are a business first and foremost, not an innovator. A lot of technology companies are innovators first, businesses second, and a lot of this type of company go out of business when they realise they didn't actually have any means of making money from their innovation. From this perspective it is of course sensible to let others make your mistakes for you, then enter the market once it's proven. Microsoft have done this time and time again; with Apple, IBM, Sega (Dreamcast, anyone?), Sendo and probably numerous others I've not heard about.

I quote Paul Graham (who created Yahoo Stores, cited by Joel Spolsky):

"If you want to write desktop software now you do it on Microsoft's terms, calling their APIs and working around their buggy OS. And if you manage to write something that takes off, you may find that you were merely doing market research for Microsoft."

But there is innovation, still. Microsoft has begun to give a lot more free reign to its web development teams. There are interesting projects taking off there, and they might well become useful tools. But as far as business goes, this is practically just research. They might turn up useful tools in the future which can be sold, but then again they might not.

The biggest problem Microsoft suffers from nowadays is that where previously they allowed others to do their market research for them, nowadays they seem to assume that they have a right to any market dominated by any company vaguely related to technology. This is a serious mistake. Microsoft can't beat Google by doing the tools Google does better than them, because Microsoft isn't an advertising company. Microsoft can't beat Apple at the iPod+iTunes game, because they don't understand what it is consumers want. They fundamentally don't grok either what it is that makes these things successful or their reason for existing in the first place.

Scoble can talk about the little innovations that Microsoft makes (even though I think pretty much every example he cites is desperately flawed), but even in these cases they're usually incremental improvement. Microsoft didn't bring the mouse to the desktop as a revolutionary input device; they merely refined it. They didn't 'make' Halo; they bought the company that did and got them to make their game an Xbox exclusive (to begin with, at least).

I honestly believe Microsoft would be set for a fall (in the way that all those clueless journos predicted the 'death' of Apple throughout the 90s) if it wasn't for the insanely large pile of cash they sit on. It'll take many years of stupidity to fritter that away. In the meantime they'll keep putting out crappy operating systems based on Windows NT with yet more "me too!" chrome based on what Mac OS X looked like 3 years previously but that will begrudgingly be accepted by the market who are already crack addicts to Win32; they'll keep on attempting to win the handheld device / videogame system / portable music player markets; keep on trying to compete with Google and keep coming up scratching their heads. Eventually a wind change will occur once the likes of Ballmer has been superceded by a new generation of people who were inspired by Apple, Google, Yahoo et al and want to do more. People who recognise that there is sometimes a correlation between business success and innovation, and that being "me too!" doesn't always hack it. That's when Microsoft will finally return to being an innovator.

Many people associate true AI with the slave race scenario. I don't see this. If we are truly advanced enough to create intelligence, then certainly we can use that knowledge to improve our own brains.

Actually, I generally don't expect quality products for free. I've been blasted several times on this site for suggesting that quality code/coders are worth money. However since Opera, IE, & Safari are available for free it removes the ability to gather needed revenues directly from the end-users in the form of software licenses.

I'm not overly familiar with the structure of Mozilla Foundation & Mozilla Corporation, but I did find an interesting article where a Mozilla staff member is quoted as saying moneys from Google allowed them to hire an additional 10 people between 2004-2005. It's partnerships like that where Firefox should be deriving funding to fix bugs.

Parents won't allow their kids in their closet, washrooms, OR schools in England if those zany, unpredictable radio waves are going everywhere!

Timms said the council had compared the cost of the Linux desktop migration with an upgrade to Windows XP, and had found that a Microsoft upgrade would be cheaper. Most of the difference was made up of costs attributed to "decision making" and "project management", largely brought about because of a shortage of skills in open-source networking and the changes to IT processes that would result.

The Linux project cost £534,710, while the equivalent XP upgrade would have cost the council £429,960. There were a range of problems with the open-source implementation, Timms said, including desktop interfaces and lack of support for removeable drives.

Also have a read of this, in which they reveal that Birmingham was using suse 9.2 *without* a yearly support contract. Also, they weren't upgrading the actual hardware as far as I can tell, otherwise an XP upgrade doesn't make sense. And what's "an equivalent XP upgrade" anyway ? Did they take into account all the extra software needed to run XP at an equivalent level - anti-virus, MS Office, etc. That's without taking into account that they will have to "upgrade" windows again at some point, and thereby spend *another* £429,960 ! (Except it will be more than that because the hardware won't be up to running Vista).

Some facts have been omitted from this article which shed further light on the appalling waste of taxpayers money that was the Birmingham City Council's Linux trial:

1) A trial of 4 differently configured Linux desktops (Ubuntu-based) and one Sun Java Desktop machine was held at Birmingham's central library in the summer 2005. A local research company was employed to measure the outcomes of the double-blind trial, specifcally which configuration was viewed as the best by participants. The Linux desktops took the top four spots with Sun's Java Desktop coming in last. Unsurprisingly the report was never published. BCC are a major Sun client.

2) The Open Source community, especially the Open Source Consortium (others included the Gnome Foundation), was entirely excluded from the project after the initial trial. BCC IT's department thought they could undertake the deployment themselves. The failure of this project proves this was not the case.

3) BCC selected an obsolete version of Suse Linux rather than the Ubuntu desktops that won the Library trial. They were unable to replicate the winning desktop configuration because the IT department accidentially erased it.

4) Open Forum Europe managed the Open Source Academy and were responsible for the dissemination programme.

Some facts have been omitted from this article which shed further light on the appalling waste of taxpayers money that was the Birmingham City Council's Linux trial:

1) A trial of 4 differently configured Linux desktops (Ubuntu-based) and one Sun Java Desktop machine was held at Birmingham's central library in the summer 2005. A local research company was employed to measure the outcomes of the double-blind trial, specifcally which configuration was viewed as the best by participants. The Linux desktops took the top four spots with Sun's Java Desktop coming in last. Unsurprisingly the report was never published. BCC are a major Sun client.

2) The Open Source community, especially the Open Source Consortium (others included the Gnome Foundation), was entirely excluded from the project after the initial trial. BCC IT's department thought they could undertake the deployment themselves. The failure of this project proves this was not the case.

3) BCC selected an obsolete version of Suse Linux rather than the Ubuntu desktops that won the Library trial. They were unable to replicate the winning desktop configuration because the IT department accidentially erased it.

4) Open Forum Europe managed the Open Source Academy and were responsible for the dissemination programme.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,3911 6902,00.htm
http://slashdot.org/hardware/03/09/04/1427237.shtm l?tid=137&tid=185

A shameless copy of a previous slashgeo.org story:
Time for Time in GIS
Christian Spanring links to a FOSS4G2006 open document presentation named It's About Time for Time. From the abstract: ""The weakness of current cartography is its poor representation of time. The surface of the earth is treated as a static thing." (Anselm Hook) [...] There are numerous experiments, but little solid support in tools or data structures for representing the 4th dimension (when we're still getting used to the 3rd dimension in GIS)." The time capabilities of GeoRSS and Google Earth are mentioned. Previous poll on time.

And why not another pertinent one?
Time Tracking Now Included in Google Earth 'Free'
All Points Blog links to a ZDNet article where we learn the time tracking tool in Google Earth Pro will now be available in Google Earth Free (and GE Plus, of course!). From the article: "The feature in which a slider is used to scroll through time [...] now features a simplified interface. [...] showing how scientists, who had tracked the movements of a whale shark using GPS, had then mapped the creature's path using the application. Business uses could include fleet tracking or mapping the movements of transport infrastructure according to Google. Jones also described how the new version would enable users to track all of the geostationary satellites orbiting the earth." Ed Parsons was first to mention this news item.

Does this mean Steve Linford's UK-based SpamHaus is finally subject to Her Majesty's edict? Will Steve serve time in the Tower of London? God shave the Queen!

So, I guess that little high-profile dinner some time back wherein ms got assurances that windows would win in China were not to be. Seems ms is being mshafted.

They wanted pervasiveness/pervasion. Well, they have pervAsian. Yeh,

Red Flag Linux?: maybe 5 RMB

A Linux distro in most places?: what you want to pay for it

windows, maybe even Vista? PRICE-LESS

windows will be "everywhere", but it will be "priceless!", not "priceless"

A First Look at Asianux 1.0
http://lwn.net/Articles/90823/

Asianux, recent stuff (need javascript on to see the site... sheesh....)
http://www.asianux.com/asianux.do

Microsoft Fights Piracy In China, Linux Wins
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=170700943

Red Flag Linux (from 2004-ish)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe =UTF-8&q=red+flag+linux&btnG=Search

Korea, China, Japan start open-source collaboration (from 2004)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,3915 0645,00.htm

Unseating a software giant
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Management-Focus/Unseat ing-a-software-giant/2005/06/13/1118514959694.html

Yes siree... ms is could have a hard time as Asia reasserts its position in the world. They are NOT going to "meekly fork over billions of dollars year after year to microsoft..."

Hmmmm...

http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/161
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1530875,00.as p
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,3911 7586,00.htm

Maybe blogger.com went to implement this ? Silly! It's the old hardware problem http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,392843 79,00.htm

I second that, SpamHaus is one of the worst offenders on the anti-spam scene, giving legitimate companies no recourse to defend their actions. Finding out the facts can never hurt you.

Here are a number of other articles related to SpamHaus's heavy handed tactics:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/?PROCESS=show&ID=2 0080176&AT=39283978-39020375t-10000025c
http://news.com.com/5208-1030-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=6005&start=0

I've always been a critic of the premium that one has to pay to get an Apple. So when I saw this article, I was quick to go configure a Dell and point out just how much one can save over the Apple tax.

But it was 25 percent *more* (at least compared the $1999 MacBook). And you *still* have to waste your time reinstalling Windows to get rid of all the circus-ware that comes on the Dell.

It really is no wonder that someone is paying Gartner to try and coax Apple out of the PC business. They'd be idiots not to continue selling hardware.

http://www.truphone.com/

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/wireless/0, 39020348,39283143,00.htm

John

KDE 4 is based on Qt 4, which is significantly faster and lighter than 3. Additionally, KDE is so customizable, that you can strip it down to only what you need as far as eye-candy goes.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that once they got us in there and had a sizable investment that they would change the playing field.

Correct second link: Windows XP Service Pack 2: Install With Care

I don't believe I saw an example of one of "several of their mission critical apps".

And you won't. What those locations do, and what's wrong with them, is between them and their vendors, not for your leader in Redmond to interfere with. If they worked with XP SP1, why change? A security patch, if that's what it really is, shouldn't affect functionality. If it's not a security patch, but a functionality upgrade, then it's fraudulent to call it a security patch. If undesireable changes in configuration and functionality are pushed out by bundling them with security patches deemd essential, then that's illegal and unethical, though you'll have to ask a lawyer what that's actually called.

However, a quick check of any non-MSN search engine will bring up lots of articles about the troubles caused by XP SP2.

• Redmond, We Have a Problem Here: XP SP2
• Users Give XP SP2 Mixed Marks
• Windows XP SP2 and the Risk of a Linux Backlash
• WinXP SP2 = security placebo?
• Microsoft: DRM Trojan hole is not a vulnerability
• Programs "Seem" to Break Under Windows XP SP2, Microsoft Says

Given the problems SP2 has had with third party (and even MS' own) apps as well as falling on its face security-wise, it would appear that SP2 is more about rolling out unpopular configuration and functionality changes under the guise of "security". After most customers, politicians and even courts will simply roll over and close their eyes when the magic word, "security", is mentioned.

Like I said, get over it. And while you're at it, get out of the way. Like one of the reviewers says, "Unfortunately, Windows remains a quite dangerous system to connect to the Internet, and users are still very much on their own in terms of security solutions."

if people switch to Vista it's because we want to, and not because they have to.

Nevertheless Microsoft may face an upward battle when it comes to Vista and business. Hey, if I anyway need new machines for all my employees and software and (bloody extortionist) license agreements and training savvy IT managers will take a very hard look at alternatives since the pain and expense of migrating to Vista is just too damn big.

That's not to say that Microsoft will go under anytime, soon. But it won't be quite such an easy shove into literally any busines' face as they did with W2K. or XP.

Projects like they are run in Vienna, or Munich are highly visible and will convince other entities to look into alternatives if they are successful (and I don't see why they wouldn't).

But don't fool yourself, there will be a lot of friction and resistance from various entites on that path.

if people switch to Vista it's because we want to, and not because they have to.

Nevertheless Microsoft may face an upward battle when it comes to Vista and business. Hey, if I anyway need new machines for all my employees and software and (bloody extortionist) license agreements and training savvy IT managers will take a very hard look at alternatives since the pain and expense of migrating to Vista is just too damn big.

That's not to say that Microsoft will go under anytime, soon. But it won't be quite such an easy shove into literally any busines' face as they did with W2K. or XP.

Projects like they are run in Vienna, or Munich are highly visible and will convince other entities to look into alternatives if they are successful (and I don't see why they wouldn't).

But don't fool yourself, there will be a lot of friction and resistance from various entites on that path.

Then maybe you should be removed form Windows support and reassigned or let go. Sorry but if you have these problems "all the time" then you are doing something wrong.

Yeah, right. It's my fault Microsoft patches often cause problems. My fault and the fault of thousands of others who just don't know what they're doing, I suppose. Let's see what a google search turns up:

• August 30, 2006 - IE patch breaks Exchange 2000
• August 16, 2006 - Microsoft patch may crash IE when certain websites are viewed.
• June 16, 2006 - Microsoft patch breaks dial-up networking
• April 18, 2006 - Microsoft patch breaks HP software
• April 16, 2006 - Microsoft patch breaks web pages ON PURPOSE (EOLAS problem passed on to their users)
• April 14, 2006 - IE patch breaks Siebel client
• October 29, 2005 - Another Black Eye for Microsoft Patch Creation Process
• May 13, 2005 - Faulty Microsoft Update Rekindles Patch Quality Concerns

I could go on. That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's a known issue. Has been for years. Many of those links point to articles saying things like "Patches have caused trouble at times, on occasion prompting Microsoft to fix already released updates" and "When we are dealing with Microsoft updates, one thing we always reiterate, then reiterate some more, is to test before deploying. The guidance is always to download, test, then deploy the patches. With Microsoft, the test section of our guidance has gotten larger and larger."

That you haven't experienced problems with ANY Microsoft patches but SP2 is at best an anomoly.

Where I work we've got about 500 windows computers, give or take. Those run on a rather eclectic mix of hardware, some as old as P2s, some as new as Core 2 Duos. Servers, workstations, you name it. We run a pretty eclectic mix of software too. Off the top of my head some examples would be Matlab, HFSS, Photoshop, Office, Vegas, Visual Studio, Metrowerks, Miktek and so on. A fairly diverse Windows environment, in other words.

Wow. I'm happy for you. Your parents must be so proud.

Wanna know how many patches ever came out that broke systems? One: SP2. How many broke? 2, both personal systems loaded to the gills with spyware. We wiped them to get rid of the spyware, they took the update and worked fine. That's a pretty good track record. Comparable to Solaris (which we also run a lot of)

So, is it your policy to automatically patch production servers using AutoUpdate? You've never run a competitor's database or application stack on any of your Windows servers? All the software you mentioned is desktop software. Because if you have, you'll find service packs breaking things aplenty. I'm not talking desktop apps. I'm talking backend. I'm actually fairly comfortable setting desktops (since XP stabilized) to auto update. I would never apply a patch to a production server without full testing on test servers to make sure things like, oh, let's see...the latest SQL Server service pack doesn't cause function FOO of product BAR to stop working...because that happens...frequently.

Now let's compare that to, say, Fedora, which we also run.

I never said anything about Linux. Patch management seems to be an equal