Microsoft Extends Win98/SE Support

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet reports that Microsoft is extending technical support for Windows 98 till 30 June 2006, despite being days away from switching support to a CD. It seems Windows 98 will also have all necessary security updates till the new expiry date." The article states that Microsoft will have "...During that time paid over-the-phone support will be available, and "critical" security issues will be reviewed and "appropriate steps" taken."

Comments

ESR's Match.com Love-Letter

[Anonymous Coward]

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Felchmale^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Pennsylvania to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

ESR pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jagermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

I could imagine the senario...

[kaiwainz]

Microsoft Customer "care": "Welcome to Microsoft how may we victimise you?" Customer: "My system has just been hacked. What do I do? what do I do?" Microsoft Customer "care": "Nothing my dear, YOU'RE NOT QUALIFIED!"

Now is the time for MS to adopt apt-get

[Debian Troll's Best]

Despite their occasional protestations to the contrary, Microsoft is no stranger to the use of open source software in their products. It is a widely known fact that Microsoft has incorporated elements of the BSD TCP/IP stack and networking tools into their own code, and have done so completely legally: the BSD license allows for this type of code 'borrowing' by corporates. However, I believe there is another opportunity for Microsoft to successfully 'borrow' from the open source community to quickly and efficiently deal with this latest need to keep potentially unprofitable Windows 98 desktops supported: apt-get.

As many of you know, apt-get is a superb tool for distributing, versioning and updating software. As frequent users of Slashdot also know, apt-get can have a number of novel uses, ranging from music distribution to control of space probes, but that is beyond the scope of this post. My suggestion is to both Microsoft and the open source community that apt-get be included in a Service Pack for Windows 98, and that apt-get be used to continue to download updates to this venerable, yet unprofitable (for MS) operating system.

Put simply, apt-get is robust, well tested, and perfectly suited for 'hands off' updating of legacy operating systems like Win98 (look at the years of testing it has undergone in the Debian community). Microsoft can turn their attention to more profitable aspects of the business (such as emerging markets as Xbox Live!), and leave the support of apt-get to the open source community, who does a superb job of supporting these things already. It's a win-win situation. MS can still support older Win98 desktops by relying on the power of open source, and the Debian community gets access to a rich new vein of end-user talent, honed by years of experience with the one OS and their reset buttons.

Would any Debian developers care to comment on a possible strategy for approaching Microsoft with this idea? Obviously a proof of concept would be desirable before we start contacting MS reps. Does anyone have Delphi or VB skills?

Re:sure you werent

[Anonymous Coward]

i love you all.

Re:I am actually impressed...

[TheLink]

GNU/Linux is mostly old technology. Unix has been around for ages, and the architecture is in fact inferior in many aspects (esp availability/reliability related) to other stuff e.g. Multics, VMS.

The parts that aren't old technology are mostly incremental improvements too.

The only thing new worth noting is the GPL.

Microsoft is just doing what they have been doing all along - trying to extract as much milk from the cows without too much mooing and without getting kicked. Linux and other Free/OSS stuff is making it more difficult.

Too much pain and too many people will figure that the pain involved in switching to a Linux distro and other OSS is less.

There is pain involved in switching. Gnome, KDE just aren't as polished. The Star Office word processor is about as bad as Lotus Word Pro (when I last used LWP) - some stuff won't stay formatted the way you explicitly specify, and so on.

Re:Sadly Enough

[Thud457]

Proof positive that everyone in the world should be forced to use *BSD! How else are smelly, arrogant geeks going to find mates?!!!