What if that proven systen is decaying out from under you? HD's failing, memory going bad... Tell you what, can you get me new boards for an IBM RT pc? I highly doubt it.
Easy! Just give John Titor a call... he's got all the time in the world, plus he has prior experience finding old tech!
If I'm understanding it correctly, using the "Subnet" scope for your dialup connections actually allows access from the entire Internet. The article seems to argue that this "bug" is due to Windows ignoring certain settings when it deals with dialup connections. It doesn't say if the firewall code is flawed (and thus not properly calculating the "subnet" scope), or if there is some other DUN code which is overriding the firewall settings.
Everytime you drive it you have to plug in and get more electric charge from the above environment destroying power plant.
In theory, a power plant's pollution is "localized" and thus more easily controlled.
Perhaps you can think of it as a mainframe/supercomputer vs. workstations/beowulf clusters... car pollution is distributed (which might be good, because then one place doesn't get polluted "too much"), whereas powerplant pollution is highly localized (initially -- yes, it gets distributed by wind patterns, etc).
The point is that it's *far* easier to reduce pollution (eg, with newly invented tech) if your pollution sources are centralized. Good luck getting every car owner to bring their 1970's beater in to get the latest anti-pollution gadget. Installation of pollution controls on one power plant reduces pollution far more than installation of a similar gadget on one car.
But the problem with this discussion is it's really a no-win solution. Humanity needs energy, and there will be pollutants no matter what we use (let's ignore entropy for the time being). That's not to say we should use the most polluting processes, but it's is important to recognize what levels of pollution can be reduced in an economically-feasible manner.
There will be some optimal point where we accept a certain level of pollution because it's not worth my/your/everyone's limited time and money to do additional cleanup/prevention.
How much energy was "wasted" while you read this post? Maybe you should've turned your computer off instead...
If someone I don't know is logged in over ssh as root on one of my boxes the last thing I am worried about is his ability to shut it down
Actually, if someone I don't know is logged into my system as root, I'd prefer they simply shut the machine down. Then they can't do any (more) damage...
Email/browsing/etc on my T40 with the extended battery (9 cell) lasts 5 to 6 hours, with no special settings for the screen brightness. The screen is set to sleep after 2 min or so, and I've disabled the pagefile in Windows XP, so the hard drive gets a rest.
you're only allowed to use their SMTP server if you are either on campus, use the VPN, or are using authentication over SSL from wherever... you'd have to anyway, with ISP's blocking outgoing port 25 these days
If they're requiring authentication over SSL before you can relay (which is a good choice on their part), they may also have SMTPS (port 465) open, which would sidestep the ISP firewall problem.
I'd rather have the OS damaged than my work files lost.
I understand your point of view, and agree with your point, but to damage the OS files, a user/worm/etc would require administrative/SYSTEM privs, and given that, they can *still* erase my files.
Most people who bitch about MS-related security problems complain that users can damage the whole system (since many run as Admins/Power Users). Yet on Linux, damage is limited to the users home directly so they are only screwing themselves over, and this is trumpeted as "how it should be done (TM)". Well, that's what I've setup, and it wasn't particularly difficult, just time consuming (in fact, I started doing so to to see if it could be done).
I can recover my work files because I keep backups. And while I can reinstall all of my programs, etc, running as a user saves me from doing so -- I just restore my file backups to a new profile and I'm back in business. It also protects from spyware/viruses/trojans etc which require higher privileges.
On a side note, I have found situations where filesystem permissions were not appropriate (Full Control to Everyone on \Documents And Settings\All Users), and I have to wonder if MS did that for convenience. Now, that may be fine for most users, but I'd still like a security template, etc for "paranoid" users to lock down the file system as well.
If you were able to run Windows with real restricted user accounts, this wouldn't really be such a problem.
This is working well for me, actually. I have two gripes though...
1. I can't add new VPN/Dialup connections easily. The New Connection wizard won't run as a regular user, and there doesn't appear to be a policy to allow this. However, I can add connections just fine through the Connections tab in the Internet Options control panel (although these connections are not firewall-enabled by default).
2. I can't adjust the power saving options, and again there doesn't appear to be a policy through which I could allow any user to adjust this. I have the policy set under the administrative account, but my own user account cannot make the changes (yet the "default" settings are *different* that what the administrator account had set -- So apprently I can override the admin settings but cannot override them with the settings I personally want.
There are other minor issues, like WinAmp doesn't save its preferences into my profile, but rather saves them to the Program Files\WinAmp directory. Granting permissions on the necessary files is not particularly difficult, however.
For games, I just install them as a subfolder in a \Games directory, which allows access to all local users. Sure, a virus running as my account could erase this stuff but the OS won't be damaged.
There may be radioactive spiders giving people superhuman powers, but water should still boil if you toss superheated stuff into it.
I always assumed that the mentality for movies was "this is the same word as you... except..."
And then you filled in the blank, with the one or two "impossible" or "unbelievable" premises required for the movie. Anything that the movie does not attempt to explain, or that I can't understand on my own, I have to assume functions the same way as it does in real life.
In the long run you're doing a disservice to the Mozilla folks by passing it off as IE
If websites see an increase in the percentage of Mozilla-related user agents in their access logs, then that benefits Mozilla.
Just imagine, 90% of users accessing the "infected" sites are using IE, and are likely getting infected. How many of those users have administrative rights on their own system? 75%?
This is the time for the Mozilla organization to write letters to newspapers, suggesting that users try Mozilla if they're tired of IE's security flaws.
Instead you just bowed out... hell you didn't even let them send the car. Think of the potential.
Well, it wasn't being filmed live, but disregarding that, one could always show up and inform the other guests whats going on, and then leave before the show starts. Let the legitimate guests in on the secret before they're embarassed...
Microsoft disputes the notion that there's a problem with the way Windows XP works with Wi-Fi.
This may be another case of MS patches causing more harm than good... although (thankfully) I think this particular patch is "recommended" and not part of the critical updates.
A client of mine had his wireless connection drop every three or four minutes, even though the base station was under the desk at which he was working. After some research on Google, I removed the MS Hotfix for WPA (826942) and all is well.
Maybe XP tries to negotiate WPA after it's connected via WEP, and since the AP doesn't support WPA, Windows disconnects. I'm not a wireless expert so I'm guessing on that...
Note that disabling IEEE 802.1x authentication didn't help; only removing the WPA patch fixed the problem.
The number one thing they should do IMHO is reduce overhead.
What exactly is "overhead"? It just sounds like a vague claim that the system is "inefficient" and needs to be "optimized".
One advantage of XP over 2000 is that on XP you can disable the page file entirely, and Windows won't keep suggesting you enable it and/or complain because it's out of page file space (as happens if you set a 2 MB page file in 2000).
My 1.6 Ghz/1 GB/80 GB laptop with XP with no pagefile is much more "responsive" than my 1.6 Ghz/1 GB/80 GB desktop running 2000 with a pagefile. Windows seems to page memory to disk whether it's necessary or not; it will page out Thunderbird to disk, for example, just because it isn't the front-most application -- yet I have more than enough free RAM (let's say 256 in use, the rest used for buffers), the amount it saves by doing so is minimal at best. And I know you can set Thunderbird/Mozilla to stop Windows from paging it to disk, but should I have to do that for every app I want to use?
I shorted SCOX at 10... so far so good. There weren't many shares available, but still it's better than nothing.
You have to short SCOX when the stock goes up, because that's when the twitchy investors get out... granted, you have to believe it's going to come back down again, but isn't that the fun part? When SCOX was going up a few percent each day (when Baystar was kiting the stock so it would close above $10.50 or whatever), there were around 3000 shortable shares available.
Will the hardware really be "free"? Or will it just be the medium upon which the software is provided (and runs of course)?
If the hardware is actually free, and I own it, then that might not be so bad. I do expect it to be DRM'd to death, and basically only be usable with the software provided.
But if it's not free, and it's merely rented to you (at no charge), then breaking the DRM on your own box will definitely land you in hot water.
Is this the Microsoft method to combating free software? That just seems like a losing battle... I can make unlimited copies of my Linux CDs, but it is physically impossible to "copy" a PC. So yes, they can produce PCs for a very low (marginal) cost, but the marginal cost of a PC will still be many times more than the marginal cost of copying a Linux install CD or disk image.
While support contracts may be one way to make money with free software, and even with proprietary or non-free software, I can't imagine this as anything more than a ploy to force a subscription model and DRM'd hardware down the customers' throats.
A typical Windows system follows a simple lifecycle: it starts out with a clean Windows installation, which gradually deteriorates as programs are installed, and uninstalled. Eventually, the Windows registry accumulates so much crud that the user is forced to do a clean install.
Half of the article seems like a rant against the Windows registry, and doesn't appear to even bring that point to a conclusion.
Sure, reinstalling can fix a lot of problems, but the machines I maintain (personal and work) do not get reinstalled unless there is a catastrophic failure. I know it's popular to believe Windows boxes need a reinstall every 6 months, but I have to question the "l33t skillz" of those particular users.
I've actually migrated installations from old hardware because I didn't want to reinstall my apps. Is there "cruft" in the registry on those system? Maybe, in the same sense that you have orphaned.conf files in/etc or old log files on your Linux box. Such files/registry entries are unlikely to interfere with anything, and when they do, it is far more efficient to handle individual cases rather than apply a blanket policy of erase and rebuild.
I have to wonder if the author of the article is trying too hard to fix problems which aren't... registry "cruft" does not harm the computer. If there are lingering problems after software installs/uninstalls, it's due TO THAT SOFTWARE. Don't install it next time.
The company has to move away from its Windows roots in order to create a secure operating system environment.
Is this the article's conclusion? That Windows isn't secure? All this moaning about how hard it is to get Windows updates and the suggestion is to "move away from its Windows roots"? So the registry "cruft" is now a security issue because the "solution" to computer problems is reinstallation? That's quite a stretch...
I call FUD; I thought vague, unsupported claims were reserved for AdTI.
The de facto monopoly in the search market makes us all very vulnerable. Just like/. moderatio points, internet user will often overlook interesting links or think that if Google can't find it, it does not exist.
Well, considering the knowledge of most "internet users" I would guess that if Google can't find it, it might as well not exist (from their perspective).
And, at the risk of offending, let me make this perfectly clear: If the average user can't find something through Google (or any search engine), how else are they going to find it? Randomly typing in URLs until they stumble across the one they wanted? If there are billions of individual pages on the Internet, one user searching for one particular page is going to have one hell of a time finding it if that page isn't indexed by a search engine at some point in time.
Assuming the physical media is intact (as in, all read requests to the disk are successful), SalvageNTFS can retrieve data if there is even a single record of the MFT intact.
My company purchased a product a while back called GetDataBack NTFS and it has worked perfectly. It worked great when I (accidentally) deleted a volume from the W2K Disk Management MMC (whoops). Recovered all the data (since only the partition map was changed). Yes, I did something stupid, but this software saved me hours of recovering from backups.
End users don't understand PKI, for the most part.
<poor attempt at humor>
Congratulations, you have won the "Understatement of the Week!" award. Note that this being slashdot, your reward may be revoked at any point in time for any reason, and by any poster. This award is non-transferrable, but may be redeemed for Disney Dollars. On the upside, as long as your award is valid, expect to be invited to Fark photoshop contests, among other sought-after perks.
Whereas microsoft _attempts_ to leap forward, but at each leap forward it takes a rest and linux passes it.
I think that analogy is more relevant to the Internet Explorer vs. Mozilla "battle". IE hasn't had any changes in how long? Compared to Mozilla? Once Microsoft achieves (or thinks they achieve) market dominance they stop innovating, and that makes sense from a business standpoint. It's the consumers who always get screwed anyways.
The interesting thing about free open source software is that it actually empowers the consumer; you're no longer "stuck" with a crummy/stagnating just because a company wants to milk it's cash cow for every last drop (and nothing specifically against that, I just want choice here -- which I don't get in a monopoly situation).
So basically Microsoft needs to just wait, work on Longhorn, make it stable and release it once it is completely finished, with much much more stability
Disclaimer: I freely admit that my information may be flawed, so correct me where I'm wrong.
Microsoft encouraged (threatened?) it's customers to migrate to the Software Assurance licensing method. In other words, "rent the software from us and we'll give you free upgrades as long as you rent from us". The rental period is three years. Yet there won't be a release of a new version of Windows for approximately 3 years (or maybe more). Not to mention the SA cutoff for the good pricing was fall of last year (IIRC).
So that means companies paid for free upgrades (OK), but then Microsoft doesn't release a new version of Windows (not OK).
What "upgrades" did they pay for? All the service packs will be freely available, unless Microsoft tries another stunt like Windows ME.
At the same time, the company's licensing agreement has changed so now they're not licensed to use their software when the subscription expires. Whoops.
Granted, other products have had upgrades since then (like Office) and the server suite, and I'm not sure how this affects the Client Access Licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
What if that proven systen is decaying out from under you? HD's failing, memory going bad... Tell you what, can you get me new boards for an IBM RT pc? I highly doubt it.
Easy! Just give John Titor a call... he's got all the time in the world, plus he has prior experience finding old tech!
If I'm understanding it correctly, using the "Subnet" scope for your dialup connections actually allows access from the entire Internet. The article seems to argue that this "bug" is due to Windows ignoring certain settings when it deals with dialup connections. It doesn't say if the firewall code is flawed (and thus not properly calculating the "subnet" scope), or if there is some other DUN code which is overriding the firewall settings.
Everytime you drive it you have to plug in and get more electric charge from the above environment destroying power plant.
In theory, a power plant's pollution is "localized" and thus more easily controlled.
Perhaps you can think of it as a mainframe/supercomputer vs. workstations/beowulf clusters... car pollution is distributed (which might be good, because then one place doesn't get polluted "too much"), whereas powerplant pollution is highly localized (initially -- yes, it gets distributed by wind patterns, etc).
The point is that it's *far* easier to reduce pollution (eg, with newly invented tech) if your pollution sources are centralized. Good luck getting every car owner to bring their 1970's beater in to get the latest anti-pollution gadget. Installation of pollution controls on one power plant reduces pollution far more than installation of a similar gadget on one car.
But the problem with this discussion is it's really a no-win solution. Humanity needs energy, and there will be pollutants no matter what we use (let's ignore entropy for the time being). That's not to say we should use the most polluting processes, but it's is important to recognize what levels of pollution can be reduced in an economically-feasible manner.
There will be some optimal point where we accept a certain level of pollution because it's not worth my/your/everyone's limited time and money to do additional cleanup/prevention.
How much energy was "wasted" while you read this post? Maybe you should've turned your computer off instead...
If someone I don't know is logged in over ssh as root on one of my boxes the last thing I am worried about is his ability to shut it down
Actually, if someone I don't know is logged into my system as root, I'd prefer they simply shut the machine down. Then they can't do any (more) damage...
Actually if you setup/use/encourage rendevous-dependent services too, you could easily "find" and talk to new people in your neighborhood.
Email/browsing/etc on my T40 with the extended battery (9 cell) lasts 5 to 6 hours, with no special settings for the screen brightness. The screen is set to sleep after 2 min or so, and I've disabled the pagefile in Windows XP, so the hard drive gets a rest.
you're only allowed to use their SMTP server if you are either on campus, use the VPN, or are using authentication over SSL from wherever ...
you'd have to anyway, with ISP's blocking outgoing port 25 these days
If they're requiring authentication over SSL before you can relay (which is a good choice on their part), they may also have SMTPS (port 465) open, which would sidestep the ISP firewall problem.
I'd rather have the OS damaged than my work files lost.
I understand your point of view, and agree with your point, but to damage the OS files, a user/worm/etc would require administrative/SYSTEM privs, and given that, they can *still* erase my files.
Most people who bitch about MS-related security problems complain that users can damage the whole system (since many run as Admins/Power Users). Yet on Linux, damage is limited to the users home directly so they are only screwing themselves over, and this is trumpeted as "how it should be done (TM)". Well, that's what I've setup, and it wasn't particularly difficult, just time consuming (in fact, I started doing so to to see if it could be done).
I can recover my work files because I keep backups. And while I can reinstall all of my programs, etc, running as a user saves me from doing so -- I just restore my file backups to a new profile and I'm back in business. It also protects from spyware/viruses/trojans etc which require higher privileges.
On a side note, I have found situations where filesystem permissions were not appropriate (Full Control to Everyone on \Documents And Settings\All Users), and I have to wonder if MS did that for convenience. Now, that may be fine for most users, but I'd still like a security template, etc for "paranoid" users to lock down the file system as well.
If you were able to run Windows with real restricted user accounts, this wouldn't really be such a problem.
This is working well for me, actually. I have two gripes though...
1. I can't add new VPN/Dialup connections easily. The New Connection wizard won't run as a regular user, and there doesn't appear to be a policy to allow this. However, I can add connections just fine through the Connections tab in the Internet Options control panel (although these connections are not firewall-enabled by default).
2. I can't adjust the power saving options, and again there doesn't appear to be a policy through which I could allow any user to adjust this. I have the policy set under the administrative account, but my own user account cannot make the changes (yet the "default" settings are *different* that what the administrator account had set -- So apprently I can override the admin settings but cannot override them with the settings I personally want.
There are other minor issues, like WinAmp doesn't save its preferences into my profile, but rather saves them to the Program Files\WinAmp directory. Granting permissions on the necessary files is not particularly difficult, however.
For games, I just install them as a subfolder in a \Games directory, which allows access to all local users. Sure, a virus running as my account could erase this stuff but the OS won't be damaged.
There may be radioactive spiders giving people superhuman powers, but water should still boil if you toss superheated stuff into it.
I always assumed that the mentality for movies was "this is the same word as you... except..."
And then you filled in the blank, with the one or two "impossible" or "unbelievable" premises required for the movie. Anything that the movie does not attempt to explain, or that I can't understand on my own, I have to assume functions the same way as it does in real life.
Once the alternative web browsers are identified, they will have to be tested to make sure that they are secure and compatible they are.
If this is the criteria used, how was IE ever selected in the first place?
Granted, this is operating on the assumption that the browser should have the highest level of security and compatibility.
In the long run you're doing a disservice to the Mozilla folks by passing it off as IE
If websites see an increase in the percentage of Mozilla-related user agents in their access logs, then that benefits Mozilla.
Just imagine, 90% of users accessing the "infected" sites are using IE, and are likely getting infected. How many of those users have administrative rights on their own system? 75%?
This is the time for the Mozilla organization to write letters to newspapers, suggesting that users try Mozilla if they're tired of IE's security flaws.
Instead you just bowed out... hell you didn't even let them send the car. Think of the potential.
Well, it wasn't being filmed live, but disregarding that, one could always show up and inform the other guests whats going on, and then leave before the show starts. Let the legitimate guests in on the secret before they're embarassed...
Microsoft disputes the notion that there's a problem with the way Windows XP works with Wi-Fi.
This may be another case of MS patches causing more harm than good... although (thankfully) I think this particular patch is "recommended" and not part of the critical updates.
A client of mine had his wireless connection drop every three or four minutes, even though the base station was under the desk at which he was working. After some research on Google, I removed the MS Hotfix for WPA (826942) and all is well.
Maybe XP tries to negotiate WPA after it's connected via WEP, and since the AP doesn't support WPA, Windows disconnects. I'm not a wireless expert so I'm guessing on that...
Note that disabling IEEE 802.1x authentication didn't help; only removing the WPA patch fixed the problem.
Solution was found here:
[wireless] Connection drops every 2-3 minutes
The number one thing they should do IMHO is reduce overhead.
What exactly is "overhead"? It just sounds like a vague claim that the system is "inefficient" and needs to be "optimized".
One advantage of XP over 2000 is that on XP you can disable the page file entirely, and Windows won't keep suggesting you enable it and/or complain because it's out of page file space (as happens if you set a 2 MB page file in 2000).
My 1.6 Ghz/1 GB/80 GB laptop with XP with no pagefile is much more "responsive" than my
1.6 Ghz/1 GB/80 GB desktop running 2000 with a pagefile. Windows seems to page memory to disk whether it's necessary or not; it will page out Thunderbird to disk, for example, just because it isn't the front-most application -- yet I have more than enough free RAM (let's say 256 in use, the rest used for buffers), the amount it saves by doing so is minimal at best. And I know you can set Thunderbird/Mozilla to stop Windows from paging it to disk, but should I have to do that for every app I want to use?
I shorted SCOX at 10... so far so good. There weren't many shares available, but still it's better than nothing.
You have to short SCOX when the stock goes up, because that's when the twitchy investors get out... granted, you have to believe it's going to come back down again, but isn't that the fun part? When SCOX was going up a few percent each day (when Baystar was kiting the stock so it would close above $10.50 or whatever), there were around 3000 shortable shares available.
Will the hardware really be "free"? Or will it just be the medium upon which the software is provided (and runs of course)?
If the hardware is actually free, and I own it, then that might not be so bad. I do expect it to be DRM'd to death, and basically only be usable with the software provided.
But if it's not free, and it's merely rented to you (at no charge), then breaking the DRM on your own box will definitely land you in hot water.
Is this the Microsoft method to combating free software? That just seems like a losing battle... I can make unlimited copies of my Linux CDs, but it is physically impossible to "copy" a PC. So yes, they can produce PCs for a very low (marginal) cost, but the marginal cost of a PC will still be many times more than the marginal cost of copying a Linux install CD or disk image.
While support contracts may be one way to make money with free software, and even with proprietary or non-free software, I can't imagine this as anything more than a ploy to force a subscription model and DRM'd hardware down the customers' throats.
A typical Windows system follows a simple lifecycle: it starts out with a clean Windows installation, which gradually deteriorates as programs are installed, and uninstalled. Eventually, the Windows registry accumulates so much crud that the user is forced to do a clean install.
.conf files in /etc or old log files on your Linux box. Such files/registry entries are unlikely to interfere with anything, and when they do, it is far more efficient to handle individual cases rather than apply a blanket policy of erase and rebuild.
Half of the article seems like a rant against the Windows registry, and doesn't appear to even bring that point to a conclusion.
Sure, reinstalling can fix a lot of problems, but the machines I maintain (personal and work) do not get reinstalled unless there is a catastrophic failure. I know it's popular to believe Windows boxes need a reinstall every 6 months, but I have to question the "l33t skillz" of those particular users.
I've actually migrated installations from old hardware because I didn't want to reinstall my apps. Is there "cruft" in the registry on those system? Maybe, in the same sense that you have orphaned
I have to wonder if the author of the article is trying too hard to fix problems which aren't... registry "cruft" does not harm the computer. If there are lingering problems after software installs/uninstalls, it's due TO THAT SOFTWARE. Don't install it next time.
The company has to move away from its Windows roots in order to create a secure operating system environment.
Is this the article's conclusion? That Windows isn't secure? All this moaning about how hard it is to get Windows updates and the suggestion is to "move away from its Windows roots"? So the registry "cruft" is now a security issue because the "solution" to computer problems is reinstallation? That's quite a stretch...
I call FUD; I thought vague, unsupported claims were reserved for AdTI.
"The irregularities were found in a routine post-election review."
Oh, so that's what they're calling it...
The de facto monopoly in the search market makes us all very vulnerable. Just like /. moderatio points, internet user will often overlook interesting links or think that if Google can't find it, it does not exist.
Well, considering the knowledge of most "internet users" I would guess that if Google can't find it, it might as well not exist (from their perspective).
And, at the risk of offending, let me make this perfectly clear: If the average user can't find something through Google (or any search engine), how else are they going to find it? Randomly typing in URLs until they stumble across the one they wanted? If there are billions of individual pages on the Internet, one user searching for one particular page is going to have one hell of a time finding it if that page isn't indexed by a search engine at some point in time.
Assuming the physical media is intact (as in, all read requests to the disk are successful), SalvageNTFS can retrieve data if there is even a single record of the MFT intact.
My company purchased a product a while back called GetDataBack NTFS and it has worked perfectly. It worked great when I (accidentally) deleted a volume from the W2K Disk Management MMC (whoops). Recovered all the data (since only the partition map was changed). Yes, I did something stupid, but this software saved me hours of recovering from backups.
I ordered my T40p with the optional 802.11a/b/g card (standard is a/b) and installed FC1
The DAG Apt Repository for RedHat 9 has a MadWifi driver module for 2.4.20; just install it through Synaptic. It works well on my ThinkPad T40.
End users don't understand PKI, for the most part.
<poor attempt at humor>
Congratulations, you have won the "Understatement of the Week!" award. Note that this being slashdot, your reward may be revoked at any point in time for any reason, and by any poster. This award is non-transferrable, but may be redeemed for Disney Dollars. On the upside, as long as your award is valid, expect to be invited to Fark photoshop contests, among other sought-after perks.
Whereas microsoft _attempts_ to leap forward, but at each leap forward it takes a rest and linux passes it.
I think that analogy is more relevant to the Internet Explorer vs. Mozilla "battle". IE hasn't had any changes in how long? Compared to Mozilla? Once Microsoft achieves (or thinks they achieve) market dominance they stop innovating, and that makes sense from a business standpoint. It's the consumers who always get screwed anyways.
The interesting thing about free open source software is that it actually empowers the consumer; you're no longer "stuck" with a crummy/stagnating just because a company wants to milk it's cash cow for every last drop (and nothing specifically against that, I just want choice here -- which I don't get in a monopoly situation).
So basically Microsoft needs to just wait, work on Longhorn, make it stable and release it once it is completely finished, with much much more stability
Disclaimer: I freely admit that my information may be flawed, so correct me where I'm wrong.
Microsoft encouraged (threatened?) it's customers to migrate to the Software Assurance licensing method. In other words, "rent the software from us and we'll give you free upgrades as long as you rent from us". The rental period is three years. Yet there won't be a release of a new version of Windows for approximately 3 years (or maybe more). Not to mention the SA cutoff for the good pricing was fall of last year (IIRC).
So that means companies paid for free upgrades (OK), but then Microsoft doesn't release a new version of Windows (not OK).
What "upgrades" did they pay for? All the service packs will be freely available, unless Microsoft tries another stunt like Windows ME.
At the same time, the company's licensing agreement has changed so now they're not licensed to use their software when the subscription expires. Whoops.
Granted, other products have had upgrades since then (like Office) and the server suite, and I'm not sure how this affects the Client Access Licenses.