WTF is right, but WTF are you talking about. Looking good? The big thing here is the infrastructure that this all represents. Being able to distribute and display completely digitally at a somewhat reasonable price is the news here. I guess MS should not attempt to move into any new markets or find new uses for their technology?
Hey man, this is Slashdot. By default they are going to bash anything and everything Microsoft, with whatever FUD they can muster.
Its funny, most times the only justification they can come up with is "hey d00d, M$ iz a monopoly!"
"We fully support FreeBSD RE's approach to fixing necessary problems before officially releasing the product."
However, that doesnt stop us from making fun of a major For Profit software company for doing similiar things. This in no way makes us feel like hypocrits, strangely enough.
but Bioware were promising multiplatform out-of-the-box for quite a while before the release of the game
No, they were saying they *wanted* to do it. Just because people at large saw an intention as a promise does not make Bioware the bad guy.
Besides, IT WORKS ON LINUX!!!! So stop whining about the lack of a linux-native installer, and count your blessings that they threw you a bone at all.
They've probably lost money on the port(s?) anyway,
So telling them to throw more money down the drain is pretty good advice. But most people have Win32 platforms to do their real gaming on, and already purchased that version. I dont think Bioware spending, say, $50k on something that will net them another $10k in sales can be justified.
Linux people just dont seem to be able to grasp the necessity real businesses have to make money; the real world doesnt work like your family, and when daddy didnt buy you a new car for your birthday, and you whine to grandma and have her buy it for you (hypothetically speaking). The real world has people providing for themselves, and wasting resources on stupid shit is a good way to go out of business (like Enron, or Ion Storm, or whatever).
and they've lost the goodwill that they abused by saying one thing and doing another (they were coding the game all the way through with little to no consideration of other platforms, as demonstrated by the farce when they were looking for audio systems to port to, not knowing that Miles had had a Linux port out for quite a while).
And we see just what the Linux community's good will is worth. Looking for approval from habitual complainers seems to be a losing proposition, and they thankfully didnt really pursue it to any great extent.
Also, they never said one thing and did another. They said they wanted to have it work on Linux, they probably worked on it unpaid and in their spare time, and its out there now. Instead of saying "WOW, thanks BioWare! You guys are the goods!", all they get are complaints that they didnt do enough. Next time, they should just say "you'll get nothing, and like it".
Maybe they could buy back a bit of goodwill by not also requiring that purchasers have access to a Windows box --
There no intelligent reason for them to make your holy war their own, especially since the Linux community's good will is worth next to nothing.
Why BioWare can't provide an installer is evidently something they choose not to discuss beyond a vague mention of legal restrictions. The word on the street -- unconfirmed by any primary party -- is that the license between InstallShield and BioWare prevents BioWare from providing another installation tool. That may or may not be the case, but I note that InstallShield offers a multiplatform version of its installer and that it runs on Linux. Perhaps that is what BioWare will use when it offers the retail version of the game for Linux.
Seriously, the guy writing the article has no idea how much stuff costs. The Linux InstallShield license would probably cost BioWare more money than they would make on the Linux port.
Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with 'electronic mechanisms and software' from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of euros for playing or owning games.
How about two pieces of bread buttered on one side and then made into a sandwich? No, an outward facing, unbuttered side is required. But somehow, the presence of live feline hair seems to negate this requirement.
TheMadPenguin writes "Once again I find myself checking out the newest SuSE release, and to tell you the truth, I really enjoy it. My personal computer is running Slackware (yes, I upgraded to 9.0 immediately), and I wouldn't trade it for any other distribution in the world, but I've got to say is that SuSE is still at the top of their game. When you look at all the desktop distros out there such as Mandrake, Lycoris, and Red Hat, they all really have their endearing factors, but they all are lacking in one way or another. Check out the entire review at MadPenguin.org. Complete with screenshots:)"
I also have never been laid, and can go weeks without bathing! If it werent for the internet, I would have absolutely NO human contact...
Kapur lists cancelled at-large elections, the authoritarianism and secrecy of ICANN discussion, and the narrowing possibility that ICANN could represent a new model of governance as indicators that global democracy has failed."
Sounds like someone else purchased too much into the dot.bomb foolishness. Come on, ICANN as a government model? A failure of democracy? He should stop smokin whatever he is smokin.
No, that was tried already. But since the problem is that the buttered side has to go face-down, it completes the equasion; the butter side WILL always land face down, because there isnt an unbuttered side (a side you DO want it to fall on).
Rather than the bread spinning in the air deciding which one to fall, Occum's Razor doesnt care, and just drops it.
Slate reports on the press release issued by IT consulting giant EDS to announce new CEO Michael H. Jordan that curiously doesn't show Jordan to have any experience in the IT consulting field.
Ya, I remember when he tried playing baseball. This probably wont be much better.
On the other hand, how could you do worse than the last guy, especially when its a guy named "Dick Brown". that name is just begging people to make fun of you; wouldnt it be smarter to have people call you "Rick" or something?
why should you have to blow your budget because Microsoft is lazy
Again, its not a case of them being lazy. They are basically saying its not technically possible to fix the problem without essentially giving you a new operating system. And if they are 'essentially' going to give you a new OS, then why shouldnt you just buy one?
That would be like GM dropping a new engine in your car because there is a fuel injector flaw. Too much work, too much money, not gonna happen.
I *assume* that your company has a firewall, or hopefully a full-blown dmz. Either way, youve lived with the flaw for this long, so I think you'll get by ok.
what do I do now that MS has told me my support contract is worthless and that I am SOL?
They didnt say they arent supporting NT4 anymore. They just said they cant fix this problem, and may stop supporting it earlier than expected. My prediction is they stick with it for the full term; they generally throw out feeler statements like this, and judge how much resistance people put toward it (like the retirement of the NT4 MCSE cert).
This is just another reason why enterprise customers will never move business critical apps to NT, if you want to see what a good company does look at HP and their EOL of the 3000 line.
Ummm... unix is how old? also, it seems kind of silly of you to act like the whole world is crashing down. This is just one limited risk flaw. Its not even an exploit, because the worse it can do is crash the server. On a risk-assessment scale, I would rate this as a 3 out of 10.
At any rate, its kind of unrealistic to not plan for the unexpected. As I said before, disaster recover should easily account for this; if there was a fire in your server room, would it be possible to recover from it? or is your company so strapped for cash that it would break them? If its the latter, I think you have more serious problems than your NT4 servers.
"The Free Software Foundation has announced [read: created] a 'Corporate Patronage [read: donation] Program' to allow companies to support [do] the work of the FSF. The members [donors] [companies with vested interests] already include IBM, HP, Ada Core Technologies and MySQL. Interested parties should contact Ravi Khanna [a fund raiser sponsored by Ada Core?]."
First of all, open source is part of the global IT marketplace, even if you don't like that fact.
And Microsoft is part of the global IT marketplace, even if you dont like that fact.
Second, only a tiny fraction of the IT marketplace is about selling and sending shiny shrinkwrapped boxes around the world
Ya, a majority of the rest are running MS "warez".
Most programmers are employed to write in-house software or special software for one customer or one need. - If the customer or your boss wants the end product to be open source, it is open source.
Wow, how insightful. Its interesting how your statement runs contrary to all the other employment data and educational statistics, in which most programmers are writing stuff that plugs into "shrink-wrapped", off the shelf products. Custom applications are a small percentage of what gets done, because it costs more. Most people learn how to use Word, rather than pay someone to study their secretaries and design a word processor that allows their secretaries to do things the same way faster.
The only way to come over this hurdles is to use another dominating product to push it
Clever use of FUD. However, its untrue. MS Office became dominant because they had the best suite overall. Not the best individual programs, mind you, but the best suite. For example, it allowed you to embed an Excel spreadsheet into a Word doc. The programs worked together, and that was quite different than just bundling a WordPerfect word processor with a separate Quattro Pro application.
Another thing that comes up (personally) is who buys it and likes it. The IT dept generally is in charge of buying the software, and tech support people prefer supporting MS Office- its kinder to the OS, and easier to fix (technet, as a resource, helps a lot). WordPerfect is downright hostile to anyone supporting it. It installs outdated component on your computer (like forcing Win95 messaging components to install, regardless of your OS), it breaks other applications (and even the ability to print, like their so-called "PrintPerfect" module).
Im not going to defend Word, however. I hate making docs, because one insignificant modification can break all your formatting or page layout. Secretaries hate MSO and love WP. But they arent in charge of purchasing the software.
Also, the accounting department like MSO as well. They already have to cut a check to MS for CALs, Server Licenses, etc. So if they can just tack more money onto the same check, rather than having to deal with licensing, negotiating, and paying for Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, they cut their work by less than half.
Its not a big conspiracy like people think. Its really rather basic, and it takes into account the mentality of one stop shopping (malls and convience stores) and the human habit of trying to get out of work (or do things efficiently, depending on your viewpoint).
So yes, Andalucia does have indeed no chance to compete in the global shrinkwrap market - no upstart company in the world has a chance to compete in the global shrinkwrap software market (unless they invent a whole new market).
I dont think this will drive Andalucia out of business. Provincial governments may go bankrupt, but since they arent really competing with anyone but themselves, they dont really go out of business. But the ability of a "state" to compete for citizens is pretty interesing, although probably not what you meant. It sounded like you thought they were an upstart company.
The OSS community created a whole operating system with thousands of drivers and applications - something Microsoft despite their huge ressources just couldn't do
Sure they could. And where do you think the majority of the legacy drivers that ship with the OS come from? I hardly think Tseng Labs cares about writing Windows XP drivers for a video card they made five years ago. Also, if nVid
So is writing with clarity and purpose. Perhaps you meant to say, "And that, children, is how Andalucia assured the world that nobody from our province" yada yada. Or perhaps because a government entity in Andalucia has decided not to pay for Microsoft products, they have in some mysterious way doomed all of Spain to the dark night of IT ignorance.
Well, in the same way that Russia wasnt the Soviet Union, Andalucia is not Espana. Russia wasnt the country, but they did set policies that affected the rest of the country.
My bad. I shouldn't have tried to decipher your fable.
No problem. Stupidity isnt a crime.
You can't learn C++ under an open source operating system, anymore
That wasnt my point. My point was enforcing a homogenous environment would hurt them in the long term, especially when that environment can potentially run counter to market forces. I would rather not let politician dictate what is available for me to learn, thank you very much. But I suppose some people enjoy dictatorship, so whatever floats your boat.
I'm guessing there are plenty of ways they can learn MS stuff
Ya, its called "On the job training", a long valued tradition maintained by student poorly armed for dealing with the real world.
If there's a demand for such instruction, there will be providers. Just not the government
Well, I dont have any figures on how many people go to public schools in Spain, so I couldnt tell you what the impact would be. However, I would say its all pretty ill-conceived anyway, and smells like more non-technical people jumping on the open source bandwagon.
Anyway, maybe this will open a job market to future American MCSEs to fill job gaps in another country. W00t!
What struck me reading this was he mentioned that he has worked under the terms of an NDA and the company decided not to fix their software. How can this be discovered? If he goes to the police surly this goes beyond the NDA. If anyone could clarify this I would appreciate it.
The police only handle criminal matters. You don't 'go to the police' (or go to jail, for that matter) for civil violations. There is a difference between being "not legal" and "illegal". Illegal means you are prohibited from doing something. Not Legal means you could be held financially liable for something.
To illustrate, in many states driving a car without insurance is "illegal", and carries the risk of jail time. In any case, it is "not legal" to cause accidental property damage.
Anyway, to the point, he was hired to give security advice. What they do with that advice is their responsibility. However, they ARE negligent once they are made aware of the problem; like the tobacco companies suppressing their studies. The difference in the two cases are whether that knowledge will cause actual harm (to lungs and health, to property or data, etc), or meerly increase risk of SOMEONE ELSE doing that harm (like unsecure code). Its like leaving a door unlocked- you didnt steal their stereo, but if you are paid to watch the door you could be held liable.
"just upgrade the server" is ALWAYS an option, especially if you already have Disaster Recovery plans in place. The only thing stopping someone is either complacency, laziness, or lack of knowledge.
Im not saying its easy, but if you know what you are doing, it just takes a lot of planning, and understanding both the OS and how applications work. I support tons of apps I cant use; because at my level they are pretty much all the same. Some are front-ends to a database, or a legacy database, or whatever.
And as someone who has worked in Banking IT, they are hardly what you would call 'cutting edge', they are more like 'ragged fringe'. Most of the work is over-politicized by people who dont know what they are doing. Lack of understanding breeds fear. Fear breeds stagnation, and stagnation, well, it doesnt get you moving forward.
Having so-called 'project managers' outnumber the actual workers is quite common in banks. About the only thing they do is keep the store and restaurant people employed by taking 'breaks and lunches' for 7 out of 8 hours every day.
Who wants to buy an operating system from a company that lets their OSes die before their EOL? Personally, this doesnt surprise me one bit. Windows 2000 is a million times better than NT4, in every possible way. Plus, NT4 Server has been around since 1996. If MS wants to truly make their supported products secure, they eventually need to drop the dead weight; you can only patch that old coat so many times before somebody tells you "hey man, you need to go buy a new coat". I dont even think its that they dont want to fix it; its probably just such a major problem that they would need to re-engineer the OS; but they already did that in their new products!
Personally, I think they did the responsible thing; they came clean and said "you know what, we have fixed things in the past, but this one cant be fixed. Now that you know, you need to use that info and plan around it."
There ARE some really good games on that list, like Anachronox, Deus Ex, Thief 2, etc., but you can probably pick up any of them for about $10 now. So I cant see the advantage of paying a subscription for this, unless you can actually KEEP the games.
Also, I would imagine they would need some current, A-list titles for this to really take off. However, it is probably beyond their means at this point: unless Valve is backing them. But what the heck has Valve done except sit on things? I remember lusting after Team Fortress 2 a few YEARS ago, and Half-Life 2 is a forgotten dream. IMO, Valve isnt even relavant anymore; they had their fifteen minutes. They could still prove me wrong, but I smell Daikatana written all over them.
Reading comprehension is a skill. I never said it was.
Because as we all know, the global IT marketplace is 100% Microsoft and growing fast. And that's never going to change
Ignore it and it will just go away is a good attitude to take. Excuse me if Im wrong, but if a person learns C++, or whatever, I believe those skills can translate to other languages. So stagnating all your people to one model, like OSS only, kind of limits their exposure. Totally banning Linux I would be against. Totally banning Windows I would be against. Totally banning Unix, BeOS, whatever. People should be free to make their choices, not have people with agendas make their choices for them. Thats why we have a marketplace.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey man, this is Slashdot. By default they are going to bash anything and everything Microsoft, with whatever FUD they can muster.
Its funny, most times the only justification they can come up with is "hey d00d, M$ iz a monopoly!"
However, that doesnt stop us from making fun of a major For Profit software company for doing similiar things. This in no way makes us feel like hypocrits, strangely enough.
No, they were saying they *wanted* to do it. Just because people at large saw an intention as a promise does not make Bioware the bad guy.
Besides, IT WORKS ON LINUX!!!! So stop whining about the lack of a linux-native installer, and count your blessings that they threw you a bone at all.
They've probably lost money on the port(s?) anyway,
So telling them to throw more money down the drain is pretty good advice. But most people have Win32 platforms to do their real gaming on, and already purchased that version. I dont think Bioware spending, say, $50k on something that will net them another $10k in sales can be justified.
Linux people just dont seem to be able to grasp the necessity real businesses have to make money; the real world doesnt work like your family, and when daddy didnt buy you a new car for your birthday, and you whine to grandma and have her buy it for you (hypothetically speaking). The real world has people providing for themselves, and wasting resources on stupid shit is a good way to go out of business (like Enron, or Ion Storm, or whatever).
and they've lost the goodwill that they abused by saying one thing and doing another (they were coding the game all the way through with little to no consideration of other platforms, as demonstrated by the farce when they were looking for audio systems to port to, not knowing that Miles had had a Linux port out for quite a while).
And we see just what the Linux community's good will is worth. Looking for approval from habitual complainers seems to be a losing proposition, and they thankfully didnt really pursue it to any great extent.
Also, they never said one thing and did another. They said they wanted to have it work on Linux, they probably worked on it unpaid and in their spare time, and its out there now. Instead of saying "WOW, thanks BioWare! You guys are the goods!", all they get are complaints that they didnt do enough. Next time, they should just say "you'll get nothing, and like it".
Maybe they could buy back a bit of goodwill by not also requiring that purchasers have access to a Windows box --
There no intelligent reason for them to make your holy war their own, especially since the Linux community's good will is worth next to nothing.
Seriously, the guy writing the article has no idea how much stuff costs. The Linux InstallShield license would probably cost BioWare more money than they would make on the Linux port.
Just be happy it runs at all.
You forgot to add that they are not funny, tho.
I thought everyone was just being hyper-critical the other day, but these jokes really were very fuckin stupid. Guess everyone was right.
I am Evil Homer, I am Evil Homer!
I am Evil Homer, I am Evil Homer!
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2121692,00. html
How about two pieces of bread buttered on one side and then made into a sandwich? No, an outward facing, unbuttered side is required. But somehow, the presence of live feline hair seems to negate this requirement.
I also have never been laid, and can go weeks without bathing! If it werent for the internet, I would have absolutely NO human contact...
the sqare of the prime inversion of water to sunlight ratio will give you the mean rate at which grass grows
Sounds like someone else purchased too much into the dot.bomb foolishness. Come on, ICANN as a government model? A failure of democracy? He should stop smokin whatever he is smokin.
No, that was tried already. But since the problem is that the buttered side has to go face-down, it completes the equasion; the butter side WILL always land face down, because there isnt an unbuttered side (a side you DO want it to fall on).
Rather than the bread spinning in the air deciding which one to fall, Occum's Razor doesnt care, and just drops it.
this story reminds me of last year, when Greece had a country-wide ban on Video Games. funny stuff.
2. can i get it to run LegOS?
Ya, I remember when he tried playing baseball. This probably wont be much better.
On the other hand, how could you do worse than the last guy, especially when its a guy named "Dick Brown". that name is just begging people to make fun of you; wouldnt it be smarter to have people call you "Rick" or something?
Again, its not a case of them being lazy. They are basically saying its not technically possible to fix the problem without essentially giving you a new operating system. And if they are 'essentially' going to give you a new OS, then why shouldnt you just buy one?
That would be like GM dropping a new engine in your car because there is a fuel injector flaw. Too much work, too much money, not gonna happen.
I *assume* that your company has a firewall, or hopefully a full-blown dmz. Either way, youve lived with the flaw for this long, so I think you'll get by ok.
what do I do now that MS has told me my support contract is worthless and that I am SOL?
They didnt say they arent supporting NT4 anymore. They just said they cant fix this problem, and may stop supporting it earlier than expected. My prediction is they stick with it for the full term; they generally throw out feeler statements like this, and judge how much resistance people put toward it (like the retirement of the NT4 MCSE cert).
This is just another reason why enterprise customers will never move business critical apps to NT, if you want to see what a good company does look at HP and their EOL of the 3000 line.
Ummm... unix is how old? also, it seems kind of silly of you to act like the whole world is crashing down. This is just one limited risk flaw. Its not even an exploit, because the worse it can do is crash the server. On a risk-assessment scale, I would rate this as a 3 out of 10.
At any rate, its kind of unrealistic to not plan for the unexpected. As I said before, disaster recover should easily account for this; if there was a fire in your server room, would it be possible to recover from it? or is your company so strapped for cash that it would break them? If its the latter, I think you have more serious problems than your NT4 servers.
Its ALL about the Ben Franklins.
And Microsoft is part of the global IT marketplace, even if you dont like that fact.
Second, only a tiny fraction of the IT marketplace is about selling and sending shiny shrinkwrapped boxes around the world
Ya, a majority of the rest are running MS "warez".
Most programmers are employed to write in-house software or special software for one customer or one need. - If the customer or your boss wants the end product to be open source, it is open source.
Wow, how insightful. Its interesting how your statement runs contrary to all the other employment data and educational statistics, in which most programmers are writing stuff that plugs into "shrink-wrapped", off the shelf products. Custom applications are a small percentage of what gets done, because it costs more. Most people learn how to use Word, rather than pay someone to study their secretaries and design a word processor that allows their secretaries to do things the same way faster.
The only way to come over this hurdles is to use another dominating product to push it
Clever use of FUD. However, its untrue. MS Office became dominant because they had the best suite overall. Not the best individual programs, mind you, but the best suite. For example, it allowed you to embed an Excel spreadsheet into a Word doc. The programs worked together, and that was quite different than just bundling a WordPerfect word processor with a separate Quattro Pro application.
Another thing that comes up (personally) is who buys it and likes it. The IT dept generally is in charge of buying the software, and tech support people prefer supporting MS Office- its kinder to the OS, and easier to fix (technet, as a resource, helps a lot). WordPerfect is downright hostile to anyone supporting it. It installs outdated component on your computer (like forcing Win95 messaging components to install, regardless of your OS), it breaks other applications (and even the ability to print, like their so-called "PrintPerfect" module).
Im not going to defend Word, however. I hate making docs, because one insignificant modification can break all your formatting or page layout. Secretaries hate MSO and love WP. But they arent in charge of purchasing the software.
Also, the accounting department like MSO as well. They already have to cut a check to MS for CALs, Server Licenses, etc. So if they can just tack more money onto the same check, rather than having to deal with licensing, negotiating, and paying for Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, they cut their work by less than half.
Its not a big conspiracy like people think. Its really rather basic, and it takes into account the mentality of one stop shopping (malls and convience stores) and the human habit of trying to get out of work (or do things efficiently, depending on your viewpoint).
So yes, Andalucia does have indeed no chance to compete in the global shrinkwrap market - no upstart company in the world has a chance to compete in the global shrinkwrap software market (unless they invent a whole new market).
I dont think this will drive Andalucia out of business. Provincial governments may go bankrupt, but since they arent really competing with anyone but themselves, they dont really go out of business. But the ability of a "state" to compete for citizens is pretty interesing, although probably not what you meant. It sounded like you thought they were an upstart company.
The OSS community created a whole operating system with thousands of drivers and applications - something Microsoft despite their huge ressources just couldn't do
Sure they could. And where do you think the majority of the legacy drivers that ship with the OS come from? I hardly think Tseng Labs cares about writing Windows XP drivers for a video card they made five years ago. Also, if nVid
Well, in the same way that Russia wasnt the Soviet Union, Andalucia is not Espana. Russia wasnt the country, but they did set policies that affected the rest of the country.
My bad. I shouldn't have tried to decipher your fable.
No problem. Stupidity isnt a crime.
You can't learn C++ under an open source operating system, anymore
That wasnt my point. My point was enforcing a homogenous environment would hurt them in the long term, especially when that environment can potentially run counter to market forces. I would rather not let politician dictate what is available for me to learn, thank you very much. But I suppose some people enjoy dictatorship, so whatever floats your boat.
I'm guessing there are plenty of ways they can learn MS stuff
Ya, its called "On the job training", a long valued tradition maintained by student poorly armed for dealing with the real world.
If there's a demand for such instruction, there will be providers. Just not the government
Well, I dont have any figures on how many people go to public schools in Spain, so I couldnt tell you what the impact would be. However, I would say its all pretty ill-conceived anyway, and smells like more non-technical people jumping on the open source bandwagon.
Anyway, maybe this will open a job market to future American MCSEs to fill job gaps in another country. W00t!
The police only handle criminal matters. You don't 'go to the police' (or go to jail, for that matter) for civil violations. There is a difference between being "not legal" and "illegal". Illegal means you are prohibited from doing something. Not Legal means you could be held financially liable for something.
To illustrate, in many states driving a car without insurance is "illegal", and carries the risk of jail time. In any case, it is "not legal" to cause accidental property damage.
Anyway, to the point, he was hired to give security advice. What they do with that advice is their responsibility. However, they ARE negligent once they are made aware of the problem; like the tobacco companies suppressing their studies. The difference in the two cases are whether that knowledge will cause actual harm (to lungs and health, to property or data, etc), or meerly increase risk of SOMEONE ELSE doing that harm (like unsecure code). Its like leaving a door unlocked- you didnt steal their stereo, but if you are paid to watch the door you could be held liable.
"just upgrade the server" is ALWAYS an option, especially if you already have Disaster Recovery plans in place. The only thing stopping someone is either complacency, laziness, or lack of knowledge.
Im not saying its easy, but if you know what you are doing, it just takes a lot of planning, and understanding both the OS and how applications work. I support tons of apps I cant use; because at my level they are pretty much all the same. Some are front-ends to a database, or a legacy database, or whatever.
And as someone who has worked in Banking IT, they are hardly what you would call 'cutting edge', they are more like 'ragged fringe'. Most of the work is over-politicized by people who dont know what they are doing. Lack of understanding breeds fear. Fear breeds stagnation, and stagnation, well, it doesnt get you moving forward.
Having so-called 'project managers' outnumber the actual workers is quite common in banks. About the only thing they do is keep the store and restaurant people employed by taking 'breaks and lunches' for 7 out of 8 hours every day.
Who wants to buy an operating system from a company that lets their OSes die before their EOL? Personally, this doesnt surprise me one bit. Windows 2000 is a million times better than NT4, in every possible way. Plus, NT4 Server has been around since 1996. If MS wants to truly make their supported products secure, they eventually need to drop the dead weight; you can only patch that old coat so many times before somebody tells you "hey man, you need to go buy a new coat". I dont even think its that they dont want to fix it; its probably just such a major problem that they would need to re-engineer the OS; but they already did that in their new products!
Personally, I think they did the responsible thing; they came clean and said "you know what, we have fixed things in the past, but this one cant be fixed. Now that you know, you need to use that info and plan around it."
I tried it, but the next day it made my pizza bread taste all funny.
Also, I would imagine they would need some current, A-list titles for this to really take off. However, it is probably beyond their means at this point: unless Valve is backing them. But what the heck has Valve done except sit on things? I remember lusting after Team Fortress 2 a few YEARS ago, and Half-Life 2 is a forgotten dream. IMO, Valve isnt even relavant anymore; they had their fifteen minutes. They could still prove me wrong, but I smell Daikatana written all over them.
Reading comprehension is a skill. I never said it was.
Because as we all know, the global IT marketplace is 100% Microsoft and growing fast. And that's never going to change
Ignore it and it will just go away is a good attitude to take. Excuse me if Im wrong, but if a person learns C++, or whatever, I believe those skills can translate to other languages. So stagnating all your people to one model, like OSS only, kind of limits their exposure. Totally banning Linux I would be against. Totally banning Windows I would be against. Totally banning Unix, BeOS, whatever. People should be free to make their choices, not have people with agendas make their choices for them. Thats why we have a marketplace.
Okay, where is that obligatory guy asking if it plays Ogg? Come on, I know you're out there!