"Private police, and privately-owned rural fire protection organizations have been known to work significantly better than the same agencies when government-run. Unfortunately, in many situations those are simply not an option. And for good reasons; don't get me wrong. But when they ARE privately run, they have often done a better job."
Not to go against your point, I myself think there're (many) places where privately held companies can do better than government, but you are not offering a valid example. Police, fire protection, transportation... are done better when private when they are allowed to cherrypick. They'll offer better service where big profits can be done, at the expense of everything else. Goverment usually will make a better average trade-off (not so good as possible on gifted places but also not so horrid where you are working at a loss). So for strategic services (where "strategic" is certainly a much open definition) going government seems to be a legit proposition.
"The robo-arm doesn't really add a lot or problems to that though (and if someone uses a naive playback attack to forge multiple signatures, the fact that they are too similar should make it easier to successfully deny the signature)."
Do you know what "non repudiation" is? Since they are too similar which one is the good one? I'd be more than happy to sign you a one million check knowing that the day you try to get it I'll go with one hundred copies so I can deny to pay.
The robotic arm is twofold bad idea: it is open to reply attacks and allows me to repudiate my own signature if needed.
"Oh yeah, fax machines don't provide any of those layers of security -- unlike this robotic arm setup. Nevermind...."
Of course, it's not as if the process to duplicate the signature could be stored to be used afterwards without knowledge of the real arm's legit owner to produce a legally valid signature at leisure. Nevermind....
"Why are they paying you if they know more than you?"
While I'm with you on the general position, this argument is plain is not so intelligent and answer would be obvious: because knowing more than you (that means all that you know and then more) they can make more money applying all the other "more" things they know but you don't while leaving to you those lessen things you know.
Whether it is possible really depends on what type of operations you are going to allow. For example, it is "possible to perform basic arithmetic on encrypted integers, without ever needing to decrypt them."
Yeah, but not without an observer knowing that you are doing arithmetics on encrypted integers if watching time enough. Link this to any other knowledge (like that you trade on the stock market) so the observer can hint on the gross numbers involved and you are done.
"When you do a search you send a SELECT * FROM table_entries WHERE MD5_hashed_filename = encrypted_filename."
You are adding redundancy without benefit. The database is just an way to index information... but directories and filenames are just ways to index information too! So you have an indexing engine (the database) for another indexing engine (the filesystem layout) but you haven't started to get to the real stuff: all that indexing is for easy retrival of actual information, which you still haven't addressed. I.e.: it is not "give me all the files that start with 'a'" but "give me all files that contain information about 'x'". Since these files are still encrypted you still have no means to make such a search.
If all you want is protecting your directory layout (directory and file names), simply cypher the whole filesystem and remotely mount it. You get free of the database step and are no worse about searching on the real contents which you still will have to do it client-side.
"Co-operative civilizations last for thousands and thousands of years where competitive ones generally destroy themselves within a couple of dozen generations of man. "
And that makes, dear childs, a glareful example of "wishfull thinking".
"Um, yes. And the temples on the Acropolis date to ca. 500 BC. Neither is in really good shape."
You can certainly say that Acropolis is not in good shape. But the Great Pyramid? It is still in perfect functional shape. Has it taken its damage? certainly yes. Is it still fully operational? Except for the pyramidion, yes too (mainly due to precaution#4: make it really massive) and it has been there for almost 50% of the stated period. Oh! and Acropolis fails precaution#4 -Partenon is not so big, precaution#1: it is on a seismically active region and precaution#2 -too a humid weather.
"None of those technologies could be used to create the mechanisms in a clock that would last 10,000 years"
I clearly remember we were talking about structures -any kind of them, not clocks. Clocks are against precaution#3, no moving parts.
"I stand by my statement, especially the original one regarding political power, which caused more damage to the Acropolis structures than any weathering mechanism"
Then so do I: for an structure to be long standing, follow my four points and you'll be quite save (like pyramids are -though I'm with you political power is indeed the worse danger; not even pyramids would stand nukes).
"Why would calling someone gay be defamation (the root crime of libel and slander)? Defamation has to generate a negative image of the person being defamed. Since there is nothing wrong with being gay there's no possibility of defamation."
That's why tribunals are presided by judges not mathematicians.
While what you say *should* be right, it is up the judge or juror to stablish what the intention and the impact of the case was. That's what the Roman ius 'dolo' covers.
"Being falsely outed as a dark-skinned individual doesn't seem to me to be defamation"
Good for you and I'd wish everybody to be like you. Sadly, that's not the case, which what makes possible to be defamation call "nigger" someone depending on circumnstances, even if he is black skinned.
"Universities worldwide let Engineers call themselves Doctors."
Sorry sir, but not. Engineers and Doctors are not even on the same league. I find even humorous for an Engineer wanting to become Doctor. What for? Basically Engineering is a "things done" character while a Doctor is a "see how it works" one. This is, of course, a very rude approximation, but while an Engineer should want to go out as soon as possible from Engineering School to start doing "things", the Doctor would want to stay in Universty as long as possible to learn or discover more "things".
"If you maintain a web server you're a sys admin."
Absolutly yes.
It's only that when your sysadmin puts his Apache hat, he becomes the webmaster. When he puts his Postfix hat, he is the postmaster. When he puts his Bind hat, he is the hostmaster. When he puts his Inn hat, he is the newsmaster.
The problem is that the "web thingie" went out the sysadmin caves and reached you lesser humans. You saw that shiny "webmaster" tittle (wow! web - MASTER!!!) and look for the way to be a MASTER too.
What the hell is a webmaster? Well, exactly the same it has been since the NSCA and CERN servers days.
"A webmaster is someone who controls the content of a web site."
Not even that. Webmaster is the one who controls the web service, just like the postmaster is the one that controls the e-mail service or hostmaster the one that controls the domain name service.
The knowledge realm of a webmaster is CGI programming, HTTP protocol, web deamon optimization, etc. Of course as the web service itself becomes more complex the webmaster's potential frontier becomes blurrier but from day zero it was clear that the one that maintains the server running and the one that creates the contents are different roles (webmaster/web content developer). It is this complexity grow the one that grants the question. I don't think nobody asks what a postmaster is because his potential duties haven't grown as much.
"It doesn't necessarily mean they "do HTML". they might just write a document in Word format and hand it to the web monkey to do up in HTML"
"We do not understand how to build structures to resist corrosion and weathering on millenial time scales"
Of course we know! And we knew it 4000 years ago too. Here goes the synopsis: * Avoid geographical places known to suffer natural disasters * In order to avoid corrosion, put it on dry weather. * In order not to decay avoid mobile parts * In order to avoid weathering, build it big enough so erosion won't take apart a sensible percentage or its mass.
You are aware that the Great Pyramid of Giza is about 4500 year old, aren't you?
"The limit to creation of computers which function in bases other than two is mostly limited by the capabilities of the human brain. We have enough trouble juggling binary. each additional number adds significantly increasing complexity."
Oh, my god. I sincerely hope nobody will ever be cruel enough to try to crash onto us something like... base-10, then. I can almost see people's heads exploding all over the planet at the mere suggestion!
"The third "maybe" state of a decision is a primary limiting factor in the creation of AI, since the "maybe" state is a critical part of human intelligence and decision making."
Oh, my god. I sincerely hope nobody called Lotfi Zadeh will ever think in 1963 of forgetting about the 'tertio excluso' from the old days to the predicate logic and be cruel enough to try to crash onto us something like... fuzzy logic in wich valor of true is continuus from 0 to 1, then. I can almost see people's heads exploding all over the planet at the mere suggestion!
"Even though base-10 is significantly more complex, the alignments of the patterns of numbers are such that it optimizes the use of the number system quite well."
"either this guy believes in what the RIAA was doing in which case that puts him at odds with the majority of the population in the United States or he didn't believe in what he was doing which means he was doing it for the paycheck so he can be bought off."
Or... he is a lawyer. He believes in the American Way Of Life and he believes laws is what maintain societies together and that everyone, every-single-one has the right to get the best possible lawyer to use law to the extreme and nothing more than law to get their own points of view defended, no matter if a mother defending his dear babies from a greedy corporation, or Saddam Hussein, you know, 'dura lex, sed lex'. That and the fact that he is an American Patriot and, as such, he does believe in the American Way Of Life, thus, freemarket, makes hime work for the best payer he can find: (presumably) the RIAA.
You would want a public lawyer to be somebody that believes so much on the value of his profession.
" All the more reason to bomb them into the Stone Age. Here we are, building a nuclear weapon, and those crazy Americans are sweating the LEGAL ramifications."
Ha! you will take USA to Stone Age but USA will bury you with its lawyers by EULA infrigement for all the eterny. Take THAT, you vicious terrorist!
'You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.'
Does that mean than all deveopment, design, manufacture and production of missiles, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are prohibited by United States law? One certainly would think otherwise seing the seer number of missiles, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that USA does indeed develop, design, manufacture and produce.
Anyway, fortunately the EULA does not explicitly forbid its use for the development, design, manufacture or production of conventional weapons, air bombs, mines, grenade-launchers, mortars and/or laser beams, plasma rays, antimatter doom day devices, et al.
"No rivals? Are you kidding me? Let's look at the alternatives:
Personal Computing Apple, & Linux are just two popular ones."
Those are not companies rivalring on their Windows offers but on their OS offers. Quite a different thing. By the way, if you don't understand that all copyright laws are government granted monopolies (not that this is good or bad by itself) it's no wonder you can't understand such a simple fact.
"Why is there so much resentment over Microsoft's different OS versions?"
Because of the obviousness that this market partition is only made to squeeze more money out of you. It's obvious there's no technicall need nor reason to limit the number of network connections from your computer; it is obvious that it is not that they had to develop some code for an XP Home to be added to a Domain, but that they developed code in order for the XP Home *not* to be able to be added into a Domain, etc.
"If you liken it to Adobe, you could compare the super ultimate version to CS, and Windows 7 Starter to Elements."
People don't mind when they see real and reasonable embetterments going from the lower to the higher versions; but they do have a concern when there's no real need for the lower versions to be lower.
"Let make sure that we qualify your comments. RedHat and SUSE require subscriptions so they aren't exactly free."
Depending on your definition of free.
"If I want to get Red Hat for example I would have to pay an $80 yearly subscription to make sure that I get all the updates and patches."
Untrue. You will pay $80/year for the comfort of them being released on binary form and easily downloadable. You still can get a perfectly updated and patched Red Hat system without flipping a dime to Red Hat. Legally (you know you can download from Red Hat the sprms and compile them yourself, don't you?).
"Now I could go with CentOS and get it for free but you get the point."
No, I don't get the point. Are you meaning that somehow the computing ones and zeroes from CentOS are somehow different to those from Red Hat?
"I don't understand your comment on buying "overpriced" hardware as the Windows and Linux run on the same hardware."
Just till about a month ago I was running at home a perfectly functional and updated Linux system (with KDE, local web and mail server, doubling as proxy/firewall for my tiny home network) on a PIII with 512MB RAM (the motherboard burnt out). My work PC is a P4 3.2GHz with 1GB RAM. Try any of those with Vista.
"There are other considerations. The functionality of say Open Office doesn't compare to Microsoft Office 2007"
Maybe you are right. But to my employer OpenOffice.org does its duty so we didn't buy a single Office 2007 license.
"Exchange is still the email system of choice."
Not to my employer. We are satisfied with Postfix/Courier/Squirrelmail/eGroupware.
"If they're worried about software compatibility migrating to vista, what makes anyone think they'll pick a non-windows OS? More likely they'll just keep putting band-aids on old systems."
Been there, seen that. On the old days, migrating from NT 4 to 2000 was a pain in the ass (mainly due to AD novelty) so many small companies stayed on NT. This 'statu quo' got time to the Samba team to produce a decent replacement for NT DC on small/medium environments with the advantage of better support on new hardware (specially server-class), easy deployment and administration, lots of added benefits (no virus, tons of addons like firewalls, remote control, easy scripting...) and unbeateable cost. Back in the day I migrated quite a large number of small companies, from failed W2000 upgrades at the begining and directly from NT 4 when mouth to ear did its job (cheaper, more functional, worrisomeless).
Now, the situation is more or less the same with the difference the alternatives are even stronger than then. The more time people stays with the same OS and same versions of Office and Exchange, the more attractive alternatives will look like.
Slashdot Mirror
"Private police, and privately-owned rural fire protection organizations have been known to work significantly better than the same agencies when government-run. Unfortunately, in many situations those are simply not an option. And for good reasons; don't get me wrong. But when they ARE privately run, they have often done a better job."
Not to go against your point, I myself think there're (many) places where privately held companies can do better than government, but you are not offering a valid example. Police, fire protection, transportation... are done better when private when they are allowed to cherrypick. They'll offer better service where big profits can be done, at the expense of everything else. Goverment usually will make a better average trade-off (not so good as possible on gifted places but also not so horrid where you are working at a loss). So for strategic services (where "strategic" is certainly a much open definition) going government seems to be a legit proposition.
"The robo-arm doesn't really add a lot or problems to that though (and if someone uses a naive playback attack to forge multiple signatures, the fact that they are too similar should make it easier to successfully deny the signature)."
Do you know what "non repudiation" is? Since they are too similar which one is the good one? I'd be more than happy to sign you a one million check knowing that the day you try to get it I'll go with one hundred copies so I can deny to pay.
The robotic arm is twofold bad idea: it is open to reply attacks and allows me to repudiate my own signature if needed.
"Oh yeah, fax machines don't provide any of those layers of security -- unlike this robotic arm setup. Nevermind ...."
Of course, it's not as if the process to duplicate the signature could be stored to be used afterwards without knowledge of the real arm's legit owner to produce a legally valid signature at leisure. ....
Nevermind
"Why are they paying you if they know more than you?"
While I'm with you on the general position, this argument is plain is not so intelligent and answer would be obvious: because knowing more than you (that means all that you know and then more) they can make more money applying all the other "more" things they know but you don't while leaving to you those lessen things you know.
"So because he is of Indian descent he must have a particular point of view? There is a name for that sort of prejudgement: Racism."
Well, then racism is quite an important piece about why Obama himself is in office.
Whether it is possible really depends on what type of operations you are going to allow. For example, it is "possible to perform basic arithmetic on encrypted integers, without ever needing to decrypt them."
Yeah, but not without an observer knowing that you are doing arithmetics on encrypted integers if watching time enough. Link this to any other knowledge (like that you trade on the stock market) so the observer can hint on the gross numbers involved and you are done.
"When you do a search you send a SELECT * FROM table_entries WHERE MD5_hashed_filename = encrypted_filename."
You are adding redundancy without benefit. The database is just an way to index information... but directories and filenames are just ways to index information too! So you have an indexing engine (the database) for another indexing engine (the filesystem layout) but you haven't started to get to the real stuff: all that indexing is for easy retrival of actual information, which you still haven't addressed. I.e.: it is not "give me all the files that start with 'a'" but "give me all files that contain information about 'x'". Since these files are still encrypted you still have no means to make such a search.
If all you want is protecting your directory layout (directory and file names), simply cypher the whole filesystem and remotely mount it. You get free of the database step and are no worse about searching on the real contents which you still will have to do it client-side.
"Co-operative civilizations last for thousands and thousands of years where competitive ones generally destroy themselves within a couple of dozen generations of man. "
And that makes, dear childs, a glareful example of "wishfull thinking".
Please remember bringing tomorrow your homework.
"Um, yes. And the temples on the Acropolis date to ca. 500 BC. Neither is in really good shape."
You can certainly say that Acropolis is not in good shape. But the Great Pyramid? It is still in perfect functional shape. Has it taken its damage? certainly yes. Is it still fully operational? Except for the pyramidion, yes too (mainly due to precaution#4: make it really massive) and it has been there for almost 50% of the stated period. Oh! and Acropolis fails precaution#4 -Partenon is not so big, precaution#1: it is on a seismically active region and precaution#2 -too a humid weather.
"None of those technologies could be used to create the mechanisms in a clock that would last 10,000 years"
I clearly remember we were talking about structures -any kind of them, not clocks. Clocks are against precaution#3, no moving parts.
"I stand by my statement, especially the original one regarding political power, which caused more damage to the Acropolis structures than any weathering mechanism"
Then so do I: for an structure to be long standing, follow my four points and you'll be quite save (like pyramids are -though I'm with you political power is indeed the worse danger; not even pyramids would stand nukes).
"and harbor pilots could continue to navigate through dangerous waters"
Like those infested with pirates?
Hummm... something does not compute here
"Why would calling someone gay be defamation (the root crime of libel and slander)?
Defamation has to generate a negative image of the person being defamed. Since there is nothing wrong with being gay there's no possibility of defamation."
That's why tribunals are presided by judges not mathematicians.
While what you say *should* be right, it is up the judge or juror to stablish what the intention and the impact of the case was. That's what the Roman ius 'dolo' covers.
"Being falsely outed as a dark-skinned individual doesn't seem to me to be defamation"
Good for you and I'd wish everybody to be like you. Sadly, that's not the case, which what makes possible to be defamation call "nigger" someone depending on circumnstances, even if he is black skinned.
"Ph.D., Engineering
quod erat demonstrandum"
Sorry but no QED. That an engineer can hold a Doctor degree (which of course, he can) is as much relevant as saying he assisted to K12 too.
"Universities worldwide let Engineers call themselves Doctors."
Sorry sir, but not. Engineers and Doctors are not even on the same league. I find even humorous for an Engineer wanting to become Doctor. What for? Basically Engineering is a "things done" character while a Doctor is a "see how it works" one. This is, of course, a very rude approximation, but while an Engineer should want to go out as soon as possible from Engineering School to start doing "things", the Doctor would want to stay in Universty as long as possible to learn or discover more "things".
"If you maintain a web server you're a sys admin."
Absolutly yes.
It's only that when your sysadmin puts his Apache hat, he becomes the webmaster. When he puts his Postfix hat, he is the postmaster. When he puts his Bind hat, he is the hostmaster. When he puts his Inn hat, he is the newsmaster.
The problem is that the "web thingie" went out the sysadmin caves and reached you lesser humans. You saw that shiny "webmaster" tittle (wow! web - MASTER!!!) and look for the way to be a MASTER too.
What the hell is a webmaster? Well, exactly the same it has been since the NSCA and CERN servers days.
"A webmaster is someone who controls the content of a web site."
Not even that. Webmaster is the one who controls the web service, just like the postmaster is the one that controls the e-mail service or hostmaster the one that controls the domain name service.
The knowledge realm of a webmaster is CGI programming, HTTP protocol, web deamon optimization, etc. Of course as the web service itself becomes more complex the webmaster's potential frontier becomes blurrier but from day zero it was clear that the one that maintains the server running and the one that creates the contents are different roles (webmaster/web content developer). It is this complexity grow the one that grants the question. I don't think nobody asks what a postmaster is because his potential duties haven't grown as much.
"It doesn't necessarily mean they "do HTML". they might just write a document in Word format and hand it to the web monkey to do up in HTML"
That's not a webmaster. That's a manager.
"Even though it was a sci-fi novel concept, I still think the idea has merit"
It's only it is *not* a sci-fi novel concept. It's obviously based on copyist monks from Middle Ages.
"We do not understand how to build structures to resist corrosion and weathering on millenial time scales"
Of course we know! And we knew it 4000 years ago too. Here goes the synopsis:
* Avoid geographical places known to suffer natural disasters
* In order to avoid corrosion, put it on dry weather.
* In order not to decay avoid mobile parts
* In order to avoid weathering, build it big enough so erosion won't take apart a sensible percentage or its mass.
You are aware that the Great Pyramid of Giza is about 4500 year old, aren't you?
"The limit to creation of computers which function in bases other than two is mostly limited by the capabilities of the human brain. We have enough trouble juggling binary. each additional number adds significantly increasing complexity."
Oh, my god. I sincerely hope nobody will ever be cruel enough to try to crash onto us something like... base-10, then. I can almost see people's heads exploding all over the planet at the mere suggestion!
"The third "maybe" state of a decision is a primary limiting factor in the creation of AI, since the "maybe" state is a critical part of human intelligence and decision making."
Oh, my god. I sincerely hope nobody called Lotfi Zadeh will ever think in 1963 of forgetting about the 'tertio excluso' from the old days to the predicate logic and be cruel enough to try to crash onto us something like... fuzzy logic in wich valor of true is continuus from 0 to 1, then. I can almost see people's heads exploding all over the planet at the mere suggestion!
"Even though base-10 is significantly more complex, the alignments of the patterns of numbers are such that it optimizes the use of the number system quite well."
Can really somebody be so bombastically stupid?
"either this guy believes in what the RIAA was doing in which case that puts him at odds with the majority of the population in the United States or he didn't believe in what he was doing which means he was doing it for the paycheck so he can be bought off."
Or... he is a lawyer. He believes in the American Way Of Life and he believes laws is what maintain societies together and that everyone, every-single-one has the right to get the best possible lawyer to use law to the extreme and nothing more than law to get their own points of view defended, no matter if a mother defending his dear babies from a greedy corporation, or Saddam Hussein, you know, 'dura lex, sed lex'. That and the fact that he is an American Patriot and, as such, he does believe in the American Way Of Life, thus, freemarket, makes hime work for the best payer he can find: (presumably) the RIAA.
You would want a public lawyer to be somebody that believes so much on the value of his profession.
" All the more reason to bomb them into the Stone Age. Here we are, building a nuclear weapon, and those crazy Americans are sweating the LEGAL ramifications."
Ha! you will take USA to Stone Age but USA will bury you with its lawyers by EULA infrigement for all the eterny. Take THAT, you vicious terrorist!
What I don't understand is this:
'You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.'
Does that mean than all deveopment, design, manufacture and production of missiles, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are prohibited by United States law? One certainly would think otherwise seing the seer number of missiles, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that USA does indeed develop, design, manufacture and produce.
Anyway, fortunately the EULA does not explicitly forbid its use for the development, design, manufacture or production of conventional weapons, air bombs, mines, grenade-launchers, mortars and/or laser beams, plasma rays, antimatter doom day devices, et al.
"No rivals? Are you kidding me? Let's look at the alternatives:
Personal Computing Apple, & Linux are just two popular ones."
Those are not companies rivalring on their Windows offers but on their OS offers. Quite a different thing. By the way, if you don't understand that all copyright laws are government granted monopolies (not that this is good or bad by itself) it's no wonder you can't understand such a simple fact.
"Why is there so much resentment over Microsoft's different OS versions?"
Because of the obviousness that this market partition is only made to squeeze more money out of you. It's obvious there's no technicall need nor reason to limit the number of network connections from your computer; it is obvious that it is not that they had to develop some code for an XP Home to be added to a Domain, but that they developed code in order for the XP Home *not* to be able to be added into a Domain, etc.
"If you liken it to Adobe, you could compare the super ultimate version to CS, and Windows 7 Starter to Elements."
People don't mind when they see real and reasonable embetterments going from the lower to the higher versions; but they do have a concern when there's no real need for the lower versions to be lower.
"Let make sure that we qualify your comments. RedHat and SUSE require subscriptions so they aren't exactly free."
Depending on your definition of free.
"If I want to get Red Hat for example I would have to pay an $80 yearly subscription to make sure that I get all the updates and patches."
Untrue. You will pay $80/year for the comfort of them being released on binary form and easily downloadable. You still can get a perfectly updated and patched Red Hat system without flipping a dime to Red Hat. Legally (you know you can download from Red Hat the sprms and compile them yourself, don't you?).
"Now I could go with CentOS and get it for free but you get the point."
No, I don't get the point. Are you meaning that somehow the computing ones and zeroes from CentOS are somehow different to those from Red Hat?
"I don't understand your comment on buying "overpriced" hardware as the Windows and Linux run on the same hardware."
Just till about a month ago I was running at home a perfectly functional and updated Linux system (with KDE, local web and mail server, doubling as proxy/firewall for my tiny home network) on a PIII with 512MB RAM (the motherboard burnt out). My work PC is a P4 3.2GHz with 1GB RAM. Try any of those with Vista.
"There are other considerations. The functionality of say Open Office doesn't compare to Microsoft Office 2007"
Maybe you are right. But to my employer OpenOffice.org does its duty so we didn't buy a single Office 2007 license.
"Exchange is still the email system of choice."
Not to my employer. We are satisfied with Postfix/Courier/Squirrelmail/eGroupware.
"If they're worried about software compatibility migrating to vista, what makes anyone think they'll pick a non-windows OS? More likely they'll just keep putting band-aids on old systems."
Been there, seen that. On the old days, migrating from NT 4 to 2000 was a pain in the ass (mainly due to AD novelty) so many small companies stayed on NT. This 'statu quo' got time to the Samba team to produce a decent replacement for NT DC on small/medium environments with the advantage of better support on new hardware (specially server-class), easy deployment and administration, lots of added benefits (no virus, tons of addons like firewalls, remote control, easy scripting...) and unbeateable cost. Back in the day I migrated quite a large number of small companies, from failed W2000 upgrades at the begining and directly from NT 4 when mouth to ear did its job (cheaper, more functional, worrisomeless).
Now, the situation is more or less the same with the difference the alternatives are even stronger than then. The more time people stays with the same OS and same versions of Office and Exchange, the more attractive alternatives will look like.