The OEM cost for pre-loading XP on a new box is significantly less than $100, as is the cost to pre-load Office. Retail end-user costs in no way correlate with OEM costs.
Even more telling is the fact that many large OEMs charge the same or more for boxes without Windows, because those systems generally prove to cost them more in the end - more support calls, more returns because their distro doesn't support the particular DAC codec, whatever. Sometimes the whole is much more than the parts.
And the whole "never worry about blue screens" really put the icing on the Lamecake. The whole blue screen argument is so 2002, and if that's what the anti-M$ bots are still spouting, they need to update their playbook.
REDMOND, WA and LOUISVILLE, CO - Nov. 16, 2005 - Microsoft Corp. and Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs®) today announced they have reached an agreement that will allow Microsoft and PC manufacturers to bring to market digital-cable-ready Windows® Media Center-based PCs in the holiday 2006 time frame.
...just for the sake of getting it out of the door quickly
I think a better statement would be "getting it out of the door a little less slowly".
Personally I think the new graphics layer of Vista will be a dud for purely technical reasons. As you mentioned, most of the other features of Vista have been either watered down, or separated out (and backported), so the impetus to upgrade has declined. I'm sure in Microsoft they've probably already started focusing on what comes after Vista, letting a select number of employees clean up that death march.
Wow - the OS after Vista is codenamed Blackcomb. I find that remarkable as that code name was coined years ago.
Just as apple drops the PPC, Microsoft starts using it?
Mobile computing is critical to Apple's strategy (indeed - mobile PCs are going to seriously erode the desktop market), where the PowerPC had few viable options. Mobile computing doesn't really matter much to the gaming console market.
For those unaware of Canadian politics, the government faces a non-confidence vote Monday or Tuesday. It is expected to fall and call a December election.
Not to mention that the submission implies something completely different than the actual article states (demonstrated by the tone of many of the comments). Canada isn't trying to retain skilled workers (e.g. the "brain drain"), the government of the day (for a short time) is trying to spend billions pandering both to
The immigrant community
The business community
The former is obvious, but the later is more insidious - "Can't beat your IT workers down to $8 an hour? Okay - we'll bring in 100,000 more to try to help out with this `skill shortage'.
If we fall even UBL knows Canada won't lift a finger to help us
Funny, given that Canada has been singled out by BL several times. Funny given that Canada was a critical ally in the war in Afghanistan, and that Canada's special forces eliminated much of BL's network. Funny, given that plans and threats against Canada have been found.
In a few decades the majority now in Canada, now will be the minority. At that time, life will be pretty interesting.
How will that make life "interesting"? Is that like some sort of threat (like "once the whiteys are a minority, we're going to kill 'em all!")? Maladjusted minorities love to say this, as if they're a part of some common tribe - imagining that all "minorities" are a common group. Here's a hint - Someone with Chinese ancestry has little bonding or in common with blacks or Japanese or Indians or Latin Americans.
It's not so much a non confidence vote so much as it is Steven Harper sees a way to snake his way into office. His whole story about conservatives being incorrupt unlike the Liberals is a crock. All the politicians are the same.
Um...that's a non-confidence vote - the majority of parliament doesn't agree with the government.
However I, and many others in the 905, will be voting for the Conservatives. The desperate Liberal bribery is grossly offensive, as is the absolutely pathetic pandering to the immigrant vote (many of whom are offended by it - irrational exhuberance about something as critical and volative as immigration quotas is absolutely insane, and it does no one a favour when the Liberals flood Toronto with unwanted and unmatched labour to try to buy votes)
How about giving up the Socialism, eh? People leave Canada for a country with a better economy, and the government's solution is to spend more tax money! Brilliant move, eh?
I presume you're talking about the US - one of the most socialist countries on the planet (or have you opted out of the endless socialist pork projects, massive socialist war machine, and corporate welfare? Is that a checkbox on your income tax return?). Of course it isn't to benefit the poor, so Americans lift their chins up and talk about their great "capitalism" versus the evil "socialism" (of the REST OF THE 1ST WORLD), strangely imagining some moral high road.
Absolutely amazing that any American, with the enormous pork and tax-grabbing bloat of its government, can bleat the word socialist in any manner other than humor or self-deprecation.
What's even more remarkable is the fact that the all-in tax load in the US is, in many cases, similar to or greater than a comparable person in Canada. Don't tell Americans this, though - it might upset their imaginary world.
One thing I find good in Canada is Toronto. It's multiculturalism is awesome. On Toronto streets, you see all shades of people, and on the subway, it's hard to hear English. That's what I see in Toronto and it's good.
The two languages of Canada are English and French, and in the very near future you can expect the requirements in those areas for immigrants is going to massively ramp up. Your claim that immigrants speak better English is, quite simply, a load of bullshit - many know a modicum of unworkable English, and revert to their native tongue at every opportunity (per your "hard to hear English" comment, however ridiculous it is. I live in Toronto, BTW). Their language never progresses, and they remain marginally employable in a English/French society.
I know because my relative who is a Canadian citizen, had to go India for hip replacement surgery. And thousands are. Yes, and the SARS crisis was mis-handled. The experts in the health care system admitted incopetence with SARS.
Whenever someone talks about health care, someone always brings up some anecdote that proves their case. How about good old fashioned metrics? You know, metrics like infant mortality, cancer survival rates, and lifespan. For instance here, with our "terrible" health-care system, you're more likely to survive a vast range of cancers than a lucky, insured individual in the US (and of course the same malady in a country like India is a quick death for a large percentage of the country). Of course in the US they have lots of large, marble-encrusted hospitals with blinkin' machines, but in practical medical terms the Canadian system is empirically superior in many measurable ways. Of course if you're uninsured in the US...
SARS --- like any country could competently deal with that. India? Ha.
The aboriginals, who are the real Canadians, are being left on reserves with contaminated water
Wow, so you were around when the Aboriginals crossed the land bridge, and you can assure us that they were - with absolute certainty - the "real Canadians" and somehow (and contrary to the rest of the planet) got some sort of magical eternal deed. What a load of shit (and I'm part-Cree "Indian" btw. Actually there is aboriginal blood throughout a large percentage of birth Canadians). Reserves with contanimated water...you don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about, or the bed that the native bands made themselves. Of course this line (the whole "real Canadians" thing) comes up when someone from some 3rd world shithole comes here and, looking around at the society and accomplishment, wants to decry it by claiming that it's really the "real Canadians". Give me a break.
By the way, how are you treating the skilled immigrants in Canada? Even those who speak and write better English are not treated that well. But everyone knows they are more educated and carry a better work ethic than those they find on the streets.
And here we come to the reality of your agenda - you came to Canada and actually had to compete, rather than having things handed to you on a silver spoon (as life is back home for most of the people who come here). So now you're, uh, "enlightening" the world with your great view. Funny stuff.
BTW: It's interesting that every immigrant talks about how educated and hard working their group is, yet one of the reasons why immigrants find a tough time is that many businesses have been burned by the grossly overstated education of many of them, and a terrible, entitled work ethic. Must be racism though.
That's what the Play button is for. Pushing it is the same as choosing "play movie" on the front menu. At least that's what happens on my DVD player.
It does this on neither of my DVD players (a Pioneer and a Toshiba). On both that simply plays the initial DVD, but then it sits on the main menu where the play button does nothing (actually both of them put a "what are you? A dumbass? It is playing" icon on the screen when you press it at the menu).
Do you know people who will spend inordinate amounts of time searching for a lost remote instead of just changing the channel by hand?:raises his hand:
With hundreds of channel it really isn't convenient to use little up/down arrows on the television anymore - effectively the user interface is borked if you don't have the remote. Neither of my DVD players will allow me to play a DVD without the remotes (they have a play button, but no method of choosing items on the DVD menu).
Because choosing preferences onscreen or by pressing a button on a remote control is so labour-intensive and laborious. It's a wonder mankind manages to use things as they are.
"It appears that Tom has entered the room. Shall I switch to Channel 54 - HotTeenAnal?"
Clearly it's a slashvertisement, as all of the linked articles are
Terribly, terribly, terribly written
Incredibly abusive of readers, spreading the limited, technically vacuous horrific prose over a dozen pages
If the Slashdot crew accepted those submissions without payment then they should commit hari kari now, because their use on this planet is done. If they did receive a kick-back - which I think is unquestionable - then I think this pretty effectively puts them on notice.
Good catch.
Remarkable that Slashdot is at such a vulnerable time, when there is a tide of credible competitors emerging, and they pull stunts like this.
Well actually they'd save quite a lot of bandwidth...Try actually thinking for a second before you post.
Oh this is rich.
Thank you for pointing out a site that proclaims that Slashdot could save $3,650 a year by switching to CSS (at 2003 bandwidth prices, though of course bandwidth is ludicrously cheap now). Gosh, you've sold me - what a revolution!
Amazing that you had the nerve, and the ignorance, to post that.
A better question, from a pragmatic, real-world perspective, would be "What did supporting CSS get them?". For the vast majority of readers, it isn't different from the classic table model at all (in fact it's a bit quirkier). I like CSS layout, but using Slashdot and CSS as an example is inane - they didn't support CSS because there was no practical reason to, other than a lot of Standards Astronauts beating on their door about their lack of CSS goodness.
Proper tiering of applications is considerably more scalable than a script, the modularity allows for much more flexible and adaptive caching per request, per application, and per user session...
Thanks for the lesson, professor. Ignoring the nonsensical caching comment, the point was indeed that applications start simple (scripts hitting a database), and organically scale out from there. The vast majority of real-world success stories evolved this way. They didn't start with a couple of managers and an architect sitting around a graph diagramming what they read in N-tier Weekly.
If someone said "Gee, I'm going to start a site called/.. Let's get started on the data layer objects....", they still wouldn't be done. Sadly, that is how most applications are developed.
The submission article is TERRIBLE in every way. Loaded with buzzwords and nonsensical meaningless drivel, it was made for the sole purpose of getting hits. I wish I could mod down a front page story.
View the presentation from the Launch 2005 event and you'll get much more useful information than the tripe submission.
As one aside (quoted from the linked article): "There are far, far too many nuts-and-bolts geniuses out there who can rewrite DaVinci's Codex in T-SQL, but who think two-dimensional client-server architecture is good enough for Internet apps. To build decent apps today, and Internet apps in particular, you need more than an idea, more than good tools, more than an application-level design; you need an application architecture, a high-level framework that carefully addresses your applications' intended functionality within the context of your hardware, network, and data-source infrastructure -- and, worse yet, too many IT managers who know the buzzwords but don't yet really understand this. "
I find this humorous, because many of the designs that have crashed and burned terribly are the over-designed, n-tier, architectural astronaut abortions that were pushed on an unsuspecting public. On flip side, many of the designs that have pervaded and succeeded at tremendous levels of scale could best be described as "some scripts that hit a database". Slashdot, for instance. Wikipedia...Digg...I could go on.
Personally I think this is an example of a good technology (RSS) that Microsoft is trying to co-opt by coming out with something marginally "better" -- mostly just more complex -- so they can attain some elements of control over it.
RSS is the absolutely height of simplicity. While that simplicity works for getting it out there and initially adopted, it does toss a wrench in it being a sustainable, growing technology. RSS is definitely showing signs of weakness (and the "next geners" are already chomping at the bit to switch to ATOM. I believe Google already tried to kill RSS), but thankfully it was built to support extensions (primarily just by supporting XML namespaces, but extensions were a part of the initial design).
I rashly proposed my own simplistic extension to RSS to great improve the mechanical interpretation of RSS entries in certain domains.
Doesn't sound right? That's because I'm talking about home use. Afterall, if can't keep from crashing at home, why would anyone want to run it as a server OS?
Home use is tremendously more varied and expansively demanding than server use is, and I highly doubt you're running on server grade hardware (or with server-grade drivers). Sounds like a pretty ridiculous comparison.
Though interesting that I played games, developed, and slammed on W2K as hard as I could, and outside of an ATI TV Tuner card and problems with it, reboots only ever occurred when I installed a patch.
Granted that Windows has improved a lot since its inception, but it still has a long way to go to match the stability and security of a decent Linux distro in a real live working environment.
What do you base this on? Windows 95?
Windows 2003 compares very, very favourably with the best maintained and configured Linux distros. If you delude yourself into believing otherwise, you do your cause a disservice.
Of course many in the Linux camp seem to be operating on very dated information (I mentioned previously that IIS 6 is actually a great web service, with a single real security fault found in its history, versus over a dozen for Apache in the same period, and got laughs and chuckles around here. Of course that's the case - few around these parts have the slightest clue about the huge improvements Microsoft has in their web server, deployed for over two years now).
Slashdot Mirror
The OEM cost for pre-loading XP on a new box is significantly less than $100, as is the cost to pre-load Office. Retail end-user costs in no way correlate with OEM costs.
Even more telling is the fact that many large OEMs charge the same or more for boxes without Windows, because those systems generally prove to cost them more in the end - more support calls, more returns because their distro doesn't support the particular DAC codec, whatever. Sometimes the whole is much more than the parts.
And the whole "never worry about blue screens" really put the icing on the Lamecake. The whole blue screen argument is so 2002, and if that's what the anti-M$ bots are still spouting, they need to update their playbook.
...just for the sake of getting it out of the door quickly
I think a better statement would be "getting it out of the door a little less slowly".
Personally I think the new graphics layer of Vista will be a dud for purely technical reasons. As you mentioned, most of the other features of Vista have been either watered down, or separated out (and backported), so the impetus to upgrade has declined. I'm sure in Microsoft they've probably already started focusing on what comes after Vista, letting a select number of employees clean up that death march.
Wow - the OS after Vista is codenamed Blackcomb. I find that remarkable as that code name was coined years ago.
Just as apple drops the PPC, Microsoft starts using it?
Mobile computing is critical to Apple's strategy (indeed - mobile PCs are going to seriously erode the desktop market), where the PowerPC had few viable options. Mobile computing doesn't really matter much to the gaming console market.
Not to mention that the submission implies something completely different than the actual article states (demonstrated by the tone of many of the comments). Canada isn't trying to retain skilled workers (e.g. the "brain drain"), the government of the day (for a short time) is trying to spend billions pandering both to
The immigrant community
The business community
The former is obvious, but the later is more insidious - "Can't beat your IT workers down to $8 an hour? Okay - we'll bring in 100,000 more to try to help out with this `skill shortage'.
If we fall even UBL knows Canada won't lift a finger to help us
Funny, given that Canada has been singled out by BL several times. Funny given that Canada was a critical ally in the war in Afghanistan, and that Canada's special forces eliminated much of BL's network. Funny, given that plans and threats against Canada have been found.
In a few decades the majority now in Canada, now will be the minority. At that time, life will be pretty interesting.
How will that make life "interesting"? Is that like some sort of threat (like "once the whiteys are a minority, we're going to kill 'em all!")? Maladjusted minorities love to say this, as if they're a part of some common tribe - imagining that all "minorities" are a common group. Here's a hint - Someone with Chinese ancestry has little bonding or in common with blacks or Japanese or Indians or Latin Americans.
It's not so much a non confidence vote so much as it is Steven Harper sees a way to snake his way into office. His whole story about conservatives being incorrupt unlike the Liberals is a crock. All the politicians are the same.
Um...that's a non-confidence vote - the majority of parliament doesn't agree with the government.
However I, and many others in the 905, will be voting for the Conservatives. The desperate Liberal bribery is grossly offensive, as is the absolutely pathetic pandering to the immigrant vote (many of whom are offended by it - irrational exhuberance about something as critical and volative as immigration quotas is absolutely insane, and it does no one a favour when the Liberals flood Toronto with unwanted and unmatched labour to try to buy votes)
How about giving up the Socialism, eh?
People leave Canada for a country with a better economy, and the government's solution is to spend more tax money! Brilliant move, eh?
I presume you're talking about the US - one of the most socialist countries on the planet (or have you opted out of the endless socialist pork projects, massive socialist war machine, and corporate welfare? Is that a checkbox on your income tax return?). Of course it isn't to benefit the poor, so Americans lift their chins up and talk about their great "capitalism" versus the evil "socialism" (of the REST OF THE 1ST WORLD), strangely imagining some moral high road.
Absolutely amazing that any American, with the enormous pork and tax-grabbing bloat of its government, can bleat the word socialist in any manner other than humor or self-deprecation.
What's even more remarkable is the fact that the all-in tax load in the US is, in many cases, similar to or greater than a comparable person in Canada. Don't tell Americans this, though - it might upset their imaginary world.
Oh, and regarding another of your comments.
One thing I find good in Canada is Toronto. It's multiculturalism is awesome. On Toronto streets, you see all shades of people, and on the subway, it's hard to hear English. That's what I see in Toronto and it's good.
The two languages of Canada are English and French, and in the very near future you can expect the requirements in those areas for immigrants is going to massively ramp up. Your claim that immigrants speak better English is, quite simply, a load of bullshit - many know a modicum of unworkable English, and revert to their native tongue at every opportunity (per your "hard to hear English" comment, however ridiculous it is. I live in Toronto, BTW). Their language never progresses, and they remain marginally employable in a English/French society.
But whitey is to blame, somehow.
I know because my relative who is a Canadian citizen, had to go India for hip replacement surgery. And thousands are. Yes, and the SARS crisis was mis-handled. The experts in the health care system admitted incopetence with SARS.
Whenever someone talks about health care, someone always brings up some anecdote that proves their case. How about good old fashioned metrics? You know, metrics like infant mortality, cancer survival rates, and lifespan. For instance here, with our "terrible" health-care system, you're more likely to survive a vast range of cancers than a lucky, insured individual in the US (and of course the same malady in a country like India is a quick death for a large percentage of the country). Of course in the US they have lots of large, marble-encrusted hospitals with blinkin' machines, but in practical medical terms the Canadian system is empirically superior in many measurable ways. Of course if you're uninsured in the US...
SARS --- like any country could competently deal with that. India? Ha.
The aboriginals, who are the real Canadians, are being left on reserves with contaminated water
Wow, so you were around when the Aboriginals crossed the land bridge, and you can assure us that they were - with absolute certainty - the "real Canadians" and somehow (and contrary to the rest of the planet) got some sort of magical eternal deed. What a load of shit (and I'm part-Cree "Indian" btw. Actually there is aboriginal blood throughout a large percentage of birth Canadians). Reserves with contanimated water...you don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about, or the bed that the native bands made themselves. Of course this line (the whole "real Canadians" thing) comes up when someone from some 3rd world shithole comes here and, looking around at the society and accomplishment, wants to decry it by claiming that it's really the "real Canadians". Give me a break.
By the way, how are you treating the skilled immigrants in Canada? Even those who speak and write better English are not treated that well. But everyone knows they are more educated and carry a better work ethic than those they find on the streets.
And here we come to the reality of your agenda - you came to Canada and actually had to compete, rather than having things handed to you on a silver spoon (as life is back home for most of the people who come here). So now you're, uh, "enlightening" the world with your great view. Funny stuff.
BTW: It's interesting that every immigrant talks about how educated and hard working their group is, yet one of the reasons why immigrants find a tough time is that many businesses have been burned by the grossly overstated education of many of them, and a terrible, entitled work ethic. Must be racism though.
That's what the Play button is for. Pushing it is the same as choosing "play movie" on the front menu. At least that's what happens on my DVD player.
It does this on neither of my DVD players (a Pioneer and a Toshiba). On both that simply plays the initial DVD, but then it sits on the main menu where the play button does nothing (actually both of them put a "what are you? A dumbass? It is playing" icon on the screen when you press it at the menu).
Do you know people who will spend inordinate amounts of time searching for a lost remote instead of just changing the channel by hand? :raises his hand:
With hundreds of channel it really isn't convenient to use little up/down arrows on the television anymore - effectively the user interface is borked if you don't have the remote. Neither of my DVD players will allow me to play a DVD without the remotes (they have a play button, but no method of choosing items on the DVD menu).
Because choosing preferences onscreen or by pressing a button on a remote control is so labour-intensive and laborious. It's a wonder mankind manages to use things as they are.
"It appears that Tom has entered the room. Shall I switch to Channel 54 - HotTeenAnal?"
Yeah, and I can make a paper nuclear reactor, except that it runs on 'D' cell batteries instead of uranium. Same thing really.
I particularly loved this part: "This V8 Engine made entirely out of paper with the exception of a few parts (motor"...
My car is entirely made out of paper, except for the car part of it.
Clearly it's a slashvertisement, as all of the linked articles are
If the Slashdot crew accepted those submissions without payment then they should commit hari kari now, because their use on this planet is done. If they did receive a kick-back - which I think is unquestionable - then I think this pretty effectively puts them on notice.
Good catch.
Remarkable that Slashdot is at such a vulnerable time, when there is a tide of credible competitors emerging, and they pull stunts like this.
Well actually they'd save quite a lot of bandwidth...Try actually thinking for a second before you post.
Oh this is rich.
Thank you for pointing out a site that proclaims that Slashdot could save $3,650 a year by switching to CSS (at 2003 bandwidth prices, though of course bandwidth is ludicrously cheap now). Gosh, you've sold me - what a revolution!
Amazing that you had the nerve, and the ignorance, to post that.
Hey, this sounds familiar (pardon the pun)!
In that link above I reference the Quiet American's One-Minute Vacations Site: It's a fantastic resource.
Oh, and one more comment:
/. to support CSS?
How long did it take
A better question, from a pragmatic, real-world perspective, would be "What did supporting CSS get them?". For the vast majority of readers, it isn't different from the classic table model at all (in fact it's a bit quirkier). I like CSS layout, but using Slashdot and CSS as an example is inane - they didn't support CSS because there was no practical reason to, other than a lot of Standards Astronauts beating on their door about their lack of CSS goodness.
Proper tiering of applications is considerably more scalable than a script, the modularity allows for much more flexible and adaptive caching per request, per application, and per user session...
/.. Let's get started on the data layer objects....", they still wouldn't be done. Sadly, that is how most applications are developed.
Thanks for the lesson, professor. Ignoring the nonsensical caching comment, the point was indeed that applications start simple (scripts hitting a database), and organically scale out from there. The vast majority of real-world success stories evolved this way. They didn't start with a couple of managers and an architect sitting around a graph diagramming what they read in N-tier Weekly.
If someone said "Gee, I'm going to start a site called
Cool, OK, that clears it all up for me.
The submission article is TERRIBLE in every way. Loaded with buzzwords and nonsensical meaningless drivel, it was made for the sole purpose of getting hits. I wish I could mod down a front page story.
View the presentation from the Launch 2005 event and you'll get much more useful information than the tripe submission.
As one aside (quoted from the linked article): "There are far, far too many nuts-and-bolts geniuses out there who can rewrite DaVinci's Codex in T-SQL, but who think two-dimensional client-server architecture is good enough for Internet apps. To build decent apps today, and Internet apps in particular, you need more than an idea, more than good tools, more than an application-level design; you need an application architecture, a high-level framework that carefully addresses your applications' intended functionality within the context of your hardware, network, and data-source infrastructure -- and, worse yet, too many IT managers who know the buzzwords but don't yet really understand this. "
I find this humorous, because many of the designs that have crashed and burned terribly are the over-designed, n-tier, architectural astronaut abortions that were pushed on an unsuspecting public. On flip side, many of the designs that have pervaded and succeeded at tremendous levels of scale could best be described as "some scripts that hit a database". Slashdot, for instance. Wikipedia...Digg...I could go on.
Personally I think this is an example of a good technology (RSS) that Microsoft is trying to co-opt by coming out with something marginally "better" -- mostly just more complex -- so they can attain some elements of control over it.
RSS is the absolutely height of simplicity. While that simplicity works for getting it out there and initially adopted, it does toss a wrench in it being a sustainable, growing technology. RSS is definitely showing signs of weakness (and the "next geners" are already chomping at the bit to switch to ATOM. I believe Google already tried to kill RSS), but thankfully it was built to support extensions (primarily just by supporting XML namespaces, but extensions were a part of the initial design).
I rashly proposed my own simplistic extension to RSS to great improve the mechanical interpretation of RSS entries in certain domains.
Doesn't sound right? That's because I'm talking about home use. Afterall, if can't keep from crashing at home, why would anyone want to run it as a server OS?
Home use is tremendously more varied and expansively demanding than server use is, and I highly doubt you're running on server grade hardware (or with server-grade drivers). Sounds like a pretty ridiculous comparison.
Though interesting that I played games, developed, and slammed on W2K as hard as I could, and outside of an ATI TV Tuner card and problems with it, reboots only ever occurred when I installed a patch.
Granted that Windows has improved a lot since its inception, but it still has a long way to go to match the stability and security of a decent Linux distro in a real live working environment.
What do you base this on? Windows 95?
Windows 2003 compares very, very favourably with the best maintained and configured Linux distros. If you delude yourself into believing otherwise, you do your cause a disservice.
Of course many in the Linux camp seem to be operating on very dated information (I mentioned previously that IIS 6 is actually a great web service, with a single real security fault found in its history, versus over a dozen for Apache in the same period, and got laughs and chuckles around here. Of course that's the case - few around these parts have the slightest clue about the huge improvements Microsoft has in their web server, deployed for over two years now).
Interesting that this was moderated "funny".