So, the networking stack will get even slower in reduced functionality mode?
I have no idea if the "reduced functionality mode" includes any network speed reductions. I was referring to the GP comment about playing MP3s slowing down the internet connection. As has been mentioned in several previous stories on here, in order to prevent media playback problems related to the way the new media architecture was designed in Windows, they opted to introduce a speed limiter into the network stack that keeps high speed networking connections from monopolizing the scheduler. This can be seen as a speed reduction during media playback on very high speed connections, which initially lead to some uproar as people questioned why playing a simple MP3 was sufficient to trigger a 30% speed reduction (if I recall correctly, would have to go back and double check that figure to be sure) in their gigabit network connection. Also, I made a mistake in the original post, and said 1Mbit/s when I meant 1Gbit/s.
"Let us play this MP3 file you've got here. Whoops! Download time now increased to 13 hours, 15 minutes."
I realize you made this comment in jest, and I'm certainly no fan of MS, but since you got modded insightful I feel I need to point out the speed reduction chosen by MS was picked to not be noticeable on anything less than a gigabit connection. So, unless you're downloading at over 1Mbit/s from your ISP (and in turn every hop to the MS update servers), there won't be any noticeable change in your download rate.
Actually it's fraud. Copyright infringement is making an unauthorized copy of Windows. Fraud is when the OEM takes your money and hands you a bogus product.
Why don't you go ahead and change some bits in a banking or trading application to credit your account instead of the proper one, and see what they call it.
IANAL and all that, but I believe it's both, just to different parties. It's a copyright violation against MS because they're distributing an unlicensed copy, and it's fraud against the consumer because they're giving them a bogus copy when the consumer believes they paid for a legitimate one. Of course, MS punishing the customer sounds like a very bad idea, but since when has that ever stopped them. I also wonder about the timing of this considering the recent problems they've had with the WGA server going down and many legitimate customers being flagged as pirates.
IT doesn't want to deal with problems, really who does? But not replacing poor technology is not a solution. Anywhere else in the company, it's not acceptable to say "I don't want to deal with problems that might arise from this, so I'm not going to sell our product". Or "I'm not going to write any more code because it might cause problems that I have to fix".
ITs job is to provide the best technical solutions to the businesses needs that they can. This job is hindered by the business in two ways. First, you have moronic upper management and marketing people trying to tell IT how to do their jobs. IT doesn't go to the marketers and tell them they WILL make all new promo posters in fluorescent yellow because it's more eye catching, and therefore more likely to bring in sales, and all they ask is that marketing likewise leave IT alone when it makes technical decisions for reasons that require specialist knowledge (why the business is paying for IT experts). The second way business interferes is in budgets and timelines. They hand over a set of requirements, a timeline and a budget, and expect all three to be met. Unfortunately at least one of the three must be adjusted to make room for the other two. More often than not, the business decides to cut requirements, and then the users complain that IT didn't deliver what they promised.
however, a rfid chip is supposed to behave in a very particular way - it needs to transmit a prefedined small set of info (number, name, anything you coded into it) precisely to a distant receptive device.
You're post is mostly correct, although there are a couple points that several people have already made in other posts here that relate to your statements. First, you state a "distant receptive device". Most RFID tags are designed to function over relatively limited ranges. Yes, using special antennas and filtering software to try and clean up background noise it's possible to read RFID in some cases from as far as a few meters, practically speaking in day to day operation most of these devices are designed to be read from at most a few inches. Secondly, it doesn't strictly speaking reflect the RF radiation. It absorbs the RF to power the chip, and then changes it's resistance to communicate information. The resistance change is picked up by the transmitter and converted back into information. This is similar to the way that metal detectors work, only in a more selective fashion. In short, these are only reflect RF about as much as any piece of metal or circuitry would. You'd experience just as much radiation from having one of these as you would a pacemaker, with the understanding that you would be more inclined to expose yourself due to the need to scan the RFID chip at a reader periodically. Do I think embedded RFID is a good idea? No, not really, but I don't think it posses a greater risk of cancer either. A proper study needs to be done in order to draw any more conclusions, as it is these papers are an interesting anecdote, but care no particular significance from a scientific standpoint.
Keep that in mind when our future alien overlords put you in a zoo and feed you happy pills.
A roof over your head, three square meals, and all the drugs you can want. Now, give me a computer with internet access, and I'm not seeing a down side here.
I actually bought the DVD that was created to document the experience the interns had while working on that project. They all seemed very happy to be there, and honestly it was a very nice work environment, particularly compared to some places. Could have been worse, they could have signed on at one of EA's sweatshops. As an added bonus, most Universities require some sort of internship in order to receive your degree, and the sort of work experience they acquired working for Joel not only looks good on a resume, but better prepares them for a professional job as a software developer.
Are the photons still entangled after the first was measured?
This all goes back to Schroedinger's cat. Once you've measured one of the photons they are both in the same state, and are no longer entangled, any further change to one of them will not be reflected in the other. The whole thing works because in an entangled state there's a probability that the photon is in either state, and until we measure it we don't know exactly which state that happens to be. Quantum theory states that until you measure it, it actually exists in both states at the same time, and it's the act of observing it that causes it to be in one state or another (this is also the freaky part about quantum physics people have such trouble with). Once you get down to the quantum level, particles behave much more like probability functions than classical particles, and that is also one of the reasons why wavelike behavior is observed. At any given time thanks to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle a particle has a certain probability of being at a particular location irregardless of whether there was a physical obstruction blocking what its path would be in a classical ray system (see quantum tunneling[1], which is why semi-conductors even work in the first place).
For more details on this you really need to talk to a true quantum physicist, I don't actually work in that field, but have a passing interest and have done some research.
Ok, your comment is badly mangled, but I think I get the gist of it and I'll try to explain.
The problem is that we can't currently control what state the two disentangle into, we can merely guarantee that they share a state in common. Special relativity doesn't explicitly deny something happening faster than the speed of light, just data being transmitted faster than that limit. Because we can't determine anything from the two entangled electrons other than they share a common state, we can't actually get any data out of the system, thus there is no discrepancy. There's also the fact that determining if they are entangled is itself a measurement and thus the act of checking for entanglement breaks the entanglement. We can only verify they are entangled by checking after the fact that they both have the same state when we measure them, otherwise there is no way to know if they are entangled or not.
Do you think that the retrovirus now could sue for this outstanding patent violation?
Depends on if the retrovirus filed first or if the bacteria could show prior art.
Personally, my money's on the retrovirus.
From TFA,
"Such transfers have happened before in the distant past" notes Werren. "In our very own cells and those of nearly all plants and animals are mitochondria, special structures responsible for generating most of our cells' supply of chemical energy. These were once bacteria that lived inside cells, much like wolbachia does today. Mitochondria still retain their own, albeit tiny, DNA, and most of the genes moved into the nucleus in the very distant past." So, I'd say the bacteria has a pretty strong case for prior art.
No, there are no such laws. Several states have tried passing them but they've all been struck down or enjoined from enforcement.
Hmm, so maybe this is a case of a popular urban legend perpetuated by managers for places like Target to keep register drones in line with the company line? I know I've heard managers at a few retail outlets telling sales people that they need to ID for M rated games or the store can be fined.
They should give details *to the submitter* of the game as to what it objects to, etc, etc. Otherwise how do you know what to change to get a different rating, and whether they are being fair or if you should go public with why they are giving it the rating they are if it seems unfair/political/etc.
That's fair, just so long as there is some level of transparency in the whole operation. I don't personally know how the ESRB works, but if it works like the MPAA does then they don't release any details at all to anyone outside the ESRB other than the final rating. If they provide the submitter with more details, then I'd say it's mostly a moot point, although I would still be interested to know as a consumer exactly what the criteria are for a particular rating, and also to have some way to verify that it's those same criteria they use to arrive at the final rating for a product.
As for the whole Jack Thompson thing, it shouldn't be a matter of much paperwork in theory. Just have a form letter or something and if he sends in 1000 requests (make them SASE if you really want to make him work for it), just mail him 1000 copies of the exact same letter. Or better yet, have a website you could go to to get the the info. Sure you could use it to look up spoilers for things, but lets face it, this is the internet age, you can find spoilers if your looking for them for just about anything.
I see a problem with it. They're private organizations, and their ratings are by nature a matter of opinion.
That's an excellent point and kind of goes to the heart of the problem. Even though they are a private organization, they serve a role similar to a state agency by restricting the distribution of a game by some arbitrary rating. Admittedly there's no law that says anything rated AO can't be distributed, but it won't be carried in most stores, and if it became common place to distribute AO rated games I'd bet there would be a bunch of laws passed to regulate them. As it is there's already laws in a few places (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) that can fine stores for selling M rated games to anyone under 17. The fact that this private organization is assigning a rating to something that carries with it a legal burden on the distributer kind of muddies the water as to its required level of transparency.
I don't see any problem at all with requiring that the ESRB give details about what it objects to in games to those that request it. Likewise a think the MPAA should also be required to specify how and why it rates movies a particular way. For anyone interested in the MPAA rating process and exactly how shifty it appears to be, check out This Movie is Not Yet Rated which follows a movie as it makes its way through the MPAA and attempts to determine who rates it, and how they come up with the ratings.
Ah, so that's why I keep that magic 8-ball on my desk. Now, lets see, 8-Ball, will my PHB come by in the next 30 min to ask if I'm done with that TSD that I'm still waiting on the BAs to give me a fixed use case for?
8-ball says "Yes Definitely", guess it's going to be one of those days.
And then I see figures from Microsoft that show adoption progressing at similar rates to their previous major OS releases.
Ah yes, the good old lies, damn lies, and statistics. First, and I think critical in this case is that even Microsoft has admitted sales are not what they hoped they would be, and anytime you hear the marketing department admitting slow sales you know something is seriously up. Another key point is that the installed computer base right now is significantly greater than in the past, so even though more total units have shipped, when you normalize that by dividing the old numbers and new numbers by the computing base at the time, sales are actually lower now. Lastly, and this is the real kicker, Microsoft makes most of their sales through OEM purchases, which occur in bulk and happen regardless of whether the computers are being sold or not, so MS can claim X billion units shipped, even if the OEMs haven't actually sold X billion computers yet. Businesses and OEM sales have traditionally been the strong point of Microsoft, accounting for the majority of OS sales, it's rather telling that governments are swearing off on Vista and the OEMs are being forced to revert back to providing XP due to customer demand.
There already IS a boycott of RIAA labels. It's not organized, and not big; and I seriously doubt it can ever be big enough to make them change their ways.
Yes, I know some people already are boycotting RIAA labels, but I meant precisely what you say doesn't exist, a large well organized national boycott. Unless at least 50% of the public is boycotting the RIAA I doubt they'll even take notice, and I don't think we'll ever manage to get that many people interested. It's far more likely some sort of legal shenanigans on the part of the RIAA will backfire and they'll get a nasty judgement that shuts them down. Either that or all the old guard labels will continue their current practices and swirl down the bowl while some new upstart that actually gets with the program takes over and becomes the dominant distributer in the market.
and as such a protracted law suit in the long term does them little harm.
They only think that, but they can only abuse the legal system for so long before their luck runs out and they get a judge that is sick of their antics. It also does terrible damage to their public image (what little they actually have). If they tick off enough people, eventually there will be a boycott of RIAA labels, although I'm not sure they could actually tick off that many people before some other legal smack down gets put on them.
Did you read TFA? They're providing "assistance" to the Moonlight developers. Moonlight is open source.
If Microsoft stops providing such "assistance" and breaks backwards compatibility in Silverlight, I suppose the Moonlight developers will have to adapt. I don't have much hope that they'll be more successful than the Samba developers, though.
Yes, and as per the last line of my original post:
Of course, in this case it sounds like maybe Microsoft is doing the right thing and actually helping the Mono guys make their product compatible with Microsoft's, but I'll still be wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly.
The part about being wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly was about Silverlight and the associated specification, not about Mono (.Net being ECMA is slightly harder for MS to screw with, although still not impossible. The biggest danger to Mono is that they'll succeed in getting Windows.Forms fully working, people will start using it extensively and then MS will tweak it to break Mono).
What if the third party developers develop tools for Silverlight in Linux and these tools become very important for the customers?
In that case I imagine certain third party developers would suddenly find a very large cash infusion from Microsoft with certain strings attached. Of course, MS could also opt to simply clone the particular tool and bundle it with Silverlight once again putting the open version at a disadvantage (see IE/Outlook bundled with Windows).
How exactly is Microsoft going to be supporting these cross-platform apps? Maybe they're thinking about doing what they did with IE on Macintosh, produce a version for other platforms, then stop distributing or providing updates to it once they decide it's no longer convenient.
Business applications are kind of strange beasts in the software world because of the long usage life they're expected to see. That's one of the reasons companies often want some big name company behind a product because they're afraid somewhere down the road the company might fold and they'd be left without support for a vital application. The problem is most of these companies haven't yet realized that open source applications provide much better guarantee because even if the original developers quit working on the application, it's always possible for someone else to take up the reins. In a proprietary system, even with a big developer behind it, there is nothing insuring that development continues on any given application.
Of course, in this case it sounds like maybe Microsoft is doing the right thing and actually helping the Mono guys make their product compatible with Microsoft's, but I'll still be wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no idea if the "reduced functionality mode" includes any network speed reductions. I was referring to the GP comment about playing MP3s slowing down the internet connection. As has been mentioned in several previous stories on here, in order to prevent media playback problems related to the way the new media architecture was designed in Windows, they opted to introduce a speed limiter into the network stack that keeps high speed networking connections from monopolizing the scheduler. This can be seen as a speed reduction during media playback on very high speed connections, which initially lead to some uproar as people questioned why playing a simple MP3 was sufficient to trigger a 30% speed reduction (if I recall correctly, would have to go back and double check that figure to be sure) in their gigabit network connection. Also, I made a mistake in the original post, and said 1Mbit/s when I meant 1Gbit/s.
I realize you made this comment in jest, and I'm certainly no fan of MS, but since you got modded insightful I feel I need to point out the speed reduction chosen by MS was picked to not be noticeable on anything less than a gigabit connection. So, unless you're downloading at over 1Mbit/s from your ISP (and in turn every hop to the MS update servers), there won't be any noticeable change in your download rate.
Why don't you go ahead and change some bits in a banking or trading application to credit your account instead of the proper one, and see what they call it.
IANAL and all that, but I believe it's both, just to different parties. It's a copyright violation against MS because they're distributing an unlicensed copy, and it's fraud against the consumer because they're giving them a bogus copy when the consumer believes they paid for a legitimate one. Of course, MS punishing the customer sounds like a very bad idea, but since when has that ever stopped them. I also wonder about the timing of this considering the recent problems they've had with the WGA server going down and many legitimate customers being flagged as pirates.
ITs job is to provide the best technical solutions to the businesses needs that they can. This job is hindered by the business in two ways. First, you have moronic upper management and marketing people trying to tell IT how to do their jobs. IT doesn't go to the marketers and tell them they WILL make all new promo posters in fluorescent yellow because it's more eye catching, and therefore more likely to bring in sales, and all they ask is that marketing likewise leave IT alone when it makes technical decisions for reasons that require specialist knowledge (why the business is paying for IT experts). The second way business interferes is in budgets and timelines. They hand over a set of requirements, a timeline and a budget, and expect all three to be met. Unfortunately at least one of the three must be adjusted to make room for the other two. More often than not, the business decides to cut requirements, and then the users complain that IT didn't deliver what they promised.
Closer to assisted suicide than murder.
You're post is mostly correct, although there are a couple points that several people have already made in other posts here that relate to your statements. First, you state a "distant receptive device". Most RFID tags are designed to function over relatively limited ranges. Yes, using special antennas and filtering software to try and clean up background noise it's possible to read RFID in some cases from as far as a few meters, practically speaking in day to day operation most of these devices are designed to be read from at most a few inches. Secondly, it doesn't strictly speaking reflect the RF radiation. It absorbs the RF to power the chip, and then changes it's resistance to communicate information. The resistance change is picked up by the transmitter and converted back into information. This is similar to the way that metal detectors work, only in a more selective fashion. In short, these are only reflect RF about as much as any piece of metal or circuitry would. You'd experience just as much radiation from having one of these as you would a pacemaker, with the understanding that you would be more inclined to expose yourself due to the need to scan the RFID chip at a reader periodically. Do I think embedded RFID is a good idea? No, not really, but I don't think it posses a greater risk of cancer either. A proper study needs to be done in order to draw any more conclusions, as it is these papers are an interesting anecdote, but care no particular significance from a scientific standpoint.
A roof over your head, three square meals, and all the drugs you can want. Now, give me a computer with internet access, and I'm not seeing a down side here.
I think you meant to check the "Post Anonymously" box before submitting that...
Or even worse, maybe he didn't!
I actually bought the DVD that was created to document the experience the interns had while working on that project. They all seemed very happy to be there, and honestly it was a very nice work environment, particularly compared to some places. Could have been worse, they could have signed on at one of EA's sweatshops. As an added bonus, most Universities require some sort of internship in order to receive your degree, and the sort of work experience they acquired working for Joel not only looks good on a resume, but better prepares them for a professional job as a software developer.
This all goes back to Schroedinger's cat. Once you've measured one of the photons they are both in the same state, and are no longer entangled, any further change to one of them will not be reflected in the other. The whole thing works because in an entangled state there's a probability that the photon is in either state, and until we measure it we don't know exactly which state that happens to be. Quantum theory states that until you measure it, it actually exists in both states at the same time, and it's the act of observing it that causes it to be in one state or another (this is also the freaky part about quantum physics people have such trouble with). Once you get down to the quantum level, particles behave much more like probability functions than classical particles, and that is also one of the reasons why wavelike behavior is observed. At any given time thanks to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle a particle has a certain probability of being at a particular location irregardless of whether there was a physical obstruction blocking what its path would be in a classical ray system (see quantum tunneling[1], which is why semi-conductors even work in the first place).
For more details on this you really need to talk to a true quantum physicist, I don't actually work in that field, but have a passing interest and have done some research.
1: Quantum Tunneling
Ok, your comment is badly mangled, but I think I get the gist of it and I'll try to explain.
The problem is that we can't currently control what state the two disentangle into, we can merely guarantee that they share a state in common. Special relativity doesn't explicitly deny something happening faster than the speed of light, just data being transmitted faster than that limit. Because we can't determine anything from the two entangled electrons other than they share a common state, we can't actually get any data out of the system, thus there is no discrepancy. There's also the fact that determining if they are entangled is itself a measurement and thus the act of checking for entanglement breaks the entanglement. We can only verify they are entangled by checking after the fact that they both have the same state when we measure them, otherwise there is no way to know if they are entangled or not.
Depends on if the retrovirus filed first or if the bacteria could show prior art.
Personally, my money's on the retrovirus.
From TFA,
"Such transfers have happened before in the distant past" notes Werren. "In our very own cells and those of nearly all plants and animals are mitochondria, special structures responsible for generating most of our cells' supply of chemical energy. These were once bacteria that lived inside cells, much like wolbachia does today. Mitochondria still retain their own, albeit tiny, DNA, and most of the genes moved into the nucleus in the very distant past." So, I'd say the bacteria has a pretty strong case for prior art.Hmm, so maybe this is a case of a popular urban legend perpetuated by managers for places like Target to keep register drones in line with the company line? I know I've heard managers at a few retail outlets telling sales people that they need to ID for M rated games or the store can be fined.
That's fair, just so long as there is some level of transparency in the whole operation. I don't personally know how the ESRB works, but if it works like the MPAA does then they don't release any details at all to anyone outside the ESRB other than the final rating. If they provide the submitter with more details, then I'd say it's mostly a moot point, although I would still be interested to know as a consumer exactly what the criteria are for a particular rating, and also to have some way to verify that it's those same criteria they use to arrive at the final rating for a product.
As for the whole Jack Thompson thing, it shouldn't be a matter of much paperwork in theory. Just have a form letter or something and if he sends in 1000 requests (make them SASE if you really want to make him work for it), just mail him 1000 copies of the exact same letter. Or better yet, have a website you could go to to get the the info. Sure you could use it to look up spoilers for things, but lets face it, this is the internet age, you can find spoilers if your looking for them for just about anything.
That's an excellent point and kind of goes to the heart of the problem. Even though they are a private organization, they serve a role similar to a state agency by restricting the distribution of a game by some arbitrary rating. Admittedly there's no law that says anything rated AO can't be distributed, but it won't be carried in most stores, and if it became common place to distribute AO rated games I'd bet there would be a bunch of laws passed to regulate them. As it is there's already laws in a few places (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) that can fine stores for selling M rated games to anyone under 17. The fact that this private organization is assigning a rating to something that carries with it a legal burden on the distributer kind of muddies the water as to its required level of transparency.
I don't see any problem at all with requiring that the ESRB give details about what it objects to in games to those that request it. Likewise a think the MPAA should also be required to specify how and why it rates movies a particular way. For anyone interested in the MPAA rating process and exactly how shifty it appears to be, check out This Movie is Not Yet Rated which follows a movie as it makes its way through the MPAA and attempts to determine who rates it, and how they come up with the ratings.
Ah, so that's why I keep that magic 8-ball on my desk. Now, lets see, 8-Ball, will my PHB come by in the next 30 min to ask if I'm done with that TSD that I'm still waiting on the BAs to give me a fixed use case for?
8-ball says "Yes Definitely", guess it's going to be one of those days.
"Gee dad, a problem light, what a brilliant idea."
Ah yes, the good old lies, damn lies, and statistics. First, and I think critical in this case is that even Microsoft has admitted sales are not what they hoped they would be, and anytime you hear the marketing department admitting slow sales you know something is seriously up. Another key point is that the installed computer base right now is significantly greater than in the past, so even though more total units have shipped, when you normalize that by dividing the old numbers and new numbers by the computing base at the time, sales are actually lower now. Lastly, and this is the real kicker, Microsoft makes most of their sales through OEM purchases, which occur in bulk and happen regardless of whether the computers are being sold or not, so MS can claim X billion units shipped, even if the OEMs haven't actually sold X billion computers yet. Businesses and OEM sales have traditionally been the strong point of Microsoft, accounting for the majority of OS sales, it's rather telling that governments are swearing off on Vista and the OEMs are being forced to revert back to providing XP due to customer demand.
Yes, I know some people already are boycotting RIAA labels, but I meant precisely what you say doesn't exist, a large well organized national boycott. Unless at least 50% of the public is boycotting the RIAA I doubt they'll even take notice, and I don't think we'll ever manage to get that many people interested. It's far more likely some sort of legal shenanigans on the part of the RIAA will backfire and they'll get a nasty judgement that shuts them down. Either that or all the old guard labels will continue their current practices and swirl down the bowl while some new upstart that actually gets with the program takes over and becomes the dominant distributer in the market.
They only think that, but they can only abuse the legal system for so long before their luck runs out and they get a judge that is sick of their antics. It also does terrible damage to their public image (what little they actually have). If they tick off enough people, eventually there will be a boycott of RIAA labels, although I'm not sure they could actually tick off that many people before some other legal smack down gets put on them.
If Microsoft stops providing such "assistance" and breaks backwards compatibility in Silverlight, I suppose the Moonlight developers will have to adapt. I don't have much hope that they'll be more successful than the Samba developers, though.
Yes, and as per the last line of my original post:
Of course, in this case it sounds like maybe Microsoft is doing the right thing and actually helping the Mono guys make their product compatible with Microsoft's, but I'll still be wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly.The part about being wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly was about Silverlight and the associated specification, not about Mono (.Net being ECMA is slightly harder for MS to screw with, although still not impossible. The biggest danger to Mono is that they'll succeed in getting Windows.Forms fully working, people will start using it extensively and then MS will tweak it to break Mono).
Fast, Secure, Reliable. Pick two.*
*This is a generalization, like all generalization not applicable to all cases, use at own risk, may cause cancer in lab rats, yada yada yada.
In that case I imagine certain third party developers would suddenly find a very large cash infusion from Microsoft with certain strings attached. Of course, MS could also opt to simply clone the particular tool and bundle it with Silverlight once again putting the open version at a disadvantage (see IE/Outlook bundled with Windows).
How exactly is Microsoft going to be supporting these cross-platform apps? Maybe they're thinking about doing what they did with IE on Macintosh, produce a version for other platforms, then stop distributing or providing updates to it once they decide it's no longer convenient.
Business applications are kind of strange beasts in the software world because of the long usage life they're expected to see. That's one of the reasons companies often want some big name company behind a product because they're afraid somewhere down the road the company might fold and they'd be left without support for a vital application. The problem is most of these companies haven't yet realized that open source applications provide much better guarantee because even if the original developers quit working on the application, it's always possible for someone else to take up the reins. In a proprietary system, even with a big developer behind it, there is nothing insuring that development continues on any given application.
Of course, in this case it sounds like maybe Microsoft is doing the right thing and actually helping the Mono guys make their product compatible with Microsoft's, but I'll still be wary of anything Microsoft is distributing directly.