A Week of Vista-Bashing

DRM troubles are driving people — including formerly-loyal Microsoft ex-employees — to Linux. A major European think-tank is recommending “naked PCs” (PCs sold without an operating system) to foster competition and bring down prices. Microsoft has been forced by consumer pressure to keep selling Windows XP for an extra half-year. And even a CNET technology …

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“Running the numbers on Vista”

Interesting… according to this article, not only is Vista not selling well, but there has been a huge jump in sales of Office for Mac, which he’s suggesting indicates that a large number of people are switching to the Mac. I’ve said it before: Windows Vista is the best thing that ever happened for Linux …

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Microsoft — ouch!

JoelOnSoftware (an ex-Microsoft employee) posted an absolutely scathing commentary on Vista and Office 2007’s packaging yesterday, along with a devastating comment on Vista itself: I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply …

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Preparing to LISP

Greenspun’s Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. — Philip Greenspun Including Common Lisp. — Robert Morris I’ve been working on a top-secret, ultra-hush-hush project for my company for several years now — so secret that I can …

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The OS Wars II: Testing the Programming Waters

I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the C++ programming language I’ve been doing software development for twenty-five years as a hobby, and the last nine commercially as …

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The OS Wars II: SSH Server Security

A leak? You call what’s going on here a leak? Last time we had leak like like this, Noah built himself a boat! — Wells (Wilford Brimley), ‘Absence of Malice’ Our copy of the new Harry Potter novel (delivered early this morning from Amazon) is presently being devoured by GoddessJ, and it doesn’t look like …

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