Couple of things... (just opinions)

Software Patents - Don't think it's right to patent non-physical devices. Hopefully we can someday we can fix this horrible innovation-stifling law.

Lindows - Don't think anyone ever confused Lindows with Windows.

Old dates on information - I was trying to show a long standing pattern of attacks. You went through many of the items essentially saying that the attacks were justified. Don't wish to put words in your mouth but I think that's the gist of your opinion.

Whether the attacks were justified or not it does show that 1) Linux was/is a threat, as indicated by Microsoft. 2) Linux is not a "ghost" that no one can sue or strong arm.

The last few paragraphs seem to be irrelevant to what I wrote so I'll let others comment on the pros and cons of FOSS.

But they keep attacking, don't they? TomTom, Novell, Lindows, other attacks from 1998 to 2007.

And, since 2003 MS has considered Linux their number two threat.

Microsoft disagrees with you.

Spend a little time on LOGO to show some basic concepts and then onto Python.

I didn't forget anything I left them out.

Don't assume anything, see what the market decides like other intelligent shoppers. Tell me you didn't buy an EISA or Microchannel system. lol

I totally agree, let's elect people to do that.

In Colorado there is a county tax that is different in every county. In NJ they have enterprise zones where the tax is half unless your a business in NJ then you need to pay full tax. See, it is unbelievably simple.

On taxes in general... they have already been paid. The manufacturer paid tax on the raw goods, tax was paid by the distributors, and income tax was collected from the people who work for these organizations. Have I left out anything? Please add it in if so. Do we get any more representation in Congress for the items that have been taxed three or more times? Please, if it is taxed in the EU, let's not do it here.

That is a better way to evaluate costs. Money is not lost if you learn how to implement things better. If the mistakes are repeated then yes the company is wasting its time. Usually, on implementing version 1 of software, we learn basically how not to do it. We take those mistakes and learn how to make version 2 much better. Version 3 further refines the product and development procedures into something that can be used again and again.

New development processes try to smash the above three versions into a repeating process. Agile development comes to mind. But even this has to be learned and adapted to what fits best for a project. The assumption is that assumptions will be wrong, mistakes will be made, learning will occur, and more correct goals will be set and implemented.

Effective IT is learning from your mistakes whereas bad IT is repeating them. Certainly some of that $6.2T is the cost of learning.

XP is a huge installed base of computers. A new high capacity device that won't work on them is big news. It may be big enough to embarrass MS to do something about it. Both Vista and Windows 7 have forced MS to keep XP going for netbooks. Neither of the new OSes will run with any decent speed on a 10inch netbook. Even XP is a bit sluggish.

Those questions were covered quite well by other posters.

In addition to what other posters wrote, I would add that, it, sector size, will get larger as drives increase capacity. When we see 128Tbyte drives become common watch for another change to reduce total sectors to something more manageable. We don't know what the limit will be because research continues. Currently, work progresses on storing bits in the state of a single electron.

Sure sure. But, for the millions of XP users this is news.

4k sectors are logical when you look at increased drive capacity, especially with multi-bit per position technology. New stuff is coming, you can't stop it. We had ISA, VESA, PCI, and ePCI. We had IDE, EIDE, SATA1, 2 and 3. I won't mention all the different types of memory we've gone through. Hardware is a moving target of innovation.

Eventually XP users will be forced to do something like the Win9x'ers had to do. Ether you can get a new box that supports the latest MS OS or you can install a version of Linux that works on your current hardware and implements the new features.

I've found that the amount of transition-to-Linux pain is dependent on the peripherals you use. For instance, my scanner gives me a hard time whenever I upgrade, but my digital camera never does.

That's Grey Code. 000, 001, 011, 010, 110, 111 and the joke should read...

There are only 11 types of old timer geeks... :-)

I don't do much calling so I use Virgin Mobil pay as you go. My bills are under $100 for the year. It's $0.18/minute to call anyone in the U.S. and they cover large metro areas. I've used it all along the Frontrange in Colorado and anywhere in NJ. It makes a good low usage inexpensive phone if you live in a coverage area(map).