Virtualization OSs are not microkernels. Microkernels require the bulk of everything to go into userland, such as device drivers. In Hypervisors, OTOH, device drivers and a whole lot of other common resources that OSs use are packed in the kernel.

Until you do a search for a new address, as opposed to something you had already bookmarked

Neither MapPoint nor 'Streets and Trips' were free. Both cost ~$20-30, IIRC. Ever since the advent of free online maps from Google, Bing, OpenStreetMaps, et al, it's doubtful that anybody would have paid real cash to buy something that was a more crippled version of those, sans features like location of major landmarks, updates & so on. End result is these products being canned. Only thing I'm surprised at is them being canned now - I'd have expected that to happen 10 years back.

Incidentally, does Microsoft still sell Encarta in the era of Wikipedia?

I flew recently, on 2 occasions. They clearly ask people to disable cellular functionality on their phones at all times, and leave the phone in Airplane mode. As of now, Airplane mode still disables not just cellular reception, but Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well. So it's misleading to claim that despite FAA rulings, things have not changed. The reason things have not changed is that the airlines have not transmitted that decision, but have kept it at status quo - allowing only Airplane mode.

One of the flights I was in had an in-flight Wi-Fi. I think it's time that the OSs - iOS, Android, Blackberry OS and Windows Phone - all changed Airplane mode to leave Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on, but disable cellular. That would be the most workable solution.

I do recall a magazine called 'Linux Extreme'

The rupee symbol has an HTML representation 8377 or &#8377. Even if /. doesn't want to support Unicode, can't it at least support the HTML representations that are there, so that people using that can represent foreign currencies or other symbols?

So Humans who live around the Arctic Circle - Lapland, North slopes of Alaska, Northern Canada, et al - they sleep for 6 months continuous and stay awake the other 6, right?

Time should be recalibrated so that it's all in powers of 2. 64 seconds will be a minute, 64 minutes would be an hour, 32 hours a day, and so on. Readjust how long a second is so that the above adds up to a day.

The Russians could just go to ReactOS, and not have to worry about this one

...then it - Internet of things - would be a good thing. I do hope that it accelerates the demise of IPv4, which has overstayed its welcome

My only 2 regrets about the NeXTs - 1) them being diskless 2) Them being based on 68040 rather than SPARC or PA/RISC

Can anyone explain why NeWS was ultimately replaced by X on SunOS? I never understood that one.

In 1992, when I entered the University, I managed to see a variety of Unix workstations in different labs. Our Computer Science labs were exclusively Sun workstations - at the time, SunOS, not even Solaris. We had some DECstations (the ones based on MIPS 3k, not Alpha) in our VLSI lab, running DECwindows on Ultrix. In our Parallel Computing lab, we had some RS/6000 workstations running AIX and Motif (remember that?) There was one term when we had a Real Time computing class, which involved running HP/RT - a real time version of HP/UX on the PA-RISC. Elsewhere, I saw SGI Indigo workstations in the Graphics lab of the CS department.

At that time, I was new to UNIX, so none of these were easy to use, so having X on them didn't really help me. What revolutionized my computer use were the NeXTstations in our computer center. Our computer center had NeXTs, IBM mainframes, Vaxes and Suns. The NeXTs were somewhat painful to use, being diskless workstations, but they drew their data from the Sun servers. It was there that I became a fast typist, and learnt to use quite a few applications, like NewsReader (for USENET), Improv (for spreadsheets) and Frame. After I graduated and NeXT got bought by Apple, I missed them.

The thing I miss about those days is not X, which never impressed me, but the fact that most of those RISC beauties are out to pasture: even having Windows NT on some of them, like Alpha or MIPS, could not save them ;-(

My post pretty much showed how none of the powers bordering China are a threat to China. Only threat is the stateless Uyghur movement, which is trying to carve out a good portion of Xinxiang out of China. Other than that, it's China that's the hostile neighbor of all those countries - South Korea, Taiwan, India and Japan.

How do you know? If war4peace was a 'she', maybe she would have.