I'm sure MS is happy to take $50 from me now and again when a project demands something more sophisticated

Why are you concerned about MS being happy? If what you truly need is MS Office; get a copy and install it on your Windows PC and keep it. These days; PCs last atleast 8+ years. You can keep using your sophisticated piece of Office for a fraction of the subscription price.

If this is sinking, what does success look like?

This is indeed Sinking. Stinking Sinking with a capital S. If MS weren't sinking; why would they toss out the Chair - Man and get a new techy CEO who knows a bit or two?

Making money off old products by fleecing captive customers will not work forever; the dressing of the books will have to stop sooner than later.

> If someone at NSA want's to look at those
Is that a plural? So why the apostrophe, moron?

You are the moron I think. Consider: The NSA is so bloody possessive; the apostrophe is warranted in my book!

Maybe he has something good to bring to Microsoft as the CEO.

Humanity has more stakeholders than Microsoft has shareholders. The only good Satya can do is to drive down the company so that the market will get products and services that they actually need and want; not what's forced down their throats by arrogant monopolists who think "'We are the only ones who can harness the power of software and deliver it through devices and services that truly empower every individual and every organization.'

Any arrogant sod that spoke thus should not be empowered like Ballmer before him; it spells disaster.

This is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The summary itself says it: " he had asked Bill Gates to act as a close adviser in the months and years ahead."
and
he would follow through on the 'One Microsoft' strategy formulated under Ballmer,

So put simply; he's gonna keep going down he same route as Ballmer; and Bill Gates will still run the company on a day to day basis.

Microsoft will continue to sink; but Gates and Ballmer would suddenly become 'good corporate citizens' and a poor, powerless, benami figurehead of Indian origin will get all the flak.

Nothing to see here, move along...wait! I think /. should have a H1B icon for Microsoft in future; that's the only thing of interest to us here.

How come I've already lost interest in what Satya says.

Maybe coz Satya is an Indian? People at high places in Microsoft have been blurting inanities for decades now; and still the Press lap it all up; and even /. debates these sweet-nothings.

In my view; the revelations have far more impact for nations in the World other than the USA (you know; such nations do exist; and are home to 20 times more people than in the US). But when the Internet is controlled largely by the US; and these revelations indicate even more erosion of other nations' peoples' rights; the debate must include the entire World. One fears that just like the US Presidential debate; the implications for the rest of us will be ignored totally.

It is 13 years since MS started selling XP. Even as late as 2010 when Windows 7 was just released; XP was still offered to enterprise customers since Vista was shit.

Windows 8 does not run many applications developed using tools that came with and later supported XP. And these apps are not even 2 years old.

So please cut out the "13 year old XP" crap. MS is still officially selling XP for some enterprise customers. They better support it for 7 years AFTER they stop selling XP. Say 2020.

Anyone who trusts Microsoft is a moron.
Microsoft Transparency is an Oxymoron; unless we are talking about Aero Glass transparency.

so in my book; that's much better than good enough. The original site should be nuked from orbit and this one should be put up instead. Pure and simple.

Redirect facebook.com and microsoft.com and all their servers and namesakes to 0.0.0.0 or to 127.0.0.1 in the root DNS servers. Problem solved.

First they donate it to non-profits
Then they donate it to schools
Then to universities
Then to the hospitals
Then to the politicians
Then to the developers ... ...
Finally they donate to the existing Windows XP users.

But nobody is interested; not even the pirates; since nobody wants to be infected with Windows 8.x.

where the list gets narrowed down daily and the winner is announced after 3 days? In the case of MS, looks like this joke will go on for a year.

My hunch is that Elop already holds the reins to the ruins; this media contest is just a soapera.

As another poster pointed out; I intended to say non-x86; not non-Intel. In 2001; I was buying about 250 desktops from HP(Vectra VE5 if I recall right); and the marketing folks from HP sang loud praises of the 'Merced' project which later morphed into the Itanium range. The guys claimed that the architecture was entirely done by HP (primarily to support HP-UX) so I presume even though Intel did the design and production of the chips; they could not implement TCPA in that.

Not a single major hardware or device maker seems ready to support Linux on non-Intel architectures. Intel, MS, HP, Cisco etc. are part of the TCPA alliance; even Linux on ARM based servers have taken a very long time to arrive.