When you sell off two successful companies you can take all that money and burn it if you like. Rothberg chose his route.

But that is the root of the problem.

Oh really? And how many Macs did Dell make for Apple? Oh, that's right, they made PCs.

The ceo doesn't have to say anything, any probe of him by any agency will be met by a phalanx of lawyers court with orders to leave him alone and instructions to question underlings and minions. The only time ceos and other top dogs have to face the music is in front of senate subcommittees, and that's rare enough.

Villifying a dead man, nice. Look, I respect you, and I agree with what you say, most of the time, but now that man is dead, and all the grousing about him now is wankerism to an extreme degree, sigifying nothing. And I'm no Apple fan boy, trust me. But it took Jobs to get pc's in consumers hands, and there's no complaints against the man you can make to change that. Give the man that legacy.

Yeah, but he was a competitor. It was a bald-faced competitor thing to say at the time, and a little dumb, but I don't fault him for it. Now he has a huge opportunity to buy back his old company, give it a little "Dell Magic", and sell the whole useless lot off for a huge profit. If that's what he does, he's simply being smart and I would do the exact same thing in his shoes.

Let them keep using xp. Doesn't stop you from doing what YOU want, after your "people" are taken care of. Give the people what they want, if they want to keep using crap, that's up to them. I never advocate upsetting the status quo, unless I can benefit some how. In this particular case, I, and You, would gain no discernable benefit. Are we agreed?

Not a viable business strategy for Microsoft.

Well... Linux works for me, I run 7 in a vm for those rare times I need it, but as a posix/Foss developer Linux is indispensable. It may not work for you, perhaps, but it is a viable alternative, a better one in my opinion, d00D.

I read the headline and came away with "Lou Reed Just Died". I'm gonna miss that guy.

The Laser Disc system was first named "DiscoVision". Wow...

Johnny (as a Death Star tech) is seen behind a control bay plugging the laser cannon back into its power source giggling "Just kidding!"

meh. thrilling.

Its "obtuse", but your point is taken. But let's be honest, many, if not every, circle of technical wizards in charge of a popular project gets infected with elitism to some degree. I will say however, and without really understanding the exact technical reasons canonical seems to be taking the technical "high road" and laughing some of their userbase writhes in pain on the ground behind them.

Say what you want, I didn't need any help hating Unity.