Yeah, but at the same time you have never been able to use these Linux machines for anything useful besides standing around and not getting infected. I, on the other hand, ran many Windows machines, all actually used, all actually connected the the Web (meaning: network card _works_, not just waits for a Linux driver to finally arive) without a single one of them ever having any antivirus software, and I never had any viruses on them.

You mean in 1997-1999 there were many applications that required admin rights? I don't think there's a single such aplication today. Nobody runs Windows under admin rights today.

I have to admit: the black-PR attack on Windows Vista was orchestrated perfectly. It's that perfection that makes is worth being included into the annals of the history of unscrupulous PR. Numerous well paid off "honest and professional" bloggers, thousands of "concerned citizens" registering tens of thousands of IDs on various Internet forums, tirelessly reporting piles of insurmountable "problems" with Vista... And, of course, millions of lemmings that believed the BS, took it, swallowed it, ran with it and eventually overwhelmed Microsoft's ability to withstand the attack. Perfect. I don't know who I should blame at Microsoft, but how they didn't see that coming I just can't understand. Someone at MS was literally asleep at the wheel. Now, the situation is different. Firstly, the very lemmings who believed that Vista was somehow flawed, now are happily using it, while understanding, if only subconsciously, that they were BS-ed by a well-paid-for black-PR campaign. Secondly, with Windows 7, Microsoft is much wiser. The Microsoft's own PR department did a very good job this time to make the new Windows a hit long before it became available. Bashing it into the ground is going to be quite a challenge. There's not even a slightest doubt that the very same people who were paid to bash Vista last time are paid even better this time to do the job on Windows 7. But apparently, this time they just missed the right moment, and just can't gain enough momentum to get the ball rolling. And now we even know a name of one of these outfits. "Rescuecom" they say. I wonder how many other similar outfits that "Josh Kaplan" is a president of were/are out there and what other services they offer. Although this one doesn't appear to be a top dog, since this specific attempt ("just wait a bit", "risky", "tough economic times") is rather lame and pathetic. Let's wait for the more creative ones to pop up. And they should be very creative to succeed this time, so it is going to be a very interesting battle.

Huh? You mist be what, 11-12 years old, if you don't get the simple fact that in an article like that there's no need to mention Linux explicitly... :)

Very primitive. They call it "hacked" in the summary, but once you get to read the actual article it turns out that those "various" methods actually boild down to: 1) social engineering attacks, 2) DDoS attacks, i.e. the attack methods have absolutely nothing to do with Xbox software/hardware itself. Also note the "creative" use of words: they call Xbox a "top target" trying to create an impression that it is the #1 target, the "topmost" target, while in reality this is not even remotely the case. They use the word "top" under the excuse that it can be used to mean "popular", knowing perfectly well that well-linuxed trolls will understand (or, more precisely, misunderstand) it correctly. What would be more interesting, is to find out who is paying for these articles.

Apparently, it is that time of the month again. Despite the well-established fact that 95% of all computer-related fraud originates in the USA, they still keep pushing the mandatoty "Eastern Europe" BS. I wonder how much of the taxpayers money is spent on cooking such propaganda stories?

One can argue that reflectors were left there by Soviet Lunokhod rovers, or, more precisely, the rovers are themselves reflectors.

Firstly, the specification of C anf C++ standard library is governed by the corresponding standard commitee. Microsoft has absolutely no authority to "banish" anything from neither C nor C++. They can deprecate it in their .NET code, C# etc., but it has absolutely no relevance to C and C++ languages. So, why would the author of the original question direct it to "advanced C and C++" programmers is beyond me. In general, C and C++ programmers will never know about this "interesting" development.

Secondly, the tryly unsafe and useless functions in the C standard library are the functions like "gets", which offer absolutely no protection agains buffer overflow, regardless of how careful the develoiper is. Functions like 'memcpy', on the other hand, offer sufficient protection to a qualified developer. There's absolutely no sentiment against these functions in C/C++ community and there is absolutely no possiblity of these functions to get deprecated as long as C language exists.

Obviously, the entire post was crafted with one and only purpose in mind: to make a trollish statement about "nonbelievers who view death as the end of existence, the annihilation of consciousness and the self". The rest was added for the sole purpose to make the trolling less obvious.

There has never been a megapixel war in the pro-world. Pro-world and the advanced amateurs have always been primarily noise-conscious and have always ignored the megapixel wars. The fight for the sensor size is nothing else than the fight for the photosite size with constant mexapixel count.

K&R is not defined well enough (and too buggy in the parts where it is actually defined) to justify a meaningfull application of the term "compliance" to it. "Compliance with K&R" is an oxymoron. Meaningful compliance begins from C89/90, but alas IOCCC does not require that. In fact, according to the official rules, IOCCC is not really IO[C]CC, but rather IO[GCC]CC. Not surprisingly, most IOCCC entries actually demonstrate a rather poor knowledge of C.

He he he. Apparently, you are unaware of the fact that "agnorant" is a perfectly cromulent word these days. (Welcome to America...)

Americans don't "leave out" the 'u' in 'colour'. Americans simply don't know it is supposed to be there in the first place. The agnorant "leave out" theory is nothing more than a primitive way to cover up their embarrassment when they finally discover that it is actually spelled with 'u'.

The word 'evolution', when used in the contexts like this one, is supposed to mean the progressive developments in the language, not just any arbitrary change. The distortions of English language introduced by virtually illiterate Americans don't qualify as evolution.

That "Russian" attack on Estonia turned out to be Estonian in the end. The there was another "Russian" attack on USA, which turned out the be Chinese. Now we have a "Russian" attack again... These, combined with recent silly PR campaign "warning" the US citizens of the dangers of visiting Russian and ex-USSR domains, is obviously staged in order to prepare the US population for the forthcoming internet censorship measures in the US. Apparently, the emergence of Russian sources presenting information in English does not sit well with federal US brainwashing/propaganda structures. Expect this PR campaign to continue. I wonder what BS will they put out next.