Well Six years is not a long time for an operating system to exist considering how long XP was officially supported. We've already seen Microsoft quickly drop support for Windows 8 in liu of Windows 8.1 and I guess it will be end of life when Windows 10 is released. I'm already getting e-mails about the "new windows" which means invariably, incompatibilities, lack of hardware support including the fact that my printer won't work until I've gone through some convoluted setup and bodging on my own. Of course they'll have another great new version of Visual Studio that I'll have to fork out $$$ for as well as upgrade my Office suite for shits and giggles as well. I've liked 8/8.1, not initially sure, but I don't spend time in the Metro world that much and it's faster than 7 in a lot of areas.

Windows 7, we hardly knew you but I'm sure you'll be around for a long time at least with Newegg deals pushing new licenses for it.

After all the e-mails that were flouted around in the Microsoft Antitrust case, you would have thought that businesses would have caught on by now. Having an active retention policy and following it does provide some collective amnesia because in any litigation situation if the information still exists it's discoverable. Personally I don't want someone delving around my e-mails from 20 years ago but unfortunately it has happened to me. The last thing you want is to be sitting in a deposition while opposing council tries to dissect your intonations and try and determine the definition of what "is" is. If you don't need it, delete it.

Smug alert!

Sorry it didn't work in the movie. We needed Will Smith to save the world and if that were the case in real life we'd all be screwed.

and Car Insurance or anything else where they use it. It's an overused piece of personal information.

I write software for Android and what bothers me is that there's always this push for latest and greatest while we still have a significant number of devices getting left out in the cold because they're 2 or more years old. Android is a three legged stool, Google, Device Manufacturers and Carriers and all three have to get their shit together on patch management and routine updates to the devices. All of them share equally in this problem yet they just seem to be aligned to always force you to buy a new device to get what most would be consider reasonable software support. That's bullshit. Sure Google, we get it you want everybody to be on the latest and greatest and yes there are features that can't be supported with every new release however there's that sticky little thing called time to market and while you may come out with a new release, the uptake by your licensed manufacturers isn't that fast. 4.3 didn't become available widely in devices until late 2012 which is just in time for Christmas so that makes 4.3 only 2 years old basically in terms of market exposure. That's young for a smart phone. I also get it if HTC or Samsung or Vendor X out there don't want to support software in order to entice you to buy a new device, but at $600 to $800 for a high end smart phone you're not going to see the majority of your customers buy a new one every year just to keep up with the latest version of Android. That's born out by the 1 Billion devices on 4.3 which is a pretty large market. Oh and to you carriers, your bloatware and other crap isn't helping either. If you're not willing to support it for at least the life expectancy of the device, which can be up to 5 years now, then get it off of there so you can at least improve your release time frequency so that your customers aren't left with insecure devices. Google needs to take the lead here and work with the downstream manufacturers and carriers to fix this shit because it's becoming a nuisance for the development community and for the end users.

Okay, but considering we're dealing with control systems, why the hell isn't somebody verifying the updates are valid? The distribution channel and validation apparently is the cause here. I still advocate air gaps between Intranet and Internet connectivity in SCADA environments and the controls on updates of any software should be verified as to authenticity prior to deployment. It should be easy for somebody to contact GE and ask for the MD5 for the update or check it out on their portal first.

Go test it in the staging environment and get back with us before you plan to put it into production.

Sure, there may be problems with load and usability but it sure as hell beats going to the post office doesn't it?

Unapologetic AC. FTFY

I think your analogy of ruthless and myopic missed the target; Gates pales in comparison to the likes of Rockefeller, Carnegie and never mind how bad United Fruit was to Central America. The Apple walled garden approach comes with the territory of buying and using Apple products. Those who buy the devices want this kind of environment and there are alternatives. Competitors may not like the fact that Apple's TOS locks them out and Developers may be annoyed that Apple gets its cut, but there's alternatives for them as well. You also have to realize that Apple doesn't own the Mobile Device space, not by a long shot. If you look at it in total, Android and Microsoft have shipped more than Apple has in the past year. http://www.computerweekly.com/... So, if the EFF is unhappy, don't sign up to the TOS and don't put your app out on Apple's App Store. Simple.

I miss the days when we had distinctive designs in the data center. Big blue mainframes, orange and blue DEC 20s and 10s.. Now it's all racks and the only blinking lights are on the switches :-(

VME is unfortunately on my CV. What I'm amazed is that they can still get parts for the damn thing.

laptop coolers are cheap when you're planted for a bit. I have a couple of them but with my new setup I'm finding I don't need to use them. I have an ASUS G751JY with the I7-4710HQ processor right now, no overheating problems. It's more of a luggable desktop than a laptop and for everything else I have servers and big desktops to handle the workload.

Considering some of the scifi crap that's been pushed out there over the past few years this may be something to see.