I got off the Windows treadmill when Windows 95 came out. I was young, but lucky enough to have some education and some contact with clued-up people and I got the whole Emperor's New Clothes thing.

I went straight to Slackware Linux (where I still am) which has been a great education and got me into Solaris, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, CentOS, Gentoo, Ubuntu and MINT.

I have never needed to run a Windows desktop since. Ever. Period. You can do it, and you can run your DOS and Windows stuff if you really, really need to.

In 99% of cases it's just fear, ignorance and laziness stopping people getting off of Windows.

Even Mrs Turgid has found herself at work booted off of Windows/IE/MS Office onto google's cloud stuff. There was no training provided and none required. IE no longer required either.

No, there isn't. I wish there was, but the problem is that all the stories that this community really cares about are here and not on technocrat.

The quality of stories here has been in steady decline for 10 years and the standard of the associated discussions is pretty abysmal. Occasionally there's something good but it's 80% filler and non-stories.

You can't have a decent discussion about anything because it's all anti-FOSS zealots, ignorant newbies and pro-MS "sensible" people these days. Gone are they days when CPU architecture and OS kernel design were discussed.

Yes, we use Visual Studio 365 Azure Edition for our C++ projects. Our compile times are a little longer, but we're riding the latest wave of post-Enterprise active data web cloud assured technology.

This gives us all the advantages of future web technology developments as they happen with Microsoft's world-leading Software Engineering/Code ARTezan(R)(TM) Cratfperson paradigm.

As a bonus, all of our best-shored development consultants were able to migrate their legacy Visual Source Safe projects seamlessly using cloud-aware IE plugins.

Why? Because while my company does do business in the US, I despise US workers - who are generally a bunch of self-important, entitled brats who think they are God's gift to development. The worst part? They are simply lazy. My God are Americans lazy. Show up at 8:45... leave at 4:15... hour and half lunch.. sitting around surfing the Internet all day while finding a few minutes here and there to do some work in between facebook posts.

Is that you, Vineet Nayar? Racial prejudice against Westerners is OK, is it?

You go around telling the executives of big businesses that their staff are lazy, spoilt, expensive and unproductive and that you have a magic silver bullet to cure the problem: hoards of young, enthusiastic (naieve and exploitable hungry and poor) Indians with fantastic educations willing to do the work for a fifth of the cost of the Western staff! And it's all under the world's most modern management! They're empowered!

How could it possibly fail?

Because it's only half true. They may be young, hungry and ambitious, dazzled by Western corporate brands and desperate to make an impression but they are straight out of college, have no experience, are learning everything from scratch, posted to a foreign country on meager living expenses away from their families for months at a time. They are expected to acquire institutional and professional knowledge from large teams of mature professional engineers in a handful of weeks and to be productive straight away.

Every corner is cut. Design? No. Testing? No. Compiling code? No (you really have to experience this to believe it). Unit tests? Why bother, we are super-Indians and never make mistakes like you stupid fat, lazy westerners... And that would take time.... Documentation? No. Listening to instructions? No (just smile and nod and ignore).

And the company has no interest in delivering more "value" than the bare minimum to maximise its profit and future income stream.

And we're starting work on a similar project for one of your major competitors. No, of course none of the knowledge we gained from your project will be used in your competitor's project...We promise. We are professional and world-class.

Boeing sure learned their lesson after their Dreamliner got grounded when the steaming pile of crap that HCL delivered was so bad they had to hire a whole new set of American developers to fix it.

HCL also managed to completely derail the development of Xerox's next-generation A3 "multifunction devices" (copiers). A few months later, Wim Appelo, the genius who masterminded it all, mysteriously resigned from Xerox...

What astounds me is that these outsourcing deals are still being made despite the total lack of success of any of them in the last 20 years. Just ask anyone who's been involved below VP level. It always ends in tears.

"It's like taking antidepressants. The world just feels too comfortable."

Spoken like a true ignoramus who's never experienced Depression.

This technique works best when combined with cold fusion. Also, don't forget about step 3.

Ignore Silicon Valley.

50 years ago it used to be a hot-bed of science and technological innovation. Now it is a magnet for designer coffee-swigging social cloud blog web 2.0 get rich quick smartphone app hipsters.

Look for real companies designing and building real products for proper customers. Silicon Valley's day is gone.

In addition to all those wonderful cutting-edge features, Microsoft promises not to sue you for patent infringement on all that Imaginary Property from Windows (the pinnacle of human technological achievement) that was stolen for use in Linux.

What more could you ask for?

What are the ideal atmospheric CO2 levels?

I'd hazard a guess that pre-Industrial Revolution levels would be a good first approximation.

However, if I could, I'd reply to your post with a picture of my big, fat, hairy, spotty bottom.

And just like Global Warming, if you ignore it, there are no consequences!

Hooray for human greed and hubris.

I'm pretty sure Samsung wouldn't just pay Microsoft without at least first checking to see if there's any validity in the patent claims.

I guess you don't follow the news too closely, then.

The patent claims are hogwash. Microsoft tried deliberately to keep the patent claims secret and/or vague (in contravention to the spirit and word of the law) in order to intimidate companies into paying up.

They've tried every dirty trick in the book to prolong legal action to keep the extortion racket going.

The FOSS community has tried to get the claims aired in public to disprove them (trivial, obvious, prior art, nonsense etc.) or to be able to replace any infringing code with non-infringing implementations.

However, some individuals and corporations with deep pockets have simply decided to pay off Microsoft (and their henchmen) to avoid even more costly legal battles (only the lawyers win etc.).

Anyway, Microsoft has put itself in a very strange situation with this. Let us adopt Douglas Adams' proof of the non-existence of God here.

Microsoft says to the world, "You people (companies and so on) using, developing and distributing Linux are infringing on our patents. We demand $5 for each smartphone shipped with the Android OS (i.e. Linux kernel) installed. [And, by the way, if you buy a license for SuSE Linux, we promise not to sue you for any of our patents which it infringes, but that's another story...]"

"Oh," replies the world, "But you are now thinking of giving Windows Phone OS away for free to any smartphone manufacturer who wants it."

"Yes, that's business!" Says Microsoft.

"Oh, I suppose so," Says the world, "But Windows contains lots of wonderful technology that only Microsoft engineers could possibly have thought of, inspired by the greatness of the corporation."

"You've got it in one!" Replies Microsoft smugly.

"And those stinking un-American pinko-commie hippies who right FOSS (Linux, cancer) must have stolen Microsoft's ideas."

"There is hope for you yet, young feller!" Guffaws Microsoft.

"But in giving Windows Phone away for free, you are admitting that there is no intrinsic monetary value in pre-compiled, closed-source software, in this case a mature, well-understood technology (i.e. and Operating System. And as such, these wonderful patents of yours have no monetary value."

Silence from Microsoft.

"So if your software and patents have no value, how do you justify charging other people for them who have come up with independent implementations of the same old (ancient) technology?"

"Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that!" Says Microsoft, who promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

No, it means Microsoft shareholders should buy some Google stock...

But Microsoft collect a "license fee" from all the major Android phone vendors for "patents" used in the Linux kernel.

I wonder what the various national courts around the world will make of this... giving your own OS away for free while running an extortion racket for protection money from your competitors?