The problem there is that the Windows firewall itself creates it's own attack surface. You have such a large range of internal machines that need access to so many different services on the servers for monitoring, administration, deployment, support and so on, and so many of those services are either so poorly documented or multiplex so many different functions/services over the same port that it's difficult to write specific rules for them, that in the end your firewall rules for the servers end up being unmanageably complex. They end up not protecting you nearly as much as you think they are, and they actually cause problems and contribute to failures (I could count on spending at least half a day every week diagnosing firewall-rule-related problems, and every release tended to result in several rollbacks and re-deployments over the course of a couple of days because of errors or omissions in firewall rule changes which we also had to diagnose). Plus, for all that cost, the primary threat wasn't from other compromised servers, it was from internal machines which legitimately had access to the servers (ie. the desktops belonging to DBAs, sysadmins, managers and so on) which were compromised by malware coming in via other vectors that bypassed all the firewalls.

Why not? For the purposes of the argument being made with respect to the UK market, they were both in the same boat.

Besides which, there were two versions of the Spectrum when originally released; the aforementioned 16K model, and an otherwise identical 48K model. The 16K spec was rendered increasingly irrelevant as time went on and the 48K version became the de facto "base model" required for Spectrum games.

Still wasn't as good a machine overall as the C64 (BASIC and faster CPU aside), but that's neither here nor there.

Assuming a company's only aim is to make money, then whatever happens to their products after they die is essentially irrelevant in that respect. (*)

Of course, I'm sure that there are those working within a company (more likely to be in engineering and development) that feel otherwise. But ultimately this will be overridden by those in sales, marketing et al, unless it offers a clear benefit to the company.

Yes, some companies will offer well-backed guarantees or promises about what happens with respect to various things should they go under (e.g. release of source code). But even that is ultimately a means to attract more paying customers- by providing a level of certainty that is valuable to them- while the company is still in existence.

(*) Unless, of course, those in power have a conflict of interest and something to gain from the company's demise.

Because each time we overcome a monumental challenge for the first time, we expand the frontier of human knowledge and endeavor.

As our frontier expands, that which was undone becomes possible; that which was possible, replicable; that which was replicable, automatable; that which was automatable, trivial; that which was trivial, obsolete.

Just over a century ago, tinkers managed to propel a glorified kite a few feet through the air. The tangible benefit of this flight of fancy is that today, we complain about the comfort of the seats in mass-produced aircraft that can send us around the globe for a historically infinitesimal cost in time and money.

Seventy years ago, the US government was one year into the construction of ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose digital computers ever created. Upon its completion two years later, it would occupy 680 square feet, require the power of roughly six modern households, process up to 500 operations per second, and spend roughly half its time being repaired. The tangible benefit of this monstrosity is that today you likely carry, on your person, roughly 25 million times more computing power than ENIAC. It is quite likely that use the bulk of this computing power primarily for your own personal entertainment.

45 years ago, after years of research and significant government funding, ARPANET was launched. Not many people expected it to be of any significant practical value; in fact, the first message ever sent over ARPANET only managed to deliver two characters before crashing the entire network for an hour. The tangible benefit of this boondoggle is that today, we have the Internet, the direct descendant of ARPANET.

The reasoning is both fallacious and just plain wrong.
Allowing anonymity does NOT make criminal behaviour impossible to detect, either the act of criminality or necessarily the individual responsible.
Even if you can't detect the individual the fact that the criminality has occurred can still be detected and addressed.

If I steal a gun, shoot someone with it and run off without being identified, I've still committed a crime. Even if the police can't identify or find me they can provide redress to my victim and assure that the person from whom I stole the gun better secures it in the future. Actions to reduce crime can be taken despite the anonymity.

So no, the reasoning is very flawed and the question of whether to remove anonymity or the classification of actions as 'crime' doesn't even need to arise.

The little problem of the holocaust being a well documented, well evidenced and very real persecution of millions of people does seem to make you look like an idiot.

But even racist idiots should be allowed to express their views - not least so that other people can educate them about their bigotry, their stupidity and how amused we are by them.

I guess you're next going to tell us that tens of millions of people didn't die in the Gulags. Which racial group would you like to blame for that one?

Implementation makes a difference. Early versions of NT were quite good, but unpopular because you needed 16MB of RAM (if I recall correctly) to run them in an era when a high end personal computer shipped with 4MB of RAM. Over the years they tried to hold the line, at one point getting the minimum down to 12MB of RAM, but perhaps not coincidentally stability got really bad.

With slave labor, no less.

Yes people are limited by their culture and time, but not *that* limited. Braun deserves condemnation for using slave labor in WW2.

No. Here's the relevant part of the ruling, quoting the Senate report on the bill:

"[i]f the `primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a `digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

What information does the car's system digitally record other than music? That it might display digital information, or play digital information isn't relevant, since those don't involve the recording function.

Computers record lots of stuff to their hard drives. Some of it is music, but the ability to write to disk isn't primarily designed for digital music, nor primarily marketed for that.

Plug your USB stick or disk or keyboard into the Pi, and if it reports that there's a new not-a-USB-stick/disk/keyboard, you know there's malware on the device.

So I'll make my malware pretend to be a plain old USB stick for the first N hours. Then it will simulate an unplug and replug itself in as a keyboard that types "format c:\ncat /dev/zero > /dev/sda\necho bwah hah hah!\n"

It's a basic principle that if an attacker can compromise your hardware, you're fscked. But it looks like the new part is that the malware can go viral, reprogramming USB devices. Whoever was careless enough to release a USB controller with firmware that can be arbitrarily reprogrammed from the host computer needs to be taken out and shot.

I?

I work in his factory.

Which would significantly reduce the appeal of the "new language" and probably result in people continuing to use the old version- with masses of support, extensions, accumulated wisdom, and software already built on it- probably forking it at some point if the current owners tried to force the change through.

Let's be honest; VB.Net was a good example of one that *didn't* succeed. It was very different to VB6, effectively a whole new environment and tech tied together with a similarly-syntaxed language, and it never achieved the popularity of its predecessor.

Yes, MS may have forced many to move to .Net by making clear that VB6 and its related infrastructure was obsolescent, but that translated to C# use, not VB. Presumably people either remained with VB6 and those who used .Net were either newcomers who had no need of a legacy language (*) or VB6 users who decided that C# was a more sensible choice (since it was clearly MS's favoured language for .Net, and wasn't hobbled by syntax that was effectively a comfort-blanket holdover from 8-bit home computer BASICs).

(*) I'm guessing that classic VB gained its userbase from the generation (and group) who started with "old school" 8-bit BASICs, and found its syntax accessible, then were able to grow while their "BASIC" grew in capability. Thing is, if you didn't start or grow with VB, then what it became is no simpler or easier to learn than C-influenced syntax like C# (and I'm speaking as someone who *did* use old-school BASIC as my first language, but not VB, and I'd much rather use a C-style language).

No idea what happened there, sorry; suspect I copied my work to a second window for replying then accidentally submitted the first as well.

Yeah, but unfortunately it's *way* to late in the day to avoid having to retain (and, ironically, formalise) the ad-hoc mess without breaking countless existing programs.

The most notorious example being one of the simplest, but also the most obviously naff; the fact that the ternary "?:" operator has incorrect precedence in PHP (compared to every other C-derived-syntax language). This quite obviously *was* a fsck-up early on (IIRC they said as much), but will always have to be kept in, an unwelcome reminder of PHP's amateur, ad-hoc origins that'll look bad to anyone learning the language, regardless of how well it improves in other areas.