I work for a defense contractor and you bet your beans MS provides top notch support. We also use open source software however it is "at your own risk" and no project manager or implementation team jumps on the open source bandwagon because of the risk of having to to it yourself or find your own resources to handle it above and beyond what can be accomplished via a support contract or phone call.

WTF??

The only monopolies i deal with every day are my Electric Utility and Cable company. MS isn't the only choice out there however PPL and Comcast are. yet PPL and Comcast continually rape me on pricing, services and features and somehow microsoft comes off as the evil company? MS has innovated many products from operating systems to keyboards, mice and hardware systems to their cool ass research department that many companies simply don't bother with anymore.

MS got busted yeah, they paid the price, yeah, they're still being sued for stupid things - of course - as with any big multinational company making money hand over fist.

Xbox live & zune is pretty innovative if you ask me - Apple is struggling to pull off what Microsoft has delivered with their new media eco-system - from Xbox live to Zune to Windows Media Center on Windows 7 - its an amazing product. The fact i can run 2 xbox 360s off my media center and integrate with zune and zune pass and allow my family to watch what they want to watch on their tv, zune or computer is pretty nice - and it was all done for a very affordable price and it works out of the box. Not only that but zunepass offers us a limitless library of music - good by cable tv and good by sirius sat. The 2 360s and pc were paid for after the first year and i'm on year 3 of the hardware and months into windows 7 :)

.Net miserable failure? stopped reading right there..

What are you talking about? Windows isn't a closed eco-system, beyond the 50,000 employed directly by Microsoft there are hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of jobs created to implement, maintain, enhance, extend and embrace Microsoft products. MS doesn't lock you in to anything and in the case of schools and businesses those businesses are choosing to lock-in to a specific vendor for business reasons - not ideological ones.

Believe it or not, the world wants accountability and you don't get that with open source since the accountability falls squarely on your own resources in most cases. People want a large resource pool, people want a stable business, support they can rely on and an infrastructure than can grow with their business.

There is plenty of open source software regardless of the platform to support academia, small businesses and those that simply hate Microsoft. There is also plenty of Commercial software as well.

Weird, if you ask me the open source movement always comes off communistic not anarchistic.. too much organization and ideology mixed into the movement to come off as anarchistic. Unless you're speaking of BSD open source licensing :)

How is this funny or even on topic? Codeplex already exists.. the foundation appears to be seeking a new director and thats about it. As far as answering the question regarding the 100 days why not email the existing board and ask them directly? The info is on the foundation website.

Its on the front page of: http://codeplex.org/index.aspx

No matter how much people hate Microsoft, comments like this may me despise the free software movement. Somehow, i have this idea that MS providing 50,000 jobs, Microsoft funneling BILLIONS into research and believe it or not, Microsoft making some great products is a *GOOD* thing. The FSF has its merits and should do more to be a leader of what MS could do rather than dividing the community into believers or non believers for all the wrong reasons.

As for codeplex itself, there is some amazing projects in there and i doubt MS is gonna piss away the effort. THey're just like google in many ways with their online presence where they test the waters and see if it sticks, but that *IS* business my friends.

If they got off their asses and let hulu work on your tv.. the fact its limited to computer or media center hacks keeps people from enjoying it enough to replace OTA or cable strongholds.

yes.. i know it can be done, but they don't make it easy.

Running DD-WRT for years :)

Didn't we just witness android os having the same issues? Many important aspects being proprietary (proprietary google apps) as well as the fact that the OS can't boot without the proprietary binary drivers from each handset device?

Way to turn a blind eye and re-iterate the obvious. Thanks for completely ignoring the topic and posting your useless drivel!

Open Source Silverlight: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/06/18/moonlight-open-source-silverlight-on-mono/

MS Office: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx

Now what *I* find weird is that apple can lock their phones to specific networks, restrict any and all apps they want to on phones and also limit the OS that should run on any x86 hardware to only hardware they make as well as fail to make their software run on other platforms in which many cases even Microsoft makes its software run on Apple (which Silverlight does thank you, as well as office thank you..)

The Doc isn't just a doc, it offers wireless remote control and full functionality of the zune on your tv - including syncing, HD radio playback and HD video playback and alll other zune functionality.

The HD in zune does relate to High Definition video.. only someone severely ignorant of the direction of microsoft could claim otherwise. From 1080p instant watch HD content through Zune on Xboxlive to the 720p TV, Movies & Videos that you can download and watch on your device through either the docking station, the zune player itself or through an xbox 360.

I purchased a docking station for my upstairs tv and love it however i use my already available xbox 360 downstairs.. Of course for the xbox i just use the dashboard integration with windows media connect and play the movies, videos and music that way.