This isn't something like fireworks rockets where you just light a fuse. If you don't have the codes & access and most importantly, the remotes needed to launch them, they are useless. That's the reason why in 1991, Ukraine had all their nukes removed - they'd not have done that had they had control, but the control remained in the Kremlin. Not too many countries want weapons of other countries situated in their territory, unless they are allies (like say W Germany & US during the Cold war). That's why Ukraine asked to have them removed. Had the Russians handed over controls to them for weapons based in their turf, they'd have been only too happy to accept

Actually, the biggest change in CPUs was not so much Intel adapting RISC techniques in post Pentium CPUs, but rather, multiprocessing, and therefore, the Core platform taking hold

Remember, one of the things that RISC did better was the multiprocessing support for those who needed it. There were Pentium based multiprocessing systems too from companies like Sequent, but those at the time ran Unix, so the competition was really b/w the likes of Sequent, vs the Suns, HPs, SGIs, and so on. All low volume, and Intel enhancing multiprocessing capabilities of its CPUs would do nothing for its PC platform.

What changed that was when Microsoft decided to merge the win32 code bases and offer XP as their merged OS for both desktops and servers, it opened the window of opportunity for Intel and AMD. Since NT, in addition to supporting RISC CPUs like Alpha or MIPS, also supported SMP, Intel could take advantage of that fact and thrown in more cores at a platform, and Windows i.e. now NT, would be capable of handling it. That couldn't have worked w/ Windows 95-ME, but once NT took over the desktop, it could.

Once this happened, the RISC vs CISC game was over. RISC previously had a performance advantage running its own native software over Pentiums running Wintel software. The struggle to beat Intel in running Wintel software was lost first by MIPS, and then by Alpha. Once Intel could throw more cores at the problem w/o costing more than a SPARC or a Power, it was over. Intel being several generations ahead of Cypress, Ross, Fujitsu and even IBM could easily toss in 4-8 cores and still be cheaper than a SPARC CPU, not to mention the off the shelf motherboards and other peripheral logic. Once that happened, it became more cost effective to use Xeons to run Linux or FBSD than it was to run Solaris or AIX or even HP/UX.

Even in the case of the Itanium, discussed later in this thread, the initial Itaniums were just meant to be uniprocessor CPUs w/ several instructions concatenated together. Today, even Itaniums are multi-core - which solves the compatibility issue b/w generations, but then again throws into question why the Itanium would be needed in the first place, if one can just toss N number of, say, Atoms, and solve the problem.

Intel's process and manufacturing advantages helped, no doubt, but the big difference was multiprocessing becoming mainstream on the desktop due to the NT architecture replacing the Windows 95 architecture in Microsoft's desktop CPUs

Itanium was first conceived as a VLIW CPU. As its development progressed, it was found that the real estates savings due to moving everything into the compiler was minimal, while in the meantime, the compiler was a bitch to write. Also, under the original VLIW vision, software would need to be recompiled every time for a new CPU Which could be a dream for the GNU world, which requires the availability of source code, but practically, a bitch for the real world

Today's Itanium, unlike Merced, is now more of a RISC CPU, w/ flags indicating which branches need to be taken, or w/ the same hardware that RISC has for register renaming. In short, Itanium III is really a RISC CPU, much like the i860 and i960 before it. Too bad that it's kept restricted to the ancient foundries, making it both expensive and a power hog.

You know that the CPU is really bad when even Linux drops support for it, and within FreeBSD, the LLVM/Clang project removes its binaries from the package. Wonder whether NetBSD came far in supporting it?

The AMD-64 architecture - is that also register limited? Or did AMD toss something like 32-64 program accessible registers @ the problem? And if they did, would Intel have limited theirs?

Nonetheless, they've lost some major markets - game consoles first to PPC, and later Intel, and then, the embedded market to ARM

In that game, what's called Ukraine is actually the entire European part of the Soviet Union. Right from the Black Sea to Karelia

Maybe, but Russia would be the world's largest 'pariah' state - too big to ignore. People will acquiesce, just like they did the Chinese conquest of Tibet. Not just that, there are major countries in Russia's corner, including China and India. If Russia has those 2 trading partners, what else do they need?

No point, since the remote would still be in the Kremlin. Even during the Cold War, it was never in Kyiv

The fullscreen apps that you mention is one more thing that got me. Even if you go into the Aero desktop, you have just 1. Every app on the PC wants the full screen. I can understand this behavior or phones or on tablets, where fingers would work differently from mice. However, importing those uses to PCs just to try & kick start that market is inane.

Like I said elsewhere in this thread, making it pretend that it's my Nokia Lumia did nothing for me. Despite owning 1 of the latter, I just found the use frustrating. Ever since I dumped it for a more traditional (non-Windows) desktop, my life has been a lot easier. Granted - all I use at home are Thunderbird, Browsers (both Chromium & Firefox) and FreeCiv.

This doesn't make sense: the legacy interfaces are the installed base for which Microsoft has a market in the first place. They are an aspect of the product that their customers like. Companies like Cigna or BofA or 21st Century or Disney are not in the business of having their employees change their computing habits every few years. So if the applications they are using do not require touchscreens, why force it on them? The applications won't have any use for Metro unless there is something about touch screens that they can use. For instance, ATMs, which would do fine w/ a Metro interface to the OS.

I agree that upstream, since Intel is changing the architecture of their CPUs, Microsoft needs to do something that makes it a good idea, say, for someone to prefer a Core i3 to an Atom. But that's something Microsoft can do w/ the underlying architecture - like moving to a more microkernel like OS, having different 'personalities' on top of those, allowing multiple virtual desktops (like KDE) and so on. But at the user level, they should change as little as possible. It's not their job to disrupt the operations of their customers, or else, before they know it, they won't have any. Rather, design the OS and future versions of the applications so that they take advantages of the newer features. At the OS level, maybe, make VMs of previous models the default for people who have ancient CDs they just have to run.

I just switched to PC-BSD a few weeks ago, and have been largely enjoying it since.

It ain't a mere question of being cheap. It's a question of overhauling existing setups, particularly in offices, where the implications are work disruptions & worse. If it was just a question of paying MS the $200 or whatever it costs, it's one thing. But coming along w/ that would be all the migration pains. Plus Windows Vista & beyond were built on a win64 subsystem, and there are a lot of XP applications that companies didn't or can't upgrade, which would not run on 7 w/o either XP-Mode or Hyper-V.

I do think Microsoft should consider a model where they sell improved kernels, w/ whatever UI customers want - be it Metro, Aero, XP or classic NT. After all, 8 is better under the hood, if the UI could be the same as before. Maybe in installation, give users a choice of interfaces - making the newest the default but traditional UIs optional, so that it can be adapted by businesses w/ minimal disruptions.

Wi-Fi support is nice to have. I do have Network support, it's there via my Ethernet. Not ideal, but functional. As for touchpad, I have tried disabling it in both Windows 8, and on a different laptop, in Windows 7. Didn't work - needed Touchfreeze. Reason I complained about Weather is that Windows 8 is the first OS that wants to know my location. I don't want it to be Windows Phone 8, iOS or Android.

I can see how Notepad is useful on both phones & laptops. I can't see the same about Contacts. Rather, they could have just made Skype the platform for sharing contacts b/w phone & laptop, assuming that it's needed.

I bought a new laptop recently that was preloaded w/ Windows 8.1. Installed Classic Shell. Here's what the problems were

1. 1. Unlike previous versions, in this OS, you have to have a hotmail/live/outlook.com account to do the first step - logging in. Something that wasn't required in Windows 7. I had a Nokia Lumia Phone previously and had no issues w/ that, but the requirements are different. In Windows Phone 8, having that profile enabled me to just transfer everything to a new phone if needed. Here, I just don't get the point, aside from being annoying
2. 2. The apps ain't much different either. Contacts - w/ phone#, just like in Windows Phone? Are they retarted - this is a PC. Yeah, one can Skype, but there's a separate Skype app for that. Doesn't need a separate Contacts list
3. 3. Weather - see #2. On a phone, it makes sense. On this, how is it any better than the sidebar that Vista had? Oh, and now PCs/laptops, like phones, want my permission to determine my location. Naah-ah!!!
4. 4. When you do log into Windows, you are confronted w/ the Metro screen. Yeah, you can install Classic shell, like I did, but that won't change that. What it does it that whenever you open an app, it goes into the desktop mode, but whenever you press the Windows button, it brings up that shell again
5. 5. For me, the last straw was that my palms would rest on the trackpad, and while typing, sometimes the charms bar on the right would pop up, along w/ a network panel somewhere in the south west of my screen, inviting me to enable the wi-fi or whatever. It's irritating if you are in the middle of something else & are forced to tap the trackpad to get rid of it

Following this, I decided to bite the bullet and install PC-BSD, a DVD of which I had gotten some days ago. I initially had some issues, since it wouldn't recognize either my mouse nor the wi-fi. So I had to get another mouse, and an ethernet cable, and then disable UEFI, and then install it. I had some rough edges w/ LXDE and KDE, but now am pretty happy working w/ Lumina. Of course, I'd be happier once FreeBSD/PC-BSD supports Wi-Fi on this laptop. Typing however is a charm, since PC-BSD doesn't recognize the trackpad, so it never comes in the way and I don't need touchfreeze or anything like it.

So doesn't Oracle's SPARC/Solaris line already cover this?