Actually in this case, the camera would've been hiding right in the neighbor's yard.

Iran: Is this your camera? What is this camera doing here?
US: Nothing. but can we have it back?

Municipal planning has now moved on from trying to do their part to fight global warming (which no one city can make a dent in alone), and towards planning for a future where climate change is a given.

I imagine the rest of the world will be heading towards that approach as well. Rather than avoidance, it is mitigation.

We have a financial system based on unlimited growth, and an entire planet is being altered by our activities. One way or another, this does not end well.

SIlverlight 2.0 is only supported on Intel Macs. So any PPC Mac owners are screwed.

So are people with another platform without a Silverlight implementation, such as Linux, BSD, Nintendo Wii, Playstation, your phone, etc...

I shudder at the thought of a new society being founded by those folks. We'd be handing them an entire planet.

At least they'd be doing less damage to ours from that distance.

Seriously, what's the issue with having an anti-trust chief who is aware of and intends to keep an eye on potential future problems? If regulators had been keeping a closer eye on Microsoft, then maybe U.S. vs Microsoft would have happened early enough to actually make a difference.

I'd rather have one that finishes the job.

Agreed. Instead of one that achieves a guilty verdict, then lets the guilty party write their own settlement. It is unfortunate that the Bush admin came in and completely changed the DOJ's outlook on that case, because the DOJ had been completely successful up until that point.

The comments by Judge Jackson, and the change of administration, were both major victories for Microsoft in what was otherwise a disastrous case.

Funny that this poll comes out now, since just about a week ago I came to the realization that I can't actually do handwriting anymore. I found out when I was trying to write my name legibly instead of with my usual scribble of a signature. Even when I slowed right down, I found I just physically couldn't make the letters anymore. It had been far too long since I'd ever written anything.

Maybe I'd have better luck writing something other than my name, as I won't be conditioned to do it wrong via my signature. But I imagine it'd take a lot of practice to be able to handwrite again, and even more to make it faster than my printing. It never was that legible, and isn't something that is used anymore, so I don't anticipate I'll be trying to recover the skill.

Now that Java is open source, wouldn't it make more sense to use the JVM as the standard runtime, instead of something that "might" not get sued for copying the .NET runtime?

Java has already been made to run on .NET. I wonder if it'd really be that hard to get standardized C# running on the JVM?

I think the DOJ got it right with the first verdict: break up Microsoft. Have one company continue to develop Microsoft Windows, and another can develop their applications and whatever else. That way, Windows is just Windows until it hits the OEM. And MS applications would no longer have any reason to run on only one platform. That way, we wouldn't need to talk about bundling every browser in existence to negate the advantage that IE has over the others.

Of course the EU doesn't have the power to break up a US based corporation, and the DOJ blew the one chance they had to create a competitive market for desktop applications and operating systems. The only thing that has brought some semblance of competition back to the market is Microsoft's own inability to deal with change, and their own incompetence.

Already exists in the form of the 'Broadcast Flag'. Hasn't been used much though, as the broadcasters know it'd cause backlash. Coupled with the fact it'd be ineffective, it does make it unlikely that the broadcast flag will see a lot of usage.

I disagree with your assessments of Windows. Windows 98 was better than Windows 95 in some small ways, but Win95 was much more stable. You could usually run Win95 for a week before rebooting. Win98 would often get to the point where it'd bluescreen daily, especially if you went more than 6 months without reinstalling fresh. Win98SE was managed to get close to the stability of Win95, which isn't really saying much.

I found Win2K to be the best release of Windows ever. Solid NT code base with a clean and quick interface, with the win32 goodies from the 98 code base. I thought XP merely added bloat, annoying intrusions, and menus rearranged for no reason. XP did improve as it went along though, and it has come to the point where 2K is missing too much modern functionality due to lack of support from MS and OEMs. XP has far better support for wireless, laptops, etc. I think Win2K was the better OS though, even though it was allowed to die.

I think Win2K's achilles heel was horrendous security, thanks to putting the network workstation services of the NT era onto the public internet. Too many remote holes. At least Win98 users had to do something stupid to be infected - Win2K merely needed a network connection.

I do agree Vista sucked. But to me, it was their second bad release of Windows in a row. They made Vista even worse than an OS released 7 year ago, that wasn't very good to begin with.

Bush saved the company from being broken up by the DOJ. The DOJ's case against MS had already been won, but under a Bush administration, it seems they didn't worry too much about imposing a penalty or having strict compliance. That wouldn't have been the case under Clinton's DOJ, and maybe not under a Gore one either.

So I guess Bush may have been a turning point for them, in that he let them continue as a single company.

Both the US and European courts disagree. By their legal definition of monopoly, Microsoft has one. That in itself isn't illegal. Abusing that monopoly power to take over other markets is what is illegal. And they've been convicted of it time and time again.

It is really a shame that the US court case basically disappeared once Bush came into power. That trial covered a lot more issues than merely bundling IE to kill Netscape. Some shady deals with OEMs, and many other predatory business practices, came to light then and since then. But the Bush DOJ didn't really see the need to do anything about it, despite already getting a conviction.

Nowadays Windows is shrinking in relevance at such a rate that it may not make much sense to intervene. They're about 10 years too late to make a difference to those companies and the markets harmed by these tactics. It seems forcing MS to be careful about anti-trust issues is helping their current competitors though, so that is a small victory.

One of my roommates had a 2.4GHz phone that knocked out the wireless connection no matter which channel we had either device set to. Quite annoying.

Even Sun's employees seem to be a bit annoyed with the product marketing there:

"Back in the 90's this was the Netscape Enterprise Server, which later morphed into the iPlanet Web Server during the Sun|Netscape Alliance. After some years it was renamed the SunONE Web Server and most recently renamed again to the JES Web Server (Sun just like to keep you confused, thus the constant renaming of the product!)"