Not necessarily: if all they were concerned about was hacking around model "locks", they could still release the documentation on the "public" registers, protocols, etc. and still require a special undocumented binary blob to be transferred into the gpu at boot.

I doubt that. The firmware, maybe, but probably not drivers. Normally the difference between high-priced and low-priced models is that the low-priced models have some internal fuses blown, so that some of the cores are disabled. Sometimes those cores were defective, other times they disable cores just to meet the demand. It could be that they disable the cores with firmware instead of fuses, and somehow the drivers could reenable cores in the latter cases, but my guess is that the people who give the orders simply think of their precious architecture details as information that needs to be kept secret, in case the competition gets too many ideas from those details.

... 8 bits per component == 24 bits total.

IPS panel technology can display true 8bit color just fine. Most professional grade screens are some kind of IPS (S-IPS,P-IPS,...), with the rest being some kind of VA (MVA,PVA), and for professinal use, 8bit is only just barely enough.

If you are thinking about OLED (or any buzzword derived from it), they have the main advantages of being more visible under sunlight while using less power -- with supposedly wider viewing angles, although since modern IPS/VA screens look fine regardless of the angle, I'm not convinced that it's any better in that area.

I was trying to write some other better analogy to explain why you shouldn't expect new software to be written from scratch, but then I thought it was just pointless. Almost all subsequent versions of ANY product (software or not) are "refurbished" design-wise. The sticker is not necessary because it should be your expectation that they reused most of the code or part designs. That's what it being a new version implies. They revised the old design, polished some aspects, changed other parts, assembled it, and then put it in a store so you can buy it. This is not just Microsoft, it's not even just software. This applies to EVERYTHING.

You want discounted price because you already own part of the same software? No problem! Simply buy an upgrade license instead of a new one. Microsoft has been offering them all this time. At launch Windows 7 Pro was $240 for the full edition, or $140 for the upgrade edition. Windows 8 had a special offer at launch, where they offered upgrade copies of Windows 8 for $40. The offer ended so it's now $100 instead.

I'm not a car owner so I don't have experience with buying cars, but I'd expect a car dealer to laugh at me if I tell him to give me a discount simply because my old car already had 4 wheels and a front engine. And as far as I know, car makers stop making parts for old models after a certain amount of time, so you have to buy them from 3rd parties. But you don't expect them to keep supporting your very old car just because you feel like buying a new one is unnecessary, do you?

By the way, Google Shopping Search found me a Windows 7 Pro license for just $26: http://www.dealscube.com/detail.asp?id=32580#page=description

I know about dynamic structures and the stl well enough, thanks. I was referring exclusively to arrays. High-level implementation of vectors, lists, queues, or any other linear sequence of items were not part of what I said.

You are comparing apples to trees. A new car will not use old parts, but it WILL reuse the same design of the engine and the transmission, and possibly the same door locking mechanism. If you find a bug in the way the doors are locked that lets you bypass the lock and enter the car, chances are the same bug also exists in older models. You don't reinvent the wheel with every single model of a car. You may improve it, but the design is pretty much the same now as it was 15 years ago.

That is not how most programming languages manage the memory, though. If you have such specialized needs, then yes, managed languages are out of the question.

Why not?! Reusing existing code is a perfectly valid option! Heck it's the whole idea behind posix: to be able to reuse most existing code by providing a stable API. Of course if you reuse old code you also reuse old bugs.

On the other hand, you are right: freeing themselves from XP doesn't mean they will build a better OS afterwards. They might, but if their goals have changed to "devices and services" for good...

Given that the concept behind Javascript is "hash tables as objects", your claim sounds weird. You must have been misusing it somehow, although I couldn't guess.

If "as data grows" you mean the array itself is growing, then that will happen with any language: resizing an array requires allocating a new memory area, and copying the data over to the new one. No clue if javascript has any other limitation regarding big arrays.

Because it takes many man-hours to backport the fixes, build the code, test the build, Q.A. the build, sign the build, and then push it through the distribution system. They have been doing it for over 10 years, and they simply don't want to continue spending resources in supporting it that could be used to build better, newer software.

Chances are the software won't run on Windows 7 because said software was making use of "features" of XP that were actually not supposed to be used that way, be it internal features, undefined behaviour, or implementation errors. The bigger issue is driver compatibility, where it is not so easy to keep supporting old driver models.

The bit where they give "exclusive rights to digitize" would imply otherwise... but I may have misread.

If your computer does not have UEFI, then it's probably older than what Valve has in mind.