I thought it was odd too untli I read the article and realised they were not talking about a real threat, they were talking about an analysts scenario. To quote:

"One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver — to actually use this capability — to destroy computers."

So basically this is a fear-mongering story since if the country in question had had the intention and capability to deploy such an attack, it would have been SUCCESSFUL. Only a small proportion on PCs would have been "fixed" if they had "worked with computer manufacturers".

They really do think everyone is stupid don't they?

"Once AMD decides to make drivers that work"...haha. hahahahaha. hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! hahaha!

Oh, lord that was funny; thank you. (Sorry I had flash backs to the early naughtys reading that).

For a long time as I recall Windows 95, (or was it 2000/XP?) used a string of zeros as the key....that could have been really nasty!

Aye, it looks great. Once it runs Linux I'll buy one.

The ability to use the XBone as a PVR would have been a significant feather in MSs cap; instead they are trying to sell the most minor of features.

The XBone is boned.

Peter F Hamilton if I recall but I can't remember the book/series...

Heh, I spent a year cleaning up after the last "10x" developer. 10x the productivity, 10x the bugs.

And to add to the FYI:

Ai is a girls name, and a word meaning either "love" or "indigo" depending on the context. Hence for the people calling this an "ai-bot"...thats something *completely* different.

And slashdot STILL doesnt support unicode :/

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/plague

- nt -

Almost but not quite: I've been working with CoffeeScript which "compiles" to JavaScript and combined with JQuery its actually nice to work with....as long as one remembers to be exacting in commenting method parameter and return types. Exacting...

"Spelling isn't important when writing. Thats what the word processor is for!"....."lol"

You're me at 13 aren't you? :)

I *hear* that MS has a culture of fear, where lower levels are basically expected to kowtow to the management line. A company without dissent and an environment where employees can air and discuss their opinions is VERY bad since decision making then lays in the hands of the select few, and when mistakes are being made, people are prevented from even pointing out those mistakes.

So far we've seen the disasters of Surface pro, Windows 8 metro, XBone, and I'm sure there are others I'm missing. That a company could have such a litany of product disasters suggests that the culture doesn't exist where *innovative & good* products can be made anymore (MS does have good products but these tend to be either their mainstays e.g. office, rebadged hardware).

The blame for this *has* to rest at the top.

I dont understand the problems that people have with it. I spent an hours learning it, I kept an open mind and ended up really liking it.

That said - 90% of what I do requires a shell so maybe Im missing something....

Interesting, would you care to expand?