There was one major feature, and two "features" added to XP:

1: The zone/firewalling support. This is actually useful just to keep dodgy apps from opening up a port or ensuring nothing can connect directly. Third parties like Zone Alarm had this functionality, but would keep prompting the user for every single connection, so eventually users would just click "allow all and don't bug me", and be done with it.

2: Secure Audio Path, where anything protected with WMA's DRM could only play on a stack of signed audio drivers.

3: Activation.

Of course, there were some other minor tweaks here and there, but the leap from W2K to XP wasn't groundbreaking. Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 was a major leap in virtually everything. The second greatest leap was with the server side -- Windows 2000 Server from NT Server was a nice leap for servers because the whole model of NT domains was changed to be a lot more scalable.

The reason why XP was considered decent is because it was out for a long time and people got used to it. On the server side of the house, Windows Server 2003 is still supported until July 14 of next year... but most places have moved to at least Windows Server 2008 if not newer just because of the better security in more recent versions.

I keep seeing things with several regular screws and one a funky type (security torx and such), If they want to make it tamper evident, put a dot of acrylic on the screw,

Then there's clips that will snap together to make a tight fit exactly once. And of course the stupid plastic rivets.

I have no idea what devices you are seeing.

I'm 55, this is true, but it hasn't diminished my interest in software, it's just something else that fascinates me and just happens to be the root cause as to why "work sucks" sometimes. My Dad is 80, a retired mechanical engineer, last we spoke about programming he had got one of his games he wrote in Delphi running on android and was playing with the python graphics library.

Solving coding problems the fun part. The work part is getting the solution to the customer, ironically few engineers are willing to tackle the work problem, or accept other people's solutions to it. So what you generally end up with is an imposed solution from above that doesn't work because the people who wrote the process haven't got a clue how the engineers are currently keeping it together. Rather than tackling the problem by demonstrating a superior answer, the engineers do their best to pretend the work problem doesn't exist.

BTW: If you're solving the "same [coding?] problem over and over again", you're doing it wrong

Imagine targeted penis enlargement ads!

I mostly agree but I would say that a good engineer provides (and meets) a deadline of his own making. Good managers have clear business plans but they can't create them if software systems randomly pop out of the basement shouting "surprise". The most overlooked and underrated skill for a "professional" engineer is business administration skills (and vica-versa with PHB's). Someone who speaks both languages is far more useful than someone who speaks only his native tongue.

Yeah it's easy to become disillusioned, if you don't have the political clout to organise your own work and "lead by example" to meet their vague goals, then get it or get out. If you do have some influence then vague, numerous, and ever changing management goals are your best weapon against the idiocracy, simply pick the brain farts that give you license to do TheRightThing(tm) and politely deflect the others.

*you - the royal version.

It's actually a good strategy for MS, I think, and I believe Ballmer screwed up by not following this strategy.

For other companies, it only works in the short term because their competitors win in the long term because without good employees, the company can't develop new products. However, for MS, this just isn't a concern. They're a monopoly in many markets, especially in business software; companies aren't going to suddenly stop buying Windows, Exchange, Office/Outlook, etc. MS can milk their existing customers for a couple of decades I think, and could easily jack up prices greatly.

I think MS (and their products) will get worse before this gets better.

Doesn't matter, people will still buy MS products no matter what. Businesses aren't going to wean themselves from MS's enterprise software anytime soon. This was a good decision: the research efforts were costing money which wasn't being made up in new sales.

MS's best course of action is to cut out as much R&D as possible and other bottom-line costs, and then try to extract as much money from existing customers as possible by jacking up prices. Thanks to their monopoly position in several markets, this shouldn't be hard.

We should expect more from people who post on slashdot ... sadly, its silly to have expectations.

TLDs have certain requirements associated with them, unless Amazon magically also has some super special secret deal that Google hasn't told the world about after losing ... then Amazon won't be able to monopolize or otherwise use the TLD to an unfair advantage.

They can set certain things related to how the TLD operates, but they don't get it all to themselves. They didn't buy a TLD for themselves, they bought the right to run a TLD under ICANNs guidelines.

That's a really good point. But I guess they could just disable bluetooth. I'm starting to wonder if today's Apple is as incredibly stupid as Sony was 10-15 years ago. Though, Apple might actually be right: the people who buy Apple stuff are such sheep they, unlike Sony's prospective customers a decade ago when they tried to push proprietary audio formats, might actually buy into Apple's proprietary junk.

Wally is my role model.

Give a friend a coffee mug. Keep the red stapler for yourself.

Reading this post made me feel dirty.

Yeah, I've moved past the point where people like you can shame me into flip flopping. I don't want you around me, and I don't value your approval.

It doesn't really matter why I hold this position, or how you want to label it. What matters is, I refuse to support companies that woo women away from traditional family life, and I refuse to be sneaky about it in the name of political correctness.

What part is untested? How about the whole thing? Theoretically, it's not that difficult. We won't know about practical difficulties until we actually try it.

You think Project Orion is the solution to interstellar travel? Look, guy, space is big. Mind-bogglingly big.. You may think it's a long way to the chemist's/drug store, but.... If we can get a spaceship going at three thousand kilometers/second, it'd take centuries to reach the nearest star. You may want to calculate how much energy it would take to get something going that fast, and consider the size of a self-contained habitat that will function for centuries.