I'll be the first to feign ignorance with Windows networking, but do tell me how I "Obtain an IP address automatically" without automatically getting the gateway? Or am I now setting up a static IP in the virtualization software network settings, then hardcoding that static IP and a false gateway in the client VM network settings? (Yes, it's easy for me as a computer geek, not so easy for others...)

You just proved my point. Most people won't want to set up a "non-bridged LAN between VMs" (then try to get that bridged LAN talking to their real LAN), they want their VM to connect to their actual LAN. If I'm a small office running an old-school Workgroup, a HomeGroup, or even a small domain, how do I get my XP (or W2K or Win9x) VM to be able to connect & access those internal networked resources without going out to the Internet--without jumping through serious hoops. Adding a 2nd NIC & wiring then configuring--to every machine that could host a VM? Are you f-ing kidding me???

The virtualization software should make it easy to do this, yet none of the ones I mentioned do. So, with NAT, I get everything internal & external, but all I want is for the virtualization host to sandbox the networking in the VM... (I guess I could install a firewall in the VM that disallows Internet access, but we're talking about really old OSes, so really old & unsupported firewalls--and I'd feel safer if that could be done by the virtual network stack. Something like a simple slider in the VM settings with 3 options: "Allow Internet & LAN access", "Allow LAN access only (no Internet)", "Allow no network access"...)

While a novel concept, I don't care to see what's happening "from the bouncy ball's point of view". Plus, unless you're in the Stellarcartography room from "Star Trek: Generations", you're only going to see a sliver of what's around you (given the limited nature of human vision), which will look like an even more dizzying version of the movie "Gravity"...

I'm sorry, but tell me an easy way for a non-technical business (e.g. a dentist's office) to shut off Internet access in most consumer-grade VMs (VMWare Player, Hyper-V, Win7's VirtualPC, etc.) while keeping network access alive. Yes, there's things like fiddling with hosts files and the like, but no consumer-level VM offers a "keep networking but disallow Internet access" switch. (Sure, you can disable NAT, but then your VM can't network, so what's the point???)

Also, Microsoft's Win32 application compatibility via the Windows 6.x kernel is decent for 32-bit and weak for 64-bit (WoW). To add, there's so much 16-bit code floating out there in businesses, written during the Win9x era, especially from vendors that no longer exist. Even trying to get some Microsoft programs working is a chore--e.g. Visual FoxPro 9 SP2. (I don't give a shit how "old" it is, it's still used and doesn't work well with Win7 x64). Microsoft has the R&D resources to figure out how to run 16-bit code on 64-bit Windows (e.g. NTVDM running on WoW--essentially a VM within a VM), and we'd be fully in the 64-bit OS era...

While there was much excitement & media hype to the Win95 launch, Windows 3.1 (1992) is definitely a better candidate for this list--it had all the foundations including advanced font support, multimedia, mouse access, networking (Windows for Workgroups) and even 32-bit application support (Win32s)--all for personal consumers. By 1995, everyone who was buying Win95 already had Win3.1 (except DOS-only holdouts) and even the DOS-only folks were using their mice to interact with their PCs. (I would argue for Windows 3.0 over 3.1, but 1991 was his starting point...)

To add, I'd say that Microsoft Office would have been a better choice than the Apple Newton. Around 1992-1994 was when companies dropped, en masse, their DOS-based WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and Harvard Graphics installations for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. So why does that count for "personal" uses? Because now, MANY households, almost all students (including those on Macs), and almost all businesses use it. Home users used to pirate copies of Office, and Microsoft now gives it away for less than $150 for non-commercial use. Back in the '90s, Microsoft was trying to foist Microsoft Works on consumers, with Office having a $400+ price point. Word and Excel file formats are ubiquitous now... (And while I applaud & appreciate "office" FOSS, they only exist because of MS-Office's successes & intentionally maintain compatibility with MS-Office file formats).

I believe I got hit by this about a week ago when I clicked on an advert linked on Chicago Tribune's website.

A fullscreen message appeared saying my computer had been encrypted and I had to pay $300 to decrypt it. I pulled my network cable out and had to power off my PC because the keyboard would not work. I was able to boot back up, but when I logged in both regularly and in Safe-Mode, a full white screen saying "please connect to the Internet" appeared and I couldn't use the keyboard again.

I pressed F8 on boot and booted into Safe-Mode Command line only. Once I logged in and saw the command line, I typed rstrui.exe (windows System Recovery) and using the Restore Wizard, restored to a checkpoint from a day earlier. I restarted my PC again and let it boot normally and once I was able to log in without seeing the message, reconnected my network cable.

My PC was never encrypted. The message only said it was. The clincher was before I booted Windows in Safe-Mode, I used a Knoppix DVD to mount the Windows partition and copy off my personal data before I started the recovery process. The data was perfectly readable and not encrypted.

The question will actually be more like "would you keep driving manually if it meant 80% higher insurance rates?"

Slashdot needs to add a trigger that deletes any post from "Anonymous Coward" with a negative rating. Without fail, they are either "me too!" posts, uninformed, or are absolutely puerile attempts at witty retorts.

The reason Firefox and Chrome will continue to support XP is because they want to support Windows Server 2003, which has an End-of-Life of 14-Jul-2015. Since Win2003 (and XP Pro x64) use the NT 5.2 kernel and they don't want to lose that marketshare, by default supporting it on the NT 5.1 kernel (e.g. XP 32-bit) would be a trivial affair. That's why they chose "at least 2015"...

It will keep my computer from 2002 on the Inter-webs via dial-up...

Take a closer look towards Iapetus. There's a monolith there that's full of stars.

Excellent thesis and a most delightful dedication!

    A few salient points from this thesis, for the Slashdot crowd:
    - Accumulation: knowing what to keep and what to toss
    - Distribution: where/how to keep copies
    - Digital stewardship: maintaining objects isn't enough ... you must properly catalog things
    - Long term access means more than just saving bits ... they must be properly rendered

Convolved on this are problems with copyright, fair use, payment for archives, orphaned collections...

Then there's the cost of creating and maintaining a long term digital repository.
Librarians have done a terrific job with our printed archives. Who will become our digital librarians?