Because bean counter walk over the engineers... Grid is built cheap as bossible instead of being reliable, maintained even cheaper and that means no alternative routes, no backups... All this in name of Maximizing profits... After all you cant sue them for not delivering, so wheres their risk of this gamble...

This is just nothing more then Microsoft realizing they are loosing it. They lost supercomputers, they lost mobile markets, now Linux is taking over servers, next battle ground is desktop and Linux is starting to make inroads there also... What choice Microsoft has but try to adapt, if they wish to be in business still in 10 years from now?

People have allready recomended many excellent books... Now if you are going to drag any deadweight electronics there, make sure you bring in means to charge them too. Laptop with empty battery is useless.. So solar-panel or two (bigger the better), inverter, battery and battery charge manager.. And you can charge what ever western not needed electronics use you have... Personally i would look what it-related projects are already there and try help them. Working with actual people will always be superior to any dull book. In fact if you can show that you have managed to come along even with people that you have no common language, might help your career more then any book. If all else fails, just enjoy scenery and piece of quiet you have there, your soon enough back to civilization and hurry..

Anything is bossible. Its only matter of question how much effort and resources its going to take to make it happen.

Its not difficult to maintain constant connection, add few satellites in good spots in space to bounce signal throw.. Its bandwidth issue. They want to make reality tv out of this so that's going to take some massive bandwidth between two planets. Video streaming down on earth is sometimes difficult all ready.. Add significant distance between planets that's constantly changing and you have problems...

Hmm why rob the bank when you can empty ATM with much less risk of cops catching you. Somehow i would have expected ATM to use something else then Windows or Dos system.

In Finland if you receive item you did int order, its yours to keep. Its sellers responsibility to make sure they ship right stuff to customers. If they want it back well that up to negotiation. Want something i now own, well give me something i think is worth it in return.

Whats there stopping this corporation to take some of that money and help develop that opensource solution. Whats wrong with you? Anything government does is away from some private sector people... Example, they could hire private accounting corporation to run the whole tax system.

Its the government, what did you expect :P Government does everything in way its most expensive as possible.

If malware dint use it before, its sure going to use it soon enough after this paper.

How do you know they haven't done that all ready? What we see in civilian side is always few years back from Military/Super secret spy stuff. You dont think army spends all that money just for guns and ammunition do you?

Hand up anyone thats suprised US goverment IT systems got hacked once again...

So software is removed now, it would be interesting to know what it was doing in those car first place.. Google mus have known they would be world in trouble if extent of their snooping comes out.

One of these claims? Something MAY happen because XXXXX.. Like those people that may escape dont know cops are after them all ready? Seriously what a joke. If their methods are/were so effective then how come there's still pedophiles free? Why aren't they all in jail? Because their methods are not so effective, except spying on all people illegally. People in power will always try to abuse those powers, if not for anything else then secure their own position of power.

I'm wondering, considering the massive amounts of money Microsoft has, the army of developers they have, just the sheer size of corporation, how the heck they cant write a single piece of software that does not have some exploitable vulnerability in it. With that massive amount of resources at its disposal and they write still crappy software... Almost like hey, lets hide all these deliberate backdoors in all these software we ship...