There are no redundancies in the WinSxS folder. That's actually the point of WinSxS: It is a "repository" of sorts where all OS files are stored and the actual files are merely hard links to the file in WinSxS. That way, even if a file is placed in multiple places, it is still only a single file.

To be able to *uninstall* updates, WinSxS does hold on to the "old" files. That way, if you roll an update back or uninstall a component, Windows will simply change the hard link or delete the linking file. If you do not want to be able to roll back to a previous state, you can always clean up by discarding the "old" service pack files by issuing the command "dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded"

I have a suspicion that you have no idea what LINQ is.

It is deprecated in PHP 6.

But PHP 6 has been deprecated, so now it's back in. Until it's not.

Yes - it is a vulnerability for which there is no exploit published (yet).

This vulnerability is serious, as it allows an attacker to permanently infect the Mac *firmware* and gain control each time the Mac is booted - even if you nuke and reinstall OS X.

You may try to dismiss this as "still needs another vulnerability". Another vulnerability or even a social engineering attack, evil maid attack will all suffice. This one can be used to take permanent, undetected residence on successfully exploited macs.

That's bad in my book

Don't be. In 2008 there was a real risk that banks would fall like dominoes. When talk started about a possible Greek default in the first round, the same concern was there: That a lot of European banks had so deep loans to Greece that a Greek default would cause the banks to start toppling and cause a widespread crisis in Europe.

This time, the other European states (notably Germany), ECB and IMF have largely taken over the "bad debt" from the banks. Which means that Central banks, ECB and IMF will have to write off some loans if Greece defaults, but banks and the financial system is largely insulated.

Last time, Greece used the threat of throwing Europe into a deep financial crisis as negotiation leverage. This time, that threat has been neutralized and that is why you see other European leaders standing more firm on Greece owning up to their situation.

Talk about WWII reparations is NOT owning up to the problems that created this crisis in the first place. Greece were about to be exposed as insolvent before entering the Euro. But getting into the Euro meant cheaper loans and could postpone the point where they ran out of money. So Greece at the time lied and cheated their way into the Euro: They "mistakenly" left out the state obligations for pensions as obligations (should have counted as long-term debt). They got in and got access to cheaper loans. But they did not mend the broken system, and here we are.

Greece must own up.

Interest rates reflect the lenders perceived risk of not being able to retrieve the loan on time or at all.German citizens are vastly more productive than Greek citizens.

If I were to lend 10.000 euros to someone, I'd have a better chance of having that loan paid in full from a German citizen living and working in Germany than from a Greek citizen living and working in Greece. That does not mean that I would not lend to Greece, but it means that I would take a higher interest rate to compensate for the risk.

It is not a diabolic German plan to put Greece down. It's just economics.

Could you be a bit more specific about what it is that makes NuGet a monstrosity?

It is a general purpose scripting language.

An object-oriented general purpose scripting language with a number of features that makes system administration easier.

One example is DSC. It is a scripting language that can use the DSC *platform* to make sure that target systems are all configured the same way, albeit each with different parameters.

Another example is workflows. Wake me up when bash or python can start a script that can survive system restarts and pick up and continue from where it was when the system restarted, complete with state, variables etc.

Nah. In PowerShell:

iwr "http://server/path/to/file.zip" -outf "${env:TEMP}/file.zip"

You can try to make it look more verbose. But expect to be called out on it.

You can accomplish almost any task with fewer keystrokes in PowerShell compared to bash - and the resulting command will still be more readable.

Desired State Configuration (DSC) that FTFA was about, is definitely one such thing that PowerShell has that python has not. DSC is a *declarative* description of the configuration you want for a target system. You should think more in line of Chef or Puppet than Python. PowerShell DSC for Linux actually *uses* Python.

The idea is that you use PowerShell to define a data structure (much like a Ruby hash) that describes the configuration of the node. DSC will itself resolve dependencies. If you require a feature DSC will ensure that the feature is installed - much like a package manager - but it actually interacts with the package manager. What package managers do not do is to configure the products once they are installed. This could be connection strings, IP addresses, user accounts.

PowerShell DSC for Linux has "resources" for file system, user accounts, text file content, package managers (Yum, Apt, Zypper), scripts, daemons, ssh keys and more. You use those resources to describe how you want a system to look - like a Chef recipe. The resource description can be parameterized (it is just a PowerShell function and can take parameters like PS functions) so that the same resource description can be used for multiple targets with slightly different values.

Once applied, DSC will ensure that the target is set up so that it matches the target. From there on it can also report on drift (e.g. more users created, files deleted/changed etc) and can warn about it and automatically bring the node back to the desired state (undoing the drift).

How about if the unix app allowed only the long form option names - but allowed them to be abbreviated as long as the abbreviation was unambigous? (That's what powershell does)

That why we still code in assembler and don't use those modern touch screens. Oh wait... (lalalalalalalal! -- fingers in ears, eyes firmly closed)

Yes, there is no concept of SUID/setuid on Windows. So there's no sudo "happy go lucky".

No, PowerShell is aimed at admins who want *robust* scripts - both the ad-hoc ones they whip up as well as the ones they choose to save. String parsing is extremely brittle, and most bash shell scipters do it the insecure and brittle way because it is easier.

String parsing is often thrown off if presented with unusual characters in file names, if executed in locales where dates and numbers are both generated and parsed different, etc.

OMI is available on Linux. Read the FTFA

You're the incompetent one. There's is no "IDE in a shell". The ISE *is* the shell - much like if you did bash scripting from emacs. The difference is that the ISE will provide you with intellisense (automatic suggestions), help, syntax highlighting, snippets, multiple script panels, integrated source-level debugging (complete with breakpoints, variable inspection etc) and even a command "builder".

Most *nix shells have good documentation. PowerShell has good documentation as well. All of the cmdlets have syntax descriptions (automatically generated from metadata), description and multiple examples. In PowerShell even user-defined functions, cmdlets and script files can have the same level of documentation. Comment based help (look it up) makes it super easy to document scripts and functions. And the auto-generated syntax diagrams and parameter descriptions also work for your own script files.

PowerShells command syntax is extremely consistent. Cmdlets are *always* of the verb-noun form, and there are only about 40 or so standard "approved" verbs. Parsing of the command parameters is the responsibility of the *shell* not of the commands like in *nix shells. Hence, all commands follow the same convention with no strange outliers like e.g. dd. Parameter names are always "long" - but can be abbreviated as long as the abbreviation is unambigous.