I'm aware you can still get XP discs second-hand or ex-stock here in the UK - Amazon lists several versions, although some look suspiciously like they may be OEM versions that are tied to specific brand/model PCs. I'm not aware of any PC maker here in the UK offering an XP options, though - maybe Windows 7, for business systems and workstations.

I recently wiped my old (2003 vintage) laptop, which originally came with XP, and installed Linux Mint - considering the machine's specs, it works fairly well.

I've read about ReactOS, but given the slow pace of progress I regard it as curiosity rather than a viable alternative.

The first attempt at running it failed an error

The first attempt at running it failed with an error...

I think the point is that Visual Studio encourages programmers to code to APIs available only on Windows. Pretty much every time I've tried to load a .NET application in Mono, the application has stopped with an error that a particular system library is unavailable.

You might not have everything installed properly. I wanted to bring this up on a Raspberry Pi recently. The first attempt at running it failed an error regarding missing assemblies, or something to that effect. sudo apt-get install mono-complete fixed that.

donning bunker gear

If you had donated at some point in the past, it looks like you get grandfathered in. From the email they sent me:

In an effort to better service our customers through increased support and a cleaner network, Dyn announced that in the next 30 days, we will no longer be supporting free hostnames. However, because you believed in us and supported this company through your donations, we are continuing to fulfill our promise to you: your service is still free for life.

I donated somewhere around $10-$20 once, probably at least a decade ago.

I got about halfway through the base SC2 (Terran Wings of Liberty stuffs), but then my kids got too interested in what I was doing, and it's a bit violent for young observers in my opinion... so it's been on hold for over a year. Hoping to get back to it within the year though.

Slow Down Cowboy! Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. It's been 4 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment - How I've missed the slashdot comment system trolling me!

Better better, or worse better, or maybe better worse?

Here's hoping it trends to the positive anyhow.

Seriously. I remember trying out the preview version on my then-XP-running PC back in 2009, and being blown away by a) how much easier it was to install and get going, b) how well it ran all my existing software, c) how it let me finally use all of the memory installed in my machine, d) how much better it was than Vista. I pre-ordered a copy soon after, and the rest is history. Now, on my Mac, I have my Windows 7 VM for running various applications I still use.

Installing Windows XP today is not nearly as fun as you might think, particularly if you've got a pre-SP2 copy. When I tried it, I had to manually install some patches just to get Windows Update working, then some more before I could install IE8, and some more before I could install MSE. And then all the patches to bring the whole lot up-to-date - that took hours and hours to finish. I'd only recommend trying it if you're installing onto a machine that you don't actually need to use for a good while.

As for the 'but it's tried and tested" argument for hanging onto XP, I would point to the number of flaws that are still being uncovered in the Windows codebase, many of which are also in XP. Yes, you can mitigate against some by hardening your system, running only as a standard user, etc. - but for most current XP installs that will probably mean extra aggravation caused by third-party software written back in the Bad Old Days that expects to run with full admin privileges.

The only excuse for continuing with XP, to my mind, other than sheer obstinacy, is where you've got systems that absolutely, positively require XP running on physical hardware - specialised hardware or software that won't work via a VM because they need direct access through physical ports. Such systems should be segregated from local networks and the Internet as much as possible.

curl http://levex.fedorapeople.org/... | lzma -z9c | base64 | qrencode -t ANSIUTF8

This produces output too large to fit on most screens unless your console font is ridiculously small or your screen resolution is higher than most (my notebook has a 15" 1680x1050 panel). Also, it appears the console (on Ubuntu, anyway) doesn't handle UTF-8. Falling back to ANSI, it's even farther from being feasible.

I wonder when microsoft will get around to getting their vendors to stop accepting kickbacks for shitty adware on new systems.
This practice is one of the reasons why I still build my own desktop systems. Getting rid of the junk is a massive hassle, and restoration of the system from partition brings it all back.

I hate the usual crap that gets shovelled on too, but to be fair Microsoft have apparently been pushing against that for a few years now for exactly that reason. Of course, they need to tread carefully there for legal reasons: if they block, say, Dell bundling a limited-time version of Norton Anti-virus, Dell won't be happy (they lose the $5 or whatever kickback) and Symantec will probably lawyer up and come knocking, particularly with Microsoft offering their own AV product now. Remember all the fallout when they killed off Netscape, when they stopped IBM from bundling OS/2 as a dual-boot setup with Windows? We both know this is different, but Microsoft's lawyers are apparently paranoid about crossing that line again.
I'm told they also offer crapware-free machines in their own stores, which makes sense. I just wish they'd make OEMs ship a plain vanilla Windows install disk like they used to, no more "restore" BS - so anyone wanting a clean machine can just re-install.

Remember the blue ethernet cables with the red cable boots?

Most of the premade crossover cables I've run across have been orange. (The ones I've made as I needed them would've been whatever color was in the nearest box of bulk cable, but that doesn't count.)

I get tons of crazy JS errors when I try to go non-beta now, so beta only it is. Not too bad for me either honestly, just different.

Sore throat, daughter's having an asthma attack at the same time that a form missing a birthdate caused a temporary lapse in health insurance, customers at work are non responsive and then unhappy with progress.

But it's good sometimes too.

Damn it /. - I logged in to post that message. WTF?!

[yeah, this is a digression]

SSL/TLS need to be reworked to support multiple root CAs in case one is compromised. That way, if two CAs have no clue about a cert, but one CA vets it, this can raise a red flag.

That's not how you do multiple CAs. You don't raise red flags; you abstain from raising green ones. Everything starts red by default. No CA (even the most hated and distrusted one) can ever possibly harm your estimation that a key is correct; they can simply fail to increase your estimate. Trust is somewhere between zero and one, but never less than zero. Even Cthulhu Hitler CA rates no less than 0.0.