From your link:

How would encrypting it with a user key help?

If they may need Office... a Windows RT machine is pretty good too and requires the same low level of support as iPad or Chromebook.

My point is that some folks tend to remember every small thing done by MS over a decade ago, and then they're colored by extremely biased narratives from articles and comments, and then suddenly urban legends becomes "fact", like the AARD code which never affected one real person, much less part of holding CS back. Google's missteps don't get the same traction and everyone seems to forget them pretty quickly. It's just confirmation bias that I notice. Coming to moderation, you have it way easier because you post anti-MS stuff. Try even posting corrections to obvious wrong things on here about MS and you'd be getting downmods for days.

So you make the claim about this issue hurting "the future of computer science", and here we are, with you unable to back up such a epochal event with one reference. Maybe MS went and deleted all internet pages related to this?

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, Carl Sagan said, but you're unable to even provide ordinary evidence except your personal experience which even you admit you don't remember exactly, and everyone knows how it could be because DOS config varied from machine to machine with a lot of powerful settings in config.sys and himem.sys, just two examples.

All I can read on it says the code didn't prevent the Windows install from going forward and that it ran silently even if it was present, except in a pre-beta release. Can you provide any web page that contradicts the above? If you're unable to, are you willing to retract your claim? I don't want spend more time trying to dig more facts to contradict an obviously anti-MS person on Slashdot who won't change their mind regardless.

Anyway, don't worry, no one here is going to read this subthread, none of my posts have been modded up like yours have been, and people reading your earlier posts will continue to believe in and propagate the same half truths and misinformation that will mislead more people who don't check the facts for themselves, and the cycle continues. I guess I must just be happy that I am not hit with downmods for going against the grain yet(bracing for them anyway), it's a struggle to keep my karma above the threshold on here.

A proper ultrabook is missing.

The below are extremely misleading if not a lie, as it pertained only to a late beta and not the final version.

I do believe you're mistaken though and probably not lying, because such urban legends are regulaly posted as gospel truth around these parts(imagine someone who didn't know anything about these reading up your modded up posts) and then start to spread these things in their posts as the truth. The cycle of ignorance continues, but in case of Google and Apple, this effect is not that bad, so they get away because people are simply not even aware of their shortcomings most of the time.

Those are not mutually exclusive, and the second doesn't justify the first, it only make people doing it look like ignorant folks with an agenda to push.

Unless you're admitting that you're spreading FUD because MS spread FUD :)

A reference would be much appreciated, or else I'll have to assume that you had buggy software or h/w, or that you don't remember correctly, or...making things up.

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2pBdoo2TgI

From http://drdosprojects.de/forum/drp_forum/posts/8863.html

The AARD never worked in a shipped version of Windows. Stop getting worked up.
And Netscape made plenty of big mistakes, including this one http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
Not to mention that the code was hugely bloated, that Mozilla Firefox is still trying to fix, after ~15 years. An OS that didn't ship with a browser would be laughed out of the market.

There are plenty of such stories about Apple or Google too, but they're not pushed like the MS ones seem to be.

For example, see how Google squashed Skyhook
http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/

Aliyun and Acer prevented from launching a phone because of the secret rules of the "Open" Handset Alliance.
http://www.zdnet.com/cn/report-google-stops-acer-from-launching-aliyun-phone-in-china-7000004246/

Apple and the famed 30% cut of even sales from Apps, an example of how they used someone's OSS code in Safari and then banned them from the app store:
http://blog.readability.com/2011/02/an-open-letter-to-apple/

Yet you hate on MS and think of Google as a savior. Tell us, what is YOUR interest against Microsoft that you're spreading lies and FUD? The fact that your posts are modded up is the reason that Slashdot is losing readership as even the circlejerk echochamber gets bored with the same hating posts and posters.

Everytime I dig into claims like this, I come away disappointed in the abject FUD that was both absorbed by such posters and the propagation of it, resulting in more people believing it.

AARD was activated only in a late beta. It didn't do anything in the final version

From Wiki:

How exactly did this contribute to the collapse of DR-DOS when it never stopped one DR-DOS copy in the final Windows 3.1 version that actually shipped? Hurt contributions to Computer Science? Hyperbole much?

It's sad that your post is modded up by clueless moderators, and it will continue to propagate ignorant lies and FUD that Slashdot is known for. Not sure if you're just ignorant or just spreading FUD, and I don't know which is worse.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Android-Rooted-best-apps-superuser,18313.html
Users who have rooted are comparatively very less, so it's an uphill battle if you're trying to make money from your apps that need root.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

Nice joke. Chromebooks are "selling" because Google is giving them away.

If MS really wants to push the OEMs, they'll just make Surface laptops, desktops and Ultrabooks and then double the OEM prices for Windows. If you think the OEMs are hurting now, you should see what happens then.

It isn't necessarily better. For example, you have a lot of system level software under Windows that you can't even sell for iOS and on Chromebooks. And on Android, your users need root before using them, which very few people have. Not to mention the 30% cut of all revenue on both the big mobile stores. In people's rush to hate MS, everyone's promoting even more restrictive software and data being stored in the cloud which users have no control over.

Linus says it best: Microsoft hatred is a disease
http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_a_Disease

They don't get a free pass, just wait for the court to set a rate, and Apple will pay Samsung the amount that the court decides, including past damages. Part of the FRAND obligation is to make it difficult to ban products.

The reason was that Samsung's patents were standards essential FRAND, which means they agreed to allow them to be part of a standard in exchange for lesser royalties and harder to seek injunctions. Apple's patents were not FRAND.