"What they were really talking about is constantly f*sking with their file formats so that when a user with a new system sends a document to a user with an old system the recipient can't open it... even if the document does not use any of the new 'features' of the updated software... and they then suffer the social shame of *still* being on last year's s/w? There is no reason for it other than to trap people into upgrade cycles that are spurious."

So rather than improve upon an old format, things should stay the way they were back in 1995 so that someone using Office 95 can still open all documents with no conversion necessary.
MS has practically bent over backwards to allow older versions of Office to open newer formats. They have always done this. As far as Windows 7 goes, the hardware requirements have actually decreased. MS may be a bully, but they aren't stupid - they know people aren't going to buy something that runs slow and requires an expensive computer, especially on the tails of Vista.
I can't stand when somebody like the FSF prefers to stifle innovation rather than make a change that might affect a micro-percentage of users negatively. They decry the messing with ODF, but since ODF in it's current state is relative crap, why shouldn't somebody have the balls to improve upon it?

If this rumor is true, and regardless of what scanning engine they decide to use, isn't Apple toying dangerously close to MS's already trodden antitrust territory? You know if MS included AV as part of an operating installation, the whole tech world would be in an uproar.
IMO Apple would be stupid to do this even though they do fly under the radar. Give it away as a free download but for goodness sake don't repeat Microsoft's sins.

The interesting factor here is that Microsoft will push the migration to Windows 7 (or maybe 8) based on XP's EOL of support in 2014. And at the same time, they are saying, you can run your XP apps in this nice XP virtual world within Windows 7 (which by the way, we won't support after 2014).

So what will really drive Windows 7 adoption is the same thing that drives application upgrades. The developers that no longer receive XP support, will no longer support their apps under XP. We've seen this happen with Windows 98 and to some extent with Windows 2000, especially with older service packs. When faced with the prospect of losing support for their mission critical applications, companies start planning OS upgrades very quickly.

Don't you realize, Windows 7 is the service pack for Vista?

At this point those "IT veterans" have to make the calculated choice of risk - whether to introduce issues because of a patch which can be easily rolled back, or introduce a virus which could have been prevented by the patch, which takes hundreds of hours to clean up.
Ultimately, regardless of OS, any software patch could potentially introduce issues and in a corporate environment, should be tested before applying them to the entire user base. It isn't that complicated, anyone waiting 2 months to apply a patch is just lazy.

I quote: "(Keep in mind that most SSD vendors publish sequential read/write rates, which are much faster than random I/O. But most operations on a desktop or laptop are random. For example, file systems and e-mail applications mostly use random operations, while system boot up or copying a large file from a USB drive involves sequential operations. So, in general, don't believe the packaging hype.)"

The author apparently lacks the basic understanding that since an SSD has no moving platter, there is no difference between sequential and random read/writes. This is why it is advertised as such. So, in general, don't believe the BS this amateur is spouting out.

I use AVG almost exclusively now although I have a few clients with NOD32 and Avast. Since AVG released 8.0 their product has been rock solid - I rarely find anything it misses when cross checking it with other AV software. The huge advantage with AVG is their excellent management interface, which absolutely blows NOD32 out of the water. NOD32's management software is incredibly and unnecessarily complex. AVG's is the easiest management package I've found to use and it will run on your Linux server as well. NOD32's only advantage now is its performance on underpowered computers, primarily those with less than 256MB of RAM.

Or they could just offer one big fat full price edition of everything.
We'd be complaining about that too.

I've seen many folks talk about how customizable their Ubuntu OS is. Joe consumer won't know what they can remove or add from that installation. It is much easier to give them a feature list and say, for these features, install this edition. For these additional features, install this edition.

MS is simple engaging in smart business. Rather than offering a one size fits all solution, they tailor both the server and workstation products to the uses that customer needs. It doesn't make sense for me to have clustering features in my Windows home server or my web server. Thus specific versions for those uses. Linux distros do this to a point but in order to be successful marketing to the clueless general public they really ought to take a look at what MS has made billions doing.

1. While Ballmer is optimistic, the official release date is still January 2010. Ballmer would love to see Windows 7 come out early and be successful, because the reality is that his future with MS hinges on its success.
2. They are already hyping it. Get out from under the rock. No, it's not close to release yet so we haven't seen a TV and web media blitz.
3. Vista was released in February of 2007. 7 is scheduled for January 2010, about 3 years. WFW 3.11 was released in 1992, Windows 95 in 1995. Next release was Windows 98 in mid 1998. Then you had Windows 2000 in 2000. XP was 2002. The reality is, there was an extraordinarily long delay in shipping Vista; OS releases from MS have traditionally been on a 3 year schedule. Windows 7 looks like no exception.
4. If you actually read your source completely, you would realize that the reason they are calling the code 6.1 internally is for better backward compatibility for applications - not because the code is not significantly changed from the 6.0 Vista code. Would you say that XP was really just windows 2000, just because internally the code is version 5.1?

Fresh on the heels of the story of the individual from Belkin, does it surprise you that the online review fiasco delves into other industries?
Big producers such as Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, and others probably have thousands of employees in their marketing departments, and it would not surprise me in the least that part of their job is to go online and give positive reviews to thier films (and maybe negative reviews to competitor's films).
Personally I don't give much credence to any online review of product simply because the results are uncontrolled, I don't know the people giving the reviews, and there is no way of knowing whether they are competent or not (not to mention completely bogus).

A dozen years ago, in the schools we were working in, we had to drag the teachers and staff kicking and screaming away from their Macs.

You aren't going to get them to switch to Linux any easier - in fact, since the Linux experience isn't even close to the Mac experience, it will be even more difficult to sell them on Linux. Plenty of schools are running linux on the back end now, but it really boils down to the site sysadmin and what he/she and staff are trained for.

Yes you are right it's all a big word game because nobody can agree on what FOSS really means.

That's why wikipedia has separate entries for "Free software" and "Free and Open Source Software", and for that matter, "Freeware".

The "Free" part of FOSS is defined namely as the part which allows a user to make and distribute copies of the software without paying a licensing fee (such as the GNU license). The "Open Source" part refers to the free as in libre ability to make changes to the source code, thus Open Source. This is how I see it and I think is the prevailing view.

The bottom line is everything costs something, whatever it is labeled.

The failure or success of companies to make a profit depends entirely on how seriously they take the moniker of "FOSS". Figuring out to make people think the software is free and still have them pay for it is a marketing a sales problem and if they can do it, or package it around a product offering like Sun does, they will be successful.

Investors want to fund companies that will turn a profit, and a good enough profit to make their investment worthwhile compared to other investments they could have made. So if a FOSS driven company wants investment capital via private or public offering, they had best be able to turn a good profit or once that initial funding dries up they are going to go under.

So rather than a paradigm, or principle, the FOSS based companies have to deal with the paradox of producing good enough product that no support is needed, yet having as their only source of income being supporting said product.

Let's face it - nothing is free. If you get your software for absolutely nothing, someone else is wasting long hours of programming or some investor is investing money and getting no return. If a company uses OSS and pays a employed or contracted programmer to fix bugs and add features, that OSS is not FOSS to that company. If they have to pay an annual support contract for each software license a la commercial redhat, it is not FOSS to that company.