As I understand it, WGA was simply used to identify the copies of the software, and probably also the master from which all the counterfeit copies were made. From then on it's simply a matter of hunting down the person who owns the master copy.

You learned COBOL in 1991?

I take your point, though. It's a very simple logic sequence - does the year go into four? Does it go into two hundred? Does it go into one thousand? If conditions 1 and 3 are satisfied, add an extra day onto the yearly cycle. It's really simple and really stupid.

That said, I'm surprised they didn't use a build of Windows CE, which (IIRC) already has leap-year handling built into it.

It won't have such a problem. MS won't be having financial troubles for a long time - they have plenty of money floating around from OEM licensing and advertising on the Windows Live services.

Please... I don't mind it in the comments, but the OP has a point. It's OK if Slashdot has a bit of anti-MS bias (this is the free world, after all) but I don't like the idea of this place becoming a libertarian Daily Mail (or, god forbid, FOX News).

Finally it looks like Microsoft are doing what they should have done with Vista. It's more stable, they've finally fixed the taskbar, got rid of the ridiculous sidebar and seem to have made it a lot quicker, according to the reports I've read. I've not used it myself yet, but after the disaster that was Vista, as they say, things can only get better.

Yeah, it's a shame octopuses have eight arms not feet.

Yeah, maybe LaTeX, but use a better front-end, like http://lyx.org/LyX. Then you can apply the formatting as you type.

Simple.

When the kids access the 'net through the school connection, it goes through an ISA/proxy server which forbids porn and games. At home, it is therefore nanny-free.

Filtering should be server-based if it is to have any effect.