I agree that your alteration makes his point clearer (although I'm unsure it was really necessary), but I'm not sure it's as much to the argument's detriment as you think. I'm probably going to come off as a Microsoft fanboy here, but so be it.

The reminder must be made that companies both create a legacy of existing files, and must use files by other companies. If you were to flick a magic switch, today, and have all your users understand a new suite of office applications and religiously save into an open format, you would in no way have solved your problems. Their blissful glee at being able to do what they were already doing but in a slightly different way would last until the moment they tried to open an existing file, or one from an external source, that "doesn't look right". And yes, I know I'm going over the same old points that get made, but I'd argue that 1) they're unfortunately still relevant, and 2) with respect, your own points aren't new either.

One additional aspect that usually gets skipped over is Microsoft Access. Yes yes, toy database, shouldn't be used in business etc etc, but we all know it does. I don't believe, and please correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't checked in a year or two, that any of the open source suites can attempt to open .mdb files. There are now open source Access-like systems to create databases, but again, what do you do about the legacy information? With databases, it's even more likely that these may be currently used, critical files.

As you've said, the starting point is probably to begin using the open document formats in Microsoft products, until all the documents made with older formats are simply not relevant anymore; for my part, our company has only migrated a few users to a version of Office new enough to *have* those formats, so I'm stuck with .doc whether I like it or not. In the end though, it's rather amusing to consider that if, one day, we find ourselves in a situation where the majority of files are created in an open format and switching to an open office suite is easy, it's likely because Microsoft bridged the gap this way.

Hey now, this is Slashdot, surely you can't expect me to RTFA? ;)

See, that just raises further questions; so the tool exists, but rather than just run it on the whole project they're asking individuals to run it on their own code as they're going forward? Makes sense from this point on, but why spend the last 6 months... You know what, screw it, I'm sure it makes sense in context!

Wait; so they've had half their people working for half a year to remove code which isn't used anymore?

(Disclaimer here; I'm an occasional, hobbyist programmer at best. It's entirely possible that I'm missing something here, and if I am do please enlighten me.)

I wonder why this couldn't be automated. You make a program that runs through and makes a big list of every function in the source, deletes functions that aren't called anywhere, repeat a few times to deal with chains of unused functions, and you're done. It seems like exactly the kind of task a computer is designed to do. Have a few flags to tell it whether to treat commented-out functions calls as valid so you don't wind up removing the alternate version of routines while trying out experimental new versions, and whether to actively delete the functions or just feed them back to the programmers to examine themselves, and you're finished. If you really want to be clever, have it look for calls that technically exist, but due to the logic involved would never get invoked in any circumstances.

I'm not even sure it'd be fair to say it would take too long to develop such a tool. After all, once it's made for a particular language, then it's done; everyone can take advantage of it, and in a few years time when you decide you need to do another grand cleanup, no need to take up six months and half your team for the task.

Now don't get me wrong here; code optimisation is a different beast, and there's far more to maintaining a tidy code base than this. But we're explicitly talking about a project to just remove unused code here. Do we really need to get those many eyes all focused on this?

I had a look on pathfinder, nothing nearby I'm afraid. I might check the forums, we'll see!

As for running a game... tried that a few years back, kinda worked for a few weeks, and then for reasons I don't even remember now we just stopped playing. Ultimately at this point, I just don't feel like I've had enough time just playing the game to enjoy it if I was the one running it, or enough time to prepare any adventures worth playing.

I already did; we had a group of 4 of us a few years back and, despite only having four sessions under my belt I GMed. I think I did a pretty good job too. Ultimately though, it just didn't stick for the rest, and I left it really wanting to play the game a bit more before I started running it. So while I know that's a possibility I really don't feel like I know anyone who'd be interested or have the free time at this point, so picking up the books would give me very low odds that they'd ever get used. If I knew I had a nigh-guaranteed way to start playing I'd jump on them, but I'm not going to sink money into it when chances are I won't get a game.

That's why I really don't get why the services I mentioned don't already exist. Why force the players to be DnD evangelists too? Do I really have to be selling everyone I know on the game before I've really had chance to play it? There are surely other people out there already ready to play, why not give them ways to get together? If I saw the 5th ed books, and on the inside cover it said "Looking for group? Visit wotc.com/lfg" or something, I'd probably jump at it... I could even go and search there first, try and arrange the group, and buy the books ready for the first session if it works out. OK, sure, I can try and convince everyone else to go along with my new hobby or go to one of the many unofficial websites out there and hope the people in my area are using the same unofficial site, but surely it makes sense to have a central, official, one-stop location for all your "who can I play with" needs?

A bit of search on the site shows they're moving in that direction. You can search for official "Encounters" sessions dotted around (although there're none near me), and they're working on something called a "virtual table" which might be for online play, but this is still all to link WotC to the players,= rather than the players to each other, and that seems like a pretty big deal to me.

I won't be buying any of the 5th edition stuff, for the same reason I didn't buy 4th or 3rd or... well, I do have some 2nd edition, but anyway.

I've wanted to play D&D since I first heard about it over 20 years ago, but the core problem has always been simple: I don't know anyone who plays D&D. I don't know how to find anyone who does. I've tried all the methods I can think of, found a few online group-finding sites and the like, but no go. I DID stumble across a 2nd Edition group not long after I left school who I played with for a handful of sessions, but then I moved away and lost touch. There aren't even any tabletop gaming shops here anymore; the last that stocked anything like D&D closed a couple of years ago, and just sold the books, no starter sessions or noticeboards or anything of the sort.

What I want from D&D right now is twofold; firstly, a decent, official, centralised, and above all *global* (I'm not in the US) grouping system to find people to play with. Maybe even go a little on the social networking side and let players say a little about themselves, their playstyles, and maybe even their characters if they have any they like to stick with. Secondly, a decent, official method of playing the games online; at the very least a chatroom with a map screen with tools for the DM to build it up quickly and easily, along with a LFG system and a friends list to help forming regular groups, preferably support for microphones/webcams, characters/enemy abilities/stat tracking, session saving, and while we're at it an easy way to print off the state of play for if you ever wind up with a great group, and decide you want to take it off the screen and get round a table, as Gygax intended. You don't have to expose all the rules of play if you still want people to buy the books, or heck, have each book contain an authorisation key to lets you use the features/skills/whatever that that book contains.

If either of those features already exist, then what I need is for them to be more public, because I've looked and haven't found them.

They're aiming to release them in November, and given the foundation only started up in mid-2009 that's hardly a long enough dev cycle to be accusing them of "vapourware" IMO.

I have a 1.44mb floppy disc here, and I can fit a copy of every game ever for those systems (except the ones I can't fit) on there too. Amazing!

Dammit, feel bad for ruining that now!

Intentional, I assure you ;)