kfsone, your expert conclusion is that they created an operating system with thousands and thousands of person-hours, simply in a masked attempt to manipulate their books? Bravo! An answer that no one cared to look for. "Humans simplify everything down to their level of misunderstanding." Ken Dahl.

I use Windows 8 every day, and spend the large majority of that time on the *desktop.* Sure PC sales are flagging, and MS has to be more present in the tablet area. But the number are... anyone. Huge. They better get WITH IT! Because we Linux nerds know marketing, sales and what the people really want sooooo well. Also, when we all get into an echo chamber, the sound gets really loud! That means what we're all saying must be true! By Shona Ghosh Posted on 2 May 2013 at 11:18 Read more: Microsoft sold as many Windows tablets as all its partners combined | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/381583/microsoft-sold-as-many-windows-tablets-as-all-its-partners-combined#ixzz2SXEDxYcE http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/381583/microsoft-sold-as-many-windows-tablets-as-all-its-partners-combined "Including sales from Acer, Asus and other manufacturers, total Windows tablet sales came to 1.8 million, meaning Microsoft sold as many tablets as all of its partners combined." All you have to do is get off your asses and do the smallest amount of research to see that your positions of alarm for MS are debatable at best. I love when nerds get their panties in a bunch about an operating system that has already blown all Linux distributions into the weeds. Windows 8 is great. I think the Start Button replacement start screens are much better than searching through lists (click click click click click click). When people get used it, they'll start complaining about something else. Meanwhile, whatever PCs and Tablets with Windows and Windows RT will keep selling, way, way more than all desktop users using Linux. We should make a yearly "Microsoft is Going to Die Because _________," event where Slashdotters can carry signs that say, "The End of the World is Coming!"

And secure!....

NAZIS HITLER! GONG! GONG! GONG! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

It's not Open Source. They make the rules. You decide to play, or not play.

Fragmentation? It's more like a bloodbath. I've been waiting since 1998 when Netscape released it's source for Linux to get it's desktop act together. It hasn't. It isn't competitive, as evidenced by it's minuscule market penetration on the desktop. Eric Raymond was wrong. It takes a cathedral to make good *finished* software that is actually usable by a large percentage of the computer world. Apple and MS devote millions of dollars to usability. Linux? People argue about what should happen, then all do different things on the desktop. There's no standardization of usage across various programs, and as Miguel said, attempting to get things working by finding the right ... anything... is still problematic. If you want to be a l33t self-satisfied Linux user, great. If you want users to be able to use your software, you have to do what the large software corporations do, QA the shit out of it, seek user input and spend big bucks to get developers to go to the nth degree of polish, whether they want to or not. This is the biggest difference between corporate software and Open Source (et al.) for the user; corporations force developers to not be lazy when the grunt work starts.

That's great, Linus, very professional. I'm sorry I cannot converse with my coworkers the way you do, because I actually have to answer to someone. Some of us out here, Linus, practice something called, "getting along." It's possible to deal with someone's request which you do not like, from a person you might not like, without charging them with being Microsoft dick suckers. Believe me, it really is possible. I've disagreed with people myself over different issues at work without calling them Microsoft dick suckers. You might say something like, "I'm sorry, I don't want to do that for the reason's I will list here." Or, even, "I'm strongly opposed (While thinking, "you fucking MICROSOFT DICK SUCKER!") to doing this," all without publicly slamming them. One thing all this declaration of dick suckers does for me, it makes Open Source software that much more desirable. I mean, how can it be hard to deal with, or bad software, when people are yelling at each other and calling people "DICK SUCKERS" in public?

Every time I've tried Opera, I think, "weird." Then I read comments that say things like, "it was first at this, or this, or this, and it's better at that." How many people are actually using Opera on a regular basis? Just wondering.

When the Zombies do come, there's no real point in fighting or running, eventually they will win.

No, they don't. I was there in 1998 when Netscape released their code and not much later, the Cathedral and the Bazaar was written by Mr. Raymond, and everyone rejoiced. What happened then? Linux on servers, and hardly any dent on the desktop. Now we proclaim the death of the desktop, and perhaps this is a spot where Linux might, or might not eventually gain the upper hand. I was waiting through the 90's and the 00's for Linux to make more than a slightly measurable dent in personal computers, as opposed to embedded devices (a so so market penetration), and servers where it has done fantastic, but Windows is there too, in the server space. Having spent most of my time working in Unix/Linux shops and cobbling things together with roughly hewn programs, lacking, many times, basic documentation, I now happen to work in a Windows shop. The integration is astounding, and the Cathedral and the Bazaar was wrong in this way, it assumed that developers would develop to the nth degree for the sake of the cause. This doesn't happen. To get developers to achingly continue to get a project (interfaces, games, business programs like Office) *properly* prepared for the masses, you have to pay them mightily to do it. You have to dump the cash, or you get crap. No one likes busy work, which is all of taking a program from a rough stone, to a highly polished gem. Don't tell me about how, Linux rules. Personally, I can totally live without it. After all of the unintended and tacitly broken promises made by the Open Source community over the years, and all of the searching on Saturdays and Sundays trying desperately get something working before the Monday traffic hit, it's ironic to now see, crop after crop of people saying, "Linux won!" In your dreams.

So far, with my inattentive glance through comments, I don't see cat pee mentioned anywhere.

Darn.

Programs like SVN, TFS from Microsoft and GIT take care of remembering all the changes, of course. That's what I do for a living. With software change management using these programs, you can write any documentation you want as you can access any part of the code at any moment in time in its history. At my place of work, we are using the Scrum development process and past code isn't really worried about too much. In a sense we are always massaging all the code in the direction of satisfying clients, and making the code work better, while keeping track, using TFS of all the described items that were worked on as time goes along. We can access any file at any time along with its associated work items. From this any sort of story can be created about the deletion of code. The usual story in a busy business is that documentation is hard, so let's just move on.

When ideas that seem possible come to scientists in general, I'm guessing that they don't generally think, "I know that seems possible, but I'm not going to bother to check." When scientific investigations get funded, they are usually not looking around for anything, but at a specific set of things. So, things get missed. I think this cool kid represents a new force in knowledge through technology, etc, etc. I'm sure it's been defined millions of times somewhere, but basically crowd sourcing brainpower; computer power. What a cool find.

My thoughts exactly. For some reason I want to know what was in his mind about what he was doing, as if it matters.