The EOL for Microsoft Office 2007 is 2015 I believe. What killer features is Microsoft going to offer in that time frame? Why upgrade at all? Products like KnowledgeTree already provide the needed document management features around existing documents and even if Microsoft moves further in that direction (Sharepoint) the space is already well catered for. Microsoft Office has some insane utilization figures in the Fortune 500 companies - it's effectively 100%.

We're at the point where we don't need to upgrade our hardware every two years to remain current. Companies are moving to 3/4/5 year replacement cycles on hardware and may even push beyond that. Each year extra on existing hardware reduces the MS Windows income. Some companies have started to investigate OpenOffice.org/Symphony/Google Docs instead and ANY that move in that direction are depriving MS of future revenue.

Porting SQL Server to a non-Windows platform would be interesting because that would almost certainly involve a Linux port. What are the alternatives? Mac OS X server farms are few and far between. The principle database platforms these days are Linux, AIX, Solaris, z/OS and p-series. Oracle and IBM both have heavy and extensive presence on these platforms. It's tough to see how SQL Server could displace enough entrenched customers to make the port plus support actually make a profit.

Visual Studio is an interesting issue but again, that would be entering a crowded marketplace. Also the number of developers is considerably less than the number of people who need an office suite, so even if the profit margins are high, it's not going to be a massive cash cow.

Now, I don't think that Microsoft is going to shut its doors in the next ten years. However, I doubt the company will be wielding anything like the influence it does today.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

I need that perl script on my desk NOW! Hang on - if it raises kids, it's probably in Lisp.

Nothing is too extensible .. that's like saying that a language can only have so many features. However, Emacs can be hard to configure for someone who is new to the platform (and yes I use the term platform for the emacs environment). If you are lucky enough to have a Emacs Guru around when you have questions, then you stand a better chance of surviving first contact with the Emacs underbelly. It also helps if you are comfortable with lisp and the hook concept that Emacs makes extensive use of.

Assembling your environment by accreting bits of configuration is a highway to Problemville. You probably just needed to add a local-set-key sexp for the appropriate major or minor mode hook to override TAB. Knowing which key map is current is the trick.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

I'm in danger of fanning the flames here but I really think you are way off target on the above statement.

If you lift the lid on what Emacs can do (as in, you grok Emacs lisp), then Emacs offers a level of flexibility that can't be matched by vi. I've written utilities built into Emacs to crawl through custom traces looking for specific patterns and summarizing them on the fly as you move through files. View-linkage routines to allow you to navigate two related files (not two similar files - we're not talking about ediff-buffers here) in lock-step. Idle timers allow you to keep internal structures reasonably current without causing the interactive performance of Emacs to suffer. The list goes on.

Vi is extensible. Emacs is more extensible.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

This is a completely misleading statement and totally misses the point. Well done!

You don't need to look at the source code to see what other products do. You just need to look at the ODF files they produce. Indeed, given the licenses of the products that implement ODF, you can obtain the copies you need for testing FOR FREE.

Similarly, while your legal department might bar you from reading competitors code for fear of copyright co-mingling, there is nothing to stop you employing a third party to go look on your behalf and write a report on what was done. So you can have your cake and eat it.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

The big advantage of Ubuntu is that Canonical will send you, free of charge, an entire Operating System, complete with application stacks, on a DVD if you ask.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

When it comes to writing a good design document, use whatever you feel most comfortable. Yes - UML is a highly expressive way of describing the life cycle of a system but if it isn't familiar to you, you'll be better off with a list of things that it is supposed to do. Ideally, the design document should be readable by every one who has some requirement from the design. This does sometimes mean that you need to split your design into externals (what the customer sees) and internals.

One technique that I have found to be particularly effective is "test-driven development". That's another buzz-wordy phrase for your resume. However, this one carries significant benefits.

If at the time you write your design you also write a ready-to-run test suite to test your design, you will write a better, more complete design because you will have been forced to think about the scenarios your design must cope with. Further more, you also have a great way to assess your progress as the design is implemented. If you were thorough in writing your test suite, then you can gauge the functional completeness of your project by simply seeing how many of your tests are running successfully.

Oddly enough, this approach leads to faster development cycles because you always have a clear picture of what is working, what needs to be implemented still and what is not behaving as expected. It is also pretty motivating to write a couple of hundred lines of code and to be able to quickly run some tests to validate its function and see another two tests click through successfully.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Of course you can do this with Emacs. You can do anything you like with Emacs.

C-x M-x M-butterfly RET

Runs and hides...

Depends on the terms-of-service. For people who pay for every Gb over a specific value or who get reduced throughput after they max out their allocation, having someone freeloading on their wireless is indeed costing them either money or quality of service.

Now you can argue that they should damn well learn to secure their wireless adapter. But I dare say you'd be upset if your neighbour jumped your fence and plugged an extension cable into your outdoor outlet. Why didn't you padlock it up?!

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Given that we get a few percent benefit from using ICC over GCC after heavy tuning, I'd say that GCC gets the job done pretty well, given that it is a general purpose, multiplatform compiler. And one thing ICC totally sucks at is compiling speed - ICC takes two to three times longer than GCC to compile and link code. When I need to test a feature today, you can guess which compiler I reach for, especially when GCC can take over an hour to complete some of the code bases here.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

The longest words I can find for that lot are only 13 letters long:

• softheartedly
• tetrahedrally

and the best score (without bonuses) is for "jollyheads". Ah the wonders of a few lines of perl.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes