[luthers_inkwell]

Please put this, and me, in the techping.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Interesting story about why Paul Allen distanced himself from Gates and Ballmer.

Bottom line: while he was working himself to death on DOS 2.0 and battling Hodgkin's disease, the two Steves were more concerned about how to steal his shares back if he died than they were about keeping him alive.

My apologies for linking to PBS.

[WalterSkinner]

Vista is delayed

..a polite way of putting it...

[antiRepublicrat]

Software patents only make the lawyers rich and hurt the consumer and small developer.

[Todd_Gray]

Microsoft will have to worry about the Open Invention Network if they want to get into patent wars. The only people who stand to benefit from this are the lawyers.

[N3WBI3]

Microsoft doesn't want its OS sales pirated, but it doesn't want to miss out on that market either. Linux apps can be shipped with a free OS

This is where I have seen savings using OSS software and now other operating systems like the free Solaris. I can run my test and development environments for almost nothing compared to a windows environment because with applications like Asterisk on Linux you pay the 2K in licensing and support on production but in test and dev I am running on some of the server hardware which was greened out last year on a free version of each...

[Myrddin]

Apple just released software to make the Intel based Macs run Windows XP. Why would Microsoft want to attack a hardware OEM that supports their OS?

[TChris]

Software patents will go down in history as one of the most monumental blunders of the 20th century.

Once again, the lawyers win.

[Constantine XIII]

Hitler couldn't win a two front war. Can Microsoft? :)

[Revolting cat!]

If we're going to run proprietary operating systems then I want my

... which has a nice windowing interface. Otherwise, France has got it right suing Apple to open up the iTunes! Open Source all the way, dude! Like it or not, it's coming, or we'll lose history like some ancient hieroglyphics. Who today can read disks written by the glorious Datapoint DOS system (superior to MS-DOS, by the way.)

[Don Joe]

Linux apps can be shipped with a free OS; Microsoft apps cannot.

Why not? After all, they used to do that. Anyone could!

Prior to Windows 3.0, the Windows SDK included a "Runtime" version of Windows, which could be tied to the app.

My first Windows app -- Word for Windows 1.0 -- came with that runtime version. If you installed Word onto a DOS machine, when you ran it, it would automatically load the Windows 2.0 "Runtime Version". When you exited Word, the Windows runtime would likewise shut down.

They chose to stop doing that when they came out with Windows 3.0. I see no reason why they couldn't do it again, if they so chose.

[ShadowAce]

Please ignore GE. This really is a good post. Don't be discouraged by an individual who obviously does not speak for the rest of us here who are interested in various tech issues.

BTW--you have been added to the tech ping list as requested!