Perhaps, but this is typical for hardware contracts in an environment that Microsoft seeks to control. If the banks have hardware maintenance contracts for their ATM machines, they are likely bumping up against the same problem.

I have worked in an IT department where we were getting slammed every few years with huge upgrade crunches. These were on desktop PCs not ATMs so I don't know how closely our problems mirrored those of banks but for us it was all of in-house software that had to be tested and upgraded to work with Microsoft changes.

We had a hardware maintenance contracted so every few years,like it or not, we would get new PCs that had Microsoft's newest OS. It's not as easy as just dropping new PCs on everyone's desks. Every piece of software that our employees used needed to be tested with the new version of Windows. A lot of them broke. Microsoft products like MS Office mostly worked in vanilla form but we had to test all of our macros and any third party add-ons like Dragon Dictate which often broke.

Basically any third party or in house applications were a crap shoot. The PCs would come in and we had little time to adapted. It was a total pain. If we were running Linux we could have tested at our own pace and then deployed instead of rushing to meet someone else's schedule.

At the rate we are driving species extinct a much simpler system of naming the few surviving will be sufficient.

"Note that superdeterminism doesn't necessarily rule out 'free will'."

I guess I don't understand how the example that you gave following that statement supports the idea of "free will." For me the more interesting question is: "What does awareness mean in a deterministic world?"

Are we just observers riding the deterministic "roller coaster?"

"a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detectorâ(TM)s setting."

Of course the physicist doesn't have free will. No one has free will. If the universe is controlled by natural laws everything that has happened or ever will happen must be preordained. Every synapse that has ever fired in our brains is just an electrochemical event caused by a long chain of other events that can be traced back to the big bang.

I'm old enough to have lived through the entire Microsoft history of dirty tricks, disingenuous press releases and out right illegal anti-trust violations. It seems that some things never do really change.

Part of the compatibility issues are due to the time lag caused by the need to reverse engineer Microsoft's âoeStandard.â If the past is any indication of how this company works they haven't been forthcoming on providing complete documentation to their document format. There may be a bit of the âoeWindows isn't done until Lotus won't run...â attitude left in a company that has a history of wanting not just to compete but do completely crush anything that remotely smells like competition. And if that takes lies, dirty tricks or anti-trust violations requiring decades to litigate then so be it.

For the younger folks here: Watch this company with a skeptical eye because they don't have YOUR best interest at heart and they will do practically anything to win.

Very true but Microsoft is known for using their operating system to extend power in other areas.

They did this in the non-OS software areas by using undisclosed API calls giving them an advantage and now they want the tablet market.

They probably figure that most people would end up using Windows 8 because most new PCs are sold with a Microsoft OS. Once people get use to Windows 8 they probably figured that they would gain an advantage in the tablet market due to OS familiarity.

They never learn.

I understand that e-cigarettes may be able to be used to kick an addictive habit that has horrific health risks. However, it is another addictive pastime that probably has health risks of its own.

It has the potential of becoming a fad which would hook millions who believe it to be safe into a dangerous and expensive habit. Something the corporate powers would relish being that they consider this a real cash cow and anyone hooked a mere crop to be cultivated.

If I didnâ(TM)t have morals and I controlled an evil tobacco company I would endeavor to gain control of the e-cigarette market so that I could manipulate the price of both products. That way if tobacco sales started to fall off I could raise the price of e-cigarettes enough to drive customers to the more affordable tobacco products. Back and forth I would cultivate my crops.

First I didn't put any words into anyone's mouth. It sounded to me like he was suggesting that more porn=less rape inferring that the production and distribution of child porn would reduce child molestation. I asked him if that is what he was saying.

Second because of your rude and nasty reply I must assume that you are either mentally challenged or have anger management problems. Either way I doubt you will be able to understand what I have just explained.

In the summer when the weather gets hot and people eat ice cream the cases of malaria go up. Should we make ice cream illegal?

There is no evidence that the increase in porn is related to the number of rape cases.

Are you suggesting that we should encourage video taping of the molestation of children in order to reduce child molestation?? That is just stupid.

From the article:

It would not be effective, and possibly counter productive, in catching child molesters.

This statement starts with a false assumption and ends in an erroneous conclusion. The assumption is that the ultimate goal is to catch child molesters. It's conclusion is that it is not effective and may actually make it harder to catch child molesters.

The laws that make child pornography illegal is a separate but related issue to child molestation. It is related because in order to create child pornography a child must be molested. It is separate in that it can stand on its own. The idea that for child pornography to be illegal it must aid in the apprehension of child molesters is absurd.

The author then invents a fairy tail where a person with eye glasses with a built-in camera turns a corner and records a child being raped. He then makes the erroneous conclusion that video recording a crime in process would be a crime itself. It would be illegal if the person who caught it with his camcorder just walked away and didn't report it or worse yet posted the recording on the Internet. People on this guys web site have brought this to the authors attention but he chose to double down on dumb by saying that child pornography is illegal no mater how you get it period. However, if turned over to the police it would NOT be pornography it would be evidence of child molestation. It would only become pornography if it were kept by the individual.

Even if this guy were correct the law could be changed to exempt those situations. Again using this fairy tail as an excuse to legalise child pornography is absurd!

The entire article is filled with this pseudo logic and erroneous conclusions. Not really worth the read IMHO.

I really don't know what Romney gives a damn about. It seems like he's been on both sides of every issue so who can tell what he believes?

I do know that he is surrounding himself with neocons and that is disconcerting. Without his own convictions he will just go along with whatever his advisers tell him. We are already hearing them beat the drums of war with regards to Iran.

I predict that if Romney gets elected we will see a repeat of the Bush years. There will be more unfunded wars. We'll see a loosening of regulations that are already too watered down. After the next banking bubble forms and bursts due to the lack of regulations, we will enter into another gilded age. We are already seeing the beginning of a gilded age now with the massive corruption in our government. The common people are no longer being represented. Only a few very rich individuals and powerful corporate powers control our government.

It is a common practice for a candidate to drift more to the centre in order to win the undecided vote. The reason people are undecided is that they don't adhere to either party line.

Romney would like to grab these votes but the Republican Party's position is to fundamentally change Medicare and Social Security. They want to control the cost occurred by the government by issuing vouchers that the recipients would use to obtain private insurance. That would ensure that the cost to the government would be predictable and controllable. It would do little to control the cost of medical care for the recipients particularly for the elderly who tend to have serious medical conditions. That group may not even be able to find insurance that would be fully covered by the voucher.

Obviously if they clearly and truthfully explained their plan they wouldn't win many votes so they make statements to deceive people into thinking that their plan would be a good thing. i.e. They claim that they are the ones who will "save" Medicare. What they don't tell you is that they will make it useless to the most vulnerable and thus kill it. It would be "Medicare" in name only.

I think you are living in a fact free zone.

The Republicans are not offering real solutions. All they want to do is give tax breaks that will mostly go to their rich cronies and privatise everything, again for the benefit of the richest.

They are in the process of killing the U. S. Postal service by requiring that they fund their retirement system 75 years in advance. They want to sell off our national treasures and they don't mind rigging elections to get that done.

Right now they are enacting voter suppression laws that will primarily suppress voting in areas that would tend to vote for Obama under the guise of preventing voter fraud even though voter fraud has never been a major problem.

They create gridlock like little children throwing a tantrum. Can you say filibuster, filibuster, filibuster? Sure you can! And then claim that Obama can't get anything done. Well no shit Sherlock. Remember that they admitted that their number one priority was to make Obama a one term President! THERE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY! Screw the economy, screw anything else. And they announced their evil little pin head plan right from the start.

The American people cannot afford to allow these cheating low life scum bags to stay in office. They almost destroyed our country during the eight years that Bush and his cronies ran the country and we just can not afford to have a repeat. Oh, and isn't it curious that Bush didn't even really win the election but the Republicans suppressed the recount which later showed that he lost!!

Get ready folks. These bastards are gearing up to steal the election again. They have already voted in Iowa to extend the voting period for Republican leaning counties while shortening the voting period for Democratic leaning counties! That's right! Make it harder to cast your vote if you live in a primarily Democrat county and easier if most of the people would vote Republican!

Is it any wonder people are getting pissed off?

So you are accusing the kernel team of unethical behaviour? Really? What proof do you have that they would do something like that? Yes there are purists but it would require someone who had the power to change the API to break things as you suggest and I don't see the kernel team doing that.