MS-DOS no longer exists in Windows. I don't think it was compatible with the NT kernel. The "Command Prompt" is confusingly similar though, but I don't think they share code.

Eagerly awaiting the first fork! MS-DOS for Linux? Mac? It can finally happen!

Of course they are. It's called competition. As far as they stick with laws, it's all fair game trying to use tactics to "undermine" them.

Strange timing on this one. They should at least wait for the Mars Science Lab to touchdown - it won't even be too long until it does, since it's already on its way. That way, media attention on Mars and public awareness/interest in Mars missions will be far greater.

Does the quantity really matter? Would you feel less concerned if "only" your entire city and your whereabouts was photographed?

Or even just the city block where you live?

Haha, you may be right and you just reignited my IT bubble fears... :-/

Microsoft already has the technology necessary in their own audio/video/text Windows Live Messenger platform. So I don't think it's about that. And yes, I feel sorry for the Skype staff today -- I don't think this move bodes well for them at all. Their competence may not be what Microsoft is looking for here.

And as for other reasons, the paying customer base (compared to the non-paying WLM user base) of Skype could perhaps be attractive to Microsoft. Keep in mind that Skype is running with losses despite all these users, though.

In the end, taking all these thoughts together, I can only imagine that this is a risky move by Microsoft. I think they are hoping for awesome synergy effects from some forthcoming integration with their products. I assume something big, and no minor idea, since it needs to pay these $8.5 billion and more.

My first idea was integrating this with Windows Phone 7 (8? 9?) to get phone calls at data rates, but I have no idea how they'll going to get the providers to accept that. That would be a feat as grand as Steve Jobs getting the music companies to sign on to iTunes back in the days, if not greater.

Otherwise... Hmm, someone mentioned Xbox or Kinect integration to communicate with others with these devices... Well that's a thought but why shouldn't they be able to just implement that feature with their Live network? Write a WLM client for these - done. No $8.5 billion wasted.

Not sure if there are other ideas about where MS may be going with this?

So they know Anonymous DDOS'ed them, and Anonymous have admitted this too.

They also were attacked separately where the theft took place. They don't know if these groups were working together. They blame the latter on Anonymous too. How did they draw that final conclusion??

I can only wish.

It's because the OP isn't trolling about Linux.

This will obviously not happen (sharing off by default!? haha, good one!), and even Sophos probably knows that.

They're just coming forward because they want to get free advertising as a security company that cares for user privacy. That is all. Empty story here.

Yes... What's more surprising than the closure is that it wasn't on YouTube.

For some reason, I always thought that Google, years ago, decided to make Google Video simply mirror the contents of YouTube and vice versa.

I agree with you, except that I don't need the high bitrate and mobile support, and get away with half the price. :)

It's not that bad IMHO to pay $8/month for unlimited access to that music library. At least not enough to speak of Spotify being "killed". It's far better than anything you could get in the nineties, or even early 2000's, so I still think that this is definitely progress in the right direction. Yes, you don't get to "own" your music, but I consider it like I do with movie visits or (back in the bad old days) visits to music stores to buy CD's more or less regularly.

Similar yearly cost, but much more convenient.

Won't happen. What *is* insanity today, however, is sticking to a yearly or bi-yearly release cycle when the HTML standards evolve faster than that. Shorter cycles implies less features indeed, but this also means that there's not as much to test before each release, so the risks of following the evolution of the web better isn't increased despite following it better.

This is basically a very simplified version of the Chromium dev's motivation to move to this.

But it's of course more fun to think it's a version number game. However, just wait 'til Chrome 27 and you'll see that version numbers will lose their meaning soon enough, just like Google and others intended.

I wonder how they did it before Facebook?