Slight error here ...

IBMers don't usually retire at 60. It was an unwritten rule for many years that the Chairman retired at 60. If it were the usual thing, brother, my countdown clock would be running!

Did he really mean to tell us this much?

This is so M$-- shallow, not well thought out and definitely in their habitually "we'll figure (or fix) it out later." You can always count on Ballmer to blow it out of proportion. What an absolutely great quote. "Those will be good acquisitions, and they're important to us," he said. "And they're of strategic importance." We have no idea what they are because they don't exist yet. But they're important. They're strategic. C'mon, give it a rest-- maybe you'll quit perspiring so much. But you know, come to think of it, maybe they are important. Maybe they'll buy a company that'll give 'em a clue...

Balderdash

If I interpret the comments correctly, the quoted blogger is saying that MS is too stupid to correctly apply principles of backward compatibility in their development and maintenance processes so, so sorry, they'll have to muck around in the innards of your machine without your knowledge.

I knew they had contempt for their users, but this is a pretty pathetic excuse even for them.

Nevermind privacy, security, and etcetera

Just consider the arrogance!

Time for everyone to switch back to paper and pencil. And keep a shredder next to the desk.

Not so fast ...

No offense, but anyone that's carefully observed the American public education scene will have noticed that first, there is zero correlation between the money school districts spend and the results they achieve. In fact, the super could easily have said we're going to have to forego painting all the gymnasiums and teacher's lounges for the next two years as blather about spending money that could pay 20 teacher's salaries. You will have noticed he didn't say they had planned to hire 20 teachers, only that discharging their obligation could pay twenty salaries. This is another way of saying, we'd rather spend that money on something else. Since money's fungible, there's no reason that their having to pay bills they incurred represents any hardship whatever. One must ask, why is this school district's failure to budget or spend properly the burden of IBM's stockholders? The second thing to consider is the quite obvious point that they knew 14 years ago they'd have to pony the dough up. Any intelligent budgeting would have started making allowance for this back then and this would have zero impact because they'd already have the money. In fact, they could have discharged their debt earlier instead of later.