Sigh... Most of you didn't even read the article.

Not one of the "base it on Linux or BSD" comments gets it. This whole thing is MSR saying, "look, we got it wrong, and so did everyone else. It's not just about one computer anymore."

Sure, they're fixing up the way system resources are exposed and planning to make the whole OS more fault tolerant, but the key takeaway is that the whole OS is network aware. Apps can discover storage, processors, memory, and other resources on the local trusted network, and use them without caring at all that they might be on different machines.

Try getting a single apache or IIS instance to run on 50 servers in a cluster, without writing all of the distribution logic in the application. Sure you could separately configure a local instance on each node, and set up file syncronization or network storage, and...

Why federate your database when you could just add another node to the OS cluster, thereby increasing the resources available to the single DB instance?

The goal is to get all the infrastucture work for free.

I hope someone, anyone, can pull this off. As a developer of a distributed app, let me tell you, the bar right now is WAY too high, and current operating systems, be they Windows or Linux are not up to the task.

[Edit: slashes caused unintentional italics]

Huge! Congrats Gentleman.

"... adolescence will in the future evolve into a period of experimentation and education that will last from the teenage years into the mid-thirties. In a kind of wanderjahr prolonged for decades, young people will try out jobs on a temporary basis, float in and out of their parents' homes, hit the Europass-and-hostel circuit, pick up extra courses and degrees, and live with different people in different places."

I am 30 yeard old and that's a description of my current life. Perhaps the author is old and doesn't realize that the world he foresees is already here.

Note: unix also began as a skunkworks within a monopoly...

The one fact that people always leave out when discussing life expectancy increases of the last century is that it is almost entirely due to lower infant mortality. The life expectancy of a 30 year old now is almost the same as it was 100 years ago.

That means that seniors aren't disproportionately represented due to medical technology, but rather due to baby booms.

"Fifty years ago senior citizens were not a force in electoral politics. Now the AARP is widely said to be the most powerful organization in Washington. Medicare, Social Security, retirement, Alzheimer's, snowbird economies, the population boom, the golfing boom, the cosmetic-surgery boom, the nostalgia boom, the recreational-vehicle boom, Viagra—increasing longevity is entangled in every one."

No, it isn't because longevity has not increased. It's just the fact that an unusually large number of people were born 60-70 years ago.

The comic is sort of funny, but a comment about someone being scared off by make and Linux on a site for hackers is like someone on a cooking site saying "what's this blender bullshit, ah fuck it, I'm going out to eat".

My progression was thusly:

Day One: "Oh boy, Mandrake Linux sure is easy to install!" Day Two: "What the hell is this 'make' bullshit?" Day Three: "I think I'll try another distro..." Day Four: "Fuck it, I'm getting a Mac."

please not this again

I can't upmod this enough.

The higher telco profits come at a great cost to the economy as a whole. Bandwidth is today just as important to economic growth as any other basic infrastructure.

The geographic challenge of the US is a red herring. Monopolistic laws, regulations and just plain old collusion, along with very high barriers to entry (regulations again) are responsible for the sorry state of US bandwidth.

I find it interesting that the driver had been stopped by "10 people" concerned about the privacy of Google Street View in the same country that has thousands of CCTV cameras lining the streets.