Posts by jwenting

Sounds perfectly reasonable for customers to be cut off from a service if they deliberately or through ignorance (despite attempts to teach them which are obviously being made) cause problems with that service.

It's no different from people being cut off from 911 calls who repeatedly make fake calls as a joke (why it would be funny to place fake calls to an emergency service is beyond me, but there are people who think it's hillarious to see the police screaming through the street every day to non-existent emergencies at their neighbours' addresses).

"Just out of curiousity (as I really don't know anything about this sort of thing), why is it that the powerlines are uninsulated? Would it really be that much more expensive? Would it degrade the signal signal somehow? Add resistence? Enquiring minds want to know."

Weight mostly. If insulation were added to overground lines to prevent or seriously reduce line losses the cables would get so much heavier the distance between the towers would have to be halved or worse.
That would make the whole system not just a lot more expensive to build and maintain (even without taking the higher cost of the cable and transport of it into account) but impossible to implement in many areas where the land is built up. You might even have problems crossing wider rivers unless you could build towers in the middle of the river bed (which while technically feasible would interfere with shipping and be extremely expensive).
Underground cables (which don't have these restrictions) often are shielded at least partially (as part of corrosion protection layers etc.).
But here too cost is a factor in deciding how far they can go in adding shielding, as at some point the cost of adding more would be higher than the prevented line losses over the expected life of the cable.

"As I write this, Hurricane Katrina is pounding Lousiana and Mississippi. Major powerlines are down, communications are out, and people are using radios all over the place to communicate, and provide disaster relief. The National Hurricane Center is coordinating efforts on 14.325 MHz, with support people all over the US who are working other radio systems that are local to the hurricane's path. Imagine this communication being impossible due to BPL."

Fearfactor USA... First you say the powerlines are out (and thus not interfering with radio...), then you go on and say those same powerlines are making radio comms impossible.
Make up your mind.

Your fears of long range interference are unfounded. The power in the signal would be so low it will not interfere.
The main reason some people are against it is precisely the lack of reliable information you're portraying leading to the scare scenarios you're writing about.
These myths are perpetuated by people with a set interest in preventing the technology from being implemented who are mainly people with a large stake in existing communications networks (cable, telephone).
They stand to loose their stranglehold on internet access, or at least see it weakened a lot.

And even if there would be interference, the long distance lines would not carry the signal at all.
The losses on these lines are far too high for that (line losses of electrical power are so high that anything over a few hundred miles …

Landfall 60 miles from New Orleans around 5AM local.

No Cat, that's not the case. Google never stated that. They openly plagiarise copyrighted works unless the copyright holders complain after the fact. While they may initially put online only small pieces that's just to set a precedent which shows the publisher/author have abandoned the work into the public domain so after a while they're then within the law to put it all online (copyright needs to be enforced or it expires).

Could this case be related to Google's decision to publish entire libraries worth of books for online without prior consent from or compensation to the copyright holders?

Doing the same to websites and the images contained therein would be a logical next step after all.

I think this isn't so much about the search engine proper as well as Google's image server which indeed downloads images from all over the web and later returns those when queried about images for a given subject.
These aren't usually (at least when I last used it) fitted with a reference to the original source of the image, which is highly questionable behaviour on the part of Google (and Yahoo and others who have similar services).

Cat, WE know that but the average person reads the definition and hears the /. talk badmouthing Microsoft repeated over and over again, puts one and one together and concludes that Windows Update is spyware...

It's that simple, remember not everyone is computer litterate and many get their "information" third hand from sources which are themselves not to be trusted and/or have no expertise in the area they're advising people about.

An update service (especially an automated one) takes control of the user's computer without his consent and therefore under that definition constitutes spyware.
As many people believe update services send large amounts of information to the service provider who then stores all that data and uses it to determine what updates to send (when in fact what most or all do is the opposite where the service sends a list of available updates and the client determines which if any it needs) they think it's spyware under a more restrictive definition in which the spyware sends information to a remote machine without consent as well.

Many people believe cookies are spyware in fact, and are hideously monitoring all their internet activity and sending everything back all the time...

Depends on what you consider "spyware" as well of course...
If you consider Windows Update to be spyware (as some people who don't know how it works or are simply mallicious do) then every PC equipped with Windows (or ever more other OSs) has spyware on it :)
Many respondents to such surveys will possibly enter YES to a question like "does your PC sometimes send information over the internet by itself".
That question will then be interpreted by the people making up the survey results as "most people have spyware on their PC"...

results are massively inaccurate :)
1) polls asking which browser is in use are usually responded to only by people using alternate browsers, at least those will respond in far higher numbers.
2) polls asking whether people had trouble are usually only responded to by people who indeed had trouble (or are even distributed only among people already reporting problems).

We've done a customer satisfaction survey a while ago ourselves. We sent a questionaire (made by a professional company, not ourselves, quite in contrast to most questionaires) to all our customers.
We got responses from maybe half of them, the other half mostly sent a thank you note to the effect that there was no reason for the survey. Of the respondents about half had had complaints of some sort over the last year, the other half had mainly suggestions for improvement of service.
The final outcome as presented to us stated bluntly that less than half our customers are happy with our products and services.
No massaging needed, they just forgot about the 50% who didn't feel the need to respond because they were happy with the current situation...

These reports are no different.

Certainly not true Cat, can't you post one thing without your Microsoft hatred showing through?

If people don't use P2P software to download pirated music, movies, and software, and don't go around to hacker sites and such, they're unlikely to ever get spyware if they're also careful to not install every piece of crap they get sent over email or download somewhere (which a strict policy and education would help ensure).

Your assumption that "every machine using IE is infested with spyware" would only hold ground if every website in existence tried to install spyware on your machine, something that's blatantly false.

Your assumption that "smart" people mostly use Firefox is also completely unfounded. The figure can be easily reached by very carefully selecting the target audience of your polls and massaging the results.

So your basic assumption that "Microsoft is evil" has nothing to do with the subject under discussion, so leave it at home (or rather burry it as it's getting very old indeed) and don't make yourself look like an idiot slashdotkiddo.
I know you're smarter than that.

If that's so then there's a severe problem with network security in most companies.
I'd even go as far as to say that if that number is correct then just about EVERY machine outside the financial and insurance sector (and possibly a small part of the IT sector) is infested, something I find rather hard to believe.

The main thing here is to implement a strict policy against the downloading and installation of non-approved software (and the use of non-approved files in general) on company machines.
This works well in concert with anti-piracy measures.

Rule #1: NO MP3s.
Rule #2: NO downloading and installing software on your own (I know I do it myself but I only install stuff I certify being clean, something I know how to do but the average person does not). If you want something, ask systems management who will then install it for you (or supply you with the installer) if the application if safe to use.
Rule #3: if you break rules #1 or 2, your internet access rights are revoked and your email account is blocked from receiving email from outside the LAN. First transgression, 1 week. Second, 1 month. Third, permanent.
Rule #4: these rules apply to everyone, especially management (who are often the most computer illiterate people in a company).

Well said Cat, especially that last part about Google in their license voiding any restrictions they place upon themselves in that license by stating they can change the license at will without the user having the right to reject that changed license.

I'd not be surprised if you're going to see a next version of Google talk (and desktop) that integrate advertising.
Once they're used be a lot of people, those can be silently pushed into peoples' computers.
Write an IM, and the other side gets relevant ads to go with it as part of the message.
Voice recognition software can do the same for voice messages.
Search for something on your PC using Google desktop and get ads for related stuff intertwined with the search results (or instead of the search results if they're 'low priority'.

I agree with benna that I don't like the idea of Google having access (at their discretion) to everything on my harddisk.
While they may not at the moment do so, there's nothing to prevent them from turning this thing into the biggest piece of spyware in existence and marketing it as "social engineering software" to "easily share documents with friends and make new friends online" so the punters will rush to it like moths to an open flame.
Google is getting far too invasive and intrusive for my taste, and I've already taken the first steps towards staying independent from them which is rejecting all their cookies.

Yes, they have impressive technology. But the possibilities for them abusing that technology are far too great and the results of such abuse far too lucrative for them to make me use it.

If local laws prohibited the Company from taking action in such circumstances then it would be a clearcut case of "the law is an ass". Freedom of Speech should not extend to the point where it allows harm to be caused without redress!

In fact, if the law prevented the company from firing the employee for slandering them that could be construed as that law violating the company's first ammendment rights to free expression of their opinion (which would be that the employee is not fit to work in that company).

Playing devil's advocate here :)

Whenever and whereever you are you always represent your company, if you name your company (that's one reason I never name my company except when I'm on company business, just my line of work).

It's the same with customers. NEVER name customers outside the company except in the most generic sense (like I am doing a project for customer XXX or company YYY is a customer of the company I work for).
Especially never say anything negative about a customer, especially off company time.
Everyone tells stories about things they encountered at work and at customers, that's normal. But make sure the individual customer cannot be put in a bad light because of it, it makes not only you but your employer look bad.

Everyone who's spent a few years in consultancy knows this (and most abide by it out of general principle), but many others seem to forget as they have no direct customer contact.
To consultants their own company is often just another company in practice if not in theory (I spent more time with customers than I did in my office during my 5 years in consultancy, often seeing real colleagues only once a month if that often but seeing customers (who were effectively my actual coworkers) every day and sometimes over the weekend).

"The real benefit of multi-core processors will really only arrive when ALL computing applications make use of the available hardware resources in a fundamental load sharing environment"

Of course, I was talking about the initial phase in which we find ourselves now rather than the ultimate outcome which will be several years yet.

"Such an response to the dilemma night seem to be an answer but in reality it’s only the most basic of ways in which more than one core can be utilized."

Same thing. And this is the traditional way in which multi-CPU machines have worked for decades.
I programmed to such systems back in 1997 during my first fulltime job as a programmer. The scheduling was "interesting" to build when you needed a process to run in several CPUs at once while at the same time leaving other CPUs for other processes. Especially interesting when your application ran several parallel processes which all accessed the same database which ran in yet another series of parallel processes.
And all that in Cobol with embedded SQL, no Java or other languages with built-in multithreading...

"Half of the available processor resource might well be handling only a small percentage of the overall workload with such an approach"

That all depends on the scheduler and how smart you make it.
The scheduler may well be able to detect that core #3 has only 10% CPU load and give it some tasks to do …

Marx WAS an anti-semite. While true that he had Jewish ancestry, that means little.
In fact it could well be an indicator, the worst enemies of a group are usually those who once belonged to that group themselves but abandoned it.

He was ultra conservative in many areas. What he wanted was in fact a return to the feudal era, except instead of a King or Emperor there'd be him at the helm with absolute power.
No more of this newfangled democracy and free enterprise, but a system of slavery and submission to absolute authority (him...).

Of course it won't work, I never said it would :)

Communists in general are extremely conservative, wanting everything to be tightly controlled and governed by the State.
As pornography doesn't really lend itself to that, they're opposed to it. At the same time they WILL use prostitution as a means to control the population. Of course the system is different, with women being forcibly given to men who please the Party as rewards.

Marx was extremely conservative. His ideas included the murder of everyone who didn't agree with those ideas, and the enslaving of the entire population (effectively prostituting the population to his own greater glory), except for those parts of the population he didn't like (like Jews and other ethnic minorities) which people were to be annihillated (yes, Hitler got his ideas about racial purity from Marx).

Of course religious extremists are against pornography. That's the same for any religion.
Take Islam for example. It bans the portrayal of the human form in art (which porn falls under in this context) completely.
So do several Christian factions (though not catholisism).
That's why they are opposed to it (as well as the depiction of the act of procreation as entertainment which is a waste of the Seed and therefore a sin).
This isn't an American thing, it's a religious thing.

Americans as a people are hardly more prude than others, they're just more vocal about it.

Strangely the most violent opponents of porn are communists. Where in the US people look at you strange maybe when they see you with a porn mag, in the USSR it would get you arrested and sent to jail or a "reeducation" camp for several years (and they classed swimsuit calendars as porn...).
Other communist countries have similar laws.

And of course even if the game programmers are too stupid to learn how to use multi-core CPUs (what the videocard makers are effectively implying, a massive insult to some of the best minds in the programming business...) the operating system programmers (especially those at Microsoft, the rest is irrelevant to the games industry) certainly DO know.
They'll just program OSs to put that game in one core while the OS merrily steams along in another, thus giving both more room than they have now and increasing performance.

Of course this shows only one side in the story.
The real drive behind multicore processors is NOT the games industry (though gamers, being tech junks almost by nature, will pick them up and then complain they're not giving the magnificent performance boosts they expected. "I'm not getting twice the fps, XXX sux" will be a widespread complaint).
The real power will come first from large scientific and financial applications, maybe CAD applications, in general things that are often run on multi-CPU machines today.
And of course servers. With multicore CPUs the Intel line gets into direct competition with a larger section of the highend machines like RS6000s.

And so the reason Microsoft has not reacted is because they proacted by releasing an update that closes this hole they themselves reported at the time they reported it.
If people choose to neglect their security updates (for whatever software they use, not just Windows but your precious MacOS as well) they put themselves at risk and have noone but themselves to blame if they get compromised.

And as usual the world falls all over Microsoft for "not fixing" something they themselves reported AND fixed months ago.

I've the same one I think benna, the Cordless desktop Pro (I don't use the horrible mouse that comes with it but the keyboard is brilliant).
At home I now use a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, also good though I find the decision to remove the insert key as a separate key very weird (am I the only one who uses that key regularly?).

Split ones for me are now a must, I may buy me some spares as indeed they seem to be getting rarer again as the trend towards ever cheaper keyboards as long as they have flashy colours (and preferably lights and transparent stuff) continues.

benna, IE supports more of the W3 standards than does FireFox (or Mozilla, or Opera, etc. etc.).
If they also support things that are not in the standard, well they all do that but at least the things IE supports were once proposals to the standards comitee (proposals that didn't make it).
You see, Microsoft is part of the W3 and sometimes incorporates things they've proposed to the comitee into their products before they're approved into the standard. Some of those proposals don't make it and Microsoft keeps them in to maintain backwards compatibility with older versions. That's all of the story, no matter what "Microsoft is evil and trying to destroy the standards" conspiracy theory the slashdotkiddos (tm, (r), (c), patent pending) come up with.

I've tested this myself. Took a chunk of code and had it validated for XHTML 1.0 Strict AND CSS2 compliance by the official W3 validator.
IE ran it without a hitch, FF didn't even know where to begin running it.
Not an isolated incident either...

Well said Benna. I've downloaded FF about a dozen times so far for 3 computers.
On only one of those is it the main browser, on the others it's used for limited compatibility testing only (which shows quite clearly that FF web standards compliance is rather poor, especially when it comes to CSS and JavaScript).

IE is and will likely remain my main browser of choice, but as a professional I need to know what else is out there...

Opt out is not an option.
They'd have to opt out for each title they ever released and ever plan to release individually in Google's scheme.
That's just not feasible for large publishing houses with tens of thousands of titles in print (thing Thor, AW, Reed Elsevier, etc.), and even worse for publishers of magazines which would have to opt out for every single issue they release separately.

I'd have no trouble with an opt IN scheme, but of course that's not in the interest of Google as they'll be unable to claim that they never got an opt out letter in the correct form from a publisher...

And yes, it's a BIG deal. As publishers ever more release their own eBook services (at a price), Google is effectively destroying their business by pirating their books and making them available for free online.
What's next, Google putting all commercially available software online for free download unless the publisher explicitly opts out for that title?
After all, you CAN opt out so it's not really illegal is it?
And yes, that's exactly the same thing.

Scanning entire books is definitely NOT fair use, and is indeed what Google is doing.
If they scanned only the table of contents and/or the index for example (and maybe the first paragraph of each chapter) I doubt any publisher would object.

It's past time Google is put in its place. They're ever more behaving like they're above the law everywhere.
While small publishers will cave in under Google's pressure and give up the copyrights to their work (which effectively puts that work in the public domain and thus makes copyright violations on that work unenforcable anywhere) large ones won't be so easily pushed over.
I hope to see some big lawsuits with Google forced to pay millions if not billions in damages.
If that brings down the company so much the better.

define "portion"...

If a "portion" is a few phrases or paragraphs out of a book of several hundred pages that might be considered fair use (which btw isn't applicable worldwide), if it means entire chapters it most certainly does not.
Google cannot claim to be able to control the way in which the scanned content will be used so they can't claim it's for "educational purposes" (which requires permission to copy btw, even if that permission is more readily granted than otherwise).
The nature of the copyrighted work is clear, it's a commercial product which is being plagiarised for commercial use of another corporate entity (Google).
The potential market of the book therefore goes down because there will be many people (given that Google will copy and publish without permission those parts of the book that have the most relevant content...) will no longer need to purchase that book.

They're comitting plagiarism on a massive scale, and claiming to have a right to do so.

Google should respect intellectual property and NOT scan anything unless they've been given explicit permission.
Who do they think they are to expect to have a carte blanche to break copyright laws unless told explicitly (and for every title) that they're not supposed to do so?

If I did what Google is doing I'd be dragged into court to a quick and (for me) expensive conviction and rightly so.

I only pointed out the net effect of (most) government programs aimed at homeless people (or people in need in general).
The setback in the situation of the person benefitting from the program once they no longer qualify is often so great that it makes perfect sense for that person to make no effort to get out of the program.

As an example we've had government sponsored jobs here for years now.
Companies got to hire long term unemployed people who'd keep their unemployment benefits and the company would pay the rest of their salary up to at least minimal wages.
Cheap labour, and a chance for that unemployed person to get a job.
There was a time limit of course, with the sponsorship lasting at most something like 2 years (in order to avoid abuse no doubt).
It failed misserably. A few people got a job as night cleaners or other essentially unskilled labour at minimal wages, but less than a percent of those were able to get a non-sponsored job after the sponsorship period ran out. It was cheaper to just hire another sponsored unemployed person after all...
Same with programs for homeless. Provide them free shelter and food (which happens a lot, and can be a good thing if linked to conditions like having to be clean of drugs and having no criminal record, stick and carrot...) and there may be no reason for them to try and lift themselves …

why call him a bastard?
He gives the homeless some money in exchange for them doing what they do anyway: walking around town aimlessly all day.

"Homelessness needs to be eradicated with social programs, government assistance, and other forms of economic improvement"

No, they need to be eradicated by giving them jobs (which will typically have to be minimum wage menial labour as most have no education at all) and by making sure there's affordable housing in urban areas (right now there's not, people end up on the street because rental rates for even small apartments and houses are now so high many can no longer afford them). There's tons of social programs, they don't work...
Another reason people end up on the streets (besides loosing jobs and refusing to work menial jobs) is drugs. People loose their lifelihood to drugs gangs, loose their jobs, loose their house, and end up on the street. Take away the drugs and you take away a lot of the homeless problem (as well as a lot of crime).

Homeless people are indeed a social problem, but government intervention doesn't work.
It perpetuates these people in their status by providing them services which depend on the existence of that status.
As soon as they somehow get a job, get a house, maybe get an education, that assistance stops taking away any incentive of thriving to get that job (it's very easy to make sure you're never hired, …

It's already happening though not on any large scale.
At the moment it's about as bad as commercials sent to companies over the fax or direct mail advertising to random people (mailbox stuffing).

And even if it's illegal in your area, it isn't illegal everywhere (and email spam is also illegal yet that doesn't stop the spammers).

telemarketeers calling you at home every night (and yes, I get on average about 10 such annoying cold calls a week and that's just the ones that catch me at home) also cost the advertiser money, yet that doesn't stop them.
The existence of do-not-call lists also doesn't deter them from using those lists as known-good sources (rather than as numbers not to call).

"I also hope that various cell phone companies continue to sell dumb cell phones. I just want to make phone calls on mine. Doesn't even need to feature a color display -- my ears cannot appreciate 32-bit colors."

Well said. I've selected my current phone based on size only, I don't use any of the "features" everyone advertises with (camera, GPRS, iMode, PC synchronisation with Outlook, etc. etc.).
I want a phone you idiots, not a PDA/phone/digicam/game console combo.

"Even if microsoft could detect with certainty which copies of windows are pirated, it would be irresponsible of them to block those copies from recieving updates. It is detremental to the internet as a whole when people can easily build up botnets ranging in the tens to hundrends of thousands of compromised computers"

No it's not irresponsible. Microsoft have stated repeatedly that computers running pirated copies WILL have access to security updates but ONLY to security updates.

It is indeed impossible to create a watertight defense for shrinkwrapped software. Any defense is of necessity a compromise between cost of implementation and potential benefit in increased income (from people now buying instead of pirating).

The only way to prevent piracy altogether is to have the user pay per use and run the entire application (except the display of the resulting information) remotely on your own servers.
That way anyone stupid enough to hand out his account info/serial number will pay for whomever else uses that information to run the application and there is no way for the protection to be removed as the actual software itself which is distributed is only a small stub for the real application which resides remotely.

There are some practical problems with a system like this though (as well as some social ones, but those can likely be overcome).
Main bumps are the fact that permanent highspeed internet access (which would be required) isn't yet universal (so your potential userbase …

From what I hear the foam they used on this tank is a new version that was forced on NASA by new environmental regulations. This new foam is actually more brittle and more likely to fail than was the old stuff...

The contract with the external tank manufacturer responsible has I think already been cancelled pending an investigation.

Many are indeed trying to kill not just the shuttle but the entire manned space program.
Those people effectively want to condemn humankind to never leave the surface of the planet again, killing our species by strangulation and starvation.
Space is the only place we can go for resources and living space, let's not throw that away.

I think the whole grounding is a kneejerk reaction to please the media and congress rather than having any real safety reasons.
It's almost certain that shuttles have always been hit by flying debris to some extent, and the damage was extremely minor (shuttles have made it back safely with large sections of their heatshield missing in the past, the little dents and scratches seen now are nothing in comparison).

That's not to say a replacement is way overdue of course. The initial plans when designing the shuttle system was for it to be replaced by the late 1980s.
Its intended replacement was almost ready to fly (awaiting the delivery of a final component and final assembly) when it was cancelled (X-33/VentureStar).
In fact, NASA and the US government under Clinton (mainly) seems to have done what it can to make sure the US human space program is killed off completely (note that the decision to kill VentureStar came just before Clinton left office, a final stab in the back of the pro-space people in the Republican party).

For a design that's almost 30 years old, the shuttle is performing remarkably well.
About the only thing where the shuttle didn't deliver as planned/hoped for was launch cost. This is still several orders of magnitude higher than it should be for a commercially viable system, far more than expected. In large part this is caused by the extremely long maintenance cycles needed between flights, making …

not at all.
Maybe initially it may work that way, but there are now alternatives like satellite and other wireless options.
At the moment those are more expensive to implement for a provider than renting a phoneline below market value from an infrastructure provider, with the price restrictions removed that will change.

Of course if phone companies start to behave in monopolistic fashion they'll have to face the laws against that, as did Bell in the past when they behaved in such a way as to prevent any competition and drive up prices.

Welcome to free competition at last.

You always want free markets, now you have them.

WOW, a no-button mouse :) What'll they think of next?

This case is especially galling as the game was already marketed and rated as being for adults only.
For the target market the scenes (which indeed can only be accessed by using an unsupported and possibly illegal (copyright violations?) crack created by a third party) depict nothing any law prohibits them from being exposed of.
It's like wanting TVs or DVD players banned because they can show porn movies (which are supplied by 3rd parties as well).

It's of course not surprising the far left is up in arms about this. It's one area where there's no law regulating the industry to the point of total government control and censorship which must be a big disappointment for them seeing as they want total government control over all aspects of life.

As you say there's no evidence whatsoever that games cause people to get violent or otherwise display behaviour generally considered to be anti-social.
In fact I'd dare to postulate that the reverse may well be true.
Rather than take out their agression on human beings, they vent it against electronic opponents in a videogame.

Whether you like these games or not (I don't generally) doesn't matter. As long as there's freedom of expression you can't ban them because you don't like them.
While the GTA series might get close to inciting criminal activity (after all, it rewards people for such activity) there's no evidence to suggest such happens when the game is …

Microsoft sued Lindows over their product name, not primarilly the company name.
Anyway, Lindows the company produced a directly competing product to the one they were deliberately stealing the name of.
This case is quite different in that the products aren't competing at all.

When Fiat released a car called the Croma onto the Dutch market there was no outcry from a major food manufacturer here who was marketing a brand of butter under that name.

Turned out Fiat chose the name poorly though (but for no legal reasons). The butter was marketed as non-sizzling (thus no problem with getting splashed with hot butter) leading to many people to conclude "Fiat Croma, doesn't sizzle" which hurt sales rather badly at the time :)

There's a demarcation issue here. At which point does using a name for one thing infringe on the meaning of that same word in another context.
Clearly Microsoft lawyers concluded that in this case there are no problems, and I tend to agree with them.
Not only is the other trademark a company name instead of a version name for a product (not even a product name in its own right), but that company doesn't even create a product which competes with Windows.

if that's so, why should Vista be worried? They'd gain exposure and might even get a few more contracts :)

Just another cheap shot by someone with a probably failing company to make a quick buck out of the company name before folding or selling the operation?
Is there in fact any word that isn't yet in use by someone somewhere for something?

I know you don't claim so, and neither do I (necessarilly, as long as the basic functionality can be accessed through the old system).
But we're neither of us "average" users. For most people switching to a 3D desktop would likely be enough reason to not switch at all.
And for hardware and software manufacturers who rely on the specifics of a certain desktop any major changes may cause so much effort on their part that they won't consider it worth the effort.
As Windows is used mainly by non-technical people who are more or less computer illiterate, and ever more as an embedded OS in for example media centers, major UI changes would likely either cost Microsoft in upgrading users or require the old interface to be retained as an option, increasing maintenance effort.
So why not retain the existing and effective UI?
Maybe the UI could be more open, so users could effectively plug in another one in its place (and on a more fundamental level than changing the shape of buttons and window borders), and maybe Microsoft is going that way, but I don't envision there to be a viable business case for them to incorporate major changes in the core paradigms of the interface as it is delivered.

For years people complained that Microsoft released new versions too quickly.
Now they're going slow and they're criticised for not releasing them often enough...
They were criticised for putting too much into the OS (to the point where some governments forced them to offer stripped down versions).
Now they release a new version with not a lot of visible differences to the current one and they're criticised for not changing enough.
In many cases the people uttering that criticism are the same in all cases, showing how hypocritical they really are.

If you're called Microsoft it seems you can do nothing right, but that might be true for any large company.

When Windows XP was released the same criticism was heard.
XP Pro was supposedly just "a glossed over Windows 2000 which noone will want" and XP Home "what Windows ME should have been all along", many advised people to not buy XP because of that but to stick with Win2K or Win98.
I don't have sales figures but I think XP has since outsold every previous version, for a large part on upgrade licenses (belying the words of those who predicted noone would want to upgrade).

But the story goes deeper. There's a lot of wishful thinking involved in the current generation of people claiming that "Windows is dead".
They want through their rethoric to pursuade people to move to competing operating systems (rather weird as those same people …

Or just use java.util.LinkedList :)

One should always prefer standard library classes first, existing stable 3rd party libraries second, and only implement one's own version as a last resort for production systems.