...for good reason? Technologies from XP are by now insecure and obsolete. Why would Microsoft sell XP still? Does Ford still sell 1998 F150's at their dealerships?
It's a fairly straightforward cost-benefit analysis. Some of us rely on software that would otherwise be too difficult or expensive to replace, software that only runs on Windows XP for a variety of reasons. In my case it's a device driver that interacts with a very expensive flow cytometer. We've taken other precautions in order to protect the computer, and we're reasonably confident we can operate it safely. The same goes for many, many other Windows XP or Windows XP Embedded installations, where it's basically treated like firmware and carefully walled off from the outside.
Does "VM it" work? I mean, there is PCI and USB-passthrough in qemu, so this might be an option, especially since VMs are easy to sandbox (easier than physical machines where someone might simply plug a cable in so he can watch YouTube, for example).
Mitigations only make sense in a cost-benefit analysis when there's a corresponding threat. Why would someone bother with watching YouTube on a junky old PC in a corner of the lab? It doesn't even have an audio card, let alone a modern web browser. Besides, it's on an isolated VLAN and monitored (and backed up) like a server, so anyone messing with its network connection will cause the equivalent "server down" alert in our NOC, not that it will do them much good: This particular lab is in a pretty remote location where network bandwidth is at a premium, so we block YouTube campus-wide.
Frankly, I'm only really worried about malware somehow sneaking aboard the thing, which is why it's on-network in the first place. I don't want people plugging flash drives into it. And fortunately, there are still antivirus products that support Windows XP, which keeps the riff-raff out.
You appear to be far too bothered what other people are doing with their own time. If they're not doing anything illegal or immoral, I fail to see the problem you have with this.
The great thing about developers working on a project in their free time, is that they can choose anything they want. They're not constrained by what other people think they should be doing, despicable or otherwise.
Why do you think they believe ms to be evil, and why do you think it is their motivator ? There are practical reasons behind reactos : programs and drivers written for old windows versions are not compatible with newer ones.
To be fair that's another way of saying "Europe has plenty of fast growing cities, just none around the London area"
I think we have improved transport economics so much that the size of a metro area needs adjusting in our minds - London has commuters from Birmingham, Cambridge and beyond - in the same way that NYC has commuters from Pennsylvania and even Philly.
The winning City in an area sucks in all the surrounding populations - it's just now that transport links mean that those surrounding populations are in what used to be called other cities and are now just suburbs.
We need better town planning not ways to hold back cities to certain geographic locations
The Bay Area, while very far from being a well planned live/work/commute environment, does have a somewhat unique structure. It is made up of 3 geographically dispersed, relatively equitable major cities, albeit with different strengths (SF - international cachet, SJ - largest city plus proximity to Silicon Valley, Oakland - future opportunity).
There are arguably more high end jobs in the suburbs surrounding these 3 major cities than in the city centers themselves. While this has removed the issue of one major city sucking in all of the surrounding resources, it has also distributed all of the problems of a major city center throughout an entire region - extremely high housing costs, horrendous traffic, etc.
Since each municipality in the Bay Area enjoys near ubiquitous power over local development and policy, it is also very difficult to implement effective regional plans to improve these issues.
I would argue it's one metro area with three authorities that plan and co-ordinate poorly and has no decent overall town / civil planning (for example like most cities, there is a focus on increasing land price being a good thing - generally not for future equitable growth)
The politics and social Dynamics in the US seem completely wrong for growth that I would consider positive in most regions. There is instead a lot of low density strip mall style growth and the resulting structures and density will largely be protected from reexamination due to risk of losing grandfathered building rights.
I would be interested to know which cities are consolidating high density areas while growing such that they will have a Manhattan.
But I don't think every city needs Manhattan style density. Four, five story mid-rise density is the answer. Austin's urban core is building heavily in that style. I was just in Milwaukee for work as was surprised by the huge number of mid-rise buildings all over downtown. Just to show two midsized cities with insane growth at the core.
