Strange noises

The battle of Hewlett's Packard has been won. There has been great loss and casualties. After much wringing of hands, pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth, and foaming at the mouth the PC that has occupied position 1 on the bench for 4 days is finally acting like a normal computer, if there is such a thing. Being a fan of HP products it worries me when the battle is this bloody. This is an older PIII machine and comes from the period when everyone was experimenting with different case form factors, etc. You literally have to remove the power supply to change a card out in it. It is now calm and purring. My bitching and cussing have been reduced to whining. I need more medication.

Windows 2000 is my favorite Microsoft operating system. Seems I am not alone. Eric Bangeman has a really good article about this over at ArsTechnica. Linux SuSE will soon be the primary operating system on this PC. I may dual boot with XP Pro since it will be a shadow in the background and available when needed for troubleshooting. XP is a strange clicking, noisy, DRM, snoopy operating system. There's an older dual processor machine that sits in the corner that is still used a lot because it runs Windows 2000. Fascinates me that Microsoft is reducing support on W2K, and will not offer a version of Internet Explorer 7 for this OS. At the same time, they are hammering away on TV with ads about Windoze XP. They actually want you to upgrade from a somewhat stable computing environment to one that they issue patches for on an almost daily basis. Go figure. Wonder what voodoo spell they are using to write code today?

Please, all XP Nazis feel free to flame on in the comments.

Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities of the programmer who must maintain it.
-Programming Law #7