OT: Wow is all I can say...

[Sivran]

I just love how naive Microsoft was when they decided ActiveX was a good idea...

"Hey! Let's design a technology that, in a nutshell, allows people to put what is essentially a win32 executable on a webpage and have it run--with system level privileges and no sandboxing--in the browser which we're conveniently integrating into the operating system..."

And yes, that <i>is</i> pretty much ActiveX in a nutshell. Supposedly sandboxing is going into the next version of IE, however. Further, .NET is, from what I've heard, very similar to and compatible with ActiveX only much safer. Why MS hasn't leveraged its power for the noble cause of eradicating ActiveX, I'm not sure.

As for Windows being cheaper overall than Linux, I can see why: for one, MCSEs are a dime a dozen, while linux gurus aren't. Second, enterprise-level management software. Linux is a blackhole in this regard. The kind of management software admins want just isn't available for linux yet.