Microsoft has publicly committed to release a patch to disable all XP activation requirements prior to any deactivation of their activation systems. So unless they go out of business or renege on that promise, lack of support shouldn’t be a problem in the future.

However, I 100% agree on your main point. I just don’t think this is as good an example as you do.

I say mac should die horribly for excessive cruelties, and windows is incompetent. Either way, they’re both screwing us all up.

Those who believe Apple would *never* install spyware to harvest useful information from those incredibly detailed analyses of all files on a system must truly have swallowed the Kool-Aid. Like all corporations, Apple makes every decision based on the “bottom line”. The only reason they would pass up this goldmine would be fear of expensive litigation if they get caught. Watch for new legislation authorizing them to spy on you “to protect the children”.

Thanks for the suggestion Brian–I’m going to check it out!

Thanks for the suggestion! Now that I’ve gotten around to reading the article, I am aware of the Dr. Dobbs method. It works if you control the codebase completely. But the problem is that as a library author, if you’re supplying a class with an arbitrary number of parameterizations (such as any integer)…you can’t really predict which ones to pre-specialize and export!

Since there’s StackOverflow these days, I’ve phrased my actual issues more specifically there:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9507973/how-to-mitigate-user-facing-api-effect-of-shared-members-in-templated-classes