I think I'm right in suggesting it's free with a bizspark licence, which is a kind of a free licence available to startups.

Whilst the platform (Azure) is clearly proprietary, they're clearly making efforts to offer cross platform IaaS and cross platform client (OpenSource) capabilities for their PaaS offerings.

It maybe a crock of shite, it maybe the best thing since sliced bread but I for one feel that that particular team deserves credit for trying (hard) to adopt open source and make themselves an attractive proposition outside Microsofts traditional core strengths. Time will tell if they're make a success of this...

Lamdas are not orignal.

- Access mandated via FB connect - Mini (proxy) allow integration between opt in site on FB platform via http headers? - Proxy sniffs traffic and gets a hi-fi profile of users. Super targeted advertising, avoiding cookies. - Emerging markets; FB account is used to transfer money, for those without bank accounts.

I like this. It espouses good engineering principles (tell don't ask etc.) the advice here is in my opinion applicable to most platforms and domains.

The more accessible the grass route tools the greater the chance of adoption. Adoption for Win8 / RT maybe acceptable with the new Express options but frankly I don't see C# developers of the future applying for licences for IDEs to compile their software. They'll just adopt a different more (immediately) accessible platform. Companies will struggle to recruit for server hosted line of business applications. The ecosystem will suffocate. Managers and engineers will consider different platforms as part of their due diligence, as a result I predict less Windows licences will be sold.

Agreed. No matter how complex they key, phyiscal security can nearly always be broken. From mysterious breaks ins to _we have ways of making you talk_

Yeah. I've been on the waiting list for months :(

You're brave sending pull requests to Linus on github for the Linux Kernel from a Windows machine ;)

Good point. If I need the efficiency of a keyboard I will use the git bash cli. I suppose this is why they've bundled powershell git extensions.

It's a first iteration / release. I'm sure with more feedback they'll release more often. I'm unlikely to use this much - because I favour the cli - but I really hope this makes git more accesible to some Windows shops.