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It's not far off reality. There isn't an NSA room in every data centre, but there might as well be, since their placement at major Internet hubs throughout the USA is equivalent. The story is quite well known.

Aperture isn't a dropin replacement for Photoshop, it's not meant to be a thorough photo editor. What Aperture comes closest to in regards to Adobe software is Lightroom, which Adobe is just releasing version 1.0 from beta. If you're going to do any in depth photoediting you'll still need Photoshop.

The latest news is that, according to Yahoo! News and BBC News, a fresh anti-trust complaint has been filed with the EC against Microsoft by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (composed of IBM, Oracle, RealNetworks, Sun & Nokia). Although the complaint was filed privately, ECIS hinted (see the links) that it related to MS Office.

The story here is about Tangent, a computer manufacturer who filed a federal suit against MS in a Northern Californian court on Valentine's Day. I've found two articles which go into more detail on this: Gameshout and ZDNet.

Basically, the complaints in this suit relate to:

• MS's promotion of its DRM software
• lack of documentation for the MS Office document formats
• pricing of MS software artifically high
• pressurising content owners to use proprietary MS media formats
• server interoperability (see the original EC case for which MS are currently being fined $2.8M daily).

According to Yahoo! News and BBC News, a fresh anti-trust complaint has been filed with the EC against Microsoft by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (composed of IBM, Oracle, RealNetworks, Sun & Nokia). Although the complaint was filed privately, ECIS hinted that it related to MS Office.

Also, computer manufacturer, Tangent, filed a federal suit against MS in a Northern Californian court on Valentine's Day. According to Gameshout and ZDNet, complaints relate to MS's promotion of its DRM software, lack of documentation for the MS Office document formats, pricing of software artifically high, pressurising content owners to use proprietary MS media formats and server interoperability.

More links here:

http://www.gameshout.com/news/122005/article2184.h tm

http://www.xboxcircle.com/portal/content/view/907/ 1/

Posted Dec 1, 2005 "Several members from GameSHOUT are getting fedup with Xbox 360 defects. According to Microsoft, they will not refund or replace discs that are scratched from the Xbox 360 video game console. However, they will offer "Perfect Dark Zero" for free. One GameSHOUT member, going by the name "Insanity Rulez" stated that the Microsoft Xbox 360 failed to save his "Call of Duty 2" video game. All stats are gone, and he got an error when making any attempts to resume his game mission. He stated, "I took out my game and checked it over and the 360 had totally ruined my game! It looks like someone took a pencil with the eraser side down [covered with sand paper] and touched the disk while spinning it! There is a perfect circle around the center of the disk and it prevents it from working on certain missions." It's not just one Xbox 360 gamer, it's becoming a daily thing now as more GameSHOUT members report their defects. CD scratching appears to be the most common defect." http://www.gameshout.com/news/122005/article1785.h tm

Focus more on making sure the stuff that comes out based on its IP doesn't suck, and spend less time filing frivolous lawsuits.

Personally, I played just about every FPS released on the PC from 1999 to 2003. And I ended up liking Xbox Halo and Halo 2 a LOT. Sure, a lot of people don't like it, and that is okay. But then again Halo 2 sold over 6 million copies, while Half-Life 2 is languishing around 2 million.

And just think about the difference in installed base of Xbox vs. PC.

Now there must be SOME reason that 6 million people are willing to buy the game. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean that everyone else shares your opinion. As I said, I played just about EVERY FPS released for about 4 years and I still liked it. Was it the BEST? No...but was it a lot of fun? YES!

Also, you say that the Xbox library is 'riding literally on about 10 top games.'

How do you determine this? What are the top games?

Would it be by the way they are rated? Because on Gamerankings.com I could list 100 games, and still be looking at games in the 84th percentile. Games like Ghost Recon, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, TOCA Race Driver 2 are all sitting in the 80-100 spots. Those are all pretty solid games- with at least 79 games ranked above them.

Or- do you only judge a platform by the exclusives? Because exclusive or not, I can play games like Burnout 3, Crimson Skies, Splinter Cell, etc. etc. on my Xbox. If they are not exclusives, it does not take away my enjoyment at all- it just means that people without Xboxes can play them too.

People that judge a console by exclusive titles usually own Gamecubes. They miss out on things like Brothers in Arms, Burnout 3...and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, which was an awesome Xbox exclusive.

...reading this article where it seems that they were their partners who asked for it

Microsoft's people have said in public several times that IE is the best browser out there. Why are their customers asking for new versions then? Heh.

This is a way of saying "IE 6 sucks, even the one in SP2". A new excuse to "sell" firefox - "are you going to expect until summer to have a decent browser?"