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First off, the Volt is not "going to be $40k".

"Lutz said the first-generation Volt will retail for about $40,000 and generate no profit for GM."

Again, Huh? For the most part, Washington pretty liberal in religious terms, but the few religious conservatives we have are not silent. Just ask MS about their good friend Rev Hutcherson and his famous anti-gay MS boycots.

I can't address the religious aspect very well, but I say that WA is silently and surprisingly socially conservative. Seattle - which has plenty of gays, vegans, and other typically liberal types - also has a long history of banning or putting onerous restrictions on teen dances. That's right: Seattle is a big city version of the town in Footloose.

That sort of attitude pervades much of the city, including bizarre rules about booze. You can't even step into a liquor store (which are all state-run) with an out-of-state driver's license, much less buy booze with one. Strip clubs can't serve booze, and the city politicians have long banned or tried to effectively kill off strip clubs unlike neighboring Portland OR.

I love Seattle but the long history of social conservatism, corrupt politicians, and racism are major faults I hope it overcomes at some point. I have had people tell me the social conservatism comes from the religious background of the city, but I don't really know the whys of it. I just know that's how Seattle is, and it can be difficult to pick up on given that the city superficially seems very liberal.

Again, Huh? For the most part, Washington pretty liberal in religious terms, but the few religious conservatives we have are not silent. Just ask MS about their good friend Rev Hutcherson and his famous anti-gay MS boycots.

I can't address the religious aspect very well, but I say that WA is silently and surprisingly socially conservative. Seattle - which has plenty of gays, vegans, and other typically liberal types - also has a long history of banning or putting onerous restrictions on teen dances. That's right: Seattle is a big city version of the town in Footloose.

That sort of attitude pervades much of the city, including bizarre rules about booze. You can't even step into a liquor store (which are all state-run) with an out-of-state driver's license, much less buy booze with one. Strip clubs can't serve booze, and the city politicians have long banned or tried to effectively kill off strip clubs unlike neighboring Portland OR.

I love Seattle but the long history of social conservatism, corrupt politicians, and racism are major faults I hope it overcomes at some point. I have had people tell me the social conservatism comes from the religious background of the city, but I don't really know the whys of it. I just know that's how Seattle is, and it can be difficult to pick up on given that the city superficially seems very liberal.

While this question was not posed to me, I think I'll take a stab at it anyway.

I would say, "pretty damn good." Take THIS graph for example. It shows MORE ice in the southern hemisphere.

Which is the exact opposite of what THIS article states. So, the data doesn't back up the predictions. Strange. Maybe the predictions were wrong?

Then, there is THIS graph reporting the average temperatures in Antarctica. Hmmmm. It's going down? So, who is correct here; the predictions or the data? Are you one of these people who changes the data when it doesn't meet your expected results?

This is what I posted earlier. There are three links. If you can find data that refutes it, let's hear it. Don't sit there and bash the source because you don't like the data.

Put up or Shut up!

And since you obviously think you are good at stats why haven't you answered my question? - Under your stated assumptions, what's the probability that Antarctica and/or Greenland is NOT losing ice?

While this question was not posed to me, I think I'll take a stab at it anyway.

I would say, "pretty damn good." Take THIS graph for example. It shows MORE ice in the southern hemisphere.

Which is the exact opposite of what THIS article states. So, the data doesn't back up the predictions. Strange. Maybe the predictions were wrong?

Then, there is THIS graph reporting the average temperatures in Antarctica. Hmmmm. It's going down? So, who is correct here; the predictions or the data? Are you one of these people who changes the data when it doesn't meet your expected results?

Gee, why am I not surprised that people who can't tell the difference between "global" and "local" also can't tell the difference between "arctic" and "antarctic" or, in fact "their ass" and "a hole in the ground".

And since you obviously think you are good at stats why haven't you answered my question? - Under your stated assumptions, what's the probability that Antarctica and/or Greenland is NOT losing ice?

While this question was not posed to me, I think I'll take a stab at it anyway.

I would say, "pretty damn good." Take THIS graph for example. It shows MORE ice in the southern hemisphere.

Which is the exact opposite of what THIS article states. So, the data doesn't back up the predictions. Strange. Maybe the predictions were wrong?

Then, there is THIS graph reporting the average temperatures in Antarctica. Hmmmm. It's going down? So, who is correct here; the predictions or the data? Are you one of these people who changes the data when it doesn't meet your expected results?

I care deeply about personal privacy for the same reason I care deeply about gun rights - chances are that I will never carry a weapon in my life, but our society as a whole is made safer and more resilient by the fact that law-abiding citizens can own and use them in self defense.

Ummm, yeah, the shooter who killed 14 in NY state "had a permit for two handguns and wore body armor, indicating he was prepared for a confrontation with police."
source.

But not illegal.

But the law, when you get down to it, is a negotiated codification of a bunch of social norms that have been judged important enough to codify, given the circumstances that the society in question has encountered. It is customary to revise the law to forbid new violations of social norms that already existed. Examples:

1. Many jurisdictions have recently had to pass laws forbidding upskirt photography in public places. One example.
2. Once upon a time, there were no laws against texting while driving. Well, because once upon a time, there was no text messaging. People who were legally texting while driving in the intervening time were sure as hell violating social norms against what's acceptable to do while driving.

In this case, clearly GP is of the opinion that we need laws regulating geo-tagged databases. If your answer to that is that we don't have any such laws, well, the answer to that, in turn, should be: "are you even listening?"

I preferred the RSAC system, which actually required some thought.

It's a nice talking point, but the real reason is the middleman -- the insurance companies and group health whatever. There's a clinic in Seattle that has opened -- they accept only cash and are able to provide services more cheaply that way.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20040405&slug=cashdoctors05

I read another article about such a clinic opening in Seattle more recently, but just can't find it. As pointed out in the link above, doctors can charge their patients less money by cutting out the insurance company bureaucracy.

Most people don't think about this however until they go out to buy their own insurance. Almost universally, a catastrophic insurance plan coupled with cash payment for regular medical services is way cheaper than getting Group Health or something like that.

Here's a picture of the House of Saud eating sand today (Riyahd sandstorm.)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20090310/621APTOPIX_Mideast_Saudi_Arabia_Weather_HAS110_564051110032009.jpg

I hear the spectre of child prostitution ads being raised many times in this thread. cite one example.

Richmond pair convicted in San Mateo County teen prostitution case

Local youths rescued in prostitution busts

And they go on and on. Just search google for prostitution and craigslist. Of course, nowhere will you find in any post mention of child prostitution. Such posts would be flagged off quickly or reported and removed.

There is a real problem, as there has always been somewhere else. It's not craigslist's fault, but there has never really been a source for prositution as comprehensive as craigslist (here in the U.S). Other sites like ASPD, Eros, Adult Friend FInder, etc are limited in many ways and charge for viewer services. It seems to me that the Cook county sheriff should be grateful to craiglist for collecting so many potential leads to illegal activity.

Mind you, I don't think prostitution in itself should be illegal so long as all participants are willing adults, but that is often not the case and where it's not it should be stopped. The problem is the handful of puritans who want to stop consenting sex and prevent its proper outlet.

Actually calls for his firing have already started. When you see that The Win7 hype is just that, and when it comes to enterprise, which is where the big bucks are and where MSFT has always made boatloads of cash, that Win7 doesn't cut it anymore than Vista, I can't say that I blame them.

We have seen that under his watch he has gone from one idea to another like the whole company has ADHD, with Zune(trying to be Apple), trying to shell out WAY too much money for Yahoo(trying to be Google) and finally his very own Spruce Goose Vista, which even MSFT board members couldn't get to work with programs written by MSFT. His tenure has frankly been nothing but one failure after another, and mark my words, when Win7 comes out it will be just as bloated and slow and sell just as badly as Vista.

What the company desperately needs is a new leader that will focus on their core strengths instead of trying to be Apple. Their big money comes from corporations NOT home users who frankly as long as it doesn't crash and runs their games are happy little campers anyway. Yet instead of releasing a low resource backwards compatible enterprise OS it looks like with Win7 they are AGAIN releasing this giant bloated pig of a multimedia OS with more bling per square inch than something off of "pimp my ride". There is a REASON why you find lots of articles including on MSDN giving step by step instructions on turning Win2K8 into a workstation OS. Because WinVista is too damned bloated to be a good enterprise OS and frankly Win7 will most likely be more of the same.

They had better change their direction, starting with a good firing for Ballmer and the bringing in of someone from Office or Win2K8 that knows business. Because I have never seen this kind of mass abandonment of a MSFT OS ever, even when WinME came out. My customers happily pay me chunks of money to make Vista go away, and more and more SOHOs and SMBs are asking me "what do you know about this Linux thing?" and yet Ballmer still tries to force everyone into this multimedia nightmare of an OS instead of keeping business/home separated like it was for WinNT/Win9x. But he ain't Steve Jobs and Win7 ain't no OSX. If they don't change their direction, which I seriously doubt will happen under Ballmer, then their stock price and sales are going nowhere but down. I mean have you EVER seen companies BRAG about giving you the previous MSFT OS THREE YEARS after the new version came out? Nope, me neither.

Here you go. The PDF linked in the article shows the actual email thread, including the "I now have a $2100 email machine" money quote by MS executive Mike Nash.

Cheers,

Hey, someone has to release the mosquitoes. They dont get out of the jar by themselves.

If you notice MS has been following the same pattern as NASDAQ - yes down right now, but that is not because MS is failing it is because there is a tighter crunch in the market.

Considering they have spent tens of billions of dollars just to keep their market price from falling more, then I think one can say Microsoft is in deep trouble, considering the stock market alone.

Non-NYTimes link:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008739323_judges13.html

In case you hate being asked to log in to read an article.

Yup, it is genocide that turns a profit. See here for some US death rates resulting from the health "care" system. The roughly 106.000 yearly deaths because of adverse drug reactions is a statistic that hides a much larger iceberg of deaths indirectly caused by drugs.

You see, the trick is to not kill people outright: you cannot make money off dead people. Instead, you design drugs that cause chronic disease (e.g. Zyprexa which causes diabetes), and market them to the general public, e.g. as a lifestyle drug, so as to get many people to ask their doctor for a prescription. That way you profoundly grow the market for selling further drugs and treatments. Any litigation you can always settle for a fraction of the profit later.

mmm 8.7% market share of only the US market

Research before turfing please. The best numbers for the Zune I could find were here. 10.2% of 30GB hard-disk based players. That's like saying, "I got the best score on the math test for someone under 4ft and weighing over 200lbs with an IQ of 102!"

68.15% and accelerating.

At this point it looks like "corporate standards" are doing quite a bit to prop up IE's numbers. The good news is that those who finally move away from IE6 aren't all moving to IE7. Many of those users are switching to an alternative browser. Which means that Microsoft's lock-in is slipping fast.

Too soon?

Many fewer people die or even experience an irritation from vaccinations than would die or be horribly deformed from the things prevented by the vaccinations. You probably still drive a car, don't you? Don't you know kids could die in one of those?

It amazes me how otherwise rational people can be so fucking stupid.

thoroughly ignore Iowans next time around and merely focus on the "wants" (welfare/handouts/bailouts/bribes/etc) of the big population centers?

The "big population centers" are generally the ones paying the taxes that support rural areas.

I am baffled why anyone other than those in the aforementioned population centers would support it.

It has nothing to do with living in a population center, it's about swing states. Presidential campaigns direct all their efforts to that minority of the population, because an additional vote in deep blue Maryland is worth nothing, while an extra vote in purple Virginia can make a difference.

Anyone who doesn't live in a swing state should support it, as it means that that vote of a single person living in a solid red or solid blue state counts as much as a swing state vote.

And any intellectually honest person living in a swing state, who don't think they deserve a louder voice than the rest of us, should support it too.

"As one of my old bosses used to say so frequently, "Fuck you, sue me."

Which is great advice unless your boss is Dog the Bounty Hunter.

This picture of Woz practicing doesn't show him as being particularly large. You get +100 virtual karma points from me for that Fantasia reference though.

Perhaps this will help you understand a little about what Microsoft's afraid of.

And if you look at news from 2003 or 2004, and then fast forward to 2008 you need not be too good at math to realize that Microsoft just ain't what they used to be.

If you're an investor, owning shares in a company that has almost all of, but a shrinking share of a shrinking market isn't a happy place to be, especially if they have no room for growth and are trimming their failed attempts to find new markets. Add that their flagship product is running in the single digits, their Marketing efforts are the not only the butt of much comedy but may cost more than the GDP of Haiti and you have the perfect storm.

It's more fun to be holding a company that's growing share, sales and profits too. A company that only holds 10% of its target markets. A company that can report record profits in a bloodbath holiday quarter in the middle of a dire recession? A company whose advertising is so enjoyable that it's viral. A company that's innovating and inventing new markets. That's more fun. That's a winner.

And that winner isn't MSFT. Their stock is where it was 10 years ago. Over the same period Apple is up 1000%. Unlike Microsoft they have 90% of the established market to get yet, and the prospect of undiscovered country.

/14 links? That's informative. Pretty sure you regret posting that now. Let's go again.

Ex-Microsoft chief deliberately releases bugs into the wild!

Forgive me for digressing but we're off the track. The common folk don't see the software in the server room. The server software isn't representative of the company and vice versa to them. It's harder to attach a symbol to something they can't see. Harder, but not impossible.

Something that's in front of them every day like desktop software, especially when it shows them both symbols together each morning when they start their PC, that's easy. It says "Microsoft" and "Vista" right on it, doesn't it? They must have some relation. It's not that hard to push it the extra inch and say the one is the other - especially when afterward the software itself will reinforce the connection every morning.

Oh, and SharePoint's security model? That's an interesting bit of work. Have you had a look at how that's actually deployed in the field? Doesn't that concern you just a wee bit? Nothing says due diligence like a press release along the lines of "a Security Group employee downloaded documents from the server and fled. We don't know what he got yet, but we will soon because he's using them as evidence in a lawsuit."

do you think the public would accept the idea of a taxpayer-financed but privately-operated school

Public grants for private schools been accepted in the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and Finland. At least private school operating costs are granted by the govenment to some private schools in the UK and France.

Of course abolishing the publicly run schools has not happened anywhere yet.

It's been done.

Incedently, Charter is Paul Allen's company. They are bleeding money right now with a stock price of... EIGHT CENTS! They've been skirting insolvency for a few years now and the Securities and Exchange Commission is saying that if they fail to refinance some of their debt, they will be forced into bankruptcy.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008683150_charter29.html

Then why don't they call it "Windows Netbooks"? If "Windows Starter" is supposed to be the netbook edition, then they've managed to give it a name that actively misleads you as to what it's intended for.

Sounds like it will be a repeat of Vista Capable. At this point, however, there can't be that many people left on the planet who don't know that it's just crap. The choke-hold on OEMs is starting to break, this time all at once instead of a manageable one or two at a time. Any remaining MS revenues are starting to be only from those locked in through formats, protocols or ideologies.

"a huge atomic phallic substitute seeming to come out of his crotch?"

You're not the first to notice the Freudian connotations. is this more interesting than this The web browser is a dead end

First, MSFT stock has paid a good chunk of dividends over that 10 year period.

Microsoft did not start paying dividends until 2003. Since then they've declared $4.96 in dividends.

You're comparing growth between two companies at very different stages of maturity, which is not really fair.

My retirement account doesn't care about "fair". What it cares about is growth. You can't get growth out of a company that's got no growth potential. You can't have more of a market than all of it.

Sure, if you look at the last few months/years of equity growth, but that doesn't mean it was the better investment.

A decade is not the last few months/years. It's hopefully one third of your working life. How long should you wait to get favorable returns? half? Two thirds? If you get to 30 years and you're down to 25% of what you put into your retirement you would have been better off putting half of the money in a mattress and setting the other half on fire.

Ok, sorry, Apple didn't ever tell people NOT to install antivirus software. However, they do tell people it isn't necessary, which is just as dangerous.

And I quote: "'The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box,' the spokesman told the BBC."

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/1205/apple.html

http://www.itpro.co.uk/608967/week-in-review-apple-confuses-on-security

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/practicalmac/2008475243_ptmacc06.html?syndication=rss

By 'astroturfing', do you mean 'having a differing opinion to the groupthink'?

No, he means astroturfing.

M$ has a multi-billion dollar incentive to astroturf all the major computer discussion sites. Unlike some companies they have the alley cat ethics and they've been caught astroturfing several times in the past. Only a small percentage change of opinions in places like slashdot can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales and it's no accident that every time they spam some propaganda like this story that lots of people pop out of the woodwork to support the propaganda. Follow the money. They are currently spamming slashdot with content-free drivel on a daily basis about their Windows7 vapourware, something that doesn't even exist as a product yet, and they are doing everything they can, ethical and unethical, to get mindshare at the expense of anything else. They also appear to be using sock puppets to mod up content free posts that they particularly want to support the M$ propaganda.

If you want to see the true meaning of groupthink head over to microsoft.com or any number of microsoft astroturf web sites. Even if slashdot had bias it only adds a tiny bit of balance to the many millions of dollars of incredibly one-sided propaganda flowing out of Redmond.

Here are some fraudulent ideas that M$ marketing and their astroturfers and sock puppets like to push:

• Anybody who disagrees with the M$ party line is a zealot. No, actually no more than any business that chooses to be an exclusively M$ shop. M$ is not the center of the universe and reasonable people don't have to use any of their products at all. Calling somebody a zealot is just M$ marketing's scummy way of trying to marginalize opinions that don't toe the M$ party line.
• Choosing non-M$ products is religious. No, actually only people who can't think for themselves might think that. Again another way M$ marketing tries to marginalize alternative points of view.
• M$ is treated unfairly in discussion forums. Gee, I'd like to be treated that unfairly. They reap what they sow. If they were truly honest and open and didn't try to manipulate and gouge everybody in sight then they might have a point.
• Open source licensing has mysterious dangerous properties making them somehow different from commercial licensing. FUD. No, they don't, all licenses need to be checked for the intended purpose. Whether closed or open is irrelevant.
• People helping each other is communist. Yeah, and breathing shared air is communist also.
• M$ has the interests of their customers at heart. No they don't, particularly because they are a virtual monopoly and because they have alley cat ethics, they only care about perceptions.
• etc. I'm sure others could add more.

Oh, and concerning "M$". It's to add some balance to M$ continuing to put their marketing drivel on general purpose PC keyboards. Personally, I'll be happy to stop when they stop.

---

Astroturfers use very creative definitions of what an astroturfer is so they can say with a straight face "I'm not an astroturfer".

Here's an interesting article about Gates predictions. Some have come true, others haven't (surprise surprise).

Interestingly, it sheds doubt on the whole 640K rumor.

'Donors with ties to Microsoft are among the biggest backers of President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration'

But my post was not just to you... you were not the only one to answer in such a manner.

Another poster wrote: "Maybe it's just different where I live. But refusing to help a child because someone might think you're a pervert seems downright selfish and cowardly to me."

Maybe I was wrong, but that seemed to be aimed at me, not the men I mentioned. But regardless, I still take issue with this. In the most common kind of scenario, a strange male would be weighing the difference between a child's scraped knee on the one hand, and a possible multi-year prison sentence on the other if someone misunderstood and found a sympathetic jury or judge. We know that things like this have happened, it is not just a fairy tale. And that is a pretty sad statement about our society.

For those who doubt, in a nearby state about 15 years ago, more that two dozen adults who were associated with a church day-care were accused and convicted of conducting a "child sex ring". As it turned out, the whole thing was pretty much imaginary, and the charges and convictions were all due to one overzealous police detective (Perez), "testimony" from children who had been coached and prompted by the same detective AND by state "Child Protective Service" workers, and a sympathetic jury.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980514&slug=2750670

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33472_wenatchee01.shtml

Here is another article from a little later:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33481_wenbox01.shtml

People should be afraid of this kind of zealot. The kind, that is, that is so fearful they would destroy their own community, and even society as a whole if necessary, in order to "protect the children" from imaginary threats.

The people who should be in prison are the people who helped this travesty of justice come about.

But my post was not just to you... you were not the only one to answer in such a manner.

Another poster wrote: "Maybe it's just different where I live. But refusing to help a child because someone might think you're a pervert seems downright selfish and cowardly to me."

Maybe I was wrong, but that seemed to be aimed at me, not the men I mentioned. But regardless, I still take issue with this. In the most common kind of scenario, a strange male would be weighing the difference between a child's scraped knee on the one hand, and a possible multi-year prison sentence on the other if someone misunderstood and found a sympathetic jury or judge. We know that things like this have happened, it is not just a fairy tale. And that is a pretty sad statement about our society.

For those who doubt, in a nearby state about 15 years ago, more that two dozen adults who were associated with a church day-care were accused and convicted of conducting a "child sex ring". As it turned out, the whole thing was pretty much imaginary, and the charges and convictions were all due to one overzealous police detective (Perez), "testimony" from children who had been coached and prompted by the same detective AND by state "Child Protective Service" workers, and a sympathetic jury.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980514&slug=2750670

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33472_wenatchee01.shtml

Here is another article from a little later:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33481_wenbox01.shtml

People should be afraid of this kind of zealot. The kind, that is, that is so fearful they would destroy their own community, and even society as a whole if necessary, in order to "protect the children" from imaginary threats.

The people who should be in prison are the people who helped this travesty of justice come about.

But my post was not just to you... you were not the only one to answer in such a manner.

Another poster wrote: "Maybe it's just different where I live. But refusing to help a child because someone might think you're a pervert seems downright selfish and cowardly to me."

Maybe I was wrong, but that seemed to be aimed at me, not the men I mentioned. But regardless, I still take issue with this. In the most common kind of scenario, a strange male would be weighing the difference between a child's scraped knee on the one hand, and a possible multi-year prison sentence on the other if someone misunderstood and found a sympathetic jury or judge. We know that things like this have happened, it is not just a fairy tale. And that is a pretty sad statement about our society.

For those who doubt, in a nearby state about 15 years ago, more that two dozen adults who were associated with a church day-care were accused and convicted of conducting a "child sex ring". As it turned out, the whole thing was pretty much imaginary, and the charges and convictions were all due to one overzealous police detective (Perez), "testimony" from children who had been coached and prompted by the same detective AND by state "Child Protective Service" workers, and a sympathetic jury.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980514&slug=2750670

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33472_wenatchee01.shtml

Here is another article from a little later:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33481_wenbox01.shtml

People should be afraid of this kind of zealot. The kind, that is, that is so fearful they would destroy their own community, and even society as a whole if necessary, in order to "protect the children" from imaginary threats.

The people who should be in prison are the people who helped this travesty of justice come about.

He did what he was paid to do.

Note: That doesn't make him a good guy. Some jobs a decent guy won't take. But he did keep his deal. MS should hope Kevin Johnson does the same at Juniper Networks. Sometimes the deal isn't the same thing your PR says it is (of course).

Have a look at this: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/honey/

Do you think China has come clean on this because of their own will?

I'm surprised the Chinese are still making honey. They have managed to wipe out several species of pollinators over vast sections of their country by grossly overusing pesticides. Uncontrolled industrial pollution didn't help either. There are places in China where farmers have to pollinate fruit trees with paint brushes. To be fair to the Chinese the USA is fast on it's way to suffering the same fate for a lot of the same reasons. Neither government seems to care.

and they took the consumer health / quality errors very seriously.

Bullshit. They only address a *specific* issue when it is discovered by the victims. If no one complains, they just keep on pumping out the poison.

Have a look at this: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/specials/honey/

Do you think China has come clean on this because of their own will?

I see you've not met many Jews. The ones I know are very religious.

Then you don't know Jews very well. Most of us really don't give a shit about religion, especially that sick everyone-should-be-a-rabbi-or-rabbi's-wife bullshit the blackhats practice.

Gates, Jobs, Torvalds, all Jews? Where do you come up with all this rank bullshit?

Actually, he's got you there. Name any major innovation in science and technology of the past 100 years, and I can probably find you a Jew somewhere behind it. For such a tiny population we do do a lot of science. For example, read "How Israel Saved Intel".

Not that the GP is right in anything he says about Muslims. Islam is... well it's pretty much the same as the Jewish religion, but a bit stricter and with proselytizing. The difference in public images largely comes because most Jews haven't practiced Orthodox observance for about 200 years now, whereas most Muslims still practice observant Islam. Oh, and because Islam marks land as "Muslim" if Muslims ever conquer it at any point, while Jews and Judaism make our sole political claim to the land of Israel, which is what this whole goddamned war is about anyway.

As we always ask, "ad matai?" (translation: "until when [the fighting]?")

Bring me your coupon, I'll sell you an empty cardboard "digital converter" box with a $20 bill for your effort.

So long as each household still gets only 2, that doesn't bug me too much. After all, they are selling a natural resource (RF spectrum) which by nature belongs to everybody. It is not unlike e.g. Alaska where everybody gets a little bit of the oil money. If nothing else, perhaps the coupons should also have counted towards the purchase price of a new TV which incorporates a digital receiver.

Beyond all that, $80 is starting to seem like chump change compared to yet another round of $500 per capita "tax rebates."

Style improvement and automatic editing software is widely used to improve the quality of writing."

So close, and yet so, so far...

Most all the predictions I read in this article have roughly the same problem - it still assumes technology is much more ubiquitous than it is in the real world. I'd say he was probably off by a five to ten years in many of those predictions. Let's see:

Computers: Personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and are commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry such as wristwatches, rings, earrings, and other body ornaments... The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software.

Getting there, but we're not quite at the point of wearing computers in common objects. Keyboard and mouse are still king.

Education: Students of all ages typically have a computer of their own, which is a thin tabletlike device weighing under a pound with a very high resolution display suitable for reading... Intelligent courseware has emerged as a common means of learning.

Closer, but education still seems largely clueless about how to effectively use computers. Intelligent teaching software is making strides, but still really can't be called "intelligent" by any stretch of the imagination.

Communication: "Telephone" communication is primarily wireless, and routinely includes high-resolution moving images... Virtually all communication is digital and encrypted, with public keys available to government authorities.

Technologists always want that video phone, and the market continually says "no thanks, voice is good enough". In fact, it's gone backwards a bit, with text messaging being rather popular.

Business and Economics: Intelligent assistants which combine continuous speech recognition, natural-language understanding, problem solving, and animated personalities routinely assist with finding information, answering questions, and conducting transactions... Most purchases of books, musical "albums," videos, games, and other forms of software do not involve any physical object.

Again, the overestimation of natural interfaces. And as of right now, a large percentage of software (especially games) is still attached to a physical disk, although digital downloads are gaining Steam... (sorry)

Politics and Society: Privacy has emerged as a primary political issue. The virtually constant use of electronic communication technologies is leaving a highly detailed trail of every person's every move.... There is a growing neo-Luddite movement...

This one's pretty close regarding privacy concerns. As far as neo-Luddite, I haven't seen any such movement emerge in large numbers. There are some anti-technologists, but it's usually a secondary effect of some other philosophical argument.

The Arts: The high quality of computer screens, and the facilities of computer-assisted visual rendering software, have made the computer screen a medium of choice for visual art.

Another one technologists always get wrong is the idea that people are eager to throw away traditional art mediums. I think Star Trek was closer on this one, about how people will always enjoy timeless "classical" entertainment right alongside their "high-tech" (holodeck) entertainment. The two need not be mutually exclusive.

Etc, etc... I'd say the predictions were generally on the right track, but perhaps just a bit too optimistic in the rate of adoption. Still, overall it was fairly insightful, if somewhat conservative. I'm not sure I could have done nearly as well.

Microsoft employment stats, by category

Revenue and Headcount

Today the same author quotes Goldman Sachs and Oppenheimer & Co, both of which think 10% layoffs are a great idea. If you work for M$ and read Slashdot, you are so fired.