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Exactly. MOD PARENT UP.

At the same time that technology is giving more than ever to humankind, respect from management for those who are knowledgeable about technology is lower than ever.

Part of the problem at Microsoft is that it is run by someone with little or no interest in technology, Steve Ballmer.

Releasing products that are unfinished because programmers have not had time to finish them seems to be normal top management policy at Microsoft. Microsoft Windows Vista is just the latest example. Microsoft employees say things like, "even a piece of junk will qualify". There's no joy in working at a place that doesn't allow you to do a good job.

or does anyone know where Illinois dumps used tech

There's a rumor floating around that they just left a Naval reactor core lying on the surface because the dirt they were going to bury it in was already hotter than the core!

Well then, let's save you some money. Boeing Surplus is no more. They closed last winter. Kinda ticked me off, since I finally moved close enough to be able to stop by.

Seattle PI
@ Make magazine
Save Boeing Surplus site

Oregon has one of the most liberally construed state constitutional rights to free speech in the nation. That's one reason PDX boasts one of the highest numbers of strip clubs per capita of any major city in the US (see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003336880_portlandclubs02m.html). Although I guess the cause could also be all the guys at the OSDL offices.

Just can't get our act together. It's why we've never been able to get past our image as disorganized and in general lower than the other birds.

Pigeon controversies triggering forks is nothing.

For a fork, you'd have had to go all the way to Soviet Russia, but a dart was close enough to prove that In Moderately Liberal Seattle, dart triggers pigeon controversy.

Author of the article has posted an update. Details are still sketchy. Some highlights:

Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, described COFEE in an interview.

"It's basically a thumb drive that is like a Swiss army knife for law enforcement officials that are investigating computer crimes. If you're a law enforcement official and let's say you have access to a computer that might be used, for example, by a child predator, a lot of times they have information on their hard disk that's encrypted, and you've got that information off in order to have a successful investigation and prosecution.

"In the past, people would have to literally unplug the computer, they would lose whatever was in RAM. They'd have to transport it somewhere else, and it would take at least four hours, often more to get at the heart of the information."

The device can get that job done in as little as 20 minutes, Smith said.

"With this tool, they can just plug it into the computer, wherever it's located. They don't have to turn off the power. It has over 150 different technology tools that law enforcement officers can use to analyze data, to get access to passwords, to obtain the information typically that people need to successfully prosecute a crime."

Update: Via email, a Microsoft spokeswoman said COFEE is a compilation of publicly available forensics tools, such as "password security auditing technologies" used to access information "on a live Windows system." She cited rainbow tables as an example of other such tools, and "was NOT confirming that COFEE includes Rainbow Tables."

It "does not circumvent Windows Vista BitLocker encryption or undermine any protections in Windows through secret 'backdoors' or other undocumented means."

Further, she reiterated that the tool is intended for use "by law enforcement only with proper legal authority."

Another update: This from Tim Cranton, associate general counsel at Microsoft: "The key to COFEE is not new forensic tools, but rather the creation of an easy to use, automated forensic tool at the scene. It's the ease of use, speed, and consistency of evidence extraction that is key."

Firstly, we must concede up front that miscommunication within MS is certainly possible, and that none of this info is reliable. After all, we have two esteemed counselors and a spokeswomen. IOW, technical competence not guaranteed.

In the first quote, he is obviously talking about a live system investigation. That implies subversion or cooperation, which is already weird enough. He says "it would take at least four hours" in reference to encryption, which alludes to brute force key cracking/guessing. And then "The device can get that job done in as little as 20 minutes, Smith said." What job? Key crack? If so, it must be either with owner cooperation or with a back door (possibly referring to an MS proprietary encryption as parent alluded to). This can be accomplished by a backdoor for the encryption itself, or by an escalation to god mode (access to all RAM contents). But I was under the impression (contrary to how nix works) that in Windows, even the almighty Administrator is not privy to goings on in the SYSTEM level. I'm not familiar with the NT kernel though.

But then the next two quotes directly contradict what he says. The spokeswoman says no backdoors are involved. But to get at encryption keys, you either need weak encryption (then why the need for online?), cooperation (we can still plead the 5th for now, so this won't go very far), or a backdoor.

One of the following must be true:

• They're all wrong and don't know wtf they're talking about.
• MS caught with its pants down and backtracking to not give away their secrets (again they real

All the brand notebooks with SSD options use first generation SSDs. These have the shattering access speeds, high durability, no noise, and power efficient benefits, but read/write performance is still mediocre.

The second generation SSDs would cost you more than a whole notebook, but have significant performance improvements:

Memoright GT vs Mtron vs Raptor vs Seagate

Memoright nails it. It is easily twice as fast as what Mac puts in their notebooks.

If you *really* want an SSD, buy one separately and install it yourself. You will not be disappointed.

BTW the file indexing that causes SSDs to slow cause HDDs to slow as well. Many people have reported unbearable slowdown, and that is with HDDs. I am sure anything slower than that would make you want to return the whole thing, but this can be fixed. Most people will tell you to just turn it off. Google has also complainted about Microsoft pre-installing an indexing system that sucks.

Meanwhile, sonic detector devices are suspected to have an adverse effect on marine mammals, and possibly other aquatic life-forms.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/216520_orcas18.html/

In my opinion, partnering with Microsoft has been ugly. For example, Microsoft knew that Vista had problems before it was released: Suit says Microsoft knew it misled -- E-mails raised Vista doubts.

Windows Vista users suffer a ghastly performance loss (roughly two times, hardware for hardware).

Look who is talking....

The war on "terror" is estimated to cost:
$341.4 million per day http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home

$720 Million Each Day http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092102074.html

$100,000 per minute http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002780385_spending03.html

Cost of Terror War Hits 430 Billion http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34040

Windows always supports 100% of hardware out of the box... though the installation of driver cds and through the preinstallation of drivers by the manufacturer.

First of all, "installation of driver CDs" isn't out of the box. Second, Windows doesn't support 100% of hardware even with driver CDs: installers and drivers are far too buggy. Third, "installation of driver CDs" just isn't an option on the OLPC anyway.

Get them while they are young eh? Sounds like the brain washing practices most southern baptist churches employ. In fact, I believe MS has been decried a number of times for exactly this practice.

"Decried"? That is exactly what Microsoft is doing: they are already getting to every child on the planet. That's why there needs to be balance and children need to be exposed to alternatives. OLPC can do that only if Microsoft doesn't usurp them as well.

Also, when you get right down to it, what you are suggesting is exactly the kind of user-lock-in that any other day of the week you would be decrying MS for.

You can't be "locked into" open source software.

But you want me to believe you aren't being fundamentalist, your completely rational and honest right?

I really don't care what you think; I oppose Microsoft out of rational self-interest.

If you want to see religious zealotry, look no further than to the top of Microsoft:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbCmnRztK1Y

Much of Microsoft seems composed of Ayn Rand pounding whiny 20-something VB hacks that can't understand why they aren't multi-billionaires yet like the previous generations at Microsoft, and they are blaming anyone and anything in sight, foremost open source. The fact that they aren't very good, that their business model is obsolete, and that that's catching up with them just doesn't occur to them.

And if you want to see what crooks these people are, just look at their E-mails:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/133050.asp

Why should we give crooks and zealots like that access to our children?

Everyone knows that Bill gates "solved" spam years ago...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/256579_software23.asp

Check out how the border patrol is detaining people domestically in this new story

nd the President's Cyber Policy is from the Executive branch, I'd say "very little".

Well, just because it works doesn't mean it works well. Take a look at the Seattle School Districts' dinosaur VAX systems. Sure they work, but verrrry slowly. And what's more, maintenance is a nightmare and scalability in not an option. I agree that we should avoid trying to reinvent the wheel, but I think updating a wagon wheel with steel belted radial tire is sometimes a good idea.

It's great to see new technologies that are easier to recycle.

Now if U.S could just stop pretending and sign the Basel Convention deal which restricts the export of e-waste so the children of Guiyu wouldn't have to waste away their lives in toxic pits melting our "green" and ecologically "safe" drives.

Recycling is great, recycling it near the consumpition is also great. Dumping it to China is not great, out of sight out of mind mentality comes and bites you in the ass sooner or later.

D'oh! My bad. The link should have been here:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/167212_radiation01.html. Forgive me, they're both seattle*.nwsource.com URLs and I mixed up which tab was which. Here's the relevant bit:

Finding a weapon with a radiation detector might seem easy enough, but seemingly innocent things also set detectors off. One day it might be a shipment of medical isotopes, the next it might be a truck full of bananas or cocoa powder, [Los Alamos scientist David] Mercer said.

Wait a minute: bananas and cocoa powder?

"Cocoa power, like bananas, has potassium 40 in it," he said. "It's not harmful to humans, but it does set the detectors off. There are lots of things around us every day that have radiation in them. We even had a shipment of toilet tanks set off a detector once."

Porcelain, it turns out, has a bit of thorium and uranium in it.

Other weird things on the list: granite, which has a hint of thorium and uranium; camping lanterns, with thorium; propane, with radium 226; Brazil nuts, with potassium 40; kitty litter, with thorium and potassium 40; pottery, with uranium and thorium.

Emitting nuclear radiation is the equivilent of shouting "hey, here, look in my vehicle. I've got something NUCLEAR!"

The problem, as the other posts in this thread show, is that having something NUCLEAR! is not all that unusual, and usually quite benign. It's not just radiation therapy patients - these radiation detectors get set off by some foods (bananas, cocoa powder, Brazil nuts) camping equipment (lanterns, propane), and stone and clay products (granite, kitty litter, pottery).

When you get that many false positives, your test is useless. It's just more security theater. You need to test not just for the presence of nuclear radiation, but to set an appropriate threshold.

I suppose that the calculation of such a threshold with a formula involving the square of the distance to the object being tested is too complicated for the majority of people responsible for our security. And that, friends, is not reassuring.

Where do you stand on the issue of medical marijuana in your state? For ten years, use of marijuana has and created a legal vacuum for the public interest versus the private use issue. Would you protect growers of medical marijuana in your state from federal prosecution when such situations occur? Do you support the free and open use of a chemical that has no known addictive qualities, no known adverse health effects and broad, diverse public support for its decriminalization?

The cost of setting up a plant is hardly "cheap" and what happens when coal becomes scarce? It IS a finite resource - unlike the sun.

Once again the cost of setting up a nuclear power plant is in the billions. Fissile materials are also finite, when they begin to run out we'll see huge increases in price. See the case of oil now.

I also take issue with your point that nuclear energy is "green". Even if we say that plants are entirely safe (Which seems to be the Slashdot consensus) there are many other issues. First of all, what does one do with the waste? Plutonium 239, the most common material used, has a half life of 24,000 years. That's longer than civilisation has so far existed. None of our current methods of storing waste are viable and many have been proven useless.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0606/S00198.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/4589321.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7068041.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jul/18/japan.justinmccurry1

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003816157_webhanfordleak01.html?syndication=rss

Let's not forget the insane amounts of energy required to both commission a plant, continually mine and transport uranium and then decommission it.

I don't understand how you can argue that replacing our dependence on finite resource that pollutes the environment with another finite resource that pollutes the environment is a good thing. I suggest you read the recently commission Garnaut Review (Professor Ross Garnaut is an economist at the Australian National University) which states that nuclear is a non-viable option and the world must develop renewable sources of energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garnaut_Report. Or the Stern review (also made by an economist) which reaches a similar conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review. I do believe these two in particular have a broader depth of knowledge surrounding economics than you do.

Sure, this is concerning to me because of how long all these chemicals survive and re-enter the water supply. Perhaps, this isn't even new News (fish on birth control -see here), but what concerns me is what about the other stuff that we introduce into our food/water supplies that is at higher concentrations? e.g., bovine hormones.

After they're done gutting FISA, they'll "reward" the media giants with tiered WWW pricing and the banning of "evil" protocols - just watch.

Signing Statements:

http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/TOCindex.htm

On December 20, 2007, President Bush signed routine postal legislation. In a "Signing Statement", the President claims Executive Power to search the mail of U.S. citizens inside the United States without a warrant, in direct contradiction of the bill he had just signed.

January 4, 08 Story:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003508676_mail04.html

House Dems Near Surrender on Bush Spying:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-melber/house-dems-near-surrender_b_89726.html#postComment

Washington Politicians Are Gutting America Like A Fish:

http://whitehouser.com/politics/bush-fascism-failed-democracy/

Bush Legacy Already Established - Helen Thomas:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/15358518/detail.html

Nancy Pelosi:

http://www.house.gov/pelosi/

email:

americanvoices@mail.house.gov

(415) 556-4862

District Office - 450 Golden Gate Ave. - 14th Floor - San Francisco, CA 94102

Greetings:

I left you a voice message earlier.

There is an article at The Huffington Post:

House Dems Near Surrender on Bush Spying:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-melber/house-dems-near-surrender_b_89726.html#postComment

If you read the comments, I think you might just begin to understand the movement that is starting to happen. I think all the Democrats you lead in the House should read this.
It's of things to come.
We have had it.
Democrats, and even a lot of Republicans are starting to wake up to the major damage done by this President, to our Constitution and our Freedom, and of the empty promises you, Nancy, made to those of us that put you there to represent us.
This Congress, lead by you, will be held responsible for idly standing by, and of recent, participating in the dismantling of our laws and accepted practices and replacing them with "mere precedent" and outright disregard for the rules of law, the ones we go to prison for, the same ones others are exempt from.
You and the Democratic Party will hear from us, we have, as a group, a starting list of 12 in the Democratic Party that will not be returning, as they are to be voted out.
The Republicans, double.

You have woken the sleeping giant that is the American people, and you all will be hearing from us and a growing number of voters across this country, that oddly enough depends on a manipulated election system we've all grown wise to.

A few weeks ago, we had thought you all had come to your senses by standing up to Mr. Bush and his group, but evidently, it was fake. We had, at one time thought that maybe you were waiting for the proper time to act. But you've decided which side you're on.
You all have failed to uphold your oaths.
We/I, have lost faith, so we shall act, and we will organize, and we will win.
Last chance has already past, and you all blew it to a lame duck President, no less.

SURRENDER DOROTHY

http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/comics/surrenderdot.jpg

Homes burned, eco-terrorists suspected

As long as environmentalists have good intentions - WHO CARES!

Indeed: I made this mistake with Internet access, and now I'm paying (haha!) the price for it.

I think the bigger problem is that consumers of all kinds of goods get hit with hidden fees so often, as the linked Seattle Times article discusses. Companies that use deceptive advertisements, like Clearwire (see the first link) shouldn't be allowed to use specious advertisements and then bury nasty surprises in pages and pages of small print.

Microsoft didn't invent it. They bought it.

I think the thing that really ticks off the tech community about Microsoft, is that they don't really invent anything, they're just extrordinarily good and spotting excellent software early on, acquiring it and then marketing it better than any other company out there.

And a very interesnting reading also: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/vistaexhibitsone.pdf

Microsoft execs on Vista problems is an excellent summary of the affair so far.

This class action suit isn't looking too good for Microsoft, I would say (though I'm not a lawyer, fortunately)

Can you provide any references to support this fact? 5% seems very low to me.

To be honest, it's just a number I remember from a previous thread on this topic.
But a little Google-Fu got me this:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003265139_imprices19.html
At a local QFC, Red Delicious apples go for about 99 cents a pound. Of that, only about 7 cents represents the cost of labor, said Tom Schotzko, a recently retired extension economist at Washington State University. The rest represents the grower's other expenses, warehousing and shipping fees, and the retailer's markup.
And that's for one of the most labor-intensive crops in the state

5%, 7%, close enough. The point stands: wages could go up substantially (even enough to attract citizens instead of illegals) and the price of friut would not 'triple' or 'quadruple' as some scaremongers claim.

Publicly state that you are thinking about killing the president. See how long it takes to receive a visit from the Secret Service.

Oh, right, I'm just paranoid.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/170992_prosser28.html

Check out page 47 of the full pdf. Its a table showing the percentage of crashes reported by graphics card vendor and Nvidia is way out in front, with 25% compared to less than 10% for ATI.

Agreed. MS made a monumental effort to ensure that Win 3.1 and DOS apps & hardware worked as well as humanly possible on Win95. They knew that successful adoption depended on a painless transition. There was a great story in the Seattle Times back then where an MS employee with a pickup truck drove to Egghead and filled the truck bed (scroll down about halfway) with a copy of every shrink-wrapped software product available in the store. He drove back to campus and handed out the boxes to the QA people and said "see if this works". The other great bit about that article is how the descriptions of the work atmosphere (near the bottom) sound like google today. I wonder if anyone would describe MS like that these days?

I'm surprised that they didn't make the same QA effort for Vista. Backwards compatibility has been their ace in the hole for a long time. People put up with the rest because moving from one OS to another wasn't that hard. Most stuff worked almost immediately and if it didn't it got fixed quickly. But the attitude that all vendors would have to write all new drivers is surprising. Granted that the vendors wouldn't have to write as many as MS would, but for an end-of-lifed product there's no financial incentive for the vendor to update it. While MS would seem to have one, given that people who have now-broken hardware are going to be mostly upset with the company that just took their money. Or if someone learns ahead of time that upgrading will disable their hardware they won't want to buy.

Give MS a break!

They did.

Good luck. Dept of State has stated that it won't change current policy:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152ap_us_castro.html

I have a brother-in-law that is American born Cuban who would like to visit and bring things back from Cuba which his parents always talk about things in Cuba that they can never get in the US (ie cigars).
BTW the cigars made in Cuba are really not as good as ones made by expatriates of Cuba since the tobacco in Cuba has problems due to diseases, drought and other factors that made the tobacco poor quality in the recent years so the reason for people wanting Cuban cigars because it a "embargoed" object.

That sounds like an awfully high number to me. What proportion of the world's population (around 6 billion, right?) is students with access to a computer and a desire to do any development of any kind?

At last! The real reason that Microsoft wants to port XP to the OLPC.

...it smelled like burnt almond cookies?

and in France the violence has turned to urban warfare

But I'll come back to that later. First:
It's people like you who are responsible for the rise of Sadam, Hitler, Bush and other despots. You justification is: there are "good" reasons to persecution. Hitler shared your point of view.
Instead of going after the people who failed to act (or juts let things happen that 9/11 to get the convenient war propaganda), you let your rights burn, you justify your own oppression, you take the lies about terrorism in Iraq as granted (the only terrorists active in Iraq were backed by the US and were acting to replace Sadam by a more cooperative dictator, just like in the very well documented coup against Mohammed Mossadegh which led to the current Iranian situation). You support the american terrorism. You can't recognise a failed leader when you see one, Bush speaks in YOUR name, he acts in YOUR name.

they have developed a reputation for it.

Americans have developed a reputation: a short summary of things done in YOUR name: You call others nations terrorists if they don't support in your holly war, you invade a country under false pretexts, plan the chaos (disbanding the government and army http://www.cfr.org/publication/7853/iraq.html) which will justify the presence of your army in the country. You steal all the oil you can while people argue about the effectiveness of your strategy. You kill people at random (just for fun, a video) and you create laws to avoid being prosecuted... You kill more people cause it's fun It's bad you broke rules but no laws, because killing people is not a crime (the killers will walk free and proud in your streets). You have a strong tendency of acting like criminals at every level of the state and you make your own law how and where it pleases you; As Bush said "He tried to kill my dad". And so you bombed a nation with radioactive waste (twice http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html). Also, giving false evidence about mass destruction weapons to bring other nations into your jihad is another strategy in you sick failed-state. And this reputation of being christian fanatics who create your own private (out of the law) saint armies http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ counts for something... Your leaders are a reflection of yourself.

I think there are valid reasons for millions of people around the world to seek vengeance against the US. So stop complaining, having a 1984 like system at the airports and having your laptop stolen by greedy TSA officials is a low price to pay for your own security when you are too lazy to act responsibly. You don't deserve freedom if you can't fight for it... It's up to you as a citizen of a country to watch where your freedom goes... You are just like russians, happy to give away your rights by fear of loosing some of this daily comfort. At the airport you are treated like cattle, because you are... Your country and its officials (from top to bottom TSA agents) consider you as such... it gives you

Liddell didn't say how much Microsoft would borrow. The company had $21 billion in cash and short-term investments as of Dec. 31 -- significantly less than in the past, following a series of share buybacks and other initiatives that have reduced the company's cash holdings.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/130975.asp

They propose $44.6bn, $22.3bn in cash and the rest in MS stock. $20bn - $22.3bn == ($2.3bn), so Microsoft has to physically borrow $2.3bn of cash. That's called debt. They don't have the liquid assets to afford the deal. The next thing that comes after this is selling off physical assets, cutting employees, mortgaging assets, and then death. Microsoft needs to turn a profit to follow this cycle backwards (i.e. to pay off their debt, or to start at any point before death and head towards paying off their debt).

The problem with American business and the financial "industry" built around it is that there is actually no interest at all in sustainable business, but rather exponential profit growth at all cost, even the death of the company itself. The company dies, the money vultures move on to the next target.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2004131851_brodeur18m.html/

There is no way in hell any public project could get across a state, let alone the entire country, for 70 billion. Sad hunh?

If only there weren't two states that didn't allow you to pump your own gas.

However, don't let that get in the way of your straw man argument.

Your figure on the Sound Transit 2 light rail budget is way off. I don't know what other light rail system to which you'd be referring either. The segment currently under construction (Westlake to SeaTac airport) is about 16 miles long, meaning it would have to cost 16 billion dollars using your billion dollars per mile figure. The budgeted amount is only 2.44 billion dollars. The 3 mile UW extension is about 1.5 billion, largely because it's all tunnel, still short of your 1 billion dollars per mile figure though.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002181534_soundbudget16m.html
http://www.seattlechannel.org/issues/soundTransit.asp

Maybe the state of Washington should take a page out of Microsoft's book: If you are working for Microsoft they give you a certain time period to pay up (activation) and if not will disable access to the bridge. Once they pay up the will allow them through, but sometimes get it wrong and prevent them from crossing until they have waded through the support process.

Nah, they're doing it another way.

$6-$7 toll on 520 bridge, possibly I-90 bridge, next year.

Damn kids, get off my lawn!

Jeeeeez people, calm down. As of composing this, about 75% of the comments are complaining of digg similarities, the new discussion system, blah blah. Calm down, people.. it's still slashdot. As best I can tell, they've just debuted a new section (idle.slashdot). You can still post your retarded memes (In soviet Russia our new CSS web 2.0 overlords welcome I, for one), and otherwise go about your typical slashdot business.

Back to the actual article.. I'd never heard of computer.com.. I guess it would help if I watched the superbowl.. but, yea, I don't. After viewing all the ads in TFA, some are decent (and I've seen re-run later), and some aren't terribly memorable (the salesgenie ad looks like something a 12 year old kid could storyboard in about an hour). Most of the dotcom ads are from companies I'm aware of (monster, pets.com, etc), although I never heard of computer.com or ourbeginning.com.

I tried to do some research on computer.com to see what its story was (currently a doorway page for a linkfarm).. and as best I can tell, it burned out right away (Seattle PI story from 2yrs later). (They raised $6M+ in venture funding, and blew $3M on the superbowl ads). There's even a 3yr old /. story that has computer.com in the comments, but TFA doesn't seem to mention computer.com directly (and the linked "video dot-bombs" from TFA doesn't seem to work for me). I'm curious if anyone here knows the full story?

it worked when Microsoft bought Hotmail

Is Microsoft making money off Hotmail? Is Hotmail inducing anybody to buy Windows or Office? If not, it was a waste of money. And I don't think it is: Microsoft lost $77m on MSN in 2006.

Saying that the most wealthy, successful software company in the world is doomed to failure for going against silicon valley reasoning is futile when that's what they've always done and made more than anyone else while doing.

Microsoft is making money with their near monopoly: Office and Windows. Anything else is negligible or a money loser.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20041022/MicrosoftResults.gif

http://www.newrowley.com/images/blog/2006/msft_profits606.jpg

It's a joke really. Nothing the company is doing is working. Even Xbox only has high revenue because it's subsidized so heavily and the company is bleeding money on it.

Yeah, all that cash just up and evaporated(no, it actually didn't):

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/309852_software02.html

There are more than 9 billion shares of Microsoft outstanding; in 2004 they paid a special dividend of $3 a share; that's a $27 billion reduction in cash at hand that went straight to shareholders, not tricky accounting. Do I need to go on?