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for the Nascar grapes

The Pacific Ocean is geologically much more new and deeper than the Atlantic side, which has a much more gradual slope on the continental shelf / continental slope / continental rise subduction system between continents. So we know the Atlantic is older.

Another fun (dynamic) map showing some actual geologic and volcanic activity:

http://oss.zentu.net/?q=node/118

vBulletin makes me want to put a bullet in my head.

Seriously, though, this list is bigger. And better. :P

Maybe you've not looked hard enough? It does exist, but what most OSS lacks is marketing/promo budget. That is why comprehensive lists like this (eCommerce, ERP, and Business Enterprise) are good. ;)

This is true. However, it is an oligopoly in which collusion and cartels are more likely. And this means the FCC still has pull.

Verizon probably won't win the early termination fees suit if it goes to the US Supreme Court, and it knows that, so it's doing the next most predatory thing it can.

The article in the OP stated: "The companies noted that Alltel is serving 57 mostly rural markets that Verizon Wireless does not serve." In other words, Verizon is buying out the rural markets, giving those people less choice, even if -- and especially if -- the suit does go to the Supreme Court.

It's probably very interesting to note what kind of correlation there is between the states' litigation against Verizon (and its cronies) and the areas Alltel serves: like "dollars of litigation" total in rural states vs. the "dollars of litigation" in the cities that Verizon tends to serve. Very interesting indeed.

About a decade too late, Microsoft is finally seeing the light.

A recent article (registration required) in the New York Times discusses how the Redmond giant is now "giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites."

Ha! I would definitely disagree on the "sophisticated" adjective. Are these noble motives? Hardly. But for non-technical types, this could easily be painted as a seeming variety of evangelical philanthropy. Truth-seekers might ask: does Microsoft really care about all those poor, starving students of the Universe? And if so, why does it care now instead of before; haven't computers been around quite awhile? If (past) actions speak louder than words, the obvious answer would be "Microsoft doesn't care." This futile freebie is far too little, far too late. The computing world got along just fine before there was a Microsoft, and it will continue to get along well whether or not Microsoft does. It could probably be easily proven that the legally-laden profit-seeking motives of the MSFT corporation have actually hindered progress, especially progress of technically-inclined students.

One of the main problems with capitalism is that it is based on the assumption that every single action by every person everywhere has a monetary-based profit motive. If this were true, libraries would not exist. Indeed, in a purely profit-motivated society, freedom itself would not exist, as time itself would be handcuffed to the dollar sign; choice, the ability to research between or among alternatives, and a non time-constrained intuition are keys for progress.

A related, but somewhat tangent aside: I cannot quantify the irritation I have with my Business 2.0 magazine subscription being replaced by the megacorporate-centric Fortune magazine. The latest two editions have been severely disappointing. Business 2.0 was about innovation, ideas, progression, change for the better. Fortune had "The $100 Billion Woman" Melinda Gates on the cover for January 2008 and some corporate greed investment propaganda on the cover for February of 2008. Evil real estate people. While I can respect "rich, powerful" women, I don't really aspire to go about having dollar signs attached to my "net worth".

I sometimes wonder what direction my academic career might have taken if I'd discovered Free Open-Source Software sooner. My advocation of FOSS stands today stronger than before; it is indeed a particularly useful tool for students, teachers, professors, small-medium business owners and other efficient people of the world.

Microsoft has effectively paid its employees with your tax dollars for years.

True, also because of its significant presence in the US state of Washington, most of those Microsoft employees are able to avoid paying income tax (state income tax at least) on those salaries. Washington is one of those states that has income-tax exemptions. Isn't it so very interesting that Microsoft is not a state-centric business, but that their products are earning revenues from all US states, overseas, etc.?

Couple avoidance of a state income tax with the fact that many Washingtonians head south to Oregon for some of those lovely sales tax breaks since, well, the state of OR has no state sales tax.

I've thought before that tax accounting is a game that only the supremely wealthy can afford to play (unethically do they play the game, imho, since most of their ethics are hinged upon avoidance of litigation) and all the while do their games erode the safety and well-being of middle-class people. It could even be argued that Microsoft's "ability" to do a hostile takeover of Yahoo! is most likely resultant from the tax dollars paid by many middle-class people, written off on paper tax forms, and essentially wasted.

begin: Small digression: Of course, Semel's insane executive compensation package or whatever it was certainly didn't seem to add much value of the majority of Yahoo! stakeholders and/or shareholders during his time. Maybe if he'd agreed to less compensation, and to giving others more, Yahoo! wouldn't be having this problem. The Microsoft-centric model has the same problem with the added result that it would most likely just kill small business.

Indeed, I really hope this doesn't indicate that the way of the small business is dying if not dead, and that it's just a matter time in watching giant corporate entities eat each other alive. No matter how it's viewed from a small business perspective, this can't be good since what Microsoft is essentially offering is to pay Yahoo! to take on some of its inefficiency burden, is it not?

People who start small businesses often have some unique product or widget (pun intended). Most of them don't have extensive training in accounting, so they think "Accounting! That's something I have to do as a small business owner." So they go look for accounting software for their computers. Or, they hope for the day they'll be large enough to justify the expense of hiring an accountant.

Like most people who have computers purchased or ordered with the Microsoft OS pre-installed, they have been brainwashed regarding security threats and can become paralyzed with paranoia regarding software installation. But they still continue to cling to the Microsoft way; they do so because they don't know any better or that the essential concept of "competition" among businesses and how competition is facilitated by innovation and hindered by lack of information. But who competes with Microsoft? Perhaps I'm idealist, but I really think there should be another option for people who don't want to feed the big dudes in corporate and governmental bureaucracy or the marketing hype and associated with the iPod generation.

Quickbooks is set up to be idiot-friendly, run like an installation disk . . . like people who go to have their taxes done by H&R Block or Jackson-Hewitt sit through an interview process or "consultation" are essentially just answering questions they could answer online. Tax accounting is the least logical form of any accounting. (Interesting side-note: the last place I interviewed for a job, it became OBVIOUS to me that the person interviewing me had not even read my resume, which she obtained online, or the "questionnaire" I'd subsequently filled out at her company's request prior to her interviewing me. That interview went bad fast.) Why should people be subjected to such redundancy? Hey, if you can read and type and comprehend, you've got some marketable skills. Headhunters don't like me when I tell them I prefer to not print out my resume, as it's easily available and viewable just as I have formatted it online.)

The people at the top of the income brackets usually try to figure out some way to keep people working in the lowest income brackets working in those low income brackets for as long as possible using various tax deductions. I've heard from the mouth of one CPA (former inlaw -- reason for the formerness of the relationship; would you be interested to know that he is married to a realtor?) something quite unethical regarding printing out of receipts which do not exist in order to claim the tax deduction and for the purpose of "itemizing deductions"! And they do it because they think they can get away with it at the expense of the less fortunate, all the while claiming a "tax deduction"!

If a company -- moreover a "staffing company or agency!" -- doesn't even have a website, or if that website has a glaringly amateur webpage spelling error for one of the most important words to people seeking work in their specific , I think there's a reason for concern.

So, and Why On Earth is there a technically-literate class of homeless people in this country?

Lessig wrote: "Can last-mile broadband be developed in a way that doesn't rely on the incentives that drive current providers toward innovation-stifling business models?" Diminishing marginal returns apply to expenditures for R&D as well. Nobody would disagree that societies are becoming more advanced as time goes on, however, the rate at which companies are able to realize returns on that increase in "innovation" is not able to keep up -- learning curves apply as well, especially ESPECIALLY when companies must pay competent people to answer questions asked by incompetent people. This is why people whining about outsourcing irk me to no end. I've worked at a company where I had to take technical support calls, and the utter idiocy of so many people is mind-boggling. If you can't figure something out, look it up in a book or online or in the manual that came with the product you purchased that you can't figure out how to get to work. People do have hobby interests on which they spend massive amounts of time or and/or money. Last time I checked, time wasn't powered by money. Automation of tasks -- like Lessing wrote about automated Tax Returns! -- gives people more time to spend doing things they enjoy doing, more "free time" as an economic reward. A longer piece written a big ago defending net neutrality: here.