"The fact that it is not caused by a mutation at all was apaprently lost on the founders of the organization."
I think that at least some the founders are fully aware of the fact that isn't a mutation, but are hoping that the people who come to their museum won't know this, and will thus take it as proof that "evolution is wrong". To those accustomed to a diet of extremely poor horror films that are usually erroneously labeled "science fiction", mutation = monster of the sort that usually comes into conflict with the teenage inhabitants of a small American town. They are thus easy meat for a bunch of con artists who are interested only in promoting what amounts to a product, and care not one whit or iota whether they tell outright lies while doing so.
This does I think serve as an object lesson about the depths to which at least some proponents of creationism will sink to in their attempts to discredit the theory of evolution. They have no interest whatsoever in the truth, but content themselves with setting up straw men that they can then knock down in front of audiences who are too ignorant to recognise and discount the use of such a base and fraudulent debating tactic.
The "museum" that is displaying this item in its list of "proofs" against evolution obviously has far more in common with "museums" run by P.T. Barnham and his ilk than what most of us would associate the term "museum" with, so I would not be in the least surprised if the people running it refer to those who enter as "marks" rather than visitors.
"The fact that objects fall toward the earth and other large bodies happens and is not the "theory" bit."
Indeed, because it's difficult not to notice this. The pure Aristotelian model favoured by mediaeval and Renaissance scientists explained it by stating that all objects have a "natural place" in the universe, which for those on the Earth, is the ground, while stars, the moon, and the planets (the sun was considered one of these) have their natural place in the heavens; any attempt to move an object from its "natural place" would result in it returning there unless some force prevented it from doing so.
It was this firmly-rooted Aristotelian model that made it so difficult for scholars of the time to accept the idea that the Earth moved. If this was the case, they argued, then dropped objects wouldn't describe a straight line, birds couldn't find their nests, and arrows, cannon balls, etc. would miss their targets unless adjustments were made to account for the movement. Because none of these things happened, it was thus obvious to anybody who wasn't entirely stupid that the Earth _must_ occupy a fixed point is space.
I'm very disappointed in Boot Camp. I downloaded it, and it won't even run on my iMac G5, so fanboys who claim that Apple stuff "just works" are lying. And if Apple really expect us to bother reading all that rubbish on their website, Steve Jobs can just think again: we expect to just download things and have them work, period. I spent a very long time indeed getting Boot Camp over my 1200/80 baud link, and it hurts to think it was completely wasted.
I'm a professional software developer, and that means I know when a program runs or not, and this one doesn't. I shall therefore write an extremely stern email to Apple telling them that they've been very, very naughty, and not to do things like this again without at least telephoning all their users and warning them.
"The real problem I've seen lately is companies taking glorified betas (with lots of serious bugs) and passing them off as finished products."
That's generally due to marketing departments, who see a decent feature-complete beta that appears to work, and then insist that the product is obviously finished despite protestations of programmers to the contrary.
Thanks for mentioning Battle For Wesnoth. As you say, like most, I hadn't heard of it, but I'm downloading it now. I love turn-based strategy, so I'm going to have a blast with this. Looks like it'll have a decent amount of replay value too.
Milton Freedman is writing revisionist crap. Some facts:
1) The BBC was not, and has never been a telecommunications monopoly. It was at that time a radio broadcaster, and nothing else (although it had been doing some experimental television work too).
2) Winston Churchill had been widely discredited with the British public because of his involvement with the disastrous Galipoli campaign in WW1.
3) Churchil was an MP among hundreds of other MPs, the vast majority of whom likewise never got a chance to speak on BBC radio.
4) He was considered to be an embarrassment by senior members of his own party because his rants were received with widespread derision.
5) As is customary with broadcasters up until the present day, the BBC was in the habit of _inviting_ people to participate in its programs, not having Churchill or anyone else demanding air time for their views. And considering the fact that Churchill's name was at or near the bottom of his own party's list of people they's want representing them on the radio, it's hardly surprising that he wasn't invited.
6) The BBC being publically funded is unlikely to have had any bearing on the outcome. Churchill was widely regarded at that time as a comical yet tragic figure who everybody except himself knew had become politically irrelevant, so interest in him was extremely low. Thus, rather than not being allowed to speak on the BBC, it is likely they simply felt that, like most other MPs in non-ministerial posts, he had nothing to say that was worth dedicating air time to.
"Michael Crichton is/was also an M.D. graduating from Harvard Medical School"
Which means his opinions on medical matters are probably valid, while his opinions on other scientific topics should not be given more weight than those of any other educated layman.
(expertise in one field) (expertise in all fields)
They banned the original because it was used as a terrifying torture device by some governments. Reports from Amnesty International indicate that it was employed in the following manner:
1) Feed prisoner on vindaloo washed down with syrup of figs. 2) Apply Eastman 910 to buttock cheeks and then press them together so they form a tight seal. 3) Stand by lavatory with a bottle of acetone in one hand, and wait a couple of hours. 4) Now then, Mr. Bond, I think you _do_ know where the activation codes for the nuclear devices are hidden...
"I think more people would be comfortable with it if there was a client installed that monitored the network for something comprable to Windows Update(tm) where it would let you know something is going on that is effecting the network and give you the tools (patch, instructions, etc) to get it fixed. "
There are several pieces of software installed on you computer that were not supplied by Microsoftor one of its accredited affiliates. These could not only damage your computer or oprating system, but may also be capable of performing tasks that are punishable by fines or prison terms. Would you like SystemBastard(R) to remove them for you, and recommend alternatives that will do many of the same things safely and legally?
If Americans were actually like the French, the US government and big corporates couldn't get away with half the crap they currently dish out. There's absolutely no doubt who is really in charge in France, because anyone who tries to do things that are widely unpopular very quickly discover that there will be a quick, massive, and extremely prolonged public response. Those marches by illegal immigrants that have made US politicians crap themselves are piffling compared with what happens in France, where even a rumour that the government _might_ raise diesel fuel prices slightly will result in big trucks getting parked along the middles of every main road in the country for several weeks; upset farmers, and you get those same roads blocked by bits of agricultural machinery and buildings sprayed with liquid animal manure; do it to Fishermen, and your ports will be blockaded; etc., etc.
And before any Americans start yelling about how much better the US economy is than the French one, they should consider the fact that the most powerful economies in history have been those in which a large underclass with few if any rights toiled to support a much smaller but massively wealthy group who owned most of what can be owned, and had the power to simply take whatever they liked from their minions (i.e. just like the Supreme Court's recent interpretation of what counts as eminent domain).
You are confusing the BIOS with the boot loader. In IBM PCs and clones thereof, the BIOS and boot-loader are indeed in ROM, but that comes from the fact that the original IBM ROMs also contained a BASIC interpreter and routines to load and store data from audio casettes (these were carried on as far as the PS/2 line, even though they were completely obsolete by then). CP/M computers on the other hand had only a boot-loader in ROM, and loaded their BIOS as software (i.e. part of the operating system), as did most mainframes and minicomputers, many of which had no ROMs at all, but required their boot sequences to be entered manually via a panel of switches.
So while BIOS == boot loader on IBM PC clones, this is not necessarily the case for computers in general.
Many things would be different if one historic fact was changed. If IBM had said to Gates "You licence your OS to us alone, take it or leave it", the entire clone sydrome would have been still-born, IBM wouldn't have lost their business computing monopoly, and we'd all be using descendents of CP/M, Macs, Amigas, or one of the other systems that were competing with one another in the early 1980s.
"The order was processed, but then I recieved an e-mail from the BBC store informing me that I wasn't allowed to buy that content due to licensing restrictions. Why? Why would licensing be involved at all? Who profits from this (since all artificial restrictions have financial reasons behind them)? "
You'll probably find that somebody owns the US rights to "The Hitchhiker's Guide" and anything related thereto (probably whoever made that dreadful film), and the BBC are not therefore allowed to sell anything covered by that agreement to US residents. Whilst this is extremely annoying when said license holder chooses not to make certain things available to US customers themselves, there's nothing that the BBC can legally do about it. The same occurs in reverse with (for example) TV shows that are available on the US iTunes store, but not any of its European counterparts because they have been licensed to various European national broadcast networks, each of whom Apple would have to negotiate with separately.
According to the article, Google is a company like no other because it is producing its own versions of things that already exist. Perhaps I've missed the point, but from where I'm sitting, this actually seems to be something that nearly every company does, and many of the bigger ones have their fingers in a lot more pies than Google do.
IMO rather than proving Google are somehow "built almost entirely out of stem cells", this actually shows that Businessweek publishes artices built almost entirely out of bullshit.
Re:Woz and Jobs
on
I, Woz
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Xerox was ahead of its time."
It was the pure R&D outfit that Xerox funded which was ahead of its time, not Xerox itself.
"Steve was merely a good salesman that recognized something good when he saw it"
Which was more than Xerox did, hence the fact that more than one of the computer visionaries at PARC left to work for Apple.
Software actually has three protections: patents, copyrights, and licensing agreements, which unlike simple copyrights, tell you how you are allowed to _use_ a product.
HP will also have a range of laptops with AMD processors and much better GPUs than similarly priced Dells, most of which now ship with those dreadful Intel chip-sets.
A lot of the pro-oriented audio stuff (hardware, software, and combinations thereof, including software "plug-ins) ship with both Windows and Mac versions in the same box, as do professional music synthesizers that come with computer control software (e.g. Yamaha's Motif series of music workstations) -- downloadable firmware upgrades for pro systhesizers and sound processors are also as a rule available for both platforms. This more than anything serves to indicate that the ratio of Windows PCs to Macs in professional audio setups is very different from the market as a whole, because there would not be almost universal Mac support in products for that particular segment if they had 20 Windows PCs per Macintosh.
Note that audio isn't the only niche area where Windows hasn't got anything like the same level of dominance as in the market as a whole. High-end animation and special effects software for movie and TV work for example often has a Linux version because it is extremely amenable to customisation, and has a number of available (and again, customisable) options for building supercomputing clusters to process large batch rendering jobs quickly. Freedom from having to audit licenses is also attractive in environments where half a dozen animation workstations can be feeding render farms with dozens or even hundreds of machines in them.
Are you sure you're not mixing up PCI Express and Mobile PCI Express (MXM)? They tend to list both on the same page, but you can't plug an arbitrary PCI Express card into a MXM slot. If this isn't the case, then please include a link, as I couldn't find anything like that number on www.nvidia.com (note that I'm not being sarcastic here, but wold simply like to know what it is I missed on nVidia's site).
"I wouldn't say notebooks "tend" to be sodered (although I also shouldn't say they tend not to be) from what I've seen it's pretty hit or miss but it's definitely becoming more common, at least at the high end, than it ever has been in the past."
It depends what you mean by "high end". If you're referring to those massive "desktop replacement" machines with 19" screens that run for an hour on two large batteries and require an exoskeleton with asbestos fittings to use on a lap, then yes, some of those do indeed have socketed CPUs. The other part of the "high-end" spectrum is however very thin, light notebooks that are designed specifically for mobile computing, and their chips aren't socketed for two reasons: (1) sockets require extra space which simply isn't available; and (2) there is a significant risk of the CPU becoming unseated due to repeated small mechanical shocks that are common in machines which move around a lot. However, the fact that desktop replacement machines are becoming more ubiquitous means that, as you say, socketed "notebooks" are becoming more common than used to be the case.
" realize that Mac OS X did the exact same thing with Mac OS 9, right?;)"
Indeed, but Apple also have the Carbon APIs to ease the transition of source code between older operating systems and OS X. Microsoft would be forced to do something similar for the existing Windows APIs, because developers would be unlikely to port applications otherwise until Vista gained enough market penetration to make a complete rewrite worthwhile. Remember that dropping the existing Win32 APIs for something better would not only invalidate vast quantities of existing proven legacy code, but also all the man-years of expertise that many companies have spent significant amounts of effort in finding and keeping. The cost of supporting Vista for ISVs would therefore be high enough to prevent a good many from bothering to support it at all, and that would in its turn slow Vista adoption.
"Guess what, wait until people port all the stuff the businesses need to Vista and then not install the Windows XP compatibility"
They'd be waiting a long time. Windows XP has been out for around five years, and it still only accounts for around 50% of existing Windows installations, and XP is compatible with most (although by no means all) legacy applications. If Vista were sufficiently different to require shipping XP alongside it to provide legacy support, then its adoption rate would be even slower because nearly everything companies want to use today would be running on the embedded XP, not Vista itself, so there would be very little reason for corporate customers to bother with it. This is Microsoft's quandary: if Vista doesn't provide immediate benefits for the software people already have, then they'll only be able to sell it to small business and home users, which in its turn means that ISVs who sell products into the large corporate space will not bother going to the effort of porting to it.
"most of the businesses I deal with work with Microsoft, and about 4 other companies to put software on their machines. They're multi-million dollar sources of revenue for these 4 companies, if even ONE asked one of those companies to port to Vista, you bet your ass that the software would be ported in short order."
Not if Vista is sufficiently different to require a significant rewrite, with all the consequent testing plus the requirement to maintain two significantly divergent source trees. Note also that large corporates don't globally implement a new OS just because it's what MS are pushing today -- they do limited test roll-outs with detailed impact analyses that can delay the process for years, hence the fact that so many are still using Windows-2000. It's irrelevant what OS ships pre-installed on machines sold to us ordinary mortals, because these are big customers who buy lots of computers without any OS on them, and then install their own customised and highly locked-down Windows configuration.
NB: I'm pretty sure MS considered precisely what you are proposing before scrapping large bodies of new code and further delaying the Vista launch. They have a lot of very bright people, so it's unlikely that Slashdot posters will come up with something they haven't already thought of and rejected.
MS wouldn't do that because it would remove a lot of peoples' incentive to upgrade. After all, if your existing software will be running on an embedded copy of Windows XP, then it won't gain anything from all the much-touted security and UI enhancements that Vista has, so you might as well simply stick with XP, which for all its warts, is a known quantity. For business customers especially (a good many of whom are still stubbornly running Windows-2000), this would pretty much be a nail not only in Vista's coffin, but also that of any new versions of Office that required it.
Another downside for MS would be the need to continue supporting Windows XP for the entirety of Vista's lifetime. It's already turned out to be a support nightmare for both Microsoft and their users, so it's unlikely that they'd want to continue with it for any longer than is absolutely necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
"The fact that it is not caused by a mutation at all was apaprently lost on the founders of the organization."
I think that at least some the founders are fully aware of the fact that isn't a mutation, but are hoping that the people who come to their museum won't know this, and will thus take it as proof that "evolution is wrong". To those accustomed to a diet of extremely poor horror films that are usually erroneously labeled "science fiction", mutation = monster of the sort that usually comes into conflict with the teenage inhabitants of a small American town. They are thus easy meat for a bunch of con artists who are interested only in promoting what amounts to a product, and care not one whit or iota whether they tell outright lies while doing so.
This does I think serve as an object lesson about the depths to which at least some proponents of creationism will sink to in their attempts to discredit the theory of evolution. They have no interest whatsoever in the truth, but content themselves with setting up straw men that they can then knock down in front of audiences who are too ignorant to recognise and discount the use of such a base and fraudulent debating tactic.
The "museum" that is displaying this item in its list of "proofs" against evolution obviously has far more in common with "museums" run by P.T. Barnham and his ilk than what most of us would associate the term "museum" with, so I would not be in the least surprised if the people running it refer to those who enter as "marks" rather than visitors.
"The fact that objects fall toward the earth and other large bodies happens and is not the "theory" bit."
Indeed, because it's difficult not to notice this. The pure Aristotelian model favoured by mediaeval and Renaissance scientists explained it by stating that all objects have a "natural place" in the universe, which for those on the Earth, is the ground, while stars, the moon, and the planets (the sun was considered one of these) have their natural place in the heavens; any attempt to move an object from its "natural place" would result in it returning there unless some force prevented it from doing so.
It was this firmly-rooted Aristotelian model that made it so difficult for scholars of the time to accept the idea that the Earth moved. If this was the case, they argued, then dropped objects wouldn't describe a straight line, birds couldn't find their nests, and arrows, cannon balls, etc. would miss their targets unless adjustments were made to account for the movement. Because none of these things happened, it was thus obvious to anybody who wasn't entirely stupid that the Earth _must_ occupy a fixed point is space.
I'm very disappointed in Boot Camp. I downloaded it, and it won't even run on my iMac G5, so fanboys who claim that Apple stuff "just works" are lying. And if Apple really expect us to bother reading all that rubbish on their website, Steve Jobs can just think again: we expect to just download things and have them work, period. I spent a very long time indeed getting Boot Camp over my 1200/80 baud link, and it hurts to think it was completely wasted.
I'm a professional software developer, and that means I know when a program runs or not, and this one doesn't. I shall therefore write an extremely stern email to Apple telling them that they've been very, very naughty, and not to do things like this again without at least telephoning all their users and warning them.
"The real problem I've seen lately is companies taking glorified betas (with lots of serious bugs) and passing them off as finished products."
That's generally due to marketing departments, who see a decent feature-complete beta that appears to work, and then insist that the product is obviously finished despite protestations of programmers to the contrary.
Thanks for mentioning Battle For Wesnoth. As you say, like most, I hadn't heard of it, but I'm downloading it now. I love turn-based strategy, so I'm going to have a blast with this. Looks like it'll have a decent amount of replay value too.
Not to mention the hours, and the fact that the project you're working (and therefore you) on can get canned at any moment
Milton Freedman is writing revisionist crap. Some facts:
1) The BBC was not, and has never been a telecommunications monopoly. It was at that time a radio broadcaster, and nothing else (although it had been doing some experimental television work too).
2) Winston Churchill had been widely discredited with the British public because of his involvement with the disastrous Galipoli campaign in WW1.
3) Churchil was an MP among hundreds of other MPs, the vast majority of whom likewise never got a chance to speak on BBC radio.
4) He was considered to be an embarrassment by senior members of his own party because his rants were received with widespread derision.
5) As is customary with broadcasters up until the present day, the BBC was in the habit of _inviting_ people to participate in its programs, not having Churchill or anyone else demanding air time for their views. And considering the fact that Churchill's name was at or near the bottom of his own party's list of people they's want representing them on the radio, it's hardly surprising that he wasn't invited.
6) The BBC being publically funded is unlikely to have had any bearing on the outcome. Churchill was widely regarded at that time as a comical yet tragic figure who everybody except himself knew had become politically irrelevant, so interest in him was extremely low. Thus, rather than not being allowed to speak on the BBC, it is likely they simply felt that, like most other MPs in non-ministerial posts, he had nothing to say that was worth dedicating air time to.
"Michael Crichton is/was also an M.D. graduating from Harvard Medical School"
Which means his opinions on medical matters are probably valid, while his opinions on other scientific topics should not be given more weight than those of any other educated layman.
(expertise in one field) (expertise in all fields)
They banned the original because it was used as a terrifying torture device by some governments. Reports from Amnesty International indicate that it was employed in the following manner:
1) Feed prisoner on vindaloo washed down with syrup of figs.
2) Apply Eastman 910 to buttock cheeks and then press them together so they form a tight seal.
3) Stand by lavatory with a bottle of acetone in one hand, and wait a couple of hours.
4) Now then, Mr. Bond, I think you _do_ know where the activation codes for the nuclear devices are hidden...
"America just happens to be one of the places where it's socially encouraged to be an idiot AND the place that lets them have guns"
Triple fixed.
Why bother building it yourself when the difference in price is the labour cost of assembling it for you, i.e. about 5 cents.
"I think more people would be comfortable with it if there was a client installed that monitored the network for something comprable to Windows Update(tm) where it would let you know something is going on that is effecting the network and give you the tools (patch, instructions, etc) to get it fixed. "
There are several pieces of software installed on you computer that were not supplied by Microsoftor one of its accredited affiliates. These could not only damage your computer or oprating system, but may also be capable of performing tasks that are punishable by fines or prison terms. Would you like SystemBastard(R) to remove them for you, and recommend alternatives that will do many of the same things safely and legally?
If Americans were actually like the French, the US government and big corporates couldn't get away with half the crap they currently dish out. There's absolutely no doubt who is really in charge in France, because anyone who tries to do things that are widely unpopular very quickly discover that there will be a quick, massive, and extremely prolonged public response. Those marches by illegal immigrants that have made US politicians crap themselves are piffling compared with what happens in France, where even a rumour that the government _might_ raise diesel fuel prices slightly will result in big trucks getting parked along the middles of every main road in the country for several weeks; upset farmers, and you get those same roads blocked by bits of agricultural machinery and buildings sprayed with liquid animal manure; do it to Fishermen, and your ports will be blockaded; etc., etc.
And before any Americans start yelling about how much better the US economy is than the French one, they should consider the fact that the most powerful economies in history have been those in which a large underclass with few if any rights toiled to support a much smaller but massively wealthy group who owned most of what can be owned, and had the power to simply take whatever they liked from their minions (i.e. just like the Supreme Court's recent interpretation of what counts as eminent domain).
You are confusing the BIOS with the boot loader. In IBM PCs and clones thereof, the BIOS and boot-loader are indeed in ROM, but that comes from the fact that the original IBM ROMs also contained a BASIC interpreter and routines to load and store data from audio casettes (these were carried on as far as the PS/2 line, even though they were completely obsolete by then). CP/M computers on the other hand had only a boot-loader in ROM, and loaded their BIOS as software (i.e. part of the operating system), as did most mainframes and minicomputers, many of which had no ROMs at all, but required their boot sequences to be entered manually via a panel of switches.
So while BIOS == boot loader on IBM PC clones, this is not necessarily the case for computers in general.
Many things would be different if one historic fact was changed. If IBM had said to Gates "You licence your OS to us alone, take it or leave it", the entire clone sydrome would have been still-born, IBM wouldn't have lost their business computing monopoly, and we'd all be using descendents of CP/M, Macs, Amigas, or one of the other systems that were competing with one another in the early 1980s.
"The order was processed, but then I recieved an e-mail from the BBC store informing me that I wasn't allowed to buy that content due to licensing restrictions. Why? Why would licensing be involved at all? Who profits from this (since all artificial restrictions have financial reasons behind them)? "
You'll probably find that somebody owns the US rights to "The Hitchhiker's Guide" and anything related thereto (probably whoever made that dreadful film), and the BBC are not therefore allowed to sell anything covered by that agreement to US residents. Whilst this is extremely annoying when said license holder chooses not to make certain things available to US customers themselves, there's nothing that the BBC can legally do about it. The same occurs in reverse with (for example) TV shows that are available on the US iTunes store, but not any of its European counterparts because they have been licensed to various European national broadcast networks, each of whom Apple would have to negotiate with separately.
According to the article, Google is a company like no other because it is producing its own versions of things that already exist. Perhaps I've missed the point, but from where I'm sitting, this actually seems to be something that nearly every company does, and many of the bigger ones have their fingers in a lot more pies than Google do.
IMO rather than proving Google are somehow "built almost entirely out of stem cells", this actually shows that Businessweek publishes artices built almost entirely out of bullshit.
"Xerox was ahead of its time."
It was the pure R&D outfit that Xerox funded which was ahead of its time, not Xerox itself.
"Steve was merely a good salesman that recognized something good when he saw it"
Which was more than Xerox did, hence the fact that more than one of the computer visionaries at PARC left to work for Apple.
"To stretch it a bit: if you are for software patents, you are for patenting math."
And thus by extension anything that can be expressed mathematically, e.g. music.
Software actually has three protections: patents, copyrights, and licensing agreements, which unlike simple copyrights, tell you how you are allowed to _use_ a product.
HP will also have a range of laptops with AMD processors and much better GPUs than similarly priced Dells, most of which now ship with those dreadful Intel chip-sets.
A lot of the pro-oriented audio stuff (hardware, software, and combinations thereof, including software "plug-ins) ship with both Windows and Mac versions in the same box, as do professional music synthesizers that come with computer control software (e.g. Yamaha's Motif series of music workstations) -- downloadable firmware upgrades for pro systhesizers and sound processors are also as a rule available for both platforms. This more than anything serves to indicate that the ratio of Windows PCs to Macs in professional audio setups is very different from the market as a whole, because there would not be almost universal Mac support in products for that particular segment if they had 20 Windows PCs per Macintosh.
Note that audio isn't the only niche area where Windows hasn't got anything like the same level of dominance as in the market as a whole. High-end animation and special effects software for movie and TV work for example often has a Linux version because it is extremely amenable to customisation, and has a number of available (and again, customisable) options for building supercomputing clusters to process large batch rendering jobs quickly. Freedom from having to audit licenses is also attractive in environments where half a dozen animation workstations can be feeding render farms with dozens or even hundreds of machines in them.
"Nvidia has 18 cards according to their website."
Are you sure you're not mixing up PCI Express and Mobile PCI Express (MXM)? They tend to list both on the same page, but you can't plug an arbitrary PCI Express card into a MXM slot. If this isn't the case, then please include a link, as I couldn't find anything like that number on www.nvidia.com (note that I'm not being sarcastic here, but wold simply like to know what it is I missed on nVidia's site).
"I wouldn't say notebooks "tend" to be sodered (although I also shouldn't say they tend not to be) from what I've seen it's pretty hit or miss but it's definitely becoming more common, at least at the high end, than it ever has been in the past."
It depends what you mean by "high end". If you're referring to those massive "desktop replacement" machines with 19" screens that run for an hour on two large batteries and require an exoskeleton with asbestos fittings to use on a lap, then yes, some of those do indeed have socketed CPUs. The other part of the "high-end" spectrum is however very thin, light notebooks that are designed specifically for mobile computing, and their chips aren't socketed for two reasons: (1) sockets require extra space which simply isn't available; and (2) there is a significant risk of the CPU becoming unseated due to repeated small mechanical shocks that are common in machines which move around a lot. However, the fact that desktop replacement machines are becoming more ubiquitous means that, as you say, socketed "notebooks" are becoming more common than used to be the case.
" realize that Mac OS X did the exact same thing with Mac OS 9, right? ;)"
Indeed, but Apple also have the Carbon APIs to ease the transition of source code between older operating systems and OS X. Microsoft would be forced to do something similar for the existing Windows APIs, because developers would be unlikely to port applications otherwise until Vista gained enough market penetration to make a complete rewrite worthwhile. Remember that dropping the existing Win32 APIs for something better would not only invalidate vast quantities of existing proven legacy code, but also all the man-years of expertise that many companies have spent significant amounts of effort in finding and keeping. The cost of supporting Vista for ISVs would therefore be high enough to prevent a good many from bothering to support it at all, and that would in its turn slow Vista adoption.
"Guess what, wait until people port all the stuff the businesses need to Vista and then not install the Windows XP compatibility"
They'd be waiting a long time. Windows XP has been out for around five years, and it still only accounts for around 50% of existing Windows installations, and XP is compatible with most (although by no means all) legacy applications. If Vista were sufficiently different to require shipping XP alongside it to provide legacy support, then its adoption rate would be even slower because nearly everything companies want to use today would be running on the embedded XP, not Vista itself, so there would be very little reason for corporate customers to bother with it. This is Microsoft's quandary: if Vista doesn't provide immediate benefits for the software people already have, then they'll only be able to sell it to small business and home users, which in its turn means that ISVs who sell products into the large corporate space will not bother going to the effort of porting to it.
"most of the businesses I deal with work with Microsoft, and about 4 other companies to put software on their machines. They're multi-million dollar sources of revenue for these 4 companies, if even ONE asked one of those companies to port to Vista, you bet your ass that the software would be ported in short order."
Not if Vista is sufficiently different to require a significant rewrite, with all the consequent testing plus the requirement to maintain two significantly divergent source trees. Note also that large corporates don't globally implement a new OS just because it's what MS are pushing today -- they do limited test roll-outs with detailed impact analyses that can delay the process for years, hence the fact that so many are still using Windows-2000. It's irrelevant what OS ships pre-installed on machines sold to us ordinary mortals, because these are big customers who buy lots of computers without any OS on them, and then install their own customised and highly locked-down Windows configuration.
NB: I'm pretty sure MS considered precisely what you are proposing before scrapping large bodies of new code and further delaying the Vista launch. They have a lot of very bright people, so it's unlikely that Slashdot posters will come up with something they haven't already thought of and rejected.
MS wouldn't do that because it would remove a lot of peoples' incentive to upgrade. After all, if your existing software will be running on an embedded copy of Windows XP, then it won't gain anything from all the much-touted security and UI enhancements that Vista has, so you might as well simply stick with XP, which for all its warts, is a known quantity. For business customers especially (a good many of whom are still stubbornly running Windows-2000), this would pretty much be a nail not only in Vista's coffin, but also that of any new versions of Office that required it.
Another downside for MS would be the need to continue supporting Windows XP for the entirety of Vista's lifetime. It's already turned out to be a support nightmare for both Microsoft and their users, so it's unlikely that they'd want to continue with it for any longer than is absolutely necessary.