The quote is "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run," as told to Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative reporter James Wallace by a Microsoft developer while Wallace was doing interviews gathering material for the book Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire:
According to one Microsoft programmer, a few of the key people working on DOS 2.0 had a saying at the time that "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." They managed to code a few hidden bugs into DOS 2.0 that caused Lotus 1-2-3 to breakdown when it was loaded. "There were as few as three or four people who knew this was being done," the employee said. He felt the highly competitive Gates was the ringleader.
The Kremlin had a term for people like you back during the Soviet era: "useful idiot."
According to what I'm reading on the forums, folks who have done this report that their Zunes freeze again as soon as they attempt to resync to their computers.
You're joking, right? Are we talking about the same Windows Mobile that got its doors blown off in the mobile market by OS X on the iPhone in a mere two quarters?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1163
* * * * *
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." —Groucho Marx
I found an online review of MSI's U90 unit, and the review found that neither the Webcam nor the wireless worked out of the box. They opined that you'd need to go buy and install a copy of XP Home to turn the unit into something usable.
Seriously, is MSI a Microsoft front organization?
* * * * *
"Empty-handed I went to the widget library, empty-handed I renturned."
—Binkei, 9th-century Japanese programmer-monk
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now
on
GIMP 2.6 Released
·
· Score: 1
Example: Take a family photograph and circle somebody. Or add a cartoon speech bubble.
You can do that easily in Inkscape. Just import your photo into Inkscape, size it as you wish, scribble all over it using the vector shape tools, then export another bitmap out of Inkscape (PNG is the default). The bonus is that your vector shapes (circles, speech bubbles) are separate objects that don't directly interact with your bitmap (which itself is only linked into the Inkscape file), so you can't as easily destroy your only copy of that Pulitzer Prize-winning digital photo in Inkscape as you could in a bitmap editor like Photoshop or the GIMP. I do this kind of stuff all the time (professionally), and while I'll certainly do it from time to time in the GIMP, the results are generally much more satisfactory in Inkscape, with the added benefit that if you don't like that cartoon bubble's outline thickness or color, etc, you can more easily change it in Inkscape. Sometimes, the best bitmap editor is a vector program.
* * * * *
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." —Groucho Marx
As someone who owns an ad agency, looking over Crispin Porter + Bogusky's client work, I'm not that impressed, at least with their TV work. Better for Microsoft to have gone with someone like these folks:
Let's be clear here. To the New York Times and every Internet blogger who fancies themselves the Times-killer, all American newspapers are publicly-traded, big city dailies.
Unfortunately for the Internet, this isn't even close to being true. I've personally helped start several small-town weeklies/dailies in my area (I do Websites as well, so no bias here), and although one startup over the past 5 years has folded, we've got a net gain in my county of two community newspapers over what we had in 2002. Plus one very high-end magazine aimed at folks with $100K+ annual incomes. And this is not unusual across the U.S., where small community publications are still going strong.
The real story is that the Internet, over the past decade, has failed completely as a local news/information delivery system to the average consumer. And, bear in mind that although the Internet is good at delivering on my $1,000 computer, at much higher cost and bother, what my $30.00 radio delivers every day for little cost or bother — national/international news briefs — it's next to impossible to find out what's happening in my town on the Internet in any detail or in a timely fashion. And, lo and behold, what few sources that do exist to find out are, (are you ready, now?) those put up by — you guessed it — my local community newspapers. And those sites normally only have "teaser" versions of the story. You have to subscribe to the Dead Tree Edition to get the full story. Very clever, no?
Now, this is not merely academic to me. I own a small advertising agency. I absolutely can not get my local businesses to do much advertising on the Web, other than building their own Websites (another interesting topic, but not for this post). Sorry, but they're just not interested in reaching folks in Botswana and Poland. Can you blame them? The overwhelming majority of American businesses (according to the US Dept. of Labor/Census Bureau) are small businesses, defined as having less than 100 employees. The much-glorified Huffington Post is completely useless to most all of my 300+ small-business clients, as is the New York Times. Without advertisers willing to spend on the Web, Web news sources will stay pretty much as they are now — Digg with the same rehashes of UPI/AP/Reuters feeds, repeated ad nauseum with posters trying desperately to add a sentence or two summary spin to the canned article hoping to reach the site's front page. Internet News is depressingly incestuous, sketchy, amateurish, and a couple of hours behind my local NPR radio station.
What media pundits seem to be missing out on is that the American consumer is more and more interested in what's happening in his own county/town/neighborhood and less and less interested in what is happening in The Big City or on the other side of the planet. We're getting less centralized, folks. Most of the US population has been diffusing from the big cities and spreading out into the surrounding countryside for the past few decades. I'm here to tell you that the Big City Daily has been dying since the 60's, mostly due to cable television news channels and the advent of 24-hour all-news radio. I'm in a rural county just on the edge of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Sprawloplex, and we've got no less than three 24/7 all-talk radio stations who are getting their quota of advertisers, last time I checked. Plus two 24/7 all-sports stations. Yes, they stream on the Web. No, it's not an income source for most, but a loss-leader supported by over-the-air broadcasting.
I do think that eventually, most all news will be delivered via network. In about 30-50 years. Right now, Google and the porn industry notwithstanding, nobody has really figured out how to make money off the Internet in the more localized news market, where the majority of advertisers (small business) and consumers are. We've got several itty-bitty print publications in my county that can draw enough revenue to pay for professional writers, design
because selling these systems in preference to a Windows PC ends up costing them money.
I went to three local Dallas/Fort Worth-area WalMarts trying to find the Everex gOS desktop. Not only did none of those three carry it, the newest store (a regional "showcase" store according to a friend who delivers there as a supplier) carried no desktops at all, whether Windows or Linux. They had exactly two laptops. They had a pathetic stock of hardware (network cards, hard drives, printers) and virtually no software. The other two stores have cut back shelf space radically on software as well. The store closest to me has gone from what I'd estimate was 50 shelf-feet of boxed software 5 years ago to around 6 feet now. At all three stores, space taken away from computer products has gone to console games, cell phones, MP3 players and cameras. Interestingly enough, the printers and cameras seem to be slowly working their ways towards each other as they no longer need a computer in between to work together.
So apparently, Windows PCs and software in general aren't selling well enough to maintain shelf space against, say, music players and cell phones, whose areas are growing rapidly I notice.
* * * * *
"A man's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."
—W.C. Fields
Because folks (especially Web developers) moving from Windows to Linux would effectively stonewall Microsoft's Silverlight initiative, as there's no (good) Silverlight/Moonlight development tools available on Linux. And there's not likely to be any good ones, judging by how far Mono lags now (after years of development) in functionality behind.NET, even with MS's cooperation. Meanwhile, Microsoft has gotten serious about trying to take the Web away from Flash and pulling the rug out from under Adobe. If Adobe were truly smart they'd be looking to make sure folks do development and content creation on Mac, Linux, *NIX...anything but Windows, where Microsoft can leverage platform control to force Adobe into a very tight corner with no escape. Unfortunately, Adobe is showing almost as much bloat and inertia as Microsoft these days, particularly with Warnock retired. Pity.
...and a strong enough military (including globally targeted nuclear missiles) not to be pushed around by the countries interested in censorship...
They may not have nukes, but they DO have the Swedish Bikini Team, which is a powerful force for good. For example, name one time when North Korea has invaded Sweden. Just one. I rest my case.
* * * * *
"Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth." —Dave Barry
The methodology in your poll is pretty flawed to begin with. Just asking folks "Do you go to church?" will bring an avalanche of false positives because many people will respond with an idealized answer rather than the cold, hard truth.
Incidentally, try talking to church leaders about "48% US church attendance" and you'll find lots of skepticism about that figure from folks who are in a position to have fairly authoritative opinions on the topic.
My former residence, Dallas, was called the "most Christian large city in North America" in a fascinating BBC documentary on religion in America back in the 80's. This was based on the churches-per-population stats. I believe it was the same program which also pointed out that Dallas also had the highest ratio of adult businesses (topless clubs, porn shops) to population. And, bitingly, it also pointed out that the Day of Worship was the "most segregated day of the week in America." Which is absolutely true. We can all work together, eat together, play together, but don't let an African-American try to get a pew in the white Baptist church across the street from me. God forbid. Our real best efforts at morality shine in our secular society, not in our religious institutions, unfortunately.
Not possible, as the University of California had significant IP in System V (going back to the 70's) and they've never transferred/assigned their rights to any entity other than BSDi. You can read here how AT&T/USL's attempted lawsuit against BSDi/UC over BSD Networking Release 2 made this pretty clear: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
So, SCO's argument changed mid-trial from "Linux violates UNIX System V IP" to "IBM violated license terms," and even that was shot down by Judge Kimball.
Dr. Michael Doyle of Eolas is actually a well-respected researcher in bioinformatics, is partnered with the University of California and demonstrated a working plug-in enabled browser at Xerox PARC in 1993. He is, incidentally, the son of a noted inventor, so the urge to create seems to run in the family. The company's other projects include SAGA, Fios, Zmap and ODIN.
In 1994, he offered to license the plug-in technology to Microsoft and was rebuffed. So, he went after them. Incidentally, Eolas' license page specifically states that Dr. Doyle is a supporter of open source and non-commercial uses covered by this so-called "906 patent" are allowed via the issuance of a royalty-free license. http://www.eolas.com/licensing.html
As much as I hate patents, Eolas isn't the patent troll that some folks make then out to be; Doyle's idea was to build a browser-centric platform for the biomedical industry, and the company actively does software research and creates actual technologies. Microsoft's violation of the "906" patent made Eolas' platform project commercially nonviable, at least in Eolas' eyes and Doyle has stated his case that there were no legal alternatives after Microsoft refused to license the technology from them in '94.
SCO, on the other hand, bought what they thought at the time was exclusive ownership of somebody else's (Bell Labs/AT&T, University of Ca.) technology, whole cloth, made little if any improvement to it, and attempted to use it as a patent/copyright hammer to flatten other software projects that demonstrably violated none of SCO's IP/licenses/patents. At least, none that SCO could ever prove in court. I would consider SCO much closer to a patent troll that Eolas, as they didn't invent the hammer they were attempting to wield. Eolas, at least, did design and build their own hammer.
What are you complaining about? You Canadians have lots of stuff that Australians don't have, like maple syrup and Dave Foley.
Say, while you're here, I've got a proposition. We'll trade you North Dakota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula for British Columbia. What do you say? OK, we'll throw in this set of steak knives, too.
* * * * *
Canadians are just Americans with better haircuts.
What would you do if a terrorist bombed Microsoft headquarters tomorrow?
Proclaim loudly to anyone who would listen that the Bush Administration knew the attack was coming for at least a year in advance; produce some documents of questionable authenticity purporting to be a communication between CIA Director Hayden and the White House discussing an "Operation Chairtoss;" speculate wildly on the identity of the individual mentioned in said document and referred to only by the mysterious handle "12th Monkey Boy;" then begin a 16-city book signing tour as sales of my expose reached #4 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list.
* * * * *
The preceding poster is a wholly owned subsidiary of the the Mitsubishi Corporation and his post may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the consent of Major League Baseball.
Mice, trackballs and keyboards were particularly good.
I have a differing opinion, having owned a Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse Blue about 3-4 years back. The thing was so bad, you could find websites hosting pages giving illustrated instructions on how to open the mouse and tweak a trim capacitor on the circuit board to get it to work properly. I had to do that for mine; its wireless range out of the box was around 6 inches until I busted it open and did the fine-tuning that should have been done at the factory. In addition, it ate batteries (most common complaint on tech forums) and couldn't use rechargeables at a time when Logitech's stuff (and just about everybody else's) could.
I went Logitech after that, and as it's been the only Microsoft mouse I bought you could argue that I just had a spot of bad luck, but judging from electronic hobbbyist websites and tech forums, it appears that a lot of folks were having bad luck with this particular product. I'm not fond of Microsoft, but this gave me good reason to question their QA process.
A smiley denotes the subtle emotional difference between "I'm pissed at my parents and The Man and I'm horny" and "I'm pissed at my parents and The Man and I'm horny but your MyFace page rocks, dude." Do you pick up on the nuance now? You might not at first, that's how subtle it is.
Slashdot Mirror
The quote is "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run," as told to Pulitzer-prize-winning investigative reporter James Wallace by a Microsoft developer while Wallace was doing interviews gathering material for the book Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire:
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233430962&sr=1-1
From one review of the book:
The Kremlin had a term for people like you back during the Soviet era: "useful idiot."
According to what I'm reading on the forums, folks who have done this report that their Zunes freeze again as soon as they attempt to resync to their computers.
You're joking, right? Are we talking about the same Windows Mobile that got its doors blown off in the mobile market by OS X on the iPhone in a mere two quarters?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1163
* * * * *
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." —Groucho Marx
I'm thinking you've got a couple of words transposed there: "Really MS has long closely worked their customers and partners."
* * * * *
This message approved by the National Council of Amphibians.
Bingo.
I found an online review of MSI's U90 unit, and the review found that neither the Webcam nor the wireless worked out of the box. They opined that you'd need to go buy and install a copy of XP Home to turn the unit into something usable.
Seriously, is MSI a Microsoft front organization?
* * * * *
"Empty-handed I went to the widget library, empty-handed I renturned."
—Binkei, 9th-century Japanese programmer-monk
You can do that easily in Inkscape. Just import your photo into Inkscape, size it as you wish, scribble all over it using the vector shape tools, then export another bitmap out of Inkscape (PNG is the default). The bonus is that your vector shapes (circles, speech bubbles) are separate objects that don't directly interact with your bitmap (which itself is only linked into the Inkscape file), so you can't as easily destroy your only copy of that Pulitzer Prize-winning digital photo in Inkscape as you could in a bitmap editor like Photoshop or the GIMP. I do this kind of stuff all the time (professionally), and while I'll certainly do it from time to time in the GIMP, the results are generally much more satisfactory in Inkscape, with the added benefit that if you don't like that cartoon bubble's outline thickness or color, etc, you can more easily change it in Inkscape. Sometimes, the best bitmap editor is a vector program.
* * * * *
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." —Groucho Marx
As someone who owns an ad agency, looking over Crispin Porter + Bogusky's client work, I'm not that impressed, at least with their TV work. Better for Microsoft to have gone with someone like these folks:
Secret Weapon Marketing
* * * * *
Oops. I dropped my sig and it rolled under the refrigerator.
To be fair, American comedian Dick Shawn also died on stage (1987, San Diego) and this audience also didn't respond for several minutes:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Shawn#Death_on_stage
* * * * *
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
—Groucho Marx
Remember: support for XP will be available through the year Jaguar-Basket-Jaguar-Snake.
Nice work! And thanks for the link to your notes, as I'm intending to begin learning Blender and it looks like those will come in handy.
I have no problem with it. I speak Hoosierati fluently.
Would you quit shilling for Merriam-Webster?
--
I was ugly and had no penis until I tried Ma Rainey's Moleskin Cookies!
Let's be clear here. To the New York Times and every Internet blogger who fancies themselves the Times-killer, all American newspapers are publicly-traded, big city dailies.
Unfortunately for the Internet, this isn't even close to being true. I've personally helped start several small-town weeklies/dailies in my area (I do Websites as well, so no bias here), and although one startup over the past 5 years has folded, we've got a net gain in my county of two community newspapers over what we had in 2002. Plus one very high-end magazine aimed at folks with $100K+ annual incomes. And this is not unusual across the U.S., where small community publications are still going strong.
The real story is that the Internet, over the past decade, has failed completely as a local news/information delivery system to the average consumer. And, bear in mind that although the Internet is good at delivering on my $1,000 computer, at much higher cost and bother, what my $30.00 radio delivers every day for little cost or bother — national/international news briefs — it's next to impossible to find out what's happening in my town on the Internet in any detail or in a timely fashion. And, lo and behold, what few sources that do exist to find out are, (are you ready, now?) those put up by — you guessed it — my local community newspapers. And those sites normally only have "teaser" versions of the story. You have to subscribe to the Dead Tree Edition to get the full story. Very clever, no?
Now, this is not merely academic to me. I own a small advertising agency. I absolutely can not get my local businesses to do much advertising on the Web, other than building their own Websites (another interesting topic, but not for this post). Sorry, but they're just not interested in reaching folks in Botswana and Poland. Can you blame them? The overwhelming majority of American businesses (according to the US Dept. of Labor/Census Bureau) are small businesses, defined as having less than 100 employees. The much-glorified Huffington Post is completely useless to most all of my 300+ small-business clients, as is the New York Times. Without advertisers willing to spend on the Web, Web news sources will stay pretty much as they are now — Digg with the same rehashes of UPI/AP/Reuters feeds, repeated ad nauseum with posters trying desperately to add a sentence or two summary spin to the canned article hoping to reach the site's front page. Internet News is depressingly incestuous, sketchy, amateurish, and a couple of hours behind my local NPR radio station.
What media pundits seem to be missing out on is that the American consumer is more and more interested in what's happening in his own county/town/neighborhood and less and less interested in what is happening in The Big City or on the other side of the planet. We're getting less centralized, folks. Most of the US population has been diffusing from the big cities and spreading out into the surrounding countryside for the past few decades. I'm here to tell you that the Big City Daily has been dying since the 60's, mostly due to cable television news channels and the advent of 24-hour all-news radio. I'm in a rural county just on the edge of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Sprawloplex, and we've got no less than three 24/7 all-talk radio stations who are getting their quota of advertisers, last time I checked. Plus two 24/7 all-sports stations. Yes, they stream on the Web. No, it's not an income source for most, but a loss-leader supported by over-the-air broadcasting.
I do think that eventually, most all news will be delivered via network. In about 30-50 years. Right now, Google and the porn industry notwithstanding, nobody has really figured out how to make money off the Internet in the more localized news market, where the majority of advertisers (small business) and consumers are. We've got several itty-bitty print publications in my county that can draw enough revenue to pay for professional writers, design
I went to three local Dallas/Fort Worth-area WalMarts trying to find the Everex gOS desktop. Not only did none of those three carry it, the newest store (a regional "showcase" store according to a friend who delivers there as a supplier) carried no desktops at all, whether Windows or Linux. They had exactly two laptops. They had a pathetic stock of hardware (network cards, hard drives, printers) and virtually no software. The other two stores have cut back shelf space radically on software as well. The store closest to me has gone from what I'd estimate was 50 shelf-feet of boxed software 5 years ago to around 6 feet now. At all three stores, space taken away from computer products has gone to console games, cell phones, MP3 players and cameras. Interestingly enough, the printers and cameras seem to be slowly working their ways towards each other as they no longer need a computer in between to work together.
So apparently, Windows PCs and software in general aren't selling well enough to maintain shelf space against, say, music players and cell phones, whose areas are growing rapidly I notice.
* * * * *
"A man's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."
—W.C. Fields
Oh, haven't you heard? HTML tables are out; layouts based on Hollerith fields are in.
Because folks (especially Web developers) moving from Windows to Linux would effectively stonewall Microsoft's Silverlight initiative, as there's no (good) Silverlight/Moonlight development tools available on Linux. And there's not likely to be any good ones, judging by how far Mono lags now (after years of development) in functionality behind .NET, even with MS's cooperation. Meanwhile, Microsoft has gotten serious about trying to take the Web away from Flash and pulling the rug out from under Adobe. If Adobe were truly smart they'd be looking to make sure folks do development and content creation on Mac, Linux, *NIX...anything but Windows, where Microsoft can leverage platform control to force Adobe into a very tight corner with no escape. Unfortunately, Adobe is showing almost as much bloat and inertia as Microsoft these days, particularly with Warnock retired. Pity.
Could you please speak up? I'm hard of herring.
They may not have nukes, but they DO have the Swedish Bikini Team, which is a powerful force for good. For example, name one time when North Korea has invaded Sweden. Just one. I rest my case.
* * * * *
"Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth."
—Dave Barry
I have pretty good reasons for doubting polls that purport to show that regular religious observance is much over 25% of the U.S. population:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=237
The methodology in your poll is pretty flawed to begin with. Just asking folks "Do you go to church?" will bring an avalanche of false positives because many people will respond with an idealized answer rather than the cold, hard truth.
Incidentally, try talking to church leaders about "48% US church attendance" and you'll find lots of skepticism about that figure from folks who are in a position to have fairly authoritative opinions on the topic.
My former residence, Dallas, was called the "most Christian large city in North America" in a fascinating BBC documentary on religion in America back in the 80's. This was based on the churches-per-population stats. I believe it was the same program which also pointed out that Dallas also had the highest ratio of adult businesses (topless clubs, porn shops) to population. And, bitingly, it also pointed out that the Day of Worship was the "most segregated day of the week in America." Which is absolutely true. We can all work together, eat together, play together, but don't let an African-American try to get a pew in the white Baptist church across the street from me. God forbid. Our real best efforts at morality shine in our secular society, not in our religious institutions, unfortunately.
Not possible, as the University of California had significant IP in System V (going back to the 70's) and they've never transferred/assigned their rights to any entity other than BSDi. You can read here how AT&T/USL's attempted lawsuit against BSDi/UC over BSD Networking Release 2 made this pretty clear:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
So, SCO's argument changed mid-trial from "Linux violates UNIX System V IP" to "IBM violated license terms," and even that was shot down by Judge Kimball.
By the way, you can see a copy of UC's license to AT&T over contributed code/IP and documentation here:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/bsdisuit.html
Not quite. http://www.eolas.com/research.html
Dr. Michael Doyle of Eolas is actually a well-respected researcher in bioinformatics, is partnered with the University of California and demonstrated a working plug-in enabled browser at Xerox PARC in 1993. He is, incidentally, the son of a noted inventor, so the urge to create seems to run in the family. The company's other projects include SAGA, Fios, Zmap and ODIN.
In 1994, he offered to license the plug-in technology to Microsoft and was rebuffed. So, he went after them. Incidentally, Eolas' license page specifically states that Dr. Doyle is a supporter of open source and non-commercial uses covered by this so-called "906 patent" are allowed via the issuance of a royalty-free license. http://www.eolas.com/licensing.html
As much as I hate patents, Eolas isn't the patent troll that some folks make then out to be; Doyle's idea was to build a browser-centric platform for the biomedical industry, and the company actively does software research and creates actual technologies. Microsoft's violation of the "906" patent made Eolas' platform project commercially nonviable, at least in Eolas' eyes and Doyle has stated his case that there were no legal alternatives after Microsoft refused to license the technology from them in '94.
And lest anyone weep for Microsoft, this is just an example of "what goes around, comes around," as VirtualDub developer Avery Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualDub#Advanced_Systems_Format_support can tell you.
SCO, on the other hand, bought what they thought at the time was exclusive ownership of somebody else's (Bell Labs/AT&T, University of Ca.) technology, whole cloth, made little if any improvement to it, and attempted to use it as a patent/copyright hammer to flatten other software projects that demonstrably violated none of SCO's IP/licenses/patents. At least, none that SCO could ever prove in court. I would consider SCO much closer to a patent troll that Eolas, as they didn't invent the hammer they were attempting to wield. Eolas, at least, did design and build their own hammer.
What are you complaining about? You Canadians have lots of stuff that Australians don't have, like maple syrup and Dave Foley.
Say, while you're here, I've got a proposition. We'll trade you North Dakota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula for British Columbia. What do you say? OK, we'll throw in this set of steak knives, too.
* * * * *
Canadians are just Americans with better haircuts.
Proclaim loudly to anyone who would listen that the Bush Administration knew the attack was coming for at least a year in advance; produce some documents of questionable authenticity purporting to be a communication between CIA Director Hayden and the White House discussing an "Operation Chairtoss;" speculate wildly on the identity of the individual mentioned in said document and referred to only by the mysterious handle "12th Monkey Boy;" then begin a 16-city book signing tour as sales of my expose reached #4 on the 'New York Times' best-seller list.
* * * * *
The preceding poster is a wholly owned subsidiary of the the Mitsubishi Corporation and his post may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the consent of Major League Baseball.
I have a differing opinion, having owned a Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse Blue about 3-4 years back. The thing was so bad, you could find websites hosting pages giving illustrated instructions on how to open the mouse and tweak a trim capacitor on the circuit board to get it to work properly. I had to do that for mine; its wireless range out of the box was around 6 inches until I busted it open and did the fine-tuning that should have been done at the factory. In addition, it ate batteries (most common complaint on tech forums) and couldn't use rechargeables at a time when Logitech's stuff (and just about everybody else's) could.
I went Logitech after that, and as it's been the only Microsoft mouse I bought you could argue that I just had a spot of bad luck, but judging from electronic hobbbyist websites and tech forums, it appears that a lot of folks were having bad luck with this particular product. I'm not fond of Microsoft, but this gave me good reason to question their QA process.
* * * * *
Oh, squidbeaks!
A smiley denotes the subtle emotional difference between "I'm pissed at my parents and The Man and I'm horny" and "I'm pissed at my parents and The Man and I'm horny but your MyFace page rocks, dude." Do you pick up on the nuance now? You might not at first, that's how subtle it is.
* * * * *
Oh, squidbeaks!