All so it can be viewed by Bings non existent users.

With the way the environment is going I think it is entirely possible for us to find many jobs for them that may indeed become essential to our survival. They would become Mass Urban Environment Curators as such and be responsible for the planting and maintaining of plants everywhere. Not just plain planting them though but managing them in useful and interesting ways to give us much more than just aesthetic and clean air advantages.

And I'm sure we could find many more interesting jobs for people that involve creating surroundings that are both more sustainable and contributing to our overall happiness.

We just have to start thinking creatively.

My guess is that they feel if they can disrupt the services of banks it will in turn disrupt the functioning of many organisations that rely on those banks for financial services. This would have a negative effect on the economy as a whole (which is already in bad shape) and possibly get the attention of the government to do something to stop it.

Now, I don't feel this is actually going to work like that but that is my best guess at what they were attempting.

Or maybe they figured a lot of banks higher ups are friends with politicians whom they could go crying to to make it stop.

No, no, no. Blue is the basic version. Screen is the new name for Pro.
If you just have Blue then you get a plain blue screen with nothing on it. If you upgrade to Blue Screen then you get a nice border around the blue panel and if you also buy Word then you may get some words representing the error message on that Blue Screen.

Have you noticed that lately MS's broad strategy seems to be 'Do whatever Apple does'?

It wouldn't surprise me if MS's yearly releases are timed to be a few months behind OSX releases to give them time to copy whatever Apple releases.

The thing is, when they sell to a corporate this doesn't matter. The corporation just creates their own image and drops that on every machine as standard.

The next largest market is not us techies but Joe average. Now yes, they do make money by pre installing this crapware but it also gives them an advantage. On the packaging they can show off that their machine comes preinstalled with this large list of software (highlighting various well known names). Joe average will tend to make his purchasing decision based on which machine has the largest list of features and the biggest numbers (works the same for stereos, TV's, etc). That's why all this tech comes packed with useless features that more often than not reduce the experience and performance. If you want to outsell the competition, sadly, this approach works.

This is why this trend is not going to change anytime soon.

You can win by not taking this approach (and Apple is probably the best example of this) but your product has to be well polished and typically you will be aiming for the upper market who more often than not doesn't fall for these marketing tricks.

If by 'confining yourself' you mean becoming the largest company in the world (not sure if that's still true) with growing profits then I guess that's a problem I wouldn't mind having.

Wouldn't it be funny if he went and started a company (let's say 'After') which implements his ideas for an OS based on a BSD kernel, completely uninhibited by MS bureaucracy. A few years down the track MS is floundering and Ballmer has been booted. Sinofsky comes back and replaces Windows UI with that from After and the rest becomes history?

Or it was all part of his plan. Maybe, just maybe, if he can convince enough people that he did in fact get elected then it might just maybe come true. And if that doesn't work he can just disappear by putting his hands over his eyes and saying 'Ha! now you can't see me.'

At the moment I would say that point is quite valid. How long that holds could be an interesting question however. I think Ballmer is going nowhere but Sinofsky is different. I think his style and approach have real potential and he's starting to find his stride. Give it a few years and I think he is going to be responsible for some big turn arounds in terms of what MS produces and we are just starting to see the inflection point.

Now I'm actually a Linux and Apple fan myself and normally don't think much of MS but Sinofsky is someone I respect.

Ok, I'll accept I was wrong there, but they are definitely in the software business and I believe they have applied a lot of what they learnt there to their hardware side of things and it is part of the reason their hardware is top notch.

Well I was talking generally not absolutely. But either way. MS must believe they can do a fair bit better if they are deciding to go it themselves. They seem to have done not too badly with the Surface so I'm actually keen to see what they pull off with a phone.

The other device makers really can't complain here from what I see. MS is starting to make their own products because quite frankly, the products made by others have been mediocre at best. They have had many years to pick up their game but none of them have. MS really does owe them nothing and if MS can make a better device themselves then they most definitely should because the others quite clearly can't.

I find it very interesting that Software companies (Apple, Google, MS, Amazon) have all taken to hardware as well and served many companies who specialise only in hardware (and have many years experience) their asses on a plate. This is a perfect example of skills learnt in one area translating very elegantly into another.

Indeed I believe we are just seeing the start of a new era of innovation in terms of new formats for portable devices. Android is maturing just as the manufacturers are starting to get their stuff together in terms of playing with new ideas. I think the future is going to be very interesting. I wonder if Apple and MS will be able to keep up?