I don't believe there is any business Google doesn't want to be in.

And as much as I'd like to believe that Google will save us all from shitty ISPs, I think it will turn out much like it usually does when Google supplants an existing product/service. They bring a bizzare form of destruction that kills the competition but also radically changes consumer expectations of that type of service: i.e. they make everyone think X should be free or ultra cheap. See GMail, see Google Apps, see Google Voice, Books, Maps, etc.

Pretty much every product they put out makes it harder to convince people that type of prouct is worth paying for. Why pay dollars when you can just pay in privacy and screen-clutter? Google as an ISP is only going to convince people that a) bandwidth is limitless and b) It should cost next to nothing. Pray they don't alter that deal because there isn't anyone to supplant them.

They may be in a slump, but we've seen bigger turnarounds happen. Besides, you really don't want to see the industry where Nvidia is unopposed. Or Intel for that matter.

...and I just ordered a 7850. Well, here's hoping it's overblown or fixable in software.

I'm stunned that this is the first place this conversation went. The article is about the ability of a digital device to do the job of a teacher and the first thing people can think of to say is that they're overpaid and too politically entrenched to remove. It really is election season isn't it...

...because its only a matter of time before they try to replace this little guy's skeleton with adamantium.

This brief makes it sound like the second the timer hits zero and XP support ends, the lights will go out and planes will crash. That's not the way software support works. This will not suddenly render all XP machines inoperative. They will slowly become outdated, less functional, more vulnarable: exactly as you'd expect from not installing updates, no more. I agree that XP has had a good run, much more than most operating systems get, and it's time for it to die, but to say that Microsoft's discontinuing of OS updates will "leave millions of existing Windows-based computers vulnerable to continued and undeterred cyberattacks" is just misleading. I think the far more significant implication of this is the unspoken permission it gives web developers to stop supporting IE6. Which is probably cause for celebration.