And by "into the wild", they mean they're now letting it run on other people's sites.

Sometimes.

I'd argue this is part of the geek/hacker mindset, and while it's a valuable asset, we have to remember that this places us outside of the mass market in some fairly significant ways. As a direct result of this, we're no longer the "target market" for consumer electronics.

The really sad part is how far Microsoft has fallen. They can't even do FUD well anymore.

The problem with this approach is that it ties you to your ISP. When you move or they get bought in ten years, you have to try to recall EVERYONE who has your email address, and convince them to update their address books.

Postfix didn't exist until December of 1998. Before that, you were likely using Sendmail, or (god help you) qmail.

It already exists:

http://www.amazon.com/Hank-Greens-2D-Glasses-Headaches-Discomfort/dp/B004X4L1UC/

A friend who gets headaches loves these.

I love this. They charge a premium for 3D that half of everybody hates. Now they'd like to charge another premium for 3D that will suck a bit less.

I look forward to the next article bleating about the mysterious decline in box office attendance. What could it possibly be?

This was more sensible a decade ago; nowadays with so much of our lives online (banking, shopping, correspondance) it's no longer "reasonable" to not do anything "personal" on the internet while you're at work.

I very much agree with you. The entire *reason* that those companies have so many divisions is that they want goodwill you feel towards one of their products (say, the Discman of old) to transfer over to other lines of products (say, their headphones).

However, what this means is that when one division (or, in this case, several) radically screw the pooch, a lot of people associate the negative experience with the company as a whole. Ergo, due to the CD / DRM issue almost a decade ago, I won't buy a Playstation, a VAIO, or a $20 pair of headphones that say Sony on them.

It's not just *GOOD* feelings that transfer over, Sony.

I agree that it can't be done right, but I think it's not just about screen size. On my mobile device I'm much more task-focused. When I'm up to something specific, I almost always ignore ads.

On a desktop I'm much more likely to be poking around or under less time pressure, so I'm much more willing to explore the tangent an ad generally represents.

Yeah, not trying to be offensive here, but answering the questions you've posed has spun up an entire industry; it's decidedly non-trivial. On the plus side, for a project of this size you can quite easily get a number of consultancies in Chicago to quote you free of charge.

Assume a DC-wide power outage. You power things back on.

If you can't come back up without the controller (which is on a VM) you fail.

Now, I'm not a VMware guy, so you'll have to tell me-- what does this failure case look like?