Actually, there is a business model by one author that seems to be working, I would say it is a rare working model and not everyone could pull it off. Sci-Fi author Scott Sigler runs a successful blog. His blog basically started off his writing career. He would blog short sci fi stories, and yes they were free, but he built up a fan base, so when he went to publish his first book it sold very well even though he publish the whole book for free on his blog as well. He has since published several books and a DVD of all his pod casts. How I personally view this much like a rock star, there are millions of people that play an instrument, very few make a living doing it, and even fewer strike it rich. Same with blogging.

I sure hope it doesn't come to this for us. Unfortunately this is the first year our CIO came to us and said in a meeting that this year it is ok to say no sometimes. We now have a capital budget of $0. So there are going to be some projects we just can not do. At least in our group we have either said yes, and only no when it truly is a dumb idea however we do spend the time with them telling them why it is a dumb idea and help them solve their problem in a smart way. However this year if it takes any money the answer is no.

You forget, Opera is one of the companies behind the EU trying to force Microsoft to install other browsers on the new operating system. So if this goes through, guess how many millions of web serving zombies will be out there by gramdma and grandpa or even your mom and dad who just bought the PC and don't know what opera is don't care and let alone it is sitting there serving web pages. I mean seriously did we lean nothing with Windows 200o default install of IIS.

Actually despite what some of the other might say I do have to agree with you and only from my own experiences. I was also very skeptical of magnets. I also still do not believe the magnetic bracelets either as there are a lot of fake ones out there. However my experiences with it. I sprained my ankle, and very bad, a class 4 sprain. Any of you know that with a bad sprain you get a lot of swelling you have to ice it several times a day. You have to massage it. Your range of motion is shot and well it takes time to heal. Do even told me at least a month if not 2 months to get rid of most pain and swelling then a little longer to get range of motion back. 2 week after the sprain a friend of mine suggested a ankle magnet, which really looked kind of like a brace, which I could wear under my air cast and best thing he had one from an ankle injury a year prior so he lent it to me to try out. So being skeptical I said sure, what did I have to loose. Next day he brought it to me in the morning, I wore it to work then home and when I got home from work I went to do the normal ritual and get out bags of ice and ice the foot again. However when I took the sock off, the swelling was completely gone and I had very little pain. It was still stiff and range of motion was bad. So I continued to wear it some days in a rush I would leave for work and forget it, I would come home and it would be a little swollen. Put the magnet on and couple hours later all swelling was gone. So it was doing something. What I do not know. But the sprain healed faster than the doctor ever believed it could. He was quite astounded. Now, it wasn't like a miracle cure I still had to get my range of motion back through stretching exercises and so on but it did help heal it in some way. I am still skeptical and unsure about it even though it worked on me. However, I am not about to go out and sprain another ankle to test it out. But my friend only gave it to me because it worked very fast for him in what was a very bad injury as well stopping all swelling. Later I talked to someone that had more of an explanation of how the magnets worked. They work roughly the same as ultrasound, no not the type to see inside your, a pulsing energy used by physical therapist in hospitals around the world. The magnetic field increased the blood flow to the injured area bring the cells needed to repair the damage. So you can believe it if you want. I also think maybe daily use bracelets are a crackpot thing. However I do believe there may be something to helping heal serious injuries.