As the study progressed, two main options emerged as choices for the council: remaining with a purely Microsoft solution, which would involve upgrading existing Windows NT and 2000 systems to XP; and moving to a purely Linux and open source alternative. “If you lay more emphasis on the monetary side, the pure Microsoft alternative would have won, or if you lay the emphasis on the strategic side, the open source alternative was better.

This was not a decision based on cost, it was based on functionality - being able to invest in their platform and implement exactly what they wanted was worth the additional expense, in large part because they committed to investing the money that would have gone towards US license fees into the local economy.

Help is a major feature, that you think it's OK to release software into production without testing a major feature, then you and I are operating with different definitions of 'production-ready'...

Would you accept flawed/ non-functional printing in an office application because the programmers 'don't actually print documents, they look at the output online'?

As I understand it there are 2 kinds of Windows 8 installations possible - a "retail" install or an "enterprise" install. "Retail" installs would include OEM installs, retail upgrades, and retail new install media. "Enterprise" installs would be installs from volume license media (Software Assurance, etc.). so-called "retail" installs attempt to upgrade to Win8.1, "enterprise" installs do not.

Currently an "enterprise" install must be manually upgraded to Win8.1, which involves an actual upgrade to the OS, not a simple patch/service pack install. "retail" installs will attempt to make the upgrade to Win8.1, but as noted above the success of a particular patch can prevent the install.

Am I to believe MS is dropping support for "enterprise" installs of Win8 this week? That sounds wrong - either MS will let "enterprise" users upgrade to Win8.1 via patch/service pack OR they will continue to support Win8 in "enterprise" settings.

About the same as an $18K Chevrolet Cruz Eco, which claims 46 MPG in the diesel variant...

How is this not just a one cylinder engine? Based on the description, that's what it sounds like.

Why don't they just scale down (massively) from diesel electric locomotives and be done with it?

Let's start with Warren Buffet, whose wealth-position enables him to pay a lower tax-rate than his secretary, yet he has been outspoken about eliminating this imbalance.

So what?

You do realize his secretary is a 1%er, right?

Ans so what, our government is funded by tax dollars not tax rate, and Warren Buffet pays a few hundred times more in tax dollars than his secretary.

Was Buffet arguing for a higher long-term capital gains tax OR for a lower income tax rate for his secretary? Are you really thinking that Buffett was hoping the government would double his tax bill? If that were the case, why doesn't he stop deducting on his taxes and maybe start sending the government a little something extra each quarter.

Nearly half of all income tax filers either pay zero dollars in taxes or actually profit from the tax code, getting a tax refund that exceed the taxes they paid in during the year - Warren Buffet pays an infinitely larger tax rate than those folks.

Distributed solar panels, installed at a taxpayer-funded discount and all the electricity they generate being sold back to the utilities at above-market rates are not the answer.

Neither is putting tiny solar panels on telephone poles...

ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates

Forcing utility companies to pay higher than market rates for electricity generated by home solar panels compared to market rates for other mass-produced electricity will NOT cause electricity rates to necessarily sky-rocket...

How could raising the cost of electricity to the utility cause the price of electricity to go up? /sarcasm

If you can get the name of the street in the hands of the tight person in government, you really don't need GPS-derived long & lat...

In NYC they have 311 - you can dial 311 on any phone in the city and be connected to a city worker that takes such reports (potholes, open hydrants, fallen tree, etc.) and passes it on to the proper department... Had it for years, does your average affluent suburb have a similar service?

Should read "Please explain the difference between an unemployed person WITH A TRUST FUND AND an unemployed person living in a poor neighborhood... I'd argue each has the same amount of time to report potholes"

Please explain the difference between an unemployed person with an unemployed person living in a poor neighborhood... I'd argue each has the same amount of time to report potholes.

Now, let's compare a working parent in an affluent neighborhood versus a less affluent working person living in a poorer neighborhood, I'd argue again they both have the same amount of free time to report potholes in their neighborhood...

Nice theory, but there are more poor whites than blacks, therefore more poor white folks exposed to lead plumbing than poor blacks.

Just a statistical fact - while 13% of blacks are poor, 6% of whites are also classified as poor, yet whites out-number blacks almost five to one...

It's incorrect to assume the majority of the poor are minorities.

Podesta argues that pothole repairs will be disproportionately skewed towards smartphone-toting folks in the suburbs, not the low income areas, really?

What happens when a city bus load of smartphone-toting commuters hit a pothole? Thirty or fourty simultaneous alerts will all go out for the same pothole.

Don't poor/lower income areas, by definition (almost) have orders of magnitude more traffic that the affluent neighborhoods? Wouldn't the greatly increased traffic, even with disproportionately fewer smartphones in use, result in an equal or greater number of alerts than in the more affluent areas?

Finally, Mr. Podesta appears to have forgotten that the FCC has expanded it's lifeline phone service (which, though initiated under Pres. Reagan, is commonly referred to as Obamaphones) to include 2 Gb/month data plans and free smartphones?

We also know that this bill won't increase the deficit by one thing dime... President Obama said he would never sign a bill that added one thin dime to our deficit in the next decade.

No one says that - they say the Health Care LAW (PPACA) is bad...