No, but I have been doing it since I started on forums in 1981 or so. That said, I now do it to annoy you.

                    -Charlie

"Frankly there are so many alternatives to sending mass mail from your own system, only highly suspicious people want to go around this."

I am a journalist, and I know what the laws are around email, subpoenas, (lack of any) protections under the (US) law, and the cost of lawsuits. I keep my own server, on my own premises, and keep logs only long enough for diagnostic purposes. All email is deleted after 2 weeks unless it is specifically moved to a location meant to be saved for the same reasons. I have been doing this, or parts of it, since before my ISP offered mail services, over 20 years now FWIW. Some people call me paranoid, I point to things like MegaUpload and call them ignorant. I guess that I would be considered "highly suspicious" according to many government agencies.

So there you go, there is at least one good reason to do the above, although I rarely send out mass mailings, probably less than one a year.

As for the rest of your points, I totally agree. Thanks for trying to stop the spam.

                      -Charlie

"For corporate users, doctors offices, plant floor, I think you will be surprised. There is more software written for x86 Wintel than all other platforms put together."

And how much of it is written to be aware of the new UI? And if you have to port your stuff to use that abortion of a GUI, why would you NOT go to an iThingy or Android? Last time I checked, most doctors, corporate users, coffee shop poseurs etc, had iSomethings, not Windows. Think TAM, not sales pitches when you develop your platform strategy or you are not going to sell very many.

                  -Charlie

You have obviously not used Windows lately, or any other Microsoft product if you say such abjectly ignorant things. You may laugh, but those of us who have to support Microsoft products know the truth, and how wrong you are. Microsoft-level quality products are indeed expensive, and for good reason too, do you have any idea how much it costs to support this crap? How hard it is to keep up and running? Clean it up after the latest security breach? Preventing breaches is a fools errand, give it up.

All this costs money, lots and lots of money. Initial purchase price may be low compared to everything but FOSS, but that is only the beginning. If you calculate TCO, you will see exactly how expensive this poorly coded pile of outdated security holes really is. It ain't cheap.

      -Charlie

[Yes, this may look like sarcasm, but sadly it is not]

More puzzling still is not just what appears to be letters on the sample, but the fact that they indicate "cool ranch", a flavor of Doritos that has been depricated for over a year now. The creation museum has a crack team of acolytes studying this amazing discovery now.

                -Charlie

I guess they don't ignore me like they say they do. Either that or the revalation was entirely promted by Microsoft's high corporate ethics standards. That said, it is still wrong, the one I tested had 15.0GB free, not 16. I guess MS didn't want to admit they have LESS than half of their storage free.

And I didn't even mention the impending service packs, patches, and related bloat. WART is going to be a disaster...... No, it is out, WART _IS_ a disaster.

                    -Charlie

"What functionality are you looking for in Windows Phone that it doesn't have? Not the early versions, but WP8 or even 7.8 or Tango?"

The ability to sync it with a non-MS or Apple device.
The ability to not feed MS's patent trolling machine.
The ability for me to customize the OS how I choose.
The ability to load ANY app I want.
The ability to not be tracked by MS.
The ability for me to tinker with it how I want.
The belief that the whole thing won't be sh*tcanned in the next year for a new paradigm.
The belief that the whole thing won't be pulled out from under me for the next MS lock in attempt.

FWIW, I feel the same way about iOS and some versions of Android.

                      -Charlie

You do realize that before the Manchurian CEO took over, Nokia was making money. In Q3/2013 alone they lost $1.27B, and the bleeding is accellerating fast. Yes they get $1B/year from MS. They have to PAY MS for OS licenses though, and it is at a hefty premium, $10-15 per unit if memory serves. That said, they aren't selling squat, but it does take a bit off the top, maybe $1-200M a year.

Short story, the $1B per year is chump change compared to the damage MS inflicted on the company.

                      -Charlie

Yes, but back then we called them 'Safety goggles'. They had a precursor to a holographic UI called 'scratches'. It worked much the same in practice.

                -Charlie

Pick up the damned mouse and talk to it. It didn't work for Scotty, but things have gotten more advanced since then. Do it in public for better results.

                    -Charlie

If time travel was possible, dinosaurs would have come to us in their time travel machines long before now.

              -Charlie

Why? He is already so well preserved that we have plenty of time. Just keep him away from coconut trees and we are golden.

                    -Charlie

(Note: There is also a strong possibility that if we sequence Keith, we might get a few extraneous dinosaur chromosomes for free....)

Heck, 81 base pairs would save you a lot of time chopping strands for PCR, you would already have the pieces. :)

Seriously though, given those numbers are for a single cell, how many do you have with a mammoth carcass? More than 1, in fact more than 1 million. If you can find a lab blender big enough to stuff a mammoth carcass in to, the rest should be trivial. I would also venture that after a while, the fact that a dinosaur bone didn't degrade to dust means that it is better preserved than your average thing stuffed in to the ground so the half life would, after a point, extend.

Given a few dinosaur samples, you could probably get enough to reassemble most of the genome. With some not all that complex math, you can compare it to a few key reptile sequences and likely get some strong hints or even direct sequences that are missing. Some things change a lot over time, others do not or can not.

And yes, I did do this in college. No, not on dinosaurs though, that would have been a bit more fun to talk about at the bars.

              -Charlie

I am? Wow, who knew.

                    -Charlie

MS is continually bashed for security reasons, and mocked for being a virus spreading engine etc etc. Those who continually make such silly and baseless allegations, as evidenced by the story above, don't even once think about the alternatives and THEIR security problems.

After dumping Windows and MS products in general a few years ago, I have had a first hand hard lesson in the probelms of 'alternative' OSes, if you can call them that. My problems have been nearly unending since switching to Linux, I mean just last month, or was it the month before, my laptop crashed. This wasn't the first time either, it routinely happens 2-3 times a year.

Think about it people, if you don't use MS, you might not have horrific security problems that compromise all conected devices and identities, but you may have to suffer through a similar fate to me. Be careful what you ask for, and THINK before you whine in public.

                  -Charlie