along with the wirecenters/etc should be transferred to local cities and townships, to use for emergency communications. (Eg 911).

Every line should automatically have a number, every line should able to dial 911. Cost of maintenance should be covered by a SMALL tax, similar in amount to the "e911" charge already in use, per home.

In fact, this is what should have been done with payphones, too. But its too late for that I guess.

Desperation, I think.

The king of "You must sell windows with every device, you may not offer other options" is now begging, with its tail between its legs, to an "other option" on a device.

"No thanks".

the security sender that you use for the touchscreen..

How hard is that?

In fact I'm surprised that wouldn't already be part of the advice for users of this.

Either that or require a swipe from two different fingers, in a specified order.

Who cares, other than Steve Chair-throwing Ballmer.

I take exception to your "all of us use MS software", despite your being somewhat vague about which "us" you are referring to.

Believe it or not, there are a very large number of people that DO NOT "use MS software". In fact the readership of this site probably has a higher proportion thereof than other more "mainstream" sites do.

Unless by "us" you mean "clueless end users living under a rock" or "office drones locked in by their CIO's choice"..

I cannot imagine anything that is becoming more and more irrelevant than "MS Office".

There is NOTHING I can imagine wishing to use those applications for, no information I can imagine wanting to enter, store, or process in those formats, on ANY platform.

There is also no reason to be "locked in" to those formats anymore. "Final output" can (and should) be in a format such as PDF regardless of whether its a business producing a report, or an individual submitting a resume. Anyone that sends some information blindly in ANY application specific format is an idiot, and deserves to have it returned or ignored. Anyone that has massive stores of information ("documents") in such formats that hasn't already at least started planning
to migrate it to a standard format (a format cannot be a "standard" if it is not fully and openly documented such that anyone can implement a 100% functional reader/writer from scratch)

MS porting Office to other platforms is a feeble last ditch attempt at remaining relevant, and that is the only reason it might be "News".

If they hadn't arrogantly locked the ARM-based devices into Win8 ONLY with UEFI/SecureBoot, there might have been a market for them among people that would have bought them, wiped them, and put something else on them.

I'm sure the dev community would have come up with an Android load for them, and I'm sure Linux hackers would have had fun with them too.

Instead, they will follow the fate of the Zune, and MS are stuck holding millions of near-worthless paperweights.

Good for them.

1. Its already there, pretty much everywhere.
2. Only one end needs to have power for it to work. (This is the "911 works even when the power is out" issue)
3. You don't need multi-thousand dollar tools to splice it or terminate it.
4. You don't need multi-hundred dollar equipment to connect to it.

Two bloated pieces of garbage. They deserve each other. I use neither.

Yes, because if theres a fire in the theater, or someone's having a heart attack, we wouldnt want anyone to be able to call 911.

How about this - about the theaters just kick any individuals that are disturbing other movies goers?

And as far as jails, I say the jail should have a special cell/tower that they can monitor. Prisoners should be physically denied possesion of cellphones. Those caught with them would be subject to appropriate penalties.

Take action against the INDIVIDUAL that is causing a problem, don't punish everyone for the transgressions of the few.

The problem is not a *technical* problem - its a motivation problem.

The biggest problem is the lack of competition in almost all markets.

Providers have no motivation to provide better service, if they know that their customers either have no choice, or very limited choices.

The LUCKY people can choose between crappy overpriced DSL from the local telco monopoly, or crappy overpriced cable from that local monopoly. (Sometimes with a monthly cap, sometimes not)

Wireless (fixed and cellular) and satellite are even worse in comparison. High upfront costs, crappy service, and monthly transfer caps in pretty much all cases.

They know they've got you over a barrel, so they just keep taking your money and shining you on.

I would drop $300 for free 5Mbps is a *heartbeat*. I would *seriously* consider their higher tier offerings.

So.. $10 for 10GB.. (or $1/GB).

Then its $5/GB after that?

So the second 10GB would cost $50??? 5 times as much? That seems.. insane..

Whats to stop me from getting two devices/accounts, and then paying 2X $10 for the same 20GB?
(could either load balance, or use one up until 10GB then switch to the other....)

I'd say you've got it exactly right.

They should do the same for health insurance - not dictate how much it costs, or what is or isn't covered, but rather regulate how the coverage is described. Perhaps define various "standard" levels of covered, give them names, and then allow insurance to use those names for their products so long as the products they meet the official description. But still allow other packages, so long as the covereages and costs are describe in compliance with the regs.

If you click to the next page of results, google corrects its estimate to read

" Page 2 of 13 results (0.13 seconds)"

Alhough it does admit

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 13 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

If you choose to show the omitted results, and click through the pages, you get to the 8th page, which indicates:

"Page 8 of 72 results (0.12 seconds)"

Still nowhere near 86,000

And while I'm sure the owners of those 72 printers might want to take some steps to secure them, its hardly the huge problem that "86000 results" would suggest.

"laziness and incompetence" = using Microsoft platforms for power plant engineering systems.

"security best practices" = never letting Microsoft platforms near anything mission critical at such an installation.