I'd take Julian Castro over a pie-in-the-sky loon like Julian Simon any day of the week.

If the executive in charge of branding back in the mid-00's was still in charge, it would be called 2016 Microsoft Windows Office Internet.

If they're selling a lot of them, that's something new. As I said: I went a year without selling one.

In other news, job candidates who fill out applications online are more likely to be computer literate than those who fill them out on paper.

Subscribing to shows instead of channels was (is?) the iTunes model of selling TV. I don't think the market wants that. (Which is good, because it would it would spell the end of the "sleeper" hit, or most niche programming.) Ye olde radio, traditional basic cable, and the current popularity of streaming music all point to a desire for access to a general mass of content, for people to select from without a whole lot of thought.

In the next several years I think we're going to move to a hybrid subscription-to-channels/libraries model, where people pay a monthly fee to ESPN, HBO, Syfy, WWE, Golf, or some other collection of content that appeals to their interests (much like people used to subscribe to magazines), along with a general service or two like Hulu or Netflix which offers a package of content that roughly corresponds to the old broadcast and basic-cable networks.

The AppleTV sat in the corner of Apple Stores for a long time, doing pretty much nothing. I worked at one between "real" jobs about five years ago, and whenever a customer noticed the AppleTV and asked about it, I described it as "Apple best-kept secret". Not that it was a difficult secret to keep, because there was almost nothing to say about it. I don't recall ever selling one. Granted, that was a rather different device from the current streaming box (my other pitch line was "an iPod for your movies"), but it was definitely a "hobby" in the same sense that the IRS defines one: something you do on the side without expecting to make any money from it.

Don't factor your son's draft registration into your decision-making. There is absolutely no will in Washington to reinstate the draft, and to do so after so many decades without it would be political suicide. And even if that changes somehow before he ages out of eligibility, a dual-citizen raised and living abroad wouldn't have much trouble getting a deferment (which goes double if we're at war with Belgium or Sweden).

Sports Illustrated devotes every issue to readers who've had this procedure done.

Apple and Microsoft seem to be working hard to make BeOS look modern again.

So here's a guy who calls himself a "libertarian", declaring that it's not legal for a private entity to refuse to do business with him based on their political views.

I did say "sad and desperate".

The irony is that the kind of people who post comments on articles on web sites tend to be the least qualified to do so. By commenting on a news article, you are acknowledging that you have nothing more constructive to do with your time, and that you aren't satisfied with the attention that you get from the people around you. The level of hateful and ignorant bile in most news sites' comment sections is so great that anyone who would stoop to adding to them must be kinda sad and desperate.

And yes, I am completely aware that my comments here contain a full day's supply of irony.

https://twitter.com/avoidcomme...

Or maybe the comments are just so full of utter garbage posted by the most degenerate members of society that it turns off regular readers.

"Brigid" (named after an Irish Saint no less!).

Or maybe the Irish goddess.

"Lack of national unity" isn't necessarily a bad thing.