For me, I am hard to pressed to think of something that Ballmer actually brought that was new and not a hold over from Gates. Windows, Office, Windows Server, and SQL Server all existed before Ballmer took over. I think Xbox was also in the works too when Gates left. Sharepoint to me isn't exactly something to celebrate. Instead, I see Ballmer squander opportunities. Windows Mobile was the largest mobile platform at one point until iPhone and Android decimated it because it became stagnant. MS missed badly on the MP3 player and released one when the market was already shifting to smart phones. Windows Tablets existed long before the iPad but sold poorly. Vista was a poorly executed successor to Windows XP.

The original mission duration was 668 sols for Curiosity. It is on 723 sols or so.

Er what?
Spirit
Original Mission Parameters: 90 Mars days (sols)
Actual Mission Length: 2210 sols (lost contact)
I wouldn't say Spirit's mission ended early. It went 2100 sols past mission date. It didn't last as long as Opportunity though.

Do your surfaces go from -150C to 20C in a single day? I would bet that your tires would not last long under those conditions. Mars conditions are not Earth conditions.

Well mission parameters for the Mars wheel would have mostly likely been as light and thin and wide as possible. Light and thin so that it would fit the weight and space requirements. Wide so that it could traverse the sandy, dune like conditions.

I don't think the UV and radiation is as much a factor as the huge temperature swings. Every silicon rubber I've seen can't handle going from cold to hot to cold repeatedly without breaking down. It could be somewhere between -150C to 20C depending on the location.

I think one of the main issues with Vista was that it was allowed on hardware that couldn't run Aero because Intel had millions in chipsets that it would not have been able to sell. Two years after Vista most of that hardware had been sold and newer Intel chipsets could handle Aero at the basic level. This left a bad impression on top of all the bugs as it added to the notion Vista was not ready for release.

I used to joke in TBC that a true hunter has 30 buttons macroed, 29 of which were Feign Death.

Why do you have to find it forgivable? If it is a show you don't like, don't watch it. I don't find reality shows like the Real Housewives to have any redeeming qualities. I don't watch them.

There are some people who believe Fresh Prince of Bel Air truly represents African Americans. So what? That does not detract whether or not it was funny. I personally did not find it funny but it wasn't because I believed it stood for anything other than a sitcom.

Well most people would see that as satire and not that the elements of geekdom are to be taken literally as 100% true. There is a category for shows like that: documentaries. I would argue most TV shows does not follow subjects faithfully. Since you mentioned "Friends", I don't think people really believe that New Yorkers spend all of their time hanging out in a coffee shop. Chuck probably does not represent a true government agent any more than Will Smith was your average Bellaire teen.

Personally I thought one of the funniest episodes was "The Alien Parasite Hypothesis" where Howard and Raj decide to settle a dispute by wrestling. In real life, two people angry at each other would have actually wrestled regardless of lack of skill instead of the hilarity of two nerds circling each other endlessly.

Bahahahaha. Oh, you were serious? I don't see it happening. Part of what allows Apple to do what it does is the fact that they control the hardware. They've even gone as far as to design their own mobile chips. Opening up OS X to a massive number of hardware permutations will lead to support nightmares at the very least.

The AHRA requires the use of SCMS however since the source of the music are CDs which have no SCMS, how would that work? As noted by the Diamond decision, these systems permit less copying than SCMS allows as music cannot be transferred from the drive.

I guess I'll have to disagree on this point as my reading is the "primary purpose" of the DARD definition makes this not a DARD as recording is not the primary purpose of these infotainment systems.

They could but big companies don't like spending money on lawsuits. It would be disposed rather quickly.