The whole point of those ads is to point out the flaws in Windows that people take for granted, and say "it doesn't have to be that way".

No, it really wasn't, because the 90's were when Microsoft's dominance was on the upswing and they seemed invincible. (Windows 3.1, 95, NT4, Office 95, IE, etc). Now they're slipping on many fronts (Windows Vista, IE marketshare, Office 11, Silverlight, WMP/WMV/Zune, etc). They haven't lost yet, but only because they have so far to fall.

Seriously, the only bright spots for Microsoft this decade where they've improved over last are the Windows Server line and the XBox.

"same thing with Apple. when people got viruses pirating some Mac software it was their fault"

Or it would be, if that had ever actually happened.

"a lot of the old time Mac fanboys are noticing and complaining"

Such as?

Seriously, how did parent get modded up?

Why? This is about tower congestion, which has been overwhelmingly caused by data traffic. An iPhone can easily use the same data traffic in a minute loading a couple web pages that a dumbphone user consumes in a month.

There's a reason smartphones are considered separately from "traditional" handsets - they function very differently, and are used very differently. Not all problems, issues, or marketshare battles make sense across the two groups.

And where do you get that conclusion? Given that the 3GS was released midway through the period, and the 3G was MUCH more popular than the original (no app store with the original, as well as - of course - 3G), it's entirely plausible that the top phone on that chart is indeed the iPhone 3G.

But the overall point is well-taken - while the iPhone may be a popular device, it's by no means #1 given the existing base of Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Other. Yet.

Oh stop trotting this bullshit out. That does not mean they must pursue money to the exclusion of all else. As Apple amply shows, you can approach that from many different angles. Looking at Google's stock price, I'd have to be quite happy with them as an investor, if money is the only object.

Also don't forget that many times investments in public companies are made not to make money, but to guide corporate direction (for better or worse). Money is NOT the only purpose of a public corporation.

Patch 3.3 comes out Tuesday.

No one has sold an 800x480 netbook in 18 months. All of them are 1024x600 or 1366x768.

Kerry was beaten, and the four years prior weren't exactly rosy.

We've had a two party system for well over a hundred years. Just how long a view do you want to take?

I'm not arguing it's the way it should be, but I am arguing that no, you're not going to change it.

Of course, the fact that these opinions have turned out to be legally sound and correct should be disregarded, hmm?

Cookies are used to keep track of a user's session, especially when it crosses a load balancer and gets sprayed to any number of identical servers. Without the cookies, there is no way to keep your session on a consistent web server throughout a session. Remember things like "www3.netscape.com"? Cookie-based load balancers are what fixed that situation.

Yes, cookies are abused by advertisers, but quite frankly, I don't give a damn if a site wants to use them to follow me on their site. They DO use them to see which products are popular, what items are considered together - valid data that lets them make business decisions. I know from working with web design firms that they can be used to track flows through a site and tell what parts of navigation are difficult, and if users are missing the "intended" way of using a site.

There are lots of valid technical uses for cookies. I've never understood why they're vilified. It's a tiny chunk of usually random/hash data that's put on your computer by the remote site. Why should you care if they then retrieve it? The only objectionable use is cross-site cookies used by advertisers, and most decent browsers let you disable that class of usage, but not the rest.

So... you ran out of diskspace during the install. Certainly the installer should be far more robust and avoid such "partial installs" in the first place, but ultimately it's a very simple root cause.

This does give me pause about upgrading my own Eee though, as I'd completely forgotten that my OS drive was 4GB.

Wait, did you say everything went smoothly except you didn't have sound or video ?

That right there is why Linux hasn't gone mainstream.

Or maybe they optimized the kernel for SSE4? All Macs do SSE4 - the Atom doesn't. Perfectly reasonable, yet people always jump to the malicious explanation...