Just FYI, you can move up first, then move to the right to skip over sections. I think it's still an extra click or 2 to get to network settings, but not that bad.

Dude.. we get it. You don't value college education (except for those "Ivory" league doctors and lawyers and such). Some people do see value in it, otherwise they wouldn't bother putting the checkbox on the application.

I'm not sure why people bag on the start menu so much. If used properly, it's the most helpful tool in all of windows, particularly with Vista and Windows 7. I think the real problem is most people have no idea how powerful it is or what you can do with it. It's always available and can be customized to fit pretty much any type of user.

However, I rarely see anyone who fully takes advantage of it's fetaures. For example, almost noone knows the difference between the "pinned to start" icons and the "recently used programs". I wish the default setting for "show recently used programs" was set to 0. When those icons change positions (and not always predictably) it confuses the hell out of regular users. However, the "pinned" ones stay in the same spot and are always available in 2 simple clicks. And with even modest resolutions, you can get quite a few pinned to start icons that are always available. If you have good vision, you can choose to show the small icons and have room for even more. This feature alone covers the majority of basic users who only typically use 5-10 programs anyway.

For power users, i'm not sure what more you can ask for. Your common programs can be pinned and 2 clicks away. Virtually all major settings and documents can be shown or hidden directly on the start menu in either as a link or as a menu. If that's not enough, you have the all-programs view that shows everything installed in an alphabetized list. And if that's too much of a pain, just click the windows key and start typing what you want. The search is very fast and you typically don't get more than a few characters in before what you are looking for is at the top of the list. And if you wait for even fractions of a second, you will see any relevent control panel options, documents, images, etc etc. that match your search.

It's really the best of both worlds for keyboard and mouse users. The hard part is getting people to understand it. Very few people are taught the "pin-to-start" concept and even fewer know that you can just type to find what you want. Combined with the confusion from the "recently used programs" mess, most people just resort to using a sea of icons littered across their desktop. Virtually every time I show someone how simple it is, and remove the hundreds shortcuts on their desktop, they come back and thank me for making their computer "less stressful".

It's a crazy thought, but what if Google were to use the Motorola aquisition to produce top of the line android handsets and give them away for free? I'm not sure how the financials would work out, but I'm assuming Google has now inherited all the good relationships Motorola has built with the carriers. Could you imagine what an industry shake-up it would be if Google offered the latest Nexus xyz for absolutely nothing? Take it a step further and say that not only will this Nexus be free, but so will the next one? Sure, they would lose tons on the hardware and manufacturing, but giving away the latest and greatest smartphone to every person on the planet would surely cement them as the world's dominant smartphone platform. Is it possible they could make enough profit from a billion new users on android to offset the manufacturing costs of the latest smartphone? Could the carriers provide enough subsidies to make it happen? It seemed to work for Nokia several years ago. Are we waiting for the new age of free phones?

Sure... it's your mom's assignment. My grandpa is also taking Theory of Computation at his university and asking me why his carefully crafted Lisp code still doesn't solve the halting problem.

I really don't understand this. How, in this age of computing, when even the most sensitive information is tracked and protected digitially (bank accounts, health records, personal identity, etc.), we still cannot acurrately and securely tally a one-time vote total? With digital signatures, virtually unbreakable encryption, firewalls, advanced routing, hash codes, unlimited logging, we still can't be sure the count is reasonably accurate? To penetrate the digital safegaurds has to be exponentiallly more difficult than say, offering a bribe to the guy doing the counting.

It's a safe bet to assume that many of the negative comments here are posted by people who have never studied or written a line of XAML. I'll agree that it's unclear what the future of Silverlight may be, but for designing and manipulating a user interface, XAML + .NET language of choice is light years ahead of the HTML + CSS + Javascript mess we have now. I contend that if web browsers natively supported markup languages like XAML or Adobe's MXML, and they all had the support to download the appropriate byte code to manipulate it (.NET, ActionScript, Java, python, etc), we would see a very different web. Without the universal compatibility, HTML/CSS/Javascript has little if any advantage over the RIA environments. Given a choice, I would bet that 99/100 developers would choose the more powerful and expressive markup (XAML, MXML, etc.) and the programming language to match whatever they are using on the server side (.NET, Java, Python, etc.).

You have a good point. The lack of a native SDK is definitely a deterrent for developers porting their apps from Android/iOS over to WP7. But I don't think sticking to the C#, Silverlight, XNA strategy is neccesarily a bad one. Outside of the few passes handed out to Adobe, Netflix, etc. I really don't see the need for writing native code these days. 99% of the mobile apps are extremely basic and can easily be ported to a managed code environment. You may not want to because you have already spent the time writing your C/C++ library, but going forward, it just doesn't make sense to commit to native code when managed code has so many advantages. It's not a coincidence that virtually all companies have converted to java, .NET, python, etc. for most of their development work. The hardware out today is ridiculously fast and the managed code platforms have matured. All politics and personal bias aside, I would love to see the day when we can truly write once/run anwhere. I think the mobile platform has taken us 10 steps backwards in that regard.

Ok, so it's not 10% anymore. My point was, you seemed to be defending it even when it was 10%.

I'm not saying there are no costs involved in maintaining a spec. Someone has to produce the logos, print the stickers, update the whitepapers, certify devices, etc. And it's not uncommon for organizations to charge yearly administrative fees to cover those costs.

But when those fees become percentages or fixed dollar amounts per device sold, it's no longer about controlling the spec. It's about profiting off of the spec. Which ultimately is a bad thing for both the device manufacturer and the consumer.

While it may be common for an organization to profit from a spec, it's definitely not the "right" thing to do. It's just more companies trying to squeeze another dollar from their partners and customers. Which is why I am applauding Google for embracing things like Arduino.

"The prices are raised across the board. That 10% doesn't cut into their profit margin any more than some other fixed cost does. You just raise your price by 10%, like everyone else."

Are you retracting that statement?

I think we all understand the basics of how commerce works. Poeple will pay for the products and services they want and think are worth the money. But adding a 10% tax to device manufacturers that ultimately gets directly passed on to the consumer is not benfiting the consumer. The iPod has a spec sheet developers build against. Unless you are saying that spec sheet would not exist without the Made For iPod program (unlikely since the devices would not be as popular without all the accessories), then how is adding 10% to the cost benefiting anyone except Apple? Do you really think the devices would work differently without the Made For iPod program?

Why are you so adamantly defending a business model that results in nothing other than an across the board 10% price increase? It may work, as you have explained, but it’s definitely not a “good” thing for anyone other than Apple (or Sony, or Nintendo, or any other company just looking to add profit through licensing fees). I know I’m not the only one who would prefer 10% better speakers instead of paying the Apple tax.

Don't kid yourself. All schools are for profit. These just happen to distribute the profit to shareholders instead of the politicians and administrators in charge.

Thanks for pointing this out. It amazes me how the real issues get twisted when there are popular phrases like "ActiveX is evil" that become the defacto response every time someone brings up IE. Internet Explorer 6 broke many standards, but it's use of ActiveX was not one of them. ActiveX is still alive today and is very useful when you are able to ensure the target users have the appropriate system configurations. Some applications NEED to execute native code from the browser. ActiveX provides that capability, just like extensions, add-ons, plugins, or whatever new term they come up with.