"but I still see Ballmer in a very positive light."

I seriously never thought I'd see those words on Slashdot. =)

Probably a creative person who is a native of Singapore?

What are you talking about? I'm a developer, and to me it is the Pound Sign. It's only the Sharp Sign if you are a musician.

This is occurring under the Obama administration, and is being perpetrated by a man appointed by Obama. The article also mentions the efforts Reagan took to close corporate tax loopholes. And you quickly extrapolated from that the Republicans are the cause of all evil. Your mind is as small and flails just as wildly as those you accuse of being limited in mental scope.

Quite frankly, I would enjoy becoming a cyborg.

They shouldn't have attached the "Windows" brand to their phone. Windows is a desktop operating system. It has a popularized reputation (warranted or not) for being unwieldy, crashing, being expensive, and mostly dedicated to the accomplishment of boring or undesirable tasks like work, writing papers, using Office, etc. They should have created a new brand for the phone.

Having a "Windows Phone" from Microsoft is sort of like IBM coming out with a social networking site called "The IBM Human Interaction System" and then marketing it to young people as hip and cool. There is an emotional and/or psychological disconnect between the nature of the product and the mental conception people have of the brand.

Even though it's stupid, when I see the Android ads I think "oh cool, an ANDROID! I wonder what it can do? It looks futuristic. I kind of want one." (note: I don't have a smart phone because I think they are stupid.) However, when I hear the word "Windows Phone", it makes me feel like getting one would be like keeping a chunk of my job in pocket. No thanks.

They bypassed the UAC? We're DOOMED!

Here's a reminder for all the Obama fanatics:

"the fight over NSLs is not over. The Obama administration has been seeking to expand the FBI’s power to demand internet activity records of customers without court approval or suspicion of wrongdoing. If granted, the data sought without a court order could expand to include web browser and search history, and Facebook friend requests."

It puts many of the anti-Bush wiretapping arguments in perspective. I was certainly not a supporter of George W. Bush, but my support of Ron Paul is looking more sparkling by the month.

How are banks thieves?

Are you saying Twitter is a more important intellectual fountain than books? Because no.

Ignoring the externality is a fuck-the-others (in this case, fuck-the-children) mentality that has nothing to do with the ideal free market or (broad and/or long-term) prosperity

It is immoral and stupid for America to blow it's economic brains out to avoid giving our children an environmental sunburn.

If you honestly believe the quality of public education had declined because of groups advocating private education and freedom of choice for education, you have no idea how the public education system works at all. My wife taught mathematics at a public elementary school, and I assure you our public schools are failing because of government policies, government inefficiency, government sponsored group-think, and horrible, irresponsible parents who are raising tv and sugar addicted monsters that don't care about anything and don't know how to behave.

The dream of American democracy? The founding fathers abhorred democracy, rightly knowing that it was institutionalized amoral mob rule. We are a republic with binding foundational principles of liberty which, quite undemocratically, cannot be simply voted away.

I'm really glad this is finally happening. I was just thinking the other day that Flash hadn't really made the internet annoying enough. Now we can enjoy 3D websites with tiny fonts, swirling graphics, and no content.

I understand the potential usefulness of this, I really do. However, I shudder at the inevitable trends in web development that will further abuse the notion of usability.

It could be that they have no desire to contact us, but also no desire to hide themselves. We may be simply too primitive to have what they consider a productive conversation, but they have no desire to hide themselves because they know that we don't have the technology or social structure to do anything about their occasional presence.

Of course, I say all of this as an extreme skeptic of UFO stories. I'm just pointing out that there is another possible explanation besides "No Aliens" and "Aliens that can't sufficiently hide themselves".