One thing in which Bing surpasses Google is with their aerial views. Bing's image quality is vastly superior and the birdseye view is in many ways much more useful than Google's Streetview. More amazing is that I see almost nothing written on Bing's birdseye view, and if you use it for just a little while, it'll blow you way. I'd hardly call Bing "a joke." I'm no Microsloth fan, but Bing has its merits.

I had WindowsME on a laptop back in 2000. Never had a problem with it, amazingly. Used it mainly for writing and surfing.

I'm in the Philadelphia area, and my service is excellent. It helps that I have an AT&T tower right behind my house, but when I travel through the area, my service is pretty solid.

In the past I've had Verizon and Sprint, which was no more or less reliable than what I have now.

Yes, I think it all has to do with where you are and who happens to have the most towers in that area.

I taught myself just about every software package that I use, and as a graphic and interactive designer, I've used a lot of them. Learning one made it easier to learn the next, and I've always had little patience for tutorials and manuals. Hell, I've even installed a Microsoft Small Business Server and I primarily use Macs. I usually referred to a manual only when I got stuck. Yes, I'm one of those types of end users.

When I made the decision to steer my shop to using and deploying Joomla, I embarked on a six month slog trying to master its structure and schema. Nothing frustrated me more than hearing remarks like yours that "Joomla is simple to use!" Bullshit. Joomla was built on pretzel logic that's fine once you get the hang of it, but I'm also faced with the problem of training clients on how to use it. I can't tell you how many blank stares and glazed over eyeballs I've seen in trying to describe the Section/Category/Article structure -- and that's the EASY part.

What's REALLY mind bending about Joomla is its menuing system. I emphasize to clients over and over that in Joomla, menus don't just take you to another page, they dictate what that page will look like when you get there. That's a key part of how Joomla works.

It gets worse when you throw in the concept of modules and positions and all the other special tags and codes you absolutely need to know when building a Joomla site.

And here's the biggest frustration for me as a designer: Since I first took to designing for the web, I've waited a long time for the first killer web design app that would free me of having to delve into HTML code. Designing in HTML and CSS for the web is like designing in Postscript for print! When GoLive comes along, I'm thinking "Finally! Just what I needed." Then Adobe trashes GoLive and pushes Dreamweaver. Fine, I spend another two months learning Dreamweaver. Then I learn all about CMS, and it's back to square one.

Joomla IS easy -- after about six months of intense use of it. Intuitive? Not by a million miles.

Abrams by no means had to be faithful to the Trek cannon. It would have been nice, however, had he not made a movie that was a mish-mash of a half-dozen other science fictions movies and maybe one that had a plot not riddled with cliches and all-too-convenient coincidences. Strip it of its special effects, and it was a HORRIBLE movie. Bad story. Boring characters. Undecipherable plot. Scientific gaffs galore. Oh, but because the effects were cool, it made it thoroughly worth the $13 admission. What really sucks is that I'll probably still go to the sequel.

Excuse me, but you must have forgotten the original Infiniti ads that rolled out back way back when to introduce Nissan's new luxury line. Everyone talked about the ads. No one bought the cars. Lexus, which launched about the same time, trounced Infiniti. Complaint? No mention of the cars. No pictures of the cars. No product. In fact, the ads were all about associations -- associations with peace, tranquility, happiness. Wha...? The follow up to this better get busy with product, or else Microsloth will have made a whole lot of ad executives richer and a whole lot of stockholders pissed.