At least the over 50's crowd can find the store, in all likelihood "the younger set" don't even know what sporting goods are.

"Sorry Judge, you can't send me to jail for that. It'd be unjust! There's hundreds of crooks who've not been caught and punished yet. You can't jail me until you've seen to all those others! It's unfair I say!"

Microsoft needs to take responsibility. They screwed up. They need to take whatever the EC decides is the punishment like the men/women/other that they are and move along. Maybe the shareholders might also decide that there's been too many failures of management and slough some of the higher level dross who make these epic mistakes off the back of the company.

They have been punished (after full due process, appeals etc blah blah) for being in breach of EC rules, directives etc. They have been fined oodles of money for non-compliance with EC directives before and eventually caved. This browser choice thing was bright and shiny and in full view of Microsoft from Ballmer to their lowliest serf. They failed to comply with the EC ruling. They are going to get hammered. And rightfully so.

It doesn't matter if it's an "honest mistake" which is a bollocks argument, because changing the install image which implemented browser choice would require a high level of approval.

What a pack of whining shills crying "Mercy!" where none is deserved.

Why might you ask? Well, since pretty much every (state and federal) government for the last 50 years has put in policies that claim to promote in education the mythical high paying science/engineering pathway. In reality such programs have been consistently cut or left to exist as a hodge podge of disparate islands clinging on hoping they can maintain some sort of funding to survive another year.

Saying you value something and then vanishing the money and support for it is the norm. Nye is dreaming if he thinks Democrats or Republicans and for that matter the American people care about stuff from the land of STEM.

I agree, it is long overdue in software development.

For those who say it's "too hard" etc, bollocks.

Who on God's green Earth is making the Surface kit for Microsoft? Apparently not Acer, but who?

What they produce most of no one wants and in particular wants to pay money for. Namely the DJ/Hip Hop trash that dominates "new music" that requires no band, no instruments, no music/lyrics and worse for the industry, has no attachment with the majority of the listening population. Add a recession and bingo! Music sales will collapse. It's also no surprise that there is little competent performing talent out there with the widespread collapse of music programs in K12.

It's a fun vicious cycle that will be perpetuated until they decide that the way to make zillions is to actually get back into the music business.

It's gutting engineering and science in general, not just IT.

However, in the case of Phones, the OEM's and carriers are going to vote with their $'s. Look at the life cycle of a phone model, and for that matter the software that runs them.

Microsoft can't subsidize WP7 forever, because unlike the XBox they don't control manufacturing runs of phones. Add to that they are in such a low market share position with phones that they can't "insist" that OEM's produce them.

WP7 has a lot of catching up to do, and Microsoft isn't exactly speedy or even seemingly capable of leapfrogging their competition, ever.

$100 billion on the ISS is vastly more useful in any sense.

Why does education produce more and more people that are less and less capable, if we understand so much better how the brain works. Note the number of remedial classes four year colleges have to offer. They never used to have this need.

For example, one has to wonder why the tests/exams which kids took 20+ years ago are generally harder and had a higher pass rate than what is currently the situation. The contend covered is essentially the same, yet the current crop of kids who take the "old school" tests mostly fail and badly so, while they appear to be good students when taking the current tests. In fact, if they know in advance they are being given an "old test" they whine like the politicians caught in a lie.

All in all, I reckon despite saying we know more we're actually doing a poorer job in education than we ever have.

You are wrong. They (anti-trust and negative attack campaigns) are NOT the same thing.

A totally screwed state. After all, it's not as though BPOS is renowned for its reliability, and for that matter since when was it a clever idea for a state to go to relatively bleeding edge tech.

Although if I were Microsoft at this moment, I'd be paying the lawyers overtime to find out why EFF thinks overturning this patent ruling is a good thing. Last I heard EFF wasn't too big on patents and they're not altogether retarded, so... anyway, if I were a Microsoft lawyer I'd be worried enough to make sure I knew where all the chairs were...

Well... It'd all depend now wouldn't it.

1) if the colleges licensed the texts en masse and made them available via iPads or even notebooks, then they and students could save a bundle
2) Colleges tend to already have something like "unlimited license" setups to manage all their internal stuff, so extending that to students doesn't seem that hard (for iPads) as the software would never have to reside on the iPad.
3) Colleges already have ginormous systems that could easily be the large backends required.

That being said, I'm not sure if it all could work, but it does seem feasible on the surface.