Here's an idea, rather than letting the manufacturers get away with making the dick waving contest be about screen resolution, why not force them to fix the fucking smartphone battery life problem?

I think you are right, though the key differentiator is not chatty vs. discrete messages. Chat done right can solve a number of problems that email has:

- Email sucks as an archive. It's fine to store personal emails just for yourself, but when you dig deep and assess how much critical corporate knowledge is locked away in this multitude of personal archives of all employees, you'll be in for a shock. A Twitter-like chat system for corporations (like Yammer) will retain that knowledge for the right group, including its future members. I find that only a small part of my conversation is actually really private between me and someone else. Most of it will be relevant for my team, for another team, for a special interest group within the company, or for the company as a whole. In a corporate Twitter, asking for knowledge is automatically the same as sharing it, as soon as an answer is given. In email, any answer is lost for everyone but yourself.

- Email is fine for communicating 1 to 1 or 1 to many, but it is a poor vehicle for many-to-many conversations. Chat systems (again citing Yammer as an example... by the way I have nothing to do with Yammer except that my current client uses it) can solve this by having private, ad-hoc chat groups in which participants can be invited or drop out as needed. New joiners will see a clear, linear history of what has already been discussed, instead of a steaming pile of replies-to-replies-to-replies in multiple sub-threads, all intertwined in a single email exchange.

In our team, we've tried sticking to the rule that forbids the use of email for anything that will still be relevant one week from the day of sending. The idea is that any such messages belong to the corporate memory, which means email is out as a vehicle for storing it. Instead, people use Yammer or email links to documents stored in a central repository. It worked out quite well, both improving recall from our corporate memory, keeping everyone on the same page and aware of each others' work, and improving the quality of discussions by electronic means.
But we too found that it is extremely hard to break the email habit. One thing that email still has going for it in the corporation is that everyone has it, and everyone is expected to read it several times a day. You might get told of for missing an important email, but being told off for missing an important discussion on some social media thingy? We're not quite there yet.

It's fairly common, especially in MS-only shops. Even my employer, which uses a mixture (although sadly mostly PHP on the GNU/Linux side, urgh) has their entire back-end in .NET, mostly VB.NET.

Don't underestimate the influence of VB. There's lots of business logic coded in VB, originally glued to Crystal Reports libraries and Access databases, which has been migrated to more centralized, sane, infrastructure thanks to VB.NET. And because small portions got ported in that way, the end result has been massive .NET apps, using SQL Server, all written in VB. It's seen as easier and safer for many businesses, especially the types of business that wouldn't touch a *ix box in a million years.

Note the term "normally use" and the rest of my comment.

You don't "normally use" .NET for desktop applications. Some people do, but I said "normally", not "ever". You would use Metro for desktop apps, however.

You don't "normally use" (actually, I think "ever" would work in this context) Metro for back-end, Enterprise web app type stuff. Some people may for reasons that are related to dominatrices and whips, but few would. The most common use of .NET is for back-end, Enterprise web app, type stuff.

I didn't say the contracts with Netflix were unreasonable!

I'm saying that it's highly improbable that Netflix is subject to an entirely different set of contracts than other online streamers. Both Amazon and Google have licensed the same Hollywood content, and Hulu has licensed content from the same studios, and all three are using Flash.

There's no reason to believe Netflix's choice of DRM had to do with the studios. It's more likely they, a company whose web presence prior to the instant streaming thing had been in the form of a fairly limited website for editing lists of movies to mail, found a company willing to do the work for them, in this case Microsoft, and asked them to do it.

Realistically, I don't think Hollywood would have cared if Netflix had gone for Flash, or even if they'd gone for RealPlayer. All they cared about was that some form of DRM was implemented.

And VB. Large amounts of VB stuff these days is back-end .NET stuff, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it, but is easy to ignore if you're living in a Java/Unix world.

A couple of problems here. First, you obviously don't believe in or understand the concept of free will. How much of a paradise would heaven be if you were forced there against your own will? Second, you seem to have a lack of understanding how "relationships" work. You cannot force someone to love you.

Also, what people in hell will be tortured with is a form or what they took pleasure in while on earth. Glutenous people for example, will be forced to eat themselves to death for all eternity. They are getting what they sought in life.

Selfish people in life did not give a damn about anyone but themselves in life or consider how their actions could affect others so they will be deprived of the love of others.

Seriously, are you expecting god to force people to love him after they die or something? The people who are saved did not "earn" salvation, all the did was accept the gift offered to them. What condemns them is pride which is what caused the downfall of the devil. If you think that you are the centre of the universe then you will be left without god's love.

Do you like unsolicited mail? Wouldn't you rather be given the option to receive a gift rather than having it forced into your hands?

Microsoft isn't deprecating .NET in favor of Tablet form factor Metro apps because that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. .NET is usually used as a back-end technology, huge amounts of the web are delivered using .NET applications. You wouldn't use Metro for what you normally use .NET for, and vice versa.

Yes, certain media outlets have hyped the fact Metro isn't .NET as some kind of evidence Microsoft doesn't like .NET or whatever. You can safely ignore any media outlet that does that. I'm not saying there's no desktop stuff in .NET, there's plenty around, but that's not where the focus is in .NET world, any more than it's the focus in Java world.

Non-obvious problem: The studios that actually own all the distribution rights to the videos on Netflix are, for the most part, wary about DRM on Linux, under the belief that obscurity grants security. Now, we all know that's stupid, but we also all know they are stupid.

If that were the case, then surely the same movies wouldn't be available via Amazon's instant streaming thing? Or Youtube's commercial play.google.com video service?

Netflix is very much the odd one out for the major commercial movie streamers in not using Flash. I really don't think the studios are mandating the technology, I think it's a straightforward case of them going to a major technology vendor to get a "solution", and getting the solution that vendor, Microsoft, found most in their interest to sell.

Amazon, YouTube, and, for that matter, Hulu (which streams stuff from different divisions of the same media companies, who are just as obsessive about piracy), are more tech savvy enterprises, being made up of people who were expecting to deliver stuff via the web from the get-go, so it's not surprising they'd go with an established technology like Flash rather than Silverlight. The only surprise, to a certain extent, is that Real didn't ever manage to muscle in on this market.

Try to think of these stories as if they are written by your wife. It is not about what she says, but what she wants you to figure out yourself.

So you're saying we're doomed.