That's not true any more. Most of the infections we have to address at work are coming through the ad networks. A harmless site spinning content from a company that puts up anything where a check clears. Local radio stations are the worst with a little player surrounded by ads from various providers.

So city traffic management is stuck in the 80s?

The thing I like about the Kindle is that it's software as well as the hardware device. I have a Kindle app on my phone, desktop, laptop, and tablet, but no hardware from Amazon.

I think they're more interested in the part where you can press a button and buy the book from Amazon and keep your bookmarks and annotations.

You need to read your own link. That survey was a hoax.

If they're of no value, then why did Google bid for them independently?

Taking your position that the patent's only value is to defend against or attack Microsoft (which I think is a massive oversimplificaiton), there are three states.

Google wins the patents alone (and Google is safe from them and use them leverage)
Google bids with the pool (and Google is safe from them but can't use them against the pool members)
Google loses the patents (and Google is vulnerable if they infringe them)

Google is protected in 2 of the 3, vulnerable in other. So unless they wanted them for agressive purposes, they should have gone with the pool as it's the lowest cost option. Or won the patents alone, but not lose and then complain about how unfair it all is for them.

Seriously? The general counsel of the company shows you the e-mail he sent to Google inviting them to bid and you want to deny it with a wave of your hand? When they only showed it after Google tried to claim they got screwed when they bid alone?

The whole point of buying the patents was to prevent them from being used against them. They offered for Google to join in and lower the cost for everyone. Google said no and now wants to complain about how unfair it is for them.

Google is wrong here. It happens. We can't lose the ability to critically evaluate Google's actions because we want them to be good.

Where is this sharp increase in Macintosh market share? The latest report (covered here earlier today) puts the Mac at 5.59% compared to 88.29% for Windows. I'd agree that Mac's expensive offerings are still selling well, and Apple is making a lot of money, but not that they're making great increases in market share on the desktop. The iPhone and iPad are their money makers.

Typically your volume license only covers machines that ship with Windows. You can run your enteripse edition on a machine that shipped with home edition, and you're entitled to future versions, but it had to come with something.

Maybe Google is a threat to Microsoft's enterprise operations, but not Apple. The biggest reason is that they don't want to be there. They've discontinued their rack mount hardware and their server is just an add-on for the Mac Mini. Their AD integration and SMB support is horrible, so you can't just drop them into an existing infrastructure as a 1:1 replacement. We do it where I work with some add-on software that makes it so our Macs can work and share files with the windows computers.

Apple could easily fix all of these things, but for whatever reason, they haven't. They're making boatloads of money in the consumer space, and seem happy with that. Google would like to eat some of Microsoft's enterprise lunch, but their products just aren't there yet.