Are you joking, or are you just that incredibly uneducated?

While plenty of people may dispute the deity of Jesus Christ, there's no shortage of historical documentation that he existed, and had a major influence on society at the time. I'm not just talking about the Bible, either. There were many who witnessed his speaking and the things he did and wrote about him... Jews, Greeks, Romans, many of them did not believe he was the Christ, but they still wrote about him.

To say that there's no compelling evidence that there ever was such a person as Jesus Christ is similar to saying there's no compelling evidence that there ever was such a person as George Washington, except that there's probably MORE evidence for the existence of Jesus.

Now, it's true, I very strongly doubt you'll ever find his DNA.

We're almost there already. Win Phone 7 is a bit short on apps perhaps, but already has many features the other two don't (and yes, there are some features the others have that WinPhone 7 doesn't).

There's still plenty of room for improvement in Windows Phone, but it's been improving rapidly already. I've owned one for about 6 months now I think (since the HTC Arrive came out on Sprint, whenever that was). It's been more stable than the "feature phones" I've owned, with the exception of my original Nokia 6185 in the '90s. If this keeps up, with Google's "Screw Security and Privacy" attitude, and Apple's "You can have it our way or you can't have it at all" "we know what hardware you want" attitude, I think Microsoft may even be able to break the stranglehold, with proper execution.

Even nerds occasionally like their primary communications devices to "just work."

So, Mr. "I've been registered with the Linux Counter for 14 months, I'm so l33t"... I know it's made by the company everyone loves to hate, but have you actually tried out a Mango phone?

-- Linux user # 292874 (Believe it or not, it's possible for someone to like and use more than one OS.)

Let me fix that last paragraph for you:

But instead, Microsoft realized they could do better than the "me-too" Google phones. Instead of coming up with another boring cluttered smart-phone to compete with everyone re-packaging Android, they hunkered down and proved themselves the more creative company. They came up with a clean new interface and worked tirelessly on building a solid base platform which could easily go head-to-head with anything available. They are trying to win by helping with advertising costs for their manufacturers, just as Google most assuredly does.

Disclaimer: I do work for Microsoft, though I am nowhere near the Windows Phone nor the marketing departments. I have no special non-public knowledge of the goings-on in either department. I am however a proud owner of a Mango phone (HTC Arrive on Sprint). For anyone who hasn't used Mango, it's an incredibly stable feature-rich platform which deserves a look.

Are they not considering DirecTV to be a company? I don't see any possible way Comcast could take this award over DirecTV. Since I switched to Comcast, they have been straight forward with their billing, I get what I pay for, and if my gear craps out on a Friday night I can get it changed out on Saturday. I'm failing to see what's so terrible about them.

My switch was:
Qwest DSL (1.5Mb, ~$40/month)
DirecTV (~$70/month)
Total: ~$110/month

To:
Comcast internet service (22 down, 5 up, typically measures out to 30+ down and 15+ up) (~$68/month)
Comcast limited cable (channels 2-30, as I was hardly watching TV) (~$15/month)
Total price: ~$83/month

Also, DirecTV had the absolute worst customer service I've ever experienced, while Comcast's has honestly been pretty good.

I know it's popular to bash Microsoft on Slashdot, but why don't we just title this "The Walmart Effect: American products made in Chinese sweatshops because Americans have become too damn cheap to pay for quality products produced by skilled labor under good working conditions."

Only two HOV and two general purpose lanes? You've gotta be kidding me... anyone who has EVER driven across the 520 bridge in rush hour would cry foul. Mass transit is a great idea, except in the Seattle area it never runs when you need it to, which means anyone with a less-than-typical schedule (that is to say, 90% of the Puget Sound work force) still has to drive if they want to be able to get home after work.

Right now the bridge is 4 lanes, none of them HOV. Moving ~80% of that traffic into one lane, ~15% into another lane, and ~5 into a mass-transit lane would only a) make the problems worse and b) under-utilize the new bridge.

If someone wanted to suggest making the bridge slightly wider so it could accommodate 4 general-purpose, 2 HOV, and 1 set of tracks down the middle, and do it in such a way that it doesn't significantly delay construction, I'd be all for it.

Ok, so everyone hates Microsoft. Get over it.

SharedView and Live Mesh are two kick-ass free services from Microsoft with somewhat different feature sets but both useful for what's being requested here.

SharedView may be one of the most under-advertised products Microsoft has ever released. It's been around for a couple years and is basically a stripped-down version of Live Meeting. A presenter can share his desktop with up to 15 people, give control to attendees, etc. Files of up to 100MB can be transferred through the service.

Live Mesh is a newer offering (in Beta) which allows online storage and synchronization of up to 5GB. Several devices can be added to one's mesh, and specified folders will automatically sync between devices and the online storage (similar to Groove and Sharepoint). Unlike Groove, Mesh also supports connecting to the desktop of other systems which are part of the Mesh. The client install is pretty straight forward and simple, to where most average users could figure it out no problem.

The only downside to these products is they don't work with Linux. There is a Mac OS X client for Live Mesh, though I've never used it. There's a Java console for Live Meeting, but sadly it doesn't appear to be available with SharedView.

Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?

We can only hope it will kill the publishers, the way they've been killing US college kids for years. Do you think college kids would eat such a steady diet of ramen noodles if they weren't spending all their money on textbooks? Have you ever compared the cost of textbooks in the US to the SAME books overseas? Take a look at amazon.co.uk sometime and compare a textbook there to the same book in the US. The only difference is likely that one says "international version" on the cover. Oh, and it'll be less than half the price.

No, a bill such as this won't endanger publishing companies... publishing companies have endangered themselves by pissing off their customers with insanely high pricing. Maybe something like this would finally bring competition to the textbook industry and help make school a little more affordable.