You have a lot more overhead for a network show. Starting at the top with studio management and producers. Add to that the various guilds and unions that actors, writers, directors and other creative staff might belong to and it can really balloon. Even at minium scale the labor costs for a two week production would hit about $400K for 70 people @ 2 weeks.

These productions trim costs because they don't have studio overheads, and have much cheaper costs for creative staff. In particular if the creative staff if willing to do something like Dr. Horrible, where they are looking for a paycheck based on DVD royalties, not upfront costs. It's a different market and I think the creative community is willing to trade the guaranteed paid check for more creative control and a stake in the final production.

I don't think Echostar really wants to skip commercials. They've been larding up the UI with ads the last few years (though not nearly as bas as the cable company's DVRs). I think what they want to do is use this as a bargaining chip.

FOX and ABC in particular have been sticking it to service providers. Sure, they'll renew a contract for the local affiliate... after you pay more money for some other channels.

Hey GM, I'll maintain your profile for $2 Million a year. By Grabthar's Hammer, oh what a bargain!

I concur, fly by wire-by-wire had nothing to do with it. Side sticks are here to stay and popular with more than just Airbus. A linked or back-driven yoke may have helped, but there's a far more compelling argument to be made for having Angle of Attack sensors and feedback.

If there was an Angle of Attack readout on the dash board that likely would have created a cross-check opportunity. The technology has been around for decade, but really hasn't caught on (or been required) commercially.

That assumes a linier upgrade path. Companies just don't work that way. A lot of them went from Office XP to Office 2007. Office 2003 only worked with XP plus and it came out during a time when a lot of companies were doing OS upgrades. They don't like to deploy office suites until they have a year or two of service packs and fixes out.

I will note I did make one mistake. The file -> Save As was an issue with Office 2007 that was corrected with Office 2010. The problem is you didn't see Office 2010 really start getting deployed until mid 2011. So that's a number of years of irritation with the Office 2007 product. I'm quite sure Office 2007 would have made more sense if people went to Vista, but that obviously didn't happen.

As far as why more companies don't go with Open Office, well, first off, until recently Oracle really clouded the waters on what the future of the product would be (fall out from the Sun acquisition.) Secondly, the folks making the decision are most likely Microsoft Certified Professionals. I think there is some baias, but I also think it's a much safer career move NOT to rock boat. Finally, there are bound to be folks that *shudder* use MS Access.

Office 2010 sold licenses because Office XP went EoL.

Sit someone down who's been using office since the 90's with Office 2010 while still being saddled with Windows XP (extremely common in the corporate environment even today). Tell them to find Save As. Watch even the most mild mannered person get physically angry because it's not in an obvious place. The UI components when first released assumed that people would be using Vista (which obviously didn't happen for most companies).

Oddly enough I don't mind the ribbon UI on Office 2011 Mac, but that's because it still have a standard menu bar up top that gives me a choice between ribbon or traditional menu UI. Though I would be hard pressed to actually buy Office Mac on my own because LibreOffice really does 99.9999% of what I do and is free.

It doesn't have that stupid Ribbon UI interface!

If I was AC I'd be more concerned about the fact they flew a TATL flight with only 95 passengers on a 200 passenger plane. They were already lossing tens of thousands of dollars on the flight as is.

The problem isn't that they aren't commissioned, it's that you can't fire anyone. A buddy of mine was a "turn-around" guy for another retailer. He got hired by BB a couple years ago. Problem is you can't turn around the stores because you're not allowed to fire the weak and the lame from the store. If anything the number of poor sales people actually inflates because those who are good at sales eventually move on with their career. All management can do is move the chairs around on the titanic.