Correct. But only for large businesses that need for problems to be someone else's fault. For startups and most private folks the question is always "What can I do with this that I can't do now". Apple and Android have been answering that question to folks since 2007. When is the last time you saw a Win Phone commercial? They need to make the same case and they need to make it better than all of the incumbents and I do not see that happening in the current marketplace.

This is also why Blackberry has failed: It answered a single need and then stopped looking for other markets. The phones were considered a distraction when they should have been looking closer at an existing market they already had a deep brand stake in. Why they didn't partner with MS then I'm not sure but the two were then heavy hitters in the enterprise sector and they should have capitalized on it but didn't.

"All in all, both Microsoft and Nokia have wonderful product. We just need to force people to buy it."

Sure! But how are you going to force the carriers to REQUIRE a Win'8 phone as the next upgrade? Give them away? They are almost doing that now. My Galaxy S II cost me a hundred bucks. The price was recently cut in half. I doubt that AT&T received any sort of discount for being such great customers from Samsung. I used to like the old Nokia feature phones but I doubt even they can make them that inexpensively as good as they are.

That's good to hear. I've skipped every other release and only done the upgrade after the system was getting real crusty. I have a nice backup setup now and upgrading every other year or so seems pretty reasonable as long as the system still makes sense. I've stuck with Suse since 1998 or so. Back then it was the distribution that was the most complete out of the box.

I'll wait for the core to stabilize for a few months and then do the update during the winter break. Setting up openSuse 12.1only took a few hours to get the final pieces to work and was mostly flawless. Best in a long time for me. 11.4 gave me headaches because of the NVIDIA open source driver and the crap I went through to switch to the proprietary X drivers. They may get it stable some day but I actually USE my system.

I thought Gnome was permanently broken... Which is why we use KDE or LXDE at my house. Which Gnome anyway? Didn't Ubuntu kill the current one off?

I have three GUI setups on this system: KDE, LXDE and Enlightenment. The wife and kids use KDE. I use LXDE and Enlightenment.

Agreed. Daughter Number One moved to just outside NYC. She works there from time to time and revels in both the cultural and artistic access that that city allows. She also learned how to drive in the big city and has the dents in her car to prove it. It isn't for the faint-of-heart. Mostly she parks just inside the borders at a large parking garage and hoofs it to the closest subway station. Navigation in the city requires a mental map of the subway that still leaves me perplexed but is a requirement to economical and efficient travel there.

As far as companies relocating to cities in general is concerned: It sort of depends. I live close to Baltimore. Baltimore is a mess. Companies seem to be relocating away from here. This is historically a heavy manufacturing town. The infrastructure required for any sort of high tech manufacturing seems to be lacking because the only companies that have moved here were Biotech outfits that don't seem to last long before running through their start-up cash and going out of business. The only chip foundries here are the kind used for defense outfits that are pretty close to obsolete. We are not likely to get a Google or similar here any time soon as the big money access is elsewhere. DC is right down the road and that means most companies want to be in either northern VA or in the DC suburbs like Bethesda or Germantown. There are lots of Banks, law firms and lobby firms in DC but very little manufacturing that I know of.

I've actually known Samsung for some time as a reasonably priced alternative but well-built brand for a lot of things like monitors, optical drives and memory...and phones. The Galaxy S II is my second Samsung phone but my first Android phone. My wife had an iPhone first. She said that, all things being equal, the Galaxy phone would have been fine because the screen is bigger and it seems to work fine. It's not as reliable as hers though as I've had to pull the battery a few times after lockups. I suspect this is more an Android issue than a Samsung issue though.

Patents are not what is keeping this company in business. They make a reliable, well made and functional product at a reasonable cost. Any manufacturer can make similar designs but they choose not to regardless of the effective quality of the design because it isn't theirs. Apple keyboards are nice too but those who learned to type the original IBM design will want one of these. I have one at work for code alone. Crappy keyboards are a distraction.

I watch movies at theaters, borrow DVDs from the Howard County Library and my wife rents from RedBox or Blockbuster at grocery stores from time to time. I use DVDs for Linux and updates or home movies more than anything else. If the studios try to lock things down any further we'll likely just skip the stuff they produce altogether.

The big three networks seem to have clued into delivery. If you have broadband the networks will let you watch most recent episodes of their most popular series along with a couple of commercials. There is Netflix, Hulu and a few others that are a lot less expensive than content from regular Hollywood sources. If you really want what they produce there are a bunch of ways to go legal without going broke. We are likely to go back to Netflix when our Verizon contract expires. Even with no 2 year contract it makes sense to drop the phones, the cable and just keep the internet. Verizon is likely to hate it but that seems to be where we are headed. $160 a month for all three is too rich for us for something most of us when we only watch a couple of shows a week at most. If I lived closer to Baltimore I'd consider OTA but we live in a lower level condo and their is literally no signal here to speak of without cable. It will save $100 a month for something not used very much.

Is there a way to ignore them harder than I was to begin with? My attitude is that these things have no purpose in the world other than to enrich someone else with my personal information. It's enough that I'm forced to use my SSN to get medical service even after my insurance company explicitly stopped using it. The forms used by every medical provider require it. Now I'm going to give my life story out to any clod on the internet about what I had for lunch that day?

Absolute total bullshit!

Right now the provider with the most expensive plans is Verizon. I know as I switched a little over a year ago. AT&T was cheaper over time than Verizon and had better support where I live (East Coast) in some places. This is for "just" phone service with text messages rather than a data plan as none of us has a smart phone. For data plans it makes no real difference - they all cost too much.

Do I think they need to buy T-Mobile? Hell, no! The whole idea stank from the get-go. If this causes them to raise prices I'll switch again. Two years is over at the start of next year and I check other plans at the end of every year. I rolled over for Verizon and they did their jolly best to roast me. I won't go that route again, ever. They might get my business again but I'll keep my eye on prices regardless. Too many of my friends seem to just stick with them out of inertia like I used to.

I'm an openSuse user and have been on some version of Suse Linux since Redhat 6 turned out to be such a personal disappointment. I picked up a commercial copy at CompUSA at some point in the '90s and have stayed with them for both school and work ever since. For most of that time I was dual-booting some version of Windows starting with Windows '98 and then moving to XP Pro which we keep alive on my daughters' PC now. Theirs is used mostly for games until the beginning of the year for about 14 hours when I use Block's tax software. That is the one reason we have a fairly carefully maintained and upgraded Windows machine in our home. I've used what was originally "Kiplinger's Tax Cut" since 1997 or so and I doubt I will change because the program seems to work so well.. When the requirements require a newer OS I'll upgrade their machine to Windows 7. They understand why I do it and I make sure they have the hardware and software they need to play the games they like. I would keep the PC up-to-date regardless since I have nothing against Microsoft or gaming and every intention of supporting my daughters interests regardless as long as they keep up with their chores, clean their room and keep their homework up-to-date.

"I slapped a 750 gig drive in my Lenovo over a year ago for about 80 bucks (Newegg)."

I bought a 3.5" 320 GB hard drive three weeks ago from there. The drive was roughly $42 shipped to my home. I'm using it now. Due to the recent flooding in Southeast Asia recently the same drive is priced at $85 or thereabouts now. My advice would be that unless you have an absolute immediate need for more space to wait a few months before even considering buying a new hard disk.

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

This, Citizen, is how World Federal Government is Protecting You!
Would you like to know More?

"You won't be laughing when a terrorist hijacks a train and crashes it into the White House.

Or smashes a Ferry into Mt. Rushmore."

How do you smash a boat into Mount Rushmore?
As to the first point: I would not be surprised since the agency seems reactive in the extreme. They have become very good at reacting to the last attack rather than working on ways to protect us from the next wave of reasonably creative terrorists.

"You should have known when the Democrats at their convention in Boston herded demonstrators off the street, and restricted them to a "free speech zone" surrounded by barbed wire, that the free speech wouldn't be the Obama Administration's greatest accomplishment."

No to mention the recent events outside the exchange on Wall St. Sure we have free speech and the right to assemble. Just not both at the same time. You can say whatever you want in private but don't be public about it or in groups as that is too much of a threat to the current power structure. If you find a place to speak publicly we'll move the police line so we get a better chance to arrest you or to give you the pepper spray treatment.

This has happened before. Then it was 1968 at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. It was shown on national television and those watching at the time were fairly evenly split between blaming the Mayor of Chicago and the hippies being beaten by the Chicago PD. Personally I blame Mayor Bloomberg for what happened on Wall Street. If he had not wanted the violence to occur and made it clear to the leadership of the NYPD that they would be investigated independently and there would be firings as a result then none of what happened would have happened. It is fairly clear from here that he either ordered the violence or encouraged it through the upper management ranks of the NYPD.