A grand screw-up. Selling stuff is what they do, arguably better than anyone. Planning to have nothing to sell? Nope. If they announce a new gadget Friday? Call it a PR trip. Otherwise, no way this was the plan.

Advertising/advertisers. Good for business, good for the web.

There will be a way, there always has been. A fine, fun tradition. 98Lite. What Browser?

OT: Metro is effectively a "skin" or layer on 7? The "registry" is still there?

Safe prediction? Simple corrections will fix these "issues".

Spies get shot. An established tradition. In fact, I am a little surprised he is still alive.

Obviously there will be a way to remove/not boot metro. MS wanted feedback on the new UI, locked it down on the early releases. They are not going to frick with the installed business base. Not.

A Yahoo is someone not quite bright enough to be considered a redneck. So when do we get pictures of her ass?

I took this as good news too. Some cynicism is appropriate, things are trending towards broken today. But there are good honest people working hard, fighting the good fight in a lot of difficult environments today, getting it done. Everywhere, management and risk averse multiple levels of bureaucracy stifle the good folks. Most of us suffer this with private companies. Imagine adding politics, the Pentagon, way too many billions, various contractors in severe CYA mode, all potentially covering up? Yikes. Glad it is not me. But good work to the folks who got it done. We need this plane in the air.

How is market research relevant to patent squabbles?

OT: A still open question, how much credit belongs to Jobs? (Has it been documented?) Fans will dismiss the market research as a curse, blasphemy, when perhaps they should be happy about it? Any part of the process that did not require Job's input can be reproduced, and would mean the company could continue its happy, profitable path.

If people want to pay this, fine. pay. All it does is undermine facebook's already thin legitimacy. Reminds me of when when digg sold off her front page.

it was "Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap".

A sign that google is slipping. I do not know how people so close to these things, so involved in tech can go so horridly wrong, but it happens a lot. Digg, eg. I have read numerous interviews with Kevin R, never does he admit that selling the front page killed the beast.

Colleges/Universities are in big trouble, they need the bodies. Kids coming up can't cut it, so lower the standards. They cannot read either, and have the attention span of a fruit fly. 20 something gets on your nerves? Look em square in the eye and ask "what is nine times seven?" They will blink twice and stare at you. To reach them, communicate that none from their generation knows this, a legacy of the changes in education. It is not their fault. They are not stupid, it was not required.

Many factors. Number one is there really are No Bands around, because there are so few places to play, everywhere. A few in urban centers, but live music was once the thing, everywhere. Feminism, MADD and the trend towards disco/DJ's combined to shut down the live stuff. Dance influence required steady beats, no changes. Female dominated disco/dance meant men followed along, as contrasted to bad boy rockers intent on blowing the doors down, women on the chase. Police state enforcement meant everyone had to tone it down. Busted for drivin while blind. Yuppification of urban hot spots is another force. Greenwich village, eg. Get off my lawn.

So there are far fewer live performers, less competition, less experience with live, knowing what moves people. If the band sucked, there was another club around the corner, down the street, in the next town. So you needed to not suck. Stuff that develops out of a jam lives/breathes grows, accidentals become changes, etc.

Modern music on the radio is most often not derived from live work, where the band gets feedback , instead it is constructed piecemeal in a studio. Finally, and to the primary loss, the thousands of hours of interplay between the members does not happen as often, the stuff is made up by one or two people. Repeated plays via corrupted channels forced into specifically limited formats is the final blow. It has been known since the 30's that just play it again reduces the resistance, people end up "liking" the stuff.

Insanity helps Facebook's stock value. Summaries should always have a punchline.

Yup. TFA points to NASA's fear of failure, leading to failure to inspire. NASA has always been secretive. We never knew how dodgy things were and are. And NASA depends on politics, has no real self determination. Current failures are on the current US political class, the current Admin, who evidently see no value in it. Tool HuffPo labor in typical incoherence, pointing the finger at the shadow on the wall. "Reality". The common thread to me is corrupted institutions. IOC, SEC, FBI, BATF, Justice, EU, U.N. Broken. IOC and NCAA are two of a kind. The current worldwide Boomer legacy. "We Broke it". The IOC political statement of a parade of beds is Classic comedy. This to open a worldwide celebration of health, fitness, pushing the limits of endurance, testing the individual to an extreme. A parade of beds. Makes me think the person(s) responsible were secretly channeling Monty Python, giving the bureaucrats the finger. The joke on them. I hope so. That they do not see this is a major part of the problem. I choose to overlook this to appreciate what it means to the individuals involved in the games. To imagine what it would be like to be there, to be one of them.

Apple is about to change their iGadgets connector again, evidently. Top story on Gizmodo right now.