Thanks, that was really helpful. I know how to properly expose an image, I've been shooting for 25+ years on film, slides, and digital. My comment was about the state of the technology and the sensitivity of current sensors. I'm was not looking for a beginners lesson in photography. And a Canon 40D at ISO1600, even if properly exposed, is far too grainy for my taste.

For me the biggest problem in pt-and-shoots, and in DSLRs to a lesser extent, is not lack of megapixels, but the lack of performance in low-light. The latest D-SLRs from Canon and Nikon, the higher-end ones (not the entry level SLRs) are getting much better, but for the most part, low-light performance of the current CCDs sucks.

You are correct, I forgot about the 340s.

Good question.. JetBlue is nice, their seats are reasonably comfortable and they have live TV in all seats. I hear good things about Virgin America, but I have not flown them yet.

AA, UA, NWA, USAir, Delta, Southwest - they all suck as far as economy class treatment goes. Shitty seats, dirty cabins, nickel-and-diming you for a bag of chips or box of shitty food. All of the major carriers are pretty bad. The smaller carriers do a slightly better job.

Yes, agreed. Some airlines do have some decent economy class seating. United is not one of them.

747-400 still has slightly longer range than 777. The longest flights are still on 747s - Newark NJ -> Singapore (nonstop). Chicago - Hong Kong (nonstop), etc etc. I prefer the 777 because they have more modern amenities in coach like seatback entertainment systems instead of a single giant screen for the whole cabin like its 1981 or something. *SOME* airlines (NOT UNITED) have actually upgraded their economy class on the widebodies in the past 20 years.

Yeah, it will fail because you say so, zealot.

Toshiba chose to do it with Sun out of pity, not because they see a market for it or anything, right?

"GNU/Linux" isn't a product, its just a name that is associated with X number of distributions, only a handful of which have enough corporate muscle behind them to arrange a laptop deal with a vendor like Toshiba or Dell.

The simplistic view that "Ubunto works on Dell" doesn't mean much to the Toshiba or Sun executive who wants to take some of Dell's market share. OpenSolaris works on Dell, too. As do the dozens of other Linux distros and BSD variants.

I agree with almost all of your points except for ZFS. ZFS is truly revolutionary and amazing. XFS, Reiser FS (i.e. murder-your-wife-FS) pale in comparison. ZFS renders Veritas and NetApp moot and useless in one fell swoop. No wonder NetApp is suing.

However, unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Ponytail guy and the rest of the C-level nerds will f* things up as usual and fail to capitalize on the technology. Sun = great engineers, shitty management. Someone needs a haircut. Its 2008 for crissakes, get with the decade.