I have to agree with you on the progression in Office - the feature set has been there since probably Office 97 for most of the apps, but 2003 for Outlook. While Office 2007 is a huge progression in UI (argument over backwards vs. forwards aside) it does not add much of anything functionally for me, with the exception perhaps being the mouse over menu popup and the context sensitive toolbars, which are significant as far as usability goes but don't necessarily add additional function.

However, I think you've got your head in the sand if you don't think Windows has progressed since XP SP1. The stability, security, and usability of the Windows platform especially with Windows 7 is far and away better than Windows XP, and with the shift to mobile in Windows 8, new opportunities abound for real business world application development that can translate to a mobile platform.

I don't think the rental model is going to work very well for Microsoft until the prices line up better with real world usage. Buyers are too cost concious these days to go for a pricing model that costs twice as much over the typical 3 years between office releases.

ASUS UX21E

11.6" LCD, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD. Better battery life than the Macbook Air. Weighs 2.25 lbs.

And it's under $1000. Probably the only drawback vs. Apple is poorer graphics performance, which is only a factor for gaming.

If you really want cutting edge, the UX21A has a higher res 1920x1080 LCD and a touchscreen option. And matches the macbook's backlit keyboard.

There are other options, but ASUS probably has the best right now.

For one, Intel's ultrabook as mentioned in the synopsis, is just being released this quarter, so that has no bearing on sales.

I can put together an Intel 14" ultrabook for $900 with twice the RAM and nearly identical size, weight, speed, warranty, SSD, as a macbook air that sells for $1200.

Lenovo, ASUS and others all have sub $1000 13.3" notebooks that compare favorably to macbook.
The macbook does probably look the best and has the sharper screen.

I suggest you check around and see what has been released in the past year before making the judgment that there are no comparisons to Apple, in some cases you may find a better product for less money.

Because you can tell from a fossil how long they were around. And you can tell that an animal looks like an eel by a set of fossilized teeth.

I don't care how great of a scientist you are, you can't predict what an animal looked like from a set of teeth. Imagine the wild designs they would come up with for humans if all they had to go on was a tooth.

It's not like updating via a router is the only choice. If you are hosting something on that IP you are going to have at least one box that can run a software client to update.

Also the vast majority of non-commercial users don't need multiple sites on one account - and they don't need a huge selection of dozens of host domains. DynDns is simplifying their free service without affecting the needs of 99.9% of new users. And if you need more sites it is not that hard to setup a free email account to link it to.

So the bottom line is, this is a non-story.

The problem with the math is that, while it is probable that given the sample size, a trial and error such as life could occur on one or several planetary objects; the probability that this chance happens over and over and over in the same place to create even a simple life form becomes less and less probable with each generation.

I would have problem from a mathematical perspective agreeing that something like DNA evolved. When you mix in something like just the right size asteroid hitting earth, producing a moon, that in turn paved the way for various life forms to evolve, the probability becomes so slim that it is beyond our comprehension. I find it ironic that in one of the parent posts leading to this thread, the poster refers to humans as somehow believing they are intelligent. Yet we have not found a better explanation of our occurance other than a train of events that is mathematically impossible.

And frankly, if your employer allows you to create your own data partitions on your hard drive, and doesn't require you to sync or store data on a file server, then they deserve to lose their data.

Google foolishly tried to ramp up demand for G+ the same way they did with Gmail. The problem is gmail is standalone and communicates with any email user in the universe. Gmail had/has featureset that goes above and beyond any comparable solution out there, thus the demand was pushed by the limited initial availability (same technique Apple uses to push demand, just look at iPhone 4s and the limited initial production that allows them to flout "sold out in 48hrs" type of headlines) and continued to be pushed after public introduction because it was a superior product.

G+ has no such interoperability and the demand bubble burst before it even went public. Anyone who got an "invite" logged on, saw the interface, and there was nothing to do that you couldn't do as well or better on existing services.

The reality is that there is a double standard here in the US, in that if a teacher speaks something positive about religion in a public school, specifically about christianity, he/she will be reprimanded, nutjob atheists will sue to get them fired, and everyone starts self-righteously proclaiming their viewpoint of so-called "separation of church and state".
But if someone speaks out against a religion, rarely is it ever mentioned.

If you are going to uphold the practice of censoring those who share their religious beliefs, you should also uphold the practice of censoring those who share anti-religious beliefs.

It has nothing to do with Amazon bluffing. They are still going to sell to CA residents, they just aren't going to do it via affiliates. The small amount of income that Amazon gets solely as a result of having affiliates send a customer their way is outweighed by the immense amount of paperwork that would be required for them to have to track sales tax numbers for every affiliate and be responsible to make payments for each one to the state.

IL has passed the same law and Amazon likewise pulled their IL affiliates. The end result is less cash flow into the state, which means less spending by the residents, and thus less sales tax income for the state. It's legislative stupidity, but that's what the democrats in charge want I guess.

The biggest issue is that the advertisments for WP7 are stressing functionality and operability, when the majority of consumers just want "cool". If they advertised this based on the cool apps and games like Apple and Google are, and oh by the way it runs your important stuff too, then they may have some people walking into stores asking for it.

To be subjective, was the fossil dated based on its features attributing it to be a transitional fossil between the Eoraptor and Tawa?
Or was it placed in that gap because it was dated such first?

It's an important distinction, as if the three species overlapped in date (two were alive at the same time) or this new find is newer than the species it was supposed to transition to, its status as a "missing link" or even a transitional fossil is false. There's not much information out yet about this but my guess is that it is placed in a gap due more to convenience than any proven time period. This is why these missing link discoveries are so ridiculed by creationists, and until this unscientific procedure of placing fossils in the timeline is improved, it is deservedly so.

My experience with the technically illiterate is primarily with my wife, who didn't use a computer at all before we got married. She tolerates Windows, and hated Ubuntu linux mostly due to her inability to figure out how to do basic tasks. At least with Windows she has mostly been able to figure out how to get around and find apps she wants to use.
My argument therefore is that the technically illiterate will find linux more difficult to use unless they limit themselves to very basic task such as web browsing and email. Even with these tasks my wife found the available email clients for linux to be less than easy to work with, especially the contact management. The browser provided her with difficulties installing flash and viewing PDF files. She was frustrated by not being able to use software given to her by her friends for greeting card creation and was unable to find a good program for this on linux.
The technically literate will have a much better experience with linux on the desktop as they will have a acumen to find software and troubleshoot when needed.
Unfortunately, linux is far from passing Windows on the desktop. Maybe someday, but for now the bulk of the development seems to be geared towards the mobile market and will likely not ever compete seriously for the desktop market for the forseeable future.

Frankly I just think NASA is taking advantage of the situation in Japan to beg for funding. Since they have been defunded so much in recent years, this is their window of opportunity to get Congress thinking about them again and sending a few more billion bucks their way.

If someone is seriously replacing a desktop or laptop PC with a smartphone, then it becomes their PC. The reality is, people will always buy more smartphones than PC's because 1) you don't accidently drop your desktop in a puddle and have to replace it, 2) Many families share a PC or two but each family member has a phone, and 3) the cost of the smartphone (subsidized, true) is less than a PC.

Sure, I would expect smartphone, tablets, and the ubiquitous "Other app enabled devices" to outsell PC's. The headline makes it sound as if as soon as smartphones outsell PC's by one unit, noone will ever buy a PC again, which is utterly thoughtless.