I work with phones for a living at the largest private employer in Philadelphia.

While office phones are clearly on the decline, they ain't dead yet. We have approximately 20k phones, half of which are VoIP and half of which are either POTS or a digital offering from the local carrier. All of them are converting to VoIP, slowly, and in the process I'm watching the attrition that the OP probably expects. It makes sense to get rid of single lines where they're unused and unnecessary.

However, there remains the complex office setup where you have administrative assistants, or a suite front desk, and shared line appearances. Once someone wants to be able to put a call on hold on one phone and pick it up on a different physical phone, they want it to work like the same technology did in the 80s.

Of course it was easier in the 80s, when those phones shared a dedicated physical copper pair that carried nothing but the voice. With digital signaling it's significantly trickier; Broadsoft has a proprietary protocol to handle this, and the IETF specification (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-anil-sipping-bla-04) never left Internet Draft status (which, frankly, is a good thing as it's a very poor protocol).

I don't see that complex setup going away any time soon, as it's a common VIP pattern.

Fire the entire committee - Republicans and Democrats alike.

Isn't that what you do with people that can't perform their assigned responsibilities? Oh wait, these are politicians, and we don't actually attach consequences to their failures.

Never mind, carry on.

Given all of the stir in the recent press about Atkins-like low-carb diets (which seems to have started from the New York Times article on the subject, I think this is certainly apropos.

Whenever I hear about low-carb diets, I hear "weight loss" with a smidgeon of "may help cholesterol." I'm not interested in weight loss... so what about their affect on cholesterol? How the heck to refined Carbs turn into Cholesterol? Why don't unrefined carbs do the same (or do they)? C'mon, Alton! You've got the scientific bend to do this one right!