The point the author may be missing here is that in a competitive environment such as financial models, the goal is not necessarily to model the market but to make a model better than everyone else's model. Consider sports, where you have a "spread". If I can model a sport and generate a better spread than the one being generated by the Vegas model, I win. If I can't, I lose. Stocks are very much the same thing, where the price of a company represents the "spread" of future earnings and I need a model that is better than everyone else's model in order to win $$$. As Einstein might have said, the quality of your model is relative to what you are comparing it to. If you compare it to perfection (actual data), surely any model will be less than perfect. But compared to OTHER models, it may be excellent. The article doesn't really quantitize what is meant by "really bad predictions" going forward so its hard to judge his findings anyway. If its wrong more than half the time, that's probably a bad model. Was it? Or is he calling 75% "really bad"?

The effort would be better spend improving Qt Designer. It seems they are moving away from C++, which makes no sense to me. Also, their documentation since around 4.2 has completely gone down the toilet. They made some good strides towards improving their graphical capabilities, but they look like the work of a company that was on the verge of being bought out by Nokia.

Everything that has been developed since Nokia took over has been worthless to the desktop, and in some ways counterproductive. And I don't get the whole Qt Quick thing either. As far as I'm concerned, 4.6.3 was the final version of Qt.

I would have claimed developing a porn addiction and demanded free porn for the rest of the year.

You only need "Linux Ultimate", because most users will fork up the price difference between Linux Starter and Linux Ultimate.

Yes, I meant distribution. I guess I botched my wiseass comment. ;-)

Following this argument linearly, wouldn't linux be better off with just one version? Or are we omitting the fact that Windows is aimed towards the stupid people?

Sorry bub, but going to have to disagree here a bit. You're flaw is that earnings aren't "flat" for MSFT. Estimates show another large jump for 2004. Accounting for their cash stock pile, MSFT only needs to grow about 12.5% a year. Just by slashing $1 billion in overpaid worker's compensation in 2005 and holding the dam, they have a great shot at that. And the resulting earnings won't be nearly as high, probably something like $18 billion accounting for inflation. But I agree on the question, "is this sustainable"? Maybe, maybe not. But it certainly doesn't sound unreasonable. And I agree that there doesn't seem to be a lot of upside. Probably more downside if that pile of cash gets squandered, which would force a scenario closer to what you described (hopeless).