Is it required that stores add tax at the register, or could they choose to label items as "tax included"? I assume they use the current method so people think they are getting a better price, but if everyone used this method as a way to eliminate the cent and/or nickel then it would not be an issue.

Eliminate the 1-, 5-, and 25-cent coins. Re-introduce the double dime ($0.20). Round transaction total after taxes to the nearest $0.10. While you're at it, eliminate the dollar bill and get the billions of Sacagawea and US President dollars out of expensive government storage and into circulation. The life span of a dollar bill in circulation is about 18 months, compared to about 20 years for coins. Cost/year is greatly reduced.

Why would Apple buy ARM and then kill off a great deal of its business? Doesn't make sense. Why would Apple buy ARM and get revenue from many competitors' successful sales as well? Ah hah! Apple wins if consumers buy iPhones, etc. And by owning ARM, Apple also wins when consumers buy Andriod, etc. MS and Palm can't get a piece of the Apple pie, but Apple can get a piece of theirs.

You are absolutely right. If marriage is redefined as no longer being between a man and a woman, there is no boundary to what should be accepted. Animals, inanimate objects, children, etc... and unfortunately I think the goal of many supporters is to legalize sex with children.

Does this smell like embrace, extend, extinguish to anyone else?

Things that have received a lot of attention in the past year or two are Open Office / ODF, Google search and gmail, and Firefox. Obviously, if the trend continues and more people move to a non-MS browser and non-MS apps, the possibility for users to choose a non-MS OS increases.

My company uses Novell Groupwise for email, and one of the biggest complaints of new employees (who are pretty much all used to Outlook) is that they can't seamlessly use Word as a mail editor. Obviously a great deal of HTML mail is being created in Word, so what better place to render it than Word? This would allow MS to make changes in Word's HTML engine that would render fine on another MS box with Outlook/Word, but not on other platforms.

MS was blindsided when it came to the ways we would use the web, and could use this as a way to steal it back. With Word's built-in HTML engine, they could potentially do away with IE and make Word the web browser. For MS shops, this would have the added bonus of allowing them to use a web repository for document storage and Word as the editor/browser for massaging docs, and over a period of time discontinue support for old-fashined HTML. With OOXML being pushed by MS as the new "open standard," MS will have a hiding place from anti-trust problems, and OOXML could forcefully become a de-facto standard for email and the web.

Google search - replaced by Ctrl-F
gmail - Google could pay to have an OOXML parser written for their needs, but would they?
OpenOffice - Improvements to the software will take a backseat to implementing a not-perfect OOXML filter.
Firefox - Battling Word instead of IE, but due to the same reasons.