Microsoft may in fact end up continuing to own the desktop and the office, but it's clear to anyone paying attention that:

A) Those markets are going to be worth substantially less at some point in the not-too-distant future and that

B) The real growth areas are going to be outside of those two markets

This is not an appealing landscape for today's dominant tech player.

Right now laptops are dropping into the $500 price range, and desktops are falling into the $300 price range. These aren't junky machines, either - they're pretty capable, certainly of running most typical office or home applications (apart from cutting-edge gaming). Microsoft has traditionally made its money by charging something like $100 a copy for Windows and $300 for its Office suite, which was a fairly small percentage of the cost of a $2000 computer. But in a world of $300 computes Windows is suddenly the most expensive component of many perfectly capable, brand new PCs, and Office alone costs more than some desktops.

Computer prices are going to continue to fall, putting additional downward price pressure on Microsoft's products. At some point corporate bean counters are gonna look at the price difference between a company full of new PCs with Windows and Office, and a company full of new PCs with Linux and Google Apps. They're gonna dump Windows - and especially Office, which is Microsoft's real cash cow - when they see that the other options cost less than half as much, while providing similar functionality for 95% of their users (word processing, spreadsheets and e-mail is all most users ever touch).

Due to the declining price of computing power - and its increasing miniaturization - the real action in the software world is going to be off the desktop and out of the office. The iPhone is a preview of what's to come in that space, which demands tighter integration between the software and the hardware designs, something Microsoft has never been any good at. Companies like Apple, Google and Nintendo are going to dominate this consumer-driven arena, and as these devices proliferate by the billions (literally) MS will find itself increasingly marginalized.

Microsoft isn't going away, but like IBM in the 1990s they're going to gradually become a less and less prominent player in the technology space.

Unless you are lazy or illiterate, there's no excuse for not paying attention and following them to the letter

His family says he's been really sick, and we know he hadn't been sleeping well from his own statements. When people are sick and tired, believe it or not sometimes they make mistakes.

Whoda thunk it?

There may be plenty of gay men out there having sex with other men, but it's also true that plenty of them are in a relationship. Hard to see how two guys boffing each other exclusively are gonna be spreading anything other than their legs.

If you want to look for an infection vector, look to all of the gym queens in places like West Hollywood and the Castro. Those guys could be celibate and still be at risk of spreading staph, due to contact at the gym, which they'd practically have to live at in order to maintain their physiques. A certain sub population of gay men spend as much or more time working out than many high school athletes - I'm not surprised we're seeing staph spread thru that population at a heavy clip.

I wonder if crystal meth makes you more susceptible to staph infections as well . . .

Prices AFTER FairTax would look SIMILAR to prices BEFORE FairTax - NOT 30% HIGHER - as opponents contend; competition would see to it.

*What* competition? If all goods are taxed equally, there is no competition - every vendor of goods and services is burdened by the tax equally.

Do you guys even read the garbage you post?

regressive? no. rich and poor would contribute to society just in proportion as they enjoy the material benefits of society.

Huh? Any idiot could figure out that the poor and the middle class spend a much larger percentage of their income buying goods and services than the rich do. The poor by definition spend virtually all of their income on housing, healthcare, transportation, energy, food, consumables and fixtures. They'll see a huge percentage of their income consumed by sales taxes (heck, they ALREADY do in most places, thanks to local and state sales taxes and property taxes).

In contrast, the very wealthy spend a far smaller fraction of their income on taxable goods. They'd largely escape taxation under such a scheme, which is why the right's always proposing this kind of stupidity.

The fact you're unable to figure that out renders the rest of your article sorta moot.

Here are the lyrics to "They Don't Know": http://www.paradise-engineering.com/quotation/theydontknow.html

And here are the (best set I could find online of) lyrics to "Rehab": http://www.metrolyrics.com/rehab-lyrics-amy-winehouse.html

Kirsty MacColl's song could easily have been penned in the '60s. As realized by Ullman, it's a wonderful bit of '60s pastiche. Winehouse's song couldn't have been written in the '60s, although she operates in a stylistic genre similar to '60s pop and soul in many (though most certainly not all) respects. Instead of slavishly imitating the '60s, Winehouse's record expands upon and updates that style.

If you're seriously comparing songs like "Rehab" or "You Know I'm No Good" to Ullman & MacColl's clever pastiche, you must be on heavier drugs than Winehouse.