(emphasis added)

A WELL-REGULATED MILITIA being necessary to the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In other words, the Brits weren't allowed to take the muskets away from members of *the militia*.

The constitution is silent re. whether Mr. Cho can purchase a glock and murder a bunch of his classmates.

In an imaginary universe where data transfer rates/connection speeds continue to accelerate but hardware stops become faster and cheaper (Moore's law is repealed), Microsoft would die out over the next decade or so because the desktop solution won't make sense after a while. But, we don't live in that universe. In truth, the rich client matters, a lot, and it will always matter. Microsoft will succeed because they're great at delivering value to the consumer, and people are smart enough to make good purchasing decisions. Google will do well, too, and Apple, but in the consumer and enterprise space, Microsoft will dominate - not because of that 'Monopoly' sour-grapes BS, but because they deliver value.

Here's a very useful model for understanding physical reality: conservation of energy.

Given these facts:

a well-tuned car burns gas cleanly and efficiently, so all the chemical potential energy is made available to the (very inefficient) internal combustion energy, and

The "Hydro 4000" can only work - actually claims to work - by increasing the chemical potential energy in the gasoline, and

Question:

where would the additional chemical potential energy come from? The car engine (very inefficient) running the alternator to generate electricity to break water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen?

Obviously, physics has the answer here: you can't get something from nothing. Energy is conserved.

Besides, if you have water in your gas, your car has worse problems.

The "Hydro 4000" can't possibly work, except to dupe uneducated people out of their money.

is the term "IPhony" supposed to any more acceptable than "Cr***berry"

Make $$ for shareholders. Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, ... they're all the same in this respect.

Google is at a stage where it can continue to get away with betraying its shareholders without causing the Google stock to collapse. Microsoft probably wasn't ever there.

How long will Google do this? Anybody's guess... but when it can't anymore, Farhad and many others will have a very bad hangover. Don't expect him to write about it, though; Microsoft is just too much fun to hate.

by carefully leaving facts out, to serve his political agenda (... of hating Microsoft).

First, the title of his little piece: Excel 2003 is an old version, several years out of date, but it's that version that Farhad is referring to as if it were all that is available.

Also in the title is the implication that Excel 2003 would crash when presented with so many rows. Not so; it just wouldn't display the rows beyond 65,000. The reason this is so is that someone at Microsoft made a smart business decision that making a spreadsheet with more than 65,000 rows is not a common scenario i.e. you have very little reason to run across it.

However, Excel 2007 does fine with that number of rows, if you really want to do it. Also, Excel Viewer is a FREE download from Microsoft.com so to read the spreadsheet in Excel, you wouldn't have to spend a dime.

Farhad wrote like a member of the Jobsian cult (i.e. Apple partisan). Salon would get more readers and more respect with a technology writer that knows what (s)he's writing about, and is familiar with real choices in the tech marketplace. A tech writer has to do some research!

Get a box running Windows Home Server, e.g. an HP Mediasmart!

Access your files and your desktop from IE anywhere over HTTPS.

Back up any files you choose, securely against the inevitable hard drive failure.

Expand storage easily; yes, even my mom can do it.

Apple's business model has some advantages: since they sell a complete hardware + software solution, and most of their computers can't be upgraded or reconfigured, they have the ultimate CONTROL and the ability to build new "standards" with the confidence that some consumers will buy them - because they've bought into the Apple mystique, they have no choice.

Believe me: freedom is better. Give me a computer that I can rebuild and reconfigure at will, upgrade (often) for free, and keep it the most secure and stable in the market, i.e. OS from Microsoft and hardware and software choices from many different vendors.

I was an Apple user many years ago, but left it because Microsoft was dominant in the business world. Today, there's certainly competition out there, but Apple is not it; Apple is too secretive, controlling, and frankly, mendacious (their ad campaigns, for example) to ever make it in the business world.

I wish Apple were a worthy competitor in the wider arena, but no, they're making too much money selling hardware and lies to care.

These Democrats were serving the public interest so well, they were a serious threat to the Republicans' rape-America-no-matter-the-means plan. So, their planes were sabotaged. Coincidence? I think not.

First: you're safer with Vista. Whether you're running Vista as admin or not, to get a trojan/virus/worm, you must click past an "OK" with the authenticated, securely signed identity of the publisher. The name of the publisher - which Vista posts prominently for the user - can't be faked. This is the much-maligned "User Account Control" of Vista.

For Apple to catch up, they'll have to imitate Microsoft in that respect.

Second: I've been predicting this for years. If Apple market share increases enough, it becomes an attractive target for black hats. Apple lies about how secure their stuff is, but aside from "security by obscurity", they just don't do security nearly as well as Microsoft.

Windows 7 will run fine on 1GB RAM, unlike Vista. And, it's at least as secure as Vista, which means that it's safer than XP or any Apple OS to date.