NumberFiveAlive

You're completely missing the enterprise side of the equation, which is still a booming part of MSFTs business right now. And they are still a goliath in Enterprise (Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server, etc).

You also speak of their 'downfall' in the past tense, as if it's already happened. They still push 90% of desktop market share, rule enterprise, rule the Office suite business, and have some nifty things going on in the entertainment side (not profitable, but nifty nonetheless).

It's not even that readable on my box.

Lending on the Kindle has worked pretty well for me. Can you clarify why it's lame?

Also, can you name a device that Amazon doesn't support, apart from the Nook? I frequently read my Kindle content on the Kindle itself, my two PCs and my Mac, and my Droidx. I could also do it on any tablet (if I owned one), or my wife's iPhone.

Not to mention, you can read any non-DRM content you want on the Kindle.

And it's not that more utility == more freedom. It's that easier-to-self-publish is going to lower the barrier for people to create niche content by bypassing the big publishing houses. It's also going to create lower priced books overall, as well as more and better free content.

I also personally think it's only a matter of time before the publishers realize what the music industry has mostly realized after a decade: DRM doesn't work. I think it will slowly phase itself out. Just a guess, though, YMMV.

That's not a valid comparison. The iPad with 3G does not include the cost of the data connection. This includes a 100MB/month connection with the cost of the subscription.

Is it just me, or does this guy have his definitions swapped. That, or I've been wrong this whole time: I've always thought of hackers as more freewheeling, possibly with less formal training (or possibly not) who like to play with new technologies and learn by getting their hand dirty.

And I've thought of coders as closer to the traditional definition of 'software engineer'. More formalized education (or possibly not), more formal approach to the process of writing code (planning meetings, standards and practices, etc).

I'm not saying either one is better (both have a lot they bring to the table, and few people are all one or the other, we're usually somewhere on a sliding scale between the two).

I'm definitely going to give it a look. For some reason I thought the single window layout wasn't coming till this version.

The multiwindow layout wouldn't be so awful if OSX were better at windows management && I had more than one monitor to work with on my iMac. As it is, it's a struggle for me.

Oh, and who knows about the downvotes. I thought for sure I'd get nuked for defending VS. Have an upvote.

Per your point #3: I spend a lot of time in both Windows 7/VS2010 AND OSX/XCode (along with a smidgen of time in Ubuntu as well) and crashes are just about a thing of the past in all three environments. That said, Xcode/OSX gives me the spinning beach ball of death at least as much as I get a crash to desktop in W7 and far, far more often than I get a BSOD in W7. The idea that windows crashes a lot is a myth hanging around from before they went to the NT kernel in XP. Granted, it's a myth that was well earned in the Win 3.1/9x days, but still. The reality is all the major OS vendors (I'm including Canonical here) have reduced crashes to maybe a once a week occurrence or better. Hardly an issue anymore.

As for the polish comment, it's really a matter of what you're used to and strictly a matter of opinion, but I find Xcode a nightmare to navigate compared to VS2010. Sure, Xcode is shinier and looks better, but the UX is far superior in VS2010 (again, just my opinion). I'm very much looking forward to a single window interface in Xcode 4.3.

As a developer, the killer aspect of OSX to me is the full blown *nix environment paired with high level commercial apps (like Xcode, photoshop, garage band, etc.). Not to mention I don't have to worry about my display card or wireless card working in OSX (like I still have to do with Linux).

I would say 'free' beats it, even at $5. Still, it's gonna be worth it for the single window interface alone.

3. Yup. I'm exclusively accessing internet through 3G right now, and I'm only 15 minutes from town. No DSL or cable options for me. 4. I agree it's been totally oversold. Those "To the cloud!" emails make me roll my eyes, even if that one does have April Oneal from TMNT in it.

I'm not saying it will succeed (that remains to be seen) but:

1. Not if you don't have the money for a computer in the first place. My grandparents would really like to get online, and the difference between a $400 laptop and a $200 netbook is significant.

2. Not if all you need is the basic functionality this device offers.

3. This is just all sort of wrong if you don't live in a metropolitan area.

4. That's your opinion, and a valid one, but I love the cloud. I'm moving everything I can to it. Of course, I don't personally concern myself too much with security, but I still think it's a great tool for a lot of casual computer users.

I think price is the real key. If it's around the $200 mark, I'll probably even pick one up for surfing while sitting on the couch or toilet. My grandparents need/want a laptop, and literally all they'll ever use it for is to google stuff. They'll possibly want to upload pictures from their digital camera they never use, but if that's made simple via USB and some cloud based service (existing or otherwise), then this device would be perfect for them. <$300 and I'd get them a chrome laptop. >$300 and I'd get them a cheap windows laptop. My wife is using a $349 toshiba full sized laptop right now, and it does everything she needs. But if I could save them $100 or so on one of these, that would definitely be the way I'd go.

There are plenty of criticisms to hurl at Microsoft, but I just don't see how 'not innovating' is one of them.

The Kinect is highly innovative and it the fastest selling gadget in history: http://www.neowin.net/news/kinect-beats-apple-becomes-fastes...

WP7 may have been late to the table and turn into a total failure, but it's certainly innovative.

Hell, even the Zune device + Zune software + Zune service is the best music provider out there, imho.

I guess you can argue that Windows 7, .NET 4.0 and ASP/MVC are derivative, but they're certainly moving their core products forward.

Microsoft has plenty of hits and plenty of misses, but everyone acts like they're being left behind by Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. They still make a ton of money and put out a lot of new, fresh products. Some are great (.NET 4, Kinect), some crappy (IE 8), and some meh (Office 2010), but would you argue Google has any better of a track record? Remember Wave and Buzz?.

The counter is pretty cool. It will probably up my productivity/decrease my browsing at work.

The only problem is I'm experiencing a much higher than normal rate of tab crashes. I hope that will clear up.

In our online store 'The safer, easier way to pay.' is a part of the page. The logo gif and the markup is part of the specs when you implement Paypal. The code looks like this, and came directly from the Paypal implementation guide:

   <img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/logo/PayPal_mark_37x23.gif" align="absmiddle" style="margin-right: 7px;" /><span style="font-size: 11px; font-family:    Arial, Verdana;">The safer, easier way to pay.</span>

My initial response to this: turkeys can fly even without a strong wind. They're agile, and extremely crafty. This is a terrible metaphor.

Yes, this. There isn't really a single avenue of study at University you can choose where you shouldn't encounter this. Unless you can make it through a degree without writing a single paper. The idea that you can plagiarize anything in any context at all is basically anathema in almost all academic circles. Not that it doesn't happen, but most people that even attempt it are smart enough to do more than change the font size to hide it.

This is...an interesting approach. Reddit is far from a Microsoft loving community; it will be interesting to see 1. If Microsoft can get some good feedback (they should be able to) 2. If they'll use the feedback (remains to be seen) 3. If the use of the feedback leads to a better product (really remains to be seen).

Still, it's encouraging to see a huge company like MS engage a hivemind like Reddit for this type of thing.

Thanks, I will check it out as it has been about a year. I think about 80% of my preference was simply familiarity.

The dev tools in IE8 are pretty darn good. I still use Firebug as my primary, but when I'm chasing an IE specific bug, the dev tools are pretty solid. I even prefer them to Chrome's.

For sure. For a while there, I tried it as my default. I came back to Google for the long tails on my obscure coding error searches, but until the recent Google revamp, I would go back to Bing specifically for image searches.

Also, I still use Bing for certain, ahem, less savory searches. They have Google beat for that. I think they optimize for it, whereas Google has stated that they don't key on it either way.

Either way, shaking up the search landscape is a good thing for all of us even if you never touch Bing. Google has definitely been forced back to innovate their search UX since Bing has come out (Image search, Instant, reformatting the results screen, etc.). We all win in that scenario.

Have you checked out the tab sugar extension for Chrome yet? I think you can save your tabs as groups and quickly pull them back up. I messed with it some; it didn't really do what I was looking for but might be more in line with what you're describing.

http://tabsugar.com/

While what you describe is a common enough practice, you definitely have to worry about closing future doors. I'd pick a place and go with it. You can always make a change in a year or so if it's not working out without burning bridges and call it a learning experience.

Clicking on the previous directory name takes you up a level. And tab completion works in the bar for going forward.

'I’m a driven person and I surround myself with other driven people. Generally, when I land on an exciting new idea, I can’t wait to jump on it'.

I read this as 'Self-control is great because I have great self-control.' I'm a big believer in the thesis of this article (to an extent, anyway: I'll take someone with high intelligence and low self-control over an extreme example of someone with low intelligence but high self-control), but he completely turned me off in the third paragraph. And then again when he likened a fifth grader wanting a treat right now with an adult committing statutory rape.

As for the monitors themselves, it's much much less about the size and more about the pixels. My primary monitor is a 1920x1200 and I love it. I have three other 'smaller' (in terms of pixels) and I honestly think the fourth one is more of a distraction than a help. I do frequently use the other three all at the same time (code on one, database tools on another, and browser for running/debugging the web pages I'm working on on the third).

My iMac display is an insane 2560x1440 (or something close to it) and I still am badly in need of a second monitor. But I feel that with that many pixels, just one additional monitor would be optimal. Particularly if it were that same size (not that I'm going to shell out the $1000 for that any time soon when the 1920x1080 monitors are so cheap now).

This has certainly been my experience with my Verizon DroidX. Fantastic hardware, and I love Android, but it came loaded up with crapware I can't uninstall. A Blockbuster App!? Hell, why not put AOL on it while we're at it.

Excellent talk by Resig. Plenty of concrete practices rather than the vague bullet points you usually get in a talk.

The part about dropping IE6 not impacting jQuery is interesting. I personally get burned by IE7 when using jQuery much more often than IE6. Which also makes me sad, because he's right about IE7 shipping bundled with IE8 and also right about IE8 is going to be around for quite a long while. Sigh.

I'm sure most people are (rightly) going to take Microsoft's word on this with a great deal of skepticism, but kudos to them for at least responding to it in a timely fashion and with what appears to be a responsible approach to the allegations.

Ok, wow, I was speaking more of the aggregate statistics, but both of those sound like great features. We're actually about to take our wholesaler/b2b only electronics site retail/open-to-the-public in the next month or so. I'm going to keep you guys bookmarked. We've never spent any time optimizing our site unless there have been huge bottlenecks. This could be a very useful service for us.

Great looking site, btw.

Nice methodology. What I'd be really interested in seeing is how these numbers impact traffic or conversion rate.