Reminds me of some thoughts I had on how Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, and yet you or I can use an iPhone, while he, despite his wealth, is stuck with clunky Windows Mobile.

Bill Gates doesn't even strike me as a guy who would use a mobile phone much.

But how about an excellent mobile browser that actually works?

Bill Gates uses firefox when nobody is looking.

Weird, surely you noticed the TAs during undergrad? Did you think they were grading papers for fun? =P

I meant students having to revert to TAing after losing research funding. Generally only the first year grad students would TA classes and then join a research group and get paid as a research assistant.

I, along with most of the others I knew in science/engineering grad school, didn't really think that funding would ever be an issue, but I saw far to many cases in which it was.

Yeah, I'm in an undergraduate engineering program and I've always assumed that funding wouldn't be a problem.

I was under the impression that schools didn't want to accept someone who was going to drop out because of finances.

So basically if they thought you would not be able to pay, you wouldn't get in.

That said, I knew that funding would probably include things TAing, and that RA's were usually one of the better sources.

NSF said that from 93-96, only half of newly minted engineering phds graduated with debt, so the percent is a little higher than I thought.

NSF 96 debt info: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib98318.htm

Some burger joints do the same, but I think I'll stick to not starting my own burger joint.

True, but if an burger joint run by one person started making that much money within several months of being conceived, I'd be at least a little bit interested.

No wing-tip vortices.

An RFC isn't an international standard, and this particular RFC was drafted by MS Research.

Also, it is important to mention that RCF3484 was drafted by MS Research.

>We've de-emphasized the history part though have kept it in the product

I would default it to off, otherwise, pretty evil.

Our install wizard asks the user whether they want the history component or not since we figured it's best not to make any assumptions. History is only one part of the product now - that's what I meant by 'de-emphasized'.

Externalities ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality ), positive or negative, don't seem to get much consideration throughout.

Sorry, but sending men to the Moon to drive around in a little car is a better example of wasteful entertainment than any of the three web companies you named.

Since under his utopia those session players will be basically out of work, they would be a lot cheaper and you could still make your album.