(pic from JoeBlo)

Microsoft’s Windows OS holds a 90% market share of business and consumer desktops combined, we’re told, and it’s pretty clear there are too many Windows-centric enterprise legacy systems out there for that to change too dramatically in the near future. But in the consumer market we’ve already seeing a significant increase in the number of new OS X machines being sold in the past year or so. With all the bad press Vista has been getting and the news of what’s to come from Microsoft in the desktop OS business, I think a real sea change is coming in the home market.

We know already that Vista, despite all the marketing hype, offers only incremental differences from XP, along with all the performance-killing bloat you expect and deserve from a new Windows version. However, according to a CNET News.com post by Charles Cooper, the next version of Windows, dubbed Windows 7, will offer a “minor upgrade to Vista,” and the version after that, codenamed Singularity, “also is not that brand new Microsoft operating system.” So basically if you want a real upgrade from XP in terms of performance and features you should just sit tight for another six or seven years.

Or you could switch to Apple, of course.

In the consumer desktop market, excluding gamers and haxorz, what do people use their PC for: Sending e-mail, surfing the Web, downloading from iTunes, maybe storing their photos. Most people looking at buying a new or replacement PC just want a machine that’s easy to use and maintain, one that’s reasonably fast, reliable, and secure, and one that fits their budget. Based on new computer sales, it’s pretty clear Apple is doing a better job at meeting those criteria than its WinTel competitors. I can only imagine the forecast gets worse for Dell/HP/etc if the consumer gets wind of what’s ahead for the Windows platform: An endless cycle of expensive upgrades all for negligible improvements.

If news reports are to be believed, the search engine and web portal is holding discussions with the world’s #1 media conglomerate to hash out a merger between AOL and Yahoo! The deal reportedly would also involve some cash infusion by Time Warner that would give it 20% of the combined business. Which begs the question: How much is 20% of failure worth these days?

Seriously, these people have all totally lost their minds. Yahoo! has like three things going for it right now: A popular news aggregation site, an adequate sports section, and Flickr. The rest of it seriously could disappear from the Interwebs and no one would notice. And as for AOL, the only things working well are AOL Fanhouse (sports blog) and Weblogs, Inc. (Engadget, Joystiq). So maybe you could put those things together — news, sports, blogs, Flickr — and make something work, but is it any better than what it was before? Is it better for shareholders? I’m just amazed we’re having this discussion.

Of course we wouldn’t be having this discussion if it wasn’t for The Borg and their $44 billion offer to buy Yahoo! two months ago. This is how badly Yahoo! doesn’t want to be assimilated, that they are talking to AOL about a merger. But even Micro$oft’s deal makes little to no sense — MSN plus Yahoo! is still a case of two wrongs don’t make it right.

About the only one using his head right now — crazy as it sounds — is Rupert Murdoch. Rupe has been trying to get rid of MySpace for a year now and maybe he’s found the opportunity by offering help Steve Ballmer fund his takeover. Oh and while you’re handing out big bags of cash, maybe you’d like to buy my slowly sinking social networking site.

Just like any other business that has run it’s course, it’s time for the “Web portals” to face facts and admit it’s over. That 1990s notion of the sticky all-in-one website that has everything for everyone is no longer viable nor useful. The Internet and Internet users have moved on. What we crave are sites and services that feed our passion in a single niche: Last.fm (music), Twitter (communication), YouTube (video). They do one thing, they do it well, and they can turn on a dime and do it differently if users tell them to.

Watching this Yahoo! saga play out is like witnessing the final days of old stars finally burning the last of their fuel in a spectacular supernova. Any matter left over will surely collapse into a black hole from which investors money will never escape.

That may be coming to an end. Ed Grabianowski at io9 posted some interesting thoughts the other day about the impending retirement of the Shuttle fleet and NASA’s switchover to the Constellation launch system. The space agency says there will be at least a five-year gap (probably more) between the last Shuttle flight and the first Constellation mission, a period Grabianowski posits might be the window of opportunity for new aerospace carriers to get in the game.

“[The] market for crewed missions to conduct repairs on existing satellites or other sensitive missions isn’t likely to shrink. With all those aerospace engineers looking for something to do with their degrees, I predict we will see a burst of private space industry startups.”

Could the demand for satellite repair services be great enough to spur investment in viable launch systems? There are many communications and remote sensing satellites in low Earth orbit, within easy reach of repair missions. Communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit are currently out of reach of the Shuttle, but a private business could conceivably develop a vehicle to take a crew out to 23,000 miles. Providing these types of space services might require a permanent human presence aboard an orbiting space station — a repair station in space — from which crews could be dispatched more easily.

The really exciting part is, once one business establishes itself, others will likely follow. Some possibilities include manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and other processing activities that could benefit from micro-gravity. And don’t forget the services industries likely to follow along if more and more humans are living and working in space.

If a viable business plan can be developed, suitable private investment will follow and our dream of becoming a spacefaring society could be on the horizon.

Geeky? Yes. Sexy? Well, maybe that’s in the eye of the beholder. Ms. Lacy is definitely a looker, and she knows how to get a crowd going. I’m not totally convinced she’s not a robot, though it is very possible that she is both real and cyborg. I would not put it past her to create a robot version of herself. Though if that’s the case, someone really should debug the code.

Olivia Munn

Okay, maybe Ms. Munn doesn’t have a lot of street cred for being a geek, but she’s definitely hot. Sure, she stumbles over some words hosting Attack of the Show! and yes she sometimes has that look of “I am totally reading this off the prompter,” but the Princess Leia costume more than makes up for all that. Definitely not a robot, though. No not a robot at all.

Morgan Webb

What else can you say? Ms. Webb has legs six feet long, totally loves the video games, and did I mention the long legs business? Very much a geek and very sexy all in the same package. Video gamers shouldn’t have it so good. Unfortunately, though, I have to go with robot. Seriously, only a cyborg could be that hot and be that into video games.

Kari Byron

I know some of you are going to say balk at this choice and say Ms. Byron isn’t really a geek, but come on, she builds totally rad experiments to test things that explode or somehow end up on fire, and have you seen how excited she gets when data fits the curve? Yes, she is a complete geek and totally a fox. As for being a robot, I’m thinking not. At least I don’t want to believe that she is, so if you know for sure she is don’t tell me.

Lala

My number 1 sexy girl is of course Lala from Tiki Bar TV. She’s all about science, especially mixology, but I believe she has a number of degrees in other areas as well. Not to mention her PhD in totally and complete hotness. And no way is she a robot. She built a robot for heavens sake, she can’t be one.

The Open Circle Theater in Seattle is running a production of RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the original manifesto of bio over cyborg philosophy by Karel Capek, the OG of anti-robot thinkers. Written in 1920, the play offers a view of the dystopian nightmare sure to result from mass production of robots that eventually overpower and enslave mankind. The reviews are pretty good, so maybe this could be the tipping point against to pro-robot propaganda machine.

Now if you can’t make it up to the Northwest to see this production but want a taste of what it’s like, here’s a video re-enactment of the final scene. Only think more dark and brooding and less campy fun.

A big chunk of the edition, though, is given over to the “don’t worry about the robots” sort of propaganda we see all the time coming from the underground robot cabal. The poor rubes there in the heartland have become unwitting pawns in the robots’ battle for the hearts and minds of the unwashed masses.

See here an interview with Ohio State professor Jim Schmiedeler, an All-American Boy type who does robotics research while deflecting attention away from the inherent dangers of building autonomous metal contraptions capable of killing and controlling the population.

I don’t think in 20 years’ time we’re going to get to the level of robots that you see in The Jetsons. But I think in 20 years’ time you’re going to see examples of these fully autonomous robots functioning in society.

You have to admire the rhetorical tricks they come up with. Using “The Jetsons” as the comparative measure of robotic sophistication, we instantly think of a beloved cartoon from our youth, which puts at ease. And none of those robots ever tried to master the world, so why should we worry?

Then of course there is a whole column on robot toys. Who doesn’t like a good wind-up toy, and how could they be dangerous? Yes, just keep thinking, “robot=toy” and the usurpation of mankind will go smoothly indeed.

And lastly we get the propagandists’ hard sell from reporter Chris DeVille, who also writes a blog called “Sensory Overload” on TV and music. Basically, DeVille takes the “you people are silly to fear robots” tact, citing chapter and verse on how robots can only do what they have been programmed to do, and heck they can barely manage household tasks like mowing the lawn so how could they ever take over the Earth?

He also has a classic bit of bait-and-switch, quoting an engineer, James Rivenbark, who tries to confuse the issue by drawing a distinction between robots and artificial intelligence: “A robot really comprises a set of mechanics,” he explained. “And really, when you’re talking about the thinking part of it, you’re talking about artificial intelligence at that point.”

Oh, I see now, it’s not robots we should be afraid of, it’s the artificial intelligence. My bad. You all just go on with your building evil robots capable of enslaving mankind because they’re not really evil. It’s just the artificial intelligence that makes them evil.

Columbus Alive!? Well, the robot propaganda is certainly alive and well in the center of Ohio, that is for sure.

Having done some drywall work in the past, all I can say, “Where was this when I needed it?” Seriously, you don’t know the meaning of tired until you’ve spent 10 hours hanging drywall on the ceiling.

Of course the best thing about this powered suit is you’ll be ready to defend yourself Ripley-style if the aliens come calling.

“Get away from her, you bitch!”