Paul hugged me today. That was a little weird, but comforting. We've reassigned Mike to New Dawn's side of the office today. He's trying to crack the accounting file for US Geothermal, which was password protected by JP, who is no longer around to provide the password. The funeral's on Friday, we're shutting the office down that morning.

Now I'm going to distract myself by writing about something else...

The XBox 360 has re-ignited my hatred for Microsoft. Where do we start? Well, just like the original XBox, it looks like Microsoft is taking a huge loss on each console. Why? First, they think they can make up the capital on game sales. Second, they have infinite cash, resources, and connections to exploit to make sure that they can dominate any market they want. If Microsoft decided tomorrow that they wanted to dominate the cell phone business, two or three mobile phone companies would be bankrupt within two years. It wouldn't matter if Microsoft made crappy products that exploded and killed people, Microsoft has the power and stamina to get what they want. That's business monopoly. That's a corporation that needs to be regulated in order to ensure that the free-market system "works".

And Microsoft does make crappy products. For example, there have already been many reports of the XBox 360 crashing repeatedly right out of the gate. Some users report that flagship games on the platform like Quake 4 and Project Gotham Racing 3 are not even playable due to bugs and crashes. Word is that the problem is chronic overheating. One player even reported that he nearly burned himself on the Project Gotham disc after ejecting it from his console. Remember when the Republicans railed on the DOJ antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, calling it an attack on America's "best and brightest"?

Yeah... Republicans are stupid...