The author is a 68 year old political scientist. The article is more like a political statement than a consumer advocacy piece.

Background story from Microsoft: http://news.microsoft.com/features/microsofts-new-cloud-powe...

Interesting that MSR also helped developing activity recognition algorithms for the device.

They are selling Hadoop (based on Java) via HdInsight. http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/services/hdin...

They may domninate the download-and-own market. However they still need to compete with other distribution mode, e.g. Netflix and Hulu in video, Spotify and Pandora in music.

But you can be sure the big music labels will furiously lobby the Americans and Europeans not to see things that way.

> he barely mentions the importance of search

To be fair, he mentioned 7 critical steps. Search engines are No. 5.

Huh, my PDF viewer seems to be failing to display a couple of pages towards the end. That's annoying.

Have you tried 'bcp'?

I just want to add the author of the article, i.e. Hal Berenson, is one of the key architect behind SQL Server 7.0 which is a rewrite from the legacy Sybase code. More information can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/about/technicalrecognition/SQL-Serv...

FYI, the person in charge (Mike Jazayeri) previously worked at Microsoft. I am not suggesting anything, just find it is quite interesting.

It's almost like employment is some sort of contract instead of some sort of religion.

I think it is interesting to think how a person's past (work) experience may influence the person's current thinking and judgement. Nothing else.