Well, another pseudo-scientific "threat" that made front pages everywhere has been shot down by careful science. Most of these stories are so dumb they shouldn't have ever made the press in the first place, but even when the weight of science is piled up against scare-mongering conjecture, the media addiction to treating these "threats" seriously still cannot be cured. Just observe the continued media treatment of Thimerosal-autism concerns as somehow justified despite rock-solid science that there is no connection. How long do we have to keep playing pseudo-science wack-a-mole? Will media editors ever be able to bring respectability to their profession vis-a-vis science-related issues?
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The Anti-Planner has an absolutely fabulous article about a Wisconsin passenger rail proposal, but in fact what the article really is about is how government decisions get made.
According to RTA's latest newsletter,
the KRM would cost about $200 million to start up and would require a
$6.3 million annual operating subsidy. For that it would carry about
1.7 million trips per year, which translates to 6,700 per weekday.
In other words, RTA wants to spend $200 million to take 3,350 people
to and from work each day. The Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha urbanized areas
have about 750,000 commuters, so RTA's proposal would take less than
half a percent of them to work. But they would all have to pay for it
in the form of some local taxes plus a diversion of a share of federal
and state gasoline taxes to fund the rail line.
By the way, though this post isn't meant to be entirely about rail itself, let's use Coyote's test on this rail proposal. As a reminder, here is Coyote's test:
Take the total capital charge and compare it to the cost of buying every projected rider at $22,000 Prius. Then, take the operating subsidy (which is always higher than projected) and see how it compares to the average gas consumption in a year of said Prius's. If the projected capital charge and subsidy could have bought every rider a car and all the gas they need to drive it, then the rail line is not only an average run-of-the-mill government boondoggle, but a total and complete ripoff.
And, the KRM... FAILS. And fails miserably. The $200 million charge would have bought every rider TWO Prius's and still have some money left over, and the operating subsidy, sure to be larger in reality, would buy each rider about 627 gallons of gas a year, which at 30mpg would get them 19,000 miles per year. But don't worry, KRM, every single new rail system to which I have applied the test has failed (Phoenix, Houston, LA, Albuquerque).
But lets continue:
The planned commuter line would run 14 round trips per day, which
means each train would have about 240 people on board. That's about
five bus loads. So why not just buy five buses for each planned
trainset and move people by bus instead?
The newsletter explains that RTA considered a bus alternative, but
it would attract only a third as many people as the rail line. It would
also cost only an eighth as much to start up, so I always wonder why
don't they just invest three-eighths as much in buses and carry as many
people as the rail line.
But then I noticed that the rail line was projected to have seven
stops between Milwaukee and Kenosha, while the bus line would stop 27
times. As a result, the bus would take almost twice as long as the
train. No wonder it attracted so few people!
The train would average just 38 miles per hour and RTA admits that
it would not go significantly faster than motor vehicles, so there is
no reason why buses could not be run on schedules similar to the train.
So why didn't they consider an alternative in which buses stopped only
seven times?
It turns out they did. The report
from the consultant hired by RTA included a bus-rapid transit
alternative that stopped fewer times than the regular bus alternative.
It included some exclusive busways, so it cost a lot more than the
regular bus alternative, but it would cost only half as much as the
train. Moreover, it was projected to carry as many riders as the train.
Naturally, RTA told the consultant to drop this alternative from further consideration.
The Anti-Planner shoots back what to me looks like a really good proposal:
The consultant had also estimated that the bus-rapid transit
alternative would disrupt traffic more than the trains. But if the
busways (which would move no more than about 5 buses per hour) were
opened to low-occupancy vehicles that pay a toll, they would actually
relieve congestion. Plus, the tolls would pay for most if not all of
the new lanes, and by varying the toll, the lanes would never get
congested so the buses could meet their schedules. This would result in
transportation improvements for both auto drivers and transit riders,
and at a very low cost to taxpayers
From a reader comes this story of Arizona looking to the public trough to get funds to lure another SuperBowl. I can say from experience now that Superbowl week is made up mostly of private corporate and celebrity parties that the unwashed locals like myself are either a) not allowed to attend at all or b) can attend only by ponying up $1000 or more. Not being resentful or a leftist, I couldn't really care less about the parties being near by. However, my opinion changes real fast if my tax dollars are required to pay for them:
Super Bowl organizers will try to nail down another big game for Arizona, possibly as early as 2012.
But for the state to stay competitive, taxpayers need to shoulder the
majority of game costs, organizers say. And the organizers plan to
lobby for legislation to accomplish that.
The weeklong celebration culminating with Sunday's Super Bowl XLII cost
the local Host Committee about $17 million. The private sector,
including such big contributors as the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and
the Thunderbirds, bankrolled more than 80 percent, while state and
local agencies chipped in the balance.
But with a slumping economy making fundraising a challenge, the Arizona
Super Bowl Host Committee, the Arizona Cardinals organization and
Valley business leaders want see that ratio reversed, with public
dollars financing the bulk of the effort.
Don't you love the last sentence? An exactly equivalent way to state this is "people have other priorities for their own money and refuse to give it up voluntarily, particularly in difficult economic times, so we need the state to take it by force."
No one yet knows how much this year's Super Bowl will fatten state
coffers, though organizers project the game created more than $400
million in spending. An economic-impact study won't be out for at least
a couple of months.
Here is my challenge: Take the Phoenix-area GDP for this Jan-Feb, take out the growth trend line (which can be found in year-over-year comparisons of previous months) and then compare it to the GDP for Jan-Feb 2007. I bet you whatever you care to bet you cannot find an additional $400 million.
I will not be voting today, because in Arizona to vote in the primary one must register with the government as a member of either the Coke or Pepsi party. I just can't make myself do it.
Yesterday, I had what will likely (given ticket prices) be a once in a lifetime experience for me -- I got to take my son to the Superbowl. Our ability to afford this event really was a result of our living in the same city as the Superbowl. The obvious reason for this is that we did not incur any significant travel costs and did not have to pay peak demand level hotel pricing. The less obvious, but ultimately more important, reason was because we could afford to watch the ticket prices on the secondary market up until the absolute last minute. If your were bringing a group from New York, waiting until Friday or Saturday to buy tickets might have been a bit uncomfortable, given other sunk costs.
As it turned out, Superbowl ticket prices this year on the secondary market (e.g. TickCo, Stubhub, et al) followed a parabola. They were below their peak early-on, particularly since sellers did not have the tickets in hand. You can buy tickets weeks before the Superbowl, but they will be listed as "for this general area." You could end up in the front row or the back -- it is a bit of a crap shoot. So they are cheaper because of this. The peak pricing came the week before the AFC and NFC championship games when many sellers had tickets in hand and could advertise specific seats. All along, I was looking for a ticket to just get in the door, so I was looking for the cheapest seats (likely upper deck end zone). At their peak, there was nothing gong for less than about $3800 (when you included the seller commission or transaction fees, typically 10-20% for this type of ticket). Beginning the Monday before the game, prices started falling -first 10%, then 20-30%, and finally as much as 50%. I jumped in towards the end of the week because a pretty good (or at least better than the worst) seat came up for a good price. I am told by a friend who showed up on game day at the ticket company office that he got in for less than $1500.
Anyway, here is the stadium - yes it is kind of odd looking. This was taken about halfway through our walk from the car to the stadium. We just barely parked in the same county. We showed up about 6 hours before game time and were in the last half of arrivals:
The stadium is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle that is a good hour away (on the complete opposite side of a very large city) from old Scottsdale where most of the parties and social activities and player hotels were.
The security included a ban on any bag over 12x12x12 inches, a pat down, and a metal detector. And the NFL did a MUCH better job than the TSA. MUCH. It is hard to see, but the tent on the left is about 1/4 of the length of the full security screening area. They had at least 25 lanes open in parallel. Despite thousands of people, we had no wait at all (the lines below are all moving briskly and continuously).
And look! We must be in the front row! Well, of the upper deck, but these turned out to be great seats and, having watched prices for weeks, a very good price-value point (in context). My son braves the wrath of all the surrounding Giants fans by wearing his Cowboys jersey.
I thought the fast set up and takedown of the stages was pretty amazing, and something you miss on TV. Here is Tom Petty's stage going out (or in, I can't remember). The funniest part was the crew of NFL guys who followed along with rags and buckets to dust off the grass after the equipment passed to make sure it looked good for TV.
We had a decent view of Tom Petty's back, which once I saw his scraggly beard was probably a good thing. The crew of screaming fans at the stage was pretty funny. They ran these folks out for Alicia Keyes, then kicked them out of the stadium, then ran them back in for Tom Petty, and then back out again. I saw one show on TV last night, and the audience looked young, but to my eye the great mass of the crowd was middle aged women, which I thought was kind of funny.
And here is the last play and confetti burst:
It was a great, perhaps historic game, and we loved the whole experience. Now back to work to pay those bills.
So, here are the [sports-related] events on my must-see list I have tackled:
Baseball all-star game, Superbowl, game at Fenway, game at Yankee stadium, 16th hole at the Phoenix Open, center court at Wimbledon, BCS Championship game, Daytona 500, personally playing golf at St. Andrews, Big 10 home football game, Rose Bowl, Cowboys home game [update: and an original 90s-vintage American Gladiators filming live]
Yet to be tackled:
the Masters, Packers home game, game at Wrigley, NCAA final four, SEC home football game (maybe Tennessee or the cocktail party), maybe at World Series, maybe a World Cup
Per pupil spending in the public schools is $18,719
Quality private schools in Pittsburgh charge from $7,000 to an elite level at $19,500. Humorously, just over $12,000 will get you a year at the University of Pittsburgh
Barely half of this spending goes towards the classroom. The rest, presumably, goes to funding a probably enormous corps of vice-principals. (If you ever are at a school board meeting that allows public comment or Q&A, ask how many vice-principals they have in their system). In Pittsburgh, administrative costs are 72.5% of teacher salary costs, meaning there are likely about 3 administrators for every 4 teachers. Ugh.
Teachers make $86,000 in salary and benefits, or $114,667 if you adjust for the fact they only work 9 months of the year. Kind of obviates the "teachers are underpaid" myth.
The only other thing I would have called the schools out on is their defense that they have to pay transportation, administration, and debt service out of these costs, as if somehow this made their numbers non-comparable to private benchmarks. So what? Do you think my kid's private school evades these costs somehow? Their school charges about $6,500 for middle school, and they make a profit on this (and do not get any donations). I am pretty sure they also have to pay for administration of multiple schools (they have a network of 5 schools) and for debt service on the capital costs to build the schools in the first place. Our schools don't have transportation, but many other private schools do.
MaxedOutMamma, who has a very nice economics (and other stuff) blog, drops a few hints about having apparently dropped into a persistent vegetative state at some point in the past. I wish I knew more of the story - maybe if I had been reading her blog longer. I have read accounts from several people who have emerged from PVS, and I find them consistently some of the most terrifying stories I have read, though I don't think they are always meant that way when told.
In a really bizarre turn of
events, I came out of the drooling world smarter than when I went in.
No one seems to be able to explain this. I went in with about a 140-150
IQ, and I came out with 160-170. My guess is that I had so little
remaining functional brain left at my worst that I evolved an extremely
efficient method of using what I had, and that as I got more back, the
functionality of the method remained. I may have less working space
then I used to, but the way in which I use it is clearly more
efficient. I do not think in language at all. Everything is mapped into
P-Nat.
Clearly, all the major problems of the world have been solved, because Arlen Specter wants to focus the Senate's time on the New England Patriots' violation of NFL rules for which they were severely punished and which violations in no way tread on any law, just NFL rules.
In a telephone interview Thursday morning, Senator Arlen Specter,
Republican of Pennsylvania and ranking member of the committee, said
that Goodell would eventually be called before the committee to address
two issues: the league's antitrust exemption in relation to its
television contract and the destruction of the tapes that revealed
spying by the Patriots.
"That requires an explanation," Specter
said. "The N.F.L. has a very preferred status in our country with their
antitrust exemption. The American people are entitled to be sure about
the integrity of the game. It's analogous to the C.I.A. destruction of
tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed."
Please, to the friends of Arlen Specter: It is time for an intervention, before the man hurts himself any more.
Next Up: Kay Bailey Hutchison calls Jerry Jones in front of Congress to explain why the Cowboys gave up on the running game in the fourth quarter of this year's playoff game against the Giants.
A number of years ago I read The Deep Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold because I was working on a novel which included extremophile bacteria. Gold's premise was that some/many/most underground hydrocarbons were actually produced underground from methane deep in the earth that is converted by underground bacteria to longer-chain hydrocarbons as they move toward the surface. Many thought gold to be a quack, including most in the oil industry, but I thought his hypothesis at least intriguing enough to test. Which someone apparently has:
An article in Science today seems to suggest that the abiotic theory is correct. In a fairly dense article entitled "Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at Lost City Hydrothermal Field,"
researchers Proskurowski et al., find evidence of the abiogenic
formation of short-hydrocarbon chains in an area where hydrocarbons
would not otherwise be able to form by the biogenic theory. What
Proskurowski et al. identified was the formation of carbon chains 1 to
4 carbon atoms in length, with shorter chains forming deeper, and with
isotopic signatures ruling out biogenic origins. The conclusion of the
article is as follows: "Our findings illustrate that the abiotic
synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of
ultramafic rocks, water, and moderate amounts of heat."
My sense is that we may now say a fraction of oil is abiogenic, but are a long way from saying that any serious percentage is of non-fossil sources. But it is interesting.
I would prefer not to see warrantless searches without judicial oversight be legal under any circumstances, so I am happy there are roadblocks in the FISA extension. What I am unclear about, though, are the exact issues surrounding telecom immunity from lawsuits which is apparently what has the thing held up. By no means do I wish to give telecoms some blanket immunity from the consequences of their handling of private data. However, it seems odd to want to hold them liable for complying with what would be, under the new law, a legal government order. Or, is the immunity issue all retroactive to past compliance with government orders when it wasn't so clear if the government orders were legal?
I must say I have some sympathy for businesses, particularly those that are highly regulated as telecom, who bow under government pressure and then get sued for doing so. For example, as I wrote before, I am required by Arizona law to take actions that the Feds consider illegal. Its a frustrating place to be.
Anyone who can provide clarity on the issues here (not the FISA issues or wiretapping issues but narrowly on the immunity issue) is encouraged to do so.
It has actually happened. Lawmakers have proposed
legislation that forbids restaurants and food establishments from
serving food to anyone who is obese (as defined by the State). Under
this bill, food establishments are to be monitored for compliance under
the State Department of Health and violators will have their business
permits revoked.
Unbelievable. And not that this would make it right, but the ban is not even on serving certain types of fattening foods, but on serving any food. Here is the key part of the law:
Any food establishment to which this section
applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese,
based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after
consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and
Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The
State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that
describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is
obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to
which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to
rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when
determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.
John McCain has a campaign finance problem.
When his campaign was down and out, he agreed to take public funding
for the primaries. Public funding comes with spending limits overall
and by state. Also, a candidate who accepts funding cannot raise money
from private sources. Now that it is possible he will be the
nominee, McCain will want to be free of those fundraising and spending
limits, but he cannot withdraw from the public system. Or perhaps he
could but only with the approval of the FEC, which is not operating
because of a struggle over its nominees. The FEC does not now have a
quorum to meet and regulate. (The lack of a quorum was caused by Barack
Obama's hold on a nominee to the FEC, but never mind).
McCain will want out of the public system because he is probably
close to hitting the limit, and he could not get more money for his
campaign until he received public funding after the GOP convention
during the summer. His "dark period" would thus be a period without
campaign funding that would run from spring until after the GOP
convention. During that "dark period" Obama or Hillary, both of whom
have not accepted public funding for the primaries, would be able to
continue spending money; some of that spending would be directed
against McCain after Obama or Hillary have secured their party's
nomination.
HAHAHAHAHA. OMG that is great. Read it and weep, Mr. McCain-Feingold. McCain has argued for years that money and speech are not the same thing, and that limiting campaign money is not equivalent to limiting speech. He can comfort himself with that thought as he goes silent for three or four [update: seven?] months while his opposition yaps away.
Letter I sent to Governor Schwartzenegger in response to his plan to close a number of California State Parks due to budget problems:
I know many people are
probably contacting you to oppose proposed closures of state parks to help meet
budget targets. My message is a bit
different: Closing these parks is
totally unnecessary.
I own and manage one of the
larger concessionaires in the California State Park (CSP) system. We are the concessionaire at Clear Lake and Burney Falls. At Burney Falls, for example, we have invested over a million dollars
of our money in a public-private partnership with the state to revamp to the
park. We also operate parks for the
National Park Service, the US Forest Service, Arizona State Parks, Texas State Parks, and other public authorities.
Traditionally, CSP has
engaged concessionaires to run stores and marinas within parks, but not to run
entire parks. However, in many other
states, our company runs entire parks and campgrounds for other government
authorities, and does so to the highest quality standards.
So, I can say with confidence
that many of the California State Parks proposed for closure would be entirely
viable as private concessions. For
example, we operate the store and marina at Clear Lake State Park but
could easily run the entire park and make money doing so, while also paying
rent to the state for the privilege.
I know that there are some
employees of the CSP system that oppose such arrangements with private
companies out of fears for their job security. But it would be a shame to close parks entirely when an opportunity
exists to keep them open to the public, and improve the state budget picture in
doing so.
Even if California decides to keep these parks open, I would encourage
you to have your staff investigate the possibility of expanding private
operation of state parks. CSP already
has one of the best and most capable concession management programs in the
country, a success you should seek to build on. The infrastructure is already there in CSP to solicit bids for these
projects and ensure that management of them meets the state's quality and
customer service standards.
Even though everything I said here is true, it probably is a non-starter because most state organizations are dead set against such private management. They would rather close services to the public than establish the precedent of private management.
Besides, the whole parks closure may well be a bluff. Unlike private company budget discussions, where it is expected that managers offer up their marginal projects for cuts, the public sector works just opposite: Politicians propose their most popular areas of spending (parks, emergency services) for cuts in a game of chicken to try to avoid budget cuts altogether. As I wrote here:
Imagine that you are in a budget meeting at your company. You and a
number of other department heads have been called together to make
spending cuts due to a cyclical downturn in revenue. In your
department, you have maybe 20 projects being worked on by 10 people,
all (both people and projects) of varying quality. So the boss says
"We have to cut 5%, what can you do?" What do you think her reaction
would be if you said "well, the first thing I would have to cut is my
best project and I would lay off the best employee in my department".
If this response seems nuts to you, why do we let politicians get
away with this ALL THE TIME? Every time that politicians are fighting
against budget cuts or for a tax increase, they always threaten that
the most critical possible services will be cut. Its always emergency
workers that are going to be cut or the Washington Monument that is
going to be closed. Its never the egg license program that has to be cut.
Update: Here is the form letter the governor's office sent out in response to my letter:
A weakened national economy and auto-pilot state spending has created a projected budget shortfall of $14.5 billion for fiscal year 2008-09. Although state government revenues this coming year are actually forecast to hold steady, the problem is that every year automatic spending formulas increase expenditures. Left unchecked, next year's budget would need to grow by 7.3-percent, which is $7.6 billion; even booming economies can't meet that kind of increase. To immediately combat this crisis, the Governor has proposed a 10-percent reduction in nearly every General Fund program from their projected 2008-09 funding levels. While these reductions are unquestionably painful and challenging, this across-the-board approach is designed to protect essential services by spreading reductions as evenly as possible.
To achieve this difficult reduction, State Parks will be reducing both its permanent and seasonal workforce. As a result, 48 park units will be closed or partially closed to the public and placed in caretaker status. By closing parks and eliminating positions, remaining resources can be consolidated and shifted to other parks to provide for services necessary to keep those parks open and operating. While 48 parks are affected by closures, 230 parks-or 83% of the system-will remain open.
We must reform our state budget process. Government cannot continue to put people through the binge and purge of our budget process that has now led to park closures. That's why the Governor has proposed a Budget Stabilization Act. Under the Governor's plan, when revenues grow, Sacramento would not be able to spend all the money. Instead, we would set a portion aside in a Revenue Stabilization Fund to stabilize the budget in down years. If a deficit develops during the year, instead of waiting to accumulate billions of dollars of debt, the Governor's plan would automatically trigger lower funding levels already agreed upon by the Legislature. Had this system been in place the past decade, we would not be facing a $14.5 billion deficit.
As Governor Schwarzenegger works with his partners in the Legislature, he will keep your concerns in mind. With your help, we will turn today's temporary problem into a permanent victory for the people of California.
It seems that one of those cycles the US always castigates itself about is a perception that the Europeans have a better rail system than we do and that we should somehow emulate their system. Which is why we still have federal subsidies of a half-assed Amtrak system and high-speed rail proposals are circulated breathlessly from time to time.
By the way, I have been a consultant to French railroad SNCF and I gaurantee we do not want to emulate the European rail system. First and foremost, the railroads are huge employment boondoggles. I remember that the SNCF when I was there had something like 100,000 freight cars but 125,000 freight car maintenance people. I suggested the railroad could assign one individual full time to his own car and still lay off 20% of the work force.
The main reason we don't have inter-city passenger rail is a simple one that anyone spending 5 minutes with the numbers can understand -- there are distance break points where air travel is more economic than rail, and most US inter-city transit falls into the larger distance ranges.
Anyway, the anti-planner shares a bit of information that is seldom mentioned in the rail discussion that makes the US rail system look a lot more desireable:
Europe has decided to run its rail system primarily for passengers,
while America's system is run mainly for freight. Europe's rail system
has about 6 percent of the passenger travel market, while autos have
about 78 percent. Meanwhile, 75 percent of European freight goes by
highway. Here in the U.S., highway's share of freight travel is only 29
percent, while the auto's share of passenger travel is about 82
percent. So trains get 4 percent of potential auto users in Europe out
of their cars, but leave almost three times as much freight on the
highway.
In fact, the freight rail system is so efficient that to some extent we've obviated the need for the Panama Canal. Many Asian container ships bound for Europe actually make port in Seattle or Vancouver, offload their containers onto trains which shoot across the country to New York or another eastern port where they are reloaded on ships for the trip to Europe.
By the way, in the same article, don't miss the hilarious proposal in Minnesota to spend taxpayer money for a high speed rail line from the Twin Cities to ... Duluth. Yeah, that's the ticket. New York to Boston barely makes it financially, but St. Paul to Duluth is going to be a winner.
The Reference Frame has a video of a dog solving the traveling salesman problem. I was doing some simulations years ago for a railroad company and actually had a traveling-salesman-like problem to solve with equipment routing. The best approach I found was simulated annealing. This algorithm starts out with a totally random solution, and then applies random swaps of route legs and then checks to see if the new route is better or worse than the old route. So far, similar to any Monte Carlo approach. But in this algorithm, the solution is allowed to jump to worse solutions, though the size of this jump is reduced over time as the algorithm is run. This helps prevent the algorithm from getting stuck in local minima.
It is called simulated annealing because it is very parallel to the process of cooling and crystallization in a piece of steel. When heated steel is plunged into water and cooled quickly, the molecules crystallize and are trapped in a higher energy state, whereas cooling the steel slowly lets the structure stabilize into a much lower energy state. Metal that is quench cooled is harder but more brittle, metal that is annealed is softer and more ductile. In the algorithm, the slow reduction in temperature is represented by the declining amount by which the algorithm can jump to a worse solution.
InfoWorld is hosting a petition to Microsoft to save XP and continue to sell it past the middle of this year. You can sign their petition . I signed the petition, but the real petition for MS may be the numbers coming in for XP sales, which are still strong. On this Amazon bestsellers page, as of 2/1/08, places #1,2,3,5 where XP and only #4 was Vista. IT News builds on my Amazon analysis:
Gates, in
Las Vegas Sunday, boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million
copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January.
While
the number at first sounds impressive, it in fact indicates that the
company's once dominant grip on the OS market is loosening. Based on
Gates' statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC's that
shipped in 2007.
And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only
marginally outperformed first year sales of Windows XP according to
Gates' numbers -- despite the fact that the PC market has almost
doubled in size since XP launched in the post 9-11 gloom of late 2001.
Speaking
five years ago at CES 2003, Gates said that Windows XP in its first
full year on the market sold more than 89 million copies, according to a Microsoft record of the event....
A survey published by InformationWeek last year revealed that 30% of corporate desktop managers have no plans to upgrade their company's PC's to Vista -- ever.
