I think wysiwyg editors are also only useful in certain cases - CMSs, blogs, DTPs - the sort of systems where the data entered is the information you will see. There are large categories of applications, however, where the data entered is first aggregated/manipulated before it is useful for any sort of output - in these cases, wysiwyg is just not the way forward.
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"
I think with the amount of coverage this story has gotten, everyone wanted something big to happen. Instead, we just get something mundane in some carefully crafted words that seem designed to give no information whatsoever, while still ensuring nobody can be sued any further. I kind of get the feeling that they are all trying to say "Nothing to see here....move along....cows turn themselves inside out all the time".
Personal anecdote - I had an issue with Visual Studio inverting colours and removing toolbars a few years ago and couldn't fix it even with re-install. I eventually (after going though official channels) emailed Scott and he spent a fair bit of time emailing me back and forth to get all the details of the problem and then put me in touch with a few other people in MS who helped me fix the problem.
Michel Thomas is excellent - I learned enough French from his course (having never learned any French before) to have some basic conversations with people I was staying with in France. Nothing groundbreaking or deep, but general basic chit chat about the weather, what to do, where to go, how to get there etc.
I work in healthcare. Basically the stuff I do has a direct impact on funding given to vaccinations initiatives, disease prevention and disease management.
Doing this, in my experience, is easy - find an organisation that does meaningful work and go work for them.
