The federal government, meanwhile, spends about $1 billion a year on after-school centers nationwide, but rejects $1.7 billion worth of applications for lack of funds.
Word on the street is that the App Store has seen some 60 million downloads since its launch last month, and has sold about $1 million worth of applications per day.
At the same time, we can recount a few truths that put Windows 8 into a more positive light: It has sold copies in the nine figures, has six figures worth of applications in its marketplace, and will sell tens of millions of touch-based laptops this year, and the U.S. PC market fell only 1.9percentt in the second quarter (again, IDC data).
(You don't remember everyone dancing in the streets, celebrating its launch?) The rules are such that, once you've sold more than $200 worth of applications, calculated after Microsoft takes its cut, then Redmond sends you an electronic transfer payment.
He has made himself head of the Board of Investment, which has swiftly approved billions of dollars worth of pending applications.
The Web is already ahead of the patent office: a site called wikipatents (www.wikipatents.com) has created an open comment process for several years' worth of patent applications.
Within a month of the July launch of the App Store, Apple had sold $30 million worth of novel applications for its devices a particularly impressive number when you remember much of the software is free.
Wells Fargo received $87 billion worth of home loan applications in the quarter, a steep fall from $188 billion in the period a year earlier.
The "Super User" scenario under which the tests were run includes 650GB worth of data, 40 applications installed, modified OS settings, and 15 optional components installed.
