However, there are some other interesting nuggets amid Steven Sinofsky’s epic blog post, which just posted.

There won’t be an “off” button for Windows-on-ARM (WOA), nor will there be various sleep modes.

One of the new aspects of WOA you will notice is that you don’t turn off a WOA PC. WOA PCs will not have the traditional hibernate and sleep options with which we are familiar. Instead, WOA PCs always operate in the newly designed Connected Standby power mode, similar to the way you use a mobile phone today. When the screen is on, you have access to the full power and capabilities of the WOA PC. When the screen goes dark (by pressing the power button or timer), the PC enters a new, very low-power mode that enables the battery to last for weeks.

Microsoft wants a say in how the Windows-on-ARM hardware works, much as it does with Windows Phone.

To those familiar with the Windows Phone 7 approach, the chassis specification, WOA shares some of those elements. The specifications being implemented for WOA allow for more diversity across many dimensions, combined with the same commitment to engineering and product excellence—all while running the same OS binaries across WOA PCs.

In order to test Windows-on-ARM, Microsoft first had to do so on phones, since no ARM tablets yet existed.

Early in the development of WOA, the only hardware we had were existing ARM devices such as phones (ARM tablets didn’t yet exist). We just thought you would enjoy a few fairly early photos I captured of debug WOA all loaded in RAM (unretouched). Note: This is not a product plan or even a hint at a product.

Sinofsky defends Microsoft’s decision not to let more existing Windows programs run in the Windows desktop.

If we enabled the broad porting of existing code we would fail to deliver on our commitment to longer battery life, predictable performance, and especially a reliable experience over time. The conventions used by today’s Windows apps do not necessarily provide this, whether it is background processes, polling loops, timers, system hooks, startup programs, registry changes, kernel mode code, admin rights, unsigned drivers, add-ins, or a host of other common techniques.

Microsoft is making some test Windows-on-ARM machines available to developers, but they don’t give much of an idea what real ARM-based Windows devices will look like.

To run this release, a low volume of test PCs specifically designed for WOA will be made available starting around the next Windows 8 milestone. These devices are for developers and hardware partners, and do not represent consumer form factors, by any stretch of the imagination. They have diagnostic tools and ports. They are designed to be opened and debugged. They do not have the final components or firmware (or power or thermal management) that a commercially available device will use. They are made of low-cost plastic. You might have seen devices similar to these on display at CES or demonstrated there, and all of our previous demonstrations have used some form of these test PCs. These PCs do represent WOA and the experience—but they no more represent the final experience than does the current state of x86/64 Windows 8. They will be running the same branch of Windows that will be made available to x86/64 testers at our forthcoming development milestone.

In an interview, Windows unit President Steven Sinofsky said that the first ARM-based machines running Windows 8 should show up around the same time as the first Windows 8 machines running traditional PC processors from Intel and AMD. He didn’t give a time frame for when that would be, but PC manufacturers and chipmakers have said they expect it to arrive later this year.

Sinofsky also said that the Windows-on-ARM machines will come with several Office apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that have been tuned to run in a very battery-efficient manner. But Sinofsky said that, although those applications will run in the traditional Windows desktop, they will be the only programs allowed to do so, other than components of Windows itself.

“There are no other compiled dekstop apps that are available,” Sinofsky told AllThingsD. All of the other apps for Windows on ARM will be the new-style “Metro” apps.

Windows 8 for Intel and AMD chips, by contrast, will be able to run all of the kinds of programs that have traditionally run on Windows, inside a Windows 7-like desktop environment.

Although Microsoft has said that its focus around Windows 8 would be around new-style “Metro” apps, there had been significant question as to whether, and under what circumstances, programs designed to run in a classic Windows desktop might be able to run.

Windows on ARM will have the desktop as an option for Internet Explorer, the Office apps and various system functions, such as the control panel, file management and other built-in features of Windows. Sinofsky also said that the version of Internet Explorer for Windows on ARM won’t support plugins such as Adobe Flash, noting the trend in the industry away from supporting Flash on mobile devices.

Sinofsky is also penning a several-thousand-word blog post on the subject — long even for someone known for his lengthy posts. In it, Sinofsky said, he goes into more detail on the company’s plans for Windows on ARM, as well as its rationale for some of the decisions it has made.

“There have been a lot of questions,” Sinofsky said. “I want to do my best to answer them.”

Sinofsky had already ruled out some sort of emulation mode for running older Windows apps on ARM chips, noting that the whole point of running Windows on the same kinds of ARM-based chips used for phones and tablets was to gain the kind of power efficiency those chips can deliver.

Microsoft has said it will deliver an updated “consumer preview” test version of Windows 8 on Feb. 29, with plans to tout the software at an event in Barcelona. However, that test version, like a developer preview released last fall, will be available only for machines running traditional Intel and AMD chips.

Sinofsky said the company is working with chipmakers Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments to provide a limited number of test machines to those that make software, hardware and peripherals. The machines are aimed at developers, though, with easy access to the internals, and the company has no plans to make those machines available to enthusiasts, corporate customers or other testers.

Microsoft first announced its plans to allow Windows 8 to run on ARM-based machines at CES 2011.

At the time, it showed a demo of some Office apps running on ARM chips, but showed little else of its plans for the operating system. Months before, it talked about other features of the operating system. Several months later, at our D9 conference, it showed the new Metro interface for Windows, as well as its plans to feature a whole new kind of application, and its plans for a built-in store to sell these new apps.

While the goal is to have Windows-on-ARM machines out at the same time Windows 8 lands on new traditional PCs, Sinofsky noted that there is a lot of work to be done to get the entire PC ecosystem ready.

“We’re building a whole new product, on a new platform, with new partners,” he said.

Update: Sinofsky’s blog post is up, all 8,610 words of it.

If you are looking for a more positive story here, Warner is happy to provide one. Digital revenue jumped 17 percent, and now accounts for 28 percent of the company’s sales. (As always, the label cites guy-you’re-unlikely-to-complain-about Michael Buble as one of its biggest stars. Shudder to imagine a Buble-less quarter for Warner.)

Most interesting is Warner’s take on the kind of digital revenue it is seeing, which we can assume is a rough proxy for the rest of the business.

Downloads — primarily from iTunes, but also Amazon and other players — accounted for $205 million in music revenue last quarter, while payments from streaming services like Spotify and Deezer generated $15 million. But that streaming revenue is growing at a 36 percent clip, compared to 15 percent for downloads.

If people who used to buy albums from iTunes ditch the service for a $10 monthly subscription to Spotify, Rhapsody or the like, then the industry would see substantially more revenue, as paidContent notes. But not even the optimistic music folks think we’re heading there.

A much more realistic best-case scenario: Some people who weren’t buying any music at all start shelling out a monthly fee for subscription services, turning pirates into profit centers. That still won’t be enough to replace the dollars the industry has lost since its pre-Napster party days. But it is much, much better than nothing.

No longer just about using your smartphone to make purchases, mobile payment options are now popping up in transit systems in metropolitan areas, as companies look to gauge consumers’ appetites for buying products while truly on the go.

EBay-owned PayPal has just launched a pilot in Singapore’s subway stations for commuters to buy goods while en route. The experiment, through which eight merchants will offer Valentine’s Day gifts at reduced prices, is being conducted across 15 subway stations across Singapore.

Commuters can make purchases by using their smartphone to scan a QR code on a billboard or poster, and can then pay through a PayPal account. (For those wondering how cell service might work while riding a subway, Singapore has long boasted complete underground coverage, in addition to being one of the most Wi-Fi-friendly cities in the world.)

Earlier this week, New Yorkers learned that they would be able to purchase beauty products while riding in some taxicabs, with just a swipe of their smartphones.

Launched by Glamour magazine as part of a Fashion Week experiment, 50 Manhattan cabs will be equipped with SnapTags from technology company SpyderLynk; according to a Wall Street Journal report, VeriFone, which handles payments for New York City cabs, will power the beauty product purchases, as well.

The experiment was inspired by the virtual stores launched in the Seoul subway system by the Tesco supermarket chain, the Journal says.

While mobile payments are becoming increasingly popular — even the Obama campaign has hopped on board — the companies pushing mobile payments forward are divided on their approach to the technology. Square, for example, uses a dongle that plugs into the iPhone to accept mobile credit card payments; it also offers an app that uses geo-fencing to allow a customer to pay when he or she is within a certain distance from a store. Google’s mobile payments app, Google Wallet, uses near field communication technology to transmit payments.

For PayPal, which recently doubled its mobile payments predictions for 2012 to $7 billion, the emphasis has been on options that don’t require near field communication; which, as my AllThingsD colleague Tricia Duryee points out, can be a limiting factor for adoption.

PayPal says that, aside from a smartphone and an app with bar-code scanning capability, no additional infrastructure — such as an NFC-equipped terminal — is required for merchants, retailers and consumers to participate in the Singapore pilot.

Late last year, PayPal began testing point-of-sale purchasing at Home Depot retail stores, in which a select group of PayPal employees can purchase items by using a PayPal-issued credit card or by entering an account number at the register.

Sources say the company has chosen the first week in March to debut the successor to the iPad 2, and will do so at one of its trademark special events. The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these.

No word yet on a street date for the iPad 3 (assuming that’s what it’s called), though my guess is retail availability will follow roughly the same schedule as that of the iPad 2: Available for purchase a week or so after the event.

As for the next-generation iPad itself, sources say it will be pretty much what we’ve been led to expect by the innumerable reports leading up to its release: A device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but running a much faster chip, sporting an improved graphics processing unit, and featuring a 2048×1536 Retina Display — or something close to it.

If 2011 was the year of the iPad 2, will 2012 be the year of the iPad 3? Said a source familiar with the device: “What do you think?”

An Apple spokeswoman declined comment on the timing of the event, saying the company does not comment on rumors and speculation.

Fortunately for me, the topics were largely familiar, as several were topics I had written about, including layoffs at Nokia, Microsoft’s preview version of Windows 8, and the impact of the iPhone on Sprint.

Here’s a video of the show. It’s 45 minutes, but Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane and Iyaz Akhtar are a lot of fun. Plus, if you watch until the “randomizer” segment at the end, you will get to see this super crazy robotic pack mule the Army has cooked up:

Users download the app to their iOS, Android or Windows Phone device; register, and then start snapping photos of the unwanted mail.

Once a photo is taken, the user taps the “Unsubscribe Me” button, and then PaperKarma does the legwork.

Sean Mortazavi, the CEO and founder of PaperKarma, who also works full-time at Microsoft, has spent countless hours and weekends tracking down 10,000 of the biggest junk-mail offenders so that you don’t have to.

The only full-time employee PaperKarma has is Brendan Ribera, an engineer formerly from Urbanspoon and iLike. He is also co-founder. Currently, Mortazavi, who works on open-source projects in Microsoft’s Visual Studio division, is self-funding the project.

Mortazavi said more than 100 billion pieces of junk mail are sent every year in the U.S. alone, making it both time-consuming and a waste of natural resources.

The company already has a long list of companies in its database, but if users submit requests for something that isn’t on file, PaperKarma will use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to track down the culprit. The Turk typically can track down people for hire at a reasonable price.

PaperKarma’s mobile apps, which are free, launched 10 days ago.

Mortazavi imagines being able to make money in the future by partnering with various businesses.

For instance, you may not want the flyer from Costco, but you may be willing to opt in for electronic coupons. PaperKarma could then charge the business for finding that customer, because it also would be saving them printing costs and mailing fees.

A couple of services like this already exist, but Mortazavi said it’s the first one to create a mobile solution.

Doxo and Earth Class Mail, two other Seattle companies, are addressing the problem in different ways.

Doxo encourages users to sign up for electronic communications with companies, which in turn saves those companies money. Earth Class Mail will accept all of your mail at its warehouses; if the mail is not junk, Earth Class Mail will open it, scan it, and send you an electronic version.