Clearly, but my point is that math is a far larger field than is usually understood and at its foundation it is no more than structured reasoning. My answer to "How Much Math Do We Really Need?" is "lots", but maybe we should reconsider studying different (more fundamental) branches of maths rather than calculus and its surroundings.

Math is important for understanding why math is important. Which in turn allows you to see that math is important for being able to reason in a structured and abstract way about the world. Many people confuse math with arithmethic, algebra, trigonometry and calculus because these were all labeled math when they were students. Nothing could be farther from the truth. At its foundation, math is very closely tied with logic in that it is deductive rather than inductive, and you use it to prove complex assertions by stitching together smaller components you already know are true. The fact that with this system you can go on and prove the validity of the theoretical tools that you use to build a bridge that stays up or to make an airplane that flies or even to understand the best way to invest your own money is what makes math not only important but also amazing...

You might wanna ask the retailer?

...and the topic is interesting. This said, I am starting to find the Internet a less pleasant place to be day after day. All the dynamism somehow makes the experience more stressful, and whenever I am just looking for some plain information I feel "bombed" with banners, moving stuff, colors, etc. To the point that I ended up working with a computer disconnected from the Internet to keep focused and relaxed. The Internet is becoming more and more entertainment and less and less focused processing of information. I am not sure it is a great improvement!

...or against MS, but how is a disc-shaped D-pad and grey buttons "news" (for nerds or otherwise)?

You are not really changing the nature of MS monopoly, you are just changing the logo. There are ways to break the monopoly, but I believe this is not even one of them.

I feel like I already read somewhere about a large multinational embracing standards and stuff, but I'm not sure :) Jokes aside, I think that this kind of behaviour shows how top dog companies are all alike.

I believe that the increasing popularity of Android is extremely important for Linux. Instead of being "an alternative to X", where X is either Windows or OSX, Android is just, well, Android. It has a clear identity of its own and is not so often depicted as the competitor or the alternative. In this sense Android has the same strong identity as Linux in LAMP installations: it performs excellently the function it is intended for, rather than "playing catch-up" with something else and this is key to its importante, fame and success.

...in the near future. This means that all Windows (Windows Phone 7, whatever success the platform will actually have) -based development is going to happen in Silverlight. Now WPF/SL is not such a bad platform, Reactive Extensions are a very advanced application of computer science (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3687) that is quite powerful once one learns how to use it, and the dependency property mechanism gives is very flexible and allows to move lots of trivial logic in the page markup rather than in the callbacks code.
So if one is interested in building an application that can be ported to WP7 and moved between the cloud and the client with relative ease, then Silverlight is an excellent choice. For web-only applications Flash is so much supported that it would be crazy not to go with it, unless the computational weight of Flash becomes a problem: then the often ligter Silverlight might be a better choice.

Personally that is exactly the reason why I fear Apple far more than MS...

Android is pretty neat, both technologically and philosophically. But Apple platforms, whew, they give me the shivers: a model that is too closed up feels like it is a real danger.

Deconstructive psychology based on folder names? Are you high?

Look, I am not trapped in a MS shop. I *am* a MS shop. I know this may not be the smartest thing to say here on /., but it's true. Do I care about MS? Nope. Do I care about Apple? Nope. Do I care about Linux? Same as above. I *just work* in technology. I have a wife and kids to support and some knowledge that I can sell as a consultant or in the form of products. I already know a lot about MS graphics stack (I learned to program with DirectX 8/9) and so XNA was the natural progression. Should MS suddenly disappear, I would move to OGL and other platforms without so much as thinking it twice. Software is no religion, and there are far more relevant things in life than which IDE best defines you as a person.