"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses"
Bjarne Stroustrup

I will use Functionnal, Generic, object oriented and procedural programming so basically it will be modern c++ http://bulldozer00.com/2014/05...

One of the reasons, "Windows 9" could be detected by some soft as "Windows 95" or "Windows 98" to be safe they skip the 9 and jumps to 10.

Zip code for gas is a nightmare :)
When you're used to enter pin code in your country, everything works fine. You move to the US for vacation want to fill the car tank and the machine ask for your zip code. You can't do anything. If you're lucky a cashier is available if not you have to find another station.

So true, I've so many problems with the Mozilla build process and Pymake, that I stop after my first successful compile.
If it was easier I maybe had time to identify and patch the thunderbird bug I was annoyed about.

No France can't choose which is religion and which isn't
It's one of the main point of the law of 1905 "Separation of the Churches and the State". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separation_of_the_Churches_and_the_State

Why only talking about developers.
If you agree to have average Sellers, Average Marketing, Average Management, Average customer support sure you can have average developers.

Here is some numbers from there in french/spanish http://alliance-lab.org/archives/1072?lang=fr#

Retailer : 33 to 40 %
Promotion to libraries: 10 to 12%
Distribution: 7 to 8%
Dead Wood manufacturing: 12 to 20 %
Promotion, communication to customers: 0 to 10 %
Author 6 to 12 %

I've kindle it's nice and I like it but not to replace all my books. First there is price it's pretty common than paper is 30% less than ebook. Second the reader can store hundreds of books right. Third more than half of book I read doesn't exist in any ebook format.
if you can store hundred why is there is no way to sort you book without spending HOURS, it's a nightmare if you have multiple book by same author, multiple book with same name or some public domain book which are not well tagged (using search when your not sure of the book title is crazy).
I've used it for some technical books it's not always good. The writer have to do extra work to make it readable. ebook pages are smaller it works for full text but not when you have some diagrams, source code... Lot of technical book have hyperlinks to different chapters which is nice, but sometime you hit a link instead of turning page. BUT ebook reader give you the search tool which is really nice for finding references.

When a company try to sell a solution to an organisation/company the customers always try to change the way the product work. It's easier to ask a contractor to change the product than to ask your employees to change the way they work. People hates change. And big contractors LOVE that, they even encourage you to ask for special requirement because each change is a lot $ in their pockets.
It's even more surprising that the same customers who ask for everything to be customizable accept to have completely generic windows stations sometimes even with default background or accept the new office with ribbons, which is a big change, more easily than you product where an icon moved.

It's pretty common mistake because in java the separation between the language and the library is not really clear.
When you talk with java programmer it usually go to "in java I can do an HTTP connection but in c++ you can't"
In C++ ,with most of people I work with, even stdio or the STL are tools available but not the language. As c++ involved really fast those years c++11 is great, c++14 will be even better and the whole default library grow fast and can propose more tools to compete with other language default frameworks.

I understand it's difficult for many people to accept the price fixing of goods but some country use that system and it works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement

But price fixing is a double-edged sword.

The Publisher choose the price of the book ( depends of the country sometimes it's a range ).
Every bookstore buy the books at the same prices so you your local book-store even in small cities can compete with amazon.
Publisher support part of the risk of book pricing. If publisher want store to have more stocks of his books he make a deal with store of quantities and he have to buy back unsold items
For the books ordered by the bookstore the publisher have to buy them back too (not full price because of transport...)

It's not perfect but it keep local store, and when you see a book somewhere you can buy it directly because you know that's it will be useless to wait, go to amazon and buy it as it will be the same price.

The paper is clear there is no conclusion from those tests. And as the tests were paid by Microsoft If there was something really significant in favour of IE we will read it everywhere.

It's good to start some energy efficiency ranking. Windows 8 (all tests are on that platform) have some very nice feature to helps developer on power consumption. My guesses is that no-one is using them as you need Win8 specific code but if somebody like microsoft try to MAYBE we could see some real differences.

It change almost nothing.
This law was to find your family members after long lost of contacts (years). It was to help family member reconnect after end of WW1 WW2 and after the end of colonisation in Asia and Africa. The administration do the research find the person, the ask him/her if he want to reconnect with you and if he/she wants give you the address. It's stopped because fewer and fewer people use it in the last decade.

If someone is missing, police still do the research.
If Someone need to be found to pay kids pension, to helps his/her parents, for fraud or taxes evasion, or even for some kind of family Inheritance there are others laws.