the people using Bing are the same people that does not know about the address bar.

Except that I use Bing and I've been designing computer user interfaces for over twenty years.

The value of Google's results has been steadily declining as it attempts to use its search engine as a springboard/spinal cord for any number of its other ventures. If Google can make an extra nickel that provides you with not the most relevant link, a link instead to one of its many partners/clients/advertisers/science projects, etc. it will do so. Not saying I blame them for doing so -- they're in business to make money -- but be clear: they are sacrificing superior search results for profits.

At least in the US, if this was done and somebody was seriously injured or died and couldn't summon medical attention because of it ... there would be lawsuits.

D00d, in the US, there would be lawsuits because it's Tuesday and someone was wearing a green hat.

...will not be between Black and White, or White and Hispanic, or even Rich and Poor. It will be between those who get pensions and employer-provided healthcare and those who don't.

I also [received] more 5-Funny to my credit in the year I've been here than your entire life.

Dood, I get +5 Funny here all the time, and I'm a fuckin' idiot. For the sake of your self-esteem and all that's holy, please don't ascribe any real-life value to slashdot moderations.

I stopped reading when I saw snydeq's name in the byline. He's their corporate communications shill who handles most of the pay-for-press astro-turfing InfoWorld does on slashdot.

The funny part is that InfoWorld is paying for what has been sold as Upper IT Management eyeballs and credibility within the slashdot audience, but the days when slashdot reached that crowd are long gone. These days slashdot readers are predominantly the young gadgeteers, hobbyists, and geek wannabes who most likely don't have any idea why an iPad or iPhone would be a threat to their IT Department. Most probably didn't even know their high school HAD an IT Department...

The mere fact of a tweet containing an exclamation mark or a smiley face meant that odds were a woman was tweeting

or a Mac user.

Videogames are not books or films; they are a different medium altogether. Consequently, videogame developers should be focusing on the interactive aspects of videogame play that are unique, not trying to imitate the linear aspects of other media. Never mind that the videogame stories are inevitably dreadful imitations of book and movie plotlines that have been done before by legitimate storytellers.

And you videogame players that are vocally insistent that developers focus more on story and less on multiplayer and other uniquely interactive aspects of their craft: Stop! Go read a book. You don't attend a ballet and then complain that none of the performers sang; stop complaining about lack of story in your videogames.

Reminds me of an often-told story around these parts...

It's the night shift in Master Control at a major national Cable TV Network. One guy has been there since pre-launch days, let's call him "Joe." Now, Joe is enormous, pushing if not over 300 lbs, sports a perpetual four-day stubble, is known for -- among many other eccentricities -- coming to work in his pajamas. Not that he was a slacker, oh no. Joe is a rock, a superman, the exact guy you want on duty should there be a crisis, or even if there isn't. He's the "Mayor of the Overnight," as the CEO once referred to him. So all Joe's compatriots in Master Control, they do their time, eventually move into daylight shifts, but not Joe. "Not interested," sez Joe. "Like it on the overnights just fine." New generations of Master Control Operators are hired, Joe mentors them, and THEY move on and up. And so his legend grows. Years pass, Joe's an industry icon, his fame grown even beyond his own company.

Then one day -- five years later? seven years later? ten years later? -- he finds he's become an HR Nightmare. See, Joe got top marks on every merit review, got maximum pay raises for his job class, every year -- and now he's making more money than a lot of suits 2-3 pay grades above him. "Can't have that," HR informs Ops. And so Joe is finally prodded and cajoled into the sunlight. Shiny suit, skinny tie, shave and a haircut, congrats Big Guy, Welcome to Management!

He lasted six weeks. Was never clear whose call it was ultimately -- the other suits who now had to deal with "That Fat Guy from Master Control," or the erstwhile Mayor himself who came to finally see first hand what he probably suspected all along, that making banks of machinery and automation systems play nice together was easy compared to any comparable accomplishment involving people.

But HR was happy. With Joe gone, everyone's paychecks once again fit nicely inside the boxes that had been drawn for them.

every hick and their family members are going to come over to ask questions on everything.

You're a classist buffoon.

The next time you look down your nose at a "hick," bear in mind he's probably thinking, "Thank God I've got a real job that let's me work normal hours and pays enough to raise a family -- not like that rude hipster stuck in retail."

The only company I would trust LESS than Facebook with my personal data, the only company with an even more cavalier attitude towards privacy, is Google. I'm more likely to hire Casey Anthony to babysit my daughters.

I find it truly, genuinely, startling that anyone outside of spinster aunts, fourteen year-old girls, and twitchy Marketing Suits whack-a-mole-ing anything and everything termed "social media" are giving this thing a second, un-shuddering glance.

This is exactly the kind of behavior I would expect from a group of guys who, once routinely stuffed into their high school lockers, have now grown up (?) to become full-fledged white cat-stroking Bond villains.

I give it another 6-9 months more of federal government inquiries and subpoenas before they dig a moat around their campus and fill it with laser-headed sharks...

uhhh, what?

Oh, yeah, I forgot: Christian-Bashing is the last acceptable and politically-correct form of prejudice and ignorant hatred.

Carry on.

That's the point: We don't NEED an "IT professional" when we have a couple of PCs and a wireless router, if we avail ourselves of outsourced cloud services for the stuff we formerly might have needed an IT professional for.

No disrespect is meant to IT professionals here: they are a vital and intrinsic resource -- within the cloud services with whom we will be contracting for service. They're just not needed on the payroll of every company with more than a dozen employees, as they were perceived as being needed back in the Corporate IT Hay Day a few years back.

Here in the NY area, there's a cloud services company doing heavy radio ad marketing that basically promotes its services as being able to say, "Take a Hike, IT Guy!"

No start-up wants to begin by spending money on beige (or even white...) boxes. Unlike the '90s, when corporate IT was in ascendancy, almost every worker today has sufficient computer proficiency to make most of the day-to-day work of an IT department unnecessary -- except as relates to the systems and software crafted by the IT department themselves. Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm..."

There are times I even think the whole "you better fear for your privacy!!" meme is FUD being churned up by the corporate IT guys who see the writing on the wall.

...this ...this ...what do they call it? "Palin Derangement Syndrome." Yeah. "PDS." But I see it now, with this whole e-mail witch hunt, and man, is it ugly and perverse. And from the people who typically whine the most about "privacy," no less!

Pathetic.