Weesh... weesh... we should name it Bob! ', the intern suggested loudly with unbridled enthusiasm.

No one consciously chooses a Microsoft [product|platform|environment] on it's merits alone. If it is chosen it is largely, if not entirely, because of external factors ,the dominant of which is market dominance. Microsoft have had a terrible history of being slow on the pivot with regard to changing markets. They are in actual peril and in fear of being bypassed by more agile competitors even those with their own problems of inertia.

Someone actually reads Thomas Friedman as not satire? I thought the NYT just put him in for comic relief.

Very interesting take on things, I like it. There is though one factor you seem to omit: The most powerful and influential people and collective entities in the world, and those that they employ, see the world very differently than you and I. To those that wish to rule and wield power, to those that always want more, regardless of how much they have, scarcity is not an issue. The well being of others, society as a whole, beyond being a resource or a problem when insurrection looms is not an issue for consideration.

Not really hindsight. I remember having this argument when Windows 95 came out and while many of us simply found it an annoying behaviour the potential for abuse and misuse was very obvious at the time.

'"The good news is that almost everywhere we look, IPv6 is increasing,"
Every time we measure it the mean distance between the Earth and its moon is increasing. Wooooo Hoooooo.

I cut my COBOL teeth rewriting a market research analysis system written by a contractor that made extensive use of the ALTER statement expressly to obfuscate the code and insure that he was employed long term to maintain the code. The boss chose to call his bluff and I got he job of undoing the mess. Success meant my move out of operations and into a cube as a 'Junior Programmer Analyst'. 1974 was an interesting year.

While not strictly a 'public sector', which I find an odd turn of phrase anyway, it should be and is key to the reformation of all of the above. I don't have the time or actually the inclination this morning to elaborate on the subject but leave it you lot to ponder it and do a bit of research on your own.

Comestibles et al. in one convenient location now with delivery service and on-line ordering.

The only real power that prayer has is to make people feel better about being able to do nothing, and so alleviate despair in hopeless situations. Nothing more and frequently less when prayer is applied in lieu of action by those truly deluded sorts that actually believe in the efficacy of interstitial prayer. All the anecdotal 'miracles' and unexplained recoveries are only evidence of our own lack understanding and meagre observational acuity, not evidence of the unseen hand of a caring an benevolent deity. As for 'spiritual' experience, yes it exists and prayer as a simple form of meditation can be conducive to it, but again nothing to do with anything supernatural.

to avoid Slashdot.

It is of course the darkest of comedies prone to provoke tears of despair along with the maniacal laughter borne of the realisation of the utter banality of the institution. But funny, very funny.

This is what diaries are for. Primitive I know but it's amazing how those little narratives jog the memory.

yer a eejit

It would seem, from the poll results thus far, that a significant portion of the respondents are natives of the mythical Lake Woebegone. It probably has something to do with the general fragility of the human psyche. Possibly it could be conditioning from overt praise for mediocre accomplishment intended to bolster self esteem in order to pre-emptively mitigate the former which ironically has made them more defensive as a ....
  Ohhhhhh where's my bottle of fuckitol as if I could really give a rats ass about other peoples fucking typing skills much less what other people think about othe peoples typing skills and why.