I reboot my work PC on the weekends because some of the craptastic applications we're stuck with don't do well if they've been running more than a few days. Bad application development is the cause of MOST of these types of problems.

SSDs are expensive when you're buying by the thousands and consider that, aside from boot times, they don't impact PC performance enough to justify the cost for MOST PCs.

It takes my work PC about ten minutes to get to a working desktop. Probably two minutes to actually boot to windows, three or four to get to the Windows logon (anyone who works Windows domains has learned that if you don't have some wait times built in, policies may not load and you get support calls), then another three to five after I log in for all the scripts, antivirus, citrix, and other crap to run before my desktop is fully functional.

Sure a MacBook Air can boot in under a minute. It also can't run most of what we use and costs WAY more than the average business computer.

I suspect its more because the electrical & computer engineering (ECE) department pretty much only operates *nix clusters. I'm not sure on the specifics but I'm sure its out of practicality more than anything. They don't offer some of these super expensive software packages as downloadable software, but rather only have them installed on the clusters, and using X windows through SSH tunnels may have been more practical than Windows terminal services. (Most cluster computers are accessible directly - CMU owns a lot of IP addresses)

As an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon, I'm going to assume this is no big deal, but possibly at least confirms what people think. CMU has several Unix clusters, as well as Mac clusters. All of the downloadable software is supported on as many platforms as the software is created with. In fact, several classes (especially the digital IC design with CADENCE) are operated only in *nix environments.
VPN access to on-campus resources are also provided in all operating environments, and having used both the PC and *nix ones, I can say documentation is quite complete. This is a relatively recent development, however, as the documentation and support has greatly improved since I started at CMU.
It greatly helps when the professors are experts in the software they're teaching and help debug problems with the IT department. (The Hadoop cluster was especially fun to debug, especially with the broken JAR file passing in 0.20.1).

I think the letter he wrote in reply to the non-final rejection was the most representative of this person's delusion. I reuploaded it at scribd for easy access: http://www.scribd.com/doc/57372518/USPTO-05-27-2008-Miscellaneous-Incoming-Letter

As I read it, all I could think of is if you're god why do you need the patent office to enforce the sue of your abilities?

HR and the suits like pieces of paper that say you know stuff. Degrees and certifications may not be good indicators of competence, but having CCNA MCSA MBA IBC TLDR after your name impresses the non-IT people who actually fund your paycheck.

Altruism didn't evolve in these robots, they programmed them to be able to share, and those more likely to share with their kin were more successful. The only way the altruism would EVOLVE is if it arose spontaneously.

This is more like saying God decided it was time for fish to get out of the water, so he gave them lungs.

aches and pains, sure. There are some practices by chiropractors which can at least temporarily relieve the problems which cause pain. The problem I have with them is that they are temporary; once you start visiting, you go back over and over for pain relief. They don't treat the underlying problem.

Disease? What disease has been cured by chiropractic treatment? Swelling of the wallet?

Deafness? Seriously?

And the colic thing has been so soundly refuted I'm just going to point and laugh.

It's possible to make friends at work. I've done it plenty of times.

Until recently, I worked with a good friend. We were friends before I took the job and remain friends. While we worked together, we spent very little time socializing outside of work. In the past year since I was laid off, we have gone back to hanging out on weekends like we used to. Remember than when you're around a friend 40-60 hours a week, you probably aren't going to go out of your way to spend weekend time with them as well. It's when you don't work together any more that you start choosing to spend time together.

Jimmy, John, you guys aren't fooling anyone. We see the looks you two give each other when you think no one is looking. We notice how you always leave work together. The company doesn't have a policy against office romance, but what you did in the copy room last week...that's just disgusting.

-Management