Speaking as a team lead for tier 2 support group, that's part of the premium service desk for managed IT outsourcing (ASA 30 seconds, 70% FTR kind of thing), this made me laugh my butt off.

Yes, we get crap-tons of calls from users about mobile devices. Tom is out of touch with "real" users, he's suffering (benefiting?) from massive selection bias here. His sample base is nowhere near representative of your average corporate IT user.

Roadmap? Why not a starchart?

Sure, and those comments are just as applicable to the mini-USB mounts. Hell, probably more applicable; the entire unit of a surface-mount USB it taller, and therefore applies more force to the solders through leverage, assuming the same insertion force.

How, exactly, can we get that cool comparison-slider, without using something like Flash or HTML5?

Wait, you mean all these policy updates are your fault? Stop messing with your sharing permissions so the rest of us can get some peace!

Mars is huge, compared to what the rovers are covering.

They could put a hundred identical rovers up there, and they'd all be finding different things, and the project would get some cost savings on the design side.

Of course, the main cost isn't in the design side, but in the heavy lift and ongoing operations.

How long before we here the politicians whining that Clinton's trying to outlaw roof shingles or make everyone replace their roof.

I'm waiting for the complaints from pilots that they're getting sun-glare.

It's interesting how many of the cables seem to be fairly precise, and others are clearly guesses or approximations.

Look at the three lines that terminate in Seattle. One of them is extremely precise, with weaving and meandering even at the nearest zoom levels. One of the others is so approximate that it crosses over islands as it goes from point to point.

Honestly they need to default to all this crap being blocked and you have to call to enable it.

You may think that, but the average consumer would find that enraging.

The same laziness that leads people to not check their bills, causes people to get irate when they have to jump through extra hoops to get something activated.

Two words. Shit happens.

Even the most well-meaning parent can get overwhelmed in a crowd surge or the kid could decide to tear off suddenly. It's not a substitute for watchful parenting but it can be useful additional tool in the toolkit. It also allows the kid to have a modicum of self-control, since mom and dad don't have to be glued to their hand all day.

I ended up calling my namesake down in Arizona, who evidently just could not grasp that our shared firstname.lastname@gmail.com belonged to me, not him.

I got that phone number because he put my email in to receive his property assessment.

Never got the guy on the line, but the voicemail seemed to do the trick.

If you bother to learn how, you can judge the existing skies to determine what the weather will be in that timeframe.

kenrblan's experience doesn't rule out the existence of the claimed policy; it just shows that if there was one, this employee didn't follow it.

Then you go without.

Pretty damned simple concept.

Yes, it's a righteous thing, as is helping those in legitimate need.

Wanting to check twitter or TMZ is not a pressing need. A life in danger is.