Must be one of Heinlein's recurring themes.

The book was Friday.

Yep, they were good at one point. That Model 100 was the last Microsoft product that Gates' own code went into. Maybe that's it, maybe Gates was a great coder, but a poor manager of coders where quality is concerned.

This short history summary shows that Microsoft's roots are in marketing, not programming

No, their roots were in programming. This was their foray into marketing. Anybody who used a Radio Shack Model 100 (or its brethren) knows that Microsoft was capable of developing an excellent product at one point.

There was no option to vote no on both. You vote for "Russia now" or "Russia later." The only other option was not to vote. Counting that as a valid option to choose the status quo is absurd.

For an abortion example, imagine the religious right-wing legislature in a US state got two options on the ballot, "Make abortion illegal" and "Allow the legislature to decide whether abortion is illegal." Any vote by the people is simply a rubber stamp of what the legislature has already decided -- making abortion illegal. There is no option to disagree with the legislature and keep abortion legal.

Fluke has these two live trademarks concerning the design and color of their devices: 85449701, 85449725.

As long as the color similarity could cause confusion in the market, it's close enough.

These days we're used to the Apple hype about design, but that's just consumer goods. In some cases, good design means lives saved. Bad design, or even decent design with unintended consequences, can be dangerous.

A former F-111 pilot told me that there were some controls to the right of the pilot's seat (radio IIRC). These worked just fine during flight and were well-designed in themselves, but eventually some unexplained crashes due to pilot error led investigators to these controls. Turns out if a pilot turned his head to use these controls at the same time he was performing a certain flight maneuver, it would screw up his inner ear, he would lose his sense of orientation, and possibly crash the plane.

It wasn't necessarily bad design, but it is a reminder that we can't anticipate all of the consequences of any one design when dealing with people. The important part is that when we identify an unintended consequence of a design, we change the design to compensate instead of blaming user stupidity.

choices seem pretty valid. the second one was "remain part of ukraine"

That is disengenuous and will only fool those who don't know what's going on. The two options were:

"Are you in favour of the reunification of Crimea with Russia as a part of the Russian Federation?"

"Are you in favour of restoring the 1992 Constitution and the status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine?"

The latter establishes an independent state technically within Crimea, but with autonomy to later join Russia if it wishes, and the parliament already said it does.

So, basically, the options were "Join Russia now, or join later." There was no option to remain as part of Ukraine under the status quo.

Groklaw had the best journalistic coverage in the world of the SCO v. IBM case, but it's "just" a blog. There's no fine line where a blog stops being "what I feel" and reports hard news. Take MSNBC, it's 85% commentary, yet still considered news, and their standards, such as using facts and verifying things, aren't that high.

Therefore I love all the comments on Turkey's government being bad, while we live under the same shit.

Tell me when you can get arrested in the US for reminding your people of a well-known US historical event, and you will start having equivalence.

They have to aggressively protect their trademark, or they risk losing it. If they accept and allow 2,000 more, the next guy can come along and say their shipment of 2,000 doesn't do harm to Fluke, see they allowed SparkFun to do it. Fluke needs these cheap knock-offs out of circulation.

Used to be that you trademarked your logo and your model-name. But trademarking your colors, shapes, etc. is ridiculous.

Color has been a possible part of trademark for a long time. Trademarks are not "intellectual property." It is consumer protection law, meant to prevent knock-off products from looking too much like the desired products. Hey, my friend had this awesome multimiter, and this $15 one in front of me looks like it. I think I'll get it. The cheap multimeter caused confusion in the market, and a customer got ripped off.

In that a company's reputation can be conveyed through a trademark makes that trademark valuable, and anything of value can be sold, so people call it "property."

How is this different from Toyota AND Honda selling yellow cars?

Color isn't a defining characteristic of your average model of car. Shape is, and manufacturers get design patents for their car designs all the time.

Hold an iPhone maybe three inches from your eyes. That's about 90 degrees. It's not enough for VR. It would be like running around with blinders on.

But that doesn't seem to be the case at all. What does he expect these companies to do? Hire underqualified people just to get the numbers to match?

He expects the companies to make a promise to improve diversity and then donate generously to his bank account as a sort of modern-day indulgence.

Some Hispanic gangs are trying to cleanse their communities of blacks by terrorizing them. Check out the Azusa 13. No love there just because they are both minorities in the US.