No. Windows handles DST rules in the registry, so it's perfectly capable of date-dependent DST rule handling. The article discusses those recommendations as a way to avoid problems caused by issues with Outlook and Exchange 2003, both of which have their own unique ways of handling TZ changes (basically, they fail to store TZ information with dates, so TZ changes screw up the display of appointments). The problems were largely addressed in Outlook and Exchange 2007 and completely fixed in the 2010 versions, which keep the appointments in GMT-plus-offset format.

There's legitimate complaints you can have with the way Windows handles TZ changes -- personally, I'm not a fan of having to install TZ patches from Windows Update and I really dislike how Windows keeps the RTC in local time instead of GMT -- but don't blame it for the failings of antiquated and soon unsupported Office programs.

Honestly, I've not found that to be the case. In most cases, you can disable the integration drivers in the guest, then move the VM to the new virtualization platform and start it back up. You may need to do a startup repair or in-place upgrade on an older version of Windows; Windows 7 (2008 R2) and 8 (2012), however, are fairly resilient.

The smoothest way to do it, though, if you've got the time, is to use the new platform's P2V tool to create a new virtualized VM based on the old one. This is how I've moved guests from Virtual Iron and Oracle VM to Hyper-V. In general, I'd say this is probably the smoothest way to move a VM running any OS to any other hypervisor, as it gives you a backup copy on the old hypervisor if needed and ensures that any special drivers are injected for the first startup.

There's lot Microsoft could do to make solid progress, starting, naturally, with getting rid of Steve Ballmer.

* Subordinate the desktop to the Modern interface. Give each program that isn't written for Modern its own virtual desktop and make them act like Modern apps in the charm bar, SideView, and the like. This whole "desktop is desktop, Modern is Modern" nonsense has got to go.
* Make a Modern version of Office.
* Remove the "Windows Store apps only" restriction on ARM so it can benefit from backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility is the major selling point of Windows (enterprise management is the other).
* Start selling Windows to ARM device manufacturers in much the same way DOS was sold to the various 8 and 16 bit computer manufacturers. Go one step further and let people buy copies of Windows for ARM at a reasonable price to put on their own devices.
* Consider selling Windows as a subscription product, similar to Office Home Premium.
* Stop changing the API to chase your competitors. WinRT is a pain for everyone on the client side and doesn't really help drive devs to the platform. Instead, seeing JavaScript (of all things!) as one of the "key" platforms for Modern on MSDN drives away other developers. Likewise, telling WPF, WinForms, and Silverlight developers that much of what they know is useless (because WinRT is /just different enough/ to be incompatible with all of these) isn't the best way to make friends with developers.
* Correct your internal struggles by not having groups fighting with each other. If this means divesting business units or firing managers, so be it.
* Stop hiring H1B consultants and engaging in weird hiring practices, like "Interview 2.0" questions and direct out of college hires. Find the best developers for your own organization and hold on to them, rather than grinding down fresh graduates. Your developer tools group seems to understand this.

It can with a simple rule: a law is, prima facie, a violation of the separation of church and state when the only articulable purpose of the law is religious in nature. For a law to not run afoul of this, it has to have some purpose to society that isn't derived from religious principles. That doesn't mean that it can't have a purpose derived from such principles, only that that can't be the only purpose. For instance, most religions prohibit the killing of other people, but preventing murder has non-religious purpose as well. An example of a law that would run afoul of the rule would be a dictate that attempts to convert people from one religion to another is punishable by death. It has no articulable secular purpose, and therefore wouldn't be permitted. (A more recent and U.S.-specific example of a law with no articulable secular purpose is the banning of civil unions with the same rights and benefits as marriages.)

The reason why this rule works in the U.S., at any rate, is because a law that only has a religious purpose is either an establishment of religion (by granting extra rights to a religious group) or an impediment to its free exercise (by removing rights from those who follow a different religion or none at all, which is in itself a religion in this view).