Let me think a moment what to reply....

They are just holding them the wrong way...

It's difficult to tell how much of the content and prose style is down to Mlodinow, but the book fell between two stools - trying to be light and fun to attract non-specialists and then being close to incomprehensible (and sloppy) in some of the deep-dive sections. The Standard Model is better explained in Wikipedia!
It felt as though the two were indeed grasping at straws and I was left unconvinced about M-theory. The idea that "any universe is possible with any set of laws" seems a little trite without more meat to their argument and smacks of an anything-goes cultural relativism (no pun intended), however sincere their commitment to, and explanation of, the strong anthropic principle: "the laws we have are that way because they are the laws of the universe that we are in". I really did expect better than that.

No thanks. If I need to print something, what's wrong with hitting the "print" control within any application? HP's misguided belied that users want to enter some long-term love affair with their utilities is as misguided as Adobe's....do your job (print, show document, etc) and then get the f**k off the device's limited resources....

In any (decent) corporate IT infrastructure (in the European Union at least), just because you are a systems admin or e-mail/collaboration/other admin, does not mean that you can access individual user acoounts - the most you are allowed is, at the request of the user, to reset a password or, at the request of a competent authority, change an account type.
Isn't it time online services were required to disclose who and how your account is accessed rather than the bland catch-all "we respect your privacy" bollocks?

Richard Dawkins devotes a whole chapter to exactly this problem in his "Unweaving the Rainbow". It comes down to understanding the statistical probability of a chance match for the particular test method - of which there are many and some are just bad. Until lawyers can articulate this in court, juries will have problems...

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Ramez Elmasri & Shamkant Navathe's "Fundamentals of Database Systems". It is a weighty academic tome but it is thorough and likely to rid you of many bad design habits. I have many gripes with it, but principally - as far as your issues are concerned - that it should have dealt with normalisation at an earlier stage and pulled the whole issue more clearly out from the wider discussion on functional dependencies.

Written Declarations in the European Parliament have no weight whatsoever, except as a possible litmus test of Members interest.
Such a declaration has to be signed by a majority of the Members for it to be valid (very few manage this) and even then all they can do is propose that the European Commission take some action - they have no force or mandate whatsover - it is more like a non-binding petition of members, and favoured by Members and Groups with little or no political clout within the institution.
To label the lead story as "EU To Monitor All Internet Searches" is FUD straight from Journalism 101, week 1...

Surely the difference can be accounted for by all those Higg's bosuns that we just know are floating around out there?

We've been using Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) since its launch last year. All the advantages of managing our own infrastructure without any of the disadvantages of actually managing it.
For mail, the synchronisation between the Exchange server and Outlook clients using AJAX is simply the best for in office, online and on the road, offline mail management from different client machines.
The help and support is 24/7 with impressive turnaround of incidents.

"I believe in standards, so let's use mine" seems to be the call from Google here.
Rather than accepting that there are whole eco-systems of standards development in which everybody plays according to a set of groundrules, Google's attitude refelcts a continued pomposity that they are better than anyone else and if you don't agree, tough shit, we'll do it anyway.
Evolution theory should teach them that it's not about the survival of the fittest or strongest - but survival of the most adaptable.
If they really wanted to achieve the objective of their gamed and controlled Open Handset Alliance, they would have brought their issues and work to an existing forum, consortium and standards body: they would risk not being able to control the outcome; but gain a wealth of input and fresh ideas from the community - that is surely the real spirit in which Open Source initiatives flourish.
. So, Google - do you support open standards or do just want to get your own way the whole time?

I was recently asked for a copy of a paper (sic!) that I wrote and presented seven years ago for the European Parliament on this problem, and have decided to make it more freely available: you can download "In Praise of paper" at http://www.pensive.eu/file/65.ppsx

...I have nothing to worry about, it doesn't affect me...
With apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller

There is nothing objectionable about a public authority insisting that all users respect the chosen technology platform. In any other area except technology, the insistence of a group of users to do what they damned well pleased, would be grounds for dismissal - "No, I'm gonna write everything in gold ink on black paper and send messages on heart shaped post-it notes". Even in other aspects of technology use, such an attitude would be unacceptable - " I don't give a fuck about your 11 by 8in paper formats, I'm gonna print everything on A3 and insist on having a printer and supplies to back up my 'right'. Screw you". No, dear user - screw you. If you don't like the idea of belonging to an organisation, with organisational policies and rules, go and work somewhere where you can spread your wings and exercise your desired freedom...