... how badly do you need this job?

First, remind the managers that there's a real legal liability issue at stake. This company that you're working for is literally 1 disgruntled employee away from a BSA audit, a lawsuit, and all sorts of court-imposed damages. If your managers still don't realize that they're sitting on a powder keg, then that's their business and you have to decided whether you want to be a part of this.

I'd keep working there and keep steering the company toward free alternatives. Why are you using Winzip, for example, when 7zip is not only free, but so much better? But by staying there and knowing about this, you're complicit it all of this.

The number of people who use Windows but loath it could be twice the number of total number Linux users combined, and it would still be less than 5% of number of people who use Windows. There are not that many people who hate Windows, the vast majority of windows users love it, especially XP and even Vista now that they've got most of the bugs ironed out.

Sorry, I just don't think that this is at all true. In my circle of friends, acquaintances, and co-workers I know of maybe a couple of people who could say that they love Windows with a straight face. Most people I know tolerate it or kind of like it but admit that using it makes them feel kind of stupid because they think that Windows' brittleness and unpredictable behavior is somehow their fault. And I don't know anyone who loves Vista. A couple of people (the same couple) don't mind it. But 'love it'?

There will never be an open source replacement for Windows, if anything replaces it it will be a closed-source OS like OSX, because programming the bits that make Windows easy to use and acceptable to a large user base are the very bits that nobody likes to write. They are, in fact, a pain in the ass to write and there is no real sense of accomplishment. That is why GUIs in Linux are horrible. Not just bad, but horrible. The rare GUI that is easy to use is a pleasant surprise.

I agree 100%, and it gets even worse for open-source, because there's a high cost associated with losing access to Windows software and Windows-specific hardware drivers, and in most peoples' minds there are no costs associated with staying with Windows.

...I'm not bothered at all by the existence of a used games market - I buy used games myself, otherwise I'll typically wait for the 'greatest hits' version to come out at $30. I'm married with kids now and I just can't afford to play the latest and the greatest games at full $60 retail.

What I DO have a problem with is that the market for used games is so grossly inefficient that the *ssholes at GameStop and EB are raking in so much money on it! Buy a used game from a kid at $5, resell it to his friend for $55 - WTF?! That's a damn good racket if you can find it. While I'm ambivalent about digital game distribution in general, thinking about putting sleazy retailers like GameStop would be nice...

I disagree. I think Symbian development is a nightmare, and I think that this is evidence that Nokia really doesn't "get it" when it comes to software.

1) How many of those owners of those 300m+ devices have ever paid Handago et. al. for an app? I'm guessing probably something comparable to the number of people using Android right now. That's called 'attachment rate' and it's very low on Symbian, especially compared to iPhone.

2) Symbian Signed. Come on, does it really have to be this hard/expensive? No, it doesn't.

3) Android and IPhone both do web development a lot better than Symbian.

4) Adobe Flash Lite is irrelevant. The only thing Flash is good for is playing back Flash video and Flash Lite can't do that. The rest is "Punch the Monkey" and other banner ads.

5) Symbian Signed.

6) AIKON/UIKON is a f*ing freak-show, and is worse than even Winmo development. I can't count how many stupid ways there are to lose track of resources and system-allocated memory in that mess.

7) Did I mention Symbian Signed?

Visual Studio has supported regex substitution for quite a while, including in Express. Under the Find and Replace dialog, expand the "Find Options" and tick "Use" (with regular expressions selected in the combo box). It works in a similar way for Replace in Files.

...except that the guys who implemented the regex engine for the Visual Studio search and replace never quite figured out the whole DFA/NFA thing, and every third or fourth time you use it it gets stuck on a recursive match and hangs all of Visual Studio. I've never had that happen with the one in Eclipse.

Do you really believe this?

Yes. Look inside an ipod. The battery sits right on a PCB and flush up against the plastic case. If it were removable, they'd have to have another section of plastic separating the battery and the PCB. 2mm easy.

Actually, it is anti-competitive

No one said that it wasn't. But there are also good technical reasons why you might not want a user replaceable battery. Why the false dichotomy?

Besides, the 2 year cost of an iphone with service is around ~$1600. There are plenty of documented and widely publicized cases of badly-made off-brand lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries exploding during use, sometimes with tragic, even fatal, results. You can gamble with your health and your life if you like. I'll pay for a genuine Apple battery that increases my TCO by about 5%, and I'll live without worrying about my iphone exploding in my pocket.