Yes, IBM was still sort of stuck thinking the PC was for serious corporate use. Maybe something to distract the executives while the actual workers were interacting with the mainframes (ie, real computers). So their mindset just didn't see the PC as a cheap system for home or small business or independent developers.

I don't think the Office suite was a killer app. Initially many users hated Word especially for being inferior to what was already there, and Excel took off first on the Macintosh and Lotus 1-2-3 was still the king on the PC. It was a slower route to dominance that came from marketing the tools together rather than separately.

Windows itself really did not have a killer app, what really got it kickstarted and popular was that Microsoft made those OEM deals with the same vendors that they had DOS OEM deals with. The PC vendors got huge discounts on DOS and Windows as long as they bundled it with every PC they sold. Thus the average user got DOS and Windows preinstalled. The user who wanted OS/2 often installed it onto a machine that already had Windows. Except for the first couple of years of OS/2 though, but in that case most business people able to spend that high price on an OS for a toy computer were perfectly happy just to be on DOS by itself, or with a 3270 terminal, or a cheaper PC GUI.

This is not a new push. During the cold war there was also a panic to get more kids into science and math, because we were deathly afraid that the commies were going to win. And there was actually money to actually do something about it, we built a lot of new classrooms, bought scientific lab equipment for schools, and so forth. We were willing to spend money to win that cold war. Today though the money is dried up, we're spending more than we take in from taxes on actual wars that we don't want to be in so there's none left to actually spend on STEM.

But even though we had this huge science push during the cold war, we still have people taking humanities classes, we still taught all sorts of subjects in elementary and high schools (not teaching to the test), and things did not become lopsided with more science majors than everyone else. We still had plenty of English majors.

It's more cross platform too. If you're using Linux as your back end for example then .NET is a non-starter whereas Java is widely used in very large applications. Yes, Oracle purchased Java and locked it down more, but it had already made itself entrenched in many systems. Whereas .NET is locked down even tighter and essentially exists only on Windows, with a brief nod to mono for being an almost-but-not-there-yet solution.

I think one reason for Microsoft trying to make this open source is because they can see how the winds are blowing, with the mass market moving away from PCs and towards smaller phones or tablets, so they want to make more inroads into the backoffice server market.

Sounds about right. JavaScript was originally just going to control some minor browser behavior; moving windows around, etc. So it didn't need to be efficient or well thought out. Then it got extended and overused so much that it slowed down computers so noticeably that it caught the attention of everyone.

So if the choice is between a badly designed language versus a good language, I'll take the good language. Barring that, if the choice is between the badly designed language that slows down my computer by a decade and having more static HTML pages, I'll gladly take the static pages (and thus noscript is born).

No, .NET is not the best of the only crappy solutions. However it is the solution that is widely used. It's a world where Windows is seen as essentially the only platform, and where what Microsoft does rather than what Microsoft says is the true API. Developers (developers, developers) are trained to use .NET as their first and last option, and they're being told loudly and clearly (and incorrectly) that .NET is highly portable. It's portable yes, but in a world where portability means that it can run on more than one Windows version.

Microsoft Killed My Pappy is still a good reason to be mad. As in Microsoft has never apologized for or admitted to wrong doing. So why trust them? Sure the conspiracy theories may be far fetched but why welcome with open arms someone who's unrepentent? Trust needs to be earned.

Oh ya, because we know he was born on Mars and he's been denying it all his life. Denial is the best evidence of a lie. The whole Kenya thing is just a smokescreen to entrap the ignorant who don't know the Mars story.

I'm having difficulty imagining how this happened. The forgot to "check" autofill, or did the article goof and mean "uncheck" autofill? And what would autofill do anywa? I use Outlook but I have no autofill that I see. Will it fill in a random list of addresses if you forget to put anything in the "To:" field?

Actually, that theory makes the most sense...

For information, their car did ram a police vehicle that was blocking their entrance, presumably intentionally. This was not just some people intending a humorous protest in drag up at the NSA steps.

It is political though, since it's all about encouraging the voters.

And because the democrats supported this push for equal rights, the intolerant segments of the south responded by flipping in very short time over to the republicans. A few could not even bear this indignity and instead created a third segregationist party, the Dixiecrats, but in short order they became republican too. Soon the relative newcomers controlled the party, which previously was a very pro-business and pro-industry party with little in common with southern interests. This is very much analogous to the magnetic poles flipping.

I find it absolutely ironic that today they love to call themselves the "Party of Lincoln" when for a century the south hated the republicans with a passion. Their famed leaders like Lincoln or Eisenhower have nothing in common with the current party. Even Reagan would be unlikely to be elected today because he'd be seen as too liberal, too pro-tax, and he had too many friends who were democrats. Nixon though they like to distance themselves from, but he's the man who caused the poles to flip with his southern strategy.

There are a few distinct differences between that older bills and this new one, even though the title is somewhat similar.

First, the law applies to for-profit businesses. And religious beliefs can be used as a defense in any private lawsuit. This clause was added because a similar New Mexico law lost a legal challenge for those reasons. The federal law does not have this clause. The original federal law and most of the state laws that copied it, are based upon keeping the government from interfering with expression of religious views (like muslim inmates being allowed to keep beards).

NExt, the law applies to protections of practices whether or not compelled by a system of religious belief. That is, very fringe practices not justified by the religion are under the protection here. So even if your church has no divinely inspired scriptures telling you to not sell products to gay people, you can still claim that you are protected by this law. Thus the Church of Cannabis has opened in Indiana, with the use of cannabis being a part of their beliefs, using this law as their basis to exist legally.

The federal law at the time was a relatively benign law, meant to protect things like feeding the homeless in parks. Since then the law has been interpreted differently by several courts and many of the people originally supporting the law in congress have backed away from it. Having a similar title does not make two laws the same thing.

No Jesus did not get involved with politics. But he has associated with known sinners even though it created a scandal amongst the religious leaders of the day. The thing is that the religious leaders can not separate the difference between accepting someone as a person and accepting the sins of those persons, and this is exacerbated in the the dividing line between religious belief and political belief is being blurred by many of these leaders.