You're expected to go on the certification treadmill, and keep getting the latest and greatest in-demand certifications so that recruiters and HR can more easily filter candidates out of job searches.

How is Cisco going to feed their families if we don't all buy new books and study aids for the new version of a certification? (or insert a different color of the broken window fallacy)

Not necessarily profitable to the applicant though.

Because it's Read-Only Memory.

(I am old enough to remember using UV lamps on EPROM, but the programming voltage was much higher than the operating voltage, so you had to take them out of the socket before programming them)

I shouldn't be writing compilers either, but I do that too.

RC4 and TEA are the only algorithms I have memorized, everything else I have to look up because they are so complicated. For being trivial to implement (at least in software), RC4 lasted quite a while.

I already have if you would browse my comment history, AC. Emphasis on the C.

Famous last words.

"I'd like to have a powerful sedative"

Or we should all buy solar panels now while they are still useful.

So like sharecropping?

For me, it's because the brand name is poison. I wouldn't even look at Windows Mobile when it came out, after the horrible Windows CE devices and ugly desktop experiences I've had. By the time I realized that Windows Phone is a pretty decent platform, I was already well established with Android in my household.

The think that gave Microsoft power, that people tend to stick with one platform once they've invested time and money into it, is now working against them. It's pretty tough to get people to switch from iOS and Android. All your email, messaging, apps, etc are tied to a particular phone OS, and your phone is typically tied to a 2 year contract.

No idea how MS can pull out of this one. I've mostly chalked it up that the sun is setting on the Microsoft empire, and someone new is going to take over the 2020's. Probably Google, but I don't really know for sure. (crystal ball is in the shop)

I'm skeptical that the executives and HR staff of Microsoft is able to identify the "garbage" from the treasure. More than likely they randomly let go thousands of good people. An attempt at cutting the fat turned into cutting the muscle and bone. I'm not saying that Microsoft should be able to sustain an infinite number of employees forever, I'm only pointing out that the layoffs are not a positive thing and Microsoft is not suddenly going to be on the rise now that they are [theoretically] rid of the dead weight.

I'd still use Firefox. I would probably continue to use it until I couldn't access my credit card website to pay my bills.

Maybe I'm not a very imaginative guy, but it feels like in the last decade that we've moved through most of the growing pains and going forward we'll only have to deal with a slowly evolving web. (or maybe that's the optimist in me)

I still have Presto-based Opera installed on a few systems (Mac and Linux), I can't imagine much practical use for supporting Opera 12 anymore. It think I keep it around for nostalgia more than anything. I do test against it, but for failures I might not do much other than file a bug against my project and let it stagnate just to see if anyone else even cares. (they won't)

They're working on the details for that one, the legislator seems OK with it, but as long as the drones aren't pointed at them.

You realize that the Wise and Venerable Legislators are OK with drone strikes against foreign countries right?