Remember kids, MSIE is _NOT_ a "web browser". It is a part of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has said so in court. Therefore, when you want to go on-line, be sure and use a "web browser" such as Chrome(Win/Mac/Linux/etc), Firefox(Win/Mac/Linux/etc), Safari(Mac/Win/iOS), or even Opera(Win/Mac/Linux/iOS).

When people ask you why you hate IE (and of course Microsoft by extension), be sure to have this fact handy and correct them about referring to IE as being a "web browser". After all, if it really was you could:

keep more than one version installed at a time
install different versions for different user account
and of course... easily uninstall it.

I would have expected he'd fucked up the camera just like he fucked up his movies with "improvements"...

Same goes for the us up in the "Silicon Forest". Also, it's so pervasive that there's also no room for snobbery up here because of it. Walk into a high end furniture store, luxury car lot, or browse a jewelry counter and they have to assume it's completely possible you're knocking down $100K+ per year from Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Intel and they'd better kiss your t-shirt & jeans wearing ass. Even if you're not in tech, West Coast Casual is baked into the culture and meritocracy rules.

It's not the East Coast: nobody gives a fuck who blew your grandfather while he was on the Mayflower and we could care less what rich/famous/political people your're 1 degree away from.

I'm sure they could have done just as well with a traditional Waterfall Quadruped Robot.
They should have at least looked into Software Factory Quadruped Robots , or Rational Unified Process Quadruped Robots.
This was all just another attempt by Agile consultants to get into the robotics filed!

P.S. Slashdot - Yes. This is a sarcastic joke mocking Agile software detractors:)

Every single statement referenced the "software vendor". Every software vendor's goal is to lock you in to not thinking and just buying your way out of any problem. Saying you have technology skills because you know some software from some vendor is like saying you can play guitar since you've got such high scores on the XBOX/PS3/Wii for Rock Band. Even if you know something from that "software vendor" inside & out, you don't know shit unless you understand the fundamentals under the hood of what the toolset is doing. That's why so many Windows "Administrators" are idiots - unlike the harsh world of *NIX, they don't (think they) need to understand what's going on under the surface. Just point & drool.

Another homebrewer here,
      Parent is spot on. As soon as you learn what goes on for quality & consistency control, you MUST respect the technical skill & control it takes to brew like that. The irony is that they put so much effort and skill into producing a bland product which I honestly won't drink - in fact, it's why for years I thought I didn't even LIKE beer. Pardon my hipster-BS, but it's micro-brew, home-brew or no brew. Sad that the American public largely doesn't know or doesn't care.

Oh well. Looking forward to my keg of milk stout floating so I can convert my keezer into a fermentation chamber for a "big" summer cider/ale run. 10 gallons of cider and 10 gallons of beer will likely be kicking off in a couple of weeks:)

These are two things that the elderly stereotypically are not accustomed to and have not had as a constant requirement throughout their lives. I suspect this will be recognized as a generational issue. The elderly of tomorrow who are today's Gen-X, Gen-Y & Millennial adults will not have this problem. We've been born into a culture that will mow you down if you don't keep yourself up to date.

Weather or not the company (or the developer) thinks the developer NEEDS an extra monitor is not the point. The fact that they have such an unprofessional, blatant disrespect for him or any other employee that they simply take equipment from them is a strong signal of a toxic work environment. The bare minimum of professional courtesy would have been to ask before taking. As a side note, if they can't pay $200 for a spare monitor; the ship is already sinking - get off the boat now!

"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert

Seems like this would be the business man's Karma coming back to bite him in the ass..

In all honesty, I'm mostly being a joking smart-ass about this. The sentiment towards the company who wants to do this work however...

I don't think I could honestly take the work myself...

Do this as ABSOLUTELY CHEAPLY AS POSSIBLE with regard to off-shore labor cost!!! Any business person stupid enough to do this only sees costs, not quality. This will help fail fast and dramatically, since as the saying goes: "Good work aint' cheap, & cheap work ain't good". Anyone in the offshore economy who has good skills won't be working at the cheapest rates. Offshoring any type of knowledge work is only about saving cost at the risk of sacrificing quality and dedication to the work for both the individual and the company. The more business people get burned by this, the quicker at least some of them will learn that this practice is unsustainable and hazardous to future business plans, the local economy, and job prospects of the future.

Take the money and run:) Give them the tools to cover all the basics that a business person would understand. Just enough to run at a sub-standard operational level that might work under the heroic efforts of local labor, but fail miserably given the infrastructure, cultural differences, and adversarial role of contract negotiations (e.g. contractor does what's in contractor's best interest because he's not a long-term employee). Also, do this slowly so as to extract as much money as possible. When this fails, be there to offer a "fix" with mix of on-shore help. When things improve dramatically, slowly shed the contract offshore labor or relegate it to menial crap work the local labor force doesn't want to deal with. We've been doing this rather successfully in the software world for a decade now:)

Yep. It's real nice for Microsoft to be able to hold the monopoly gun to a hardware vendor's head and say, "You can support _OUR_ operating system at _YOUR_ cost, on _OUR_ schedule, regardless of how difficult it is or you can simply fuck off and die. Your choice." It's too bad Linux, BSD or any other OS on the planet can't have a way of doing the same thing. Don't blame Linux, blame the hardware manufacturer and vote your dollars. It's the only power we as consumers have.

I've been voting my dollars as best I can for years: no Linux support? No sale.

I'm sorry you've given up on your convictions. But you know, it's never too late to change your mind and decide to live your life. For starters, why not back off the "Diagnosis Murder" or at least try to watch only what you bother to record on your DVR. Then, when TV time is done, pick up something new & interesting to learn in the open source world. Spend some time at your local Linux Users Group. Have you revised your "short list" of reasons why Microsoft are a bunch of disgusting assholes? You may not be a gamer, but perhaps your friends & families deserve to know that (just like their software products), Microsoft also cranks out garbage hardware with 40%+ failure rates (see http://www.destructoid.com/new-survey-puts-xbox-360-failure-rate-at-42--171088.phtml). Give the history lessons of Stack Inc., "cutting off Netscape's air supply", the anti-trust case and the fact that before Outlook the whole notion of a virus being spread in an E-Mail as *LITERALLY* an old Internet joke.

I'm approaching 40 and I've been a software developer for almost 14 years now & fighting and hating Microsoft since I first laid my hands on an MCC Interim Linux distro on six 3.5" floppies in 1993 as I learned that there was better, more secure & more capable software in the world than DOS. I've learned a lot, built a career, and I'm not about to give Microsoft a pass to pollute the world with more crap, vicious business tricks & closed "standards" as they always have just because I'm starting to get tired.

"Old" is a state of mind, and once you decide to stop growing and learning you're going to be stuck there...