I have to install a lot of stuff as part of my job. I really try to untick all the stupid search engine/browser bar boxes, but every now and then IE is searching using Bing again rather than Google. I probably forgot to untick something, but it still pisses me off, and IMHO, it's still unfair leveraging by MS.

And some MS (I assume?) installs keep sneakily reverting me to fucking Bing. The offence is not having a monopoly - it's abusing it, ie. leveraging your other crap onto people's desktops by virtue of having dominance in the OS arena.
If you had read the fucking article, you would have seen that MS admits the breach anyway: "The company acknowledged its mistake in July, saying it was now distributing software with the browser option and also offered to extend the compliance period for an additional 15 months."

Only in this case the US government (NSA) is saying they want a new one... and Schneier is saying he doesn't think one is strictly necessary at this point.

Yes, this was a university, not a standard corporate. If you do have a single build for servers and a single build for workstations everything does get so much easier - this just doesn't fit a Uni model, because of a) necessity of people doing weird stuff and b) internal politics :)

This is utter bollocks. I used to run a large network and if you know there is a critical patch coming, you can plan for it. If you don't, and it gets released haphazardly (OOB), you're just fucked. There is no good way to get it on 200 servers and 2000 desktops in under 48 hours without causing major problems.
Nice offhand remark about Google leaking MS zero days. Got anything to back that up?
tl;dr - utter rubbish. Yes, I work in the field too and have done for over 10 years.

No, but I know where it is.

I think this is because they are an amalgamation of (literally?) every cable company in the UK. What can I say? I get the advertised speed in general, and good uptime - but it does seem to vary a lot with area from what I hear. (I'm in Bristol)

I've got 20mb/s down - ISOs for example do NOT download "instantly" as you put it. On Virgin cable (what I'm on), you can get 120mb/s - which I don't need, but the upstream bandwidth that goes with that would be welcome - takes ages for me to upload a VM to someone else.

The Arctic has lost around 3x what the Antarctic has gained - so the answer to your question is "no", no balance. http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-antarctic-sea-ice.htm

Where the fuck did he say he used the sidewalk?

I bet LD50 would. http://andrewferguson.net/2005/11/07/death-by-caffeine-calculator/

I'm sure the dead people are really glad they weren't intentionally killed. Fuck's sake.
PS. Didn't stop in '75. "In November 2000 the European Parliament invited IBFAN, UNICEF, and Nestlé ... UNICEF's legal officer commented on Nestlé's failure to bring its policies into line with the World Health Assembly Resolutions. Nestlé declined an invitation to attend". Fuck Nestle.

That's utter bullshit. NHS does urgent stuff pretty well; try going to a private hospital with a heart attack and see how quickly they get you to an NHS hospital. I have a friend who's kid is in the hospital down the road for urgent cardiac care.

It probably falls down for chronic, long term complaints like painful but not acute knees, hips, etc. But that's a whole different kettle of fish.

FUCKING YES!

Now, I've only presented with mainstream, acute conditions where everyone knows what to do - like a broken arm for example - but I've always found the NHS pretty good. The bare minimum of treatment is the right treatment; re-set it, put a cast on and then send me home. You are re right about the food though.