I've used it more than once, but not often enough that I don't have to go back and learn parts of over the next time I use it.

It just isn't very intuitive. The regex support can do awesome things, but just I can't seem to keep enough of it in my head to be productive. Or if I do, it leaks out when I'm off coding in some other language :-).

All this stuff about "is the software author pure enough" makes me sad. That is why I like the BSD (and similar) non copyleft licenses. Remember, 99% of software users are not programmers and wouldn't use the source code if they had it. Heck, most *programmers* even don't use the source code of the FOSS they consume. The GPL is catering to the tiny percentage of software users who are RMS or like RMS.

People with Asperger's just don't conform to the expectations most people have, and unless you have some background and understanding, it is just baffling, and they tend to get slotted into categories people already have, like "rude" or "difficult," when really something else is going on. My personal experience (family member) is that you keep saying to yourself or the other person "Why can't you ..?" where ? is something that fits expectations, and finally you realize the answer is that "because you have a non-typical brain wiring." Once you get that it becomes easier because you understand that this probably isn't fixable, and you're going to have to alter your expectations. But most people don't get to that level of understanding of Asperger's.

Also, we don't know just how crackable off the shelf encryption is. More than you'd think, probably. The NSA is not going to tell you just how good they are at reading encrypted material but they employ some of the best cryptographers on the planet, so their capabilities are not to be underestimated.

I think the issue is, as the submitter said, they don't control from where the end user downloads the product. They could get it from anywhere and those 3rd-party sites don't put up any kind of disclaimer. Maybe you can put it in bold letters in the installer, but many users don't read their EULA anyway, and you can't rely on the download site.

Oracle has its issues, to be sure, but they have been fairly careful about doing acquisitions (despite doing a lot of them), and have a better track record than Hp of keeping the businesses they bought alive and making profits (not to say that they've never had misses).

I'm sure that they have good security technology and procedures.
But you are only as strong as your weakest link. And any large and complex system has bugs and vulnerabilities, whether you are talking about off the shelf software such as Linux & Apache, or custom software. And even if the endpoint software is bulletproof, the network may not be. So they shouldn't brag about being uncrackable. They probably aren't.

Word is so complex, most users don't even touch most of its features. And making the UI customizable, as a way of dealing with complexity, does not improve matters - it just confuses users even more. That said, it could be (and has been) worse: if you used it in the 80s, when it was a poor competitor to WordPerfect, you are glad you don't have *that* to deal with anymore.

SSL involves more than just usage of the RSA algorithm (and doesn't necessarily depend on that algorithm).

In my experience developer and software engineer are synonymous. Some organizations will call a person creating or modifying software a Developer and some will call him/her an Engineer. Architect tends to imply you are spending most of your time designing systems or reviewing others' designs, although higher-level software engineers do quite a bit of that too.

I remember at one job I had to call up HR once and ask them what my title was. But it did gradually dawn on me that you don't want to be a title step lower than people who are equally or less skilled than you are. It does affect how others see you in the company and ultimately may affect your salary and promotion prospects, although I don't believe my own career has been derailed much by not caring.

if it were not literally true, in this case.

No, not any more. When I was a young programmer, you could disappear into an office and just code all day. But one thing that has happened in the last couple of decades is that coding has become much more collaborative. Even if you are not doing extreme programming, with another coder practically in your lap, test-driven development, continuous integration and methodologies like Scrum mean that you are spending a lot of your day with QA and other devs. Break something and you have 20 guys on your back to fix it, stat. Put in some nifty but unorthodox code and then get it reviewed out of the product. I'm sure there are lots of people who thrive in that environment, and it does tend to improve the quality level of the software, but it means that you don't get to fly solo anymore, and that is what drove a lot of introvert/geek types into programming in the first place. It's also a bit of a shift if you haven't grown up as a dev in the new world, although I've been able to deal with it.

2010 is ages ago in this business.

Apple has been making huge money in the other end of the market, high-end smartphones. That is a much higher margin business and still growing. Nokia has been losing market share, to Samsung among others. Also, as others have noted, they are deep in bed with Microsoft already, so that is another reason for Apple to pass.