I always read things like this on slashdot. People conveniently ignore all the innovations coming out of Microsoft. Try comparing office 2010 to office 95 sometime. Unlike Android, Windows Phone is not a copy of apple, but quite innovative. Windows 8 is bringing innovations that will change the face of computing in their implementation of Contracts. I don't think anyone has realized yet how huge a sea change the contract system is. The idea that my App can support social networks, data feeds, or other systems not even invented when I wrote it, is incredible. There have been hundreds of innovations sinc.e windows 3 that make the OS more intuitive and easier to use, as well as under the hood changes that people never see, like the back compat subsystem that actively patches old apps as they load.

In 20 years, linux has not managed to make a single desktop OS GUI I could teach my mother to use. Just because you don't see the innovations, doesn't mean they're not there.

In the late part of the second world war, the US did a study on partial starvation. The study probably couldn't be repeated nowadays due to ethical concerns, but it gave a lot of interesting data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment

Among the conclusions from the study was the confirmation that prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis as measured using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) (a standardized test administered during the experimental period). Indeed, most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression. There were extreme reactions to the psychological effects during the experiment including self-mutilation (one subject amputated three fingers of his hand with an axe, though the subject was unsure if he had done so intentionally or accidentally). Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase

Basically, it's very difficult to make diets work. If you want to lose weight, you need to increase your calorie burning, and keep your calorie consumption at reasonable levels. Restricted calorie diets will just make you food-focused, and as soon as you stop, you'll return to your genetically predisposed weight.

Actually, when the iPhone launched, it had no app-store, or third party apps at all. Both Blackberry and Windows Mobile of the time did have third party apps. It was severely limited in functionality: It didn't do turn by turn directions (My 2003 dumbphone did that), it didn't do MMS (ditto), it was 2G when all it's competitors were 3G already, It had no keyboard, the virtual keyboard was portrait only, no video recording, no stereo bluetooth, a headphone jack that pretty much only worked with it's own headphones, and pretty bad call quality.

Note these are all features it's competitors of the day already had.

What it _did_ have was a stellar music and videos interface, beautiful industrial design combined with excellent software integration, and a multi-touch capacitive screen. Apparently that was enough.

Actually, when you leave a company, for any reason, you forfeit unvested stock options. Since this article was about unvested shares, the employees who quit or were fired would lose them automatically.

Not that I know of. I've certainly never marked a candidate down for their email address, and I've never heard of anyone who has.

The problems we ask are not ones that need a lot of research, mostly they've already been researched to death. What we're trying to measure are problem solving ability, knowledge of algorithmics and data structure design (which is basically how much classical CS you've done), and ability to function and interact well in the MS workplace. None of these things by themselves will disqualify a candidate, we've hired people with no formal CS background, and we've hired from all personality types and work styles.
Talking things out, however, is quite a common occurrence. Pretty much every day someone comes into my office and starts drawing things on the whiteboard, or I will go draw things on someone else's whiteboards, even if they don't actually have much input, it's useful to talk through a problem with someone else, it lets you spot issues you wouldn't normally.

I still think you didn't get a great phone interviewer. Coding over the phone is generally a dumb idea, especially since all we want to know is "Do you have enough ability that we are willing to pay a couple grand to have you come out and do a full interview loop". Mostly phone interviews should be historical and general. (Tell me about your last project. What was the most interesting problem you solved on it? How? Did you consider other solutions? ... etc")
If you dig properly and ask for details, you can generally tell if someone is talking bull.

You had a bad interviewer then. This is not how we're trained to interview, even for the introductory phone interviews, which are generally not very technical.

Also, puzzle questions are no longer condoned. We ask questions that are appropriate for the position. They can still be tough algorithmic questions, but not ones that require some "trick" to get right. In general the questions I ask are hard, but solveable, and I don't expect candidates to get them "right". What I want to see is how they approach the problem, if they generate test cases based on the specs and then test their algorithm with them, and what they do when they discover that the algorithm might not cover all the cases.

I love reading the responses to this when I've just come from the hysteria that is microsoft requiring secure-boot UEFI. So anything done in the name of security is fine, as long as it's apple and not microsoft?

Um, according to the financial statements for FY11, the E&D business (which includes the CE/Mobile "abominations") made $1.3billion in profit on revenue of $8.9billion. This puts it around 125 on the fortune 500 in terms of profit, and about 275 in terms of just revenue, and solidly in the black. If this were any other company it would be considered a ridiculous success. (Amazon took 8 years to make a profit of $73 million, and now, at 16 years old, is making a profit of a third of the E&D division)

Heh, in my view, the dead tree version has the most insidious DRM of all. It uses analog technology to artificially degrade any digital copies you try to make. It takes many hours of work and even more hours of proofreading to convert it to a DRM free digital version. On the other hand, it takes me less than 3 seconds to convert a Kindle book to a DRM free digital version. (Which I do under the DMCA exemption for ebooks that do not allow screenreader access)

You mean something like the start screen?

So... Uh... Google currently outstrips all other tech companies in PAC contributions (money raised from employees for the purposes of lobbying). I suspect they've been in the "big boy leagues" for a while now.

So you rotate the kinect completely out of position, invalidating the audio calibration (which measures the audio reflection characteristics of your room), and then complain that the echo cancellation doesn't work perfectly? Did you even read the text that said you need to rerun calibration if you move the kinect or your speakers?

Microsoft doesn't want you as a customer. A customer is only useful if you can make money from them :)

Most kinds I believe. I don't know if he uses DVS or not.

My wife enjoys most kinds of movies (except "chick flicks" and those stupid "40 year old virgin" style comedies). The matrix did not impress her, with it's incomprehensible script and relying on a lot of visual information. She went through the whole of "Cowboys and aliens" thinking the lead character was Harrison Ford (and asked me afterwards who played the "old guy"). Unless it's a silent movie, you can get a whole bunch of information out of the audio and it can still be entertaining.

We don't watch subtitled movies, for obvious reasons.

What's the point of watching a movies like planet of the apes? You don't even know if it's real. It's easy to make computer generated apes without having real apes.

If it's good enough that you can't tell the difference, then the "reality" of it is irrelevant. Heck, if "real" were a requirement, the porn industry would have died years ago.

Just because something is not your kink does not rule it out as a kink.