Not being a Windows guy, I am not sure if this would be practical for, say, unsigned 3rd party software with its own update mechanism. How would the system know if a given .exe is legit?

From the assumption that IRS will pay standard joe off the street rate to Microsoft, to impossibility of running XP without support, not much in this article passes the muster of common sense. Chrome and Thunderbird are still well supported and secure, and that's all IRS employees should need in terms of accessing Internet. Everything else would be in-house applications which can be secured on server side, so it should be Ok even if they still have run IE6.

As for employees that don't follow instructions, there is nothing to keep them from installing freepr0n.exe on Win7.

Dude, computer science was not developed by young people. Most algorithms were invented by college professors who were in math for many decades. As for modern programming, it has not been around long enough for us to answer this question. It is not as laborious as early days of coding 100 pages of assembler and writing every sort routine from scratch. I would say it would be doable for many 50 year olds. Weather it's a smart career move for someone looking to retire in another 10 years is a different question.

I would rather teach a coal minor to code than try to educate one of today's self entitled kids. He (and occasionally she) will have discipline, hard work culture and some guts. Bloomberg is continuing elitism of his soft drink ban episode.

But in general we should move to guaranteed wage model to avoid a good thing (getting off dirty coal) being also a bad thing for thousands of workers. People who are up for retraining will want to make more money, while others can at least tide to retirement after being in one occupation for 30 years.

But all of a sudden allegations that marriage is only the first step and the final plan is mandatory gay sex education in elementary schools do not sound so far fetched. I have and will donate to political causes others may not agree with, for example school choice. I sure hope that a donation I made as a private citizen would not some day preclude me from being CEO of a company. If Hobby Lobby doesn't have corporate religious freedom to restrict health insurance, perhaps OkCupid should be penalized for boycotting based on a political viewpoint.

Most of human beings with access to Internet are using Android. They may not be spending most of the money right at this moment, but that is going to change very fast. Or, if your platform gets superseded by competition on iOS, alternative platforms may let you live to fight another day. Remember, Facebook didn't pay 19 billion for $1/year revenues of WhatsApp.

A standard fire alarm has the same reliability as birth control though abstinence for pretty much the same reasons - it only works if used consistently all of the time. They should have left the feature on while its being fixed. It's the only thing that keeps people from ripping out the batteries.

Space program is one of the few unique things Russia can be proud of on the world stage. If it's prestige is endangered, Putin is apt to take notice. Unlike oil, space is above every country in the world and there is no inherent reason Kazakhstan has to keep its dominance for launches.

Conservatives who can not wrap their minds around win-win developments in human civilization that defy their expectations of a zero sum game.

Greatly reduced occurrences of data being disassembled as code and vice versa. Or code being disassembled into meaningless rubbish due to wrong starting offset. .EXE is no ELF binary or java class file.

To this day, most humans don't have access to clean water or safety from violence? Are you saying people have stopped working because of police departments and public water fountains? Food and shelter are already available free in US, but some people fail to locate available resources and there is huge overhead in government bureaucracy. Just making them really free without preconditions would just save everyone money.

I wish more companies would do this, and sooner too. Would your ten year old code really be a serious competition to your current efforts? It can however be priceless for learning, or even support for hobbyists who like tinkering with old gadgets.

Lets thank Microsoft for doing the right thing and hope its a sign of good things to come from their new leadership. Apple, Novell and Sun - please take notice.

Would an abundance of goods with no requirement for people to work their butts off making them would be considered a problem. What is wrong with just letting people enjoy fruit of the modern civilization without considering our collective wealth a downside? Plenty of people will still find a way to work in order to afford more exclusive stuff line posh houses, luxury vacations or whatever. Lots more would find something productive to do just out of boredom. For everyone else, we should just encourage responsible birth control in the sense that if you can not even find your own place in society you are not in the position to teach your children to do the same.

If you have your electric car and all the factories and mines involved in its manufacturing connected to solar panels, then any attempt to compare the CO2 as generated by a fossil fueled car is bogus.

If not, a small and efficient gasoline car made from materials that require minimum energy and other pollution to manufacture will most probably be more environmentally friendly overall than a leading electric car. Especially after figuring in pollution other than CO2 and the fact that only a minority of owners will be getting 100% of their battery charge from solar panels.

Unless you support Russia taking over Germany as well, I have no idea what you are trying to say.