This is what lawyers do when they're either on retainer or an employee of a big company: justify their existence with litigation and copyright enforcement.

My thoughts exactly. What's the use case for a voting machine? I think the Ruby on Rails blog demo had more fields than a typical vote screen.

At least there's a log file. B-b-but iStuff just works! Umm, no, sometimes it doesn't... I guess I'll just swipe the on/off button for the 15th time, see if that makes a difference.

Yes, or some idiot ARP spoofing the gateway (if the AP doesn't provide client isolation).

If you play any kind of tactical shooter, or turn-based/real-time strategy, you're going to want to play it on a computer. There's just no comparison to a proper keyboard and mouse setup for more-involved, complex games.

One word (well, kind of two): RemoteApps.

This. We can't wait for the Surface so we can deploy RemoteApp (Remote Desktop Services, i.e. Terminal Server) versions of our legacy applications.

All the Executive types see these Apple iPad ads where Doctors are manipulating ultrasounds, or sales guys showing off an amazing PowerPoint deck and we're the ones who have to bring them back down to earth with, "well, it doesn't really work like that because your ERP system doesn't have a native iPhone app".

... and the impending death of Windows/PC as an open, general-computing platform by the hands of Microsoft. He didn't mention tablets once in his tweets.

Slashdot needs an edit feature. You're right. My bad. Had a different train of thought originally.

Microsoft Windows native/legacy applications -- a massive massive software ecosystem unparalleled by any other OS/platform (besides the Web perhaps?) -- is the reason why they can never turn their backs on it. Its the key to their power, but with power comes a great responsibilit^H^H^H burden.

They will try, but at the end of the day, the Microsoft walled garden will always have the gate left open.

Apple has a walled garden. That's it. Android does too. Microsoft has a walled garden, but if you have an x86 tablet, you can plant petunias and begonias if you want in there. That seems like an improvement to me. And it's likely a technical reason too: all those Windows-native calls/hooks that your typical Windows-compatible applications require likely do not exist on the ARM version of Windows 8 (I'm not a Windows programmer/guru, so I'm speculating here, but seems likely no?).

Maybe they left the live CD in the CD tray.

You know bock is just a type of beer, like a lager, ale, or stout right? And yes, there are cans.

I'm in Canada and I can't think of a brand of beer, domestic, premium, or imported that doesn't come in can as well as bottles. It might not be stocked at every Beer Store or LCBO (Liquor Store), however.

...paying to upgrade wouldn't be painful, but actually welcomed.

Just the other day we setup a client with a delegate mailbox so she had two inboxes in her Outlook profile. Problem is, the pop-up notification only works with her primary inbox, not the other one. There are a bunch of hacks out there using VBScript and Win32 pop-ups, but they're nothing like the Outlook one (can't click on message, for example).

Instead, Microsoft puts their money behind such memorable hits like, "Where'd My Message Headers Go?". In Outlook 2003, you could right-click on the message and go to Properties. In Outlook 2007, it was right-click, Options, now it's under the abysmal Home Button thingy > Options, and you have to have the message opened to do. I'm sure some fanboi is going to jump on here and tell me of some other way to open it, but the point is, I don't want to learn new ways to do the same thing; we spend enough time in IT learning new technologies that UI distractions like Microsoft fobs off on us are unwelcome and counterproductive.