10 years ago, Steam was a glorified auto-updater that sat there and sucked up system resources... something like 64MB of RAM when 128-512MB was standard.

Steam now takes something like 128MB of RAM in a time when 8192-16384MB of RAM is common. In addition to being an auto-updater, it also has a store, friends list, friends chat, game library, a non-puke green color scheme, and a host of other features. ...and if you ask me how I know this, I'll toss my Steam "11 year" badge at your face.

(Note: I'm guesstimating at these RAM usage numbers, and they're the numbers when you're not actively using it.)

I suggest you look up who owned the US Internet backbone in the early-mid 90s before you claim "heavy regulation" got us into this mess.

Oh, you weren't aware that the government (via the National Science Foundation) owned the US Internet backbone back in the 90s and privatization got us to where we are now?

C#'s primitive types actually aren't. They're really structs with overloads for math operators. For example, int is a System.Int32.

No, the benefit C# has here is that it only has one number representation.

Java's int is a real primitive... but as you noticed, Java's Collections don't work on primitives. So, Java has to convert it to the equivalent object.

Since Java doesn't let you do operation overloads on types, you have to convert it back to a primitive before you can most things with it.

Also, objects tend to be heavier than structs.

The full product name is "Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN" and the Ultimate MSDN subscription covers every product on MSDN. I would say "every product Microsoft makes" but sometime in the last few years they pulled all Windows versions older than XP (except 3.1 for some reason), then when XP's support expiration date came up they removed that as well.

Visual Studio Professional is currently the only Visual Studio 2013 version you can buy without an MSDN license: $499 without MSDN; $1,199 with MSDN Professional, which is missing a lot of MS's products.

While they didn't say anything about porting VS to Linux/OSX, apparently they made the Windows VS Standard edition free today. They're calling it Visual Studio Community 2013 and it's based on Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 (which was also released today).

Of course, it's still missing the features you get in the Enterprise, Test Manager, and Ultimate editions. Heck, I don't even see support for TFS mentioned, although it does support Git...

Of course, the Starter edition also limits how large the app can be and didn't allow you to use the cross-platform GUI layer. Did they mention anything about that in the new version?

And no, I'm not joking about that: Xamarin Pricing has the details... see the "Unlimited App Size" and "Xamarin.Forms" sections.

Incidentally, TF2's backstory when it came out was:
Two companies that each control half the worlds governments are secretly controlled by one person who force them to fight each other over useless objectives to keep up appearances.

It wasn't until the first Halloween update (a year after the game came out) that that any semblance of a real plot involving the Mann family and Saxton Hale came about. Which is funny since the Mann family plot started as an excuse to have a ghost on the then-new Halloween map.

The TF2 backstory is now... complicated. And entirely unnecessary to just play the game.

On a side note, TF2 lore is separated into 4 sections: Original Game (back story prior to most of the game's modes), The Australium Saga (happens between original game and the DoomsDay map), Blood Brothers (happens between the Australium Saga and the MvM game mode), and Ring of Fired (post-MvM story and likely ties into the Asteroid map currently in beta). This is ignoring the non-canon Halloween storylines.

Part of that IE is just an application built on top of the mshtml.dll rendering engine. This rendering engine is an embedded control for other applications and is also used by vendors other than Microsoft (such as Symantec).

Some vendors (such as Valve) have realized that's a fucking terrible idea and switched over to embedding other browsers (Chrome Embedded Framework in the case of Steam).

So, when you say "remove IE" do you mean just remove the executable or do you remove the DLL, breaking any applications that rely on it?

Incidentally, the embedded control is also why you should keep the version of IE up to date on Windows even if you don't use IE.

To add to this, Microsoft shipped a faulty copy of mfc42.dll with Visual C++ 6. It removed a bunch of functions.

Now, keep in mind that mfc42.dll was used by any MFC applications compiled by Visual C++ 4.2-6.x... including Netscape, Microsoft Publisher, and a number of other programs.

Oh, did I mention that MFC was the recommended way of writing Windows programs back then?

Incidentally, Microsoft started including the VC++ version number in its DLL names again after this thanks to that screwup... which they had done before (vc++ 4.1 had mfc41.dll, etc...)

That would be wrong.

AMD and Intel had a Microcode cross-licensing agreement from way back in the late 1970s.

Even if they hadn't, word on the street is that one of the requirements IBM had for using Intel processors in its personal computers was that there had to be a second source for them. Meaning that Intel had to license the designs to a second company. What company was that? AMD.

It isn't clear that they have a good way of detecting clones other than trying to rewrite the USB IDs (or other EEPROM data) as the clones immediately overwrite it while real devices don't.

Since this is a mid-term election year and election day is less than a month away, you'd think that would apply right now.

Especially since Michigan has its gubernatorial election on mid-term years.

Or in other areas. I know in the Lansing area, we still have at least 2 operational GM plants, both built since 2000. Wikipedia suggests there are two more located somewhere in the area. That's not even counting suppliers or other areas... or even manufacturers other than GM.

If you're including Tesla under "who loses out" then you also need to include General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler under "who benefits from the bill modification."

Also known as the "big 3 automakers" in the US (even though Toyota has passed Chrysler in sales).

In this case, Michigan's economy is still somewhat heavily reliant on a small set of automobile manufacturers. None of which are Tesla.