Here are some things I found usefull in university:

- study of algorithms (big-O notation with case studies on sorting algorithms); This one completely changed the way I view program efficiency

- formal languages / compiler theory (grammars and parsing have never been the same for me since). This is something you will look at when you write any low-level parsing/validation: XML, functional / expression editors and even program parameters parsing in some cases.

- language classes (this was not the actual name of the course and I don't remember what it was actually), but we went through query languages (SQL), unstructured languages (BASIC), procedural and functional (C, pascal), OOP (CPP, java) and declarative (prolog). Prolog was something that made me see differently how the language changes the way you think about programming.

All that said, the academical medium has never been accused of being very practical minded, and I learned at least as much in working in programming as I learned in university. Don't dismiss one in favor of the other as each will show you things the other simply doesn't.

> So how hard is it to just automatically add the uninstall to the upgrade process? Make it optional: after completing an upgrade, ask the user whether they'd like to remove IE or keep it.

I would say "pretty hard". Not harder than some other things they have to manage, but you are looking here at functionality that affects a complex operating system. Having the system without IE for a clean install is relatively easy: you have a stable configuration made, then install it and test it.

Having an old system (with who knows what running on it) upgraded, is pretty damn complicated (you have to change more than a Gb of files without breaking dependencies); when you add removing something from it that was critical to the OS in the previous version (if we are to believe MS that is), that should increase the risk of breaking stuff quite a lot.

From the "project management point of view", you're looking here at adding at least some man-days of testing for this feature to weed out bugs from this alone (out of the top of my hat I would say some month or two in man-days, with all that's involved in the upgrade process). A competent manager on a budget will probably try to avoid adding that feature if there is no distinct need for it.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, but saying "how hard can it be" might be an over-simplification.

Other than the odd impulse purchase from J-List or ThinkGeek or something, who seriously buys anything they see in a banner ad? Almost nobody, that's who.

True. Unfortunately, almost nobody can be a significant number, for a large enough number of visitors.

Wish I had mod points ...

NEVER, EVER give slashdot a challenge you don't want fulfilled!

Chalenge:
1. RTFA!
2. ???
3. I win! (profit)

And yes, those weapons did end the war.

As far as I remember from what I read about WW2 (and I could be wrong in this), Japan was in peace talks either before or after the first atomic strike.
There is debate if the nuclear attacks were necessary, and there are some strong arguments that if the first may have been justifiable, the second definitely wasn't.

What the second attack changed, was that Japan accepted an unconditional surrender, instead of peace negotiations.

What do you base your affirmation on, when you say that those weapons ended the war?

... are like free endorsements for Firefox + adblock plus + NoScript + ... some other extensions.

The more they keep annoying users, the more popular the solution becomes.

That's a good argument, but I think you oversimplify.

The intention behind it is to stop spam, and the results of responding to these emails will lead to the responders answer less in the future (at least in theory).

While I agree with the principle that "the same energy that creates a problem cannot be used to solve it", this is not the case here.

For a similar example, there are vaccines that use a dead/weakened virus to trigger an antiviral response from the body (and you could say that sending more viruses to eliminate viruses will not eliminate viruses).