The problem is apathy, not incompetence. The site (or more accurately, the middleware powering the site) was probably built for IE5/6, which was not at all uncommon ten years ago when "everyone" (not literally, but I know you know what I mean) had IE. The software did the job for so long that the people in government let it run and turned a deaf ear to the distress it caused for constituents. It's easier to tell constituents to go find IE9 than to upgrade the system. They also fall into the "the perfect is the enemy of the good" trap, telling themselves that they don't need to just fix the IE problem, but they need to totally modernize the whole system including the backend and business process.

If the government had a magic button that could fix the problem, they probably would have pressed it. But no such button exists (unless you count injecting the X-UA-compatible tag), and modernizing the system is a lot more cost and effort than that.

Father? no. Godfather? sure why not.

also "They have to use a dongle for USB ports!!... That's a $79 accessory!!!"

A lot of mechanical keyboards lack a numeric keypad. This probably saves them money, but has the side-effect of making the keyboard more mouse-friendly which is easier on your shoulders (get it? "side-effect" ha ha).

I like that about mechanical keyboards. But many people would rather have the numpad.

In technology you have an RFC published by a body whose authority supported by consensus. Then when you implement that technology, you can choose to be as compliant with RFC as you want. English teachers tend to see things as right vs. wrong, while in technology it's compliant vs. noncompliant, strict vs. loose/flexible. Loose compliance is often beneficial - how many people you know actually type the trailing dot on all of their FQDN's (e.g. http://slashdot.org./story)? The RFC says you're supposed to, but people rarely except when editing DNS records. Do we say that everyone is "wrong", or just noncompliant with RFC?

I find the technology model far less judgmental.

Swiss movement was old technology which should have died out a long time ago. Quartz was superior in every way.

The real problem I see with all watches (including Apple's watches) is that they're still way too bulky. It's hard to find a mass-produced watch less than 5mm thick.

Perhaps... I just got off the phone with them and they're mailing me a check to reimburse me for a MBP that I had repaired through an Apple Store last year.

Dell previously sold computers preinstalled with Linux at higher prices than identical hardware preinstalled with Windows. Their continuous parade of sales and promo codes only applied to Windows configurations, making Linux usually more expensive.

And how would this affect landline telephone service offered by Time Warner and Comcast? Would the law force them to prioritize my Vonage traffic?

Exactly. Ask your optometrist for one Rx optimized for computer monitor use, and another Rx for general use. Or, take your existing Rx and add +0.50 or +1.00 diopter to each eye to make a pair of computer goggles. Vision-correction is an approximation anyway.

Nothing survives. Not even bacteria.

Same situation. If running Exchange, for example, configure Comcast's SMTP as a smarthost.

I doubt anyone working at AT&T actually had a sinister plan to advertise a $200 promo and offer only $100.

At these big companies it's more likely due to corporate disorganization, with one department not knowing what the other department is doing. The promotions are developed by marketing geniuses, who tell the IT people to put them into the computer, then at point-of-sale they're supposed to be able to locate the promotion in the computer. That fails, so then you call customer-service where the people have even less clue what's going on so they refer you to go back the store where someone more knowledgeable can help you out.

It's also a problem of over-marketing as much as disorganization. Twenty years ago, you could open up a 1994 phone book and on the 3rd page would be a list of local telephone plans and prices. There were no time-limited promotions and codes to complicate things. Instead, all customers paid the same rates. Long distance was a totally different matter. People were switching carriers monthly hopping from one promotion to another. But local telephone had simple pricing. Today broadband needs to be more like that.

The $499 version is bait and switch. Upgrade to an i7-4610M with 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, and the price hits to $1399..

Don't confuse "nonprofit" with "charity". While virtually all charities are nonprofits, not all nonprofits are charities.

The NFL being nonprofit is simply a reflection of how the league is organized and equity and earnings are allocated. In this case, most of the equity in the NFL is held by individual teams and the teams' billionaire owners, and all the earnings are targeted to those same teams. The league acts as just a vehicle for the teams to coordinate functions like marketing, scheduling, and league matters. So when the league gets $10 billion in TV contracts, all the profit is distributed to the teams, which then pay taxes on it. Being structured as a nonprofit, the NFL league has trustees and beneficiaries. It could reincorporate as a for-profit, in which case it would have owners and shareholders. In that case, each team owner could be granted one share. If that were to happen, Paul Allen instead of receiving one tax bill for $100 million for the Seahawks, would get two tax bills for $70 million (for the Seahawks) and $30 million (for the NFL share). From the taxman's point of view, it's pretty much the same.

There's nothing sneaky about the NFL being a nonprofit. It's just reflects how the league was originally set up.