... or are you just hanging your hat on the word "robo" as an excuse for starting another generic my-party-is-better-than-your-party flamewar?

Media in general likes a story to have "conflict" (even when it doesn't), and Slashdot these days is far worse than most. However, half the conflicts you read about here are entirely made-up. Of the three articles linked in this summary, not a single one quotes a single opponent or critic. It's just something that "Unknown Lamer" tacked on at the end, because the Slashdot-format would incomplete without something like that.

I can't really blame Slashdot, though. Reading this silly comment above (and, sadly, watching myself type a response)... there are plenty of people who take bait.

... and yet attracts awful jokes and puns with equal force.

Wow, someone in 2012 used the word "literally" in a correct manner. My brain literally just exploded!

Dell, in its "infinite wisdom", have been providing both of these restore options for years now on a separate recovery partition. I am only personally familiar with Dell's, but I'm sure that other makers offer something similar. I still prefer a physical CD/DVD rather than a recovery partition approach... but other than that, I haven't heard much complaining over the past few years about this kind of functionality.

Microsoft takes an established third-party utility, and bundles something similar within Windows itself (as they do with practically every release)... and NOW this is suddenly a horrible idea and everyone is full of complaints? Hey, I'm hardly a Microsoft fanboy, but this is just childish. Where have the posts and the complaints about Dell been for the past few years?

Perhaps I should have explicitly told you to piss off, and that you're being a ridiculous goober. Sorry for also failing to make that message obvious in context.

Perhaps I should have explicitly said "blowhards" rather than "political-minded people" in the opening sentence, but I was trying to start off on a polite note! :)

Either way... I was speaking about two opposite extremes. It seemed pretty clear that my perspective was somewhere in between the two (along with yours, and probably the majority).

About half the politically-minded people I run across in IT are hardcore Ron Paul types, and the other half are Karl Marx types. Both of those groups are annoying in different ways, and tend to ruin any conversation that they barge into.

However, I do have to say... at least the Ron Paul types are often competent and good at their jobs. I have NEVER , during 15 years in the field, EVER encountered a competent IT professional who dreamed of being in a union. Union culture is pretty much the antithesis of what makes a good engineer tick. I clicked on and briefly skimmed your profile, and could not help but notice that not a single one of your comments over recent months has anything to do with technology or IT work.

Umm... were you around during the 1990's?

Even in a normal market, tons of hiring managers don't understand enough to separate the wheat from the chaff anyway. In an overheated market, when hiring managers have to take what they can get if they want to fill a position at all... it is STUNNINGLY easy for workers with zero aptitude to jump in.

Apparently there is a hardcore minority who differentiates "programming" from "IT"... just as the Stallman crowd believes it to be of vital political importance that we call it "GNU/Linux" rather than just "Linux". However, just as the overwhelming majority of people know the OS as "Linux", so to do most people lump all computer-related jobs under the "IT" umbrella.

As a "developer", I consider my career and skillset to be totally different from an "admin" or someone in "ops"... or even "maintence developers" who look after the legacy apps rather than design new applications. However, the CEO refers to all of us as "IT". We all go to "IT" job search sites to post our resumes. Other than a minority of assholes who see admins as beneath them... most everyone refers to all of us as "IT". I'm cool with that.