Currently millions of people are unemployed. Are we really going to give them all jobs as developers?

Consider Zynga. You can't open Facebook or be slapped in the face with Farmville, Cityville, Suckville or Mafiawars. Apparently it's one of the largest companies (revenue-wise) in what is one of the largest segments (gaming) of software development. In other words, this is one of those 800 pound gorilla's in the industry.

Total number of jobs: 1,200 and I bet a large part of that is in India and China. The toilet paper factory in my town employs half of that (and likely more if we're looking at USA jobs only) and that's only a small regional player. How can software development replace millions of low-schooled manufacturing jobs, especially with education in the USA going down the crapper?

"Nichols found free customers are higher maintenance and more demanding than the paying customers. 20 or so paying customers asked questions while "hundreds" of free ones did"
That, of course, are meaningless statistics to draw conclusions from, without knowing the ratio between paying and non-paying customers. We also don't know what the questions were. If there are 50 freeloaders for every paying customer and each class of customer is asking questions at the same rate, those 20 paying customer questions will be matched by 1,000 non-paying customers -- "hundreds" would suggest that non-paying customers are less demanding.
Also, the questions itself might differ. Maybe those non-paying customers where asking questions about the benefits of paying?

...of having an ad on the cover of a device when it is turned off. Thank god your tablet, smartphone or laptop does not have a big logo on the cover, advertising its manufacturer.

I wouldn't mind getting a $25 discount for that. The two problems that I have with it are:
* Are the ads related to what I bought on Amazon? If I buy, say, a dozen dildos, do I have advertisments for sex toys on the cover of my kindle for the next two weeks (or until I buy something else)
* Is Amazon going to pull a bezos on me? After two months reverting and saying "you know what, we are going to insert advertisements inside your e-book on second thought. You know, a bit like "an e-book on the kindle is just like a real book. Except that we can yank it from your shelf if we decide that's a good idea".

Microsoft has been working very hard over the last few versions to make the use of VBA less and less attractive. The strategy behind this must be (I cannot imagine anything else) to promote the use of .NET but I don't think that is happening. What is happening, is that it's forcing more and more users to work with macro-less solutions. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that macros are great way to lock their customers in. Instead of getting a small group of developers moving to .NET they are now confronted with a large group of customers moving to OpenOffice. Once you break the VBA barrier there's nothing that will stop you after all.

This was discussed ad nauseum at photography forums last year. Key is to read the actual proposal and not depend on the warmongerings of a journalist trying to attract more traffic to his site:
Cartridges packed with equipment to be packed in intermediate packagings together with the equipment they are capable of powering.
The fuel cell cartridges and the equipment must be packaged with cushioning material or dividers or inner packaging so that the fuel cell cartridges are protected against damage that may be caused by the shifting or placement of the equipment and the cartridges within the outer packaging.

All the rule is basically doing is requiring that batteries are transported in such a way that they cannot short out. Either by putting them in the device they are made for (so your gameboy is safe) or by putting them in a special container (the big Li-Ion batteries for SLR's come like that in the box anyway).

After the Great Battery Scare last year with all those laptops combusting spontaneously their was little choice but to start with at least some regulation regarding the combustable nature of these batteries. The requirements are minimal and reasonable and quite frankly I have yet to see anything shipped commercially that doesn't meet those standards.

The outrageous price for moonrocks is largely based on how incredible rare they are (on earth, at least).
When you start bringing in those rocks by the ton, price will drop significantly. Nobody is going to pay $2000 per gram when they know you're sitting on 5 tons of that stuff. They'll just wait until you are forced to sell at a lower price.

While you're at it, pick up a box with the "Robo Rally" board game. It's great fun to play and forces the players to think and concentrate in a playful way.

All the other things aside - I agree with them - the #1 reason for a Gaming Review magazine is... the reviews, right?

Well, that's where they truly, 10 on a 1-10 scale, suck. I've yet had to see a game that was advertised for that would score less than 70%. In fact, I would usually subtract 60% and divide by 4 to see how the game would rate on a 1-10 score in a more realistic way.

Combine that with enthousiastic "previews" of games in production where the lads of the redaction had a good time with the programmers (read: the review will not dip below 90%) that where always 6 month ahead of when the game had the vaguest chance of appearing and one wonders how they managed to last so long.

Good riddance!