I can only speculate on what kind of kind, generous and benevolent entity would produce such an informative production. Surely a non-profit of course? Regardless, they must _clearly_ must have the interests of the general populace at heart!

And I do look forward to a similarly insightful exposee on the likes of Facebook, Amazon, and the many other, lesser known advertising/tracking groups in the internet...

Nudge, nudge - you already can.

https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl

Good thing I always take the stairs...

It doesn't quite entirely come down to the cost...

1. At home, you have to finish the entire liquor bottle. Don't take something you don't like or haven't had before.... Can't try something new if you don't already have it. And your selection is going to be a lot smaller.
2. Bars usually have a nicer atmosphere. Other people, television, music, etc.
3. At a bar, you can leave and go on to the next place on foot/public transit. In a suburb, you'd need a taxi, so you're back where you started

And I guess this is the cruncher... how do you expect people to get home at the end of the night?

Well, space still comes at a premium if you want to get a cheap and fast SSD....

I only know Perl, but I still found the Hebrew easier to understand...

Thank you for your suggestion. We have considered your proposals and have decided to adopt them.

And just so you know, after today, you don't need to come in any more.

Yes, in fact, it really is your fucking fault. Because you're a bitch, that's why. You simply accept whatever is put around you and don't start complaining until you have to start taking it up the ass, when you should have known very well beforehand that it would happen. I, on the other hand, take care to point out these flaws. And I generally have enough logic and rational persuasion to convince people that they don't want to settle for a locked in platform.

And just because your infrastructure is built around lock-in and bad technologies doesn't mean it should stay that way. It's only gonna get worse the longer you do nothing about it. You didn't magically start out in the position that you're in today. You started digging a hole, and continued digging it deeper and deeper - and it won't stop getting deeper until you get out for good and standard on platforms that don't lock you in this way. This kind of foresight should be obvious to system architect, and he/she will do everything in his/her power to avoid getting caught in that position, assuming he's not drinking the MS/other vendor's kool-aid.

In short, stop being a coward, take a stand for yourself, and make a bloody effort to fix the damn situation. Sometimes, I have to put in additional upfront work (and sometimes I don't, even), but I never find myself complaining in retrospect. You on the other hand, seem to support taking the easy path, even though you know very well that you're putting your fate in your vendors' hands. In other words, you're compromising on yourself, and making the situation worse, not just for you, but for everyone else as a result. Yes, you are entirely at fault for that.

In fact, it most certainly is your fault. Have you heard of this man named Mohandas Gandhi? Something, something like "be the change you want to see in the world?" If you don't like using Windows (and I have no reason to believe this is the case, because you haven't explicitly stated so, but let's assume it is so for the sake of the argument, as there are many users in a similar boat) because you have to use those technologies, then you only have yourself to blame for not doing something about it. As for me, I've been using Linux since 2007, OpenOffice/Libreoffice and GIMP all the way, and have never once thought of going back. It hasn't been perfect, but it's far closer to perfection than going back to Windows could ever be.

A coward's response. If you want to accept shitty results and solutions just because you can point the finger at someone else when it breaks, then you really don't have much of a personality or drive for getting things done, period. In other words, it makes you worthless from a technologist's standpoint.

Go right ahead... because economists make such great technologists. /s

I would much rather have knowledgeable people working for me, with the proper tools (open source if they must be) and a genuine interest in the success of the project; as opposed to hiring a bunch of tech support schmucks working for a for-profit company with crappy tools that aren't engineered to work, so much as to generate profit for said company. And let's face it - any good economist would happily sacrifice the utility of the product to make higher profits. Why do you think Windows is so far behind on the security curve?

You mean like this?

Dammit, the link didn't show up.

here it is: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-075-advanced-calculus-for-engineers-fall-2004/exams/

I'm not a mathematician, but there are an awful lot of courses on OCW. There are lots of lecture notes, as well as assignments and exams with solutions to provide examples. They're probably not as polished as a good math book, of course, but they look great as a reference....