If it's the user agent string and not the updated browser functionality that breaks the "business app" then why bother to use the user agent string at all? The companies I've worked for have always stuck with the oldest version of IE they can get away with and if you managed to somehow get admin rights and update IE, the app will load but not work. User agent strings should not matter in a professional, managed software environment so I fail to see how a new string in a new browser that corporate isn't going to deploy anyway will break anything.

Or save the money and build a decent Linux box?

You've never met Sales & Marketing.

I've seen this on a business trip to France years ago. Sounds like a Field Service Engineer job or some such equivalent. Yes, there are labor laws, but in the Semiconductor Capital Equipment industry you do the work, whatever the hours. I was there for a month installing a new system with assistance from the French Field Service team assigned to maintain all the other tools for that particular customer. Our main point of contact was in before us and out after (and installation days are generally 10+ hours/day to meet deadlines that don't account for customer holdups), his boss would yell at him that he was going over hours and then yell at him that things needed to get done and he can't take time off, work the weekend if necessary. He could try reporting this but he'd likely just lose his job. He admitted most jobs in France are far less work but this certainly does not apply to all.

I think you mean Honorable Chairman ROFLMAO.

Not only was he broadcasting pirate radio but he did it in the commerical frequency range, more likely to interfere with a licensed operator (who wants that ad money) and get the FCC called to investigate.

"We are not planning on doing anything until it is too late." said Julia White, a general manager in Microsoft’s business division.

You're not going to hear a difference between high bitrate vbr and flac, no one said you were supposed to. The point is that if you want to archive something, you get as perfect a copy as possible and use that as the source to make more heavily compressed/portable copies without having to constant go back to the slowly deteriorating physical media.

McAfee cashed out of the company a long time ago.

So you can create an alternate URL, so what? I don't see how these proxies can be used to send spam. If someone creates a URL with these proxies, how is that any different than using something like bit.ly? Does SpamHaus blacklist all URL shorteners too? I thought the purpose was to only blacklist any domains actually sending spam emails, not necessarily any and all domains contained within those emails. What if one has a link to CNN or something else that is supposed to prove the efficacy of a given product, would CNN also be blacklisted by SpamHaus?

It's a lot easier to use one account and the filter controls that have been there for years. I have certain friends who are otherwise cool but can get very sensitive about certain types of jokes so I might make a post visible to everyone but them. My sister sincerely believes that criticizing me with zero cleverness, wit, or irony is a valid form of humor and that everyone else gets it so I hide certain things from her too. Only takes a couple seconds and no one knows anything is being hidden.

Someone remind, what's wrong with employing all the desperately unemployed STEM citizens with advanced degrees already in the US? There are plenty of STEM grads with masters and phds who are willing to settle for low wages just to get a foot in the door and have some experience to put on a resume. If the people who are born here are really so bad, why not just move all those companies (or at least STEM operations) to someplace "preferable" and take cost of living out of the equation entirely?

Which is why he stole that quote... then applied for a patent on it. "But I said it while wearing a turtleneck! That's innovation!"

This should be modded funny, if anything. It is a description of hipsters calling themselves audiophiles. Real audiophiles embrace digital technology but are also skeptical of $100 stereo cables and other fancy sounding junk. Check out the Hydrogen Audio forums and The Audio Critic

While I agree strongly with your last point, I disagree just as strongly with the assertion that writing is just as difficult as "creating an OS kernel or a graph alogorithm."

I know it's anecdotal but I breezed through liberal arts electives while majoring in EE by writing papers either the night before or the morning of the due date. At the same time, people majoring in those classes I was electing were pulling their hair out to get the same grades as I. No, our professors did not grade us differently based on major, they had little knowledge or concern for that. I also had a friend who liked to poke fun at other non-science/engineering friends. He even wrote some of their papers for them, having never taken those classes, and got them As. Everyone in science and engineering shares these same anecdotes.

I was lucky enough that my university took technical writing seriously so that every year we had to pass/fail a required course on technical writing. The guy who taught that really wasn't an engineer and only cared about proper writing and communication. The dept would bring in professional writers to grade our work and have a sit down review with us individually to point out any tiny flaw and make sure we understood where we went wrong and how to fix it. It's true that most of the other students though it was BS and that they shouldn't be bothered but it was pretty easy nonetheless.

It's true that society has devalued writing to the point where adults primarily read teen and young adult garbage, even to the point where they hold up Harry Potter as an example of "good" writing. Still, science and engineering are far more abstract and difficult than proper writing. The submitters and editors post shit summaries not because it's hard but because they just don't think it's important enough to exert any effort. That would take time away from reading 50 Shades of Grey.