I think you have those backwards.

Hey, some people just wanna be a monkey. Career myopia is astoundingly prevalent in youth culture. Then again, maybe some people want to spend the rest of their lives slurping Mt. Dew, munching down on a bag of Cheetos, while waddling between their 5'x4' cube--where they sling their sh*t around--and gaming console equipped break room every now and then. I mean hey, when your folks die, maybe you'll get to move up out of the basement and take over the rest of the house.

That's the precise business model employed by countless businesses from tea and coffee companies, to the Culligan man. Many have been doing it from even before the DotCom bubble.

Better tell Culligan then...

What do you mean? This is a staple means of operating for coffee, tea, wine, etc. type businesses from even before the DotCom bubble. "Send to my business 2lbs of Sumatra blend every two weeks. Bill my credit card."

Most manufacturers just grind the crap back up and run it through again.

It isn't the state that's the problem. It's your manual labor job. If you want some cushion you need to apply yourself to an education that permits sitting on one.

That'll teach me for reading these polls in the morning before I'm awake. I wonder when (if they haven't already) they'll bring in the data miners, remove the "disable ads" feature, and start pushing B.S. in my face.

BTW: any happen to know why I supposedly need a portable oxygen concentrator? It's been chasing me all over the web lately.

You know, it's sad, fascinating and scary to witness sci-fi come to be reality. It looks like we need to start working on counter-measures to these little (micro) intrusion devices.

There are plenty of 4th generation languages that are highly capable of the job, and do so in an elegant, and more importantly maintainable way. JavaScript is a monkey's language born from the intentions of enabling lay-users. A noble goal but detrimental to professional development work.

Microsoft has lost the consumers, but it has not (yet) lost business. The people that think their tablets are intended for consumers are dead wrong. If consumers buy them great, but comparing iPad to Surface is an apples to oranges comparison.

No one is currently putting line of business apps on mobiles, neither iOS nor Android. They're designed for consumer utility and entertainment not LOBs. Microsoft is betting big that they can fill the vacuum and thus fortify their position with their biggest/best customers. Does Windows 8 on the desktop offer a poor user experience, the consensus seems to say yes. It's also pretty obvious that the Windows 8 UX wasn't designed for the desktop, it was designed for mobiles. Why would they do that? I think they're probably smelling the future. Desktops are becoming increasingly niche, slowly replaced by portable form factors. While business may lag in this trend I think Microsoft sees them going the same way. They've cast their chicken bones and are making a desperate gambit based on that reading to get back on top.

There are certain kinds of software that allow for drunken programming and kinds that do not. Web and mobile app development tend to fit into the former, whereas line of business apps would be an epic failure and create a short route to the unemployment line if developed while drunk. Relatedly there are two classes of software developer, the monkey and the engineer. The monkey just slings some crap around and calls it a day. The engineer is contemplative and methodical. Accordingly each tend to slot themselves (or have it done for them) into a certain kind of development work. It is unfortunate that the monkey dominates public perception but then public perception has seldom been a strong concern for the geek/nerd anyway.

You're right, they'd never miss $90M, even with them running a deficit for several years end-on-end. If they're fortunate and their forecast comes through for 2013, they'll just barely squeak into the black. I wonder if that forecast included this little windfall...

I'm starting to wonder that myself. There's far too much pandering to lay-users and at the expense of "News for Nerds". Maybe it's just me but it seems to be sliding ever more rapidly now that Dice is running things.

C|Net? They're so 2002. Do lay-users even consider these folks relevant any more? I figured everyone thought of them as they do other DotCom bubble era companies like Geocities and Tripod.