The question is "minutes spent on the phone." Surely,that doesn't exclude using your phone for texting, email, browsing, playing games, etc, does it?

I was the go-to guy in the last office I worked in (I probably know more about computers than the other 6 people put together), but I enjoy helping people so a reasonable portion of the day was taken up by this. It seemed like the bosses appreciated it, especially as they asked for my help as much as anybody else in the office did. However, when they needed to lay-off staff due to the economic downturn, who do you think was the first to go? That's right - it was me. It was deemed that the other guys were more productive. Presumably everybody's productivity dropped a little bit when they had to start solving their own problems. So I agree with you: get your head down and get on with your work, don't help co-workers unless you have to, and if you can convince others to help you to boost your own productivity then take advantage of their helpfulness.

That was comedy genius! Well done that man!

I'm British. The terms "entered administration" and "made redundant" are in normal everyday use in Britain. I think it is reasonable to assume that the writer is British and that it would never have occurred to him that these phrases would be misunderstood by an American. I'm sure it wasn't done just to wind you up*. * I'm not sure if the phrase "wind you up" is used in the US. It means to say something with the intent to provoke.

You have a favourite lawyer?!

The AC may have a point. The OP might just be a Grumpy Old Man who will be grumpy no matter what he does.

You did not have the flu and I suspect that you have never had flu. No matter how healthy you are, the influenza virus will completely wipe you out and you will be barely able to stand, never mind go to the gym. You had a bout of the common cold.

Do you mean "Code: The Hidden Language" by Charles Petzold?

Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more. I find it impossible to take notes and listen to somebody speak at the same time. That said, the OP's wife is a woman(!) and apparently they can multi-task!

Hmm... I suspect that most people distrust anybody who lives more than five miles away from them. Just so you know, in England, southerners think that northerners are uncivilized, uneducated idiots, and northerners think that southerners are shandy drinking pansies.

I'm so glad to see your comment "not every human is equally adept in recognizing images". I thought it might just be me: for years I've been inadvertently clicking on the print icon instead of the save icon. To my mind, they are generally rectangular and similar colours; unless I stop and think about it for a second there's a 50% chance I'll hit the wrong one. Recently, I made the mistake of putting bookmark icons for Gmail and BBC iPlayer next to each other and removing the text. Both icons are reddish and have triangular bits.

Although I much prefer text based interfaces, I appreciate that some people have problems distinguishing words. A good UI needs to give people the choice.

You mean the same US government that has accumulated a $14.5 trillion debt? Surely no organisation on the planet has ever been so poor!

Joking aside, I think you're probably right; Apple will drop OSX as soon as they possibly can. I don't think they should, though.

Huh?! I've been with Virgin broadband for years, currently on the 20Mb service - I stream music and surf the web all day long, watch hours of BBC iPlayer in the evening, plus can download gigabytes of software. I have never been throttled. The last time I checked, I can download 10.5Gb per day (and it's completely unlimited at night). I suggest you have a word with whoever is sending you such big emails!

You wouldn't trust an automatically controlled boat today, in 2011, on the basis that a partly automatically controlled boat sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912?

A robotic bus just might be safer than a human driver if all the other vehicles are driven by robots. All vehicles could then communicate with each other wirelessly, making traffic signals unnecessary - although I guess it would be useful for pedestrians to know when it is safe to cross. The only thing that robots might have a problem with then are unforeseen circumstances like dry ice, grit, children playing... I suspect that robots can probably already react more quickly to such events than humans.