Which goes back to it only being the best business desktop because most businesses use MS office (thus run windows, thus have the install base to maximise profit on a dev platform).
In an ab-initio race with today's platforms, I think we'd see something like the home computer market in the 80s. Very diverse. Any evolutionaly system can achieve a false maxima, which is the niche that Windows occupies at the moment. It may not be the most effective tool to bring to bear in many situations these days, but it has the most momentum, so it gets used.

Weird, I've worked in lots of enterprises over the years, and largely, I've found that the real techs prefer automation (we're not paid for what we've already done, we're paid for what we do next).
Automation is the only way to get time to do what needs doing next. Unless, of course, your basement is the infrastructure you're running.

He's never heard of Deep Vein Thrombosis, I suspect.

Same here.. I once took up the post of a cleaner in a homeless hostel.. And that was a crap (literally, at times) job. Paid a pittance, but when I absolutely needed to get by (paying my way through Uni), it had to be done. Anything that brought the money in.
Put it this way, I'd rather be treated as a sex object (though at my stage in life, that's just not going to happen) or even an object of derision than that job. It was tough. There again, I knew what I was getting into when I took the job. There are jobs like that out there if someone doesn't want to be a booth babe; they just take longer to make the same money, and they mean getting a lot dirtier, doing a lot harder work, and taking a lot more risks.

Of course it does. It's programmed to fit on a particular machine with a particular OS/tools. These wear out. The media the software sits on degrades, and can occasionally corrupt.
The APIs eventually change. All sorts of things happen, which is the software analog of 'wearing out'.
I'd treat support as a standard warranty deal if nothing was agreed (i.e. it depends on what you paid for it; If I charged you £50k for a wordprocessor, I'd expect to be supporting it for some time; if I charged you £2k for a reasonably complex bit of software, you'd be lucky to get 1 year out of it). It all depends on what could reasonably be considered the 'lifetime' of a product.
But, after that, any support, and they pay.

Open plan do, yes..
With offices for the more cerebral workers, that need higher levels of concentration, this background noise is kept to a minimum.

That the massive under-representation of males as home-makers is something that society seriously needs to readdress? As a rough call (just from the sample set of people I know, I'm sure there are better stats out there), about 2% of males are home makers in a couple. About 50% are in shared (dual income) arrangements, and about 48% are sole breadwinners.
Can society please fix this MASSIVE disparity before working out lesser disparities?
Not a serious post to flame about though, but it gets my goat that saying "the stats aren't even on something" has nothing to do with personal choice.. Most of it is about choice and interest. It's only really been the last decade tech was about communication and getting more 'interesting' to the average person (male or female). It'll probably be about another half decade or so for that shift in access to filter into the university system and out through into the general jobs market..
I know a couple of decades ago, even those figures would have been a joy to anyone looking at the balance, which implies society trends of females becoming slowly more interested in aspects of the field..
Crying wolf all the time only pisses off the serious people in the field, infantilises women (and other targetted groups) and assumes that correlation is causation.

The whole copyright system was based on a fair deal between the author controlling the work, and society at large gaining ownership and free access later (with the ability to reuse the characters in stories of their own making).
What you're now arguing is a way to get corporations a way to weasel out of the deal (which is what they've been trying to do by effectively "stealing" the public domain by legal technicalities), and have everything their way, because it's easier.
What we need is a fair deal again. If money could be made by people with a 12 year copyright when it took most of that to saturate the market, then why do we need an effectively infinite copyright when market saturation can measured in days or weeks (theoretically in hours in some cases)?
This no longer adds up as a fair deal. So they are surprised when people ignore a rule that's no longer making sense?

1) Lack of role models doesn't stop people from doing things. If a subject interests them, they'll do it. Until reasonably recently (a couple of decades) there were very few female doctors, or biologists. Now the fields are very popular with female. There were no real role models (unless you count nurses).

2) You kind of disprove your point here. The fields are definitely a touch "nerdy". And thus females aren't attracted to it because they aren't "nerdy". This isn't peer pressure, this is choice, unless you're going to start telling people they aren't allowed the choice of what they're comfortable with.

3) You don't give any real misconceptions. If someone has the interest in a subject, they'll follow it. My little niece (8) has a firm love of maths. She's always been a geek girl, and I'm teaching her programming, what engineering is about, what science can do with the world, and she loves it. My two other nieces like arts based, and one like biology. That's what they're happy with, and their choices were firmly made with all options open and fully supported.

4) Most don't see engineering as a "stepping stone". Most engineers go on to become really good engineers. It's a very rounded role. However, if you don't like engineering, then you won't be successful, and you then won't be able to use that success as a stepping stone to other things. Wouldn't you agree it's better to follow something you're passionate about and do well, rather than something you have no aptitude for and hate? If you succeed at what you do, you can use that as a stepping stone to where you want to go..

From a business perspective then, removing the scanners and the TSA involvement would be far cheaper (as no employees to pay, or machines to operate).
What you seem to be saying is that someone is unprofitable for pointing out where the employer could concentrate to actually deliver the service they're paid to deliver, and not be in breach of contract, rather than letting them go on obliviously.
This would give the employer an advantage on an open market (better service, better reputation), so the employee is to be valued.

Interesting postulation.
However, you could equally say that "the talk" given to many black youths sows the seeds of prejudice in them, and follow your argument through from that point.
Thus, any beating a black person gets, by your own argument, is thus their own fault due to their own prejudices.
There's as much evidence for that as there is for your postulation.
In other words, it's not acceptable. Either way round.

And being a minority is supposed to be an excuse for that how? Does being a minority mean you've got special dispensation to be aggressive, unpleasant, or engage in criminal activity at will?
No, it means you're in a small group. Under set theory, you can divide a population in many ways, and colour of skin is only one. In those sets, people are always parts of various minorities. Almost everyone is part of a minority group in something.

You say "learn". Actually, learning this isn't really at the heart of the matter.
Often, a group is told from within that they're viewed a particular way (whether this is true or not is irrelevant). And they behave based on faulty information.
Also, it can be based on a misconception (i.e. concluding "people don't value my contribution" if the reward you're given isn't what you think it should be, irrespective of whether society in general gives that general reward for that general contribution). This again leads many to feel slighted, and become hostile.
There are a whole slew of other misconceptions, misinformation and general conditioning that can, and does, lead to exactly the conclusions you're stating are "smart and correct". I'd actually say that the 'learning' and the behaviour you state are actually a terrible way to proceed. All it does is reinforce a negative image.
If the role isn't valued, find one that will, and work at it. There are successful people of all skin colours. The thing they all share is that they work hard for what they get, and they respect the contributions of others, and they don't try to play victim. If life throws bad things, they field it, fix it, and move on.
 

However, almost any attack by a white person upon a non-white is happily referred to as a racist attack, even when there's no evidence of that.
What you seem to be epousing is "If a person decides that something someone else says means a particular thing, then that must be the intent".
This is very wrong. When you attempt to infer intent from what someone says, you need to be pretty careful to try and get the real meaning (everyday language is notoriously bad for passing very precise meaning). It's not acceptable to beat on someone because you decide that what they've said is derogatory towards yourself when it's not (and the intent never was). If they interpreted "remember Trayvon" as a racist remark, that's because it's their first instinct, or they expect a white person to intend it as a racist remark regardless.. Both of which are incredibly racist behaviours.

Possibly not. In Bristol, UK, there was a City Councillor (herself of African descent, and oddly, spending most of her time in Florida) who accused another councillor of being a "coconut", which is a racist slur meaning someone who is "black/brown on the outside, and white on the inside". This happened in session (on the official public record). After having several firings of caucasians over implicit racist slurs, this one was practically ignored. It took a big backlash in the public to get the politicians to even begin an investigation. The councillor herself stated "I can't be racist, because I'm black.".
In the end, she got a slap on the wrist.

Yes, racism does cut both ways. However, by and large, you don't get to claim racism unless your skin is non-white.

Studies confirm that there is a general racial bias in everyone (succinctly put in Avenue Q's "Everyone's a little bit Racist"). However, being adults, we should pretty much be trying to accept that we're flawed individuals, and get on with making everyone's life a bit better as long as they live up to society's expectations (if you're arrogant, violent and antisocial, don't expect people to like you whatever the colour of your skin).

In the article, there are some actual truths. Basically, in any given social segment of any size, you'll meet all kinds of people. Nice and nasty and everything in between. Treat people as people, because that's who they are.