You can't say that with certainty, rather only (?????-1)/????? confidence.

Well, it's unreasonable to expect employers to act on information they don't have. If there's evidence of wrong-doing as in this case, then it's perfectly reasonable to take it into consideration.

On the flip side, there was a "game" many years ago called "google whacking", where you tried to find two words that when typed into google would give exactly one hit. I doubt it would work now, but back say in 2000, it was still possible.

Well, they at least pass the "no felonies" test. That doesn't make them trustworthy, of course, but it doesn't make them unworthy of trust either.

You want to call it "an online girl-fight", but it's harassment. Big difference there.

First of all, if they committed a felony, then that speaks poorly of their character. Felonies are serious business, so just doing them for grins is something that they should carry for the rest of their lives. I know I wouldn't trust anyone with a felony conviction. Secondly, even if you argue that the particular misbehavior didn't deserve a felony conviction, then they were stupid for getting caught, so who would want stupid employees?

Unless that's changed in the last month or so, the 360 will NOT read NTFS formatted drives. Pretty insane for them not to support their own format, but there you are.

Well, saving money on licensing fees is just one piece to consider. There's also training and support costs. The "software commons" are skewed towards microsoft, and other closed system vendors. It's relatively cheap and easy to find people versed in those products, either as a developer, administrator, or end user. Just think of generic office workers. It's not much of a bar to require applicants to be competent in MS products such as Outlook, word, and IE. Require the open office alternatives and firefox, and the pool of prospective workers shrinks considerably. The same goes for more specialized functions, such as developing (and support!) as well as administration. The pool is smaller, thus harder to fill and more expensive.

Perhaps the average cost might be lower, though most claims of that don't hold up well to scrutiny. However, and here's the key point, it's a minority of people (i.e. working professionals and higher) who pay the vast majority of taxes. That's the case in the U.S. as well, though it isn't quite as bad. So, that means a few ants paying for all the grasshoppers as per the old fable.

Sure, the cost is lower if you get somebody else to pay for it. Everybody likes to be subsidized, or even better, get freebies. That's on the backs of others, but the government takes care of that dirty business. Like a pauper with a gun, their need trumps your work.

NASA gets way too much credit for inventions that it had absolutely no involvement. Velcro is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro a prime example of that. It was being manufactured years before NASA even existed. Sure, NASA used Velcro, and popularized it to some degree, but any decent PR company could have done that.

I'm not so sure about that. Aluminum and paper have value, yet people still throw those away or actually pay to have them recycled. It's basically a matter of scale: ten plastic bags are garbage to a residential family, but 10,000 are a commodity resource.

Probably not very well, but they sure can get a job teaching.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

It's everybody's "fault". The parents don't give a damn because education is a freebie the state supplies. The teachers don't give a damn, because they're government workers and if there's a problem, take it up with the union. The kids sure don't care, since it's just glorified babysitting anyway.

Those Seagate drives have been fraught with problems since their release. The model they quote is ST31500341AS. The reviews on both Amazon and NewEgg detail the history. Supposedly, Seagate finally got the firmware sorted out, but would you want to test it with a couple grand of drives? More to the point, would you want to support it? That choice has the air of penny-wise and pound foolish.

Only if roads only worked for one particular type of car. In this case, the "road" is applications, and if the cost of being successful was to develop on multiple platforms at the same time then we would see a lot less development occurring. Look at PC gaming. Even with a dedicated fanbase and enthusiastic support, Linux has never become a gaming platform. Why? Because it's not worth the cost of porting already existing games, let alone developing specifically for that platform. If there were many competing OS's, you'd see this problem across a broad spectrum of application classes.