There's one problem with that, which I faced. I was getting the B or C in classes like college chemistry and organic chemistry. I told the instructors I was thinking of dropping the class and trying again later, but they told me that A.) my grade was typical, and that it meant I was actually doing decently well in the class; and B.) if I do drop the class, I shouldn't bother trying to take it again, because based on their experience I would end up with the same grade. It was impossible for students to absorb all the material taught, they told me, and if I got a C this time, the next time I took the class I would just forget the other half of the material and get a C again.

This not only seemed to me to be a totally ridiculous way to teach a class -- you actually admit that students can't learn what you're teaching?? -- but this was also a junior college, where anyone who wanted to get a four-year degree would need to transfer to a four-year university. The department prided itself on teaching classes that "prepared you for Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, or any university in the country." The catch, however, was that they handed out grades that made it impossible for their students to transfer to any of those schools. They'd pat you on the back for passing their class, then reward you with the kiss of death that basically ended your education ambitions right there.

And kinda entry-level. I'm just generalizing here, but based on my own interactions with SharePoint, I strongly suspect that nobody ever sat around, racking their brains about how to hack a SharePoint site.

I am not big on my networking protocols, but didn't the HTTP 2.0 group decide to base its work on Google's SPDY protocol? The two don't look the same to me, but some of the descriptions in this spec do look like reshuffled versions of the SPDY spec. What's the relationship between the two these days?

Based on what I see at the (rather many) computer conferences I attend, I beg to differ. It seems to me that a great many IT professionals have switched to MacBooks and aren't looking back. But you can't run Microsoft Dynamics on OS X, so not many in the accounting department are going to switch.

Personally, I think Microsoft is absolutely right to invest as heavily in Visual Studio as it does, because if that product wasn't just so top-notch, you'd have developers fleeing Windows for OS X in droves.

That's not really it. Many of the movies released in 3D have been converted from 2D to 3D, after the fact. Early conversions looked bad ("Clash of the Titans") but newer ones are looking better and better ("Star Trek Into Darkness").

Maybe, but many of them installed them because they were forced to buy new projectors for digital content (because film will be obsolete by the end of this year). I'm not sure the cost of getting a 3D capable projector is really significantly more than buying a new, multimillion-dollar digital projector for each screen.

I've been really wanting to see Hugo based on all the comments I hear about the quality of the 3D, but the 3D edition of the Blu-Ray is apparently a limited edition three-disc sets (including two discs you don't need if you have the 3D Blu-Ray and a 3D-compatible player). It's hard to find, and when I do find it somewhere it costs an arm and a leg (typically $40).

I went to see The Hobbit in 48fps and I really enjoyed how it looked. Contrary to all the people complaining about the "soap opera effect" on high-refresh-rate LCD TVs, 48fps was how that movie was really meant to be seen, and I enjoyed experiencing the filmmaker's vision.

The film itself, though? Utter, execrable schlock, and a total wasted opportunity considering the quality of the source material.

I still like to go to the movies in 3D when I think there's going to be lots of flashy sequences that could benefit from it (something like a "Star Trek Into Darkness" or "Man of Steel"). The problem is, I live in a major urban market where the cost of seeing a 3-D movie typically runs around $16.50 or more. A ticket to see "Man of Steel" in IMAX 3D tonight will cost $21.50, including service charges, and I think it was a couple of dollars higher on opening weekend. When I see prices like that, my interest quickly fades, and I assume the same is true for a lot of people -- particularly when we're constantly hearing reviews that say "the 3D added nothing, don't bother."

Enlighten me on this one, because my 3D TV seems to be able to play any 3D content you can throw at it.

Sure, there are various manufacturers of 3D TVs and many of them use different technologies for their glasses, but that's just a consumer choice. They all play the same content. As for technology, my TV is a "passive" set that lets me watch 3D programming using the same glasses you get in movie theaters. You can actually bring your glasses home from the movies and use them with the TV if you want.

You can load your own screen savers on a Nook (on the e-ink ones, at least; I can't speak for the tablets). You just make a new directory in the folder that includes all the built-in screen savers, name the directory what you want your screen saver to be called, and load it with as many images as you like. The Nook will rotate through them.

TFA says "Management is clearly focused on salvaging Nook operations rather than trying to make a go of it with the stores" and "B&N's disastrous focus on making Nook e-Readers is weighing heavily on the chain's operations."

Did they not get the memo today that B&N is discontinuing its whole color tablet line and that future color devices will only be sold as co-branded products manufactured by other companies? You read that right, B&N is no longer going to manufacture any tablets. It's going to continue to produce e-ink devices, but that's it. That whole "cannibalizing itself with branded tablets" angle they're whinging about is a dead end, as of today.

Second, how is the fact that the Nook apps are cross-platform making B&N's stores irrelevant? If the Nook apps didn't exist, wouldn't it just be the Kindle apps that are making B&N stores irrelevant, and B&N would have no slice of the ebook pie whatsoever?

Also, let's maintain a little perspective here. B&N's total revenue from the Nook division in fiscal 2013 was $776 million. Its revenue from its retail division was $4.6 billion. Are we really expected to believe that B&N execs are actually ignoring the retail business in favor of Nook? That just sounds like some absurd, "activist investor" fantasy.

B&N is struggling, sure. But it faces fairly serious market challenges. It had no chance at competing with Amazon in the ebook market without making a serious investment in both hardware and software. Has it made some missteps? It seems so, but to say they'll be impossible to retreat from seems a little premature.

Have you considered that it might be your application crashing or freezing up that is causing the 503 errors? You'd better rule out that possibility before you look elsewhere, because if your company's lousy code is to blame then you'll likely have the same problems wherever you go.

I don't understand. I'm not a parser, but to my eye that means "assign." If you wanted to compare, you would do "if ($foo == 1 + $bar)", no?

Microsoft says the Xbox One can monitor your heartbeat using just the camera.