...there has been plenty of new ones to maintain the level of outrage and frustration. Remember PlaysForSure? How about the switch from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8, leaving its best loyal customers (and buyers of the relatively new Lumias) in the dust? The XBox One DRM fiasco?

If your account has two-factor enabled, any account change will require entry of that limited-time token. Now, if the person doing the social engineering was able to access the account in the first place with only the last four digits of the card number, then they may have also been able to bypass this or turn it off with the help of the customer support rep. But I didn't see any mention of this in the article and wanted to point it out for those who use GoDaddy and are afraid of a similar situation occurring.

The problem with open office floor plans is that every other office accommodation is also affected, but in a negative way - at least at the companies I've seen or worked in. Conference rooms are downsized as well and are given uncomfortable chairs (such as bar tools). Quiet places or "phone booths" are moved to reservation systems. Kitchens, cafes, and cafeterias are no longer respites from work, but just another area to hold meetings. Any office implementing an open floor plan should also set aside traditional offices, cubicles, or booths that can be rented out, ad-hoc, when a serious conference call or task comes up that requires undivided attention. Moreover, these workspaces should be equipped with all of the necessary amenities (laptop dock, second monitor, etc.) so that workers can truly come and go at a whim. Having to pack up my desk and wander the halls for half an hour just so I can hear myself think over the lady having the daily conversation with her college-aged daughter or the guy slurping his coffee is not productive at all.

...he introduced the Apple community to Android, Windows Phone 7, Linux, Windows, and OS X Snow Leopard.

He says Bill Gates needs to come back, and then states Gates listened to J Allard about the Xbox, Microsoft's only real consumer success story in the last decade. Doesn't that mean that maybe J Allard should be the new CEO of Microsoft? Or can Block not connect the dots he himself puts down on the paper?

from old media, over me accessing songs I own from wherever I am, or any device I have.

Sorry, I was on a Firefox forum the other day and saw Beta 10 tossed around frequently and just dove right into my post.

Wasn't this supposed to be the answer to Chrome - yet Chrome has shipped several iterations in the time it took them to get from 3 to 4? I think Firefox is on beta 10 or whatever. For a while, I maintained that I would switch back to Firefox once it matched the speed and minimalist interface that Chrome had, as I didn't like using a browser from Google. Now? Not so sure anymore - I'm so used to Chrome and it fits my workflow so well. It will take a lot to get me back.

Really? In the past 6 months, I know about twelve people who have left their iPhones behind and went to an Android device, instead of upgrading to an iPhone 4 when their contracts were due. I realize this is anecdotal, but I see more people switching from iPhone to Android than the other way around.

The poor performance of Wave when it first debuted quickly killed any hype it had going. Everybody was eager to try it out, then realized it ran like a dog in pretty much everything except Chrome (and even sometimes in Chrome, too.) That and the fact that it was a standalone app - I wanted to be able to work with my Google Docs, share items from my Reader, and work on emails from within Wave, spreading information between all three if I desired.

The difference here is that you can still install applications from outside the app store on Windows (and Android for that matter), where on iOS you can't. That's why everyone was worried about the next version of OS X moving to a more iOS-focused paradigm; Apple has final cut on everything.

In most organizations, the IT department is treated as pure cost instead of something that provides strategic value. These IT departments have no chance of getting a budget approved that will allow them to "start over" on any part of their implementation; hence the constant onslaught of temporary fixes and patches.

I love the shuttle program, but I would never wish something to go wrong on a mission just so they can launch another shuttle.

Exactly right. Of course, most people don't realize this, and are content to bash Microsoft for purposely trying to make them unhappy and confused.

This isn't about taking market share away from Google, or Bing, or whatever; it's keeping Google out of what Apple views as an increasingly important source of market research. Right now, every natural search performed on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad goes through Google - so Google can view that data and use it to refine/improve/develop their own competing smartphone OS. By further locking in users to their own search engine, Apple effectively closes the pipeline of free research to Google - unless users explicitly go to the webpage of their search engine, which will only be done by a small, small number of users.