is there an implied criticism of MS here? I also don't remember countless other companies that were gobbled up by IBM, Sun, Oracle and other big tech companies.

Yep, stolen cell phones are certainly the kind of thing law enforcement should be working on. When the phone thief's big brother is in your house at 2 AM, you can be safe in the knowledge that despite you being on your own, they are out there pounding the pavement to recover all those phones.
 
Theft of a single item of small property probably stopped being a police priority sometime around the time the Andy Griffith show went off the air.

Yeah, panic attack was my first thought. Had a few in the past, and it's easy to think you're having a heart attack, especially that first time.
 
Interestingly, I'm personally in better physical and mental shape than I've been in years. Lack of activity options has gotten me and the family outdoors and exercising together. Extra time with the family from working from home has brought us a lot closer together. Ironic that it took a global pandemic to get us healthy.

I haven't noticed. I'm using Opera.

Five windows 10 computers in the house. The guy that wrote the article is distorting things.
1. I got a screen that said something about the new Edge. Gave it a few seconds then clicked the "skip" at the bottom.
2. Oh no! Edge is pinned to the taskbar... just like when my windows install was brand new... I have to right click and select unpin, so call the feds.
3. The only way I've seen prompt to change default browser is by actually starting Edge. You know, the same as when you first launch Chrome, or FF, or Opera or...
4. Yep Opera is still there, still my default, shortcut is still on taskbar, nothing missing from favorites etc.
 
I've gone through same thing 5 times. If the author isn't making things up, they practically had to TRY to force the non-issues they had. Sorry guys and gals, installing a major update to a core bit of your OS and highlighting it to the user in case they might be interested is not a sign of MS relapsing. As I expected, this thread is full of people that will not let go of 90's Microsoft and see monopolies everywhere.

I'm sick of this "it's ok, they're insured" attitude, as if it justifies this behavior. Is there any country in the world where setting arson is NOT considered a crime? Is your car insured? If so, do you mind if I set it on fire? It's insured, so what's the issue?
 
Keep ignoring
the fact that those insured cars have to be replaced. If insurance rates go up, who pays? The citizens who foot the tax bill of course.

Non-Lethal is wrong. These options are considered "less than lethal" and are usually referred to as such by law enforcement.

Passing a fake $20, yeah no big deal. Being high on a mix of drugs and fighting with the police? Kind of ups your risk. Should he have died? No. I don't condone anyone dying once in police custody. Still, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It's not victim blaming to point out that actions have consequences
 
Let's not pretend that time served counts for diddly in the US. It will follow you and interfere with your life forever, regardless of race. The punishment doesn't end when the sentence is served. All these protesters might make more impact protesting that kind of crap.
 
Karma will catch up to the looting mob I hope. Likewise I hope it catches up the the race baiters. The body wasn't even cold in the morgue before it was a racial issue. I still haven't seen any evidence that he was killed BECAUSE he was black. No racist posts by the cop, no record of racist actions, no unearthed videos of him in blackface buying new sheets. Nothing.

We're not in some big, wealthy district (but certainly not a poor one), maybe 18k students near Dallas county. The district has made use of google classrooms and other online tools for several years for students to communicate with teachers at any time, get and turn in assignments and so on. It paid dividends when this began. Since most of this stuff was in place and well understood by students (K-12) and staff, adding Zoom and some other tools was relatively simple. Kids with no computer at home were given one from the districts supply of chromebooks for in-class use. Kids without internet access got help getting connected from the district.
 
So anyway... I find that my own kids, 6th and 8th graders, are still very engaged. They can easily get one on one time with a teacher. When they are in video conference, all students can ask questions in chat and the teacher can answer ALL of them since he/she has time after the meeting. My kids are fairly self motivated, but we've talked with parents of several of their classmates and in general grades are no better or worse.
 
Last thing...I think that the difficulty of teaching kids from home depends a lot on how engaged the parent was before all this. If you're not used to paying attention to what the kid is doing in school and just kind of leave it up to them do get stuff done, then what do you expect?
 
Sorry if this sounded preachy. Kids doing well in school has always depended on engaged parents, engaged teachers and a school district that enables. None of that has changed because of a virus...

we're going to see a better prepared nation when this passes. I hope... My family aren't preppers by any stretch of the imagination. We still keep a good supply of important items that might end up in short supply (alcohol, disinfecting cleaners, first aid supplies, common meds for cold/cough and so on). Near miss from a tornado a few years back made us a bit more aware I guess. Anyway, if you wait for the government or CNN to tell you what to do and when to do it, you're already behind.
 
Ok, I'm going to be a nice guy and let out a "secret". Try Home Depot for paper towels and laundry/cleaning supplies. It's not the first place a lot of people think to check. We got a couple of 6 packs of the shop paper towels. Better odds of finding something on the shelf than at the local wal-mart.

35th anniversary? Who celebrates that? I've always had a suspicion that Nintendo has sat on these kinds of remake/re-releases to have a guaranteed income during a tough time. There is no way they won't make piles of cash. I'd love to play mario64 on my switch.

He/She said " one of my FIRST jobs". Maybe you were making bank with your first job, but I doubt it.

"America does not have a housing shortage. Some cities have housing shortages." This is about the bay area, so local housing shortages are a reasonable discussion. Bay area is not like the rest of the country (in a lot of ways). Housing supply is limited because the city government, responding to citizens that don't want to see their inflated property values go down, keeps it that way. When you have a bunch of people overpaying for property the last thing they want is affordable housing moving in.

No offense fellow GenX... I started my career with a lot of great "boomers" that got me where I am today and hate hearing them disparaged.

"boomer"... i'm not a boomer and I'm tired of the term already. If you have a career in technology you owe it to those damn "boomers" who created the industry. My only problem with millenials is their attitude that nothing existed before they thought of it. Besides there are plenty of non-boomer MBA types making a mess of things today. It seems to be a job requirement.