The hilarious (or maybe hilariously horrifying) thing is that MS has been providing awfully forgiving backwards-compatibility since the Windows 95 days. The really horrifying part in the linked example is that they provide this hand-holding to people who didn't even read "past the first page" of the SDK when the program was originally written for Win 3.1.

That said, "it made sense at the time" and/or "we really didn't have a choice back then" seem to be recurring themes in Windows development (at least on Raymond Chen's blog).

During my long sojourn with XP, I got to spend a lot of quality time with bluescreens. That said, it wasn't usually windows crashing so much as device drivers crashinig windows (I'm looking at you ATI!).

Well, he's not *entirely* wrong. The problem is that we use one acronym for every kind of nonrecoverable error in the windows os family, which is mainly the fault of ms (with blue-flavored error screens going back to 3.1 as I recall).

That said, with a little pedantry, it can be pointed out that the NT series has the uniquely-labeled 'STOP' errors (with handy error-id hex #), as well as the more stark NMI screens (especially those lovely Memory Parity Errors). Plus, there's the sad smiley bluescreen. That definitely started with Win8 (and ended, hopefully).

But in the end, it's bugchecks all the way down, no matter what your os is. The Guru Meditation is a great example from the Amiga.

I think there's a 'Hitchhiker's' quote for that:

That said, I don't mean to flame Republicans in general. Just the virulently stereotypical ones I'm related to.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I actually registered Republican in '08, though that was to vote for Ron Paul in my first presidential primary. In retrospect, I wasn't nearly as well-informed a voter as I thought I was.)

They're much better at sharing/retweeting "SCANDALOUS Truth About Obama/Democrats Revealed!!!" videos on their preferred social media platform.

This is also where you pray that maybe the New Slashdot will feature an edit button.

Exactly! This is where your trot out xkcd and feel smug!

Your winnings, sir!

Not if she were from the highlands, at any rate.

I believe that dear Mr. AC meant 'state agency' in the sense of an agency that is ultimately responsible to a state governor (1 of 50 such), as opposed to agencies who are ultimately responsible to a person often addressed as 'Mr. President'. Generally speaking, your local DMV is one such agency.

Hence the difference between *state secrets* (e.g. the judges of the chili cookoff at this year's Texas state fair, wouldn't want anyone to try and 'help' them with their impartial decision) and *State secrets* (e.g. the flight schedules for unmanned drones, wouldn't want someone to 'help' them make an unscheduled landing.)

I'm pretty sure apk would have used at least one line break.

That reminds me, it's been months since we've seen any comments from Michael Cristopheit.

Learning about payment practices of larger (and sometimes smaller) companines has been one of the most... heartwarming aspects of working for a small business. Perfectly illustrated by the Obligatory Dilbert.

You are my hero forever.

Also, +1 Recursive Humor