this has been Canada's (more specificly, Quebec) problem for a long while now, many (if not most) of our phd/md/etc. are leaving our province for another province/country in which they will be better paid or to join some big company, here their tuition fees are minimal but they're expected to work here afterward, it's a suppose to be giving-giving, but many come to Canada to study and then leave afterward...
I personally think this shouldn't be possible, maybe with something like in the army that say you have to serve at least 4 years before you leave after you get the iniial training.

Did they expect something like "Thank you google for fixing some of the problems we had on a browser we don't want to code for anymore" ?
Cause it's true they face new security problems that won't be fixed by microsoft with monthly critical updates as it is a plugin and not the basic application.

well the thing is Microsoft doesn't distinguish between an OS bought retail in a shop and the one already on your computer, they both have the same EULA, apple should do the same, in fact they do:

I don't see the logic that "I don't want a part of what I bought" applied to microsoft just because it's a monopoly especially when the choice is not the problem, but the lack of refund (which the constructor choose to charge you for, it's part of the deal !).

I don't want to see this case become jurisprudence as it will only lead to lots of trouble in the computer industry when both big companies have policies in place to refund if needed :/

By the same logic I could sue apple for the apple tax on the G5, the iMac, my iphone, ... it doesn't make sense at all and only in the EU could you see something like that :)

I just spent over 1'400$ on a PC and I expect my new games to look better than old one (for example BF3 > BF2, CSS > CS), but of course for casual gaming I don't care, but these games aren't the one I spent 3-4hours a day for the past year on.

better like in .. make all your friends pay for the game even if they never played it before just so they can play with you on LAN/schools and other social events? Wow that's one hell of a company evolving in the wrong direction, even wtih EA's DRM t hey managed to let us install our game on 4 machines and play with it in LAN but who am I to judge, I only played SC @ LAN during all my years of high-school during dinner and afterclass at the computers room...

WHS, so you can only "mirror" data that matters.

Great advice on the lubrification part, it may seem hard to talk about the most popular non-scifi-like tv-show, but sometimes we have to endure other people talking about the latest lame show that everybody's watching. Listening to their crappy music on the radio helps also when you end up in a bar and discussing bands.

I am definatly with you on the part that it's ok to don't show you're disgusted by some popular subjects if you wanna meet friends, but if you have intentions of having a serious relationship you just can't hide these things, although it could wait a bit...

I find that just hanging with people, see what they're genuinely interested about (about people aren't intellectuals so talking about global economics, latest discovery in science and such won't interest them that much, at least in most social settings) helps a lot.

You seem to also just wanna meet people even if it's not a girl so getting a course during the night might help, joining social groups (most cities have 1-2 geek space), joining mansa, going to events/conferences/seminars, most websites (and sometimes game servers too) that have a strong bonds between the readers/players also do GT regularly so you can meet like-minded people.

now 50% (among teens) of relations are started online, so yes this works, but I won't say it's easy or the best way, although ...

These are capitalist corporations. Their goal is to make money. People are willing to buy censorship technology (just look at any government office). Why do you act shocked that this is happening?

indeed, in large organization we never use the "default OS install", they have their volume license and build their new systems from images prepared by techs themself from the default windows install. It really doesn't affect us in any way, the only difference I can see where I work is instead of installing the ghost client on xp, we'll do this on vista and then push the old xp image ... what a difference !

I'd like to see any mac user getting a PC with an old MAC OS X version (8years old) with the same hardware taht will run the new one a few months later if you need it to, oh wait we were complaining about microsoft weren't we ? ;)

No. No. No. and No. We already learn enough useless theorical stuff at the university let us at least learn something usefull in the industry in the few practical course...

You have to teach in those very few practical course the bit that will be usefull right out the university. If you really do need fortran (in the case you go on specific area of specialisation/research) you'll learn it on your own easily because of the basic understanding you'll have of other language.

stop teaching stuff only usefull in very narrow field or research !

It's not as much the games as the way the gameplay let us interact with other people with in-game chat or over TS/Ventrilo. For me, when I play video games online it's about people and not the game itself, although the game as to allow such cooperative gameplay. Good examples are TF2, WoW, L4D, etc.

I personally don't quit playing because of the community that our servers built around the players (GT every 2 months, lan each year, etc) that makes me come back every night and far from the game itself (sometime we play like user but we have the greatest fun at just talking to each other and talking about everything.)

To me this addiction is not really one with the game but with social interactions THROUGH the games.

You can't open source something that is still in use in 60+% of the computers and say to your customers you won't support it any longer (except for CRITICAL security updates) it doesn't make sense. They should give old OS codes like win 3.0 and maybe win95/98 but would we really learn from those? I doubt it, reading winternals books or watching channel9 architecturing videos help us, I think, a lot more to comprehend how the OS does its job than reading old codes from OS poorly written.

your idea is good though, but it's the choice of the product on which to open up the code that's hard. They already gave us the .net framework codes ... give them time :P

if you remember the changes from 2 years ago where the summer time changed a few weeks, many company discovered that "extended support" didn't cover that sorta thing and had to pay many thousand $ for the patch.
from a company perspective it makes sense to not support your product indefinatly for free, but when 63% of the end users in the world use it it can only worry me. I sure hope w7 will get a high acceptance rate so that in 2014 we're no longer stuck with 50% if the world on xp with no more security update, that would be a nightmare.