If you're not gonna use 'em... might I plug them into my receiver?

Get this, many of the people at the company - the developers, the outreach, the designers - actually value the idea of open source and the company/culture as a whole has actually changed from that of 20 years ago that /. loves to hate. But no... it couldn't possibly be that the company as a whole has changed, could it? There _has_ to be some sort of evil intention.

It's been an internal hackerspace (both hardware and software) at Microsoft for years. Mouse Without Borders (one-to-many mouse/keyboard control), BusAlarm (wakes you up when the bus gets to your stop), and Codeflow (my personal favorite diff/code review tool) all came out of the Garage years ago.

I (also SE) can't imagine why anyone would disagree. Short of incompatibility with team/company culture, why would you want to work with anyone less than the best in your industry, regardless of where they're from. If that talent happens to be from Asia, Europe, Australia... who cares? People want the best colleagues possible for their team.

The Windows Phone OS really is a great piece of software. It doesn't have all of the same features as Android and iOS (the important remaining ones are going in the fall) but it has - in my opinion - a much nicer interface. IMO, it's visually attractive, aesthetically consistent, and works very well.

Unfortunately, there aren't many attractive phones supporting it; the Samsung Focus wasn't bad, but that's only for one carrier. Otherwise, consumers are flooded with a bunch of (again, IMO) unattractive and cheaply-made HTC phones. Unlike the OS, the almost all of the phones aren't devices that can garner an "ooh" every time they're taken out, unlike the iPhone or Galaxy S II.

Amazingly enough, I legitimately do prefer the ribbon to 2003's menus.

I'll give you the Mailings tab, but I think the other things you mentioned are in their proper places.

It makes sense that the Tables tab only shows up when you're working with tables, as the only table-related command that you could possibly need access to when your cursor's not on top of a table is to create a new one. Therefore, you need a jumping point to create a table which you can edit; thus, the insert command is categorized under a permanent tab. There's no need for "insert table" to be in the Table tab, as you'll never have any reason to create a table within the table you currently have selected.

The References tab could work similarly - "insert" under the Insert tab, with the rest popping up later - but unlike Tables, Pictures, and any other of those fleeting tabs, you don't need a specific object type in order for any of the other grouped commands to be of any use; you just need text. As long as you have something typed, you have the potential need to insert a footnote, generate a table of contents, or save a citation, so we've now established the References tab as a permanent tab. I suppose it's a bit of a toss-up whether "insert footnote" belongs more directly under the action or the subject, but it's honestly not terribly difficult or inconveniencing either way. I never once found it weird that it was under "References" rather than "Insert", and I doubt I'd have given it a second thought were it the other way around. You spent five minutes because you didn't bother to read the button's label? I'm afraid I can't offer you any sympathy, as it was directly to the left of "Insert Endnote", rather than below it.

Yes, I found Office 2007 a huge breath of fresh air over 2000 and 2003, and 2010 improved further, I thought.
So now, seeing as I'm not tongue-in-cheek, open fire!

I think the thing to remember there is that this is designed to run on both tablets and full computers. Seeing as the Win7 interface isn't streamlined for touch and the tiles aren't streamlined for mouse + keyboard, they have to keep both. What about splitting them apart? Like with Windows Phone, they're coming from (way) behind in the tablet market, so keeping them together means they can leverage their existing Windows 7 user base.

I think the best thing would be to allow the user to "dock" their tablet with a monitor/mouse/keyboard. Imagine having the Win7 interface spring up on the screen where you can use your mouse and keyboard, and keeping the widget-y tiles on the tablet (where you could still interact with them).

Yo, the Ribbon's fantastic!

I just finished my first year as a Software Engineering major, and was somewhat shocked at how many people were unable to understand the core of CS and SE after a slew of relevant classes. A few observations:

- Many students are in these majors because they felt they were "good with computers" in high school. This really just means they were spending more time than is healthy on the internet (ha, don't we all?) and playing video games, and probably being third-hand distributors of memes. Playing lots of video games != being good with computers != being smart != being a good programmer.

Okay, a good percentage of students aiming for a CS degree are misguided in their abilities coming out of high school. How can that be fixed?

- Students need to crawl before they walk. Given that most students going into computing degrees have no or negligible experience programming or solve logic and reasoning problems, they need to taught to truly think before they're allowed to write a single line of code. In this regard, courses such as Precalculus (rotation of axes) Multivariable Calculus (change of order of integration and coordinate systems), Linear Algebra (abstract thinking in many dimensions), and Discrete Math (algorithm-oriented thinking) are not only extremely valuable, but - I argue - ought to be required before even marginally complex code.

- Grade schools (and parents) need to push math at a more accelerated rate, and earlier (I'm talking about the US now). The human brain develops most significantly between four and six years old (preschool to first grade). Why, then, is it standard practice to not teach the absolute basics of multiplication and division until the end of second grade at the earliest? Not only would the students have greater mental capacity once fully developed, but they'd also have the necessary practice using their brains to solve significantly-complex logical and mathematical problems by the time they reach college age to program by thinking algorithmically. Students are severely limited on the upper end in what courses they can take in high school. Most high schools don't offer anything past Calculus (many don't even have BC, the latter half of Calculus, at their school), or more than a single entry-level programming course. These students are only marginally better-prepared for a CS degree than the rest.

- I don't think the issue is that the courses are designed to weed out students who aren't going to be capable of the material. "Weeding out" is necessary for any field - sometimes, people aren't good at what they enjoy - but way too many students are unprepared for their college majors because their high school curricula weren't focused in their favor. In my hometown's school district, a typical 7th-12th grade year consists of one science, one math, one English, one social studies, one language, and two electives. Somewhat balanced at first glance, but then you realize that the only elective courses available are more rote- and literature based courses. I am not "poo-poo"ing liberal arts - they are important in understanding the evolution of cultures - but so few of them are actionary and forward-looking.

TL;DR:
- "Plays lots of video games" does not equate to "will make a good programmer"
- Colleges are trying to teach programming before teaching the ability to critically think through a problem.
- Grade-school-aged students aren't getting the necessary background in technology or logical reasoning at either school or home.
- Having a degree in something ought to mean that you're completely competent (not just in a base-line capacity) and ready for anything the workplace can throw at you, not that you struggled through four years of classes in an area, and mastered only 75% of the material.

Yeah, that's the one downside, I guess. I'm running with an SSD for boot, then 500 gigs internal and 1 TB external, so 120 megs didn't warrant a second glance for me.

Also, weird, because the fully-installed program is a little less than 80 MB. Still, something to note if you're running an SSD exclusively, though.

How did Zune customers "get shafted by DRM"? The only DRM-touched songs are those past the 10/month with Zune Pass. An extra $2.50 each month for unlimited streaming and non-permanent downloads. None of the Zune services are being touched, and I will still be able to get my HD serviced for years to come.

The only true part of your post was that iPods have not been discontinued, but Zunes have.

...but this is absolutely pathetic.

Does anyone remember the original iPods? They were absolutely terrible, and had almost nothing revolutionary about them. And now they're the largest-selling portable media players.

Sure, the original Zunes (both hardware and software) were miserable to use, but the Zune HD and Zune 4 kick the shit out of iPods and iTunes in all of hardware, software, interface, and back-end service (iTunes Store vs. Zune Pass). I'd be willing to bet that almost every single negative comment about them here either a) have zero experience with them, b) used extremely old and out-dated versions, or c) didn't give the distinctly unique interface a second glance. I admit, it's very different and takes some getting used to, but it's hella better than any alternatives I've used (being Windows Media Player, WinAmp, iTunes, VLC, and MediaMonkey for the software, and iPod Nano and iPod Touch for the hardware) for music.

Point is: give shit a fair chance before nay-saying it. I don't mean "reading multiple reviews", "watch the keynote", "look at the screenshots", or "go to the store to check it out". For software, use it as your primary media player/internet browser/OS/word processor/whatever else for a week or more and see what you think and how you feel after that. For hardware, hell - go ahead and buy it. You've got 30 days to decide whether you like it.

'cept that the Zune HD was a beautiful piece of hardware running fantastic software on both the device itself and on the desktop side. Windows Phone improves in almost every area (it did take away a few small things that really helped make the Zune OS so good). Simply because a product doesn't sell successfully, that doesn't mean that it isn't any good. I'd wager that you haven't used a Zune HD once nor have you given the Zune software a fair shot.

Just because it's been like that for the past 18 years, that doesn't mean that's the best solution. I looked kindly upon getting rid of the status bar because there wasn't anything down there that I would need to see any every given moment of browsing the web:

AdBlock's enabled, but I don't need to see that it is at any given moment. It stays enabled until I disable it and vice-versa.
NoScript is blocking content on the page, but I don't need an icon to tell me that; that much is apparent from something not loading, and is easy to change by right-clicking. My context menu is trimmed to the items I need, so adding functionality that I change all the time (but doesn't change on its own) to it is works very well.

Greasemonkey, Xmarks (now mostly obsolete by Firefox Sync), MasterPassword+, mass download managers, YouTube downloaders, etc., they all are either "set and forget"-type extensions, so you don't need to constantly monitor their statuses and can just trust them to do their jobs, or are context-sensitive, meaning they only act upon certain parts of a site, and therefore belong in your context menu.

I think you should give "no status bar" a shot, something longer than a 30 minute trial run; make it your primary browser for a week before you judge it.

Still, if Mozilla removes all the information from the bottom of the screen, they can't just leave one thing that _really_ doesn't belong there.

Only a couple things are important in a URL: file type, protocol, and domain, and there's plenty of room for two to show that once you get rid of the search bar. I never had any issues, though I suppose they could have darkened it. It _is_ taking me a moment to scan the URL in the bottom-left corner when it doesn't have ample white-space in the background and is so damn close to the much more colorful and therefore eye-attracting taskbar in Windows.