You know, I read these articles about Microsoft, and I start to wonder who actually cares. As opposed to 10 years ago, Microsoft just isn't a part of my day-to-day interactions.

* Laptop is a MacBook Pro
* Phone is Android
* Tablet is Android

At work:
* I work with very large e-commerce sites - everything is Linux
* No SharePoint

Outside of Outlook/Exchange at work, I just don't use anything Microsoft anymore.

^^ THIS ^^

Another thing I do not "get" - even if one was to believe in a "creator" (in particular, the Judo-Christian one), why would you worship it? Epicurus said it best:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

Make sure programmers having documented unit tests is a standard at your work. Then watch him write tests for his uber-methods. Either he'll "get it" or he'll think testing is stupid. Having a programmer proclaim "testing is stupid" usually doesn't go over well with the rest of the department.

Reflecting back, it is sort of amazing how far Microsoft has fallen. From being nearly synonymous with everything computer related to now being the last one you think of when it comes to the technology that is nearest to us (our cell phones and tablets), it is stunning. And everything they make now looks like a desperate me-too move. Even more broadly, just a few years ago I was working in all Microsoft platforms from server and web development to desktop and office automation. Now, with the exception of Exchange, I don't even see Microsoft products. Amazing.

Cool, it looks like I can go get a free Win8 license key! Then I thought about the time I'd have spend looking into it and realized that I cared so little about Win8 that I went back to whatever I was doing beforehand.

I really see this viewpoint eroding. I think a lot of it originally came from that old guys tended to be mainframe-centric, and young guys were cut on open systems. There is a HUGE difference between the development mentalities between the two. My experience has seen that for the most part, mainframe guys really struggle when they are taken out of that environment. Between the fact that modern open systems have been around long enough for the young guys on them to become the old guys, and that many of those guys are now management making hiring decisions, I personally have seen this become much less of an issue.

All this word-wrangling about who-thought-of-what-first and who-made-who-do-what seems pretty infantile. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is going to go about making shit that people want to buy while the US and the companies that are part of it sit here and argue in court with themselves. Such a waste of financial resources and productivity.

Stepping back a bit, does it strike anyone else as extremely strange that we have a system in place in which the bodies that understand what they are doing (Google, Apple, Moto, etc.) turn to a body that doesn't (the courts) for decisions of can-or-cannot do?

All I can do is shake my head at how far we still have to come as a species - not because of a lack of "belief" in evolution per se, but rather the insistence to not at least be trying to better think about and understand the world (and universe) we live in.

Main chorus of "Through the Fire and the Flames"

I lost my wife to stomach cancer.

Although this would not have saved her (she had traditional surgery to have most of her stomach removed), one thing I noticed through the entire journey was that the research was geared towards more common cancers, like breast and colon. I'm happy to see that treatments of other cancers still being pursued.

NOTE: For Windows 8, a clean install also contains the extended Windows Defender technology, which, for the first time incorporates complete antimalware functionality – also optimized for memory and resource use per Jason’s blog about protecting you from malware. (This functionality does not exist on a clean install of Windows 7 where we would recommend that you add security software).

This somehow made me frown.

But most code reviews I have seen have been reduced to smaller items and standards enforcement (spacing, declaration, naming conventions, etc.) and not around anything that I consider significant enough to make the app "better." Usually those types of things are more in the application architecture, and a code review is much too late for that. As an aside, we used to semi-jokingly refer to code reviews as the "revolving vendetta" in my previous company, as certain individuals would pick on certain others with more zest.

In healthcare, we called this approach "universal precautions" - everything you touched was infected with a super HIV/Ebola/cock-rotting-disease and should be treated as such. Trust nothing, ever. Inconvenient, yes. Safe, yes.

Wait until your babies grow up, then you will find these comments funny again. Seriously.