is more like have a comment history and know if you are trolling.

i disagree, you should have your fair share of discrete mathematics, you know finite state machines, de morgan laws when you are changing your if's, regular expressions,

For LOB applications often you are making specific domain languages so you should know your grammars, also understand complexity in computer science terms is VERY useful.

So you are using a lot of math every day, in every compilation, solving this bug, or whatever, just a subset of math but math nonetheless.

a lot of people can benefit from a little coding background, I met a girl, not dull at all, that program textile patterns, a lot of financial people could program a few lines and save a lot of excel madness, many scientists that can prove or disprove hypotheses, biologists banging his heads to process the sheer raw data, contemporary musicians and artists that should know how to program to make their performances.

Sure kids will hate programming the same way most of the kids hate their math lessons, or their sexual education, or the arts program. But teach to everyone programming even with bad teachers, bad curriculum will bring a new breed of innovations and make the life happier to all of us.

today works like this: bribe local authoritites and enslave miners in third world countries while destroying the environment, then let criminal organizations export them back to the us, like the blood diamonds; there is a huge black market out there.

Well funded R&D can bring us amazing advancements, I only hope this project succeeds and stops the illegal mining and the black market in the same vein of the synthetic latex.

this is still true with the current stock price?

yes, apple updates are cheaper, OTH they are more frequent, in the timeframe 2009-2012 you pay for leopard, snow leopard, lion and mountain lion, $90 or so, so yes, apple is still the king of expensive shit.

well, there is the original source

"We start modestly as space is available on our sites selling online and in some stores in the United States Microsoft. But the reception, including the press, is phenomenal. This product is one of the best PC and one of the best tablets combined in one machine. Soon, we will present in more countries, more stores. It is here that figure will talk sense."
(google translate)

as i stated before, ballmer never said that sales were modest, he said that surface had a modest distribution, i.e. only launching in a few markets.

well, your link is wrong, Ballmer Never said that SALES were modest, the quote is a " widely distributed mistranslation ".

how do you exactly know that for example Nokia has to pay less than 2.25%, or if they have a lower rate with cross-licensing?, i don't find 2.25% unreasonable at all for the tech required to make an compliant mobile phone,patent licensing deals in the phone industry have been worth up to 5% of the price of the device involved.

yes i reread it and he ran the test and failed miserably until two months ago, after submission it failed when he ran it in a slow machine something he never did before. and is stated as a requirement to pass the tests.

suspend correctly is that in a machine with low memory, slow cpu the application suspends in less than 2 seconds. at least to pass the test.

he should run the Windows App Certification Kit tests where he can test the app before submission, and there are clear explanations of each and every one of the issues.

For example:
- direct3d: "Ensure that the app correctly supports the minimum Direct3D feature level you chose. If that feature level is higher than feature level 9_1, then your app must still run correctly at feature level 9_1. See Developing for different Direct3D feature levels (DirectX and C++) for more details".
- Crashes: "We expect apps to be fully functional without the use of Windows compatibility modes, AppHelp messages, or compatibility fixes."
- Performance: Make sure that your app suspends correctly.

The website linked in the app and listing page was not finished. i think is clear of its own, your webpage is clearly not finished.

Thankfully everyone can have the tool and run it until the tests are ok, then submit it, any programmer who refuses to read the fucking manual deserves to get out of the store.

Testing is a big subject, my take was to write a full automated test, one that puts the database in a zero state and do as many business scenarios it can, simulate the pass of time, simulate external inputs in the most realistic fashion so you don't have any surprise in the deployment.

The Test Team can use the tools developed to speed up their job(put the system in X state can be made by your automated test framework). they test manually all the system too, specially the UI and report bugs,

Designing the system so you can easily test and replicate states, developing the tools and putting it all together with the team was a task i found stimulating.