I'm not going to say I exactly disagree with your original analogy; I do agree that the vendors should be held accountable for urging Microsoft to allow the "Vista Capable" sticker to appear on machines that weren't capable, but there is something I think should be taken into consideration. Microsoft has a history of offering versions of Windows that provide specifications below what the OS is actually capable of performing decently under, but prior to Vista, every version was capable of providing users with the advertised look.
I remember when XP was released, they issued system requirements that were about half or a third what the system actually required to operate adequately, but I don't recall hearing of anyone who couldn't use the "Fisher-Price" desktop effects, despite the performance issues, when operating at minimum requirements (I worked as a Microsoft Support Technician at the time XP was released). Vista, on the other hand, was completely incapable of supporting Microsoft's new Aero desktop and many of the other features Microsoft advertised when installed on hardware that met the so-called minimum requirements, yet Microsoft still sold Vista as being the look as much as the system, so personally, I feel they are doubly responsible for propagating the lie of what "Vista Capable" meant.
All well stated, but I would like to add one other point; Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985, but Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984, almost two years earlier (four days short of twenty-two months if you want to get technical), and the 68000 processor, though 16-bit externally, had 32 bit support internally, and could access 16MB.
That's an interesting question. If you look at Microsoft's stock price history for 2007, there was a fairly extensive price drop between January and early-March (a nearly $4.00 drop that was fairly consistent), and then it took until early May for the price to climb back up to $4.00, which indicates that the release of Vista may have hurt them significantly (I'm not an economist, though, so I can't really say much). On a side note, Microsoft stock collapsed (dropped from nearly $60 to about $30) in early 2000, which might have been part of the dot com bubble burst, then essentially flat-lined (held at around $30) until late December 2008 (it's now a little below $20, though to be fair, everyone's hurting).
I completely agree with you about Windows and other Microsoft error messages, particularly those in the more recent products (I issued a response on this elsewhere in this same thread, but feel it's worth repeating). Errors should provide the lay user with information that they can pass on to a technical support agent (I do ISP support), so the agent can help the customer diagnose the problem efficiently. Messages that use "you are too dumb to understand this" terminology (thank you for putting it that way) hinder efforts to help lay users, who should not be required to study and understand every aspect of a computer's operation just to use the thing.
Telling the user "there was a failure connecting" without providing additional information is completely useless; I've had to tell several customers that I couldn't help them because I had no way of understanding what the error they were giving me meant. This has become even more painful with the advent of Vista, where I frequently have to point the customer to the only interface that will report the errors I require. Just as going to your doctor and telling him your leg hurts without telling him where or how leaves him with no resources to diagnose your ailment, an error message that says "there's a problem", but says nothing more leaves support agents equally mystified.
Thank you for such a well worded response. I completely agree with you; error messages should be detailed enough that the user can understand what is happening, but keep excessive detail (such as register dumps) hidden unless specifically asked for. That's one of my major complaints with Vista (I don't use it, but I'm an ISP tech support agent, so I deal with dozens of customers who do).
One of the most bothersome errors is with the "Connect to" dialog; if the connection fails, Vista tells you this, but doesn't explain why, offering only the options of cancelling, trying again (which will likely fail if the problem is with the settings), or diagnosing the problem (which seems to completely ignore the error information the user should have been given). A proper failure message tells the user something practical, such as "invalid username or password", "there was no answer", etc. Add that to the point that creating a connection in Vista is such a convoluted mess to begin with (why the hell did they get rid of inetwiz?) and it begins to become obvious why people hate the product.
I was tempted to answer plot hole, but here's another point of view.
There are technically no "alternate" timelines, simply alternate events, but the events of the past still affect the situation of the future. Marty and Doc are out of their time space, so they continue to remember the events of their pasts, as does old Biff, who was out of his time space when the shift (the change from natural (the events Marty originally fixed in 1955) to alternate (the events old Biff screwed up in 1955)) occurred. Jennifer is unconscious, so she is completely unaware of the changes, and Marty and Doc fix the problem before she wakes, so she never experiences the alternate events. After Marty destroys the almanac, fixing the timeline, the time space shifts back to what I've termed as natural events.
So, in all technicality, there are no alternate timelines, just alternate events that deviate from the so-called natural timeline. My sig should explain how I devised this explanation.
Just a short note, but to be honest, Blakey Rat reminds me of Frank Burns, while you remind me more of Hawkeye (I'm referring to the TV series, not the movie, which I'll admit I've never seen). Or to take a different route, he reminds me of Arnold Rimmer while you remind me of Dave Lister.
Totally agreed. I've not seen one comment posted by HermMunster on this thread that seemed even remotely trollish; he was simply making observations based on what he sees as facts (though personally, I'd like a reference to those 47+ reporting applications, not that I am in any way, shape, or form a Windows supporter). It seems more that Mods are giving him -1 Troll for stating something they don't agree with, which, in my opinion, should hurt their credibility. Maybe I should metamod more often.
That's what I wondered myself. Any halfassed programmer (such as myself) can easily see that the while () loop should have been a simple if () comparison.
Personally, I can think of at least a few practical uses of anthropomorphic robots, though they won't become genuinely useful until some distant time in our future.
Translation is one thing computers could do far better than humans if a machine with enough power to manage the task was created to be specialized enough; C-3PO from Star Wars is a good example of how this might work, since he could translate just about anything he heard for those around him (yes, he is fictional, but he's still a good template for what we might be able to accomplish).
Helping us understand ourselves, as a species, better is another thing anthropomorphic robots are already doing; Nova (the PBS science program) has shown such experiments at work in at least one episode I can think of. The experiments may not yet be as beneficial as other studies are, but they have been helpful.
Admittedly, there are many things people have tried to do in the anthropomorphic robot field that are completely useless, but to dismiss the science as a whole because of a few poorly implemented failures is, in my opinion, short sighted.
Just thought I'd make a few brief comments about a few other con factors I've dealt with supporting ISP customers using Vista:
1 - INETWIZ (Internet Connection Wizard) is no longer present. I'll be one of the first to say INETWIZ had its major faults (such as making "Use area code and dialing rules" the default and making the default connection name "Connection to" and the phone number), but it was one of the most straight forward interfaces Microsoft ever created, and changed little (if at all) between versions. The "Make New Connection" wizards have always been overly complex for creating simple internet connections.
2 - The only way to create a desktop shortcut for a new connection is in "Network Connections", and I have yet to find any way of accessing the Network Connections window quickly (it can take a minute or more to direct a customers through all of the menagerie of menu options necessary to get there). In Windows XP, I can simply direct a customer to "Connect to", and create the shortcut in menu, but there is no such method in Vista.
3 - "Connect to" and the default connection interface is useless for technicians. Despite the age and pitifully slow speed of dial-up, there are still thousands (if not millions) of dial-up customers in the United States, and when those customers cannot connect, they do *not*, with very few exceptions, want to wade through the "troubleshooting" interface, which seems incapable of detecting such errors as "Invalid Username or Password" or "The Line is Busy". This forces me to direct these customers to their dialers, which is why it's vital that a shortcut to the connection be created on the desktop for any customer using Vista. No previous version of Windows gave me as much difficulty in troubleshooting a customer's connection issue than Vista.
I also have complaints about IE7's new interface, but I think these three are sufficient. Of course, I don't own Vista myself, and will never purchase the OS for personal use (I've switched to Ubuntu and Mac OS X), and I personally detest Microsoft Office, so most of my observations are based on second hand experience, and trying to figure out what I need to direct my customers to do using the Vista test machine at our office.
"I can be as cool as Apple! Really I can! Quit laughing at me!"
That reminds me of an episode of TaleSpin I recently watched (on YouTube); one of Shere Kahn's employees is trying to suck up to his boss, but fails, of course (this is Disney), and he's always whines "Stop laughing at me". In my opinion, he is quite reminiscent of Microsoft in his ruthless actions and his illicit actions to get what he wants.
I'm responding because I feel you deserve a response for such a well written post; I'm not going to comment on your "browser technologies" comment because a) I am not particularly familiar with the technologies, and b) I'm not that interested in learning about them.
I don't know how well Microsoft will retain the server-end. To me, a lot of it comes down to Exchange.
I agree that Exchange is probably the most "attractive" server element Windows has, but unfortunately, the user front end (Outlook) is a bear to deal with. My work uses it, and I accidentally told it to archive some of my email shortly after I started (I forgot to shut archiving off) and Outlook lost my archive file, so now I have to tell Outlook not to search for the file every single day, there's no way I know of to stop it from searching, and the stupid application forces me to click on two different dialog windows before I can access my email (and in my opinion, that's a real pain in the ass).
I'd say there's a good chance XBox will survive, but you can never tell with the console market.
That's a very good point. If I recall correctly, the success of the Wii was a huge surprise to the industry as a whole, despite the small number of games targeted to gamers (all I have for the Wii specifically is Metroid, Zelda, Smash Brothers, and Wii Sports (which came with the console) though I do use my system for many of my GameCube games on occasion). Of course, I am also one of the most abnormal people I know.
I'm not sure Microsoft's R&D is the problem.
There is a point I'll totally agree with. There have been a number of ideas I've seen out of Microsoft's R&D that I thought were creative, and possibly even practical, but felt certain they would never see the light of day. Unfortunately for all of us, we have to tolerate Microsoft, and companies in other industries like them, who stifle innovation while pretending to contribute.
I agree very much with your points, particularly those regarding Word. I only wish OOo was based more off of the WordPerfect design; there is an environment where you don't have to worry about the program confusing processes.
A few brief examples are Reveal Codes (a powerful editing tool that shows you everything inside the document, so you can truly feel you own your work), true WYSIWYG (so you can see exactly how what you type is being set as your typing), and instant preview (this lets you see exactly what a change to the document will do without actually applying the change). As for type setting, there are great tools I've never seen anywhere else such as "Center on Margin" (centers between your current margins), "Flush Right", and Indent, which give you incredible control over the appearence of your document.
I only wish Corel hadn't futzed the whole thing up; WordPerfect 9 was the last version I feel maintains most of the quality of the original product (I just wish it wouldn't crash as often) while using features that are useful today, and there have been at least four versions since.
While I'll admit it's not longer "Major", WordPerfect 9 for Windows (the 2000 version, which is also the best Windows version) has the best Office UI I have ever used; the only downside I've seen is how often it crashes on me, which isn't an awful lot, but often enough to be annoying.
WordPerfect has operational features such as the "Application Bar" which automatically changes to meet your current needs (working on a table, you get the table tools; working on a graphic, you get the graphic tools; working on regular text, you get the text tools; etc.) which maximizes document real estate.
WordPerfect also allows every key on the keyboard to be mapped uniquely (though you do have to create a separate keyboard map), all of the tool bars to be edited and new ones created, and many other things for customizing the UI.
But as far as the UI is concerned, there's the fact that "Print Preview" is merely another editing interface; the application is true WYSIWYG interface, so what you see is genuinely what you get (even in draft mode, except for minor effects like vertical justification within tables).
As for all of the other office apps, though, I'll totally agree with you about the low quality of their UIs.
I spent the better part of the afternoon looking for the ref: Corporation of Presiding Bishop v. Amos.
The actual case is "Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos". I searched Google and found it immediately, but then again, I knew exactly what to look for (being a member of said church).
That said, my brief examination of the case in point revealed that the facility in question was "a nonprofit facility . . . run by religious entities associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" (http://supreme.justia.com/us/483/327, referring to 483 U.S. 327). As the OP pointed out, the Supreme Court sided with the LDS Church. The same article points out that an exemption to Title VII (listed as 702) can be applied to "religious organizations' secular activites" without violating the Establishment Clause of the first amendment.
Of course, as also stated by the OP, Diskeeper is not a religious organization, and it would be a stretch to claim that it's run by a religious entity associated with a religious organization. Hope this helps.
I'd like to add that with Open Source, making a complaint about a problem with the software is much, much easier. I use ubuntu, and I've had an inexcusably annoying problem with GIMP for some time, and finally got around to reporting it last night. It did take me a few minutes to find the bug reporting tool, but once I did, I was able to issue my complaint in explicit detail, and make sure that what I had to complain about wasn't something that had already been issued. Furthermore, the tool let me know exactly how much information I needed to provide to ensure that my report was as useful for the developers as possible. To my knowledge, such an issue with Microsoft would be next to impossible to achieve without spending hours on the phone with their tech support agents and corroboration from multiple other users.
Not to sound like an MS apologist or supporter (I'm writing this in Firefox, on a Mac with my Ubuntu machine (the only other I own) next to me), but MS never advised customers use an alternate browser in this situation; that was a recommendation made by security professionals, to whom, I believe, your suggestion of making the recommendation permanent should apply.
I won't argue your point with the standard Firefox install, but my employer allowed me to install PortableFirefox on my desktop at work (or rather, my employer doesn't prevent me from adding and keeping userspace tools on my desktop), so I can manage my PortableFirefox updates independently, even though I'm operating as a limited user (Firefox is also provided by the company, but is somewhat limited). I'll agree, this isn't an answer for everyone, but Firefox's disadvantage disappears for those in my position.
I completely agree with several points of your post, but I am not sure I'd agree that "Helios was perfectly in the right to flame back." I know it is certainly human nature to respond that way to comments as nasty as some of those he received, but I, personally, believe human nature is not always the best course of action.
Despite this, however, I agree that he took the correct course of action in a) protecting her from libel by not distributing her surname or contact information at any time, b) discussing the matter with her in a civilized manner after the fact, which opportunity he used to reconcile with her, and c) posting a public apology for his earlier statements. These latter points, in my opinion, set a much better example for all of us than his earlier behavior, even if the teacher "brought the storm upon herself" first.
My personal feelings are I am happy to see that Helios and Karen made amends with each other in this situation, and I wish the best for each of them in their individual future endeavors. I hope they have both learned valuable lessons from this experience.
I'm not a web developer, myself, but I do know a little bit about art, so I thought I'd also offer you a little bit in the way of a suggestion or two. Not being pushy, though the title along the top is the hardest to look at.
I have nothing against orange or blue (they are my two favorite colors, in order of priority) but it is difficult to make them look good together. Perhaps softening one or the other might help, or changing either the blue or the orange to a different color might help. Red looks great with orange, since they're so close together on the color wheel, and so do turquoise or cyan with blue.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not going to say I exactly disagree with your original analogy; I do agree that the vendors should be held accountable for urging Microsoft to allow the "Vista Capable" sticker to appear on machines that weren't capable, but there is something I think should be taken into consideration. Microsoft has a history of offering versions of Windows that provide specifications below what the OS is actually capable of performing decently under, but prior to Vista, every version was capable of providing users with the advertised look.
I remember when XP was released, they issued system requirements that were about half or a third what the system actually required to operate adequately, but I don't recall hearing of anyone who couldn't use the "Fisher-Price" desktop effects, despite the performance issues, when operating at minimum requirements (I worked as a Microsoft Support Technician at the time XP was released). Vista, on the other hand, was completely incapable of supporting Microsoft's new Aero desktop and many of the other features Microsoft advertised when installed on hardware that met the so-called minimum requirements, yet Microsoft still sold Vista as being the look as much as the system, so personally, I feel they are doubly responsible for propagating the lie of what "Vista Capable" meant.
All well stated, but I would like to add one other point; Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985, but Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984, almost two years earlier (four days short of twenty-two months if you want to get technical), and the 68000 processor, though 16-bit externally, had 32 bit support internally, and could access 16MB.
That's an interesting question. If you look at Microsoft's stock price history for 2007, there was a fairly extensive price drop between January and early-March (a nearly $4.00 drop that was fairly consistent), and then it took until early May for the price to climb back up to $4.00, which indicates that the release of Vista may have hurt them significantly (I'm not an economist, though, so I can't really say much). On a side note, Microsoft stock collapsed (dropped from nearly $60 to about $30) in early 2000, which might have been part of the dot com bubble burst, then essentially flat-lined (held at around $30) until late December 2008 (it's now a little below $20, though to be fair, everyone's hurting).
I completely agree with you about Windows and other Microsoft error messages, particularly those in the more recent products (I issued a response on this elsewhere in this same thread, but feel it's worth repeating). Errors should provide the lay user with information that they can pass on to a technical support agent (I do ISP support), so the agent can help the customer diagnose the problem efficiently. Messages that use "you are too dumb to understand this" terminology (thank you for putting it that way) hinder efforts to help lay users, who should not be required to study and understand every aspect of a computer's operation just to use the thing.
Telling the user "there was a failure connecting" without providing additional information is completely useless; I've had to tell several customers that I couldn't help them because I had no way of understanding what the error they were giving me meant. This has become even more painful with the advent of Vista, where I frequently have to point the customer to the only interface that will report the errors I require. Just as going to your doctor and telling him your leg hurts without telling him where or how leaves him with no resources to diagnose your ailment, an error message that says "there's a problem", but says nothing more leaves support agents equally mystified.
Thank you for such a well worded response. I completely agree with you; error messages should be detailed enough that the user can understand what is happening, but keep excessive detail (such as register dumps) hidden unless specifically asked for. That's one of my major complaints with Vista (I don't use it, but I'm an ISP tech support agent, so I deal with dozens of customers who do).
One of the most bothersome errors is with the "Connect to" dialog; if the connection fails, Vista tells you this, but doesn't explain why, offering only the options of cancelling, trying again (which will likely fail if the problem is with the settings), or diagnosing the problem (which seems to completely ignore the error information the user should have been given). A proper failure message tells the user something practical, such as "invalid username or password", "there was no answer", etc. Add that to the point that creating a connection in Vista is such a convoluted mess to begin with (why the hell did they get rid of inetwiz?) and it begins to become obvious why people hate the product.
Unfortunately, while it is working a little, it's not doing enough.
I was tempted to answer plot hole, but here's another point of view.
There are technically no "alternate" timelines, simply alternate events, but the events of the past still affect the situation of the future. Marty and Doc are out of their time space, so they continue to remember the events of their pasts, as does old Biff, who was out of his time space when the shift (the change from natural (the events Marty originally fixed in 1955) to alternate (the events old Biff screwed up in 1955)) occurred. Jennifer is unconscious, so she is completely unaware of the changes, and Marty and Doc fix the problem before she wakes, so she never experiences the alternate events. After Marty destroys the almanac, fixing the timeline, the time space shifts back to what I've termed as natural events.
So, in all technicality, there are no alternate timelines, just alternate events that deviate from the so-called natural timeline. My sig should explain how I devised this explanation.
Just a short note, but to be honest, Blakey Rat reminds me of Frank Burns, while you remind me more of Hawkeye (I'm referring to the TV series, not the movie, which I'll admit I've never seen). Or to take a different route, he reminds me of Arnold Rimmer while you remind me of Dave Lister.
Totally agreed. I've not seen one comment posted by HermMunster on this thread that seemed even remotely trollish; he was simply making observations based on what he sees as facts (though personally, I'd like a reference to those 47+ reporting applications, not that I am in any way, shape, or form a Windows supporter). It seems more that Mods are giving him -1 Troll for stating something they don't agree with, which, in my opinion, should hurt their credibility. Maybe I should metamod more often.
That's what I wondered myself. Any halfassed programmer (such as myself) can easily see that the while () loop should have been a simple if () comparison.
Personally, I can think of at least a few practical uses of anthropomorphic robots, though they won't become genuinely useful until some distant time in our future.
Translation is one thing computers could do far better than humans if a machine with enough power to manage the task was created to be specialized enough; C-3PO from Star Wars is a good example of how this might work, since he could translate just about anything he heard for those around him (yes, he is fictional, but he's still a good template for what we might be able to accomplish).
Helping us understand ourselves, as a species, better is another thing anthropomorphic robots are already doing; Nova (the PBS science program) has shown such experiments at work in at least one episode I can think of. The experiments may not yet be as beneficial as other studies are, but they have been helpful.
Admittedly, there are many things people have tried to do in the anthropomorphic robot field that are completely useless, but to dismiss the science as a whole because of a few poorly implemented failures is, in my opinion, short sighted.
Just thought I'd make a few brief comments about a few other con factors I've dealt with supporting ISP customers using Vista:
1 - INETWIZ (Internet Connection Wizard) is no longer present. I'll be one of the first to say INETWIZ had its major faults (such as making "Use area code and dialing rules" the default and making the default connection name "Connection to" and the phone number), but it was one of the most straight forward interfaces Microsoft ever created, and changed little (if at all) between versions. The "Make New Connection" wizards have always been overly complex for creating simple internet connections.
2 - The only way to create a desktop shortcut for a new connection is in "Network Connections", and I have yet to find any way of accessing the Network Connections window quickly (it can take a minute or more to direct a customers through all of the menagerie of menu options necessary to get there). In Windows XP, I can simply direct a customer to "Connect to", and create the shortcut in menu, but there is no such method in Vista.
3 - "Connect to" and the default connection interface is useless for technicians. Despite the age and pitifully slow speed of dial-up, there are still thousands (if not millions) of dial-up customers in the United States, and when those customers cannot connect, they do *not*, with very few exceptions, want to wade through the "troubleshooting" interface, which seems incapable of detecting such errors as "Invalid Username or Password" or "The Line is Busy". This forces me to direct these customers to their dialers, which is why it's vital that a shortcut to the connection be created on the desktop for any customer using Vista. No previous version of Windows gave me as much difficulty in troubleshooting a customer's connection issue than Vista.
I also have complaints about IE7's new interface, but I think these three are sufficient. Of course, I don't own Vista myself, and will never purchase the OS for personal use (I've switched to Ubuntu and Mac OS X), and I personally detest Microsoft Office, so most of my observations are based on second hand experience, and trying to figure out what I need to direct my customers to do using the Vista test machine at our office.
Thanks for the great laugh.
That reminds me of an episode of TaleSpin I recently watched (on YouTube); one of Shere Kahn's employees is trying to suck up to his boss, but fails, of course (this is Disney), and he's always whines "Stop laughing at me". In my opinion, he is quite reminiscent of Microsoft in his ruthless actions and his illicit actions to get what he wants.
Thanks for the tip, but Outlook refused to create an archive file. Do I create one manually?
I agree that Exchange is probably the most "attractive" server element Windows has, but unfortunately, the user front end (Outlook) is a bear to deal with. My work uses it, and I accidentally told it to archive some of my email shortly after I started (I forgot to shut archiving off) and Outlook lost my archive file, so now I have to tell Outlook not to search for the file every single day, there's no way I know of to stop it from searching, and the stupid application forces me to click on two different dialog windows before I can access my email (and in my opinion, that's a real pain in the ass).
That's a very good point. If I recall correctly, the success of the Wii was a huge surprise to the industry as a whole, despite the small number of games targeted to gamers (all I have for the Wii specifically is Metroid, Zelda, Smash Brothers, and Wii Sports (which came with the console) though I do use my system for many of my GameCube games on occasion). Of course, I am also one of the most abnormal people I know.
There is a point I'll totally agree with. There have been a number of ideas I've seen out of Microsoft's R&D that I thought were creative, and possibly even practical, but felt certain they would never see the light of day. Unfortunately for all of us, we have to tolerate Microsoft, and companies in other industries like them, who stifle innovation while pretending to contribute.
I agree very much with your points, particularly those regarding Word. I only wish OOo was based more off of the WordPerfect design; there is an environment where you don't have to worry about the program confusing processes.
A few brief examples are Reveal Codes (a powerful editing tool that shows you everything inside the document, so you can truly feel you own your work), true WYSIWYG (so you can see exactly how what you type is being set as your typing), and instant preview (this lets you see exactly what a change to the document will do without actually applying the change). As for type setting, there are great tools I've never seen anywhere else such as "Center on Margin" (centers between your current margins), "Flush Right", and Indent, which give you incredible control over the appearence of your document.
I only wish Corel hadn't futzed the whole thing up; WordPerfect 9 was the last version I feel maintains most of the quality of the original product (I just wish it wouldn't crash as often) while using features that are useful today, and there have been at least four versions since.
While I'll admit it's not longer "Major", WordPerfect 9 for Windows (the 2000 version, which is also the best Windows version) has the best Office UI I have ever used; the only downside I've seen is how often it crashes on me, which isn't an awful lot, but often enough to be annoying.
WordPerfect has operational features such as the "Application Bar" which automatically changes to meet your current needs (working on a table, you get the table tools; working on a graphic, you get the graphic tools; working on regular text, you get the text tools; etc.) which maximizes document real estate.
WordPerfect also allows every key on the keyboard to be mapped uniquely (though you do have to create a separate keyboard map), all of the tool bars to be edited and new ones created, and many other things for customizing the UI.
But as far as the UI is concerned, there's the fact that "Print Preview" is merely another editing interface; the application is true WYSIWYG interface, so what you see is genuinely what you get (even in draft mode, except for minor effects like vertical justification within tables).
As for all of the other office apps, though, I'll totally agree with you about the low quality of their UIs.
The actual case is "Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. Amos". I searched Google and found it immediately, but then again, I knew exactly what to look for (being a member of said church).
That said, my brief examination of the case in point revealed that the facility in question was "a nonprofit facility . . . run by religious entities associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" (http://supreme.justia.com/us/483/327, referring to 483 U.S. 327). As the OP pointed out, the Supreme Court sided with the LDS Church. The same article points out that an exemption to Title VII (listed as 702) can be applied to "religious organizations' secular activites" without violating the Establishment Clause of the first amendment.
Of course, as also stated by the OP, Diskeeper is not a religious organization, and it would be a stretch to claim that it's run by a religious entity associated with a religious organization. Hope this helps.
I'd like to add that with Open Source, making a complaint about a problem with the software is much, much easier. I use ubuntu, and I've had an inexcusably annoying problem with GIMP for some time, and finally got around to reporting it last night. It did take me a few minutes to find the bug reporting tool, but once I did, I was able to issue my complaint in explicit detail, and make sure that what I had to complain about wasn't something that had already been issued. Furthermore, the tool let me know exactly how much information I needed to provide to ensure that my report was as useful for the developers as possible. To my knowledge, such an issue with Microsoft would be next to impossible to achieve without spending hours on the phone with their tech support agents and corroboration from multiple other users.
Not to sound like an MS apologist or supporter (I'm writing this in Firefox, on a Mac with my Ubuntu machine (the only other I own) next to me), but MS never advised customers use an alternate browser in this situation; that was a recommendation made by security professionals, to whom, I believe, your suggestion of making the recommendation permanent should apply.
I won't argue your point with the standard Firefox install, but my employer allowed me to install PortableFirefox on my desktop at work (or rather, my employer doesn't prevent me from adding and keeping userspace tools on my desktop), so I can manage my PortableFirefox updates independently, even though I'm operating as a limited user (Firefox is also provided by the company, but is somewhat limited). I'll agree, this isn't an answer for everyone, but Firefox's disadvantage disappears for those in my position.
I completely agree with several points of your post, but I am not sure I'd agree that "Helios was perfectly in the right to flame back." I know it is certainly human nature to respond that way to comments as nasty as some of those he received, but I, personally, believe human nature is not always the best course of action.
Despite this, however, I agree that he took the correct course of action in a) protecting her from libel by not distributing her surname or contact information at any time, b) discussing the matter with her in a civilized manner after the fact, which opportunity he used to reconcile with her, and c) posting a public apology for his earlier statements. These latter points, in my opinion, set a much better example for all of us than his earlier behavior, even if the teacher "brought the storm upon herself" first.
My personal feelings are I am happy to see that Helios and Karen made amends with each other in this situation, and I wish the best for each of them in their individual future endeavors. I hope they have both learned valuable lessons from this experience.
Good point. Sometimes I think HTML is a curse.
I'm not a web developer, myself, but I do know a little bit about art, so I thought I'd also offer you a little bit in the way of a suggestion or two. Not being pushy, though the title along the top is the hardest to look at.
I have nothing against orange or blue (they are my two favorite colors, in order of priority) but it is difficult to make them look good together. Perhaps softening one or the other might help, or changing either the blue or the orange to a different color might help. Red looks great with orange, since they're so close together on the color wheel, and so do turquoise or cyan with blue.