My point was that here in the US, especially the south and southwest (including conveniently enough CA where they are discussing this law) summer is a major thing and that you seemed to forget that being used to the UK.
There is this thing called summer when lots of people need to COOL their homes and incandescant bulbs only make that problem worse. Also as pointed out by other posts, there are much more effecient ways to generate heat than through light bulbs.
>"Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server? I asked that to >an Oracle DBA once, and he just got red in the face and stammered about having more options >to configure things the way he wanted. I asked what exactly he configured, and basically >got a lecture on Microsoft being evil. I then asked if he thought Larry Ellison was a >saint, and the conversation just continued to devolve.
>Serious question: why is Oracle considered so much better that SQL Server?"
If you ever run a LARGE datbase at the enterprise level, you will see the difference very quickly. When you are dealing with thousands or tens of thousands of users are millions of records, Oracle will kill SQL Server on performance and response time.
Also as already noted Oracle doesn't limit you to using a Windows server the way SQL Server does.
Having used various versions of Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and (God help me) even on occasion Access for the database behind various applications in different jobs, the only 2 I would recommend are Oracle and MySQL depending on the size of the database and the budget of the business buying the product. For small businesses that I have worked in before MySQL is great; it's free, and works well unless you are talking about large data sets or large numbers of users at the same time. For enterprise level systems like those used in government or extremely large organizations give me Oracle any day, but then you are dealing with budgets large enough that the cost of Oracle is easily dealt with.
If they are developing a launch mechanism, then you could shoot a canister of the stuff over the fleeing vehicle to deploy in front of it.
Also this would work wonders if you are the one being chased in a situation and need to disable the vehicles chasing you. I know this is not the case very often in Iraq right now, but it could be very useful for future operations.
>I should really improve my insulation, but don't. Why? Because there's no payback in natural gas savings.
>...so I do the things I can afford: Recycle, fix dripping taps, take the bus when I can. I realize there are often higher-purpose reasons than cost savings, but many people simply can't *afford* to be green.
I spent less than $700 and one full day of labor for me and my wife on a weekend on insulation on my house Fall of '05. The savings on the utility bill paid for the cost of the insulation (including the price of renting the blower to blow it in and buying a decent ladder) in less than a year.
I also replaced all the windows in my home with triple pane Low-E argon filled windows earlier this year. Yeah that ran me just shy of $5000 installed. I financed it through the same company I bought the windows from 1 year same as cash. I expect the energy savings to pay for the windows in roughly 7 years. The new windows also look a lot better and came with a lifetime warranty against breakage that is transferable if I sell my house. The added value to my home will almost pay for the windows by itself if I sell the house.
I agree that solar panels, hybrid cars, even projects like the windows I did can have a high up front cost. A lot of people cannot afford that cost up front, but simple projects like insulation, sealing around doors better, etc. are cheap and really will start having benefits that add up pretty quickly.
First off not all call center employees need to read scripts. A lot do, but I wasn't one of them. I had over a decade of experience with computers before getting that job. Like a lot of the people working there (or at least most of the night shifts), I was using it to pay my way through college.
Second a lot of people lost jobs other than just the people on the phones. Managers, trainers, senior techs (the guy that gets to actuall figure out how to fix it when the front line tech that may just be reading from a checklist can't figure it out), janitors, etc. BTW I was one of the senior guys answering questions from front line techs and then later a trainer. It's just too bad that a lot of call centers have low hiring standards and only gave us 2 weeks to train someone. Yes, the majority of call center techs NEED the checklists and the scripts, but not all of them. Besides most Americans would rather get there tech support from someone here than trying to deal with a language barrier and still having the tech read from a script either way.
As to me not having skills that are sought after: I finished that degree with a couple minors added to it, went on the get 2 master's degrees, ran my own business in grad school (that was profitable enough to at least pay the bills and help pay for the degree), have years of R&D background, have development and project management experience, and now have a very nice job in the IT sector.
Seen the same thing happen to me and 600+ fellow employees a few years back. I think anyone with more than half a brain knows this survey is BS. Unfortunately a lot of HR types don't have half a brain.
Tell that to the 600 people I worked with at a call center several years back (main job working through undergrad) when Gateway decided to close that call center and move it and all 600 positions to India. Remember that outsourcing happens to existing jobs as well as new ones all the time.
While the FBI's database does include convicted felons (not sure if your prints go in it if not convicted or for misdemeanors), it also includes the prints of every Federal employee and all military personel. The database is not strictly for criminal records. Admittedly adding all visitors from other countries to the database is increasing the scope of its use a good bit, but it does not mean they are automatically assuming you are a criminal or a terrorist.
1) Having run a business before I would probably not hire you either. Your tone makes you come across as petty, bitter, overly cocky, and rather self absorbed.
2) Yes 3.65 GPA is good, congrats on that. Is that a 2 years degree, a 4 year degree, or from a graduate program? Do you have any work experience to go with it, especially in your field? GPA is not nearly the most important factor in finding a good employee.
3) Guess what, Google didn't want me either when I got out of grad school. This coming from someone who had a 3.48 in undergrad with minors in math and applied physics. My graduate GPA was 3.7 completing both a master's in CS and a Graduate Certificate program (think Master's equivalent to a 2 year degree) in Software Engineering and Project Management. Oh yeah I also worked a full time job all through college (undergrad and graduate), worked a second part time job all through undergrad, taught for the university as a grad student in addition to my full time job at night (in IT) and helped run (as in one of the 5 people who started the company) a small and profitable business during my graduate work.
In the end I had a really hard time finding a good professional level job even with all this. The main reason why was that I was way too cocky. After being turned down for a lot of jobs I knew I was qualified for gave me a little humility during interviews I had multiple job offers to choose from.
From the way you come across in your post, you need to remember that you may have something to offer a company, but so do a few hundred other people that applied for the position.
He adds, 'It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher. But there is a big downside to this gutsy redesign: It requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid.'
Oh great, they made it so much better. But is it really a better product if noone wants to use it. Personally I don't think Office has had any major improvements since Office97 except for the spelling and grammar checks getting better in Word. Of course I guess all the people who really want Office to go away as the industry standard will be happy. If you have to completely relearn the interface, why stay with an overpriced product like Office as oppased to OpenOffice or other alternatives.
We already have the technology to shield solar radiation. We needed it to build both the space shuttle and space suits for astronauts. In a place like the moon with a very thin atmosphere you cannot stick the base in a permanent shadow or everyone freezes to death. You build it in as much sun as you can get without getting too warm (not a problem unless we even decide to explore Mercury or such) to provide warmth and for power from your solar collectors.
The main problem with the $1 coins is that collectors grabbed so many of them that not enough stayed in circulation. This at least is according to an article I read last week when they were talking about making a new $1 coin. Sorry, I don't remember were the article was from.
Considering that it might take me 5-10 text messages each way to get the same information as a 5 minute voice call, I imagine that by sheer number voice calls are much less than they used to be. Are they looking at how much total bandwidth is used for each type of communication or are they looking at the number of communications sent. It makes a big difference if a 2 minute call is counted the same as a 2 hour call.
"This is the problem I have seen. We expect teachers to go to college and obtain a degree that takes 5 years, student teach for a year (for free), and then start at $25,000. I made half again as much after getting a two year degree in Computer Networking. There is no incentive to become a teacher so the only people who do are those who love it and those who won't work elsewhere. Those who love it are becoming burned out. The old axiom of "those who can't... teach" is becoming true."
Too true. I used to teach at the college level, and I loved it. The problem was that with only a master's in CS I was only getting paid $35K a year. I loved to teach and my wife and I could live ok on that with her working (finishing her degree at the time) until our son was born. At that point doing what I loved (teaching) became less important than being able to provide stability and a good lifestyle for my family, and I went back to industry. I'd gladly do some volunteer work with highschool students if my work schedule would let me. If it wasn't for spending time with my son and that my wife has to work nights half the time I would look for a community college looking for a part time night instructor just because I miss teaching. The problem with teaching is that very few places pay teachers well. Even at the college level this is true unless you go all the way for a PhD.
Part of the problem now is that a lot of schools think that students have to have computers and such in the classroom to learn. Unless you are teaching a computer based course, this is nonsense. If schools used some of that money to pay for better teachers, they would probably have a better return on investment.
The spelling and grammar checks in Word have gotten much better over the years (don't think the grammar check was even added until Office 97), but other than that not much has really changed.
I swapped from WordPerfect to Office 97 when in college because that was what most of my professors demanded. I swapped from Office 97 to Office XP simply because my wife already had a copy and that was what I had at work to make taking work home easier. I have had no reason to "upgrade" again.
There have been several occasions where I personally like the older versions of MS products better than the new version. Money was one of them (my wife likes it, personally I always did budgets in a simple speadsheet). The newer versions of money want to store your information on the web instead of on the local hard drive by default, constantly wants to connect to a MS server, and had more bugs than the older version. Even the wife swapped back to the old version pretty quickly, but it messed up the data files so badly in the process that we had to just scrap everything and start over.
IE7 is almost in the same category for me. I appreciate the attempts at better security, but thought the previous layout was much better. Sorry guys at work IE is the only option I have.
There are a lot of devices that are still semi-active even when "off". If you want to be sure that they can't track you, take the battery out of it completly.
Not quite. Microwaves cause dipolar molecules (like water) to basically flip back and forth with the peaks and troughs of the wave. The motion of the molecules causes friction on the other molecules around them and causes heat that way.
Trust me in a corporate setting not having backwards compatability is a big deal. For home users it is even worse.
If you loose backwards compatability you run into the same problem that all the smaller OSs have in getting the corporate world to adopt them on a larger scale. An IT manager may be able to convince the bean counters to give enough money to do the OS swap, but try asking them for the money to have to swap every application you have as well because the old ones won't work anymore. Then on top of that try getting the funding and the authorization for the time to retrain all your employees on new applications that they are not as familiar with. Beyond that, productivity will go down for a while until people get used to the new systems even with training. Now if the new system is truely more efficient (from a worker bee point of view in time to complete a task) this may eventually pay for itself, but do you really think most upper managers are going to be that patient before firing the IT manager for screwing over the entire company's productivity rates? If you do then you are dealing with much more patient managers than I am used to or just folling yourself. That is the true cost of loosing backwards compatability, especially when a large number of your key applications are built in house, then you can't just go purchase the new version that will run on the new platform with minimal retraining needed. For companies that develop a lot of thier own applications in house, you have a lot of down time until the IT departments can recode to whatever new standard the new OS requires.
Home users are better and worse off in some senses. While a lot of home users will probably just buy the new versions of major software (office software, email, etc.) when they purchase a new computer that still adds a lot to the cost of a machine. For the more technically savvy people out there (this is/. after all), even if you like the new OS and it's features, do you really want to have to replace every app you've got because they don't work properly anymore. Yes VM solutions can mitigate a lot of this, but those solutions are not perfect.
I was one of the people that MS picked up on a 6 month contract for the extra support load when XP SP2 came out. Take it from someone who was there, the biggest complaint (especially from corporate customers) was when it broke compatability with old apps they were using. I heard a lot of people (and people I knew personally) say that they would install SP2 once the compatability issues were fixed when they eventually swapped to a newer version of the key app that they couldn't live without. Now MS did fix some of those issues with patches shortly after SP2 came out, but imagine that problem scaled up to replacing an entire OS without regards to backwards compatability. I know everyone around here likes to bash MS, but they are not nearly stupid enough to piss off thier corporate customers that badly. They know that would be the fastest way to push people away from Windows in a heartbeat, or at least to insure that not many people bithered swapping to the new version instead of just staying with what they already had that works.
The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) is already using some methane plants like this from sewer waste for a small part of it's power generation. It has already been proven a usable, cost effective technology, but I don't know how well it scales up. Of course they have also been installing wind farms and solar sites for the last couple years too.
I use gmail as my main email outside of work as well. Very little gets through their spam filters and into my inbox, but I have seen a signifigant increase both in my spam folder and slightly in what has made it to my inbox in the last month or two.
I'm sure all kinds of jokes about MS bug history will come up, but at least they caught it before it was officially released. Better a 2 week delay to fix the problem than them saying they will worry about it later in an update.
That said, this sounds like a fairly major bug to catch this late in the game.
Maybe it's just my definition, but a lot of people seem to share it with me. If it fixes something that is broken, I call it a patch. If it changes or adds features for the user to improve the product (not from a bug fix point of view) then I call it an update. I'll admit that MS seems to not keep that distinction very well.
Well then maybe you should try voting. I agree that the 2 major parties are both pretty bad choices most of the time, and I know that most third parties don't have enough support to win most elections at the national level. Not voting is basically abstaining; if you are not going to at least put your opinion forward (vote) then don't complain when noone listens to you.
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My point was that here in the US, especially the south and southwest (including conveniently enough CA where they are discussing this law) summer is a major thing and that you seemed to forget that being used to the UK.
There is this thing called summer when lots of people need to COOL their homes and incandescant bulbs only make that problem worse. Also as pointed out by other posts, there are much more effecient ways to generate heat than through light bulbs.
>"Serious question: What exactly is the advantage of Oracle over SQL Server? I asked that to >an Oracle DBA once, and he just got red in the face and stammered about having more options >to configure things the way he wanted. I asked what exactly he configured, and basically >got a lecture on Microsoft being evil. I then asked if he thought Larry Ellison was a >saint, and the conversation just continued to devolve.
>Serious question: why is Oracle considered so much better that SQL Server?"
If you ever run a LARGE datbase at the enterprise level, you will see the difference very quickly. When you are dealing with thousands or tens of thousands of users are millions of records, Oracle will kill SQL Server on performance and response time.
Also as already noted Oracle doesn't limit you to using a Windows server the way SQL Server does.
Having used various versions of Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and (God help me) even on occasion Access for the database behind various applications in different jobs, the only 2 I would recommend are Oracle and MySQL depending on the size of the database and the budget of the business buying the product. For small businesses that I have worked in before MySQL is great; it's free, and works well unless you are talking about large data sets or large numbers of users at the same time. For enterprise level systems like those used in government or extremely large organizations give me Oracle any day, but then you are dealing with budgets large enough that the cost of Oracle is easily dealt with.
If they are developing a launch mechanism, then you could shoot a canister of the stuff over the fleeing vehicle to deploy in front of it.
Also this would work wonders if you are the one being chased in a situation and need to disable the vehicles chasing you. I know this is not the case very often in Iraq right now, but it could be very useful for future operations.
>>the reason so few people are green
>I should really improve my insulation, but don't. Why? Because there's no payback in natural gas savings.
>...so I do the things I can afford: Recycle, fix dripping taps, take the bus when I can. I realize there are often higher-purpose reasons than cost savings, but many people simply can't *afford* to be green.
I spent less than $700 and one full day of labor for me and my wife on a weekend on insulation on my house Fall of '05. The savings on the utility bill paid for the cost of the insulation (including the price of renting the blower to blow it in and buying a decent ladder) in less than a year.
I also replaced all the windows in my home with triple pane Low-E argon filled windows earlier this year. Yeah that ran me just shy of $5000 installed. I financed it through the same company I bought the windows from 1 year same as cash. I expect the energy savings to pay for the windows in roughly 7 years. The new windows also look a lot better and came with a lifetime warranty against breakage that is transferable if I sell my house. The added value to my home will almost pay for the windows by itself if I sell the house.
I agree that solar panels, hybrid cars, even projects like the windows I did can have a high up front cost. A lot of people cannot afford that cost up front, but simple projects like insulation, sealing around doors better, etc. are cheap and really will start having benefits that add up pretty quickly.
First off not all call center employees need to read scripts. A lot do, but I wasn't one of them. I had over a decade of experience with computers before getting that job. Like a lot of the people working there (or at least most of the night shifts), I was using it to pay my way through college. Second a lot of people lost jobs other than just the people on the phones. Managers, trainers, senior techs (the guy that gets to actuall figure out how to fix it when the front line tech that may just be reading from a checklist can't figure it out), janitors, etc. BTW I was one of the senior guys answering questions from front line techs and then later a trainer. It's just too bad that a lot of call centers have low hiring standards and only gave us 2 weeks to train someone. Yes, the majority of call center techs NEED the checklists and the scripts, but not all of them. Besides most Americans would rather get there tech support from someone here than trying to deal with a language barrier and still having the tech read from a script either way. As to me not having skills that are sought after: I finished that degree with a couple minors added to it, went on the get 2 master's degrees, ran my own business in grad school (that was profitable enough to at least pay the bills and help pay for the degree), have years of R&D background, have development and project management experience, and now have a very nice job in the IT sector.
Seen the same thing happen to me and 600+ fellow employees a few years back. I think anyone with more than half a brain knows this survey is BS. Unfortunately a lot of HR types don't have half a brain.
Tell that to the 600 people I worked with at a call center several years back (main job working through undergrad) when Gateway decided to close that call center and move it and all 600 positions to India. Remember that outsourcing happens to existing jobs as well as new ones all the time.
While the FBI's database does include convicted felons (not sure if your prints go in it if not convicted or for misdemeanors), it also includes the prints of every Federal employee and all military personel. The database is not strictly for criminal records. Admittedly adding all visitors from other countries to the database is increasing the scope of its use a good bit, but it does not mean they are automatically assuming you are a criminal or a terrorist.
A couple points:
1) Having run a business before I would probably not hire you either. Your tone makes you come across as petty, bitter, overly cocky, and rather self absorbed.
2) Yes 3.65 GPA is good, congrats on that. Is that a 2 years degree, a 4 year degree, or from a graduate program? Do you have any work experience to go with it, especially in your field? GPA is not nearly the most important factor in finding a good employee.
3) Guess what, Google didn't want me either when I got out of grad school. This coming from someone who had a 3.48 in undergrad with minors in math and applied physics. My graduate GPA was 3.7 completing both a master's in CS and a Graduate Certificate program (think Master's equivalent to a 2 year degree) in Software Engineering and Project Management. Oh yeah I also worked a full time job all through college (undergrad and graduate), worked a second part time job all through undergrad, taught for the university as a grad student in addition to my full time job at night (in IT) and helped run (as in one of the 5 people who started the company) a small and profitable business during my graduate work.
In the end I had a really hard time finding a good professional level job even with all this. The main reason why was that I was way too cocky. After being turned down for a lot of jobs I knew I was qualified for gave me a little humility during interviews I had multiple job offers to choose from.
From the way you come across in your post, you need to remember that you may have something to offer a company, but so do a few hundred other people that applied for the position.
But that's a prefectly valid question. We know people who are good at math and logic like cats. We just don't know if those cats are alive or dead.
He adds, 'It has taken a good product and made it better and fresher. But there is a big downside to this gutsy redesign: It requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid.'
Oh great, they made it so much better. But is it really a better product if noone wants to use it. Personally I don't think Office has had any major improvements since Office97 except for the spelling and grammar checks getting better in Word. Of course I guess all the people who really want Office to go away as the industry standard will be happy. If you have to completely relearn the interface, why stay with an overpriced product like Office as oppased to OpenOffice or other alternatives.
We already have the technology to shield solar radiation. We needed it to build both the space shuttle and space suits for astronauts. In a place like the moon with a very thin atmosphere you cannot stick the base in a permanent shadow or everyone freezes to death. You build it in as much sun as you can get without getting too warm (not a problem unless we even decide to explore Mercury or such) to provide warmth and for power from your solar collectors.
The main problem with the $1 coins is that collectors grabbed so many of them that not enough stayed in circulation. This at least is according to an article I read last week when they were talking about making a new $1 coin. Sorry, I don't remember were the article was from.
Considering that it might take me 5-10 text messages each way to get the same information as a 5 minute voice call, I imagine that by sheer number voice calls are much less than they used to be. Are they looking at how much total bandwidth is used for each type of communication or are they looking at the number of communications sent. It makes a big difference if a 2 minute call is counted the same as a 2 hour call.
"This is the problem I have seen. We expect teachers to go to college and obtain a degree that takes 5 years, student teach for a year (for free), and then start at $25,000. I made half again as much after getting a two year degree in Computer Networking. There is no incentive to become a teacher so the only people who do are those who love it and those who won't work elsewhere. Those who love it are becoming burned out. The old axiom of "those who can't... teach" is becoming true."
Too true. I used to teach at the college level, and I loved it. The problem was that with only a master's in CS I was only getting paid $35K a year. I loved to teach and my wife and I could live ok on that with her working (finishing her degree at the time) until our son was born. At that point doing what I loved (teaching) became less important than being able to provide stability and a good lifestyle for my family, and I went back to industry. I'd gladly do some volunteer work with highschool students if my work schedule would let me. If it wasn't for spending time with my son and that my wife has to work nights half the time I would look for a community college looking for a part time night instructor just because I miss teaching. The problem with teaching is that very few places pay teachers well. Even at the college level this is true unless you go all the way for a PhD.
Part of the problem now is that a lot of schools think that students have to have computers and such in the classroom to learn. Unless you are teaching a computer based course, this is nonsense. If schools used some of that money to pay for better teachers, they would probably have a better return on investment.
The spelling and grammar checks in Word have gotten much better over the years (don't think the grammar check was even added until Office 97), but other than that not much has really changed.
I swapped from WordPerfect to Office 97 when in college because that was what most of my professors demanded. I swapped from Office 97 to Office XP simply because my wife already had a copy and that was what I had at work to make taking work home easier. I have had no reason to "upgrade" again.
There have been several occasions where I personally like the older versions of MS products better than the new version. Money was one of them (my wife likes it, personally I always did budgets in a simple speadsheet). The newer versions of money want to store your information on the web instead of on the local hard drive by default, constantly wants to connect to a MS server, and had more bugs than the older version. Even the wife swapped back to the old version pretty quickly, but it messed up the data files so badly in the process that we had to just scrap everything and start over.
IE7 is almost in the same category for me. I appreciate the attempts at better security, but thought the previous layout was much better. Sorry guys at work IE is the only option I have.
There are a lot of devices that are still semi-active even when "off". If you want to be sure that they can't track you, take the battery out of it completly.
Not quite. Microwaves cause dipolar molecules (like water) to basically flip back and forth with the peaks and troughs of the wave. The motion of the molecules causes friction on the other molecules around them and causes heat that way.
Trust me in a corporate setting not having backwards compatability is a big deal. For home users it is even worse.
/. after all), even if you like the new OS and it's features, do you really want to have to replace every app you've got because they don't work properly anymore. Yes VM solutions can mitigate a lot of this, but those solutions are not perfect.
If you loose backwards compatability you run into the same problem that all the smaller OSs have in getting the corporate world to adopt them on a larger scale. An IT manager may be able to convince the bean counters to give enough money to do the OS swap, but try asking them for the money to have to swap every application you have as well because the old ones won't work anymore. Then on top of that try getting the funding and the authorization for the time to retrain all your employees on new applications that they are not as familiar with. Beyond that, productivity will go down for a while until people get used to the new systems even with training. Now if the new system is truely more efficient (from a worker bee point of view in time to complete a task) this may eventually pay for itself, but do you really think most upper managers are going to be that patient before firing the IT manager for screwing over the entire company's productivity rates? If you do then you are dealing with much more patient managers than I am used to or just folling yourself. That is the true cost of loosing backwards compatability, especially when a large number of your key applications are built in house, then you can't just go purchase the new version that will run on the new platform with minimal retraining needed. For companies that develop a lot of thier own applications in house, you have a lot of down time until the IT departments can recode to whatever new standard the new OS requires.
Home users are better and worse off in some senses. While a lot of home users will probably just buy the new versions of major software (office software, email, etc.) when they purchase a new computer that still adds a lot to the cost of a machine. For the more technically savvy people out there (this is
I was one of the people that MS picked up on a 6 month contract for the extra support load when XP SP2 came out. Take it from someone who was there, the biggest complaint (especially from corporate customers) was when it broke compatability with old apps they were using. I heard a lot of people (and people I knew personally) say that they would install SP2 once the compatability issues were fixed when they eventually swapped to a newer version of the key app that they couldn't live without. Now MS did fix some of those issues with patches shortly after SP2 came out, but imagine that problem scaled up to replacing an entire OS without regards to backwards compatability. I know everyone around here likes to bash MS, but they are not nearly stupid enough to piss off thier corporate customers that badly. They know that would be the fastest way to push people away from Windows in a heartbeat, or at least to insure that not many people bithered swapping to the new version instead of just staying with what they already had that works.
The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) is already using some methane plants like this from sewer waste for a small part of it's power generation. It has already been proven a usable, cost effective technology, but I don't know how well it scales up. Of course they have also been installing wind farms and solar sites for the last couple years too.
I use gmail as my main email outside of work as well. Very little gets through their spam filters and into my inbox, but I have seen a signifigant increase both in my spam folder and slightly in what has made it to my inbox in the last month or two.
I'm sure all kinds of jokes about MS bug history will come up, but at least they caught it before it was officially released. Better a 2 week delay to fix the problem than them saying they will worry about it later in an update.
That said, this sounds like a fairly major bug to catch this late in the game.
Maybe it's just my definition, but a lot of people seem to share it with me. If it fixes something that is broken, I call it a patch. If it changes or adds features for the user to improve the product (not from a bug fix point of view) then I call it an update. I'll admit that MS seems to not keep that distinction very well.
Well then maybe you should try voting. I agree that the 2 major parties are both pretty bad choices most of the time, and I know that most third parties don't have enough support to win most elections at the national level. Not voting is basically abstaining; if you are not going to at least put your opinion forward (vote) then don't complain when noone listens to you.