Thats because its trivially easy to change desktop managers in Ubuntu, for free. But if you must know, I hate Unity. Dont particularly like Gnome 3 either. I keep trying to like KDE, but I keep having a bad experience with font sizes.

With that being said, I kind of like Metro. Maybe because I only use windows for gaming, but for a system where you only use 5 or six programs regularly, its not bad. Though I couldnt get the network to work in a VM when I tried the consumer preview, so maybe I would hate it too if I could have actually installed something on it I wanted to use.

Am I the only one who thinks the headline sounds kind of like a threat?

Sports drinks are my preferred morning beverage when I am hungover. Otherwise its coffee or tea (depending on how my tummy feels), OJ or soda (depending on what I have on hand, I prefer OJ, but the acidity of soda is good for getting that morning breath taste out of my mouth before I brush my teeth too). Energy drinks would probably be better than a soda, but since you cant easily find them by the case, its annoying to try and keep stock of them.

What are my options for doing it on the fly? I use Rhythmbox for music on my PC, Totem for video, and Mortplayer on my android phone for music. I would love to be able to adjust it on the fly so if one of the FLAC files I have starts playing I dont have to just go without hearing the quieter parts.

I'm not insisting everyone listen to it the way I like, I am stating the fact that that is how I prefer to listen to it. Why are you insisting that everyone must have high quality sources and equipment? Why dont you keep your high quality sources and equipment and I'll stick with what works for me?

Ive tried that too and it does work in certain cases. My biggest problem is that I like to fall asleep while something is playing, and subtitles dont work well with my eyes closed. The worst part is that if I was even a little bit tired, I would fall asleep watching foreign language films, no matter how interested I was in watching it. I think it took me 3 tries to finish Ip Man.

Sadly, I have to agree with this. I hate having to listen to something at an unreasonably loud volume (for the time/place) just so I can hear the quietest parts, only to have the loudest parts wake everyone in the house, piss off my neighbors, or cause shit to rattle off the shelves (when its not intended).

Its also one of the reasons I prefer DVD rips to actual DVDs. I usually have a fan on in the house so I have to turn the movie up to be able to actually understand the dialog. And if the source of the media has a lot of range, the explosions, gunshots, or whatever startle the crap out of me. Hell, the first time I watched Braveheart on DVD I jumped off the couch during the scene when he set that wooden keep ablaze, just because it was so much louder than any part of the movie up until that point.

If we all had ideal sound systems and listening environments with no ambient noise, then yeah, good dynamic range is awesome, otherwise, let me be able to hear the spoken words over my box fan/car noise/noisy neighbors/nearby road/rain storm/etc without having to subject everyone in the neighborhood to whatever I happen to be listening to at the time.

Opera Mini grants them complete access, as by design, it routes all traffic through their system so they can compress it and send it to you. Opera Mobile is more like Opera Desktop where it gives you the option to turn that function on, Opera Turbo I believe its called. Though I do not know whether they collect your browsing habits by default.

I use all three, desktop, mobile for when I am on wifi and dont care how much data is used, and Mini for when I am using my mobile data plan.