The creation of child pornography is not exactly an act of speech. The subjects in those works are real victims. If your ideology or religion is being mocked, you're not a victim. If you demand that your ideology or religion be off-limits to critical review or mockery, you're just an asshole.

I only meant newly created models. I could be wrong, of course, but I think having a touch enabled screen will become a selling point on mobile PCs now that the dominant OS expects your device to have one.

As you might notice further up in the thread, I agree completely. I think some people have a knee-jerk reaction to the relationship between Rand, Elayne, Min and Aviendha, but I think this ignores everything else those characters are independently. Most of the time, the three women in this relationship are off being independent badasses.

My perspective may be a bit different from some other readers; I am male, but I'm not strictly heterosexual- so I wonder if there is something especially pornographic or cheap about the characters that I'm not being distracted by. I also tend to identify with the goals of feminism. When I saw the relationships and mild and infrequent sexual content in The Wheel of Time, it didn't seem to objectify or render weak anyone in particular. In a world where, in many ways, women enjoyed a position of privilege and authority (Aes Sedai, town Wisdom, queendoms, guild leaders, business proprietors) I just did not look at these couplings through the lens of medieval patriarchy.

I don't recall any egregious focus on breasts other than acknowledging their existence, but the older books in the series are a bit fuzzy to me. I could be wrong. I guess what appealed to me was the attention put on them. There are huge portions of the story which are written from their perspectives, and I'd say maybe 10% of that was anything close to romantic. And of course men are terrified of Aes Sedai. That seems reasonable enough to me. Generally, I agree that Sanderson has done a very good job finishing.

Oh, I don't think that's fair. There are many female characters in the story who are not in love with Rand, and it's a huge stretch to suggest that even the three who are are nothing more than sex objects. How many chapters are written from their perspectives? How many instrumental events do they take the lead on? Do they wait for the men in the series to tell them what to do? No. Characters like Egwene, Nyneave (In love with Lan, but not moreso than he is with her), Elaida, Siuan? Each of these characters are leaders and interesting on their own.

I found the number and quality of female characters in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series to be refreshing. Are there any other fantasy series that reverse the trend when it comes to females?

Windows 8 pro does not restrict my window management and multitasking at all compared to Windows 7. Perhaps the RT version does, I'm not actually sure. I don't think there's a good motivation to upgrade 7 to 8 on desktop PCs perhaps besides the performance boosts, but I'm excited to use Windows 8 on a laptop/notebook hybrid device.

I think the majority of new mobile PCs are going to be built with touch screen capabilities and the tablet form-factor in mind. On these devices, Windows 7 would be a mistake.

There's nothing to learn. You might have to poke at it for 5 minutes before you're comfortable. I think this is not as big a deal as a lot of people think.

Aspects were a great idea, but the most attractive "killer" feature to me was being able to host my account on my own server. It's a long shot, but I still push Diaspora when I can.

Can you expand on this "reverting to bing" behavior? I'm not saying it doesn't happen or anything, I'm just not exactly sure what you mean. I've been using nothing but windows for the past few years and I don't think I've even seen Bing on my screen once.

What do typos have to do with insight, exactly?

I must be especially tolerant of it for some reason. I have been using the release preview on a 1920x1080 desktop for a while now, and I don't miss 7 at all. I guess my interaction with the start menu has always been minimal, relying on the search function almost 100% of the time. That still works fine for me. I haven't noticed any trouble in using the desktop interface either, and I appreciate the changes to explorer.

I've been using the release preview for a while now, and I don't think you need to worry. I don't feel at all restricted in my window management. Windows desktop applications work exactly as they do in Windows 7. Some new applications may be made to work using the tablet-oriented UI instead of/in addition to the desktop UI, but I seriously doubt productivity software will trend towards only providing a tablet UI.