LeVar Burton played Geordie LaForge on Star Treak -- a character who could not see except by virtue of a digital visor he wore. Now the actor in real life tries something that's also sorta similar -- if you wave your hands, squint your eyes and gesture knowingly. What are the odds! The parallels must have been mindblowing! Life imitating art! The jokes must now write themselves! Queue the Benny Hill music...

Um, I think you've reached your metaphor quota for today. Thanks for coming out. Anything of substance to share?

still released it that way in spite of the problems. Arrogance is the only logical explanation.

This has been a well documented problem from earlier preview builds and was specifically not fixed in the RTM code because... well because MS seems to think it can make unilaterally bad UI decisions again and again and get away with it.

Try setting your Win8.1 display to 150% on a 1920x1200 monitor. This is exactly where I've used WinXP, WinVista, Win7 and Win8, yet in Win8.1, a random assortment of applications (including many MS utilities and 3rd-party programs) deliver barely readable fuzzy characters. At least in Win8.0, you could set a master switch to tell the OS to disable DPI scaling, but in their infinite wisdom, some group within MS decided that to hell with useability, they're going to simply remove the master switch and force ALL users to disable DPI scaling on an app by app basis, making it bloody well a gargantuan effort to avoid either fuzzy or tiny text.

It's absolutely appalling... About as appalling as MS deciding that Win8.0 users shouldn't be able to boot into desktop mode on a non-touchscreen device and then completely removing the start menu as if giving the middle finger to the existing install base was some kind of magical shortcut back to a dominant market position.

If you're arrogant, but generally make good or at least non-destructive UI decisions, most people will forgive you. When you're arrogant and make butthead UI decisions, well, then you're MS.

  They've managed to marry Apple's arrogance with butthead UI decisions.

Disclaimer: I own a top of the line 54" Panasonic plasma set from a couple years ago and enjoy its excellent picture quality.

If you walk into a Best Buy or any other retail store and head over to the TV section, what immediately hits you is the brightness of most of the LCD sets and the comparatively subdued brightness coming from any (remaining) plasma sets still on the floor. In the unscientific forced side-by-side comparison environment of a brightly lit store, the LCD panels just show better.

It's the same reason that many folks think they'll prefer shiny laptop screens or speakers that deliver booming lows and super highs. It all seems better in a snap judgment... It's not until you take it home and have to live with it for a few hours that you start to realize that matte screens are easier on the eyes, speakers with more natural frequency response are easier on the ears and that LCD TVs (usually demoed in torch mode) need to be turned down to a more tolerable brightness level (well within the realm of what a plasma can do) during extended viewing sessions.

> Look at how quickly the people followed the orders to cower indoors because of 2 kids.

Really? The "2 kids" in question bombed a public event with improvised explosives, then killed a police officer, hijacked a car and the last one took refuge by hiding in a boat in a local neighborhood. How would the authorities have responded in your magical utopian 'free' country?

Luke, we're gonna have company.

Even in the Martha Stewart case, they only got her on obstruction of justice. Hard to say whether Cuban was legit or not, all we know is that the evidence was not strong enough to convict.

The theory seems to be that insider trading is so widespread and difficult to prove that one of the government's strategies is to go after a few high profile 'celebrity' cases as a way to drive awareness among the populace. It probably gets your average Joe to think twice before trading on a tip from an executive friend higher up in the corporate ladder, but I suspect the people who really know what they're doing siphon millions out of the market daily.

I wonder the same sorts of things myself. I sense that a good portion of this 'likes' business is actually a very subtle but sophisticated game of influence deployed by marketers. I suspect a few things are at play when a network encourages 'likes' for a TV show that hasn't aired:

1. It's a form of early market research. 'Likes' are probably as good a metric as any for predicting the size of the initial audience, which in turn helps the network fine tune what they can charge advertisers at the outset.
2. It drives popularity, albeit based on false pretenses: Once the show starts airing, and you hit the site to learn more about it and see all of those 'likes', you'll get a feeling that it's more popular than say a similar show where the network didn't troll for 'likes' prior to its initial air date. This is especially important when the network is trying to influence those of us (e.g. teenagers, pre-teens) who consider popularity to be of significant importance.
3. On social networks, when you 'like' something, it lets your connections know. Getting people to be aware of something is of course half the battle with marketing, not to mention that if you are considered an important influencer among your peers, then you're providing your implicit 'thumbs up'.
4. I suspect there's also a sort of cognitive dissonance play going on. If you 'like' something on Facebook, I suspect you're also more likely to engage with it in the future simply because of that 'like', and irrespective of all other factors.

Disregard above, I misread your comment. Yes, that's a potential problem. I'm guessing that there is some sort of specific engagement required on the part of the company, otherwise I could go around claiming I'm going to buy Chevron and then accuse their execs of insider trading...

Cancel existing orders and don't schedule new company stock trades as soon as you have become an insider either by your own doing or by an external party?

YOU CAN'T TRADE STOCK IN A COMPANY WHEN YOU HAVE PRIVILEGED NON-PUBLIC INFORMATION THAT COULD MATERIALLY AFFECT THE STOCK PRICE IF THE PUBLIC KNEW ABOUT IT. Anyone who works for a public company knows this. You'd think the CEO would have a particular interest in staying on the right side of insider trading laws, but he was sloppy while the Feds were watching and they nabbed him for it. No conspiracy theories needed to explain his utter stupidity.

He got 10 years for insider trading. Nice try though.

Why do I get the feeling this whole thing is like a big billionaire's version of SimCity for him? I wonder what "natural" disasters he has in store?