You are legally obligated to take positive action to comply with a subpoena. So setting up that kind of system is still obstruction of justice.

You cannot serve warrents to search property in other countries.

Yes you can. If Microsoft stole an antique and shipped it to China, and then was ordered to produce it they couldn't say "well its in China so we don't have produce it".

Tiles unlike icons are supposed to be

a) live so they are presenting useful summary information
b) variable in size, so the amount can vary

The legacy stuff doesn't make use of the Window8 and Microsoft unfortunately itself doesn't install; by default some of the really cool applications that use Windows 8; like their Bing based applications.

If it just started in March, they're still 2-3 years from a conclusion in court.

We probably can't observe the multiverse. What we can do is postulate how events might play out if, as is suspected, subatomic particles have some interaction with their counterparts in "nearby" universes. We can model the various possible explanations and use the models to generate testable predictions. Assuming that process ultimately rules out some of the models and favors others, we still won't know that there really are multiple universes, all we'll know is that a model that assumes there are, and assumes they interact in specified ways, is a good explanation for the observed phenomena. "Good" in the sense of being as simple as possible, and no simpler, hard to modify without contradicting observations, etc. Other explanations might work, but just be conceptually weirder and harder for us to think about.

Or maybe we'll eventually find something in the model that demands a multiverse, and for which we can find no other simple, consistent explanations. That will tend to convince us that it really exists. Or maybe the theory will show us a way that we can scale up the interactions to the macro level, where we can observe the multiverse. Or maybe we'll find something that contradicts the multiverse... or maybe none of the above will happen and the whole concept is just a game for very clever people.

Many things are possible, that's why it's fun :-)

Look at GP. Those are small amounts. See what happens if some retailer were doing 10k $100 cards / day per location paid for in cash.

I understand. But they are analogous. In a Hypervisor the real kernel doing most of the work is out in userland while there is a tiny "kernel" which runs part. Moreover the device drivers are split.

Ap X uses device Y
there is no device driver involved X uses a virtual device driver. The virtual device driver then talks to a real device. Which is pretty close to the Microkernel design.

Maybe. But this is an area in which we actually can make observations that allow us to refine the math, because it does make testable predictions.

English is the world's second language. Moreover it is the language of science. What other language would you choose for a worldwide contest? Some obscure local language? Or perhaps the slender budget of IAU should be spent on translating their website into 75 different languages? Ridiculous.

That's great to hear. I didn't realize you were a Microsoftie (though it's on your /. bio). I work for Google, but I'm all for strong, healthy competition.

Neither did Reagan. It's easy to find counterexamples.

The many-worlds hypothesis usually used in explaining the oddities in QM doesn't assume different physics.

Yeah, we're fully aware of the problem. Improvements are in the pipeline. I'm not sure I can disclose what, exactly, although there's obviously no reason to be secretive about this.

I'd say that HURD is just a failed product and not read too much into it. QNX has been out for a long time with a terrific microkernel that offers real advantages. Its about to become too dated as their isn't going to be the funding to make the move to 64 bit but... Moreover arguably the virtualization OSes are essentially microkernels where a virtualization system acts as a mini kernel, multiple non-monolythic kernels operate on top of them and then branch out. Virtualization hasn't exactly been a failure. There are substantial advantages to both approaches and frankly Linus ended up introducing a modules system to capture many of the advantages of microkernels himself.

If they don't record the information though it is called money laundering. American Express got nailed with that in the 1990s for Traveler's Cheques they were letting people buy in the USA, lose in the USA, and then getting them recovered in a South American American Express location with no record of the who.