Snowden definitely deserves jail time. But much of the information he leaked should never have been held secretively from citizens. In other cases it should have never been collected in the first place. He pushed the data on purpose.

Hillary, on the other hand, was simply irresponsible. To my knowledge none of the potential leaks have helped citizens uncover corruption.

Snowden = vigilante
Clinton = negligent

It's not too hard to see the difference and why Snowden appeals to the same folks who dislike Hillary.

Ask yourself: "What would happen if I were employed in the federal government and mishandled government data in this same manner?"

I have a feeling the answer would be much harsher than what Hillary will get.

Sure, but does anyone actually sit with their start menu open for hours? Or can they open a web browser and browse to their website faster than clicking the Start button? Let alone open several sites and have them all available at a glance.

That was definitely true a while back. I hated Microsoft back then. But now that they can't lean on the monopoly crutch for everything, and actually have to compete, they've been churning out more useful products and even innovating in areas like universal apps. They finally found a hardware product (Surface) that is doing quite well. They've been pushing many of their products towards open source as of late.

I don't like what Microsoft used to be; I just like where they are headed today, and the fact that they are actually bringing new life into markets that are beginning to be dominated by a select few.

Right, it is area, but if you think about it that is quite a difference. Here's an example of the different sizes:

http://www.winbeta.org/sites/d...

That picture is very zoomed in, for context the Twitter tile is slightly larger than a standard desktop icon.

So, what you're saying is...

  - Users are not forced to pay once cent to obtain any of the content
  - Users find products they are interested in, and are priced reasonably enough that the user wants to purchase the product
  - Sellers find potential buyers they might otherwise not find
  - Sites make money to encourage continued generation of content

And on top of that, users can block ads just by installing AdBlock.

I'm really having a hard time finding the downside in this.

The desktop exists in all its glory in Windows 10. It will still do everything you mentioned. Tiles are not part of the desktop.

The Start menu, however, has tiles. And they can be resized; you can make them smaller than desktop icons if you want. And they can be removed completely if that's not your thing.

Tiles have 4 sizes, the smallest being 1/16th the size of the largest.

Agreed with some stock apps, their icons could use work. But for the most part I find the opposite to be true... many tiles rotate pictures related to current news, social media, and so on, while some create graphics like the local weather forecast.

It sounds like you are using Windows 8 or 8.1. Windows 10 has a different interface, you don't need to "scroll over a screen".

The menu structure for applications has not changed. Word 2013 is in the same folder that it would have been in for Windows 7.

I can't say I've come across this. The "smoke gray transparency" sounds like the background color and can be changed in settings.

You can get rid of tiles if you want. You can even shrink the menu down to remove the extra space they once took up.

Most of those effects are for highlighting open tasks (which is why they call it the task bar). No version of the Start menu has ever used such glassy highlight effects for open tasks.

It doesn't surprise me that this would turn into FUD. When you can't find a good argument, make one up.

Apple is not a computer company. They are a designer products company.

Microsoft is a computing company.

You can still uninstall any updates, and updates can be delayed by months under the Pro license.

I'm just curious, why are live tiles so horrible? I see this reaction often but I never really get a good explanation why, though I've heard many reasons why they are good. They are like icons, except resizable and enhanced with live information. They are rectangular/square, just like the taskbar icons in Windows 7 that everyone I know loves.