I tested it earlier today and I think it looks great. The boot time is insanely fast, the metro UI is better than I thought and you can still easily change to the normal Windows shell. On top of that developers can target both Windows PC and the upcoming Windows tablet markets with their apps. Overall I got a very good impression of Windows 8.

Most countries have criminalized commercial copyright infringement, which the sites in question are doing as they profit from warez. It's true it's not often enforced in countries like China, but we're talking about UK here.

Do you honestly think that Google would just abandon their second largest market area?

Google already removes illegal things like child porn. Copyright violating sites are just as illegal, so what's the problem? Like the article states, court order would be required for it. I think it would also only apply to google.co.uk.

If EA only cared about numbers they wouldn't release games like Mass Effect or Mirrors Edge. EA is a large publisher - they release all kinds of games. They release strategy games too, but boohoo this wasn't one of them.

I think you mean Ubisoft or Activision. EA has been playing really nicely the recent years. In fact they've published many innovative and great games too, perfect example being Mirror's Edge. Then there's games like Mass Effect, Battlefield 3, Create, The Saboteur and so on.. EA has really improved from what they were in 2005 or so. Maybe you should get up with times too.

Doesn't this kind of "DRM" question also apply to Google's apps? Like you know, Google C&Ding CyanogenMod for including their apps.

Sorry, but phone screen is way too small for gaming. It's okayish in a bus or so, but there's no way I would consider it fun time to take my phone to sofa or bed to play some games. And on top of that, laptop isn't really ideal for that either. I have a great gaming laptop, but it just doesn't allow relaxing like that on sofa or bed, while tablets do. And quite frankly, I would like to do something else than just read too. On top of that, I spend quite much time sitting down at the pool and having a few beers. Tablet would give me ideal entertainment for that. There's no way I'm going to take my laptop there, though.

Are Ubuntu and Mac OSX "trash OSes" too because they have app stores?

Besides, Vista was a good OS, but it changed the Windows fundamentals so much that many apps broke. But to advance, improve security and to use better driver model Microsoft had to do it at some point. There was nothing wrong with Vista but the old badly designed programs that stopped working with it when MS had to take the step forward.

Windows 7: 2009 Windows Vista: 2006 Seems they've taken three years release cycle, which is a really long time compared to Linux distros and Mac OS X. It's better than the time after XP anyway, which really started to feel like an outdated OS, by security standards and features too.

I don't think Microsoft is that late for tablets. Quite frankly, I think the current Android tablets still aren't worth using. That leaves you with iPad, so there's definitely some market open for tablets and what Microsoft has shown about Windows 8 for tablets it looks quite nice. On top of that you get the support for Windows apps, which is a huge deal.

But even on normal computer side, Windows 8 seems to improve many things over 7, which already is really good OS.

Not only that, but entertainment is US most profitable industry, and it's huge export to other countries too. So not only gaming industry (and movies and music industry for that matter) create jobs, they bring in lots of money to US. All immaterial too. If someone deserves tax breaks, it's those industries as they bring so much value to the US (even if you disagree with some of their business practices)

Well North Korea isn't going to start anything.

You can see the Norway shootings for example. The guy didn't commit suicide in the end, but killed ~90 people and he might just as well have suicided himself after that. It wasn't related to religion in any way, it was politics - right vs. left, and more capitalism ideas against socialism. He took it to extremes, but religion wasn't part of that. I suspect this also was much more about politics than anything religion related.

That's the exact reason why North Korea has extensive network of underground tunnels and bases. US can't really track those. It's also the reason why North Korea and Burma are (supposedly) trying to build nuclear weapons underground in the jungles. The best thing is, US can't really do anything without provoking Chinese.