Spend a little time in one of these companies to gain the prestige of having worked for them (that's probably one of the big draw cards of working at a company like Microsoft), then take that experience and "bank it" outside in a non-Fortune 500 company. If many people took this approach (and with some luck) the brain drain may cause these companies to rethink the stack ranking policy.

I totally agree with you about HTML/HTTP being (wrongly) moulded for applications, I guess we've sort of seen this coming for a while now with many intranet apps being pushed out (hey-- no installer!). It really breaks away from the premise of marking up and presenting content and allowing light functionality to sit on top of it.

It does create a new opportunity to invest in defining and building a platform-independent web-enabled framework for apps, but I doubt we'll see it.

>I dont think you have used an Xbox if your making that claim
I actually have both an xbox 360 and I've run both Windows 8 pre releases. The xbox dash is better, but IMHO they share very similar look and feel (and are both sandboxes which only run basic applications).

>metro is for smartphones and tablets
No it's not. It's the default mode Windows 8 boots into, regardless of whether you run a desktop PC, a tablet.. etc.

Honestly, I'm not a big fan. Taking what basically amounts to the (current generation) Xbox user interface and applying it to desktops and portable devices just seems like a massive step backwards.

The HTML 5 standard looks good, and brings definitions which have been missing for over a decade, but it's no replacement for a desktop environment and fully-featured applications.

Also, am I the only one who reads Windows RT and thinks 'Windows Re-Tweet'?

I somewhat disagree. Technology is changing at a pace far greater than in the 80s, finding someone with demonstrable experience, say, with Azure or Hadoop is going to be quite tough (so it is likely you'd take someone with experience in those technologies even if they are without a degree). In the 80s, the spread of technologies themselves were a lot more limited, although access to computers themselves was rarer.

I'd still see finding decent work in the 80s would be harder without a degree, the knowledge was likely to be harder to obtain than compared to now where APIs are published on the Internet, forums like StackOverflow exist, OSes are distributed for free and development tools (like Visual Studio Express) are also distributed for free.

No it hasn't - the ALL CAPS menus are in the Release Candidate. The menu setting can be overrided with a registry setting though.

That, and no mention of Unicorns! WTF?

"The industry-controlled kill switch is a popular idea all over the world." Maybe it is to the content industry. To the rest of the world (those with functioning brains) know that this is an insidious notion.

RE: But I've used 1366x768 screens - they are *terrible*
Totally agree. I've been using a Dell Studio XPS with this "widescreen" display for about two and a half years, and the lack of vertical space is a usability killer.
"1366x768 means always having to scroll.........."

Not to mention it *starts* with these warnings, then it extends to ads you can't skip. Australia's put up with this for the better part of a decade now.

I'm not sure it's that clear cut. Are you saying that *all* the music you downloaded you would have paid for, song for song or album-for-album? There's quite a big difference between what you acquired for free and what you *might* have been prepared to pay for.

The general consensus appears to be (or.. should be at least) that a downloaded song != a guaranteed sale. Thus the music industry, in stating that every download is a loss of revenue, is a nebulous statement at best.

There's data which suggests that some people, after downloading and listening to a single, have gone out and purchased the associated album; much like listening to a single on the radio might achieve.

There's also a few theories that people downloading tracks have been more likely to attend concerts, buy merchanise.

I'm not sure it's totally safe to assert that p2p/file sharing hasn't had an impact on revenue, but it's also hard to rule out an improvement in sales by the same token.

If I had mod points, I'd mod this up. I reckon you're close to the mark.

There have been so many tax subsidies/loopholes for large multinationals, even when the Aussie dollar was ridiculously low, not that long ago.

Yet the tax rate for individuals is ridiculously high. The majority of the population are paying the bills (and the government's doing a great job of literally *giving* away our tax dollars), while other industries (I'm looking at you, mining industry) make massive record profits off our (finite) natural resources. It has to change.

Quite right, it doesn't add up. We used to be the last "1st world" marketplace for goods (typically, US/Europe/Asia then us), and we'd cop the original RRP (or new release price) for it to boot. Some things never even made it to Australia (sold out in other regions). So yeah, unless you actually live or have lived in Australia (or another place which has had the same experience) you don't know what you're talking about.

It used to be that we, as consumers, could short cut the price gouging by buying direct (from Amazon.com, etc) and having to cover the international postage (which was still WAY cheaper), despite things like DVD regions (don't get me started on that bullsh*t). Sometimes this was the only option when said thing/movie/TV show wasn't made available for sale locally.

Manufacturers have wisened up since those days and now impose export restrictions on sites like Amazon e.g. can't buy a DLP Projector on Amazon and have it shipped to a non-US address, or can;'t use an Australian-issued Credit Card as payment. Those manufacturers want you to pay the local price from *their* distributors (often double overseas prices). This also goes for services - e.g. I couldn't book train tickets in Europe online with an Aussie-issued credit card, had to book locally at twice the price.

It gets more hypocritical when we start to discuss digital sales when many of the aspects of handling physical products no longer apply. I'm glad this is finally coming to light, most Australians I know are fed up with the constant price gouging which has been going on for decades.

If they prove to be well preserved, they'll probably be amongst the best (working?) examples in the world. None of them saw active service - they came straight out of the factory, and assuming they can be put together.. why not?

Me too +1!