Are you sure that isn't a feature?

Upstate New York is a large and diverse place. I've lived here for 30 years and I could count the memorable power outages on one hand. The power has rarely gone out for me in a mix of city, suburb, and rural locations. When it has, it's almost always been just a few minutes.

Maybe your area has better prices, but where I live (a typical low income US town), that's not the case. My girlfriend and I switched to a vegetable, fruit, and meat diet a year or two back. Our food bill went up a good 20%. On top of that, because it's a somewhat rural area and the population is generally low income, the variety of fresh food available is pathetic. It can get very boring eating spinach and cabbage all the time. Even with our garden, we don't get the quality and variety of food that we should, and we try pretty hard to make it work. The general population isn't going to put in that kind of effort, especially with the added cost here.

The people I deal with on a regular basis eat processed grains and processed meat. A 'meal' for one person can cost pennies. I'd be very surprised if you could match that calorie/$ value anywhere. You certainly can't here.

I would have to say I agree more with this than your first idea. I think the only reason they try to make it sound like it's always been about the experience is pure marketing. They know it hasn't been about the experience, but they want it to be. So they make it sound like it always was because in marketingland, if you say it enough, it eventually becomes true.

Maybe it doesn't make sense on the face or when looked at objectively, but there is a psychological effect where confidence and repetition will make people believe things. Microsoft was banking on the marketing to get sales, but the marketing wasn't convincing enough and the product wasn't compelling enough. Whether that's because of poor understanding of the market or a design problem is hard to say from the outside. Personally, I'd guess that it's both; the whole thing is hamstrung by in-fighting in management.

Hauppauge has a number of different products that do all kinds of things, including standalone PVR boxes. http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/prods.html

Another big one to look at if you want to capture tv is Silicondust's HDHomeRun, which simply connects to your network and works quite painlessly with Windows and Linux. I haven't used it with OSX, but supposedly that's fairly easy as well. http://www.silicondust.com/

Encryption can be a problem if you want more than just your local channels, but Hauppauge does offer a couple of CableCard boxes for use in the US. I'm not sure about the details as I've only used the more basic capture cards.

Yes, if you crashed an RC plane or Cessna in a crowd, you could probably kill a few people, but keep in mind the cost of the attack. An RC plane costs a good bit and would draw attention. For the small payload an RC plane can carry, you might as well just go discretely plant a couple of bombs or throw grenades. And if the target is inside a building, you're not likely to cause enough damage to be worthwhile. RC attacks are just not worth the money and effort.

You're most likely just trolling, but I'll bite.

My girlfriend and I cook nearly all of our meals. We're anything but fat. We recently switched from a healthy, but carb-heavy diet to almost purely meat and vegetables. Our grocery bill went up at least 25%.

If we bought nothing but pasta, hot dogs, frozen meals, etc, we could cut that way down. Processed food is MUCH cheaper than unprocessed, and the gap is widening, at least here.

This was a typo, should have said 20, but anyway...

Just timed it booting, mostly out of curiosity. Boot time after shutting down was 14 seconds from power button to login screen. I didn't time resume from hibernate (was a bit more than 1 second longer than sleep) but it really is much faster than you'd expect, and significantly faster than a normal boot.

I did set it to hibernate rather than suspend and I believe I turned off hybrid sleep, though it's been a while and I'm not 100% sure. It is conceivable they pulled some funny business with the naming of things. That said, they did quite a bit of work on fast boot, hibernate, and resume for Win8. Good post about it here (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/delivering-fast-boot-times-in-windows-8.aspx).

All that aside, my laptop boots ridiculously quickly, faster than anything else I've worked with. I haven't timed it, but pressing the power button to the login screen is definitely less than 10 seconds and from login to desktop is nearly instantaneous. Whether the credit should go to the hardware or software, I can't say for sure because it's my only Win8 install.

Did you forget what site you were on? Or are you just trying to troll? I'm a mechanical engineer and computer geek who does just a tad more than power point. I'm saddened to say that I've almost certainly spent significantly more time on my computers in the past decade than I've spent with my family.

Anyway, of course you need to configure Windows 8 not to use the Metro apps, if you don't want to use them. That's included in my 'once you're set up' line. The good news is that all the old Windows 7 desktop apps are still there! Windows 8 is just Windows 7 with some minor changes and the Metro shit dumped on top of it. Once you figure out where things are, it takes no more than 1 minute to change the default apps back to the desktop versions and it works pretty much identically to Windows 7, even for someone like you. Windows 8 is even noticeably faster than Windows 7.

Yes, they should make the Metro apps opt-in or tablet only, but Windows 8 is hardly the travesty you're making it out to be.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a 90s thing, but you're right that it's not usually necessary. 95% of the time, I just close the lid and let it hibernate (it takes approximately 1 second longer to resume from hibernate than from sleep - they really did improve things nicely on that front).

That said, I'm hardly a luddite that can't be arsed to learn things. The shut down and restart stuff mostly comes from updates or from my incessant fiddling. I'm constantly trying new software and experimenting with better ways to set up my gadgets and I find Microsoft's placement of the shutdown commands idiotic. People, especially averages joes, should not have to learn new key combinations or swipe/hot corner to access something so common. By all means, include those as options if you like, but it should be in plain view. When my most common support question is 'how do I shut down?', that's just sad.

That's referring to the 'Metro' touch screen style apps. Desktop apps still work the same as they always did.

Basically, yes, it's broken, but more because it's harder to get to the old config screens and such that you're used to. Once you're set up, it's not that different.

While I think it's idiotic that we have to do this, he's right. I set up my laptop in this manner and it's not really that bad. The ability to arrange my icons (to proper desktop apps) in the start screen is actually nice and it does feel markedly faster.

My only real complaints since getting it set up are:
1. I still have to stop and think to remember how to restart the thing.
2. Changing settings can be a nightmare since many things point you to the metro config apps instead of a proper control panel, etc. Once you get used to how to access the old config windows, this is manageable.

So... it's bearable to use it day to day, especially since I mostly just use the laptop for web browsing or to kill a little time with a game. I could tolerate working on it, but I think I'd put Debian or Mint on there if I really wanted to get things done.

I run LMDE (Mint Debian Edition) or straight Debian Testing on my computers whenever possible. They're fully compatible, just add one or the other to your sources. Similarly, I'm reasonable sure that standard Mint is compatible with the Ubuntu repos. I'm sure others will correct me if I'm wrong

Cupantae covered my thoughts pretty well on that, but:

Even if the feature set of Wayland were exactly the same as X, in what way could it possibly hurt you for there to be two projects that do the same thing. Maybe Wayland is better is some way. Why are you worked up over it? I truly cannot think of a good reason and I really am trying to see your side in this. I posted my original question because I actually wanted to understand your point of view. The only things I can think of at this point is that you're either in it for the argument or you really just can't stand to see anything compete with your favorite project.

Whatever your issue is, you should either provide a reasoned argument or lighten up. If not, you're really living up the stereotype. How sad for all of us.