I don't think they are doing this for MS's benefit. Microsoft already have such a large network effect, this will do almost nothing for MS. The network effect is how Microsoft and Intel became giants in the first place. Wintel machines of the late 80's and early 90's allowed them to quickly erase Apple market share. You can have a shitty product but the value proposition increased as the installed user base increased, so you'd still have to buy it. I think every agrees Win Vista was horrible. MS spent 1 billion dollars developing it and then broke even on Vista 2 month after release by moving 20 million units a month at $50-60 per unit net. Compare that to the original OSX, also about 1 billion to develop. $50/60 per unit (less for the newer kitties), but Apple only moved 19 million per year. It took Apple 2 years to break even. The advantage is already there, this will do very little for MS.

I think the issue that Intel is try to address for themselves is that supporting Linux/Android is painfully expensive because the Linux/Android space is very fragmented with many different versions of kernels, drivers, etc Supporting Win8 which is fairly uniform will reduce the cost of support.

Sure not limiting it to Win8 will potentially reduce revenue, but you also reduce costs. If the reduction in cost is greater than the reduce in revenue, you have positive increase in profitability.

Existence of Nessie doesn't disprove evolution. Unfortunately evolution doesn't say Nessie can't exist, just very unlikely. Anyway, if anything evolution tells us dinosaurs still roam the earth today. Or at least their descendants, the birds. So the "OMG Dinosaurs disprove evolution" is a bunch of non-sense..

If you really need something to block things on the cheap then use PeerBlock (it's free). Then you can use the lists at iBlockList or look for some lists on the internet. There should some appropriate lists for you. Also you can white list servers individually if needed.

I think the DRM arising from being online is secondary. The biggest reason why the game has to be online all the time is the real money auction house (RMAH). If you allow RMAH and a off-line single player mode then you can hack your save games to get unique items. Then hop online to sell in the RMAH. Blizzard wouldn't want that.

Also, the article clearly points out that the vaccine works, just it's effect wanes over time. And it is recommended to get a booster. This extract grossly misquotes the intent of the article and undermines the work that the medical community does.

Let's put it this way. When you have a vaccine that works 95% of the time, and 99% of the kids are vaccinated. You'll have ~5% of the population contracting the disease despite being vaccinated. And the 1% of the population will contract the disease because they weren't vaccinated. You end with way more students that are vaccinated with the disease than those who are not vaccinated (absolute number wise). But it also ignored the fact that 94% of the population was protected against the disease.

I got my PSVita game and accessories last week from Amazon and just got the console today. Can't wait to go home and try it out. It's like Amazon did that on purpose to say, you should gotten the early launch bundle :/

No I'm not a fanboy, just an early adopter. I also purchased the 3DS the day it was available. I have a Wii and a PS3. No xbox because I'm not buying a system just to play Halo, and I suck at FPS anyway. OK I guess I could buy an xbox for Fable, but I was too addicted to WoW at the time to play anything else. Seriously I didn't even touch my Wii and PS3 for like an year and a half. >_>

As far as what kind of ships, my opinion is without very effective anti-laser defensive equipment, capital ships are just bad ideas. They make easy targets by fast small and agile fighters which can still punch holes in your defenses very quickly. A swarm of the smaller ships can quickly overwhelm the capital ship since the capital ship is easily detected where as the smaller ships have greater stealth characteristics and can approach virtually undetected until it's too late. Remember what I was saying earlier, if your opponents wouldn't even know the laser is coming until it hits them, then you have huge huge advantages of going small and stealth and building a larger number as opposed to capital ships.

If there was great anti-laser shielding equipment, then I'd imagine capital ships should still be useful as they can provide more fire power, carry more supplies, and travel further.

As far as if there would be wars or battles. I'd say that a space war will be drawn out over many many years or even generations as it takes a very long amount of time to travel the interstellar distances even if we are able to produce FTL travel techniques (which is unlikely in any event). Which means it's unlikely to have an all out space war. It'll be more likely to just be random skirmishes within a single stellar system.

Projectile weaponry would be fairly worthless given laser based counter measures that can shot down your projectiles long before they will reach their target. The only way to get them to hit is to overwhelm the defense system, which means huge amounts of resources wasted in trying to hit a target.

So the vast majority of weapon systems will be energy based. Lasers will not be visible until it hits you since it's moving at the speed of light. So in that respect you probably would not even see it until it's hit you. In fact you'll probably wouldn't even know that you are being fired at until something's hit you. Unless your opponents are using some sort of energy-emitting ("active") method of tracking your position, they would fire at you and you'd only know after you've been hit since classical information cannot travel faster than light or the laser itself.

If you have laser energy dissipating shields, then you'd see a blinding light splash across your shield when you get hit.

Now let's consider if you were in a space suit and in space and you're spectating. It's also likely that you wouldn't see much either. Lasers are monochromatic and does not scatter unless interrupted by particles. If vast stretches space, there is actually nothing there. In those regions, you wouldn't see the laser going between the ships. You will see when the laser impacts and does damage or if it is dissipated, but the whole Star Wars thing with the lasers that you can see? You wouldn't see them. If you are in a dust/gas field, then yes, the lasers will get deflected off the particles and you should see the laser. Of course laser based weapons will be less effective as it is hitting a whole bunch of stuff before it finds its way to the target. (You can think of a laser pointer at home. If you have a very clean room, no dust, then the laser point will point at whatever it is you're pointing at and you shouldn't see the beam itself. If you have dust in the room then the laser will illuminate the dust and you can make out the beam).

Continuing down the line of though, you probably wouldn't hear much if you didn't have a radio if you were in a space suit in space. Space is pretty much a vacuum and vacuums don't conduct sound unfortunately. Waves require matter to propagate (light is a special case) and sound is a wave. So without a radio, you get to watch the war in absolute silence (go watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, but ignore the orchestral accompaniment). But if you had a radio or was in a space ship, you'd hear explosions from the ship getting pummeled by laser batteries. But of course, if you were unlucky enough to get sucked out of the whole that was punched into your space ship, you'd very quickly be unable to hear anything before you died from suffocation or got incinerated by a second valley from the lasers.