But did he manage to deliver the "think about the children line" with a straight face? 'Cause that's like the all time best argument for when you've got nothin' else. Or you're asking someone to do something that fails the basic sniff test of, "Is this reasonable?"

So ... here's the thing. Metro was designed around keyboard and touch, not mouse. Desktop was designed around mouse and keyboard. Many of the years-old keyboard shortcuts such as alt-f4 and alt-tab (definitely Win95 era, possibly Win3) work perfectly fine in Metro. Just because Metro looks "touchy" doesn't mean you can't interact with it in other ways.

I am frankly ... kind of amazed that a nerdy crowd that frequently crows about the number of ways they can interact with gadgets (different iterations of Android, MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Amiga, BeOS, BSD, BASH and on and on) have such a hard time wrapping their heads around keyboarding through Metro.

The standard Beer Store keg in Ontario is 58l (half barrel). That's 58 (give or take) kilograms of beer + the weight of the keg. That's closing in on 150 pounds.

If you think your kegs aren't carbonated, I have a quick test for you. Give the keg a few shakes, or roll it on the floor for a couple minutes. Take your coupler, shut off the gas to it. Attach to it a new keg. Most Sanke D couplers (at least the good ones) have blow-off valves (it's a safety feature so that the keg doesn't go BOOM! if things reach over 100PSI or so). It usually looks like a ring. Pull it open -- I will personally guarantee that you will first hear the gas leak. And then see foam. Gushing. Beer can only hold about 1 volume of CO2 (per volume of beer) -- the other 1.5 volumes typical for a beer keg will energetically fly out, taking some beer with it.

Less entertaining, you can simply hook up the coupler to the keg and open up the tap. Depending on the length of your draft run (this will work on a short run, where your line pressure is about 8 PSI), you'll be able to slowly pour beer as, again, the CO2 comes out of solution and pulls some beer with it. Warning: if you do this, the rest of the keg will be flat unless you crank up the PSI to 20 with a CO2 (not beer gas) tank or so for a few hours to force CO2 back into solution in the beer.

There are "beer in a box" systems that carbonate flat beer on the fly, but they're exceptionally rare.

FWIW, a huge part of pulling the perfect pint is to control the pour so that you get enough CO2 coming out of the beer to form a decent head. Too hard / too fast, too much foam. Too gentle / too slow, not enough; the bubbles will come out with time (or gentle shaking), however.

I'm a brewer. I go to lots of bars, speak to lots of bar managers and owners, and poke around lots of beer fridges.

First, high volume bars, if they want metrics, install flow meters on draft lines. The sophisticated ones communicate with the PoS and report when the beer is flowing and how much. If the server's pouring freebies, the system will know and rat on the bartender. The system also knows if a brewer is shorting their kegs or is making foamy (over-carbonated) kegs that lead to spillage. Managers love that. Second, the meters are integrated into the lines so there's no ****ing around with flying saucers; you will always get the right data for your taps. Always. Third, most beer fridges are wet, dank pits. No one likes spending time in them. Telling bar staff to pick up a keg that weighs upwards of 150lbs and place it on a disk is ... hopeful. Telling bar staff to perform the same maneuver on a disk stuck in a keg fridge? That's borderline stupid. Those saucers are going to get punished.

Also, it's not rocket science to keep a few extra kegs around if you're managing 30 taps; you, by definition, have lots of storage. And if 4 or 5 lines blow without replacement? That is not a big deal. In fact, some bars won't replace blown kegs after dark because it makes them look busier (no, seriously, I've seen this in action) and helps to push people to less popular brands.

Seriously? Has this guy worked in a brewery ... or a bar ... recently?

My feelings are summed up by Joseph Volpe's article at Engadget, http://www.engadget.com/2014/0...,

In my own case, I would be most likely to use one while working ... but work involves dust, steam, liquids, and 70kg kegs. It's not a good environment for something on my wrist.

The reefs in the Caribbean have been dying for decades, but not from acidification.

About a quarter of the way down on this page, http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/201... , you can see what happens as the stony corals die off. The branches of the corals break off and no longer supply refuge to small fish from predators. And there's less ... well ... hard stuff in the way to slow down waves. It's kind of depressing to snorkel or dive in Florida since you can see all the old coral skeletons lying on the ocean floor, slowly being covered with silt. While, of the three images, the one on the right looks the most vibrant, most of what you're seeing is soft coral (no calcium carbonate skeleton) and sponges that are, you know, spongy. Soft corals provide little or no protection to juvenile or feeder fish.

This bit should be scaring the pants off us. Not because we'll suddenly not be feasting on oysters, but because of zooplankton that form delicate calcium-based shells. If those critters go bye-bye, we will likely see the collapse of more ocean fisheries as food sources dry up.

And, in something of a double-whammy, coastal regions in the tropics are often protected by reefs from the ravages of some tropical storms. If those reefs slow down their growth (that replaces damaged reefs structures), or start dissolving, we're going to be have a tidal wave (bad pun!) of starving refugees.

You don't need to believe in global warming to see those two issues becoming problems. You need enough empathy to see this as being a problem, even if it's not in your own backyard.

If you do believe in global warming, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not the oceans will rise high enough to wipe out their homes before acidification lays a licking on marine ecosystems.

When I was a kid, the math model taught at my school was something along the lines of, "If you show kids the math and some of the underlying principles, it will eventually all come together." It didn't work for me -- I just didn't get it, but it worked well for a handful of my classmates who went on to successful careers in engineering and coding. What did work was hours' worth of flashcards on road trips drilling times tables into my thick skull. Over time, I also picked up some tricks for estimating sums in my head (and for most things in my life, estimates are good enough).

But I was never particularly good at algebra, physics, or trig. They're too abstract for me to wrap my head around.

But give a bunch of prices to add in my head? And figure out the sales tax? And tip? I got that covered -- that stuff I can do faster and more accurately in my head than people who had better than 90% grades in high school math, and, in some cases, university math. As an adult, I've read a lot of popular science books about physics; I love the ideas, but if you show me a page of equations, it's all Greek to me.

My point? Kids learn differently. What works for one, might not work for another. There's no one size fits all method for teaching kids; that's why it's imperative to give kids a variety of different experiences at school and figure out which methods work best for different kids.

FWIW, reading to your kids is also shown to be (arguably) the best thing you can do for ensuring their academic achievement.

Damn straight.

I am at a loss as to why a repository of human knowledge should try to engage as many people with as many different interests as possible.

Oh, wait.

You're absolutely right.

I think what we're seeing is that /.'s culture has shifted over the years; there don't seem to be as many thoughtful people around who can see issues from other people's viewpoints. Instead, /. is skewing towards a particular subclass of nerd, one that really doesn't get (and sometimes feels threatened by) people who aren't just like them. When it comes to stories reporting on the makeup of of the IT workplace, we're likely to see comments modded up that say white men in IT are the most discriminated against despite making up 70+% of the workforce. Apparently, 100% should be the goal.

Just pointing something out ...

I've seen people complain that Microsoft doesn't innovate, doesn't try new things.

And I've now seen people excoriate MS for trying new things and trying to innovate.

And, FWIW, some some aspects of Metro have been popping up elsewhere -- I don't think Metro has been an unmitigated disaster. At the venerable NYT, http://nyt.com/ useful bits can "slide in" from the margins when you move the mouse over to the left side of the window. Tiles are the lingua franca of The Toronto Sun, http://torontosun.com/ .

  MS, however, did screw up some things. Well ... a lot of things with Metro for the desktop.

First, it's a UI designed for media consumption (and single- and double-tasking) -- that ship has sailed. Phones, tablets, and, to a lesser extent, notebooks (and, in my house, the WiiU) are for media consumption. Desktops are for productivity.

Second, Metro is actually pretty decent when you figure out how the keyboard shortcuts (win-key +s for searching, alt-tab to switch windows, alt-f4 to shut a window, etc.). But it's pretty awful if you go at it with a mouse -- and MS did not, at all, make this clear.

Third, the Start button thing is ... almost, but not quite, a red herring. If you're looking for a program that's two or three menus deep, good luck to you. It is usually faster (if you're a decent typist, at least) to hit the win key and type the name of the program. If it's a program you use frequently, it should probably be pinned to the taskbar. I've watched my kids on the Win8.x desktop -- the only time they bother with the Start button is when they log out. I think the problem here is that we've had nearly two decades of living with Start and it's proving to be a tough habit to break ...

Fourth, and probably worst of all, MS foisted Metro and its apps on users in situations where it shouldn't have. If you were writing up an email in Outlook (desktop program) and wanted to open the calculator to check your math, it defaulted to a Metro, full-screen, four function calculator. That's stupid. MS has two built-in picture viewers, both relatively equivalent. But, using the default programs app, the Metro app can be set as the default app for several times more file types than the desktop app ... even though the desktop app can open those files and be set as the default viewer through Explorer. That's bad. And some OS settings can only be set through Metro -- and that's inexcusable since Metro is not supposed to be for "power users". And there are lots of other goofy places where the Metro app is the default choice, even when launched through the desktop.

I know a bunch of independent filmmakers -- no, none of them can make the Lego movie. They can make low-budget rom-coms. They can make cute animated shorts. And they can make some superb docs ...

But they don't have the render farm required to make an animated 3d movie (even outsourced, I am thinking that kind of processing power and the pipes required to move the data won't come cheap). They don't have the money to get quality voice actors. They don't have the marketing and negotiating chops to land a serious IP. And artists don't come cheap. The gulf here is rather large.

FWIW, basement sound producers are still having trouble making music sound as good as music (played by musicians on instruments, at least) recorded in a studio with an a-list crew.

With Hachette, I think Amazon is trying to ... crush is not the right word ... but marginalize marginalize traditional publishers. Amazon already has a jumbo-sized self-publishing business for small and independent writers, but less well known is Amazon's publishing business, http://www.apub.com/ . The tin-foil hat wearing me says that Amazon might be squeezing the publisher in order to get at the writers, either for self-publishing or to build up APub. I.e., Amazon might be trying to eliminate the middle man in a play to get at all the revenue in the book trade, save that which goes to writers and printers (for dead tree versions).

The full on conspiracy theorist side of me says that the scary thing is that, if Amazon does become something like a traditional publisher with a stable of writers, other retailers will have to buy stock from their largest competitor.

That's the bit that sends shivers up my spine.

With Warner, it seems different. I don't think Amazon wants to make blockbusters; something else is at play. It could be that Amazon senses blood in the water since the physical media business, while lucrative, is slipping away. Maybe, just maybe, Amazon is trying to squeeze Warner on physical media in order to get favourable terms on streaming or digital sales. 48 hours of availability ahead of iTunes? 2 weeks of availability ahead of Netflix?

In parts of Niagara Falls, Canada, it's also possible to bounce between US and Canadian carriers.

I just turn off data roaming for my phone and pick up a SIM for wherever I'm staying.

Long version: see pwnies' (IU designer at MS) posts at reddit, like this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/techno...

Metro has 2 UIs: Metro for casual use; classic for power users / production. MS wasn't particularly clear on the split and made it seem like Metro was the only UI going forward with classic atrophying in the background. That, apparently, is not the case. But MS pulled a boner here and mis-sold the UI.

It was always easy enough to restore the old school start button with either Start8 or a handful of free utilities. But ... you had to go and find them. MS was hoping that was just enough hassle that casual users would stick with Metro. So ... casual users get a UI optimized for touch and keyboard (alt-f4 to close windows; alt-tab to switch; win-w to search settings; win-s for searching docs / the web / whatever; type to find apps). Further, the included apps tend to be basic ("dumbed down") so that your grandpa can figure them out. Metro is also optimized around the idea of single-and double-tasking (i.e., media consumption). Metro isn't made for your typical /. user.

Classic is for people with multiple windows open, Office users, and so on -- those who can find OS settings and utilities (I think MS' definition of power user might have been overly generous).

Metro is really, really good for what it is. Once you grok the keyboard shortcuts or the gestures (swipe from the sides to make stuff happen), it's actually pretty cool.

What MS screwed up is not the UIs, but, rather, how they interact with each other. With release-era 8, if you opened, say, the picture viewer from classic, it punted you into full-screen Metro. Ditto for the calculator (true story, needed to check some math for an email, opened the calculator, and was presented with a full screen, 22" four function calculator -- that's just stupid). Some settings are accessible only through Metro (again, that's stupid -- hiding settings casual users shouldn't need to touch in Metro was bad design). Some default associations, like those for RAW photos, can only be set through Explorer if you want to use the classic app -- the Set Associations app only shows the Metro viewer as being available for those types. And so on. And forth.

As for the Start menu? It's easy enough to get back ... but I'm torn. I don't honestly use it all that often since I read about hitting the win key then typing the name of what I wanted. It's ... different than using the mouse. But, most of the time, it's also faster than going through nested menus.

Win8 is flawed. And weird. And occasionally antagonistic. And the dual UI aspect was very, very poorly handled. But its bones are good (fast, stable, secure). I like Win8, but it seemed to take longer to properly set up my desktop than it should've (Modern Mix also helps to control full-screen app pop-ups by running Metro apps windowed).