Windows 8 has more features than Windows 7, in fact they tacked on an entire new and separate UI over the desktop. Yet, it runs faster and makes better use of memory. It makes better use of SSDs and cuts boot times down a lot. Just adding features should not slow an OS down, as features are mostly only loaded when needed and memory management should be able to handle background stuff.

Actually the earthquake did damage the plant in a very critical way. The emergency cooling system was broken, so that even when they started pumping in water from fire engines it didn't cool the cores and they went into meltdown.

I suggest you try watching this documentary: http://youtu.be/ldki2ji5-gU

Yes, but the effects of short term contamination are not. The evacuated towns in Japan are pretty much being abandoned now, because even when they do manage to fully decontaminate them there will be no-one to live there. All the former residents have had to move on with their lives, find homes and jobs elsewhere, go to other schools and try to start some kind of new life.

Those communities, those businesses are all gone for good.

When someone has to rely on an ad-hominem you can take it as read that they don't have any specific criticisms. I somehow knew the first comment would be an hominem.

Android does get updates, it just depends on the handset. If you buy a £30 phone you can't expect much. On the other hand Google and Samsung flagship models get a couple of years of updates minimum. If you consider the point at which iOS makes your iPhone unusably slow they are pretty much on par. At least with popular Android devices you have the option to go to Cyanogen or any number of custom ROMs.

That seems to be a problem fairly unique to certain expensive phones. Android gets faster with each version on the same hardware, the only slow downs being in manufacturer custom versions. Samsung and LG generally do okay, HTC not so well. Windows has been getting faster since Vista. Linux generally gets performance improvements but is a special case because there is no single distro and each kernel is custom built. I'm not sure about MacOS.

The law was actually passed in the mid 90s. They have been trying to update it but had trouble getting consensus from all member states. I expect this will spur them on a bit.

You didn't read their report, did you? They ranked Dell very slightly higher because although their CO2 emissions at the time were a little higher, they were making a credible effort to increase clean renewable energy use. Greenpeace give points for making an effort to improve.

Why yes, actually. You really didn't read that report, did you?

Er, no. Apparently you were not listening. Greenpeace is for a move away from nuclear, coal and gas towards renewable energy sources. Like what Germany is doing. In 30 or 40 years they will be nuclear and probably coal free as well.

It's not really clean if it generates waste that you currently have no long term storage policy for, and no way to recycle into something useful. Yes, you could pull a thorium reactor out of your ass to reprocess it, but until you do I'm not convinced that is an economically viable plan. If it were, why is no-one doing it and making a fortune?

One mistake by a court which doesn't set a precedent isn't indicative of the law or national policy.

That's not what the right to be forgotten is. It would more accurately be described as the "right to be forgotten by commercial entities".

In the EU we have data protection laws that affect anyone collecting personal data for business use. For example a company with a client database must take steps to ensure that it is protected and people's personal data is not leaked, and that it isn't sold for profit without consent. There are rules concerning things like credit reference agencies keeping data on things beyond the period which they can legally be considered, e.g. bankruptcy that doesn't have to be declared after 5 years. Subjects can also request that their data is removed if they no longer have any relationship with the company, e.g. if you close your Facebook account they must remove all your old data too.

In this case Google crawls the web for information about people. They must treat that information according to data protection rules. It doesn't matter if the information is a matter of public record. An old bankruptcy might have been written about in a newspaper, but that doesn't mean that a credit reference agency can report it after 5 years. People may remember, they may not, that's just life and a measure of how noteworthy the individual is. The point is that when they apply for a new business loan the credit reference agency isn't allowed to remind the bank. Even if the bank employee remembers they can't use that information in their decision, and if they do they won't be able to justify it to the regulator later since the credit report didn't mention it.

People use Google to research other people. Google is extremely good at finding and sorting information about people. Why should Google be allowed to opt out of rules that affect credit reference agencies, for example?

Note that your personal right to remember is completely unaffected. You are not required to forgot or remove information from your personal web site.

They have a lot of work to do to convince people that Beats sound good.

This patent seems to be specifically about noise cancelling, which is the one area Bose is actually good at. Their noise cancelling does seem to be slightly better than the competition, e.g. Sony and Audio Technica. Only slightly though.

Straw man. Greenpeace do not argue that all fossil fuel use is automatically bad and should be avoided, they simply argue that the current massive scale of use is bad.

I'm really starting to dislike the way every debate about the environment, women, nuclear power, guns and many other topics instantly gets flooded with ad hominem attacks, straw men and other logical fallacies. It's like a tabloid newspaper or low quality TV news channel. I'm sure Slashdot wasn't like this a few years back.