You're quoting the mouth diarrhea of Pete Pachal, a Mashable "reporter" who can't discern between facts presented and his own, flawed interpretation of a slide show line.

Here's the actual quote from MS "Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, we'll be keeping it current for the supported lifetime of the device," said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Operating Systems Group

Well, if the lifetime of the supported device ends after a year, then you would have to buy a license/subscription for an unsupported device.

As I speculated, it's probably like Apple. My Gen 1 iPad, bought in early 2011, is no longer supported by Apple. None of the OS updates since 5.1.1 have been available on the device, despite it being less than 4 years old. My daughter's iPod Touch (4th gen) was bought in December of 2011, and won't run anything past iOS6.1.6, and it's barely 3 years old.

Will MS EOL devices so quickly? Hard to tell. Possibly for tablets and handsets. They have less control over hardware so there could be processor cut-offs or minimum installed requirements checks (proc type/speed, installed memory) instead of model number limits.

As is true with every piece of hardware out there. OEMs don't get to install 10 for free, they pay a per-box fee. Even Apple has a value for the OS they install with each Mac, and when you buy a new Mac you get to pay that engineering fee all over again.

If you own a W7 or W8 license (i.e. you bought their software) and you build a new machine in within a year of the new W10 release, you get to upgrade for free, too.

The linked article has Pete Pachal's unfounded speculation that Windows 10 will be an annual subscription, touting it as fact.

The actual quote from a MS executive is, "Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, we'll be keeping it current for the supported lifetime of the device," said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Operating Systems Group.

So, no, you won't be losing your upgrade after a year. Like Apple, once your device has reached it's supported lifetime MS isn't guaranteeing that you'll be able to upgrade anymore and you'll be stuck with an OS that has basically been EOL'd as far as support is concerned. This is really a way to (1) get you on the hardware upgrade train (2) reduce version fragmentation in the Windows sphere and (3) reduce legacy OS support for the vast majority of MS users.

So, something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A shame that we fully expect this data to be used to track us personally (because, let's face it, it probably will). This kind of data would be a huge value to civil engineers and planners who design the roads and target maintenance, improvements, and new routes. It would cost in the tens of millions of dollars to collect just a fraction of this using traditional methods, and yet the data could be had for less than a 1/10 of that and be far, far more complete.

Corporations said they would always act in the best interest because they're held accountable by stockholders and consumers? Is he saying that unregulated corporations are doing things which may be harming the population in general because of a short-term profit motive? Say it isn't so!

You've never seen manufactured housing (aka mobile homes)? That do that all the time, and delivery it right to your site ready to be hooked into the power grid and water/sewer.

Don't like mobile homes? Try a modular home. Built in a factory with all the bits complete but in shipable-size pieces, assembled on site.

Still too much? there are a dozen different panelization technologies that will send you prefabricated parts you just screw or connect together.

Lots of people pay outrageous prices for stuff. People with lots of disposable income. If you were pulling in solid 7 figures (or higher), the cost of Google glass would be insignificant, less than the cost of a lunch out to someone with an average salary. Buying a private jet vs flying international first class seems like not that much of an upgrade, considering you get to the same place either way, and you get a comfortable ride regardless, but jet ownership and usage is increasing, even through you'll probably never buy one.

That's just it. Nearly 200,000 people die every. single. day. Doctors have patients die all the time because some things can't be fixed, or can't be fixed within the constraints of "regular" medicine. One of those constraints is money. I didn't see where he took her to a clinic and offered the best surgeon in the world $10,000,000 to attempt the surgery. (And, remember, all medical procedures are just probabilities of repair not guarantees.) Because he probably would have gotten a different answer.

And, yes, it's intensely frustrating. In fact, I'm often glad that I'm not a doctor. I've run into cases where someone's home will cost more to fix than the home is worth. Often, for those people, it costs more than their life savings. It's the death sentence for the structure, and a pretty dire condition for the owner. Imaging that your only shelter is falling apart around you, and may collapse, but not only don't you have the money to fix it but if you found the money and did fix it, it would still be worth less than the money you spent.

As for the misdiagnosis, doctors are still humans and they still make mistakes.

Every fiat currency in the world is backed by the guns and ammo the country can bring to bear in the event of war, because might implies stability.

Fiat currencies are backed by nothing more tangable that that which underlies bitcoin. It's all a matter of confidence. The biggest problem with bitcoin is psychological. Humans, on the whole, have been duped into believing that inflation is good, and that more money means more value (ignore the fallacy there, most people will never understand it). Bitcoin is a (nominally) fixed supply, which means that it's value related to other fixed supply goods, in a perfect market, will never change. To someone who has used fiat currency all their lives, that's a bad thing.

In fact, as bit coin value goes up relative to fiat currencies, the payments in bitcoins (how much you "make" on a transaction) goes DOWN, which is the worst thing you can show any average Joe. The flip side doesn't help - if the value of bitcoin goes down, then the public sees it as a commodity which has lost value and is therefore a bad investment.

IMHO bitcoin can't win.

Oh, they do. Mine has a little section with breadboards and wire and arduinos and shields. And they're about 2x-3x what Amazon will deliver to me for free in 2 days (yes, I have prime), and 3x-10x what the parts go for on the open/global market. So, yes, I'll spend $20 on that SD shield if I absolutely need it today, but if I don't I can guarantee I'm going to order it for $10 at Amazon or for $4 the next time I order from DX.

Being local means something, and I prefer to buy locally, but not when I get raped at the checkout. I understand the 1000% markup on a pack of 5 resistors or a single LED I need that might cost $2 - there's a minimum cost to package, stock, and sell something. But the bigger stuff really needs to be more in line with what other vendors are selling it for on line. That means better/more efficient distribution and smarter inventorying, and clearly they're not interested. Lowes seems to be able to stock copper parts at $0.15-0.40 a piece, and you can buy a whole range of bolts, screws, and nuts for as little as $0.05 a piece. If they offered me a hammer for $40 that I can buy online for $15-20, I can pretty much guarantee they wouldn't be making many in-store sales, which is why they sell a hammer for $17-22, because for $2 extra I'll happily get it right now, but for $20 extra I can buy two on line and always have a spare.

There should be a law against doing this that applies to anyone not in law enforcement. Or government. Or corporations. Those are the minds which will be affected, and they won't stop until something is made illegal.

Those people are just collateral damage in the war to maximum revenue. They say you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and you can't make yacht-buying CxO salaries without breaking a few laws. So a few people get bad wifi. They should just be richer so they can buy better service.

With the resurgence in the maker movement, RS might have been in the right position to take advantage of it, but instead had tacked towards a mobile phone mall storefront with some overpriced toys, horrifically overpriced, low end consumer electronics, and batteries.

Sadly, there's probably not enough volume in the maker niche to keep all of the stores afloat at competitive pricing (i.e., not $35 for an Uno board that can be had from Amazon for $18 and from foreign shippers at $12), but it would be awfully cool to have racks of parts and components in at least one store in every town.