By the time Windows 7 was released Vista had enough service packs to make it quite usable, so I don't think that it is fair to say that my statement was far from the truth. There are plenty of people who still claim to this day that Vista was an unusable mess even though that was just the initial teething problem.

And even then, a lot of what was said about the OS was just wrong. I avoided Vista because of what I read about it here. When I finally got a laptop for my wife with it pre-installed, I decided to try it out for a laugh before I wiped it with my XP CD only to find that it was a perfectly capable system. It certainly didn't take 30 seconds to do a directory listing for me. I'm sure that a lot of people had driver issues that caused problems, but the other stuff said about it (like the DRM that was supposed to infest the OS and stop you from doing anything that Microsoft didn't want) was just the product of fantasy.

Of all the examples that I gave of the times when people have said that a version upgrade of Windows gave no real features, I think the Vista to Win7 would have to be either first or second in the list when ordered by plausibility. I think the fact that this claim was made about Xp->Vista (when that was the biggest change in Windows under the hood in nearly a decade) shows that in reality it is a bogus thing to say. I certainly don't say it. I was just pointing out that with each upgrade, someone will make that claim.

The difference there is that if you didn't know about the hot corners, the Mac was a perfectly usable system. On Windows 8, you had no way of getting to the start screen or charms without knowing about them. Without that knowledge, Windows 8 was an unusable system.

I should have been more clear that having the ability to do this is fine, but requiring the user does it as the main interface is not.

On that note: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/w...

Hertz: "We have no plans to use the cameras!"

Consumers: "Thank goodness! We were worried!"

Hertz: "Well, shit, it looks like we've got a plan!"

A lot of those shortcuts were also on the Windows 7 start menu (unless you turned them off). I don't have a Windows 8.1 system in front of me, but I don't recall anything on it that could not be pinned to the Start Menu. Perhaps some of the direct links into the Control Panel, but that could be done with a bit of fiddling.

That's true. It is also different to "it prints blank pages" and "it emits no pages". "It doesn't print" is vague and unhelpful, because as you said customers lie in bug reports and will therefore say it won't print when it actually prints garbage.

Having been the recipient on many a bug report that was as simple as "it won't print", I know that you almost always have to follow up such general bug reports with questions to narrow down the problem. This is especially the case with printing when the problem may only present with certain documents (something a crash report will not tell you).

But when Firefox doesn't crash it doesn't send that information (obviously). The equivalent of "it won't print" would be "the web page is blank". A rendering error will not trigger the crash reporting system.

However, if a bug report is generated due to a crash in the print spooler then it will be obvious that it didn't print so adding the text "it won't print" provides nothing useful.

This was answered in the link that you provided. Right click on the task bar icon and open a new instance of the application (or access the jump list of recently used files). It works for Windows 7 and 8.

Yeah, I hate the Metro interface too. But this is the high profile change that they made to Windows 10, so it is already a solved problem.

This is a configurable option in Windows 8.1, so that isn't a problem.

It will be interesting how many of Windows 8's less intuitive user interface features will still be around in the final version of Windows 10. My most hated modern user interface idea is the removal of UI hints to simplify the screen. You end up having to try clicking and swiping everything just to see if it does something. Having to move the mouse to particular corners of the screen is a crap idea too

Well that is what they have done now. I read a great article once on the though process that went on behind the scenes about the new interface. I wish I could find it again, because it put it all into perspective. I will still always hate the Metro interface and the loss of functionality that it brings, but I have been surprised at the change of heart about it that the staff at my company have had about it. They went from hating it to acceptance (and even one who loves it).

That gets said about every version of Windows. XP was just a face-lift on 2000. Vista was just XP run as a limited user. Windows 7 was just Vista, which, for some reason, the people who hated Vista decided that they loved. The changes in each version are more noticeable when moving back to an old version. You suddenly realise how many of the new features you use when they suddenly disappear.

Now I write that though (on my Windows 7 computer), I can't think of any examples of things that I miss from Win8 right now.

This is extremely and wildly not true. The most basic part of doing literature review is following original sources and everyone I know does this. You have to, because reviewers pick this stuff up. Even when I couldn't find a pdf or physical copy of an original source, I'd still cite it. Also, you're fooling yourself if you think that just because something was done 30 years ago, there's no point in citing more recent sources. A lot of more recent work is nothing more than just repeating old ideas but with slight modifications that nevertheless reveal new insights. Finally, when writing a paper, there is no need to cite everything that has been done right back to ancient Greece. The audience of a scientific paper is assumed to be the scientific community which is already familiar with the body of work.

"It doesn't print" isn't a complete and useful report because it is just one step up from simply saying "it doesn't work". Presumably it does print for some people, so the developers really need to be able to narrow down the problem.

Does it crash as soon as it starts the print process, or does it go appear to generate each page? Does it send anything to the printer (flashing light on printer), but just no pages are emitted? Is it just that blank pages are emitted? Or random garbage characters? There can be many symptoms of not printing, and they would each suggest a problem in a different bit of code.

Yes, it does log activity in the beta versions of Windows. It seems that their collective head is in the right place. However, all the logging in the world can't see what has come out of your printer.

Frankly I think the procedure should simply be banned outright, with very long prison sentences for anyone performing a circumcision without a good solid medical reason. It's barbaric, no different than female circumcision which seems to be the cause célèbre of modern women's rights activists. And yes, I know circumcision can confer some health benefits (my understanding is it slightly reduces HIV transmission, as well as protecting against some kinds of infections), so does a woman having double mastectomies to prevent breast cancer, and yet I don't see a general move to lop off all women's breasts.

Oh, they're working on it. As with a lot of this stuff it is being sold as convenience. Most people don't appreciate the value and importance of cash and are happy to use Level Up or Apple Pay or whatever other payment method. I'm not saying those services are in league with NSA/CIA/etc. (though it wouldn't surprise me). But as the public gets more used to using cashless systems the idea or getting rid of cash will seem natural. Once that's done say goodbye to any anonymous transaction. There will be a record of every purchase we make, subject to review.

I use cash whenever possible, even when it isn't convenient. But I think it's only a matter of time.

True the one group of charlatans who are NOT lying when they claim their "treatments" have no side effects are homeopaths - you can't have side effects when you have no effects.

Your soul evidence for your anti-science insanity is anecdotal, and the worst kind of anecdote - an anonymous one (since you posted as AC).

The only SANE reaction here is to assume you ARE in fact an acupuncturist and this is your way of trying to advertise and drum up some business in a desperate attempt to avoid competing with actual science.

Keep in mind that there is virtually no evidence for panspermia.