I some time running the Windows 10 Technical preview that was released in January. Although it's an early, nowhere-near-finished- pre-beta version, it shows where Microsoft's thinking is headed. And it's not good.

While they have made some improvements over the clusterfuck that is Windows 8, in most cases they have doubled-down on stupid, keeping the vast majority of bad design decisions that were made with Windows 8. Even bringing back the Start Menu was botched. It still isn't as functional as Windows 7.

And the whole thing is just fucking ugly. More and more people spend an enormous amount of time in front of a computer, not just for social/entertainment purposes but for work as well. Aesthetics matter and Windows 8/10 fail horribly. This picture sums it all up perfectly:

http://i.imgur.com/iiXQRtN.jpg

Windows 10 IS Windows 9.

Because Microsoft knows better than you.

This is part of the absurd new mindset at Microsoft. You aren't supposed to exit the application. When the application has been idle for a while the OS (supposedly) will suspend it.

This design makes no sense, but neither do the other 1000 bad design decisions they made with Windows 8/10, so it's not surprising.

As long as Uranus doesn't get any closer to me, I'm OK with it.

Do you really think that the 'fake' watches don't come from the same Chinese factory as the 'real' ones?

You forgot the sarcasm tag.

Unfortunately (for the Internet trolls) being "more careful" isn't necessarily an option. What Curt Schilling actually demonstrated is that it's trivially easy to "out" or "dox" most people due to their blindly spewing every last bit of personal information about themselves all over the Internet.

Ultimately, that's the problem. I thought the original Star Trek was great. But, it was 1966 and I was 12 years old. In reality, the "good old days" never actually existed and they weren't actually as good as we remember them.

A faithful re-creation of the original Star Trek is NOT a good idea. There simply have been too many advances in the last 40 years. The cheap sets, cheesey special effects and bad acting just aren't tolerable any more.

That's because it's a useless gimmick. And it requires lot of extra work to produce, with little or no real benefit.

Yes, that is correct. And 'walk away' is exactly what people need to do. .The ADD/OCD stare-at-your-phone-every-minute-of-the-day crowd doesn't want to hear it, but if you're having problems surfing the web on your phone, it's because you're doing it wrong.

Browsing the Internet on a phone is a perfect example of the old saying: "Just because you *CAN* do something, doesn't mean you *SHOULD*." Other than the occasional "I need to look up directions to somewhere" I leave my Internet use to comfortably browsing on a real computer where I am in complete control of what software is installed and how it is configured.

If people would 'walk away', a huge drop in mobile ad revenue just might get the message across that websites need to clean up their act. Until then, you're just part of the problem.

Smartphones, Tablets and EBay had very little to do with the demise of SkyMall. Long before those things ever existed people weren't buying SkyMall's useless, overpriced crap. It's amazing they held on for this long. They must have a parent company with lots of money to waste.

Actually, security is not hard. But, security done properly requires you to commit substantial resources -- people, time, money. And that cuts into profits, so most most companies are not interested.

In the 80s they at least sold stuff that people wanted. VCRs, computers and computer components, stereo systems and components (speakers, receivers, turntables, etc). And there weren't a lot of other companies selling those products (at least where I live).

But nobody buys those things any more. As the demand for those products disappeared Radio Shack removed them from their stores, leaving them with nothing to sell. And the few things they do have that someone might want can be bought elsewhere, probably cheaper and with less hassle.

The problem is, getting rid of the things that you don't want and only getting the things you want, doesn't necessarily lead to lower prices.

People want unbundling of cable channels because they have done the following math:

200 channels for $100 a month = 50 cents per channel.
Therefore, if I pick only the 50 channels I might ever possibly care about, my bill will be 50 x 0.50 = $25, a substantial savings.

But there's nothing forcing the cable company to charge the same price for every channel. If you have odd tastes and most of the 50 channels you like are very unpopular, you might actually get your 50 channels for around $25.. But there's nothing stopping the cable company from charging much higher prices for the channels they know are the most popular, so, you could end up choosing your 50 channels and still end up paying about the same amount of money that you pay now for 200 channels.

Is one liable when a bunch of semi-autonomous code goes off and does something bad?

The entire premise here is flawed. The code didn't just accidentally do something bad.

That would be like me randomly shooting a gun and if a bullet happens to kill someone I say "I didn't do it deliberately so it's OK".