That's part of their script these days. I received the same speech on both US coasts within a week. "Is there anything about these machines you know that I don't?" You'd think I wouldn't have to answer that question over and over and over but alas. I figure I may as well make it as uncomfortable for them as it is for me. I don't mind being felt up. To be fair - the pat downs have been nothing but absolutely professional. That is, assuming you consider a pat-down professional.

Interesting....

I think I missed a step in your thought process. It can find compounds but not tell which ones are toxins/impurities?

I'm calling bullshit on bullshit. My associates has landed me two decent jobs (sys admin).

To be fair - all my electives were geek classes - like network security and various programming. School is entirely what you make of it. You can float through, get your paper, and learn nothing. Or you can rock the fuck out and learn a lot of cool, useful, shit.

Yeah...it's that blending of the two types of "reporting" that threw me off. At least w/ the onion I know where I stand. With this group...I have no clue what they're after or who their audience even is. It feels like those well crafted spam emails that are almost coherent but just not quite.

You're supposed to post as AC if you're going to belittle someone while avoiding answering a question. Don't you know the rules here?

Meh. I figure you're joking but the decade-old meme is getting, well, old.

As far as the free antivirus solutions go for PC, it's one of the top three fairly consistently on the reviews I've come across. And with Windows 8 - it's automatically installed and running in the background so the n00b end-user we all love to complain about should be less of a vector than usual. This is typically regarded as a good thing for most sane folks.

So yeah, a little more than just a placebo.

Are they even a real site? No, really.

Just by quickly looking at what's on their site I can't tell if they want to be taken seriously or not.

Headlines?
"App designed for safe sending of naughty selfies is rife with risks. Teenager subtitles: App makes selfies safe BLAH BLAH BLAH "
"Data cops seek 'urgent clarification' on new Facebook advertiser plans. We advertise to you next to your own content ... bitch "

Funny you mention that - that's something I was looking up recently, but I've come up with nothing so far.

I wouldn't call it "hell" per se. Just like w/ Vista and 7 I still go in and remove all the "pinned" shortcuts and replace it with quicklaunch. And honestly I haven't had to do a reinstall of a Win 7 box yet

I really wanted to like it and bought into their promo deal to put it onto my laptop (like $40 for a legit copy of Win 8 Upgrade).

But I've run into the same gripes as him regarding the interface. If you were just in the Modern UI 100% of the time on the tablet it wouldn't be a terrible experience. However, it tries to switch back and forth from that interface to the traditional desktop interface and does so very, very poorly. Even on a tablet this transition is godawful. It's worse on a non-touchscreen laptop.

The new "start menu" just adds more work for me and adds very little value to the experience. This isn't a bad format for a tablet, but when you're on a laptop and not in the Modern UI - forcing the use of that new start menu is just absurd.

Now, it does seem to be a bit more responsive than Windows 7 and has a couple of neat features - for example the taskbar now extends across multiple screens and you can set its behavior to a couple of different methods. It seems to integrate nicely w/ the xbox environment but I'm waiting to see what its full potential will be for that.

Overall there are just a lot of things like "are you friggin serious?". In the land of UI the amount of mouse movement, clicks, and typing is how we define "work" and yet for some reason MS has been wanting to add more work to a lot of the user's tasks. This is something I still don't quite understand. (Look at the office ribbon - despite some of its nice features there are quite a few places where it just managed to add more work for the user to accomplish a task).

So yeah, it's that bad. I don't outright hate it but it's because I've modified a lot of it so far to fit what I'm after. I would absolutely recommend against it for a non geek to upgrade to.

Why don't we just bulldoze concentration camps too? You know, just so we don't appear to be supporting the Holocaust.

While I know this is in jest...there's some strange appeal to this concept.

Amen to that. Spotify is nice but I found the same thing - it was terrible at recommending anything new to me. That's what the major appeal to me is for it - I LOVE discovering new tunes.

I've been an avid paid Pandora listener for a few years and would love to see them find a way to improve their services especially if it can make them more marketable and last longer. This can benefit both the consumer and the artist if done properly and I think Zoe Keating, incidentally whom I discovered on Pandora, has the right idea.

When I find an artist I REALLY enjoy the first thing I end up doing is finding more of their songs not on Pandora...but on youtube. Then if I like a good portion of their stuff I'll usually go hunt for their album, which I usually try to buy directly from the artist when possible, or I'm looking to see if they're ever playing anywhere near me.

It would also be neat if it could show a map/chart of artists based on what you've thumbs upped previously or sort by station or something while you're in a buying mode. One thing I couldn't understand is how Pandora didn't enter into the music sales business as that would have flowed nicely with their current business. Imagine having an "add to cart" for songs you really dig and being able to play those on demand within the Pandora interface? Or just revert back to full on radio mode like always. There's just so much potential for this service and it typically nails what I'm in the mood to listening to.