All Microsoft had to do to make windows 8 a success, both financially and critically, was to make applications load faster. Think about it. People are simple, impatient creatures, as are their bosses. Imagine an app that loads in 10 secs on windows 7 and then 5 secs on windows 8. Companies would jump on that upgrade ship in a heartbeat! It's all increased productivity. That's it, that's all they had to do. But no, they go messing around with interfaces and workflows. Bunch of idjits.

i actually think i saw a "Made in China" bumper sticker on our drones.

It will also allow individuals to share data across different 4G LTE devices

does that mean we can now share our 4G cell phone data plan with a 4G usb stick and not have to buy another stupid data plan for it?? because i'm all for that.

"Despite the fact that the rightful owner was able to locate his iPad within hours of the theft, thanks to the anti-theft application he had installed"

It's not a very good anti-theft application if the iPad was stolen!
They should call it something else, no?

20 billion for a spaceport to go see a big ball of rock. Believe us, we've been there. There's not a damn thing there. Why don't they spend their time on something they're good at. Like letting their citizens live in slums, cold and hungry. I'm sure 20 billion for space travel does a lot more good. .

Exactly. So what basically happened is, the TSA increased security post-9/11, the TSA increased wait times, so now the kind of security i was getting for free pre-9/11, i now have to pay $100 for. Oh, and it only works 80% of the time, oh, and only for 2 airlines, oh, and only for some airports. The TSA are the ones causing the delays! And not only are we footing the bill for the technology and laws that cause the delays, but now we're also paying to get rid of the delay. It's a scam, pure and simple. We've certainly come a long way from innocent until proven guilty. Or until proven suspicious apparently.

Nowadays though, porn sites open all sorts of crap without your approval. Let's say you go to a legitimate porn site and it opens up on its own a pop up or new tab or new window, which is very normal, and in that content is kiddie porn. Now, it's on your machine, you were on the computer, but you didn't voluntarily download it, it was pushed upon you. So how does one prove you did or did not voluntarily download it?

Last message between Drone and Ground Control: Can you hear me now?

I know i'll get flamed for this, but, come on, it's 60ns. we're really gonna spend millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of time over 60ns?? Yes, I know, over large distances it's a different story, but is this really as big a deal as people are making it out to be? I'm just asking.
Isn't it quite possible that Einstein just rounded down when he was calculating 'c'? ;)

Because it's easier to kill terrorists than to kill cancer

Personally, i'd be ok with everybody bringing an uzi on flights if i never had to walk through another security checkpoint for the rest of my life.
They should hand out guns at security checkpoints, like bags of peanuts. 1 terrorist with a gun onboard versus 200 of us passengers with a gun. i'll take those odds.
I'm joking of course. mostly.

From the platform highlights..

this, to me, is the most signifigant part of the release. End-users and IT people have been asking for this forever.

I don't agree that it's the norm, even for a small company. You don't need big money, esp. for java development.
We're small and we get by well. cvs, eclipse, junit, cruisecontrol, ant, rpm. Throw a little money for Jira and you're doing pretty well.
But you're there, so either run or try and change things. But believe me, it's not easy. Developers get engrained in ways of doing things. And even if it's for the better, changing that takes time. Convincing your boss and a senior dev guy to start is your best bet.

At least for me, the thing that's wrong with a pretty desktop environment is trust.
Instead of editing a config file directly and being at the heart of the matter, you're trusting a program to do it for you behind the scenes.
Maybe that's ok for the lay man, but i could never get used to it. I want to know what's going on. It's like the people that say, why don't you use webmin to edit your web/mail/db server config files instead of doing it manually? I can't trust it. Simply have not been able to get past it..
But, that's me.

that's what i preach. password sentences. i'm over the 8 char min, upper case, special character required passwords.
i'll do 14 char minimum, no complexity requirements, 60 day expire all day long.
I like to pick something that's relevant to current life events, like:
"i have a crush on the pizza delivery girl!"
It also helps that you provide actual disincentive. If through regular auditing you find a user's password stupidly easy. like joebobjoebobjoe or a user has written their password in plain sight, they have to wear the company 'Dunce' hat for a whole day. More subtler is revoking a user's internet access to all non-work related sites and services for X days for a security violation. gmail, hotmail, facebook, etc..
Works better in smaller companies :)

I like how the analysts talk about churn and that the increased revenue will make up for the lost customers, but they don't talk about the potential customers the increase may scare off. What's that number like??
I think a modest price increase would have been fine. 10% maybe. But 60%? come on.