Yes. They ask their consultant, Sir Bedivere, questions about their density.

...Well, they had to test the multiplayer games as well, paying someone to share the experience was necessary.

... I'd like to know what percentage of users ticked "yes" to : 'do you want to enroll in the customer experience improvement program?' My hunch is that such a group suffers from two defects:

1. It's self selecting, and selection is based practically on a positive view of Microsoft products;
2.it might be too small to be representative of the whole, and no data on enrollment is available in the article.

moreover, the article says:

So my quick summary: Microsoft wants me to believe that a group, selected according to criteria and methods that would have my statistics professor at the University screaming that I am a confounded moron, is right in believing that windows 8 does not have a usability problem, and therefore I am also a confounded moron because I use windows 7 with the XP menus. Ah, I did not mention that there's no word on how would I use touch on my installed screen base, which does not have a touch interface.

it might be that the security is good NOW, but that this results are good enough that they do not want to risk decryption in a distant future..I recall a slashdot discussion about Key cryptoanalysis which was in a way scary, about how good new rigs using video cards are.

It might just be that the RESULTS from the sensors are so far ahead of the curve, that the DoD doesn't want to broadcast them in any shape or form. Or, security of military channel data have been compromised to some degree. Or, just a message to the Chinese, who have tested antisatellite weapons in the past, that their "dark period" in that case is not measured in weeks, even if they disrupt communications between the satellites and earth.
It might be like the B2 Spirit: there might be only 20 of them, but if your bosses control a country spanning 5 time zones and want an early warning system capable of defeating it, start to print money now. Because you do not have enough of it.

Begging your pardon, it's untrue. we gathered our best bureaucrats in TWO places, Strasbourg and Brouxelles. According to, guess what, a committee, cutting one would save about 180 mln EUR a year. I am also guilty, in my original post, of not having put in fat salaries for the committee members. Nothing like an entitlement to make a problem into an eternal problem, see also the common agricultural policy.
Personally, I think that any entity willing to have two capital cities and spend half its budget on a sector representing less than 5% of its gross domestic products is fit to be tied. But then, it's just silly me.

Instead of opposing it and then caving in, The western world could rip a page off the dictatorships' book: "the proposal has merit, but it has to be studied thoroughly: We could form a committee with ,oh, all the countries in the world, chaired by a non aligned country, Tuvalu [internet domain: *.tv], and wait until they come with a legal and technical proposal behind which a qualified majority, for example enough countries representing 95% of world population and internet domains, gathering at least 85% of the number of countries involved, could be found. Do you mind if we of the ole US of A get represented by all the 50 states individually? We know for a fast that Canada wants to do likewise, and to be fair, all the European countries have a vote each, so it would only be fair..... See you in 3.100 AD, ok? Of course, if some technical advance has taken hold in the meantime, the whole process has to be restarted."

It looks to me that bunching all of those vendors in one bundle is a bit risquè. In effect, some of them are selling something that they do not own.

...mmmmm, where to begin? This is Slashdot, so let's start with Microsoft. I never saw, read of heard about a suicide that lasted longer, unless the Dynosaurs killed themselves using farts to start a climate change. XP is still dominating their cash cows, and lo and behold, the serfs have fought back: "yes, come back when you REALLY will cut support. Line up over there, if we really want to retrain the whole workforce, we might as well go for open source + service contracts.....unless you offer us upgrades to windows SEVEN for 4.99$ per seat.". Final Nail in the coffin: price raises, obviously; why let a good opportunity to be LESS competitive go by?

Google, the smartest of them all: it's selling dearly to people things that they really do not own, mindspace. the gadgetry is very good, I do use calendar syncing, but I never entered via the browser since I set it up, and I use thunderbird + lightning as a client; anybody cares to bet on what will happen if all of a sudden the calendar utility ceases to be free and/or interoperable? I do think that at the Mozilla foundation they have a stock of Champagne bottles, in case it happens.

and now, the Apple of my eye. My teen daughter is quite taken by the Ipad, and it's the most expensive toy she has ever received. but "retina display"? "iphone 5"? "Siri"? it's becoming an organized religion: you have to believe, because if you approach with rationality, you get cold feet. Seriously, I know I am fifty, but looking at a puny display I cannot SEE the high definition.

But the biggest pun of all is "the government". Get serious, the only thing the governments are interested in is a." are there taxes to be had?" and b. " will these bozos provide us with private data, backdoors, snooping facilities if we ask?"

Great. Microsoft is convinced that Betamax won.

I am not a programmer or an IT guy, I am only a power user...the kind of guy that remember spending the 80s squabbling to get the latest and greatest, the 90s fine tuning whatever was coming, and the 2000 trying to keep still and not be noticed when IT got round to changing computers... "yes, officer, I guarantee that my PC has been upgraded last week."
Now I am a partner in a small company, we have win xp, and do not care to upgrade. why should I? we have one Win 7 machine, and it works just fine, now that it has the XP theme, but we'd have to erace everything, do a fresh install of win 7, reinstall everything....just to reach where we were. I think that the most utterly moronic thing that MS did in recent years was not putting in place something that allowed a smooth and hassle free upgrade from win XP to win 7. That would have paid in spades, more than sinking money in Nokia and windows 8. MS is no.seven or eight to the smart phone race, in order of appearance, and lower down in importance.

moreover, what I find strikingly funny is the idea of using touchscreens in an office environment...that's even more stupid. it's slower and less precise than a mouse, and less versatile than a keyboard, and it's absolutely trashed by the Keyboard plus mouse combination. The military have lots of environments in which usability is literally life or death, and their LCD panels have buttons on the sides. no touch screen sir, you cover what you're looking at!

come to think of it, nobody asked why Apple, who has historically imposed a price premium on its hardware, has never ever toyed with touchscreens on the mac...

I am from Italy, and that's not news here. Remember, Christmas was placed next to the winter solstice because, from time immemorial, humanity in the northern reaches has celebrated a kind of potlatch to salute the arrival of the new season. For the Christian clergy in Roman times, it was dated to supercede Saturnalia , but any search on google may throw up the odd solstice festivity much earlier. As in all things, Geography beats History, 1 - nil.

[Imperial commando]:" this is the cover story:"Additionally, the lasers could be combined to generate a super laser that would shoot into space, similar to the combined laser effect of the Death Star in the Star Wars trilogy, though the goal is to study particles in space, not annihilate planets.""

Why should it strike me as news? Anyone who still has Microsoft after they issued excel 5 was angling for trouble. Ballmer is the man of the missed opportunities, but the balance sheet model was skewed from the start.
If anyone troubled to check the balance sheet these past years, he'd have noted that MS made big fanfare of stock buybacks: after all, its market position meant it was a big net cash machine, and investments in its sector of adequate size, and no antitrust considerations, are a bit thin on the ground. So where to put the money, if not in the company itself? the troubling bit is they put it in the manager's coffers; the issued shares where options granted to employees, and in many years they covered two thirds of the buybacks. So no net increase in Earning per share, thank you.
If the shareholders had been less index funds or tech fanatics, they would have pestered the company years back and insisted of a special dividend, like 40 bucks per share, with a big chunk of debt injected in the company. from then on, only cash dividends, no buybacks.

I do wonder how a car built to the same downgraded specs would cost. I always come away with the impression that all these contraptions, driven by a pint-size diesel engine, would do 200 km/litre, cost half the price of the electric version, and on a total life accounting probably be as environmentally friendly not to notice the difference. And remember, a well thought out diesel engine is good for 300.000 km, my car has 130.000, and a cousin of mine's is ticking after 500.000.

As always, tough, it's apples and oranges: a combustion engine driven contraption like this

a. would never get any authorization for the public sale,
b. "we want you to get Euro NCAP certification",
c. would be shunned as a curiosity without a future.

I never, ever saw an "apples to apples" comparison, or serious feasibility study. For example, here in Italy, a local regulation practically prohibits linking your garage electrical system to your house in a condo: what do I do if I want an electric car? Either this regulation is a piece of crap, which I suspect, or the govvies think that I should not keep a refrigerator in a garage eventually subject to flooding, but that I can keep expensive rare earth batteries with nary a problem. Chemistry 101 , anyone?

I beg to disagree. Garbage producing countries are paying to get rid of the thing, including transport costs. I do not see the Saudis paying the swedes to get rid of the oil which is staining the inside of the oil wells. In the end the Swedes are only selling a service: how to part morons from their money. Luckily, now there's an economic crisis, so we're starting incinerating plants over here in italy too.
Pity is, they're owned and/or controlled by the municipalities, so none of those will use garbage from outside their administrative area: plants are built too small, etc.etc., so as a country the problem will remain.