I agree the gnome3 dynamic workspaces are annoying, but fortunately there's an option to turn them off. You can turn off the top-left-corner gesture too. I use ctrl-f1 - f8 to switch workspaces, it's nice.

I suppose you could argue that the defaults are not great for experienced users, but most experienced users would expect to have to customise their desktop a bit, I think.

Here's a terrific animation from NOAA putting the current CO2 levels in the context of the last million years or so. It takes a few minutes to watch, but see it to the end.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

tldr: current CO2 levels are about 40% higher than the maximum levels seen in the last ten ice age cycles.

Actually the smoking / cancer link is very hard to really prove. How can you conclusively link an act (smoking a cigarette) to its consequence (getting cancer) when the two are separated by perhaps 40 years of possibly related health events?

Smoking / cancer is proved by careful statistical analysis of very large studies. Or rather, you repeatedly do large studies, narrowing confidence intervals each time, until you reach a point where things seem to tip over in people's minds from "unproven" to "proven".

It's really very like climate change in many ways.

I mean the idea that global cooling was a serious concern in the science community in the 70s is a myth. I was there too.

Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Your two questions are good ones and the science seems to say that action could help slow or even prevent some of the worst effects.

Whether change is politically possible (or desirable) is an even tougher question and not one science can really speak to. This is where the debate should be now, I think.

Yes, ps4 plays DVDs and Blu-rays fine, and has been able to since launch.

Read down a little further, he compares an MBA and a Surface Pro 2 running anad's wifi web browsing benchmark. The hardware is very similar, but the MBA lasts about twice as long.

There's a "suspend" item, on the top-right menu, same place as always.

You can configure what you want to happen on lid close in the power settings (press the win key, type "pow", press return).

Gnome-shell is very customizable, you can use tweak tool to turn off dynamic workspaces and turn on files-on-desktop, for example. A range of nice extensions are available too.

After only a modest amount of tinkering I have a very fast, functional, attractive desktop.

There are safeguards. There are home office guidelines that the police must follow (they must only detain people suspected of involvement in terrorism, for example) and there's an independent reviewer who oversees the application of the law.

At least after a quick glance it seems that the police ignored (or took a very broad interpretation of) the guidelines and that the independent reviewer will be holding a triple-cunting when he meets the Metropolitan Police Service. One can hope.

Schedule 7 has been revised (no more than six hours of detention, "suspect" must have a lawyer) and the new version is going through parliament now, so that's something.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23763625

From the linked article:

Furthermore, in addition to the original feature set, VideoLAN has added more ways to synchronize media (upload over Wi-Fi, native Dropbox integration, support for third-party apps through the Share dialog, and via Web download), support for network streams, video filters, passcode lock, background audio playback, and playback speed manipulation. There is also support for subtitles (including Closed Captions and complex SSA), native support for multiple audio tracks, and playback on external screens or AirPlay.

Go around a university library and see what the students are using. Here at Cambridge it's about 50% mac, 25% win, 25% pen and paper.

MS have lost the next generation of consumers.

I don't think that's correct. If I had a range of other measurements and cherry-picked the ones that agreed with mine, thinking the others were outliers, that would be confirmation bias.

What we have here is a large set of independent measurements that all agree. Where is the bias? There is none.

Fortunately for science the Mauna Loa readings are in good agreement with those taken at hundreds of other sites around the globe.

Here's a great animation from NOAA showing global CO2 distribution and putting recent changes in the context of the last million years or so. It takes a few minutes to watch, but it's worth seeing to the end, in my opinion.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

I'm not sure you're right on the 30% stake being their interest. App stores do not make large amounts of money and MS know that.

Instead, they think the future is mobile, and that they MUST have a competitive product. A mobile product needs a good app selection, a good app selection needs a lot of developers, and developers need a market to sell to, or they'll work on another platform.

Metro is a way to create a market for phone apps without having (yet) a significant phone product. For it to work it must be thrust in the face of desktop users.