Some of these new metro apps are pretty cool. However, on my 27 inch monitor, the full screen really annoys me. What I wish, is that I could size them, and put them where I want! You could put them in a box, I could drag them around the screen. I dont know, you could call them 'windows' or something.

For my use case, windows 8 is a complete waste of time. The metro interface just gets in the way. In standard form the new start screen is slower and takes more time to use.
2 Common use cases for me:
Windows: Aim to the Start Button Click, slight move to programs, click on program.
Windows 8: Move down to the left corner wait for the start to appear and click. Now move the mouse to the app I want which could be the whole way across my 27 inch screen, and click on program. Or worst case, move to the far right of the screen to scroll the screen across, and then move up to the program to click on it. On my monitor, that can be alot of mouse movement just to run one program.

Windows: Hit start, type calc. Hit enter. Very quick. (unless something cpu heavy is running - may take a while to appear)
Windows 8: Hits start, type calc. hit enter. This is noticeably slower. The search list takes much more time to populate.

Windows 8 without a start screen replacement for me is terrible. Windows 8 with a start screen replacement offers nothing more than windows 7. It feels a little snappier but that's it. Running windows 8 for while now, and I just don't use metro mode at all. As I opened with, If I could window some of the apps, Id possibly use them, but without that, there's no point.

We use the Cisco Ironport - and have done since before Cisco bought them. Quite good devices - but as posted by someone above - 90% of the work is done by reputation filtering and protocol correctness filtering - which can be done using the normal black holes with relatively no cost. If the spam makes it through both of these, then its probably got a 5% chance of making it through the content filtering. I probably get a couple of false negatives a day - and 0 false positives in the last 3 years..

Second level support here. It means the Radiation Beam has been erroneously set to full power.

(Unfortunately if you think this is a joke, google the Therac 25 accident. This should be compulsory study for all programmers and software engineers.)

That is what happens in Australia - with our ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Four TV channels, numerous radio stations, very good and relatively unbiased news service - no ads. All for approximate 7cents a day per tax payer. (Used to be 12 cents per day - and they proudly proclaimed this - but then their funding was somewhat cut.)

Cheapest (full service - Qantas) flight from Adelaide to Melbourne 700kms (Australia): $140 (Meal + Newspaper + 1 free alcoholic drink + minimum 1000 FF points compared to BA's measly 125.)
Cheapest flight from Adelaide to Melbourne: $48.

US has it bad, very bad. Australians don't realise how bad flying is until we leave Australia.

Note that the two relevant entries that you mention are both spawned from the same product and code base. Originally, MS SQL Server was Sybase SQL server.

Lightning is full of bugs. Its been getting better over the years - but its so far behind Outlook and Exchange. Its a pity, because a little work with this, and it could be a very good Outlook/Exchange replacement. Cyrus-IMap is a better mail server than Exchange in every way, and the remnants of Netscape Calendar (now with Oracle) is a better calendar server in every way - its just the clients suck.

These are some wishes from semi-enterprise...
Mail:
1. No auto-configuration. Why should users have to configure mail servers - configure it through DNS srv records. (Dont get me started on the current mail configuration - theres plenty of rants here already.) If the srv records are there, it knows all of the account details, just provide a username and password and thunderbird is configured.
2. The text editor is only a minor improvement from the original netscape (and in some ways that was better.) Have a look at MCE editor for ideas on providing a better editor (and its already in javascript for easy porting)
3. Plugin deployment is difficult.

Calendar:
1. No auto-configuration. Using Caldav means adding a horrible url for each calendar you want.
2. No way of administering these calendars. - Delete, rename etc. I can add new ones, by crafting a new url.... https://caldav.example.com:8080/caldav.php/username/NewCalendar
3. No adding of modifying permissions on calendars.
4. No listing available calendars from the server. I should simply be able to list my own calendars that are on the server - and list ones available from other users, and resources.
5. Invites are still spotty.
6. Theres very little insight to when it goes wrong. no meaningful error messages - stuff just doesnt work.

Sogo is addressing some of these things, however, this should all be included functionality - core to lightning.

It really highlights some of the issues - calendars are hard, and because its a plugin - its in javascript - and thats damn hard too.
But its annoying, because its so close to being a great enterprise product.

No, CDMA was shutdown. It has been replaced by the NextG network - with is simply a GSM/HSPA network operating at 850MHz in the country and also on 2100MHz in the cities. With this it combines the best of range and capacity with the dual frequencies. It really highlights the engineering excellence of the best of Telstra - its easily the best network in Australia, and the others are struggling to keep up. Its a pity that nothing else of Telstra shows similar quality.
It may not quite have the range of the old CDMA network, however its close, and it delivers excellence bandwidth to the areas it does cover. They have also rolled out 4G services through the CBD's and this will get a practical 30Mbs of downloads.

The alternatives? Vodafone/3g is massively over subscribed, however on their way through $1BillionAUD to attempt to fix it. Optus is in a similar position, having caught everyone who fled from Vodafone.

Solaris will join a domain - and allow decent user mapping. Samba's user mapping honestly just sucks - even when it is joined to a domain. There are options - but they are all 'patented' and expensive. (See Centrify or similar) (How do you patent user/userid mapping?)

Incidentally Ive noticed that 389 Directory server only allows single-values for attributes such as mail... They have probably done it to allow their replication to AD.

Not true.. There is a good reason, and its reducing your quantisation noise. You will increase your Signal to Noise ration by sampling higher, doing your processing and then filtering back down. In fact, doubling your sampling frequency gives you the equivalent snr increase of more than an extra bit. DSP cycles are dirt cheap in the recording stage, so why not?

How does a sound engineer get to call themselves an engineer? Im not having a go, Im just asking...

However, for those of you quoting Nyquist, you only have half the answer. One of the side benefits of a higher frequency is lower quantisation noise - and hence a better signal to noise ratio. When you take a sample of sound, you then fit it to 16 bits. Obviously an analogue sound pressure level wont fit perfectly into a 16 bit value - so you have to fit it to the nearest one. The difference then becomes noise - which can generally be approximated as white noise (I know mathematically this is possibly incorrect, but practically its true) with its energy spread over the available frequency. Filter this noise out (which your ears will do for anything above 20-25khz) and you reduce the effective quantisation noise being heard (you have filtered out half of the noise's power) - improving the signal to noise ratio.
This obviously will not work in the case of material already sampled - as the quantisation noise is already there in its sampled form, however, it will have a similar effect for the encoding - if the encoding poduces white noise as part of its process - which (not having researched their encoding thoroughly) is likely.

Will it truely make a difference? I doubt it. TrueHD is already damn good - and the limitations are really going to be in the amplifiers and the speakers, particularly the cheap power supplies modern home amps seems to carry. I'm sure this is really just more about planned obsolescence.

The Australians and the British simply had their soldiers walking through the falling mushroom clouds of nuclear tests. They then denied that this activity caused cancers later in life and refused to provide compensation or support for it.

Acer A200. Should be able to get a better price, its a solid device and in the box with Android 3.1 with Acer provided 4.0 updates. This is the machine that finally convinced me to drop money on a tablet. The right machine at the right price.

Has anyone read the crap on there? My first read was about selecting a Database for your business. Its a couple of pages of meaningless waffle. There's no real content - the author clearly has very little knowledge about databases, hasnt written anything meaningful or useful and Slashdot has ultimately published an article that will not be of any help to anyone.
Plus is uses another whole new commenting system - so more issues and bugs to contend with.

To agree with some of the above posters have mentioned, I for a long time have come to Slashdot not so much for the articles, but the comments on the articles. You could always guarantee that a number of world leading experts on the subject would be posting. Those days are sadly passing.