Slashdot loves to get inaccurate and inflammatory.

Is that if you do renounce your citizenship, the US gets all spiteful and will blacklist you from coming back.

Obviously you have to evaluate your situation, but just make sure you factor that in. You wouldn't want to say "Ya, don't really need that citizenship anymore," only to find you can't come back and visit family because the government got pissey about it.

The issue with Metro is that the "Only full screen mode," is a deal breaker on desktops. I do not have a 30" screen to run one program at a time, thanks (barring a few exceptions). However they become perfectly usable when they are in a window. Modern Mix for Stardock does that, and apparently Windows 9 will do it natively. Ok well at that point, Metro is just another API you can use alongside Win32 and .NET and maybe there's some interest. If a Metro program works just like any other then perhaps more people will be interested in writing them.

Of course that remains to be seen, but a new API that is cross desktop/tablet/phone isn't a horrible idea, forced fullscreen on a desktop is.

Agree, but fixing the root cause of this is MUCH harder than removing some search results.

Heck, getting gay marriage legalized is probably an easier cultural change than getting people to treat information they hear with appropriate skepticism and giving people a chance. Actually, if we could fix that then getting gay marriage legalized would be a simple follow-on...

Visual people seem to like it often. Mom loves the new start screen because of that (she's an artist/ex-art teacher). However it does have some issues for normal desktop use. Not the OMGWTFBBQ whine fest geeks make it out to be (which is largely MS bashing) but still.

The big issue is that it is clunky to use in a professional setting. Like on my desktop I have a whole lot of applications, and I often run and use many of them. The start menu is good because it doesn't occlude much of the screen. Also everything is nice and hierarchical, making it easy to find things. The start screen becomes a pretty big mess. It goes on for ever, even on my 30" monitor, because I have so much installed and it shows all icons. Yes, I can set up tiles with the most used stuff, but that really doesn't solve the issue since I already have task bar shortcuts for that, I go to the start menu/screen when it is a less used program.

Hence I run a start menu replacer (Start 8 in my case). It isn't that I can't use the start screen, I just find it inferior to what it replaced. It's perfectly usable, the 2012R2 servers at work all use it and that's fine, however a start menu is better/faster for what I do.

On a tablet, it works nicely. You need bigger icons to do finger navigation. However my desktop isn't a tablet, my screen is not and will never be touch (no finger prints please and thanks). So it is sub optimal.

Hence MS really is right to bring back the menu for desktops, and have the screen for tablets. However you are also right that the whiners need to STFU because it is not the dire disaster they like to pretend.

Not really relevant. Microsoft has control over the data and can produce it if it wishes. It can't hide behind corporate forms.

Then Microsoft is screwed. In the meantime, Microsoft has access to the data and must provide it. They don't get get to pretend their subsidiary is not under their control.

As a lawyer, let me assure you that plenty of countries have laws/ruling that let them compel persons under their jurisdiction, including specifically companies incorporated under their laws, to take specified actions in other countries.

And the government's answer is "no, bring us your data or we freeze your assets and hold your US-based management in jail until you produce it."

No, it's not as simple as that. Servers and data fundamentally obey those rules more easily than ANY OTHER THING ON EARTH.

Anyone that has a Taxpayer Identification number(read social security number) is required to report. The banks ask you at the time of creation of an account if you have one, and if you do then you have to fill out a special form and they report all your assets to the US government, despite you know, the government not needing to know any of this. If we get married then she gets a TIN and then has to report all this shit. And of course the ironic thing is that this is going to cost way more than it is going to bring in. So the US is pissing people off and fucking over it's citizens all in the name of losing money......

The biggest kick in the pants though is that this act has got me siding with the Republicans. I've officially renounced my membership in the democratic party over this turd of a law. Not insane enough to become a Republican but.

Excellent. Then as long as you restrict yourself to selling your products in Antartica and locating all your operations there, you'll be fine.

If you sell elsewhere, then you'll be fine to the extent that the armies of Antartica make the rest of the world stand in awe of its ability to bring freedom and the Antartic legal system to their shores.

What was wrong with the existing legal remedies?

"...reinserts it back into your searches"...at the top of the page.

Sorry but you have to be pedantic when gathering requirements.

Um, are you aware of FATCA? It is basically the financial version of this verdict. It forces any financial institution anywhere in the world. It even demands that US citizens who have signing powers on bank accounts for their companies report the balance to the US government. And it's not only US citizens, it's everyone who is of "US interest". As a US citizen abroad let me tell you this sucks, this sucks hard. It's now harder for me to get a bank account, I'm engaged to a national of the country I'm residing in, and as soon as I get married she is going to have to report all her bank balances to the US government. I've never thought about renouncing my US citizenship until now, the US government has no business sticking its nose in when it doesn't belong. This has been a pattern of late, and Obama in some regards is worse than Bush. The US government needs to realize it's not 1950 anymore and they don't have economic hegemony anymore...