No, the problem is that people keep using it as if the touch interface is the only option. If you use it like you do Windows 7, it's actually a fantastic OS. Use the desktop, and treat the Start screen like a full-screen version of the Start menu. You don't need a Start orb to click on -- just hit the Windows key. I seriously cannot understand why Microsoft chose to market the Metro/Modern UI interface as the primary interface for the OS instead of easing people into it by treating that as a new Start menu (which is what it really is).

That's a terrible argument. We learned from our mistakes, and would prefer not to see others make the same ones. Because, you know, those mistakes actually hurt everyone when more and more debris clutters up the space around Earth. Your argument is like those saying we shouldn't expect 3rd world nations to use clean fuel and manufacturing techniques just because we had a dirty, polluting start and haven't 100% cleaned ourselves up. The damage caused hurts everyone, not just the one causing the damage.

The same way they always have - by getting bought out.

When patents are gone, startups can thrive. Until then, their only hope is for someone to buy them up.

What competitors? They are only competing with each other. RIM and Microsoft are not competition at this point. Apple and Google teaming up on this is actually the best possible thing that can happen.

Let me put this in historical terms:

It's kind of like the earliest treaties between the USSR and USA regarding nuclear weapons. Sure, China/England/France had some nukes, but either superpower could have swatted those three down without an issue. Those early treaties weren't very substantial, and covered very few weapon systems. Yet they laid the groundwork for future cooperation, and eventual de-fusing of the Cold War.

Frankly, the more cross-licensing the better. It's our only hope until someone finally wises up and ends patents entirely. Had the patent system worked out like nuclear weapons (preventing global-scale wars due to MADD, or in this case, massive litigation resulting in sales bans), then I would be in favor of simple patent reform. Unfortunately, it's been shown that corporations can't be trusted to act in the best interests of consumers, the economy, or themselves when it comes to patents.

This isn't a consumer offering, it's a business offering, which includes US-based ProSupport. There is actual Linux support here, and next-business-day hardware service.

The clueless? You mean like yourself? Windows Update automatically takes care of updating the definitions and running background scans. Definition updates are pushed out daily, sometimes multiple times a day.

AMD is betting the farm on ARM-64. If it fails to take off in the server world, there won't be anything left of the company. Too many cuts and too deep. The worst part of that is that not only would we lose competition in the x86 space, but graphics competition at the high end would also be gone (unless Intel starts working miracles).

Not even close. 4GB DIMMs are not appropriate for most virtualization workloads. 128GB isn't enough for a board potentially housing 64 cores. It'd be inefficient at best, a complete waste of power at worst. Density is the name of the game there, and 16 and 32GB DIMMs are what most folks are looking to buy. In fact, it's quite possible that the reason all these DIMMs are becoming available is precisely because they were just replaced with 16 or 32GB sticks.

Oh, the budget for GPS will pretty much never be cut until the system becomes obsoleted by something newer. The US military relies on GPS. However, the more navigation systems we have, the faster and more reliable fixes can become for civilian use.

That's just it - this sort of computing task cannot get by with 5 9's or 7 9's or a hundred 9's of reliability. It needs to be 100% reliable, which means that every potential hiccup, flaw, or design quirk is understood and documented to the nth degree, and thus can be worked around. It also means you can reliably simulate the hardware and throw all sorts of stress testing at it.

Obviously you have no idea how bad the supply disruption was last year. Even the big OEM PC makers were scrambling to do whatever they had to in order to secure hard drives. And if HP/Dell/Lenovo were scrambling, what makes you think someone as small as Backblaze could just secure a deal that didn't triple or quadruple prices compared to what they had been paying?

Apparently you're not quite clear on what the purpose of a prison sentence is. It's not as much to keep dangerous people locked away as it is to serve as a deterrent. Right now, as it stands, there is not an effective and well understood deterrent against this kind of behavior.

Sure, a plane crashing during takeoff/landing and killing a lot of innocent people would be an effective wake-up call to not keep doing this. I think putting people who are going out of their way to endanger the lives of hundreds of people in prison would be just as effective without the loss of innocent lives.

Or would you prefer we take the more common route that governments seem to like lately and make the laws work against a product that has legitimate use, rather than the stupid and dangerous behavior?

And BTW, "most people" have not done something stupid that has endangered that many people. In fact, I'd wager that "most people" have not done anything even remotely that dangerous beyond driving like an idiot.

Yes, and the first link result from a google search for "What is an NPC?" goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-player_character

When I get asked inane questions like that at work, it is very hard not to provide a lmgtfy.com link where the exact same question is entered and answered. I do actually find it abhorrent and pathetic when people take the time to post questions like that when they are so easily answered by a quick search. More complex or open-ended questions are one thing, but asking for simple definitions is pretty lame.

Lasers are not the problem. The appropriate solution is to label the crime what it is -- attempted murder against the number of people onboard. Have fun with your back to back life sentences for trying to kill 300 people, jackass.

That's actually what the founding fathers had envisioned. They believed nobody would want to be in politics for long, so they never envisioned career politicians. While many of them were lawyers, there were also judges, farmers, and scientists there.

At this point, the idea of a doctor taking a few years off from their practice, a scientist taking a break from research, or a farmer leaving their farm to go spend a few years in DC is very foreign to us. In most cases, they would have a very hard time returning to their occupation due to the toll that is taken by that much time away.

That said, I think these sort of people are way more skilled in cutting deals than the typical crop of politicians. As Jon Stewart tried to point out with his "Rally to Restore Sanity" a couple years ago, the average person has to work with people they don't like, and come to agreements with those people, on a daily basis. Yet Congress can't seem to do the same.