or people that actually used the system decided that having 16 small icons on 1/4-1/3 of the screen was actually more useful than pinning all of them to the taskbar. and that hitting a single icon would get them back to where they were used to (or even boot directly into).

yes, some of the settings are obfuscated in win8 but by no means worse than the current generation of ubuntu or mint. i run all 3 currently. one of my biggest gripes about ubuntu right now (unity, to be fair) is that when i RCE to my win7 pc, and hit the start key, the unity search app also loads. i also absolutely cannot alt+tab between windows of the same app. i have to alt-`. talk about a change from the norm. way more annoying than anything ive ever faced with win8.

you sound like the guy earlier who took 5 years to get a "stable" win7 system. im 99% sure you've never even used a win8 system and just mock it according to slashdot trolls who hate change. you mocked win3 to win95. you mocked win95 to win98. you mocked 98 to me (rightly so). even though nt was stable, you mocked that too. let's hate microsoft. vista? f vista! even though it was stable as crap a year after release and device manufacturers actually got around to producing quality drivers. but lets all hate on microsoft because why the hell not? my surface pro 2 is probably the best piece of hardware i've ever purchased. and that includes an alienware m17rx3 that likely still outperforms (or damn close) current gen macbook pros.

what is inherently wrong with a single OS philosophy? google just threw it in our face at google i/o a few days ago. i don't see you complaining about that. but it's google isn't it? they steal our privacy and we love them for it. apple locks us in to the app store and we couldn't be more happy. at least microsoft is putting out products that we can (mostly) do what we want with.

laughable. 5 years since win7 has been released and it took you this long to get a "reliable" system? do some research before you buy shit hardware.

And this exact same thing didn't happen before facebook? Before the Internet? Are you out of your mind?

Kids -can be- freaking dumb.... they don't fully understand the world yet and what their actions actually mean. Hence, the term kids. How much have you changed and realized from 14 to 30, to 40, to 50? Every day now (I'm in my early 30s), I deal with something that I would have handled differently as little as 6 months ago.

Facebook is not the problem. One could argue it's the parents problems for not "raising" their kids properly and to some extent I would agree. However, think about what you did when you were a teenager. Did you ever lie to your parents and say you were going to your best friends house for a sleepover while you were really going to a party to get drunk? I did. If you were a happy, successful kid, why would you parents not believe you? I exploited that in my parents and most of us have.

This is a sad, sad story. I hate reading about stuff like this. But this is not FB causing problems. If FB did not exist, a simple email with the video file to the entire school does exactly the same if not even more damage. If the Internet didn't exist, a USB drive would have gone around the school. End result? Same.

Blame FB if you want, but you're dumb.

yea because the 1% of the market that belongs to linux users will definitely hurt WD's bottom line.

0) I don't live in Shanghai (100km west of shanghai) so this is only my observations.

1) Yes, they are 2 person scooters. Problem is, everyday (multiple times a day) you will see 3-4 people on the same e-bike and a lot of times with a CHILD riding backwards across the driver.

2) Half of Shanghai's population? doubtful. You obviously didn't ride in a car while in Shanghai. My home is Atlanta which is notoriously bad for traffic. Atlanta has nothing on Shanghai.

3) Lessons from the Chinese regarding e-bikes vs. cars? I've been in China for almost 5 years. Just today, I was getting out of a taxi and I looked out the window to see if I was clear to open the door (right side of car, they drive on the right side of the road). No one was visible so I opened the door. Some Chinese guy on a e-bike decided to jet out of the shopping center in between 2 cars stopped very close to one another and I almost took his head off. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Chinese people driving cars OR e-bikes just don't look/care where they are going. They automatically have the right of way (in their mind) and nothing could possibly go wrong (in their mind).

Now, I've lived here in China for almost of 5 years. I've only seen a handful of car accidents. Way less than in the States. Part of that is that I'm not in a car much myself (I don't drive - quick trips in taxis) and part of that is that cars in general drive much slower than in America. However, I have seen significantly more gruesome e-bike accidents on a bi-weekly basis. They don't wear helmets, they don't look AT ALL, and they drive like they own the road. Guess what? When a taxi stops and u try to fly by it, the door WILL open and you WILL get knocked on your ass at some point because you are not paying attention and generally being a d-bag.

As much as I dislike (not used to) the Win8 interface, I can't disagree with you more.

Win3 "FORCED" a new interface onto users. Win95 "FORCED" a new interface onto users. Vista/7 "FORCED" a new interface onto users. Guess what? Did you stay with the old style or adapt? You adapted.

Like it or not, -everything- will have touch capabilities in the near future. Kudos to MS for trying something different.

How can you "grow" into a metro-style interface? It's either there or it isn't. If you boot into the Win7 style and make metro an option, no one will do it (not what they are used to blah blah blah - why even code a new OS then anyways). However, if you make metro the default and make the old-style desktop an option, people will have less desire/need to go to the desktop. I agree that metro is currently not refined nearly enough but that will change soon enough. And I will say that I believe that metro is refined enough for the majority of users who would not be considered "power users."

Define "played faster." Sorry, but no one really gives two piles of dung if the game runs at 270 fps or 303 fps.

Crashed less? I haven't had a game crash on me since Vista. Maybe I was one of the lucky ones where Vista actually had solid drivers for everything or maybe I was one of the smart ones who did research and found 100% compatible products to buy. Since Win7, more of the same. I've played WoW through Wine (same hardware).. I've played D2 through Wine (same hardware)... and you're trying to spout this nonsense that games run faster and don't crash in wine? Seriously? I seriously doubt you've ever played any game through Wine.

Don't get me wrong.. it's an amazing product and has gotten better over the years but there is no comparison for running natively than running through an API emulator.

I'd be curious to see numbers running the same tests on the same games with Win7 and OpenGL vs. Linux OpenGL on the same hardware. Why are we comparing OpenGL vs. DirectX? Not apples vs. apples.