Okay, I forgot all about classic-shell. Use that and it solves the vast majority of Windows 8's problems. Figures the open source community would solve that one.

I still say it's lazy on MS part, though.

...from a usability standpoint; and as everyone has pointed out a million times, it's the lack of some type of Start menu. It just doesn't make sense to have to completely leave the desktop whenever you want to launch another application. The silly corners aren't even that big of a deal (although they work much better in a tablet environment than on a desktop).

Win8 was obviously built for a touch screen. Microsoft sees things headed in that direction and decided to make that the primary focus. The desktop gets what feels like a "port".

It's sad too, because other than that Win8 works really well. And it really could have been the perfect desktop. Picture this: You boot into Metro. That's perfect for people who just want to check email or a quick look at the news or weather or what have you. It's good for mouse and awesome for touch screen. When you have serious work (or gaming) to do, you click the "desktop" icon and boom, you have your actual desktop. I mean a real desktop, with its own menu for launching applications. If you want to go back to the Metro it could be a hot corner or even a right-click option. Whatever.

The point is, if you're in the middle of something and need to launch, say, a calculator it's just silly to have to leave the desktop to do it. Sure, you could clutter things up putting the icons everywhere but who wants to do that? I get why MS wanted this for its tablet (how is the Surface working out for you, by the way?) but it seems just plain lazy to not have a true desktop version.

I'd imagine that someone will come up with a mod that essentially adds it back (actually, there already is one, although all it does is put metro in a window on the lower right of the screen where the Start menu would be--not ideal, but it shows people are thinking about it) or maybe even MS will realize that it's best to give people what they want.

But then, everyone knows you skip every other version of Windows anyway.

$150 a month extra for about ten years, that is.

It isn't about cutting costs, it's about not increasing costs.

I live in Virginia. There are 4.5 million Dominion Virginia Power customers. Dominion did a study a few years ago and found that it'd cost $83 billion to bury all of the lines. Since Dominion is a regulated monopoly, when its costs go down customers get the reduction, but customers get the increase when its costs go up as well. If you divide it out, you get each customer paying a little more than $150 a month extra. Now, you could try to adjust for changes in population over time and make it so people who use more electricity paid a greater share of the cost, but any way you slice it the bill would go up by an amount that's too much for a lot of people to afford.

Instead, what Dominion is doing is making sure it buries new lines. That helps at least. Personally I think they should be replacing mangled lines with below ground lines as well, but that would mean people being without power for even longer, and that would cause such outrage that the state (which still controls what Dominion does, mind you) would probably not stand for it.

Going by this, you can. As long as you A) purchased the mp3 yourself, B) do not have a physical copy or the CD it came from, C) only give it to one person and D) erase any and all copies of that mp3 that you have as soon as the transfer is complete.

Or you could buy 50 different copies of a song, give it to 50 different people and immediately erase all 50 copies from your system. I'm guessing the record companies would dig that.

So if you go to Ocean Marketing's website (www.oceanmarketinginc.com) you'll find it A) looks very amateurish, B) has misspellings (like "Firat Name" on a form) and C) has a phone number that, when called, is "not in service". Not exactly what you would expect a legit PR website to look like. Maybe this company couldn't afford to hire a more professional outfit but something just doesn't seem right.

Actually, the current suggestion is to put a device on your car to track the mileage so they can tax you based on how much you drive.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/18/news/economy/gas_tax_drivers/?section=money_latest

Take away the profits and you might as well take away the games and movies people are pirating. It takes a lot of long hours and hard work to make a decent movie or game and you aren't going to find many people who are willing or even able to do it for free. There are those who will give up their time and effort for indie films and such, but even those people are doing it with the hope that it'll springboard them to a big gig with a big paycheck.

Somehow, I don't think anyone at NASA has to worry about those questions under the current administration.

Good thought, but a 6-month CD won't earn you much (they're only paying about, what, .6%?) so put the money in an online savings account instead. You can get more than twice that from, say Capital One or Amex.

Hey, every little bit helps, right?

I'm sorry, but that argument is just ridiculous. This guy didn't rip off the IDEA--screenwriters and authors have been doing that ever since the first caveman scrawled a "rich girl, poor boy" story on a cave wall. This guy ripped off the actual characters, and even named the main character "pacman". Sure, the original game has been around for almost 30 years, but it isn't like Pac Man is some obscure work that no one remembers. Namco/Bandai currently makes a version for every platform out there--Android included.

As many people have said, all you have to do is create your own characters. You can have them running around doing the same thing Pac Man does all day long, it won't matter because they're YOUR characters. This guy did not even bother to do that. He used someone else characters and someone else's design. Hollywood does this all the time, because it ran out if ideas a long time ago. However, you won't see someone remaking "General Hospital" using the same characters, names, etc. even though "General Hospital" has been around a lot longer than Pac Man. That's because "General Hospital" never went away. Neither has Pac Man.

What it boils down to is this: creative people deserve to be compensated for good ideas. (They can be compensated for bad ones, too... if someone's willing to pay.) The idea may be simple. You may look at it and say "I could have come up with that!". But the fact is, you DIDN'T come up with it--and the person who DID is the one who deserves the recognition. That is the legitimate use of copyright law.

Maybe you aren't the creative type who can come up with something simple and iconic that's still making money 30 years from now, but just because you can't do it, don't knock those who can.

Last time I checked, Facebook wasn't going to reveal any information about me that I didn't put there to begin with. So now instead of simply telling people DON'T PUT ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET THAT YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET TO SEE, we have to have another set of 500 page regulations that no one will understand, that no one voting on them will even read before voting, and that will end up having some messed up consequences down the road. That makes sense. Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Okay, I admit that it's rotten when apps raid your friends list and scarf their info as well as yours, but again it wouldn't matter if people wouldn't put "private" information on the World Wide Web. I have a crazy idea: go meet people in real life! It's cool! It's even in 3D!

Well, it took controlling interest of GM because allowing it to fail would be harmful to national interest. (And the gov't still has controlling interest,even though GM allegedly paid back its bailout money), Same goes for a lot of banks. And if the financial reform bill passes, it'll be legal for it to take over any company it thinks is big enough to affect the economy. How big is big enough? The gov't decides that, of course. So it pretty much has the ability to seize anything it wants to at this point. It's a little late to complain about it now. There used to be a word for that...

They aren't going to MSN. Criminals don't want to be spammed any more than the rest of us.

If my wife could create a rootkit, I wouldn't be divorcing her!