I'm not much interested in Hollywood versions of classic books, ever since Peter Jackson took a book that is much shorter than any of the books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and stretched it out to what promises to be a trilogy in it's own right. The Will Smith "I, Robot" has almost nothing to do with Asimov's stories. If Hollywood brought the notoriously talky Foundation Trilogy to the screen it would have nine films, be crammed with CGI fleets slamming into one another, the Mule would be more physically intimidating than Sauron and Arkadia Darrell would have bigger tits and ass than Beyonce.

...formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like "amplituhedron"...

LaForge: "Captain, the amplituhedron flux is below seventy percent, we risk a core breach!"

Picard: "Initiate technobabbatron purge! Engage!"

They should do #1 anyway. Stardock already figured out how to run Metro apps on the desktop, and having that option would dramatically help adoption in corporate settings.

What galls people is they have to add aftermarket software just to make the Win8 UI acceptable. It's like getting a brand new car, and having to take it to a garage so they can make the left pedal work as the brake and the right pedal work as the accelerator again.

I misread the other candidate, Julie Larson-Green, as Julie Green Lantern. I think that would be an even better publicity generating name.

Microsoft would win a ribbon for that pick.

Make it illegal to send a text if you know the recipient is driving. Now you gotta prove to a court of law that the sender knew. But it's easy to prove the driver was texting by checking phone records. But no, we don't want to do that, because it would imply making it illegal to text while driving.

Microsoft got burned by all those developers bad mouthing Win8 for months before it came out, which killed sales, and they won't let that happen again. It's a Google conspiracy, you see. Because Win8 is actually a great OS. Who doesn't want to sit in the office all day swiping tiles until their arm breaks off? It's good for your triceps.

Meanwhile the puppet Barry Soetoro is anxiously waiting by his telephone for the call from his puppet masters over at "Big Oil" (tm).

Before the war, Syria used to export 200K barrels a day. That's not big oil, that's small potatoes.

Chromecast took a big hit on orders after that story came out, so here's Google backtracking. At least they don't double down ala Win8.1.

Praise for chromecast among whom? I think the corporate media really pushed the thing to where it got initial traction, but it appears that the development community is turning against it with the lockdown on unauthorized streaming content. I got a Rikomagic TV stick, also for $35, runs Android, can't be locked down. Chromecast doesn't interest me.

Microsoft: removing features and calling it an upgrade.

Another name for Microsoft removing features is debugging.

I have been using Windows 8 on a few of my machines. I have been trying and failing to understand why Metro exists on desktops. I can understand tablets, but desktops? What does it do for an advanced user that cannot be done in standard desktop?

What it is intended to do is boost Microsoft's anemic penetration of the mobile market by forcing everyone to get accustomed to the Zune-style tiles UI on the desktop machines they have to use at work so they'll see a phone or tablet and won't shy away, and somehow this will translate to market share. Unfortunately, it's a non-starter because people buy phones and tablets for relaxing AFTER work. Because after 5 pm it's time to do something DIFFERENT than PowerPoint and Outlook and Excel.

Surprised this game hasn't been suggested yet.

Where is the file manager in "Metro" ?

None, just as there is no file manager in Android, unless you download an app. Developers developers developers developers!

The Jobs Pinnacle. Get more toys than any other kid on the block, then die of pancreatic cancer.

Opening the same jpeg in Paint versus Metro takes about 1/10th the time.

Yeah, but all you can do in Paint is draw Hitler mustaches on supermodels and junk.