I don't even care if they hurt Apple. I just want things to be good for consumers again. Force the publishers to have to negotiate again on an individual basis. Thats all I, the customer, care about. Apple can do whatever the hell it wants, as long as it is legal.

The freedom to pay more? More choices at the exact same inflated price?

RTFA. That is exactly what happened, well at least the spirit of things. They told the publishers that they could set their own prices, but no one is allowed to sell for lower. This helped Apple, since they didn't have to fight over price (with their ridiculous mark-up) with Amazon (with their huge market share, and existing infrastructure, and contracts). It didn't do much to Amazon. But it screwed consumers.

So basic economics is only useful as long as it doesn't hurt your favorite company? Amazon had a larger customer base, more infrastructure, more experience, more contacts, and thus more buying power. Normally this would mean they could leverage lower prices. But... being that this wasn't good for Apple, this is wrong now?

None of this really matters though, all that matters is if Apple actually engaged in price fixing. Which is illegal. And has been for a long time. Nintendo got busted for it in the 80's. The RIAA got busted in the 90's. So if Apple did the same thing, they should get busted now. Being a bully is legal. Price fixing isn't. Look up the definition of "price fixing", look up the actual facts of the case... This is all that matters, not what you feel about Amazon, or Apple.

Before this there were multiple sources of ebooks. But... and this is all that matters to me, they were at different prices. Amazon might be cheaper, or Kobo, or Barnes and Noble, or... even Apple. Now we might have more sources, but who cares, they all cost the same (too much). Not that it matters to me anymore, I refuse to buy ebooks until they actually cost as much as I see their worth (less than actual books, since they aren't material, I don't own them, they aren't permanent, and I can't share them, and if Apple or whoever don't like me they can make them go away). Back before Apple screwed us, I loved them. Now... I'm waiting for the law, or publishers, to realize that the writing is on the wall.

At an artificially inflated price. And you have no choice than to pay that price, unlike almost any other product in the world. The real book, I can get cheaper, I can get discounted, I can get as a loss-leader, I can get clearance, I can get second hand, or at near wholesale... The ebook, I can't.

Kaku doesn't really strike me as credible. I'm sure he's a good scientist, but he does too many "time travel wormhole star trek is cool!" pop-sci things to really let me trust him. Tyson reminds me of Sagan, smart and doesn't feel the need to dress things up to sell to the lay audience. Kaku is like Bill Nye, science for people who hate science. Tyson is Mr. Wizard, science for people who just didn't go to school for it but find it cool just because science is cool in-itself.

I suppose thats main difference in how people teach science; one group thinks to be interesting science must DO something. The other school think that the intrinsic "aha" of science is enough to make it interesting. I find the former group to be annoying, and more destructive than useful.

Tyson is willing to let the science talk for itself, without dressing it up. Which makes him Sagan-y enough to reboot something as venerable as Cosmos. He's more likely to let the sheer beauty of the universe talk for itself, without forcing wormholes and time-travel down our throats.

Enforcing strict accountability, transparency and keeping money away from politicians to as great an extent as possible? By forcing them to judge things on "for the good of all of us" as opposed to "for the good of a small percentage of us".

Which obviously works, but I still prefer how Win8 does it. I've got about 40 programs pinned, along with some notifications, in 4 groups. This would be a pain without the start screen, especially since I'm one of those people who hate cluttered desktops (right now I have 3 folders and a link, thats it, and it feels cluttered).

Looking at my girlfriends start menu... she has around 35 folders, and 10 programs sitting on the first level of her start menu... dig inside them, and you'll find 10-15 files, mostly readmes or uninstallers, along with links to webpages. Every time something installs the bloat grows. Every times something get uninstalled, it leaves zombie items and folders behind. And if you want to keep it all organized you have to muck around with it after EVERY single install, and need to manage to two separate locations that feed into the start menu (all users, and user). I tried to keep a nice hierarchy (start>design>sound/graphics/text/utilities), but I generally put it off, since it was one more pointless task that made me feel like I was fighting against my OS, and more-so, developers who feel the need to put as much cruft and clutter on my computer.

There is a reason that every other major OS or windowing scheme has moved beyond pure menus for program management. The start menu should die, and I will not mourn it.

Actual scientific answers to things like this would go a long way. My girlfriend used to work with people with sever autism (nonfunctioning), and we have a couple friends with highly functional aspergers (not counting the self-diagnosis, which I always mistrust), and the difference is mind-blowing. I don't think environmental causes alone can account for such a discrepancy, really they might as well be different disorders (not that I'd consider highly functioning aspergers to be a "disorder", per-se, more a cognitive difference). I wouldn't be surprised if Autism was fractured into several separate disorders, and the lowest end of the spectrum was shaved off someday when we realized that not everyone works the same, or responds to stimulus the same way.

"More science" is my answer to everything though...

People have different tastes, no big surprise. I

I like Windows 8. I like the start screen. I actually like it more than the menu of old, it is more useful to me, personally. If they got rid of it, I'd try to find software to replace it. I don't mind the lack of start button, less shit on my desktop is good (another personal preference), I never really cared about the button sitting there, saying "Start", or whatnot, since I haven't even seen it since Win95 thanks to muscle memory and the win key.

This isn't to say everything in Win8 is good. I don't like that "All programs" screen, it is an un-organized/unorganizable mess, especially next to my very organized and aesthetic metro screen. The charms bar is dumb, I appreciate the thought but it seems a bit rushed and tacked on. The difference between the top-left corner, and alt-tab annoys me. Search is a bit of a mess as well. Apps are dumb, both in layout and being forced to use the Windows Store, and not being able to be windowed. And having ads.... And being generally piss-poor compared to real software. And not having intuitive controls on a desktop, not a tablet. And... I could go on. As a result I've only bought one app (Game Dev Tycoon), and only actually use another (Pulse), the rest only act as heads ups, and notifications.

Internally Windows 8 is pretty nice too, it is actually reliable when it comes to transfers over my network, and with SD cards, and manages to be about as BSOD prone as 7, i.e. not at all. I'm not as excited about Windows 8 as I was about Win7 (its like XP, but compatible, stable, and modern!), but I can overlook its flaws for its good bits.

I'm actually pretty excited for when/if the Leap Motion actually comes out, since it seems like it would work perfectly with Metro apps, if not for anything on the desktop. MS dropped the ball a bit by not releasing Kinect PC with Windows 8.

I must be the only person who actually prefers the metro menu thing. I don't think I could go back to the small and horribly ordered (unless you spend the tedium of organizing it constantly) menu again. I like having all my main programs organized and displayed prominently. The metro screen is the best thing they did in Win 8, really (outside of making SD and Network transfers less idiotic).

Metro apps are still mostly crap, and they still need to make the whole OS feel less "tacked on", and work on UI and app consistency, though.

If this update is $15-20 I'll grab it. If not... I don't mind Win 8.

Which is neither here nor there... Autism is just as scientific as a non-measured dopamine imbalance, when it comes down to it. Less so, even, since no one can really point to a brain or test and say "yep, there's your autism problem right there".

This obviously doesn't mean autism doesn't exist, or rather the cloud of behaviors that we currently label "autism" doesn't exist. Autism is very much a diagnostic "shrug" right now, nothing more than a loose collection of behaviors and severities. At one end you have people who aren't mentally "ill" (it doesn't impair their ability to function at a high level), and at the other you have non-verbals who bang their heads into walls who can't even communicate. You have a vast array of symptoms, which aren't even shared between all individuals. And you have very little to no science backing it up.

Again, I'm not saying that people don't have it, or what people feel isn't real... But there is no difference between autism and a non-measured dopamine disorder... outside of the fact that we CAN measure dopamine, and it can be low... but at the moment we can't measure autism.

So your problem with unscientific psychobabble is that it was the wrong type of unscientific psychobabble?

Did I say that? Did my cat sneak into my room with invisible bits while I was typing that? I've re-read my message three times now, even with my special glasses, and can't see where I wrote that.

This is a fallacious statement. There are "genocidal" Jews in Israel, and peace-loving Arabs in Palestine. Sadly on both sides the genocidal factions get the most press and power. The settler and hardline Zionists are just as bad, really, as the extremists among the Arabs.

There was a point where you could say "this side has higher ground", but I feel that that time passed long ago. There has too much violence and extremism at this point for anyone to say anyone has clean hands anymore.

The Jews should have settled there like they did. The Arabs shouldn't have reacted as they did. The Jews should have struck back as they did... The Arabs should have retaliated in that way... Etc...

That would be picking sides... No, the aggressors on both sides should be stuck down, both Arab and Jew, allowing the normal folk who just want to raise their families live peaceably. The Arabs shouldn't get a pass, any more than the more hateful bits of the Zionist movement. Occupy Isreal/Palestine, then throw anyone who breaks the peace, Jew or Arab, on a desert island, naked, and let them sort it out like men, without letting innocents suffer.

Not going to take sides here, since both sides are reprehensible, and deserve very little sympathy at this point. I take that back, the normal people in both Israel and Palestine deserve it, the bellicose asshats in their governments and outspoken religious authorities deserve none whatsoever. That said; your statement is a bit wonky. Yes, modern Arabs, and later Muslims, were there later than Jews, but this is a bit false, since the root ethnicities and cultures that spawned both were there longer than either. Further "we were there first" is about as idiotic as one can get. Should the Native American tribes be allowed to partition American cities, restrict their ability to food and medicine, and generally treat them all like terrorists, criminals, and subhumans by default? They were here first, after all. Actually Siberians and the Japanese should be allowed to, since their genetic stock is more closely related to the original settlers of North America than most people here now.

No. Both people have to coexist, whether they like it or not. If they can't, I don't care, someone should come in and FORCE them to. And anyone who supports the hostilities of either faction should have as serious sanctions as someone supporting any other terrorist aggressor state, since they really don't hold a moral high ground on any issue anymore. They both are bad guys. No excuse changes this fact. Picking sides is nonsensical, its like arguing over who was less evil, Stalin or Mao.

I can't attest to how loose it is, but the actual OS is very solid (a bit of an improvement on Win7), most of the complaints are about the UI changes. Ignoring Metro (or whatever the hell it is called now) it is a very good OS.

I don't mind Metro, it isn't perfect, and feels tacked on, but it hasn't been the end of the world for me. If the changes in TFA are true, then I'd be pretty happy, though I probably wouldn't turn on the Start button if I had a chance. I barely used it in Win 7 (beyond search; i.e. [Win]-"pho"-[Enter] = Photoshop.), and would barely use it in 8.5.