You'd think someone would have thought to allow separate default apps for desktop/tablet mode. Launching a file from one mode only to have it open in the other is aggravating hell... desktop windows controls don't work well with touch input.. not on my 8.1 tab/laptop anyway. And if you went the other way, you find yourself in a crippled metro app that doesn't have the function you were looking for.

LAYOFFS

Having worked in government IT for a bit, I'd say their story is entirely plausible and not entirely unreasonable. How many years of backups should they be required to keep? But hey, don't worry. Congress shall pass laws mandating backups and we will spend millions on tapes to be used once until
subpoenaed.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"

In any case this is some petty, inconsequential, political bullshit we are talking about. Did the extra scrutiny result in anything? Anything at all?

Oh, but cheap, exploitable labor is the Capitalist's god-given right. Just another commodity.

Tell you what... If you stopping making up misleading headlines I'll try and not be so cynical about them.

IMHO,

Ultimately this is a culture war and will only be won over the long term. For starters we could push back against Saudi Arabia instead of coddling them. I don't see how anyone can expect to win a war against Islamic fundamentalist terror when the spiritual center of Islam is controlled by fundamentalists with unlimited funds from oil sales. We also need to promote a more equitable distribution of wealth, world wide. Poverty breeds violence, ignorance, and fundamentalists of many stripes.

We could quit behaving like hypocrites, ignoring blatant and obscene human rights abuses by our Islamic dictatorship "allies" because it's profitable in the short term.

We could quit pissing our pants at the thought of terrorism, accept that it may occasionally happen (as it always has), and carry on instead of over reacting. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism has never represented the existential threat to western society that some would have us believe. It may be a thorn in our side for quite some time but the pain and damage it inflicts is entirely absorbable.

We should quit using this pathetic war on terror as an excuse to destroy ourselves.

The reaction to 9/11 pretty much proves that the US will accept no risk unless it's self inflicted.

How long until we hear that?

Even Nexus is only good for a few years.... I'm holding my breath for another year of N4 updates.

Absolutely. For example Microsoft's misguided decisions to do things like hide file extensions by default and obscure the way files are organized with with My Documents, symlinks, and .ini files which hide true directory names have been counter productive in my experience. These decisions only serve to assist a limited subset of users who never venture beyond routine computer use and totally screws them over when they do.

There's got to be some acceptable balance between ease of use and NOT keeping users ignorant.
What constitutes ease of use for my mother is not necessarily the same as ease of use for my kids. It seems to me that we should be designing software that will teach our kids useful skills while not deliberately obfuscating the way technology works rather than for a previous generation who may never need or want to know what's really happening.

I generally have the most fun in games with no plot at all and they tend to have more replay value.
Not to say that there aren't any fun games with plots...

Maybe we could go after the industries that paved the way, first.... Big Pharma, Oil, Defense, etc...

You have a point about Google but unless the others are dealt with, does it really matter? If the contest is between the corporations then, so far, Google remains the lesser evil.

You've restored my faith in humanity.