Actually according to them, only 32.6% "of climate science papers agree on it":

We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. source

"Evidence at trial showed Alcatel's patent application to the U.S. Patent Office (USPTO) that resulted in the issuance of the '131 patent was faulty because the claimed invention was both anticipated and rendered obvious by technologies from the 1980's that preceded Alcatel's patent application by years." source

Microsoft has a problem. Only 100M Windows 8 licenses sold, less than 60M actually being used for Windows 8 (all enterprise and some pro licenses include downgrade rights... big companies buy Windows 8, but they're still installing XP or Windows 7). They also have the problem of being seen big, slow, and stupid. Apple's doing one iOS and usually one MacOS upgrade per year, and not charging big bucks. Android has been even faster, with usually two major releases per year.

Microsoft can't take them on head to head on a 3-year upgrade schedule. So the old "Service Pack" sounds like a bug fix. Now it's going to be a new incremental OS update.. which they thought, briefly, about charging for. They did this before, with Windows 98SE... no idea why, but there's history. But they have clearly decided that, whatever's in this update, the value to Microsoft in getting this out (perhaps selling more Windows 8.x copies, necessary to get developer support) is worth far more than they'd make selling 60M update packages.

The danger, of course, is that this is seen as just another service pack. They need to deliver the kind of punch you see from Android 4.1 to 4.2 or the numerous MacOS upgrades. They might... but some of that's going to be selling it, and most of those to new users who avoided Windows 8. Though given how bad Windows 8 is, after the lesson of Vista, I wouldn't place any bets...

There are only about 76 million X-Box 360s, total. There were 480 million Android devices sold just last year. I don't know how many people hold MS Accounts ... though it's certainly less than Facebook or Google account holders. But I don't think X-Box is at all significant in boosting those numbers.

So yeah, they decided they can't charge for a service pack. Not news.

The change in name... 8.1 vs. 8sp1 is no doubt aimed at, very least, suggesting Microsoft is doing real yearly OS updates. This is needed because of the competition. Google usually does two new Android major releases in a year. Apple does one iOS and about one MacOS release every year.

Microsoft, on their typical 3-year schedule, simply can't compete with the pace of technology. Even today, not so much. Windows Phone OEMs are already complaining that the HW requirements of Windows Phone 8 is, once again, making it impossible to compete head-to-head with Android and iOS. I don't disagree.. though part of that is the artificial split between Windows Phone and Windows on tablets; iOS and Android don't do desktop, but they do tablet and phone. On Android, apps routinely adjust themselves for the different screen resolutions, so adding new ones is no big deal. Windows has a small number of very specific requirements, and hardware is changing faster than those numbers.

Sure... really long term, we're doomed either way. If there's the critical mass for a Big Crunch (these days, it's a question of dark energy vs. dark mass, given that even today, galaxies are still accelerating from one another), everything crunches together, whatever that really means. If not, eventually, all stars die out, and it's the heat death scenario.

But in practical terms, that's a "high class" problem. Any given species on earth is good for a few million years at best. We expect our big brains will automagically solve this problem, but another big dino-killing-sized asteroid could easily offer a different opinion. If we establish multiple home planets, we're trading some many thousands of years for many billions of years, potentially, of humanity.

So the next problem... leaving the Universe for the one next door. If that's a real thing, anyway, as modern physics suggests. And yes, I do like Stephen Baxter's books, thanks for asking :-)

Take the long term view. If mankind goes extinct, then absolutely nothing we every worried about in the short term matters one iota on that day after the last human dies. Right now, and as long as we're only on Earth, any number of catastrophies could kill us all in sort order, some we create, some that just happen. Either way, mankind and every thing it ever did ceases to matter at all.

Or, we keep working to fix this ultimate problem. Taking the million year view, moving sustainably beyond earth is the most important thing humanity will every do.

I was talking about "Photo Cops" this weekend while driving on the Garden State Parkway and saying "if they ever introduced [photo cops] on the GSP, people would be screwed." Referring, of course, to the fact that it is a 55 mph road and everyone was driving 70.

They tried having photo cops on Route 80 in NJ back in the late 80's or early 90's (don't quite remember) and it was simply a camera sticking out of the back of a van. Trip the speed limit, take a photo of the driver, mail summons to person. From what I remember at the time, it caused a bit of an uproar after a few politicians got pictures of them driving with their mistress and the summons envelope being opened by their wife.

Speed enforcement is fine; it keeps people relatively sane with their driving habits. I personally feel that the dangerous ones on the road are the ones who are driving more than 5-10 mph away from the average that everyone else on the section of road is driving. But sometimes you have a clear shot where there is nobody around you and goosing it up several mph to gain some time isn't that big a deal. If an automaton is going to penalize me without any context, that's where I draw the line.

Its not like they could have just said Critical update patch...oh no, we need to make things confusing.

What happens when admins get confused and pour the contents of their beverage containers into their servers?

We apologize for the confusion in the Critical Patch Updates. The individuals responsible have been sacked. To avoid further confusion, all CPUs will be processed through CUPS, the Critical Update Patch Server.

And now the goddamn printer doesn't work.

The White House's official position is that they support legalization of phone unlocking.

Looked this up and it's correct -- life expectancy in the past is quite a bit longer than I expected for people who make it past childhood: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time

Given that the patent office is self-funded, and rejections only make more time-consuming work, it'd be silly for some Machiavellian Patent Office executive to hand out incentives for rejecting patents.

Au contraire. Given that the patent office is self-funded, and rejections only generate more filing fees, it'd be Machiavellian for some silly Patent Office executive to hand out incentives for rejecting patents.