Wait until you have to REMOTELY administer the beast.
The active areas in the corners of the screen function on the "Maybe" principle (Maybe it'll work, Maybe it won't.) So if you don't clutter up your desktop like thousands of idiots do, and stick umpty-bajillion shortcuts on your taskbar, there are times when, if the RDP+Metro session just "ain't feelin' it" and becomes a useless mess as you try to click around to get it to work.

So yourself a favor NOW and install a Start Menu replacement. You'll thank yourself later.

I've been steering clients clear of Windows 8 and Server 2012 for nearly 2 years now.

If Nadella fucks the next-gen stuff up and continues with "Tablet Interface 4 Every1", I'm going to be converting a bunch of clients off Windows and onto VMWare and Linux with some form of locked down VM solution. Because that'll be easier and cheaper than the Metro interface retraining costs for my clients.

The agile way, quick and dirty. Find the code for whatever task you're supposed to do and change it. You do not try to place it on some grand master blueprint like in waterfall. Nor do you, according to agile, need that blueprint to add a new feature. If your code change breaks anything then tests will fail. Now you've got regressions, that's a task if you need one. Don't build any extra abstractions. Don't make your code overly generic. Go back and add those only as they become clearly needed and necessary. The general sentiment is that we don't know what tomorrow will bring, so fix it for today and if we need to redo it later we'll do just that.

You ask for the big picture, agile's answer is that there is none. The whole code base is alive and trying to keep on top of everything else that's happening is too much wasted time. You just keep the bits and pieces you work on working as you make changes. If the architecture becomes a problem then we'll make that a refactoring task to solve that particular issue, but it's never a full review. If agile was to create driving directions they'd go something like "Take the road going closest to the direction you want to go. If it becomes rough, carry on as it's probably better to get through that go back. If you really hit a dead end, make the smallest possible backtrack that lets you get around it."

History isn't encouraging, though. They've been pursuing the dream of one windows to rule them all since the days when that involved smearing a crude layer of flayed win95 across winCE and pretending it was a good fit for PDAs.

Now that hardware has advanced they have a much better shot at architectural unification (if memory serves, NT has basically edged out everything else except for whatever CE support they provide for legacy customers); but UI? That won't go well.

Well, you are unlikely to be the *only* one who doesn't think this is all that impressive, because you're unlikely to be the only one who didn't read the article or looking up the device on the company's website.

The robot in question is designed to capture energy from surface waves for propulsion. So it is not a deep submersible, it waddles along a six meters below the surface, tethered to a streamlined surface buoy that it drags along and uses to capture wave energy. Making it through a major storm is a significant proof-of-concept for such a system.

From your constant insistence, over multiple comments, that under your proposed system nobody would "have" to work. I consider it a privilege to be able to work to provide for myself and my family, not a burden to be cast off at the first opportunity. My ideal world is one where everybody has the ability and opportunity to work for a living wage, not one where everybody gets free stuff.

If the Chinese decide building this collider is a matter of National Pride and Honor, God help anyone or anything that gets in the way; any corruption will just be greasing the wheels of the juggernaut.

Base 2 is real cool, you can count up to 1023 on your fingers; sadly I keep getting thrown out of noisy bars every time I try to order 4 beers in binary.

Yeah, I got bashed up pretty good too - but I was just too damn nauseous to care :)

Your analogy is unacceptable. You should have written it in Esperanto. Esperanto is the new standard for analogies from corporate. Also, you should have simultaneously posted it to your FaceBook account which you are required to have if you wish to perform analogy services on this network. Furthermore, you did not submit your prose to the grammar nazi trolls, or allocate time for analogy review in the scheduling program. Please rectify these discrepancies and I will get back to you during my appointed window for analogy review, Tuesdays from 2 to 4:20PM.

From the corner drug store. Duh.

Same as if a well trained diver in a dry-suit decided to ride out a hurricane. If he had a re-breather system and enough O2 and other gases to sustain the system - maybe drop a line bristling with tanks a little ways down? Leave enough slack between the buoy the tanks and you and maybe you can swap when needed? He could adjust his buoyancy to stay just below the crazy weather and read a water-proofed Kindle. Well, that and he might want to coat whatever exposed flesh he has to the water with petroleum or silicone goop. He might need a bag of fresh water, too - and god help him if he has to take a dump or whizz during the time he's in the water - but aside from those little complications? Meh.

Granted I assume a lot here since there was once I was going diving off the coast of Cancun - and OHMYFUCKINGGOD were the waves ridiculous. I was about to puke all over the deck till my dive buddy said "Don't stay on the boat - get in the water and go to about 8 feet. The desire to retch will subside. If you stay on the boat you'll only want to die." He was right. As soon as I was at about 8 feet it was serenity. I looked above to see the ladder to the boat leaving the water and plunging and saying to myself "wow, that's gonna be a fun ride coming back out of the water." The 76 minutes below were awesome - the 15 trying to get back into the boat? - The nausea came back with a vengeance and I blew chunks...

But it got me to thinking - anything able to get below the tossing waves should be perfectly fine to ride out a storm. It's being prepared to stay submerged that long and all the complications that entails - up to and including taking on enough nitrogen that even at 15 feet you may have to decompress a while (I don't remember if that would happen or not since 15 feet is the safety stop for rec diving? That and you could use mixed gasses at that depth that can be at times pure O2. But yeah, why not a dry suit with the right plumbing, a water-bag and protection for exposed flesh to the salt water? Hell, I'd do it on a dare just to see if I could do it - calm weather first, of course :-) Might be dark and lonely knowing you have a freaking typhoon right above your head in the blackest midnight. But what the hell, if the book is good I could float there forever.

Goes to show you don't necessarily have to get someone for what you want to get them for to have the same outcome.

As a matter of strict values, I share your vision of a world where nobody goes hungry or cold. But I strongly disagree with your path to getting there. You consider a world where nobody has to work as a utopia. My observation is just the opposite. If you take effort away from people, they tend to become entitled, lazy, selfish, and (ironically, with more leisure time) miserable. They may have enough to eat, but they lose so much of their humanity that they become less excellent as people. There is intrinsic value to hard work. In my experience, people who work hard (up to a certain limit) are happier. A society of bored people is one where crime is rampant and people are full of envy and strife (because nothing begets envy like a sense of entitlement). And that's not even to mention practical issues, like the inflation that dogs basic income economies.

My "utopia" is one where everybody works hard when they're working. When they're not working, ideally, they're building strong nuclear and extended families, raising children with a strong work ethic, and teaching them that when they are able, they should help those whose efforts have been less fruitful than their own. That help involves, for example, helping people through tough times, or giving them a lift while they do something to improve themselves like get an education or start a business. The end goal is always for everybody to get to a point where they can support themselves by their own efforts, so that nobody is dependent on government largess (as opposed to everybody). In fact, government hardly enters into it, except for providing some basic infrastructure and emergency services.

Perhaps that society is not possible in our present human condition, but it is an ideal I would sooner seek after than one where an over-powerful central government deals with poverty by subsidizing laziness.