Part of the problem is that patent lawyers want patents worded as broadly as possible. However for most software ideas are cheap but the devil is in the details.

I always thought what hindered .Net was Microsoft's refusal to adopt it wholesale. Supposedly, the original Vista made more use of it even for explorer. If they can't convince themselves it's the right way to go why should anyone else. Like you say, it seems for certain things .net can make sense just not for everything. When they adopted it wholesale in VS10 people complained that part of the reason it performed so badly was because of that. There were also alot of limitations that were introduced that weren't there in previous VS versions.

What you're saying sounds like what the WM_COMPACTING (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms632618%28VS.85%29.aspx) message was designed to do for 16-bit apps.

There's still alot of value in DVD's by mail. The studios will likely continue to increase the prices for streaming. ISP's continue to impose bandwidth caps. DVD's provide portability without using mobile bandwidth which is even capped more. DVD's have close captions and extras. You can buy DVD's if you really want to own the content.

This is not that big of a deal. They'll probably have both a metro and desktop version. It's the same thing they're doing for Internet Explorer. The metro version can then be used on windows phone and tablets.

There's nothing really new here. This seems to be no different from logging out and then doing a hibernate. It's probably because users don't understand hibernate that they are able to pass this off as fast boot. If users were in the habit of hibernating it would make no difference. They should be announcing faster hibernate not fast startup. This fast startup will not help with restarting for software updates or to install new hardware.

The problem with an account lockout policy is it also penalizes the good guys too. The bad guy brute forces to get a lockout and then you try to log in but are stuck.

I find both parent's posts insightful. I think time really only exists in the universe. It doesn't seem possible to take a derivative of the universe (time) to apply it outside. Even in the universe it's relativistic and not absolute. The creator of the universe would have to be outside of the universe. Consequently you wouldn't be able to apply the concept of time to the creator because time doesn't exist until the universe is created.