Actually I do think you see any touch screen systems in best buy that are anything like MS is talking about. They are talking about touch screen laptops with detachable screens (basically, like the surface pro).

To be honest I have been looking at stuff like this for a while and the only device I thought was up to scratch is the surface pro. What i want is a high end, high spec laptop that I can use as a touchscreen tablet when I am on the train or bus or whatever but can put on a desk and use as a decent high end worskstation (with external keyboard, mouse and screen). If every company tried making these the costs of all of them would come down in a competetive market (also driven by increased demand for components meaning they could be made cheaper).

Unfortunately not many companies have done this, probably because they know it will kill the market for all the current unsold high end laptops they have in stock thanks to intels ultrabook push. They will probably fold and do what MS wants in the end though if the Surface Pro gains any traction in a year or so once it becomes more affordable.

In terms of the next MS OS that is an easy prediction: it will be a server / desktop cross over so they will start to have on product for mobile devices and one for servers and desktops. It makes sense since when you do connect to a windows server to do stuff currently you use remote desktop so why not keep it the same as the desktop you are using.

The pro versions of windows 7 have most of the server stuff so why not just throw it all in and be done with it. MS are starting to realise that they need to keep the OS dominant or they risk losing everything so I expect them to make more and more gambles like Windows 8. Some will certainly fail, but they know if they do not try and innovate then they risk losing everything the have built up.

Didn't the victorians try that before? I think I seem to remember from history class it didn't turn out so well.

Die someone say horse? There's plenty of that behind bars: http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8174000/8174870.stm

I just moved to Mint on my new laptop and I mostly agree with this. I have had a few issues with it but generally speaking it seems brilliant.

I chose Cinnamon as I wanted to maintain some semblance of compatibility with Gnome (ie, gnome shell) but with a proper desktop orientated OS. I bought a laptop with a 1600*900 screen for a reason: I like smaller icons. I do not want everything to be made artificially huge so I can use a thumb instead of a mouse pointer as I did not get a touchscreen laptop.

I used Ubuntu before and didn't hate Unity, especially now it has got pretty stable and usable. I might even jump back to it in a few years time when I can afford a shit hot combined touch screen tablet ultrabook type thing (If you can hear this Mr Shuttleworth, just dig deep in your pocket for some loose change and I'll be back to Ubuntu in a jiffy).

Until then though I figured sticking with a desktop OS made sense and Mint seems to be the best fit for that at the moment.

If they were you would know from the smell by now :)

Maybe instead of just bitching about it uselessly you could actually do something useful. Go here and help fix the awful slashdot code: http://slashcode.com/www.slashcode.com/

After all, it is an open source project like any other.

Sorry you miss an important point of a jury in most systems: They also decide if the person should be punished in the case at hand. They are free to decide that a guilty person is innocent if they do not think what they did should be against the law.

This is actually the case in the US too, although in the US the defence lawyer is not allowed to mention this in court. Here in the UK they are, and frequently it has been used to get people off even though they actually admitted to what they are accused of.

See the section here about the Official Secrets Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Ponting

I believe it used to be mentioned in the US frequently in trials of people accused of possession of weed so mentioning it was clamped down on although this is only a vague memory of mine from when I studied law decades ago. I just searched now and can't find any references on the web.

Is that a problem with the prosecutor or a problem with the jury who should actually be doing the acquitting?

That is utterly moronic. The prosecutors just did their job. It is not their job to decide if the law is just, or decide if people the police (or anyone else who has gathered enough evidence) accuse of a crime is innocent. It is their job to go do their very best to get people the police accuse of a crime found guilty at any cost (even if their personal opinion is that they are innocent). It is the defence teams job to get their client off at any cost (even if he is guilty as hell).

The only people who get to decide guilt or whether a law is just (ie - fair) are the jury. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury

The only thing the prosecutor can say to drop a case is that there is insufficient evidence to support a prosecution (they of course may try to get you to plead guilty first to save face but that is fair game).

None of this is to say I think what happened to Aaron Swartz is fair. But the points above are the principles under which a adversarial legal system operates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system

In this case someone wanted to prosecute Aaron Swartz. The prosecutor looked at this and decided their was a realistic chance of a successful prosecution. Aaron chose not to wait for a jury to decide his guilt and killed himself. If he was innocent of any crime a jury would hopefully have found him so, but he lacked enough faith in the system I guess but I nor anybody else can be 100% about his reasons, especially since he left no explanation. We can make an educated guess, but that is very different from certainty.

I find the idea of blaming any one part of the system in this case to be wrong, especially as the part everyone blames was only doing what they were supposed to. When a guilty person gets off it is not the fault of their defence lawyer for doing their job too well, it is a breakdown of the system as a whole. I think the same applies in this case, blame the entire system not a single cog within it.

This is just one further example of a shortcoming within the US legal system but every legal system has short comings, inquisitorial legal systems have their downfalls too.

The big issue here though is actually particular to the US system in that in order to drive down costs, more and more cases are now settled without a jury being involved by the prosecution doing its damnedest to scare the defendant into a pragmatic guilty plea to save the cost of a trial. This happens in millions of cases and probably does save lots of money and most of time gets the right outcome, in this case some poor guy who was out of his depth was literally scared to death by it.

Maybe the solution here is to make jury trials the norm instead of the exception whatever the cost. Since juries were designed to prevent shit like this they have to be available to all, not just the few who can afford them.

They will, the subpoena for the illegal copy you downloaded is in the post :)

But with the furore that certain right wing shock jocks whip the public into at times these are exactly the qualities you need to be elected.

You did not provide any actual argument but I infer from the link that you think any system where they do not elect judges and prosecutors must be likely to have these sorts of problems?

I suppose it comes down to whether you think it is better than a system err's on the side of caution or heavy handedness (since you are never going to create a "perfect" justice system with no miscarriages of justice). So you would rather an innocent person was sent to prison or in this case extradited to another country and lose their child (I know in this case she was probably not innocent) rather than a guilty person possibly get off because the process failed?

The reality is that you can find a myriad of cases in any justice system where the process has failed to produce the correct outcome with hindsight. Since they will always happen it really does come down to the question of whether it is better to wrongly punish an innocent or that a guilty person escapes justice.

Most other countries tend now to view that criminal acts should be punished by the legal system or even recorded on the persons record if the guilt of the person in question can be established beyond all reasonable doubt. This means the in all cases the due process must be followed to the letter to as much as possible ensure that innocent people are not punished by the state or are punished in as few a cases is possible.

Interestingly but slightly off topic, if the mother in the case you post had come to the UK where I live we may never have sent back to the US to face justice as we will not extradite to countries where there is a possibility they will be killed as punishment for their crimes.

The stress I meant was the generally confined spaces, but your right as well that they did seem to overuse the teleporting in monster trick.

Someone else has told you why this is stupid idea but only in 7 words, so I wanted to elaborate: Your approach means that when you check the code back into your chosen versioning system every single line will come back as changed rather than just the lines you changed. That means you have to spend more time figuring out what was actually being changed.

You might as well change every line to have a different carriage return format while your in there just for kicks. Ok, it is trivial in both cases to work around, but why cause your co-workers any extra hassle what so ever. Instead try and make things as easy for them as you possibly can.

I think you hit the nail on the head there, but possibly not in the way you mean.

Doom3 was an absolute masterpiece of atmospheric gaming, but it was just too much. It set your nerves on edge in a way that meant playing for more than an hour or so was just too stressful. I love the levels, the monsters, the story (ok, its basic but what do you want from a FPS) but I just find playing it burns me out too quickly. It is just too good at making you feel uncomfortable and claustrophobic without any respite.

I was just thinking back to Doom as I type this and from memory the big difference is that Doom had more variety with some levels set outside or in huge cavernous high ceilinged spaces. This variety is what made it great as it certainly had plenty of claustrophobia inducing levels too.