Well, MS did the same mistake once more: take the full blown Windows and port it to a tablet.
Others (Android and iOS) where built from (almost) scratch to run on tablets/smartphones.

While Apple is backporting power saving features from iOS to OS X, MS is plain porting Windows 8 Desktop to mobiles...

As long as the MS strategy will still "Everything is Windows and Office centric" I don't expect anything fitting really well on tablets.

or after PRISM:

Microsoft introduced touch screen functionality only to be able to provide fingerprints to the NSA

and/or

Microsoft is earning more money from the NSA that from Windows 8 sales, so who the f**** cares about feedbacks !

As the guys in Redmond want us(*) to use Metro (and therefore a touchscreen), what is the point of using keyboard shortcuts ?

That's consequent inconsequent !
But hey, the MS marketing gurus knows exactly what the world need, no matter how stupid, ridiculous or insane it is.

Definition of "us": anybody beside me

Not completely true.
There is a general shift from "classical" PC to tablets but MS is still leader on OEM systems.
MS is trying to put in place a new ecosystem like Apple.
Windows 8 is more a new lineup than just an OS. They try to unify the UI and to push you using their cloud services.
But somehow the MS board misses some points:
- They did the same mistake for RT as they did with the netbooks: people see windows and expect to be able to run full blown applications.
- The big advantage of tablets is the battery life. Intel i-series are not battery friendly at all. So why a Surface-Pro ?
- Metro on notebooks and desktops doesn't make any sense.
- On an ultrabook which can convert from classic to tablet, Win 8 should automatically switch from desktop to metro as you flip the display.
- They released a product series with an empty App-Store and a non-touch friendly Office suite.
- If they want to gain customers in such a saturated market like Smartphones and Tablets they should be better than anybody else.

Actually the only usable "Metro enabled OS" they have is Windows Phone.

I see already some politicians in the US asking for a military intervention to all possible supernovae as they are an external treat to the US...

I'm always amused reading about how usable or unusable devices are.

Let's go through:

Tablets, by design, are devices which should not require a lot of typing.
They are sleek, small and light and a quite long battery life.
They target the mostly the communication market. They sit at the client side of communication where you don't need CPU power.

The same applies for smartphones, except that they are almost wearable.
Smartphones are always with you. You don't have to seek for them, you simply get it out of your pocket.
The display is big enough to look a video but too small to browse comfortably.

Netbooks are for me "tablets with keyboard" as they use the same low powered CPU.
They are pretty cheap and targets mostly the consumer market.
The problem with the netbooks is that they are delivered with Windows and people see them as "a small notebooks" and expected to be able to use Adobe Premiere on them...

As the manufacturer realised that, they popped out the ultrabooks.
Sleek and small as netbooks but with high powered CPU and GPU, so actually "tablets on steroids with keyboard".
They are pretty expensive and I see one market: as dockable desktop replacement.
You work with monitor, keyboard and mouse but you can just undock it and walk away.

Then there is the Microsoft Surface. Not the RT (which is a classical tablet), I'm talking about the Pro. That's special...
It's high powered as an ultrabook but has no docking capabilities, it has the size of a tablet but not the battery life.
I still wonder for which market this device is made for...

They all have their market niche (beside the Surface-Pro) as they also have advantages and disadvantages.
I don't need my tablet to be able to run Adobe Premiere, for the simple reason that I don't want to cut a movie on a tablet. I wouldn't even do that on a notebook !
For this I want a big screen and a powerful CPU.
I also don't want to stand up and walk to my workstation to read my mails.
I grab my tablet, sit on the balcony and go through my mails. I need neither a big screen nor a bit-cruncher for that.

So unless some chip manufacturer will produce 12 core CPUs that can run on battery for 8 hours, tablets will remain what they are: a portable compromise.

I don't know the price landscape in Australia but...
I live in Switzerland and I see the price differences for import items coming from neighbour countries.
A book from Germany, just by passing the border is 30% more expensive, a cloth from Italy 50% more, and you name it...
How can this be, especially when you take in account that the VAT in EU countries is much higher than in Switzerland ?

Well, I came to the conclusion that the reason for it is: we pay the price without complaining !
Every company selling whatever in Switzerland simply apply the "how much would they be willing to pay for it" rule and therefore end up with fantasy prices.
A lot of international friends always states that we have such huge salaries here in Switzerland, well we need them to pay such ridiculous expensive goods !

Boycot all the products having fantasy prices !

I have to admit that in my actual job I don't use a lot of mathematics.
As network engineer all kind of processor powered devices do that for you.
Still my initial formation as electronician simply required a well knowledge of math !

When people ask me how to calculate something in excel my answer is a formula and not an excel function.
Am I old school when I prefer to know how to do it instead of just doing it ?
Knowledge is an option, curiosity is mandatory to discover new things.

Why is Apple suing Samsung ? Because they can.
Actually let dig a bit deeper, why the hell in the US you can own a patent about every shit ?
A US Judge (involved in an Apple case) recently stated that the whole patent system is crap (well he formulated differently) and it's true.
His statement was mostly based on following facts:
- the patent bureaus are understaffed, therefore the check if the patent application is correct are just minimal.
- the judges involved in patent claims have no clue about technology.
- the main reasons to hold a patent are only two:
a) holding a patent protects you about being sued for the use of it
b) get a patent for whatever and wait for someone to infringe it and thus sue them.

He also proposed a really simple way to eliminate those foolish debates:
- a patent holder cannot have exclusive right on it. A patent implicitly allows others to copy and build upon licenses payment to the patent owner.
- a patent holder loses the patent if not applied within a reasonable amount of time.

I would even go further and define a roof for the due licenses, otherwise one could decide to get gazillions licenses...
But anyway, the system is crap and urgently needs to be reviewed.
I prefer technology companies to invest time and money in R&D rather than in lawyers and trials !

"The average home network still uses NetBIOS"

1) NetBIOS is not DNS.
        gTLDs refers to DNS, so don't worry your NetBIOS name resolution is still safe.

2) If the average home network still use obsolete NetBIOS then the average home network is crap.

3) Who cares about gTLD ? Probably some suite wearing tech-nooby who think it's cool...
        The average user don't care about the URL, that's why we have phishing.

4) This proliferation of TLDs is simply plain stupid and only adding complexity to domain name resolution.

5) In short: it sucks !

Yeah right, don't let you fool by those panic makers !
Stick on you IPv4 !

Too bad that the rest of the world is moving to IPv6...

But hey, Darwin theory probably applies also on the Internet users ;-)

There still a huge amount of people who thinks that IPv6 is a replacement for IPv4.
Well it will be somewhen but it will take quite a while...
Dual stack is a must for everybody who wants to keep theirself connected to future services.

I'm a network and security engineer and although IPv6 require a rethinking about the security it is the solution to lot of IPv4 related problems.
For instance and just as an example, port scans are kind of useless in IPv6 when run it on a /64 network as it contains more addresses than the whole IPv4 range...
NAT/PAT belongs to the category "security by obscurity", if you want to secure your network get a good firewall and know which traffic passes it.

Finally lets put it that way: if you want or not, IPv6 is there, so either you move to dual stack or you look for an ISP who does NAT-PT for you...

The "I don't need it" fraction will realize that they will though need it as soon as they try to access a IPv6 only addressed service.
I'm running IPv6 at home (connected via dual-stack VDSL) since more than 3 years and whitout any noticeable speed difference.

Hybrids will partially solve the problem.
The actual problem is that we still use a huge amount of oil and up to now the alternatives are either still too expensive or blocked by lobbies.
If you want to save money hybrid are an alternative if you manage to make long drives on pure electric.
A step further would be the long range electric cars where the combustion engine simply generates electricity. With those, the gas engine always revs at the maximum efficiency as it's loading the batteries and not moving the wheels.
In Europe Renault as a good alternative to that: pure electric cars with swappable batteries. On short runs (up to 100 mi) you can charge them, on long runs you can swap your empty battery for a full one at the gas station. They are introducing the idea and if they manage to have a widespread network of gas station storing batteries it could have quite a success. The car itself is a bit expensive (but not as an hybrid would be) and it requires way less maintenance as it is pure electric.
The ecological aspect is another story since what is the advantage of clean drive when the power needed to charge the batteries come from coal ?...

I'm a radio amateur and sometimes I use a digital modulation called PSK31 which transfers data in a "chat-like" way at 31 baud.
The normal reaction when I state this is "but you know that we have a worldwide spanning network called Internet where you can transfer data at megabit rates, why you do that ?"

Because I can !