I can deal with something being bad when it's due to a lack of time, funds, talent, resources... almost any reason. For this reason I can deal with Linux being awkward, and readily admit it's not very usable for most people. (or even for me if I'm honest.)

I cannot deal with something being bad when all of the above resources are available in abundance, yet Marketing and C-level suits think it's A-OK to throw everyone under the bus for the purpose of forcing market share for their mobile app dream.

No.

Indeed I can live with the start screen. It's awkward, but I can live with it. The real disaster is elsewhere and I can't believe I still have to point this out after 2-3 years.

1. Default apps for many file formats are ridiculously dysfunctional Metro versions. This means users are cast into Full Screen Hell, showing Beelzebubs re-imagining of a PDF reader, image viewer or music app, designed for those confined in the darkest levels of hell. Escaping from these apps is actually hard. Noone can hear you scream.

2. Charms Bar on the right that pops up usually when I don't want it to. Which is always. Heh.

3. Some other bar on the left with any Metro apps that opened, usually without me wanting them to. What is that thing anyway and why is it there. Why is having two task/app switchers in a single OS ever a good idea? WTF Microsoft! W!T!F!?

4. Settings Schizophrenia. Where is that setting? Full-Screen-Hell-Mode or Control Panel? Or (gasp) BOTH? Oh My @#(&$ing GOD!

5. Installed Apps.. Where do they go? 8.0 Put everything and the kitchen sink in the start menu. 8.1. puts nothing in the start menu. Where are they? They're in a level below in the middle of a huge list of stuff. The only reasonable way to open an app is to search for it. So you better remember what it's called, Mom!

6. Search. I'm running out of expletives. It manages to open yet another full screen abomination in front of me when I'm looking for "Supplier Visit Notes 15Jan.docx", AND it starts finding stuff on the Internet.. What the hell MS!! You've messed up just about the most basic purpose of an OS user interface which is to let me store files, find them back and open them!

Anyway, you may feel less anger and pain about the above than I do but the point remains that Win 8's peculiarity (See, I can be nice too) isn't confined to having a start screen instead of a start menu. I guess I could have made that point in just a single line. ;)

Han.

Nearly refused, really? Or they just asked you about your last visited country, which is a routine question? (And if you filled in London for example and your passport shows entry for a day in Dubai, then it's common to ask about it.)

Thank GOD!! I hate it especially how this causes an entire URL not to be selected in a browser when clicking the URL.

Just because someone may have highlighted some text to middle-click-paste, which they don't want to mess up.

NOT WORTH IT.

Kill it now, kill it with FIRE!

I was so sure that was going to read: "The USA was founded by Anonymous Cowards." :-)

Right, so use your real birth date for the fake account; you know you can make it private anyway. Or routinely use your brother or sister's birth date, that also works and you'll remember.

Brute Force the birthday date? ;) You're more likely to use a year that's a little younger than you are, and more likely to pick the first of a month, or your real day of the month but in a different month.

Many people who can't or won't figure out how to set an appropriate audience for their Facebook posts do it. So you have one account for the weekend party crowd, and another one for your family and business contacts.

That's wholly unnecessary of course, as long as you assign your FB friends to one or more Lists. They only issue that Facebook won't fix is that they offer an option to keep your Friend's list private (visible to 'only me') but that there are some tricks to very easily get to someone's full friend list, even if you're not FB friends with that person. So that would be a reason to move to separate Facebook accounts for your party friends and hookers and so on.

Not sure why that is so shocking; hateful or not, it is apparently a widely held view in that case. Go to Bill O'Reilly's Facebook page and read through the comments, that gets pretty hateful, and is then Liked. It's also presumably not anonymous.

But you're right, if you only like free speech when it's something you agree with (or aren't offended by) then don't visit such a forum.

There are loads of topics on which I can contribute with knowledge and personal experience, yet that I don't want to turn up in a 5 millisecond Google search by anyone bothering to Google my name.

So the result is that I won't contribute; easy enough.

Or just maybe I could be bothered to register a fake Facebook account; so far I never saw the need for that.

rest in peace

E: Unable to lock the administration directory, are you root?

sudo rest in peace. Bitch.

Also, get rid of ALL the duality. Like the separate task list for Metro apps only: get rid of it. Use a single task bar and task switcher; the desktop task bar seems just fine for that. Also I don't see the point in the charms bar, which is also annoying as it's hidden and pops up mostly when you don't need it. Which, actually, is all of the time: it's really not necessary to have; if anything needs starting, or searching for, use the start screen!

I don't mind if that start screen would have a couple versions to it (or tabs, etc.) such as one for settings / a redesigned control panel.

I don't mind the start screen in itself, it would indeed be nice if it just showed as an overlay with a dimmed/blurred background, I guess similar to what Ubuntu Unity does when you make the dash open full-screen.

Haha, annoy two sets of fans at once. :)

Then again, clearly it's possible to hit with photon torpedoes, and using the Force.

Don't asteroids usually spin? If you blast a crater on one side, then you have some serious aiming to do to hit the crater?

Well, two things: They can't do anything other than brush it off, because as a US company they are bound by the Patriot Act to make and and all data available to the US government upon request. They simply can not sell you security and privacy of your data.

It's not just Canada either; many European companies are very strict: no data of any kind can get stored in a US based datacenter or by a US based company.

Any other country is just fine. We are in Thailand. (And hosting in Switzerland.)

Yay Patriot Act.