Theory of general relativity? It may not tell us how gravity works at the most fundamental level, but it does give us a lot of tools for predicting gravity's effects. So to say that we don't understand much about gravity is plain wrong.

Point taken, but on the other hand, how did WP7, which is pretty innovative by MS standards, come about? I'm sure that contained within all of the individual silos that exist in Microsoft there is the capability to come up with a coherent strategy, however I think the probability of this actually happening is close to zero

They really need to stop thinking "we need to make Windows more like a tablet"

Why? Microsoft is a huge corporation...

What would be wrong with aspiring to make something different/better than iOS?

I agree!

What I really want to know is what kind of drugs the people making decisions at Microsoft are on.

OK, so tablets and smart phones have taken off in the last decade, so develop some corresponding high quality tablet and smart phone software/OS's, or build around a stable core kernel. Hell, while you're at it you could even create a whole ecosystem that encompasses all of these platforms (App Store, anyone?) - you could even bring Xbox into the fold!

Microsoft has created a smartphone OS, OK, that is good and I'm sure with time it may have gained traction, but trying to tablet-ize Windows, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING MICROSOFT?! Create a high quality tablet OS or extend from Windows Phone, improve on Windows 7 for Windows 8, but DO NOT try to turn Windows into a tablet OS, it will not work and will alienate a lot of people.

It has been said many times before, but a PC is not a tablet and a tablet is not a phone, a PC is definitely not an Xbox. Microsoft, please can you just concentrate on writing high quality software which is appropriate to the corresponding platform.

As to the original question, why does Microsoft even need to take a risk - they surely should be able to tell from initial feedback that this whole concept is DOA and they should reverse course already

The difference is, the speed limit is the limit that everyone is aware of - it is a level of risk that has been agreed to some extent (democratically) by the whole of society and which is seen to be socially acceptable. Going over that speed limit is blatently ignoring this, and hence is seen to be immoral.

Restricting internet access to students like this is ridiculous. If the "University Network" needs to be protected, segment it off from the part of the network students can get to the internet from.

Who is the IT department to determine what is "beneficial" or "useful" to someone's University education? The internet was borne of research and inquisitiveness, blocking the internet goes against this idea completely.

OK, so people might watch YouTube etc but if this helps students feel they are free to go and explore the internet and helps to foster a culture of learning, who cares?

Someone’s "messing around" is another person’s productivity, I wonder if the IT department would have deemed the inception of Facebook for example, a good use the University network?

Aging and dieing lets evolution do its work. I'm pretty sure there is no reason in principle why an organism couldn't like indefinitely, but it would eventually be killed off by its environment, which it wouldn't be able to adapt to.

The reason I don't like to reboot is that, if everything was perfectly coded, rebooting wouldn't be necessary and every time you reboot you are effectively admitting that something has gone wrong somewhere.

However - there aren't many systems in the real world that are perfect so you just have to get used to it and learn to accept it. Even with all of the best configuration and maintenance, if there is some crappy software installed somewhere it is just out of your control.

That doesn't stop you striving for perfection though!

Finally, a processor that might be able to run Crysis at maximum settings at a decent framerate...

Sort of sounds like (but probably isn't) how probability works with quantum mechanics and how knowing some information can affect the wave function.