I agreee it IS Win7

LOL. Not having a tablet, I must guess that touch tiles add SOME convenience with tiny but touchable screens. I sense that the store aps are basically the sort of thing people put on phones - where is the nearest MickyD's, that sort of thing. At least, I have not found any others, except dubious cutdowns of traditional Win aps, like the Metro version of mail. So it's not clear that any of tiles, touch, or the store aps are of much use.

That said, the IDEA apparently DOES have use: it's what Apple is doing with the MAC, making it as much as possible resemble iOS, because clearly getting ONE interface to work almost everywhere would have various benefits, to uses, to developers, and to system vendors. Maybe someone should check and see what MAC people do with touch screen MACs.

As an updated win7, win8 ROCKS, in speed, in stability, and in some relevant extras, including ISO mounts and VMs without needing anything third party.

HA HA HA ROTFFLMFAO

It amuses me, to see thieves aka content creators (since when did a media firm CREATE a single thing) trying to call the cops on convenience. Don't they know, convenience ALWAYS wins? We pay happily when by doing so we get more of what we want quicker more often more cheaply more reliably. Can't do that: then no payment for your alleged property/service.

The trouble with law is someone must enforce it

I like a basically peaceful environment and also appreciate how law saves effort and boosts trade in many ways, but in general I think the least amount of it possible is best. I myself would divulge to the government your private data, if it appeared you were in the process of arranging to murder my fellow citizens. But I would not do so to assist someone in protecting anything intangible, such as their reputation, or desire not to be libeled, or desire to enforce an alleged right to non-material property. And absolutely not to assist anyone to collect a tax or to enforce a drug law, or a money laundering law.

I'd rather have no protection in cyberspace, than any at all, if to get that I had to in any way acknowledge or be affected by anyone's ideas of what is right, that go beyond physical safety of physical persons and physical property.

So why pay the ones who don't deliver?

It surely makes those of us who have, do, and will be the ones providing more value than the price charged, just a little annoyed. Escaping the locals is one of the foundation-stones of progress. I do not know about you, but I would not, could I but find a buyer, operate a business in a swamp-gas-for-services jurisdiction. I'd operate where we had the teamwork going on.

Where I would collect the taxes I had earned the privilege to pay, for generating revenue in that jurisdiction's business environment, I would not argue, nor does the law provide, as far as I know, for my either not paying those taxes over, or not collecting them from the consumer.

This about customers, folks who will not spend at home, on the local rascals, but they feel they can get equal or better value dealing with say me on the internet. So they might actually pay me. And I have NEVER done business, nor set foot, in their jurisdiction; I may not even know where in the world it is. People preferring to spend their locally earned funds on faraway strangers are making a signal in a way: something local could be better, or at least a bunch of the locals think some local things could be better – they are putting their money elsewhere.

So how does it help anyone, besides local officials and their patrons, to either pay more for less locally, or more for more on the Internet?

THINK. A business has expenses and taxes where it operates, and hopefully the benefit is enough that it is indeed a benefit. It’s prices will be higher, because its costs are higher, if it also pays taxes/expenses WHERE IT DOES NO BUSINESS – IT GETS NO BENEFITS.

This tax is about fairness to local POLITICIANS.

we had something similar in 1966

On IBM 360-70, with starships, planets, gravity, missdle trajectories accurately displayed (as moving points of light / not much in the way of the now-obligatory graphics). We called it Space War.

down with the cloud, send software as a service to the guillotine

down with the cloud, send software as a service to the guillotine

This is THE classic example of how FREE and SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE are inferior to purchased software as a physical possession, locally controlled and NOT cloud based. With software I own run and maintain, if a new and improved flavor comes along, I can ignore it. With hosted services, my opinion does not matter.

I would NEVER recommend or consent to ANY clod based anything, as long as a TOLERABLE alternative existed.

OK Corral for them

I'm not partial to the theory that a government or a nation or any huge institution or assemblage of humans has any more authority or legitimacy than I myself alone. With that said, if someone wants a secret kept seriously it follows they may do absolutely anything to enforce that secrecy. It's just another tentacle of self-defense. And the secrecy breakers can try their darndest as well. I think the bank accounts and websites of wikileaks supporters are fair targets. As I DO NOT sympathize AT ALL with the causes for which wikileaks leaks, I just want tickets to the bloodshed, be it figurative and recurring or literal and potentially ending some day.

Oh I get it now

If a half way reasonable "ultrabook" or Windows 8 touch screen hand held costs $600.00 USD or more, and an iPad costs less, and while it might do a tad less, what it doesn't do can't really be done on a touch handhold, and what it does, it does well...all the windows thing offers is extra customizability, less coherent design...

Steal All Intangible Property - oops, there is NO SUCH THING!

How can anyone claim to own a signal? It has been BROADCAST. It's just like Impotent Impropriety - Intellectual Piracy - whatever that stupid phrase is, a name for a non-existent thing. There is no such thing as intangible property, it's an oxymoron. Just because millions of people want to believe something - or even EVERY person - does not make it real. And no LAW can make real what is not. Nor can any government do more than kill us all - we can not be forced to admit that there is such a thing as legitimate authority, except where such a thing may actually exist - maybe in a lifeboat going over Niagara, or under enemy fire, but not in too many other places.

Computers legally are Sidewalks, not bedrooms

Computers are not like bedrooms. Computers are like sidewalks. No one can construct or otherwise emplace anything on your sidewalk, so to that extent, it belongs to you. They can't dig a hole in it either. But mainly sidewalk law says that if it is your sidewalk, you are on the hook if anything hazardous about it damages anyone else.

Destruction of data or equipment or alteration or forgery of records of contracts (voluntary commercial transactions) ought to be crimes, but not much else. There's no privacy on a sidewalk and they are there for public use.

Most of the stuff government concerns itself with as to computers is crazy stuff, of clearly interest to some people who think that because they have found it useful to them to buy and open computers for essentially public use, they get to say on what terms the use occurs. They don't. Scrap all these laws, abolish intellectual property and proprietary information, and start over.

dot com redux

Attended MIT; saw some of the beginnings.

Funny about Jeffersonian cults. It’s a throwback to BEFORE agriculture really – the last time the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian-egalitarian-democratic idea made ANY sense. Hasn’t since. In the recent era – say the last 14-15 K years –it is civilizational technology – primarily theology – and cultural technology – primarily political and military science – that has led. This is the strongest becoming stronger by recruiting the next strong and targeting the next following strong as enemies…based on the Roman understanding: the State is a Playground and Gold Mine for the Strongest.

Really taming that dragon in my experience requires being polite to it in public, and vital to it in private. What Jobs did: capitalist Ninja wielding all the weapons of the counter- and hacker-cultures. Truth is out lately though: Apple is guess what A BUSINESS…

I guess we like to need to believe. That’s the deal, with 3 D printing.

super storm my rear end

The number of storms with lower pressures higher winds greater surges and wider reaches is considerable. The 'super' thing about this one consists mostly of the fact that it hit the City, the planetary capital, and secondly that it did so at high tide, so that the City's transit system was put out of action plus a good deal of the electricity distribution.

Whether the weather can be expected to be more energetic, as seems likely to me, or just the same old weather, people are ever more numerous and ever more interdependent, and ever more hostage to anything, including weather, that disrupts our systems. Redundant systems and accepting the risks as well as the rewards of interdependency probably have a lot more to do with our future, than trying to manage our impacts on climate, let alone the climate per se.

Seems not long ago this was Science Fiction

Michael Flyyn's Firestar series has a main character of considerable wealth with a quantum frdge...20 years ago, about.

Intellectual Property is Theft, its a form of Piracy itself

That which of its nature is capable of multiple non-exclusive simultaneous uses, and which cannot be secured, cannot be property. Period. It can be like a Linux distro, copyrighted, so that people other than the creators have difficulty selling it or anything derived from it. And supported, not necessarily for free and sometimes at a steep charge indeed. Any other business model is a crime against nature.

I have never put up with anyone else's opinions about their so-called property and I do not propose to start doing so now or at any later time. I am not the sort of person who EVER considers consequences, everything to me is self-validating at the time done or just plain wrong, so don't bother shaking rewards or punishments at me, save those for Church where one might find people who believe in such.

all the more reason to like cats

they are just like us, honestly intent on their own desires and to heck with any other species. Life as it should be, unless it should be entirely different from how it is lived by all Earthly living things, a hard concept for me to grant validity indeed.

Rehab in the States is usually drug withdrawal treatment

Which ones does your team need to stop taking anyway.

The Store isn't for income

Not having 'developed' anything since before Windows 95, I have no idea what challenges there might be in ARM/win8 RT software. My hunch is that the whole ARM concept is a mistake, that having the familiar to build on is more important, and much harder to get around, than battery technology. And I myself just don't want computation following me around. I mean it's anywhere I spend much time or I won't go there; I hate travel in principle but if I am walking by choice, it's to talk and to look, not to futz with some contraption (on other modes of travel I find either books or daydreams preferable). I only have a cell phone because my ISP is less reliable than my old landline and payphones are rare, working ones rarer, and affordable working ones, nonexistent – and the landline would cost me more than the cell and almost as much as the ISP. I don't WANT people or information reaching out and touching me!

Yet the tablet IS important simply because its use is part of making one's connections to work, to people, to places, and to goods/services place-independent and portable (I'm cool with place independent, lol). If Win 8 Surface_Pro works as intended rather than as the review says windows RT Surface_plain, it will address a real market. People do different things portably than sitting at home or at a fixed workplace; I can't imagine using Access on a city bus.

The STORE: I think it was the combo of seeing people actually like or at least tolerate the thing that was the key. Maybe it's just easy, maybe it's more secure, maybe the choices being sorted by authority pleases some people, maybe the lack of channel partners makes it more efficient but probably all of those to some extent. The reason it makes money is people WANT the contraptions and enough of the APS in the store, to buy the contraptions in huge numbers. The first mover tends to win when a new niche is found and especially if the same outfit gets to ride the wave, should the niche develop into a major market all by itself.

Eventually all dominators have competition. Sooner or later some combination of wanting to preserve all that wealth, please late-coming stakeholders, and the end of the ‘cosmic inflation’ phase, leads to conservatism and bureaucracy. Others will offer things that seem to be the same, are somewhat interchangeable with the originals, but do more for less faster and flashier. Then someone will throw in something new, as in a human need not previously addressed by the old stuff, possible by never-before-seen concepts and technologies. Then the next new niche and the next new tsunami will start somewhere else.

Oxymorons in charge? No, they are just Redundant!

"Helpful Government" or "Presidential Leadership"?

No, but it's proof that "Liberals Democrats Obama and Idiots" is Redundant - the words are redundant, so are -or should be - the people they describe.

Make him the Secretary of Labor

THIS is how to solve the problems of employment, production, the environment, etc. all at once! Give this guy a Nobel! Or at least promote him to Vice President!

Amen

The whole idea of working or owning is all about a more prosperous future than if one did no work or owning. The whole idea of politics is to protect vested interests, starting with generally approved ones such as defending the nation and establishing a justice system, and moving down from there, all the way to Taxicab Regulations. This is fundamentally the same conflict as the Greeks saw in Democracy 2500 years ago: chances are that if people can vote themselves benefits obtained by force from others at no cost to themselves, they will.

They ought not to be allowed to do that. Constitutional government attempts to resolve this problem, and has done rather well at it, in certain places and for fairly long times in some of them.

Government by definition involves lies

Government at bottom protects us from other people at the cost of some of our living standard. To the extent we can cooperate and compete without endless injuries motivating government interventions, we can get along with less government. Particularly is the lessened part is the part where our wages are taxed to increase someone else's wages.

No Adobe malware on any kind here

There is no Adobe malware of any kind whatsoever on this partition. And everything works and works much better.

Go For It Barack!

Although I myself lack and seek a job as I like choices that income brings I think jobs are a bit over rated. Being useful can be accomplished without pay; getting a living COULD be accomplished without EVERYONE working, and it should be IMHO. But there are other good possibilities here, besides jobs.

Attracting minds to innovation may be a good thing in itself. Technology to make use of off-Earth resources and to make off-Earth habitation plausible is fundamentally necessary. People could already end civilization and possibly humanity if they chose to, so far, we have not; another means to that end would not change that.

serves Redmond right

Have a $40 version as well as a plethora of free but time limited versions. Hadn't remembered the fool media center on this copy, my main one and the paid-for one; thanks Reg for the reminder.

The key before boot was a real annoyance. Not quite enough to motivate ME to set up a KVM but nearly. Glad those who did, found a way to get even. LOL.

Amen

IA = Intel Architecture; must be why they chose to fall on their sword; it WAS their sword lol.

More folks with phones than toilets: sad but not surprising

Just shows the priorities of the rich and greedy, be they Obama's yuppies or Mitt's moneybag types: the stuff they like, that help them dominate and control, gets priority. Particularly when OTHER stuff is more important, both to them and to everybody, but the further distribution of THOSE things does not benefit THEM, as, so far, they have other means of avoiding any share of the troubles of those without toilets. But they lose a chance to profit, if people have no phone lol..

hope they find life

Hope they find life, might get funding for real space exploration, which in turn would enable (but not require) space exploitation, so maybe some day human beings can (a) preserve Earth more easily (b) gain energy and other resources from places besides Earth (c) actually live in places besides Earth. Having done all that, someday, humanity would (a) be more likely to survive (b) be capable, if desired, of exploring places light-years away. Who knows, we might someday either discover, or attract the attention of and find ourselves discovered by, some other intelligent species.

who does that idiot work for

Who is this guy?

I might want his job lol. He misses the whole point. Business is about gratifying customers but not as a goal in itself, as a means to ROI, to making money. The MS customers are businesses. And, their employees. As one such, if we get ONE set of stuff to train people on, we win. That’s it.

Thanks for the blindingly obvious - a lot of folks are deliberately blind to the truth

People do stuff for exactly one reason: because they want to. In some way they find it good for them. That's it. Figure that out, you know not only why they did what they did, but likely what else they will do next. Right, law, the opinions of others, the likelihood of getting away with it, usually have nothing to do with anything when it comes to real people. And that includes you and I.

Right On Scientists

What people believe in their hearts to be Right is almost by definition wrong. Besides, if I were to care what anyone else thought, it would imply I ought to control what they think. Which I probably could but chose not to.

Read the great fiction writer Norman Spinrad for an early statement of the obvious truth here this research is finding hints of. "The Iron Dream". 1972. Iron Mentalists (sic) stop co2 emissions we get an ice age.

crackberry withdrawl

One wonders if there is or will be a 12 step program for Crackberry Withdrawl.

More Idiots

More people who know nothing. Doesn't matter who discovers or invents something. Matters who runs with it and how well. That is why there is no such thing as Intellectual Property, and the fact that the Constitution establishes such things, in a fashion, in order to encourage invention, and we have laws allegedly for that purpose, doers not mean I feel contradicted. First discovery + first mover = first revenue; immediate resale of it by others is what the legal system, quite properly, discourages. Kinda like what Christians plus Governments say about physical property: find it, or create it; use it, break no law doing that, it's yours; break no further law, it stays yours. Sometimes "Stewardship" is legally required, like homesteading the place to get title to free land. It is always required in practice: ignore and lose track of physical property, unless it is literally immoveable, it will disappear, laws don't matter. They never matter they are just useful crutches. For getting along or sometimes for resolving disputes (power does that, in general).

Only naturally exclusive things - places and objects - can remain exclusive. Does not matter what people think of this nor what any law says, it is still true.

another piece of Reporting or Research in the "DUH-blindingly obvious category"

Yes. It's a big ask. Nice to see the Monster (Google) get some competition.

Another rason why I am ORANGE not GREEN

ORANGE being the OPPOSITE of GREEN, and I hate anything green, in the eco-politics sense, although it is my favorite actual color.

A few orangutans are far more valuable to me than all the alleged homo sapiens addicted to Green-ism, or Yuppie-ism, or NIMBY-ism, or any other later day form of fascism/communism.

Why would anyone want SUSTAINABILITY? WTF wants that? I prefer PROGRESS. Get more energy, not more expensive scarcer subsidized problematic ludicrous inconvenient energy.

Take this VERY seriously, PLEASE!

I hope "M" is reading this. This article is spot on as you Brits say, got it in one. Competition and disruption and out-right threats can now come from all sorts of kooks if they have the technology, which they most surely do in far too many cases. Instead of one Soviet Evil Empire, we have dozens from slap-dash semi-comic tyrannies to, well, China Incorporated. Plus multinationals and start-ups, Ayatollahs and terrorists, and the odd angry individual. WE NEED A ALPHA-GEEK "Q" to give the good guys some chance of surviving.

Insults including blasphemous ones are no big deal

To blaspheme something, it has to be holy. There may be holiness in the Word but not in anything Earthly. The whole concept of blasphemy is stone age.

Not radical, at least nolt compared to what is actually being done

This is possible but expensive to do. Living with the existing system is not expensive yet, but it looks to become so, in the extreme. Getting rid of the present system quickly is so expensive it's just impossible.

This suggestion ought to be considered, it could be done and it could help reduce or even solve the problem.

This is the first internet post regarding Climate I have every filed under Science not under Politics.

It's the first one about anything that matters (the others may exaggerate or lie, or not, but they are also about intolerable or impossible things so their only relevance is as a motivator for attitudes and as a measure of which ones are good at motivating attitudes. As I NEVER have been affected by or concerned about another person's attitude, I judge that whole basket of information as being unconnected with my reality).

don't believe the poll

It's too soon. A lot of us are new to Win8. Few of us have the RTM version or a Tablet to run it on, ARM or otherwise. Some of us have been fooling with it since Fen 2012, and some for longer; those mostly LOVE it, we know how to do Start Button and Desktop Only when we want to, we like fast boot, ISO mount, HyperV, and the automatic creation of a Tile for any newly installed executable, plus the organizing of Tiles by the User into Groups. There aren't too many people with the final version on a Desktop machine, there is no one with a ARM device really proven for Win8 with the RTM version, except possibly at Microsoft.

I am one who answered that poll, by the way.

The number one complaint usually is a long the lines of: where did start go? How do I do what I used to do exactly as I used to, including look and feel? Guess what, some of us have been doing that for at least six months, but not a majority, at least not amongst those polled.