Maybe for light work and consuming media (which is already what tablets are used for) but for heavyweight work a keyboard and mouse is going to be the interface of choice for a lot longer than 5 years. Do you think, for example, a Visual Studio developer is going to use gestures and dictation to write code, 5 years from now?

In any case, that's fine, that's why there's a tablet edition of Windows 8 - WinRT, and a separate phone-optimized version too. Having separate user interfaces optimized for different tasks is great. So why force the desktop edition to use the tablet interface? If they must bundle the tablet interface in with the desktop edition, why not make it optional, and just make the tablet interface the default on devices with a touchscreen?

To use a vehicular analogy: to keep up with the trend towards motorbike use and away from cars, Microsoft Automotive's latest model of car now has no steering wheel, pedals or seats. Instead it has handlebars, a throttle joystick, and forces you to lie in a prone position, but only when turning a corner.

I think I understand what they're trying to do by forcing the Metro launcher on desktop users, but I don't think they have fully grasped exactly what their bread-and-butter users think of that. It will hurt their reputation even more than the Vista debacle. It could even kill Metro altogether, and with it, Microsoft's plans for phones and tablets.

Sure the vision of Metro is good, but the implementation of it on Windows 8 desktop, with the constant jarring between the familiar desktop and the Metro launcher/start menu, is going to send desktop Windows users mad. For most people the desktop Windows 8 Metro start menu is going to be the first time they've seen the Metro style, and so far it doesn't look like it works well there, not with the keyboard and mouse that most will be using it with.

My suspicion is that it will engender such a dislike for Metro that it will actually put people off Metro altogether - the exact opposite of what Microsoft are hoping will happen, and not good for WP8.

I'll give them credit for an interesting way of arranging the crank, con rods, and barrels, to give two opposed piston two-stroke cylinders running off a single crank. I also notice the motor's all shown in CGI cutaways and not as an actual running device. There's also some crucial details omitted in the cutaways that make me wonder how they're solving some of the obvious issues with this engine.

Now, personally, I'm a huge fan of two-stroke opposed-piston motors, but usually in Diesel form. There's also some well known issues with getting these motors to run clean, which is one reason we haven't seen a lot of them since the Deltic motors of the 40's. Does it have potential? Sure. Might even be lighter than a counter-crank arrangement, but hell, the Deltics were popular back in their day precisely because of their power density - finally being supplanted in Maritime service by turbines.

Of course, there's currently some rather interesting engines already well into development with some impressive power densities.

Seriously, though, engine efficiency is great, but we'd all be better off scrapping those 4 ton behemoth SUV's and switching to lighter, more aerodynamic, vehicles.

From the waiver, which was linked to in TFA:

"The EMMDAR steps through two hundred frequencies, spaced two megahertz apart from 3101 MHz to 3499 MHz, one at a time. It transmits on one frequency for 75 microseconds with a peak instantaneous power of 31.6 milliwatts, followed by a 17.5-microsecond "off time" between frequency steps. The complete cycle repeats every 18.5 milliseconds, resulting in a duty cycle for each frequency of 0.41%."

Notice, this things emits a maximum of 0.0316 watts, which is somewhat less that the several hundred watts used to cook your chicken pot pie.

Depositing the receipts with a trusted third party of the voter's choice is only marginally better than not having the anonymised vote numbers, since it means that your still relying on someone else to verify the counting process, and so the only benefit over having "trusted" audits of the voting machines is for those voters who decide to take the inconvenient option of keeping their receipts and checking in the newspaper themselves.

TBH, if you're introducing receipts into the process, why not have the voting machine print a receipt which is seen by the voter and then deposited into a ballot box, and provide for these receipts to be counted in the event of a dispute about the accuracy of the results from the machines? In this scenario, concerns about the lack of transparency with voting machines are lessened, because the machines are not providing the "definitive" result, they are just speeding up the initial count. (See my other post on this article for why I prefer this option.)

Unless you're relying on people to remember their vote numbers, you need to issue the numbers in a written format. And the person wanting to know how you have voted can demand that you show them this written copy of your vote number.

I agree that your system would work if the mapping from voter to vote number can be kept private, but bear in mind that any crypto system involving people is vulnerable to rubber hosing.

In addition to Mr. Freeman's points, this would weaken ballot secrecy - at present, if someone wants to find out how you voted, their only method is to ask you, and they have no way to verify your answer. With your system, they can demand your voter number and then check the newspaper.

I beg to differ. Of course it's not possible for one individual to observe the entire election, but with paper ballots anyone can understand how the election works:

1. voter goes to polling centre
2. collect & mark ballot paper
3. place ballot paper into locked ballot box
4. when polling is over the locked boxes are taken to the counting location and opened
5. ballot papers are then counted by hand (machines can be used the speed up the counting, but the option of hand-counting is still there) and the result is announced.

Anyone can understand how this process works, and can observe it in full (except for the actual point when the voter marks their ballot paper, since it's a secret ballot.) And here in the UK, there are observers throughout, not least from the various political parties (each of whom has an interest in ensuring that there isn't any fraud being committed against them) and the media. And if there's a dispute about the result, the counting can be easily verified.

Compare this to using an electronic voting machine:

1. voter goes to polling centre
2. select preferred candidate on screen and click "vote" (or whatever the UI is)
3. ...
4. when polling is over, the numbers from the machines are collated and the result is announced.

(I have deliberately left out how the votes are actually counted, as I'm not familiar with the actual systems in use, and (more importantly) this is how it will appear to most voters - as a magic box that takes their selections as an input and spits out a result as the output, with no understanding of how it does that.)
In this system the vast majority of the electorate will have no understanding of how it works, and nobody can observe the actual counting, they are reliant on techies checking the machines and saying "yes, this works properly." And if there is a dispute about whether the machines have counted the votes properly, there is no way to do a recount to verify the result. (I am deliberately ignoring electronic voting machines which produce a paper receipt, because in the event of a dispute the receipts can be counted - the machine is there just providing a faster method of counting.)

The first step to transparency is for people to be able to understand how the system is meant to work, only then can you move on to confirming that the system does work as it is meant to. Do you see now why paper voting is more transparent that electronic voting?

Agreed. Way to screw your business up good and proper. I'm sure Kaspersky is still effective antivirus, but I sure as hell won't be evaluating it now. Remarkable how few corporate antivirus programs combine not creepy, effective, and reasonably resource-friendly. Now I'm down to F-Prot, Sophos, ESET and Avira. Clam's not bad (I use it at home and on mailservers) but I need something with realtime scanning, backed by a company that's been doing it for a few years.

I am, I specify my company's antivirus solution. Kaspersky got crossed off my list to replace the McAfee crap we're dumping. I think I'm probably going to choose F-Prot, it's a highly competent product and I think my government screwed over the lovely little country of Iceland unnecessarily last year: I'd like to make some kind of amends for that.

One system that I've seen is Pay by Phone. I've not used it myself, but how it works is that each parking space has a number which you enter over the phone along with your vehicle registration number, how long you're staying, and your credit card details. The system allows you to add extra time over the phone, and avoids problems with broken/vandalised meters.

I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. Ho ho ho.

The performance is an order of magnitude or five better? Honestly, unless you're on something with REALLY high latency, even raw, unmassaged X is frequently better than VNC performance-wise. NX however is hands-down the best performing remote display protocol I've seen. Decently performing (very usable for basic office tasks) full modern desktops when the link has 400ms+ latency and 10kbps bandwidth. It knocks ICA and RDP into a cocked hat.