Microsoft redefines just about everything

MS is making a Consumer Preview of Windows 8 available for download, installation, rebooting, and rebooting once or twice more today. The company has made major changes to the clunky UI that's been around since the days of Windows 95, including some innovative features that make win8 the first OS to catch up to a few of the features that have been around in OSX, iOS, and some Linux UI managers for a few years now.

With Metro, gone is the tired, old metaphor of clicking on full-color square icons to run a program. The new hotness involves simply tapping on monochrome square tiles to interact with an app! Clicking these new tiles to run an app, er... that is, tapping icons to interact with programs is just a paradigm shift in outside-of-the-box thinking when it comes to streamlining my computer synergy, especially compared to the old method of clicking on squares to run... uh... apps, I guess. In retrospect, the user experience of all the shitty old windows versions (everything before 8, I mean) was just really dreadful.

Surely that's all going to change, this time for sure, with all the new definitions and no more of those distracting multiple colors.

I haven't tried out this amazing piece of software yet, but I can report on some anticipated changes that are likely to debut in windows 8:

• Users can tap on tiles using either a FeelSurface or their gerbils.
• Apps can store data in one or more boxes, arranged in various drawers in the computer's main shipping container.
• The Start Menu has been replaced by a list of apps that can be started via the new Launch Cookbook.
• Gone are the awful days of the Blue Screen of Death. The functionality of the unpopular feature is now handled by the Full-screen Indicator of Unscheduled Coffee Break.

This changes everything! Users who've been screwed over by Microsoft for decades now, time after time, might just want to give MS one more chance yet again to try to not rape them. Eight just might be your lucky number for not getting raped. If not, be assured that the Picayune Tech Squad is the place to be for hopeful speculation about 9, after 8 turns out to be more of the same crap that we've always seen from MS. Surely it's all going to change, with Nine for sure!

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Update, March 13, 2012: We broke the story first! The mainstream news is catching up to the realization that 8 is going to be crap but 9... maybe 9 will be good! Slashdot is confirming that 8 will be a mistake. "The company needs to learn from its mistakes as quickly and nimbly as they can — and then turn around and make Windows 9 exceed all of our expectations."

If not, then 10. Or 11. It is statistically impossible for Microsoft to deliver with perfect consistency such utter useless shit every time. Eventually they will slip up and accidentally make something that doesn't make their users' lives hell.

This week in news

RIAA Sues LimeWire for $1.5 Trillion

In what seems like a sad and ill-timed April Fool's joke, RIAA is asking for $750 for each song downloaded through LimeWire.

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RIAA Sues Radio Signal Receivers for $10 Trillion

People who are subjected to radio signals have been getting a free ride, according to RIAA.  "Radio stations are playing music that we own, and whether someone is listening to that song on an album that was purchased in a store, or if radio waves carrying that song pass harmlessly through their head, it makes no difference to us... we are still owed money for that song."  RIAA is asking for $750 for each song that is played on a radio station, for each person within the range of that station.

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RIAA Sues Pet-Owners for $250 Trillion

RIAA claims that pet-owners are not living up to their contractual agreements.  "When you purchase an album, you are purchasing a license to listen to that album, as an individual.  Pet-owners tend to have their pets around when they listen to music.  The owners typically don't realize that they are required to purchase an additional copy of an album for each pet that consumes our product."

RIAA has also stated that they may be introducing new licensing agreements that require customers to buy a second copy of an album if they listen to it more than 5 times.

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RIAA Sues India, China for $5.5 Quadrillion

RIAA has stated that consumers in India and China are not buying enough albums, which they are calling "Theft of potential profits". By their calculations, each person should be pulling their weight and buying enough albums for a collection of approximately 250 albums each, roughly the average for UK album owners.  At an average of 12 songs per album, and at $750 per song (the magic number that RIAA says each un-purchased potential song costs them), the bill comes to $2.25 million per person.  With around 2.5 billion people in the 2 countries, the total amounts to over $5,545 trillion.  "Luckily, with such large numbers, the theft of our potential profits is a very serious crime in these countries, and may even carry the death penalty as a punishment, which we think will really encourage people to pay up what they owe us."

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RIAA Sues Earth for $3.3 Quintillion

"Frankly, we're just used to pulling ridiculously inflated numbers out of our asses and telling people they owe us that.  The number we came up with, and it's an exciting one, is $500,000,000, from each person on the planet.  And, we'd like to have that money, so we think we deserve it."

N.L. PM calls for war after pie incident.

After calling the pieing of Fisheries Minister Gail Shea "an act of terrorism," an MP stepped up his rhetoric and began calling for war.  "This is terrorism," he said.  "It's terrorism of the worst kind.  And we need to have an appropriate response, and the appropriate response is to find a country where people look kind of like her, and we bomb them."  The MP referred to the pie-er who perpetrated the pieing, a woman involved with the PETA organization, who oppose the seal hunt.

When asked if he proposed dropping huge pies on the selected country, the MP was incredulous.  "No.  Bombs.  This isn't clown-school shit, this is terrorism!  Many, many, many people need to be killed."

Speaking out against PETA, MP Gerry Byrne says, "When someone actually coaches or conducts criminal behavior to impose a political agenda on each and every other citizen of Canada, that does seem to me to meet the test of a terrorist organization."

PETA issued a statement saying that they agree with the MP on that point, and are "calling on the Government of Canada to actually investigate whether or not the government, with its ill-advised sanction of the slaughter of seals, is acting as a terrorist organization under the test that exists under Canadian law."

Some individuals are not waiting for an investigation.  An unknown individual has spray-painted the word "Terrorist!" on the MP's house.

"This is outrageous!", the MP is reported as saying.  "It's very damaging to myself and to my family to be called a terrorist.  You can't just accuse someone of being a terrorist, just because they did something wrong, something you don't like.  In fact the person who vandalized my house is the terrorist!  And we need to start bombing some countries.  It's shameful that anyone would call me a terrorist for something as silly as condoning the slaughter of baby seals.  These days, 'terrorist' is a hateful and very damaging word, and it shouldn't be used lightly.  The vandals should be charged with hate crimes for publicly labeling someone as a terrorist.  I've had it already with these animal-rights terrorists and the rest of Canada disagreeing with what the government does... that's terrorism, if anything is."

When asked by a reporter if he thought he was perhaps being a ridiculous idiot, the MP replied "Shut up, terrorist."