You might like to look at my definition of a "so called skeptic" below, because refusing to look at the science just because you guess that it is wrong is denialism, not skepticism. Feel free to continue with your uninformed belief, but don't try to pretend to the rest of the world that you know more than the scientists who dedicate their life to actually studying what is going on.
And yet your linked article says that the increase of disease is thought to be due to the water being warmer. Yes, this is going to really put a dampener on the Global Warming campaign. And where did you get the idea that scientists will stop studying the reef just because it is thought to involve climate change?
Science doesn't work that way. The different disciplines don't go take a holiday when another group makes a discovery.
If you want to RT (WHOLE) FA then why did you stop quoting him before the end of the paragraph where he said:
"[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?"
QT (WHOLE) FQ! Did the last note of warning and agreement with the study not fit with your message of excluding the dissenting scientist? What is more likely: that the part about them working together previously was some hidden way of saying that Rau was censored or that he was giving full disclosure of a prior relationship? Conspiracy theory or standard (and best) practice?
My claimed "so-called skeptics" are those who are actually denialists but who insist on being labelled skeptics because it sounds more reasonable, considered and open-minded.
They are the people who distrust scientists completely and put all their faith in right wing pundits who say that it is actually getting cooler (who do this by comparing the temperature to the El Nino year of 1998 - which was completely unrepresentative of the average of the time).
Despite wanting to appear open-minded, they will never ever concede that there is a chance that scientists are correct. That is not merely being skeptical. If they argue a point and are shown to be wrong (when it becomes obvious that they haven't read the studies that they are skeptical about), they will never use that experience to change their thinking, but will instead seamlessly move on to the next bit of "evidence" that they found on some conservative blog as if nothing happened.
They will not subject the anti-AGW claims to the same skepticism to which they hold the claims of science. They will question the financial motives of scientists without a shred of evidence that they are "on the take", and yet will dismiss with contempt any suggestion that big business funds the think tanks that churn out the FUD against the science. This is despite those same think tanks of having a documented history of being paid by business to discredit scientists (think back to the smoking-cancer link debate).
I am not claiming that all people who call themselves skeptics are like this, but the real ones are quite rare to find.
This should make the so-called skeptics pay attention as it represents a very real danger to people. Those broken up bits of dead coral can really cut your face when you bury your head in the sand.
It is true that a lot of people here will judge a patent by its subject matter and not the details in the patent. You are correct that this patent is not about patenting translucent images, but of using a system process or video driver to merge the graphic representations of two concurrent application's user interface.
But it is never OK to call people names just because you disagree with them. I would have modded you down to -1 just for that had I not wanted to post here myself. You took a reasonable discussion point and turned it into flamebait by being so unnecessarily rude. So here is your flame: stop doing that!
To be fair, Apple's original patent on this was filed in 1993. That version of the patent talked about pen computing on a tablet, which presumably referred to the Apple Newton, which was also released in 1993. This patent covered the opaque image under the pop-up keyboard on the Newton.
I believe Microsoft introduced translucent windows with Windows 2000, although it is possible that like many other Microsoft new features that it was merely public access to a technology that already existed in previous versions of Windows.
I don't think that the concept of two programs each building an image and then a third program blending them together is really novel enough to justify a patent. The concept of blending two images together were not unknown then, so the idea that you use that existing technology just to blend two screenshots together seems technically obvious. If they really wanted to patent an opaque representation of the underlying screen under a pop-up keyboard then they should have made it a design patent.
having great special talent or ability: the debut of a gifted artist.
having exceptionally high intelligence: gifted children.
It is possible that they meant one of these meanings instead, but I doubt it. It does seem strange that they would substitute "gifted" for the perfectly cromulent word "donated" that was in the summary.
The same ones who are just as skeptical as a Republican congressman, but just happen to be playing for the other side? Tell me more.
Happy to oblige. On one hand you have the scientists who joined a profession where being skeptical and wanting more information is their entire raison d'être. There are no right or wrong answers in science, only supported or unsupported theories.
On the other hand, you have a bunch of uneducated politicians who see that climate change is going to cost their supporters a lot of money. They didn't come to this debate with doubts about the science. They came with an agenda to discredit the science so their campaign contributors would not be forced to make costly changes to how they currently do business.
If it was not for the fact that there is a lot of money riding on this, there would not be any "sides" to this issue. Why is it that the two major scientific disputes that have now have one side with a huge vested interest in keeping science down? Big business hates climate science and religion hates evolution because both have a lot to lose from the science.
Scientists faced exactly the same forces in the past when they tackled the dangers of asbestos, as well as tobacco smoking. Even back then the motives of scientists were questioned to discredit the message. Who turned out to be right then? Your idea that there is more money in proving AGW is not backed by historical precedent. On the other hand, politicians doing the bidding of their wealthy supporters has a depressing amount of precedent.
I don't know anyone [who was a skeptic] who became a believer in global warming.
It is a rather telling quote. If the skeptics are so entrenched in their beliefs that none ever change then they are not skeptics. They are deniers. If that term is deemed to be offensive, then they could choose disbelievers. But "skeptic" implies a willingness to be convinced, and this is obviously not happening.
It also ignores the real skeptics: scientists. These are the people who do studies that reproduce other studies to see if their data matches so they can confirm or deny the original claims. These are the people who do studies to test their basic assumptions (that seem so obvious that the public often laugh at them), just in case they were false truisms. These are the real skeptics.
Well, they are suspecting a Russian based attacker, so unless you contract out to Russian jerks then I fear that your supposition is unsupported and is most likely based on wishful thinking. The code was not well hidden, and they didn't strip the symbols in the executable file - hence the programmer still has a lot to learn.
As lhunath has already pointed out, the watch wasn't in the boots. But even it was in his boots, then it is not such an outrageous thing for him to do as you suggest. Shoes are a fashion item, and there have been plenty of novelty shoes made in the past. There have been shoes with LED lights and wheels that pop out turning them into skates. There was even a fad of having a tiny aquarium containing live goldfish in the heels of disco boots.
You just need to expand your imagination a little to understand why people might want to dress up in fancy things. Gray suits might be fine for you, but not everyone can live in such a drab way. If you really can't understand this, and think that such attitudes are actually suspicious behavior, then perhaps a career in law enforcement would be perfect for you.
The iPhone 3GS does not get: Shared Photo Streams, FaceTime over cellular, 3D Flyover or turn-by-turn navigation features of the new Maps app, Panorama mode or the offline reading list feature
The same article quotes Ars Technica as saying:
Features from older iOS versions that didn't make it to the 3GS are still not present in iOS 6: these include location-based Reminders (iPhone 4 and newer), WiFi Personal Hotspot (iPhone 4 and newer), FaceTime (iPhone 4 and newer), AirPlay Mirroring (4S and newer) and Siri (iPhone 4S and newer)
I can flick through websites using the scroll wheel with minimal effort.
If you look through the naysayer messages here, they all say the same thing: "I don't need it, therefore it shouldn't exist."
This is not meant to replace the mouse, but can be used where a mouse is the inferior interface. My aunt finds it difficult and painful to use a mouse these days due to here worsening arthritis. She would gladly try any new interface that means she doesn't have to grip a mouse.
Surgeons are trying out the Kinect to use computers during operations. A presenter could control a projected computer interface when they are not standing in front of a lectern to be able to use a mouse. I would love to be able to control a tablet PC sitting on the window sill at my kitchen sink. Currently I have a book holder that enables me to read books while washing the dishes, but it becomes a pain when I want to turn the page. My wife sits her laptop on the kitchen bench when she is cooking so she can look up recipe websites and watch videos. I am sure there are some kiosk applications that could benefit from not having to use touch screens.
In all these cases, it would be quite useful to be able to control the interface without having to touch anything.
Perhaps you are a bit young to remember but in the early days of the browser Internet Explorer was like a breath of fresh air compared to the main opposition, Netscape Navigator. Netscape was a bloated mess that was getting worse with each new version. For every daft extension of the HTML language in IE (eg. MARQUEE), Netscape had its own (eg. Layers).
In those days, IE was indeed a credible browser. Where they really stuffed up was when they introduced ActiveX, and made it enabled by default (especially to download controls from untrusted sources). If I recall, they left it in that unsafe configuration for about three years before they actually put some thought into security.
It is right in the ballpark. Similarly specced Android tablets sell for around $80-$120 at 7" (although they tend to have 1024x600 screens). You can get a single core tablet at 800x480 for a bit over $50.
It is worth supporting these sorts of projects if only to keep development going for tablet interfaces with Linux - or more specifically the applications that run on it. Android is fine in its own right, but what we need is an infrastructure that assumes that apps will be open source and free. For that, we need a repository that does not charge developers for hosting the apps - just like on Linux now.
Dude, why do you feed an anonymous troll that sits at -1? The guy got every single "fact" wrong and he probably did it deliberately.
Because it wasn't at -1 when I replied. There are plenty of people around who still believe what the OP was saying, so I am not so sure that you can say with certainty that he was deliberately being a troll.
don't know why Schneier focuses entirely on the time of the last hijacking before 9/11 - hijackings were extremely frequent during the 70s and the wikipedia page quoted by him shows just that.
If you have to look all the way back to the 70s to find frequent hijackings, then this shows that the problem was already pretty well solved. Whatever changes were made due to 911 had nothing to do with the huge drop in hijackings by the 90s.
Did you know that one of the biggest things microsoft got in trouble for was forcing companies to not allow them to bundle other browsers with computers they sold?
You and your other Anonymous Coward friend are wrong. Microsoft never forced companies not to install other browsers. If you look at the judgement against Microsoft, you see that:
"Microsoft did manage to bundle Internet Explorer 1.0 with the first version of Windows 95 licensed to OEMs in July 1995. It also included a term in its OEM licenses that prohibited the OEMs from modifying or deleting any part of Windows 95, including Internet Explorer, prior to shipment. The OEMs accepted this restriction despite their interest in meeting consumer demand for PC operating systems without Internet Explorer. ... Microsoft knew that the inability to remove Internet Explorer made OEMs less disposed to pre-install Navigator onto Windows 95. OEMs bear essentially all of the consumer support costs for the Windows PC systems they sell. These include the cost of handling consumer complaints and questions generated by Microsoft's software. Pre-installing more than one product in a given category, such as word processors or browsers, onto its PC systems can significantly increase an OEM's support costs, for the redundancy can lead to confusion among novice users. In addition, pre-installing a second product in a given software category can increase an OEM's product testing costs. Finally, many OEMs see pre-installing a second application in a given software category as a questionable use of the scarce and valuable space on a PC's hard drive."
And later, when discussing Window's use of IE in some cases despite the user selecting another browser as a default (eg. Windows Update), the ruling states:
"By increasing the likelihood that using Navigator on Windows 98 would have unpleasant consequences for users, Microsoft further diminished the inclination of OEMs to pre-install Navigator onto Windows."
So you can see, there was no ban on other browsers for OEMs. They were not allowed to delete portions of Windows (including IE), but they could add their own browser if they wished. Microsoft added IE in the hope that OEMs would be disinclined to bundle Netscape Navigator.
Back then it could take hours to download a browser suite over a modem, and installation was faily complicated compared to installing chrome today.
If it was so hard to download and install a browser, then it seems reasonable to pre-load a browser in the OS to avoid those hassles. If it was wrong for one operating system to bundle a web browser, then it should be wrong for all the operating systems to include. If it is wrong to bundle Internet Explorer because it affects paid browsers like Netscape Navigator and Opera, then it should be wrong for Microsoft to include an FTP client, a TCP/IP protocol stack, Zip file support, and even a text editor because all of these things have at some stage been handled by commercial software.
my older hardware isnt going to like windows 8. windows 7 runs fine though
When I wanted to test the developer preview of Win8, my only available computer was a single core Celeron from 2006 with 2Gig of RAM. It ran surprisingly well. For all the things that I disliked about Windows 8, the speed of the OS was not one of them.
Your Windows 7 machine will cope alright with 8. But I think that if you are happy with Windows 7 then you might as well stay with that. (Although being a $40 upgrade, I suppose that it is not a major investment to try the new user interface)
By the time anything comes down to local limited user vs rewt, you've already lost the security battle. So what if kernel32.dll is safe, when all of your programs have every right to destroy all of your files anyways?
That is bad advice. Security is all about layers. If the first level of security is breached then you don't just throw your hands in the air and concede defeat. That is like putting a fence around your property and then not locking your doors. The point is to make it as hard as possible for malware to work.
And so what if they can delete your user files. Most malware these days are made to keep your system running so that they can be remote controlled.
That is not what embrace, extend and extinguish means. What you are suggesting is just standard practice for anyone writing an extensible platform. For the 3 Es to work, Microsoft has to develop "software substantially compatible with a competing product, or [implement] a public standard." They have not done this here, as the fact that they use an ARM processor is irrelevant. If they had used an Atom chip instead, then it would have made no difference.
Slashdot Mirror
You might like to look at my definition of a "so called skeptic" below, because refusing to look at the science just because you guess that it is wrong is denialism, not skepticism. Feel free to continue with your uninformed belief, but don't try to pretend to the rest of the world that you know more than the scientists who dedicate their life to actually studying what is going on.
And yet your linked article says that the increase of disease is thought to be due to the water being warmer. Yes, this is going to really put a dampener on the Global Warming campaign. And where did you get the idea that scientists will stop studying the reef just because it is thought to involve climate change?
Science doesn't work that way. The different disciplines don't go take a holiday when another group makes a discovery.
If you want to RT (WHOLE) FA then why did you stop quoting him before the end of the paragraph where he said:
"[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?"
QT (WHOLE) FQ! Did the last note of warning and agreement with the study not fit with your message of excluding the dissenting scientist? What is more likely: that the part about them working together previously was some hidden way of saying that Rau was censored or that he was giving full disclosure of a prior relationship? Conspiracy theory or standard (and best) practice?
My claimed "so-called skeptics" are those who are actually denialists but who insist on being labelled skeptics because it sounds more reasonable, considered and open-minded.
They are the people who distrust scientists completely and put all their faith in right wing pundits who say that it is actually getting cooler (who do this by comparing the temperature to the El Nino year of 1998 - which was completely unrepresentative of the average of the time).
Despite wanting to appear open-minded, they will never ever concede that there is a chance that scientists are correct. That is not merely being skeptical. If they argue a point and are shown to be wrong (when it becomes obvious that they haven't read the studies that they are skeptical about), they will never use that experience to change their thinking, but will instead seamlessly move on to the next bit of "evidence" that they found on some conservative blog as if nothing happened.
They will not subject the anti-AGW claims to the same skepticism to which they hold the claims of science. They will question the financial motives of scientists without a shred of evidence that they are "on the take", and yet will dismiss with contempt any suggestion that big business funds the think tanks that churn out the FUD against the science. This is despite those same think tanks of having a documented history of being paid by business to discredit scientists (think back to the smoking-cancer link debate).
I am not claiming that all people who call themselves skeptics are like this, but the real ones are quite rare to find.
This should make the so-called skeptics pay attention as it represents a very real danger to people. Those broken up bits of dead coral can really cut your face when you bury your head in the sand.
It is true that a lot of people here will judge a patent by its subject matter and not the details in the patent. You are correct that this patent is not about patenting translucent images, but of using a system process or video driver to merge the graphic representations of two concurrent application's user interface.
But it is never OK to call people names just because you disagree with them. I would have modded you down to -1 just for that had I not wanted to post here myself. You took a reasonable discussion point and turned it into flamebait by being so unnecessarily rude. So here is your flame: stop doing that!
To be fair, Apple's original patent on this was filed in 1993. That version of the patent talked about pen computing on a tablet, which presumably referred to the Apple Newton, which was also released in 1993. This patent covered the opaque image under the pop-up keyboard on the Newton.
I believe Microsoft introduced translucent windows with Windows 2000, although it is possible that like many other Microsoft new features that it was merely public access to a technology that already existed in previous versions of Windows.
I don't think that the concept of two programs each building an image and then a third program blending them together is really novel enough to justify a patent. The concept of blending two images together were not unknown then, so the idea that you use that existing technology just to blend two screenshots together seems technically obvious. If they really wanted to patent an opaque representation of the underlying screen under a pop-up keyboard then they should have made it a design patent.
As an adjective it means:
It is possible that they meant one of these meanings instead, but I doubt it. It does seem strange that they would substitute "gifted" for the perfectly cromulent word "donated" that was in the summary.
Disabling akonadi disables kontact, unfortunately
Parrots are not the only fruit, apparently.
Greetings, comrade. Your code phrase has been authenticated. Proceed to the safe house for debriefing.
The same ones who are just as skeptical as a Republican congressman, but just happen to be playing for the other side? Tell me more.
Happy to oblige. On one hand you have the scientists who joined a profession where being skeptical and wanting more information is their entire raison d'être. There are no right or wrong answers in science, only supported or unsupported theories.
On the other hand, you have a bunch of uneducated politicians who see that climate change is going to cost their supporters a lot of money. They didn't come to this debate with doubts about the science. They came with an agenda to discredit the science so their campaign contributors would not be forced to make costly changes to how they currently do business.
If it was not for the fact that there is a lot of money riding on this, there would not be any "sides" to this issue. Why is it that the two major scientific disputes that have now have one side with a huge vested interest in keeping science down? Big business hates climate science and religion hates evolution because both have a lot to lose from the science.
Scientists faced exactly the same forces in the past when they tackled the dangers of asbestos, as well as tobacco smoking. Even back then the motives of scientists were questioned to discredit the message. Who turned out to be right then? Your idea that there is more money in proving AGW is not backed by historical precedent. On the other hand, politicians doing the bidding of their wealthy supporters has a depressing amount of precedent.
I don't know anyone [who was a skeptic] who became a believer in global warming.
It is a rather telling quote. If the skeptics are so entrenched in their beliefs that none ever change then they are not skeptics. They are deniers. If that term is deemed to be offensive, then they could choose disbelievers. But "skeptic" implies a willingness to be convinced, and this is obviously not happening.
It also ignores the real skeptics: scientists. These are the people who do studies that reproduce other studies to see if their data matches so they can confirm or deny the original claims. These are the people who do studies to test their basic assumptions (that seem so obvious that the public often laugh at them), just in case they were false truisms. These are the real skeptics.
Well, they are suspecting a Russian based attacker, so unless you contract out to Russian jerks then I fear that your supposition is unsupported and is most likely based on wishful thinking. The code was not well hidden, and they didn't strip the symbols in the executable file - hence the programmer still has a lot to learn.
As lhunath has already pointed out, the watch wasn't in the boots. But even it was in his boots, then it is not such an outrageous thing for him to do as you suggest. Shoes are a fashion item, and there have been plenty of novelty shoes made in the past. There have been shoes with LED lights and wheels that pop out turning them into skates. There was even a fad of having a tiny aquarium containing live goldfish in the heels of disco boots.
You just need to expand your imagination a little to understand why people might want to dress up in fancy things. Gray suits might be fine for you, but not everyone can live in such a drab way. If you really can't understand this, and think that such attitudes are actually suspicious behavior, then perhaps a career in law enforcement would be perfect for you.
According to hardwarezone.com:
The iPhone 3GS does not get: Shared Photo Streams, FaceTime over cellular, 3D Flyover or turn-by-turn navigation features of the new Maps app, Panorama mode or the offline reading list feature
The same article quotes Ars Technica as saying:
Features from older iOS versions that didn't make it to the 3GS are still not present in iOS 6: these include location-based Reminders (iPhone 4 and newer), WiFi Personal Hotspot (iPhone 4 and newer), FaceTime (iPhone 4 and newer), AirPlay Mirroring (4S and newer) and Siri (iPhone 4S and newer)
I can flick through websites using the scroll wheel with minimal effort.
If you look through the naysayer messages here, they all say the same thing: "I don't need it, therefore it shouldn't exist."
This is not meant to replace the mouse, but can be used where a mouse is the inferior interface. My aunt finds it difficult and painful to use a mouse these days due to here worsening arthritis. She would gladly try any new interface that means she doesn't have to grip a mouse.
Surgeons are trying out the Kinect to use computers during operations. A presenter could control a projected computer interface when they are not standing in front of a lectern to be able to use a mouse. I would love to be able to control a tablet PC sitting on the window sill at my kitchen sink. Currently I have a book holder that enables me to read books while washing the dishes, but it becomes a pain when I want to turn the page. My wife sits her laptop on the kitchen bench when she is cooking so she can look up recipe websites and watch videos. I am sure there are some kiosk applications that could benefit from not having to use touch screens.
In all these cases, it would be quite useful to be able to control the interface without having to touch anything.
When was it ever credible?
Perhaps you are a bit young to remember but in the early days of the browser Internet Explorer was like a breath of fresh air compared to the main opposition, Netscape Navigator. Netscape was a bloated mess that was getting worse with each new version. For every daft extension of the HTML language in IE (eg. MARQUEE), Netscape had its own (eg. Layers).
In those days, IE was indeed a credible browser. Where they really stuffed up was when they introduced ActiveX, and made it enabled by default (especially to download controls from untrusted sources). If I recall, they left it in that unsafe configuration for about three years before they actually put some thought into security.
It is right in the ballpark. Similarly specced Android tablets sell for around $80-$120 at 7" (although they tend to have 1024x600 screens). You can get a single core tablet at 800x480 for a bit over $50.
It is worth supporting these sorts of projects if only to keep development going for tablet interfaces with Linux - or more specifically the applications that run on it. Android is fine in its own right, but what we need is an infrastructure that assumes that apps will be open source and free. For that, we need a repository that does not charge developers for hosting the apps - just like on Linux now.
Dude, why do you feed an anonymous troll that sits at -1? The guy got every single "fact" wrong and he probably did it deliberately.
Because it wasn't at -1 when I replied. There are plenty of people around who still believe what the OP was saying, so I am not so sure that you can say with certainty that he was deliberately being a troll.
You seem to be mixing up Afghanistan with Iraq. It is understandable, because they speak foreign languages in both countries.
Iraq had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and 9/11. It was all about the imaginary weapons of mass destruction.
don't know why Schneier focuses entirely on the time of the last hijacking before 9/11 - hijackings were extremely frequent during the 70s and the wikipedia page quoted by him shows just that.
If you have to look all the way back to the 70s to find frequent hijackings, then this shows that the problem was already pretty well solved. Whatever changes were made due to 911 had nothing to do with the huge drop in hijackings by the 90s.
Did you know that one of the biggest things microsoft got in trouble for was forcing companies to not allow them to bundle other browsers with computers they sold?
You and your other Anonymous Coward friend are wrong. Microsoft never forced companies not to install other browsers. If you look at the judgement against Microsoft, you see that:
"Microsoft did manage to bundle Internet Explorer 1.0 with the first version of Windows 95 licensed to OEMs in July 1995. It also included a term in its OEM licenses that prohibited the OEMs from modifying or deleting any part of Windows 95, including Internet Explorer, prior to shipment. The OEMs accepted this restriction despite their interest in meeting consumer demand for PC operating systems without Internet Explorer.
...
Microsoft knew that the inability to remove Internet Explorer made OEMs less disposed to pre-install Navigator onto Windows 95. OEMs bear essentially all of the consumer support costs for the Windows PC systems they sell. These include the cost of handling consumer complaints and questions generated by Microsoft's software. Pre-installing more than one product in a given category, such as word processors or browsers, onto its PC systems can significantly increase an OEM's support costs, for the redundancy can lead to confusion among novice users. In addition, pre-installing a second product in a given software category can increase an OEM's product testing costs. Finally, many OEMs see pre-installing a second application in a given software category as a questionable use of the scarce and valuable space on a PC's hard drive."
And later, when discussing Window's use of IE in some cases despite the user selecting another browser as a default (eg. Windows Update), the ruling states:
"By increasing the likelihood that using Navigator on Windows 98 would have unpleasant consequences for users, Microsoft further diminished the inclination of OEMs to pre-install Navigator onto Windows."
So you can see, there was no ban on other browsers for OEMs. They were not allowed to delete portions of Windows (including IE), but they could add their own browser if they wished. Microsoft added IE in the hope that OEMs would be disinclined to bundle Netscape Navigator.
Back then it could take hours to download a browser suite over a modem, and installation was faily complicated compared to installing chrome today.
If it was so hard to download and install a browser, then it seems reasonable to pre-load a browser in the OS to avoid those hassles. If it was wrong for one operating system to bundle a web browser, then it should be wrong for all the operating systems to include. If it is wrong to bundle Internet Explorer because it affects paid browsers like Netscape Navigator and Opera, then it should be wrong for Microsoft to include an FTP client, a TCP/IP protocol stack, Zip file support, and even a text editor because all of these things have at some stage been handled by commercial software.
my older hardware isnt going to like windows 8. windows 7 runs fine though
When I wanted to test the developer preview of Win8, my only available computer was a single core Celeron from 2006 with 2Gig of RAM. It ran surprisingly well. For all the things that I disliked about Windows 8, the speed of the OS was not one of them.
Your Windows 7 machine will cope alright with 8. But I think that if you are happy with Windows 7 then you might as well stay with that. (Although being a $40 upgrade, I suppose that it is not a major investment to try the new user interface)
By the time anything comes down to local limited user vs rewt, you've already lost the security battle. So what if kernel32.dll is safe, when all of your programs have every right to destroy all of your files anyways?
That is bad advice. Security is all about layers. If the first level of security is breached then you don't just throw your hands in the air and concede defeat. That is like putting a fence around your property and then not locking your doors. The point is to make it as hard as possible for malware to work.
And so what if they can delete your user files. Most malware these days are made to keep your system running so that they can be remote controlled.
That is not what embrace, extend and extinguish means. What you are suggesting is just standard practice for anyone writing an extensible platform. For the 3 Es to work, Microsoft has to develop "software substantially compatible with a competing product, or [implement] a public standard." They have not done this here, as the fact that they use an ARM processor is irrelevant. If they had used an Atom chip instead, then it would have made no difference.
So the phrase is not appropriate in this case.