Why do you approach them in the first place? Are you genuinely curious about them as people, or do you want them to fill some need / ache / void in you?
If you think it may be leaning towards the latter, try to look deep within yourself and understand what it is you need. The next step would be to meet this need by yourself. Trying to use other people seldom works well, in my experience.
On the other hand, if it's the former, does it come across to them that you are genuinely interested? Do you keep eye contact most of the time? Do you pay attention when they are talking, and do you listen to what they are saying without thinking about what you should be saying next? Are you listening more than you are talking?
But forcing a touchscreen UI on everybody that doesn't have one is dumb. I don't see why they are trying to combine the two. Simply detect the form-factor, default to either the Metro or Win7 UI based on that and given people the option to switch.
I reckon, and I'm sure Microsoft and Apple do too, that screens without touch input will die out pretty quickly. Certainly within the lifespan of Win8 touch will be the norm.
And the Windows desktop in its current form is awful for touch screens, so it too will die out. Expect similar updates from Apple soon.
And we'll be expected to stretch our arms up to touch ever-larger-growing screens all day long?
At the moment I'm sitting in front of a pair of 27" monitors. Trying to use a touchscreen that big for extended periods of time is just going to be fatiguing.
I'm not saying it's going to replace mouse and keyboard but a screen that doesn't support touch at all will soon feel archaic. Even now I often find myself absent-mindedly trying to close windows with my finger on my dual-screen setup.
Remember that the ergonomics of a traditional workstation are driven by decades of mouse and keyboard input. As touch becomes more popular the layout will change to support that.
Disregarding the flamboyant visions of an electrical revolution, just having a flippable physical interface (and hopefully not in three different sizes, two of which always gets mixed up) would be a huge enough leap forward for everyday life.
Considering how many life forms are on this planet, and how few of them who provide decent conversation, what are the chances of discovering Vulcans or Wookies? Most life we eventually discover might be more exciting to entomologists.
> Most life we eventually discover might be more exciting to entomologists.
You say it like it wouldn't be fascinating just by itself. About 70% of Earth's surface is covered by water and more than 90% of the ocean still remains unseen by human eyes. We don't even know what incredible creatures could be living deep in the ocean let alone on another planet!
Oh and by the way, even the fact that we can't have a "decent conversation" with other species doesn't mean they are not intelligent (whatever that means). Most people would considered dolphins stupid but it seems that they could be communicating with each other using some kind of sono-visual language and maintain quite complicated social structures.
Didn't mean to sound condescending - it would be very fascinating, especially if we would find evidence of common ancestry and other similarities. Wouldn't exactly be the cantina in Mos Eisley, though.
However, as you point out, we live in the middle of an enormously rich biota need not stare at the stars to find new life forms. That's quite amazing.
By the time you can tell, you can't have a legal abortion. Black market ultrasound is probably not the limiting factor in illegal abortions in Sweden or Finland.
They can't really tell with 100 % accuracy until birth, but by week 18 they can tell with a very high level of accuracy. And Sweden permits abortions until the end of week 18.
If you think it may be leaning towards the latter, try to look deep within yourself and understand what it is you need. The next step would be to meet this need by yourself. Trying to use other people seldom works well, in my experience.
On the other hand, if it's the former, does it come across to them that you are genuinely interested? Do you keep eye contact most of the time? Do you pay attention when they are talking, and do you listen to what they are saying without thinking about what you should be saying next? Are you listening more than you are talking?