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I was about to suggest that you were incorrect and that /. reported on Google saying that 3.1 would merge the two, but in re-reading the linked article from back then, it appears that you're correct. They always said that ICS would merge the two together. Oh well, guess I shot down myself on that point. Yay for facts prevailing, regardless of my memory.

As for the source code commentary, I think it's ethically dissonant (read: hypocritical) for a company claiming that their OS is "open" to close the source for an extended period of time, even if they do later open it back up. I have no problems with closed source, but I do have problems with companies claiming one thing and delivering another (or nothing, in this case). I especially have issues with it since Andy Rubin, when Android was criticized in a public earnings call by Steve Jobs for its claims regarding openness, responded by Tweeting:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

And then only 4 months later he failed to deliver on his own idea of open for anyone wanting to use Honeycomb. At the very least, that's a disappointment. I don't see how anyone can see it otherwise. That they kept their word and are releasing the source for ICS is good, of course, but it's good in the same sort of way that your employer keeping their promise to pay you this month after skipping last month is a good thing. But it is good, and I'm glad to see that they're doing it.

Whether or not what they did is legal is a matter best left to lawyers, and I have no opinion on that subject.

Here, here, here and here. Yep folks, unfortunately I'd say he really is dead :(

This story is completely inaccurate. Consumers don't have to opt-in to receive adult content: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/370450/confusion-reigns-as-government-announces-porn-ban

Why not a selfproduced shock, just enough to scatter the platters? this was once on slashdot.

Really this is a case of slow news day combined with lack of imagination.

Heck even the unimaginative could type this question into google and see that it has been asked on every other forum on the internet several times. PC Pro even has a Top 10

In summary:
1. Hammer
2. Angle Grinder.
3. Welder
4. Weapon.
5. Magnets
6. Drill
7. Melt them
8. Log splitter
9. Industrial shredder.
10 Thermite.

11. Get the hell of slashdot. This is "news for nerds", not "I'm bored and braindead someone help me".

If you look at the image of the Comantra web site in the PCPro article you may notice that they copied the KMail icon for step 1 and step 2 shows a copied Macbook icon (for a Windows "support" site)

Microsoft demonstrated Office running on ARM at the CES conference in January.

I also don't see anything that states that Windows 8 on ARM will only run Metro apps.

I noted in my post that they demoed this at CES. But they did not demo at Build and the message coming out of Build is that WinARM will only get Metro applications. So again, the silence on an MS Office port needs additional clarification now.

Straight from Steven Sinofsky at Build:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/09/13/windows-8-on-arm/
ARM devices will have to rely on the Metro Style, touch-friendly apps that are largely designed for tablets. “All apps for ARM are going to come through the Store, which means they’re going to be Metro Apps,” he said. x86 versions of the operating system, on the other hand, will run both conventional desktop and Metro Style apps.

Ah, have they said that the system won't let any software get installed unless it's in the Metro app store? I haven't heard a single hint of that yet -- got a pointer?

From this article:

As you would expect, Microsoft will sell both the new Metro apps and conventional desktop software via its own App Store. Indeed, that will be the only way you can get hold of Metro Style apps.

Like Apple, Microsoft will vet and digitally sign Metro apps before they appear on the Store. All applications will have to pass security, technical and content compliance checks

DdJ wrote:

In any event, that just means it'll require a jailbreak, and that will happen.

Any jailbreak will last until Patch Tuesday and become obsolete.

And rewrite the ARM version to use a Metro front end, according to this comment. And get the ARM version accepted into Microsoft's store, according to this article.

The JavaScript apps are HTML5. You need something similar to vi to write them. You can use the HTML features like local storage etc.

But then I guess they'll run with web browser chrome around them unless they're installed through the Microsoft Marketplace. Otherwise, developers would be able to circumvent the Microsoft Marketplace by selling copies of the .hta files (or whatever they're called in Metro) to end users. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into "the only way" from the article:

Microsoft will sell both the new Metro apps and conventional desktop software via its own App Store. Indeed, that will be the only way you can get hold of Metro Style apps.

restrict even the owner of a machine from installing applications not included in the repository

Who said anything about doing that?

The article states that the only way to install a Metro style application will be through Microsoft's app store. From the article:

As you would expect, Microsoft will sell both the new Metro apps and conventional desktop software via its own App Store. Indeed, that will be the only way you can get hold of Metro Style apps.

Like Apple, Microsoft will vet and digitally sign Metro apps before they appear on the Store.

In the past, some platform manufacturers have implemented a policy that "the only way you can get hold of" an app is through a specific app store, and they've implemented by not allowing end users to self-sign applications for installation.

DeathFromSomewhere wrote:

$99 per year for access to gcc?

What the fuck are you talking about?

I am aware that Visual Studio Express allows the user to develop classic applications. But will the version of Visual Studio Express made available after the release of Windows 8 allow the user to develop Metro applications? If that were the case, then users could self-compile and -install applications from sources other than the Store, and the article states that like Apple, Microsoft doesn't want that. This is why App Hub (formerly XNA Creators Club) and the iOS developer program have an annual fee.

TFA, on one page - http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/369397/how-volunteers-rebuilt-world-war-ii-computers/print

It hasnt been released yet, but they claim to have plans to release it.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/366604/google-we-ll-open-source-android-3-0-when-its-ready

"paranoid side of the bed this morning"?
Well lets see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1041011/MI5-launch-spy-sky-UK-manhunt-British-Taliban-fought-Afghanistan.html for the interest in voice prints.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/363802/wired-coppers-the-new-technology-behind-old-bill/3 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)/CCTV.
and the http://www.independent.co.uk/news/facerecognition-cctv-launched-1178300.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4035285.stm for the joys of tracking your face...
Mix in ideas of the Data Retention Directive, the past skills of the GCHQ, MI5 funding .... you would only need to be seen near one access point.
A laptop user would have to be lucky all the time. A CCTV network only has to be lucky for a few frames...

Thanks for the link to the PC Pro article, it's very interesting and personally I felt you left out it's most interesting point:

The cited source [in the report itself, not the media articles] of that figure? None other than this report from PC Pro from 13 May.

Regretfully having read much of the report, the above is a good example of how worthless it is. PC Pro rubbishes poor media coverage of a government report, then another government report quotes PC Pro and uses the figure in exactly the wrong way that PC Pro was complaining about in the article the report is citing!

Admittedly the report does refer once to "median total cost of ownership", but either they failed to understand what that meant or failed to communicate the meaning in the report. Read para 16 & 17.

It's a very poorly written report, irritating to read and lacking in professional verse. While they appear to have sourced widely, assertions are made in the form of regurgitations of other's material, and throughout those sources are often very poor. There's no sense that they explored any of these sources in depth, let alone went into the field and investigated for themselves.

This is a pity partly as it attempts some very interesting topics and partly because a group of people running the country can't write a decent report.

However, as our report from the 13 May states: “The bottom line might make it look like Cabinet Office workers are all sitting in front of the most ridiculously expensive machines in Britain, but officials played down the figures, saying they covered more than just the hardware. According to a Cabinet Office spokesperson, the “costs cover the core infrastructure and applications – basically anything supplied by a third party’.”

(Read more: “Obscene” Whitehall IT spending or sloppy journalism? | PC Pro blog http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/07/28/obscene-whitehall-it-spending-or-sloppy-journalism/#ixzz1TUbtZD9C)

Is http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/07/28/obscene-whitehall-it-spending-or-sloppy-journalism/

Basically, they took something out of context and sensationalised it.

... that this £3,500 doesn't just cover "hardware sitting on a person's desk"; it also includes the software, support, long-term upgrade contracts, etc. This "journalism" sells newspapers (unsurprisingly, the Daily Mail featured it quite prominently) but ignores most of the facts.

I'm not denying that some money is being wasted, but nowhere near as much as this report implies. See this article for more detail.

IT may have rules and procedures in place for good reasons, but all too often those rules are followed in a passive aggressive manner to put IT in control of business, instead of the other way around.

You say that now. Then the Department Manager of your department, or the VP of Asshattery, gets caught doing various illegal things from his work desktop and IT gets word from on high to either (a) "cooperate fully" with a police investigation, (b) figure out how to hide it so it doesn't get to a police investigation, or (c) do some combination of (a) and (b) that may or may not be legal.

Departments should be stating business cases and needs and IT should be helping figure out how they can help accomplish these. Frequently, this is not how it works.

Everywhere I have worked, the process has gone line this:
- Department states business case. Part of the time, business case involves a complete lack of understanding of how the technology currently owned/operated by the company works. Part of the time, business case involves unrealistic assumptions like "it'll only take a couple days to move us from our current server environment to a completely different architecture." Part of the time, business case is actually reasonable.

- IT then figures out (a) what needs to be done to make it happen, (b) whether it can be done in a time-effective manner given the existing IT workload and available staff, (c) what it will cost to temp or outsource it if not. Sometimes there is also (d), whether the new toy the fuckwit VP du jour has purchased on company funds even does what he thinks it will do and how the FUCK to integrate it into the existing network.

The stories from developers fighting with IT are endless and all of them are countered by the same basic fear card and the general statement that users are idiots.

That's because for every story like yours, there are a dozen or more fuckwits like this or morons like this that the IT department has to contend with.

There is a general arrogance that we are on "their" systems and not that they are managing "our" systems.

And what you fail to consider is that "they" are caught between you, the user, and the weight of the company heads screaming the usual, contradictory priorities:

#1 Priority - "Just make everything work."
#1 Priority - "Keep everything safe."
#1 Priority - "Give the users what they want."
#1 Priority - "Protect the network from rogue users doing bad things."
#1 Priority - "Make the VP's latest toy cell phone plug in to everything."

Nothing that comes from "on high" for IT is ever not a "#1 Priority." IT is one of the most thankless tasks in existence. If everything is running well, people forget they exist. If something breaks or has to be taken offline for maintenance, someone is inevitably screaming bloody hell. Then they have to deal with mobile devices, 18 gazillion models of phone that everyone wants to hook in to company email, traveling flash drives that are a danger vector for worms coming in and corporate espionage going out...

Try putting yourself in their shoes once in a while. IT aren't the bad guys. They're stuck in a terrible position, under PHB's that make your department's PHB look like an utter genius by comparison, and your PHB is the guy who once took a week sick off of work after accidentally supergluing his hand to the family cat.

Here's a link to the passwords so you can check if your password is on there

Just search the page for your password. Chrome does a great job of this because it starts highlighting matching passwords as you type it. I just checked my passwords, none of them are on this list.

That link has more to the story.
How'd he afford to drive a Bentley and live in a nice house?
I wanna be "bankrupt" too!

Pertinent to the story, just spotted this in the news:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/367885/acs-law-solicitor-is-bankrupt

Blackmailing filesharers didn't turn out to be the money-spinner he anticipated it to be...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/367345/confessions-of-a-computer-repairman/print (will prompt to print though).

Bah to three pages. :P

I wonder why most of the web browsers are heading down the UI simplicity route (which people seem to like), while websites still look as horribly complicated as the one in the article's screenshot. It doesn't matter how cluttered the browser is if you have to have a headache pill out after viewing one of these sites.

On behalf of all of us... fuck you.

I help my friends with their PCs all the time. I do it out of the kindness of my heart. I help my parents when I can.

But when I help them, I also educate them. I show them what I'm doing. I doublecheck to make sure they've got up to date virus protection, up to date OS, properly locked down home network (PC direct into cable modem = AUGH).

And I tell them look - I'm your friend. I'm helping you out. But I get a ton of people asking for this every day. Coworkers constantly ask for "help" with their personal machines. Friends-of-friends. Friends want someone to help their mom, or their aunt too. I could make a full-time job of "helping friends" with their computer and NEVER MAKE A FUCKING DIME. So I have to limit it. And that means that I'll gladly help a friend out, provided that they're not just being total morons about this stuff and doing crap I warned them not to do.

Is it a bit rough? Sure. Do I want to be a 24/7 free "tech help center" for anyone who has my cell number? Fuck no.

In conclusion, if you didn't read the link the first time, fuck you. I guarantee if you treated a doctor, lawyer, carpenter, or car mechanic the way you treat the IT/Computer people, they'd tell you to fuck off as well.

On behalf of all of us... fuck you.

I help my friends with their PCs all the time. I do it out of the kindness of my heart. I help my parents when I can.

But when I help them, I also educate them. I show them what I'm doing. I doublecheck to make sure they've got up to date virus protection, up to date OS, properly locked down home network (PC direct into cable modem = AUGH).

And I tell them look - I'm your friend. I'm helping you out. But I get a ton of people asking for this every day. Coworkers constantly ask for "help" with their personal machines. Friends-of-friends. Friends want someone to help their mom, or their aunt too. I could make a full-time job of "helping friends" with their computer and NEVER MAKE A FUCKING DIME. So I have to limit it. And that means that I'll gladly help a friend out, provided that they're not just being total morons about this stuff and doing crap I warned them not to do.

Is it a bit rough? Sure. Do I want to be a 24/7 free "tech help center" for anyone who has my cell number? Fuck no.

In conclusion, if you didn't read the link the first time, fuck you. I guarantee if you treated a doctor, lawyer, carpenter, or car mechanic the way you treat the IT/Computer people, they'd tell you to fuck off as well.

Samsung has denied it's installed keyloggers on the machines. It claims Hassan's security software registered a false positive. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/366442/samsung-denies-installing-keyloggers-on-laptops

use proprietary connectors everywhere

If I remember correctly, PS3 has standard USB connectors, when 360 has proprietary modified USB (different voltage and different physical connector).

(eg. memory sticks)

If I remember correctly, early PS3 had both SD and memory stick built-in when 360 had proprietary memory cards. Arguably they got removed, like 2 of of the original 4 USB ports, but that was cost reduction and both SD and MS got removed at the same time.

try to lock you in to their products at every turn

If I remember correctly, PSP was the first Sony device to ever support MP3 natively, back in a time where WMA was the only supported format on the Microsoft side. There's a famous Krazy Ken interview.

overcharge for replacement batteries

Let me google this for you.... Oh yes you can get plenty of replacement batteries, from Sony (more expensive) or random 3rd parties (less expensive) - the decision is yours. I wonder if replacing batteries on iPhone/iPad/i* or Zune is so easy.

install viruses on your PC without asking, makte CDs that won't play on PCs

Ok Sony Music *is* really evil... But for their defense, they're the only divison, with Sony Pictures, controlled by the western side of Sony, not Japan, and having american "values". The rest of Sony made sure rootkits were prohibited forever see section 4.2.1 so that music and movies guys would be burnt at the stake if they ever did this again.

I did once see a review of a laptop which had a mini-mouse pop out on a stalk, but that wouldn't have been very comfortable to use.

How long ago? The only one I can think of is the HP Omnibook 800, and that's been out of production for over 10 years. And it wasn't as bad as you'd think, other than the mouse itself was too small (and lefties were screwed). Here's a review I found that's still up and has a picture of it, though not a good one...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/laptops/1185/hp-omnibook-800ct

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/365875/the-emergency-internet-bunkers/print (will prompt to print though).

Yeah. Here's what I'm talking about (from another ./ story from today):

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/365875/the-emergency-internet-bunkers/3

"Although ... IPRED ... requires web hosts to hand over whatever records they hold on rights infringers, thereâ(TM)s no requirement within Swedish law to retain such information â" and thus Bahnhof opts not to."

So, if a company has its head screwed on straight, it can protect its users' privacy if it wants to.

It's too late for the contest, the Apple images for Safari were already staged, so they got to exploit the old version.

Apple took a risk by patching late and obviously misjudged the timing.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/365845/safari-first-to-fall-in-hacking-contest

Until the new WebOS phones actually go on sale they are in 4th place.

4th???

The smartphone market share for the last quarter of 2010 was:

Android (33%)
Symbian (32%)
iOS (16%)
Blackberry (15%)
Microsoft, old and new OSs combined share (3%)

WebOS would be 6th or worse.

http://acsbore.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/acslaw-letters-issued-by-gcb-ltd/

and

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/364501/exposed-file-sharing-lawyers-collect-fines-using-dormant-company/2

Not to be the bearer of bad news , but Im sure the government will be corrupted by microsoft eventually http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/364438/microsoft-moves-in-on-marthas-98-pc-scheme ...

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/363580/when-computers-go-wrong/print

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/363322/updated-antivirus-firms-short-changing-customers says, "The two firms have now denied the claims"...

Or you could go read the 'print' version which is all on one page and not 75% advertisement.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/363175/who-will-win-the-battle-for-control-of-the-web/print

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/11/19/1339220

Anti-Piracy Lawyers 'Knew Letters Hit Innocents'
Posted by Soulskill on Sat November 20, 0:31
from the collateral-profit dept.

nk497 writes "A UK legal watchdog has claimed lawyers who sent out letters demanding settlement payments from alleged file-sharers knew they would end up hitting innocent people. The Solicitors Regulators Authority said the two Davenport Lyons lawyers 'knew that in conducting generic campaigns against those identified as IP holders whose IP numeric had been used for downloading or uploading of material that they might in such generic campaigns be targeting people innocent of any copyright breach.' The SRA also said the two lawyers lost their independence because they convinced right holders to allow them to act on their behalf by waiving hourly fees and instead taking a cut of the settlements. The pair earned £150,000 of the £370,000 collected from alleged file-sharers. Because they were looking to recoup their own costs, the lawyers ignored clients' concerns about the negative publicity the letter campaign could — and eventually did — cause, the SRA claimed."

Your post on this is entirely idiotic.

Of course Apple had no idea that they were distributing an App (regardless of which 3rd party submitted it) which contravened the applications original licence GPLv2?

Yet they did/can decide if any App has been developed to use interpreted code? http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357121/apple-bans-flash-from-iphone-and-ipad

They can manage to filter (censor) this award winning political cartoonist, until the world calls their bluff! http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apple-bans-satire/ how many less connected voices are also quietly sidelined?

And of course they can prevent Apps with explicit content. http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/did-apple-just-ban-sexual-content-from-the-app-store/

Still the approval process could never have known this was an issue.

The final piece of idiocy in the post is to blame gpl zealots for the fact that a free (in many more ways than you seem to understand) media player won't stay on iOS. One for that matter that enables users to sidestep the frankly idiotic patent/license/drm/locked in nonsense around video, that Apple (and several other corporate interest groups) uses for self serving, anti competitive practices. Not to mention their practices simply disadvantages users. Open formats are better for end users - end of, some things are infrastructure even in capitalism, language for example, why we should even allow formats for video etc to be tied up in IP hell I really don't know.

Frankly VLC doesn't have a proprietary, Apple approved equivalent for a simple reason - such organisations/developers have no interest in empowering you, it is the GPL zealots you complain about that take the risks to challenge these practices.

Still what do I know, why not watch your media on Apples quality media player software, while you're at it, manage your media using the excellent iTunes. I know when I want to move my data from one device I OWN, to another that I OWN, I like to actually "think different"!

Compaq - 1997

IBM - February 11, 1998

Dell - January 30, 1998

HP - February 14, 1998

Gateway - March 1, 1998

And those aren't introduction dates, they're just handy examples.

By the way, those listed companies were the top 5 PC makers in Q3 1998, globally and in the US, and they accounted for the strait-up majority of the US PC market at the time.

And Apple sold only a tiny fraction of the USB PCs bought in the era of the early iMac. "USB PC shipments were estimated at 20 million units in 1997 and 100 million units in 1999." So I'll split the difference and say 1998 saw 50 million USB PCs sold. How many were iMacs? Try 0.8 million. So that's 0.8 million versus 50 million. Let's be charitable and call that a 50:1 ratio or 2% of market share. Ouch.

Well, that wasn't a full year. How about 1999? We've seen the overall number of 100 million USB PCs, but in 1999 Apple sold only 1.8 million iMacs. So in 1999 USB iMacs again accounted for roughly 2% of the USB PC market. Still ouch.

So, the iMac was not the first PC with USB, the iMac was not the major but rather a fractionally tiny vector for USB into the marketplace, and the iMac did not "exclude all other port types."

(one page print version: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/361783/putting-the-squeeze-on-the-broadband-copper-robbers/print)

Since we're slashvertising, I had a bit of a play with Smartwater several years ago - it's actually very good stuff. Essentially, they've figured out a way to put a long unique code into UV reflective paste (which is pretty hard to clean off stuff - although not impossible, so it's best to put it in hard-to-reach places). You slap it onto anything you want to protect; the police can find it with simple UV, and can get the unique code by asking the Smartwater boffins to analyse it. It's used on money trucks, and claims to have a 100% prosecution rate (although I wonder if there's only been one prosecution or something). The Smartwater people keep your particular code unique for as long as you pay them rental of it. I wonder what they'd do if you buy some, use it, but then stop paying for it, yet some of your stuff gets nicked. I suspect they'll still tell the police who you are, but probably only after the current owner is consulted.

Learn Flash/Actionscript3/Adobe AIR. It will simply run everywhere. (cue Flash vs HTML5 flame war. off-topic, IE9 ain't coming to XP so screw that -- I'm sick of all the "this will only work on Safari" or "this will only work on Chrome" HTML5 demos. As someone who actually builds stuff for clients instead of just blogging about these technologies, this is a dealbreaker and ***FORWARD*** compatibility headache as Windows XP will never go away for the near future. The original reason I learned Flash coding was because of the bloody headache of cross-browser compatibility.)

Back on topic, Flash is coming to every single smartphone platform (and even TV set top boxes). 19 of the top 20 mobile manufacturers are already part of the consortium Adobe Open Screen Project and they're working to get Flash running on their respected platforms. Only Steve Jobs didn't sign up for whatever his reasons. Flash is now out on Android, Symbian, Maemo, coming to WinMo 7 (Flash Lite is already out on older versions of WinMo), Blackberry & Palm, definitely on Meego (Nokia Maemo + Intel Moblin).

Flash CS5 can now be used to make native iPhone apps legally again as per App Store policies (the process is the same as making an Adobe AIR app). Here's a refresher on exporting your AIR project into iOS: Packager for iPhone Refresher.

There's some surprising current statistics to fix one's perspective on the death of Flash by the iOS gadget crowd. Currently 97% of the internet is Flash capable and iOS only has 1.1% share. Of course, the iOS share will increase as more customers buy them, but think of that when building stuff with the widest reach possible. Also, currently, devs seem to be monetizing the most on iOS, but the App store is now *so* *so* *so* saturated that it's hard for a new app to get noticed amidst all the noise.

Flash 10.1 is already out on Android Froyo (2.2) and AIR for Android is currently in public beta and should come out soon http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air2/android/ so Flash is already good to go if you want to target Android.

Another thing to consider is that Android market share has now overtaken iOS and since there's not enough decent content on the Android and Adobe AIR marketplaces compared to the Apple App Store, if you build a good app on any of those platforms, it's easier to pull in a user base since there isn't much competition yet.

Your Flash apps would run on Symbian^3 devices which are already out (N8, C3, etc) as they have all Flash Lite 4.0 (A slightly stripped down version of Flash 10 which already runs AVM2 AS3 swfs). In fact, Nokia just launched the $10million Calling All Innovators N8 app contest and Flash is one of the formats you can enter in.

Not only will your apps run on mobile devices if you build 'em in AIR, they will also run on Desktop Linux, Mac & Windows and that is the biggest plus for me. For complaints about the cost of Adobe tools, you can build SWFs and AIR apps from completely Open Source tools. The Flex SDK is FOSS and you can build apps just with your .AS3 sourcecode + a command line just like with the JDK for Java (or pick any appropriate IDE of your choice to make your life easier). Oh, btw, the commercial Flash Builder is free for students & teachers + developers who're hit by the economic crisis and are currently unemployed -> apply here for license.

Of course, please don't forget to *optimize* *optimize* *optimize*. Flash is not a slow platform. T

Heck, Canonical will ship you a disc with Ubuntu on for free, so it can't be that pricy.

Canonical had to do some cutbacks to it's ShipIt program due to the high costs.

""It's absurd to expect ordinary members of the public to think "

Really?

"They are comparable to prohibition in the US in the 1920s."
How? A ban on liquor is equated to a making music copying illegal?

hey! look what you get when you cut and paste from TFA. A little rider on the bottom...

Read more: Music chief: preventing file-sharing is a "waste of time" | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/359458/music-chief-preventing-file-sharing-is-a-waste-of-

While Microsoft is pushing 64-bit as a way to gain performance in the OS, it earlier this year advised users to install the 32-bit version of Office 2010, 'because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition.'"

may be technically true, but is irrelevant to whether people should use 32-bit or 64-bit. 32-bit programs such as Office run just fine in 64-bit Windows. Running a 64-bit OS is going to improve performance (in most situations) if your other applications use a lot of memory.

Light Peak devices are 6 years away (at best)

Where did you get that from?!
According to this, Light Peak will be available to manufacturers by the end of this year.

Absolutely, it's the 99% of the lawyers that give the rest a bad name...

Seriously though, it's not that often that criminal lawyers (most of the ones you list) annoy me, though I have contempt for the one that threatened Gary McKinnon with the eventual death penalty if he didn't stop fighting extradition, for example - and there's AMPLE examples of prosecutions that should never have happened.

Many civil lawyers, especially those that work for large firms or on class action suits are simply parasites on society though. It's not like we can even avoid them - they insert themselves into everything, from drafting the worst parts of the Digital Economy Bill, to the impenetrable legal 'contracts' that come with everything these days to sending threatening letters to if they don't pay up right now, threatening sanctions that aren't even in the law, based on virtually no evidence that itself is frequently wrong - and have admitted that it is a profitable business, as of *course* no-one would ever pay up in confusion or fear or to just make it go away, they *must* be guilty, so we shall do more of it!

And oddly enough, many politicians started out as lawyers. So they start with using obscure, badly written and vague laws to beat down competitors and exploit the customers; then going into the legislature, where they draft obscure, badly written and vague laws to supposedly tackle one thing, and end up having loopholes big enough for a truck-driving tax avoidance expert to drive though.

Are all lawyers worthless? Of course not. Do they have a similar level of worthless people doing worthless* jobs as say, estate agents, advertising executives and telesales people? Oh, yes.

*worthless to you, me, and the general good of society. I'm sure they're worth quite a bit in financial terms to the lawyer in question.

I remembered seeing a few stories about the BT HomeHub being weak.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3258-bt-to-close-remote-assistance-hole-on-home-hub.html
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/09/bt_home_hub_vuln/
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/201312/bt-home-hub-spits-out-password-to-hackers

So how come I can't run Firefox or seaMonkey on the iPhone?

"Last year, Mozilla claimed it was “too hard” to develop for the iPhone, claiming Apple placed too many restrictions on the user interface. Instead, Mozilla looks set to continue focusing its development effort on rival platforms."

From:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357601/no-firefox-for-iphone-despite-opera-s-success