From what I know Windows has had this since forever (Request for remote assistance via msn messenger)

Dammit, all those 'nucu-lar' power plants in France and elsewhere for nought, if only you'd posted earlier.....

Hookers n blow?

That was a well known hoax by the Top Gear people (they caused the problem I believe... google it) which they admitted not to mention the main guy is apparently very biased towards Hydrogen Cells and actively derides EV tech

Simply because a massive chunk or majority of people believe something doesn't make it true - ref: Geocentric theory

As another poster said it was a lack of information and regulation. The 'ownership society' part was a somewhere in the range of 10's of billions not the trillions already sunk. It was the disconnect between people that were giving out the mortgages and risk. If they had no incentive in checking out the ability of someone to pay back a mortgage, why would they not engage in risky behaviour - after all it was legal.

That's its lowest sensitivity setting. It can detect from 1 ppm upto 10k ppm. If you wanted to convert it to per hundred it'd be something like 0.000001 to 1 parts per hundred. Not exactly standard notation

Couple of issues

• 1) I want to download my movies in high quality. I can't - the best quality is crappy Apple HD - if I go the illegal way I can get high quality and its conveniently packaged
• 2) The same applied for music for a decade before some sanity was restored courtesy of Apple having them over a barrel
• 3) I like to DVR programs and store them for posterity. I used to have an analog Media Center hooked up but now I need to either buy their equipment (cable card) with encrypted content (Anti DRM person), use their DVR equipment AND that not only doesn't allow me to do what I want but has a tiny hard drive allowing me to record a couple of high definition shows (no they don't have an eSata port or allow expansion)
• 4) My cable bill is north of 80 dollars a month (premium channels etc) but I'm not getting the product I want.
• 5) If I went the way of DVD-Sets it's illegal for me to rip movies I buy (DVD / DeCSS / Bluray equivalent etc) to my computer
• 6) If I buy the DVD-sets as per their opinion I'm buying a license not the product yet I have to pay again to re-buy it in high definition (double dipping on their part)
• 7) The MAFIAA is to put it nicely evil and a monopoly. (oligopoly?).
• 8) Copyright exists to benefit the people not MAFIAA and their cohorts in-spite of their destroying it.

Generally in a competitive market what the consumer is willing to pay for the consumer gets. Not what is forced down their throat and enforced by a bought and paid for government. I like spending my money on movies and music. I go to the movies regularly (inspite of having a pretty good home theater). But if instead of trying to woo me as a customer the only thing they do is a big middle finger at me...........

• What would be fair would be to reduce copyright back to the original 7-14 years with progressively higher licensing fees making it ever more onerous for them to hold onto copyright of something non profitable. Perhaps do it on a percentage of revenue (would say profit but we know how they cook their books)
• Create a central licensing authority for all media (that can be copyrighted) - books, videos, music whatever. An artist registers their copyright and a copy is stored there . A consumer could then buy a license and download (or have a physical copy shipped) in whatever format they choose.
• Tack on a transit fee (bandwidth or shipping) to allow for the costs to be recouped if your downloading a bluray vs a dvd (preferably torrents to minimize the load)
• The above also eliminates DRM
• Have a network of private providers feeding of the central authority (create an API linked with a payment system). This would allow innovation - say an iphone store etc to be driven independantly
• Artists could independently add their work and hire a 'marketing company' to market it. (bye bye RIAA hello to a bunch of marketing companies)
• Provide a mechanism where-in the content will be universally available upon release (one could perhaps copyright it from day X indicating pre-production and on release anywhere its available on the repository) preventing them from gaming markets further minimizing incentive for anyone to pirate content
• Somebody smarter then me could add in clever incentives for individual (non corporate) content creation.

The problem is a failure of markets caused by the MAFIAA and their ilk and can easily be fixed by ignoring them imho

Ditto for Windows. I use both and have been frustrated by both. Running a dual video card setup Linux (Ubuntu) often craps out when configuring the display (need to manually edit Xorg.conf) On the other hand I've had Windows crap out because a single service got corrupted e.g. IIS's configuration got corrupted (can't uninstall / reinstall IIS - get a 1053 error on other services - windows installer service dead). With an in-place reinstall borking the entire thing coupled with a wipe and new install - the new install ending with a ran out of activation error. Not exactly user friendly Both have their pro's and con's. Out of the box windows 'just works' far better (binary drivers, multiple displays whatever). On the other hand if anything does go wrong good luck ever figuring it out SOP seems to be to wipe and reinstall it

From TFA its a beta status driver that makes the api available. Is there any timeframe for when the release version comes out (Holding off on an upgrade O:-))

Don't know about you but try playing back a 1080p H.264 video file and watch it choke to death and then some.