Two words for you: Patent portfolio.

Bullshit.

VHS won for a simple reason: it was adopted by the porn industry.

Same's true for virtually all technology. Hell, one of the reasons people started to read was because of an Italian book describing sexual positions.

> To back up a program you copy it to a source then copy it back and run it. No install programs that install malware. Windows users are just used to bad things.

Not always true, unfortunately. Quite a few mac applications come with installers if they're doing anything even remotely clever with the underlying OS - Parallels does, as does gimp-print.

It's not unusual to find that bothering to write an uninstaller in the first place - never mind one that actually uninstalls everything - simply never happens. Fortunately this is seldom a big problem, but it can be an annoyance nonetheless and if you claim it doesn't happen you're either ignorant or disingenuous.

("Ignorant" isn't an insult, BTW, it simply means "you did not know" - and there's seldom shame in not knowing something. But it's frequently used as an insult by.... well, I guess ignorant people. People who did not know that it shouldn't be used as such.)

The trick with Ryanair is you don't give them an opportunity to have a problem.

Which means:

  - You make damn sure you check in online and have access to a reliable printer to print the boarding pass.
  - You never check in luggage. If necessary, you purchase a cabin-bag sized suitcase (there's lots on the market and they're made to fit carry on allowance size down to the centimetre).
  - You schedule your time so as to arrive at the airport well in advance (something you pretty much have to do with ever increasing security paranoia anyway).
  - You check before you board whether or not you're allowed a separate bag for duty free purchases (depends on the airport for some weird reason).
  - You never, under any circumstances, attempt to board the plane with anything that isn't in your bag or in a pocket. Newspaper under one arm? Nope.
  - You check ID requirements before you leave. Many airlines are imposing policies regarding what ID they require before they board you that have nothing to do with passport requirements at your destination.

We do. Like the GP said, Cheddar and Cider.

Strangely, it seems our best cheese - and for that matter cider - is made by people who have a proud tradition - stretching back many generations - of marrying their cousins.

And I don't mean for "waah waah antitrust" reasons, I mean because I honestly think we'd see a hell of a lot more innovation in more productive directions. A parent company might hold majority shareholdings in the subsidiaries, but daily operations (including pretty much all strategic thinking) should come from the individual companies Microsoft would be split into, not from the big hulking brute that is Microsoft today.

The idea being that

Off the top of my head, you'd wind up with:

  - Home Entertainment. Gets the XBox. Without the "mustn't play nicely with others" mentality coming from the top, they could license DAAP and integrate with Apple, maybe use the xbox as some sort of media centre that can stream to devices around the house.
  - Operating systems. Gets Windows - both client and server. Because it's now effectively a separate company, they can build stronger relationships with others - the concern that there's a conflict of interest somewhere mostly evaporates.
  - Enterprise Software. Gets SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, maybe IIS. Without the "must integrate everything 15 ways from Sunday and run only on Windows" push coming from HQ, there's scope to openly publish integration mechanisms.
  - Productivity Software: Gets Office, Visio etc. Opens the door for publishing an API that allows third party companies wanting to build a Sharepoint-alike and integrate just as seamlessly as Sharepoint does. (Or does Sharepoint just use WebDAV?)

We already have such an agreement, it's called Safe Harbor. The EU already has strong privacy laws; to store information with US companies they have to be Safe Harbor registered.

It's arguably pretty meaningless because it's self-certified - it has one purpose and one purpose only. To enable European companies to tick the box that says "We're keeping data safe".

Thing is, while we can all wring our hands and say "Ah, but PRISM changes everything" - it doesn't. It doesn't change a single damn thing until such time as regulators officially voice an opinion to that effect. Which frankly I can't see happening because those regulators are charged with upholding the law as written - and the law as written doesn't say anything about international spying programs having any impact on what's considered safe and what isn't.

Then either you're incredibly naive or you've never looked at what you get with most cloud providers.

Those £15/month virtual servers? You don't get any redundancy on those. If you're lucky, the provider will move it to a new physical host if the one it's living on breaks down, but they won't make any guarantees regarding how quickly that will happen or how automated and transparent that process is.

IME, the pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap brigade are punting exactly this. It's a whole bunch of physical boxes running something like Xen with a web-based front end but none of the work necessary to make it truly highly available has been carried out.

You want true high availability in the cloud - where even an entire datacentre going dark won't affect you? Well, then you have two choices:

  - Architect your own. This means you will need several cheap virtual servers and you'll have to write your own software that accounts for all the various failure modes. Yes, this is difficult. Yes, this means you can't just fire up an Ubuntu image with Apache preinstalled on AWS and forget about it. Yes, this means it's a hell of a lot more expensive because suddenly you need to pay for lots of virtual servers rather than just one or two and you need to put a hell of a lot more work into the development process. But that was a choice you made when you went for the cheap option. Oh, you thought that because they used the word "cloud" in their marketing, that meant they'd already done all that for you? Ah.... no. Sorry.

  - Contract it out to a company that has already built all this at the virtualisation level so you don't need to worry about it at the OS level. They operate a highly-available infrastructure with redundant everything and guarantees that even if something does fail, the redundancy will kick in automatically and you'll see no downtime. There are companies that offer this, but you might want to sit down with a strong drink before you look at their pricing structure. Clue: It's a hell of a lot more than £15/month for a basic virtual server.

Your options at the time for a Windows-like OS were Windows '9x or NT 4.

NT 4 didn't have any sort of power management whatsoever.

So in the context of the time, it's accurate.

No, but pretty much every major ISP operates a transparent cache and they could very easily be ordered to keep the very presence of the block a secret.

I already have a device that streams content just fine. It's called a PVR. Why should I buy a second box to stream media just because Netflix refuse to sign up for the one I already have?

Where does this stop? If, say, Hulu set up in the UK and get a series that's exclusive to them, will I have to get a third box to stream that?

What we have right now with streaming devices is broadly the same as HD-DVD vs. BluRay, DVD vs. LaserDisc and VHS vs. Betamax - only instead of just two standardised methods to get the media to the TV, there's loads of mechanisms with precisely zero standardisation. There's AppleTV, there's Roku, Humax have a scheme for their PVRs, there's YouView (a rebadged Humax box, though it doesn't use the same portal), there's the XBox 360's media centre, there's apps for the Wii - the list goes on and on.

No doubt in the fullness of time this will coalesce into some sort of single standard - we already have most of the technology in place. Until that time, I'm sitting this one out. You want to sell me something, you either make it work with what I already have or you standardise the technology so any manufacturer's streaming box can be used to sign up for any streaming service.

I'm well aware. But if I'm going to watch Netflix, I'm going to watch it on the whacking great 40" TV in my lounge. Not the rather smaller 15" screen on my laptop.

However, I do not have anything that is permanently plugged into that TV that is capable of streaming Netflix. Or, more accurately, I have equipment plugged into the TV that is hypothetically capable of streaming Netflix but nothing that is practically capable in the real world. I am not prepared to jump through hoops in order to be someone else's customer, even if those hoops are relatively straightforward (such as plug my laptop into the TV). It may be a relatively tiny hoop, but it's a hoop all the same and frankly, there are too many of those in my life as it is. I will not add another.

There are already three boxes plugged into the telly (PVR, amp and DVD player), one of which left the factory with streaming capability built right in (PVR). The manufacturer of the PVR is still in business and appears quite open to discussions regarding getting content providers onto their system; it is no concern of mine that Netflix have not engaged with them.

The service integrates with what I already have or it doesn't get even tried in the first place, never mind bought.

Most PVRs with an ethernet port will do something similar - it's not unusual functionality by any means. It's an absolute mystery to me why companies like Netflix seldom partner with PVR makers; it's such an obvious partnership you'd think they'd all do it.

Actually it doesn't. My PVR will happily read MPEG 4 files from a fileshare; I just need to drop them on there.

I've never pirated Breaking Bad - I don't find TV that exciting. But it would be easier.

I didn't, but even if I did, it wouldn't make much difference because Breaking Bad is on Netflix in the UK.

Netflix isn't available over the air so I can't get it from that.

Netflix doesn't bounce signals off a satellite so I can't get it with satellite TV.

Netflix don't run a channel through Virgin's cable network, so I can't get it with Virgin (even if they did, my town isn't cabled).

My PVR is a Humax, and has its own Internet-based portal but that doesn't allow you to watch any arbitrary Internet-delivered channel; only channels that have partnered with Humax to provide it. Netflix have not partnered with Humax.

I'm not a big gamer, so the Wii isn't even plugged in any more and I'm not about to plug it in for one show.

Yes, I can plug the laptop in; it has an HDMI connection. But the laptop doesn't have the same convenience as all the other equipment that's controlled from a Logitech Harmony remote. So already Netflix is looking at least a little inconvenient (yes I know there are /.'ers who don't consider it the slightest inconvenience to repurpose an old PC as a Roku box and control it with a full keyboard but I'm not one of them).

The UK is chock-full of "Only £5/month!" deals; most of them have strings attached like "rises to £15/month after 3 months, minimum contract period 18 months" in microscopically small print. So I'm naturally wary of anything that involves regular payment - particularly as it's only for one show and I have no idea whether or not I'd like to keep it for anything else.

Lazy? Maybe. But I took the decision a long time ago that I mess around with technology enough for work purposes; I'm buggered if I'm going to do the same for leisure. Once plugged in and setup, it either JFW or it's not plugged in in the first place.