That's great. How do you propose we go about it? Just sitting around in a Facebook group bitching won't accomplish anything.

It influenced the Christmas Number 1 in the UK massively.

Another Cisco Mac user here - been using one for more than 4 years. I don't even have a Windows VM any more and make do with the pain that is Entourage.

Cisco is moving its business to not depend on any particular platform and we run community supported Ubuntu, SuSE, CentOS, OS X, Windows 7 and more builds internally, as well as instructional wiki's and mirrors. In addition, you can always fall back to the IT supported Windows XP images.

It works really well and it's incredibly empowering to just run whatever tools you want to get your job done - this isn't an exclusive club either - this is everyone from sales guys, SE's, coders and more. At our frequent tech meetings I'm betting at least a quarter the users are not running Windows in the room (most using OS X these days).

Really, Cisco should be seen as a model for other companies to mirror their (very large scale) IT ideology from. I'm convinced that the productivity and employee satisfaction from being able to use a Mac or a non-IT Windows platform pays for itself tenfold.

Funny thing is as a dyslexic student they spent ages correcting my basic English. Hours doing they're, their, there etc.

After a while I learned how to overcome my dyslexia and amazingly can now out-spell and out-grammar the vast majority of my peers at work. The reason? Because I was dyslexic I got corrected and cared for.

The kids who weren't? Well they were 'normal' and no one bothered. Yeah, I still have trouble spelling necessary (which is what spell checkers are for), but I understand the basics of English and have high spelling and grammar competence.

What's wrong with using, say, DirectShow/Quicktime/FFMPEG/etc on various platforms provided those libraries exist and using a built-in theora for basic compatibility?

I understand the patent dispute and it does make sense, but why not pass the buck on the most popular platforms and get a different library to render the video?

The pub is just a central point of British culture.

Try getting directions from a Brit without them referring to various pubs along the route.

Ask a Brit to meet you in town and see if they don't involve a pub in it somehow.

The pub to the Brit is like a café to your continental European. It's not just to go and get sloshed, it's just a major social area.

As for having a pint at lunch time, what's wrong with that? A good pint of ale with some lunch is hardly a sign of alcholism and anyone who says otherwise is over-exciting the issue.

I run my own private SMTP (postfix) and IMAP (courier) server to handle my mail across my various domains. I then use getmail to pull my ISP stuff down too and amavis + spamassassin to reduce my spam.

However, this all gets pulled down in to my gmail account where pretty much every email I've ever had is archived in a fast, easy to search archive with more than ten years of email backfilled, tagged and searchable. Gmail also picks up about 100 extra spam mails a week that my own filtering misses.

The web interface is great for me, as I find most dedicated clients to be clunky, especially when handling gigabytes of mail (and this is mostly pure mail, not attachments). Even Mutt when opening a Maildir/ of this size takes some time for me (if you know how to speed this up, get in touch!). I can also access my mail from pretty much anywhere and the interface works great on my iPhone and corporate Nokia.

So... show me a client that can pull that volume of mail, store it in a non-fragile format and search it instantly without me having to spend a very long time sorting it in to folders and I might agree I don't have the brains... However, I suspect there isn't a good solution out there for all that, so I'm sticking with Gmail for the time being.

Thus, these guys are setting most of the major network standards, as well as implementing them.

If the cable is made to specification and thus does what it's sold to do -- for $6 or $80 then it will transfer your digital signals properly.

If it doesn't, you're almost certainly within your consumer rights to return the faulty cable for a full refund or replacement.

However, I doubt any special manufacturing process has gone in to making the $80 cable any better than the $6 one and they are both built to the exact same specifications and tolerances.

I get the NFL here in the UK in HD (mostly) and the picture quality is usually of good quality. Sounds like a problem with the decoding or something your local station is doing maybe?

The tabloid crowd will almost always equate paedophilia (or homosexuality or whatever) with abuser/rapist.

I don't know if it is that, but that's what they'll always call you.

None of those things are really that bad though - having the option and market regulation to provide basic safety features in a very dangerous environment (i.e. car) is a GOOD THING.

I don't care who pressured the industry, but except for the 55mph thing, I think seat belts, DUI laws and airbags should be law and everyone should have the responsibility/choice to use them. The motor industry isn't famous for putting safty first!

Now this MPAA thing just sucks. I use the analog output from my box to feed to the kitchen for when I'm cooking. No way would I want them to suddenly stop allowing me to watch stuff in another room just on a whim. But that's got nothing to do with my car having safty features!

In my opinion the police should follow up every call.

Even if completely legal activity is occurring, it would be grossly irresponsible to say "No crime here" if the person is distressed enough to call.

Worst case, fine them for wasting police time.