Mine (not quite that early) had a bug that gave the wrong colours with our (Hitachi?) TV. According to Sir Clive, this was the fault of the TV manufacturer for 'not following standards'. Expecting Sinclair to test the Spectrum hardware with a range of commonly used televisions before release was, of course, completely out of the question...

I originally had the 16k model, partly funded by the refund from a ZX81 (actually two in succession) that had conveniently died - QC was not Sinclair's strong point. Increasing this to a (massive!) 48k was my first experience of an internal hardware upgrade, with chips bought from some mail order supplier that advertised in the back of Sinclair User. They were buggers to insert (an uncle with electronics experience was enlisted to help force them into place without trashing anything).

The article also doesn't mention the controversy about Elite Systems and their apparent failure to pay the developers they are making money off:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/a...

Firefox wil be copying this behaviour within a week. That's why we have SeaMonkey.

A cynic might suggest that the UK Government doesn't care about file formats any more than MS does, and the whole whole "we're seriously considering alternatives" thing is just a ploy to get a better deal on Office...

Sorry, but that's just Double Dutch to me.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In South Africa, HIV denialists advised by the Duesberg cult were in charge of public health policy for several years, leading to a tragedy of genocidal proportions:

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

So wait, you're saying that narrow corporate interests were trying to push their own inferior solution in place of a technically superior system strongly preferred by the userbase? There seems to be something vaguely familiar about this scenario, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

Join us! Give yourself to the Dark Side. It is the only way you can save your friends. Yes, your thoughts betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. And we have cooler spaceships and better dialogue.

The FBI's top 10 malware packages in full:

10. Conficker
  9. Zeus
  8. Melissa
  7. LOVEYOU
  6. Ask toolbar
  5. Windows 8
  4. Stoned
  3. Stuxnet
  2. Cryptolocker
  1. Slashdot Beta

In an earlier Snowden story, it was revealed that:

"British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) reportedly used spoofed LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to compromise the computers of network engineers working for global roaming exchange providers based in Europe."

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?...

Is it possible that all of us, right now, are logged into a spoofed page that has replaced the real Slashdot for reasons known only to GCHQ and the NSA? 'Beta' is probably the final stage in whatever sinister plot they have planned for us. Incredible, I know, but is it any less likely than the alternative, that a job search site none of us had ever heard of would buy Geeknet for $20 million, and then proceed to trash its properties by a series of bizarre decisions like setting up SlashBI (beware the tumbleweed!) and inflicting Beta on its loyal readers? Just how far does this conspiracy go?

No, I just chuck this stuff out there without too much thought - much like the Slashdot Beta development process.

Yes, but it's a lovingly crafted completely functional working system that preserves both the spirit and the full capabilities of the original, and the project team has worked very hard to avoid unnecessary deviations from its (highly successful) 20th Century specification. Pretty much the opposite, then, of Slashdot Beta.

It's about a dictatorial regime imposing a new version of its software on what it sees as a captive population of users, with a generic new user interface obviously copied from somewhere else.

Oh sorry, you meant Red Star, not Slashdot Beta! No idea. Looks like Linux.

No, don't JUST post rants here. But post them here as well. Then perhaps somebody with a financial interest in this site who would otherwise see only pre-filtered comments from whoever is in charge of this Windows-8 style fiasco ("we've had some very positive feedback from seven of the target demographics listed in Happy Table 5") will happen to come across what most people on here actually think. Which is that Beta sucks.

With ebooks, the 'region lock' is at the time of purchase. Amazon US will happily ship printed books to (e.g.) the UK, but you can't (officially) buy US Kindle books from a UK-registered account. You can use the Amazon UK Kindle store, of course, but if the price is higher or the book simply isn't available in the UK, tough luck. For obvious reasons all this is about as effective as the DVD region lock, but if DRM and location checking were perfect, country-specific ebooks wouldn't be available elsewhere.