I think Smith could have made a much better doctor if he'd been given the role ten years later. I don't understand the need for ever younger doctors, I'd like to see a return to an older actor with more gravitas. I really liked Tenant, but mainly because he brought something different to the role, I don't want that approach to become the norm.

You missed the part about being cowards or dying all the time. Both Mickey and Rory were protrayed, at least at the start, as bumbling idiots more interested in running away from danger than diving in (and reluctantly being dragged into dangerous situations by their headstrong female companions). Both did eventually get storylines in which they got to play a more heroic role, but then it seems like the interest in doing anything with them tapers out and they either revert to form, or they leave, or we see an event every week that isolates them from the doctor and the female companion who go on to save the day themselves.

Could be even more interesting than the human companions, who we're meant to believe are both simultaneously brilliant, able to save the universe and solve complex logic problems, but also ask a stream of mundane questions (largely so that unfamiliar concepts can be explained to a varied audience). At least with an alien visitor there would be a reason for asking questions about everyday things. They'd have to be mostly human in appearance though, as the majority of the storylines are centred around human characters (I assume for budgetary reasons) and they'd need to blend in more often than not.

What basic expectation of privacy is there on the internet? The misguided belief that there is privacy is a huge problem for society. If we all acted on the internet as if we had zero expectation of privacy there's a chance we might take security more seriously, or that people might actually be civil toward one another.

Having a partner who works in a hospital and having done some contract work for the national heath service myself, I have to say hospitals have a LONG way to go before they get to this point. They've not even managed to solve this dream of having universal access to patient records and interoperability with purchasing systems etc on wired desktops effectively yet (and the number of times the whole system grinds to a halt and they have to revert to paper is scary).

That's before they have to add in the complication of wireless data access (being ubiquitous enough inside what are often old buildings with incredibly thick walls - most hospitals I've been in are communication black spots - yet not so intrusive that it interferes with medical equipment) and the issue of battery life (the first time a faulty charger results in a tablet dying and essential patient information not being available at a critical juncture, the whole scheme will come under harsh review). They also have the issue that a lot of staff are reticent to even interact with existing technology and are likely to view something even newer and wizzier with a good deal of suspicion (although done right, tablets with a simplified interface might actually help reduce some of that tech nervousness).

Spot on. The problem as I see it is when companies are allowed to have such diverse interests, how do consumers fight back anymore. If Ford do something bad, you can stop buying their cars/parts/paying them for a service. It's not difficult to identify their products and it's relatively easy for you to actively avoid them. In the case of Sony, they have so many fingers in so many pies, you'd need to be on constant alert to avoid putting money into their pockets. Don't like the practices of their music arm? Well good luck buying a TV or camera or phone or pretty much any home media kit or even Blu-Rays or any recordable media in fact, or in car entertainment or going to see a movie or ... well, you get the picture. Suddenly avoiding them is a full time job, you have to be an incredibly clued up customer to spot their involvement with some of these products. Even if their music arm takes a battering over this (and past experience tells me they won't), they'd just cover the losses elsewhere until business picked back up. I won't say it wouldn't hurt them a little, but it's not like they have to comply with customer demands or face going out of business. All those people who say "if you stand up to a bully they'll stop bullying you" probably never stood up to a bully. It might work occasionally, but most of the time it'll just get you pounded into the dirt.

Same here, my last Sony purchase was a PS1, and technically I don't think that counts since I bought it second hand with all the games I cared about for it. At least once a year Sony demonstrates how little it cares about either its customers or humanity in general, and every time there is a huge "let's boycott Sony" call, yet they're still there, still doing the same crap. They probably feel by this point that they can never do anything so bad that it wouldn't be forgiven/forgotten - I'd love to see a real groundswell of opinion force a true boycott and see them change their ways (because honestly, some of their products do look nice, you just know if you buy into them they're likely to explode, or have features removed after sale, or be locked down or have rootkits hidden in them, or they'll lose your credit card details, etc).

That's a little harder to disguise on a date though, unless you can somehow contrive to always be sitting down when you meet. Maybe a fake broken leg or something :)

By that logic though, it's impossible for us to buy the record labels' music, because we're not getting the file we paid for, we're getting a copy of a copy of a file at best (assuming both the distribution website makes a copy of the original and my PC downloads a copy of that, in reality there could be many more steps in between). That either means we're buying a license - in which case the license should be transferable regardless of whether we're giving them the original file or a copy OR we're not getting what we paid for and everyone who downloads from legal music services is actually downloading a file they have no rights to. This all just goes to highlight how stupid it is trying to apply physical laws to digital transactions in the first place.

Nope - the contempt is an ongoing offence that lasts while ever you fail to deliver the requested password. Since he has literally no way of delivering said password, his contempt sentence could theoretically be completely open ended (pending either a successful appeal or the judge showing leniency if he believes after X years that whatever is on the drive wouldn't be worth serving this much time for).

That's a little bit different though. It's perfectly normal to have a partition filled with garbage if the drive has seen extensive use (particularly if someone else had the drive before you and may have used a tool to destroy all their data). Having an encrypted file which you claim contains nothing illegal but which you never had a password for because you just created it with a huge random string password and left it sitting on the drive is odd behaviour to say the least. A judge is more likely to believe you in the first scenario than the second, and really contempt comes down to what the judge believes. Give him something to make him unusually suspicious and that's how he's going to react. I wonder if it would help if there were a reason for the huge random encrypted file - maybe if you were working with encryption/decryption and had reason to have a few garbage files around for testing purposes (although I'm not sure what the legality is of working on decryption methods in the first place, never having had to find out).

Probably worse than that even, since most safes can be brute forced more easily than a 60+ digit randomly generated password.

You're making no sense. To protect yourself legally, you are creating a fake file that looks suspicious and draws attention to your actions when you know that, even under threat of imprisonment without trial, you have no way of unlocking the file to prove your innocence? That's like buying a car for cash, filing off all the identifying marks and number plates, destroying all the paperwork and hiding it under a sheet in a garage to "protect yourself legally" - the police are instantly going to think it's stolen and you have left yourself no way to prove that it's not. If you want to protect yourself legally and the file really doesn't contain anything incriminating and you really don't have the means to decrypt it, why not just delete it?

Killing Napster was the biggest mistake RIAA ever made. Instead of taking advantage of this established, centralised hub of distribution and cutting some good deals for DRM free, inexpensive content, they killed it and caused a slew of replacement sites to rise in its stead. They've been fighting the same battle now for over a decade with no end in site, meanwhile they've slowly been dragged down the route of cheaper, DRM free, convenient content that they could have chosen from the start, and as a result they've alienated a lot of people in the interim.

GP wasn't defending copyright, he was stating that some facilities are so useful we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water by closing them down just to prevent those who chose to misuse them.