Yeah... except... over the last few decades, technology advances like this at the cutting edge of racing technology have translated within a few years to increased fuel efficiency and so on in production cars.

Vehicle technology gets driven forward by the people who sink lots of money into vanity projects like this. We all end up benefiting from it.

Yes, there are some versions that can be upgraded to a firmware which (by some reports at least) fixes the problem. And there are others which aren't.

I bought a pair of drives within a month of each other off Amazon. The first came with the non-upgradable firmware. The second came with the fixable version. It really does seem to be pot luck.

I live in mortal terror of the Seagate Squeak. This is an intermittent sound that their 2 and 3 GB Barracudas sometimes start to make after a while, which sounds a little like a bird chirp. It's apparently caused by crap power management on the drive.

There's actually very little information out there on whether or not it is a definitive precursor of drive failure, or just something those drives start to do after a while. However, it's so unsettling that I've ended up pre-emptively replacing two drives in my home PC which developed it.

I've played MMORPGs on and off since 2003. If anything, the trend these days in MMOs in the West is very much against needing the kind of time commitment that was common in the early days of the genre.

In the days before WoW, MMOs generally required a very, very serious investment of time if you really wanted to get much out of them. In Final Fantasy XI, which was (by the most reliable metrics) the most successful pre-WoW MMORPG, simply reaching maximum level would require many months of playtime, most of which was spent grinding (killing enemies over and over again in a repetitive cycle). The end-game content would require many, many consecutive hours spent waiting for rare monsters to spawn. I was working a job with more or less 9-to-5 hours when I played it, which meant I could never get to the top ranks. But for the 18 months or so I played it seriously, it was by far my most time consuming leisure activity (probably peaking at around 30 hours a week).

Part of the reason behind WoW's success was that, by design, it eliminated much of the timesink component that had previously been associated with the genre. The level-up process was pretty fast; weeks rather than months for an average gamer (and probably only days when measured in time actually spent in-game). The days of camping timed monster spawns were largely gone, replaced by "instanced" end-game content that guilds could schedule at will. In theory, the time commitment required fell a lot with WoW - and almost every other global MMORPG since has followed WoW in this streamlining.

Of course, WoW certainly didn't end the "MMOs ate my life" stories. In fact, by opening the genre to a wider audience, it increased their frequency. WoW touched off a very competitive streak in a lot of people; and to be one of the most successful guilds in progress terms, you needed to put in a fairly serious schedule of raids (the instanced end-game dungeons). An average guild schedule would have 4 raids per week of 4 hours each, with a 75% attendance requirement for players. On top of this, most players would need to spend at least a couple more hours making in-game money to finance their raiding activities. And many players would have more than one character. So the time required to play at the high levels was still fairly severe. But at least players had the option of more casual play schedules, while still getting some measure of enjoyment out of the game.

And over the years, Blizzard (and their competitors) have actually worked to blunt the edges of the most punishing raid schedules and have, in essence, throttled access to end-game content so that there's much less point in sinking your whole life into the game. There are generally limits (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) on how much progress players can make in a week. You won't be locked out of the game after a certain period (outside of China, or unless parental controls are enabled), but you will rapidly run into diminishing returns. This holds true across most current MMOs; WoW, Old Republic, Lord of the Rings Online, Final Fantasy 14 and so on. The only possible exception (and I don't play it so I can't say for sure) is Eve Online.

So basically, if you are playing a modern "global" MMORPG and you are pumping your whole life into the game, you are playing it wrong. Of course, some people do still play it this way and some Asian MMORPGs are still designed around older mechanics that make a near-whole-life commitment essential. But the people who pumping their whole life into WoW, or who choose to play those Asian MMOs despite their many shortcomings compared to superior "global" offerings are almost certainly doing so because of other issues in their life rather than the game mechanics.

Actually, shareholders are often quite happy to see down-scaling from an under-performing company. In the West, where we tend to have more activist shareholders these days (in part a reaction to Enron, but also driven by other shareholder movements like the one that ousted Eisner from Disney), Nintendo would be getting a lot of visible pressure right now to shed the loss-making parts of its business.

That would almost inevitably mean the home console hardware.

Want to lobby Nintendo for DVD playback?

Or region unlocking?

I don't think that "doing a Sega" is the answer for Nintendo. There's certainly plenty of evidence that it wasn't the answer for Sega themselves.

I think there might, however, be something of a middle way for Nintendo here; but to get to that you've got to look at the company's strengths and weaknesses.

Nintendo is a poor console manufacturer. I don't necessarily mean that it makes poor hardware (though the Wii-U would seem to imply their powers here are in decline). Rather, I mean that they are poor at doing the other things that a console manufacturer needs to do. They are terrible at building industry links; while you can blame the lack of third party support for the Wii-U on the poor installed base. But the Wii? With its vast installed base? That was almost entirely because Nintendo are just plain nasty to deal with for other parties. Their licensing fees are high, their certification process is difficult (and often ineffective) and they don't make life easy for people they as in competition with their own first party titles.

Nintendo is a middling games developer. They do have some valuable franchises, but with the exception of Pokemon (which bizarely remains a handheld-only experience), these have a fairly narrow appeal. And contrary to popular belief, that narrow appeal isn't aimed at kids; it's more at the jaded 40-ish "ex-gamer" market (a market which does include a lot of game-reviewers). However, in many genres, their games are no longer really top of their field (hate to break it to you, but Mario Galaxy 2 isn't a patch on Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time). Without the benefit of being "the only thing on their platform worth playing", I'm not sure that Nintendo games would be all that successful commercially (the company has almost certainly lost a lot of money on Mario 3d World in the last couple of months).

What Nintendo are extremely good at is making toys; hardly surprising as they've been making toys for much longer than consoles or games for them. Their biggest successes - the Wii Mote and the handful of titles that accompanied it, the 3DS stylus, the odd peripherals they used to do back in the Gamecube generation - have basically been toys. Fun in short doses, able to be sold with a high mark-up and with a short-lived mass appeal. When they deviated from this with the Wii-U gamepad (which is absolutely not a toy), they went horribly wrong.

So perhaps the future for Nintendo is to work with platform holders (one or more of MS, Sony and Valve) to develop a series of mini platform-within-a-platform experiences. Relatively small scale agglomerations of a handful of games based around quirky and different toy-like peripherals.

By the end of the Wii's lifespan, everybody was heartily sick of motion controls (the Wii was wildly popular for its first 2-3 years then essentially stopped making money). But a shorter-lived, cheaper mini-platform based around the Wii-mote technology, compatible with both the 360 and the PS3? That might have been a more appealing proposition.

PS4 plays DVDs just fine (though I preferred the UI for DVD and BD playback on the PS3). Might want to check the validity of your FUD before you deploy it in public.

Except the 3DS sales have also had to be revised down from forecasts. Not by as much as the Wii-U's in percentage terms, but still by around a third. Plus 3DS hardware, even though it's now back to a profit on each sale, is bringing in nothing like the margin per unit Nintendo has historically been able to reap. Worse, the 3DS's sales have trended down over Christmas, implying the machine has passed its peak.

Sure, the machine has done fairly well on sales, but it is very much the "new PSP" rather than the "new DS". As in, a machine that sells pretty well all things considered (the PSP sold on a par with some of Nintendo's handhelds, though not the DS), but is very much dependent upon Japan for that success, with the rest of the world moving on from it quite quickly. That's ok (Sony would be delighted if the Vita were doing as well), but it's not giving Nintendo a financial replacement for the old DS's mega-success.

Perhaps more worryingly for them, a number of third party developers targeted at the 3DS have been finding life tough recently (the Rune Factory developer went under not long ago). The platform's wider eco-system is definitely losing out to a mixture of smartphones/tablets, the home consoles and even PC.

I've had similar experiences in the past, though I'd say it's specifically Japanese. I think a large part of the problem stems from how they teach English in their schools - it's actually compulsory right through to 18 (for those who stay in education that long) but is taught like Western schools teach Latin (ie. as an intellectual and linguistic exercise, not as a living, spoken language). I suspect that plays a big role in the decline of Japanese global competitiveness when compared to other East Asian societies (which teach English "normally").

On being unaware of Western trends - yes, that's very much true. It runs through a lot of their game developers too. Perhaps the worst example is Polyphony Digital, who when Gran Turismo 5 was nearing release confessed that nobody in the development team had played the Forza games (their biggest rivals). As a result, Gran Turismo 5 ends up feeling horribly dated in comparision to Forza 3, let alone 4 (even if it does have a bigger car list) and Forza 4 ends up becomig the de facto standard for console racing games. Even when Turn10 (the Forza developer) dropped the ball horribly with Forza 5, Polyphony still refused to learn from their mistakes and completely missed the opportunity to close the gap with Gran Turismo 6 by picking up a few key player-convenience features from the rival series.

The working-with-third-parties issue is, I think, more Nintendo-specific (Sony are quite good at it). Nintendo's arrogance in dealing with third party developers is legendary and you will certainly find many people in the industry who will privately confess that their feelings for the company verge on hatred. If they'd kept better relationships with third parties like Squaresoft, they could have done a lot to prevent the original Playstation from ever getting a serious toe in the market. I think part of the problem for Nintendo is that because their business model is so heavily built around games development (a more marginal activity for Sony and Microsoft), they forever see their third party developers more as rivals and partners (and love to mess them around via certification processes etc). If they can't figure out a way to square that circle, then they'd be best splitting the hardware (or software) business off entirely into a separate corporate entity.

Because, aside from the high profile cock-ups, EA still develops and publishes quite a lot of good games. Crysis 3 and Need for Speed: Rivals are recent EA-published games which I have bought, played, enjoyed and had value for money from.

EA is a vast company. Some parts of it are completely disfunctional, while others work just fine. Pointing at a broken game like SimCity and saying "I am not going to buy that game" is a good and sensible thing to do. Pointing at a broken game like SimCity and saying "I will not purchase any EA games" is cutting off your nose to spite your face (and carries a whiff of zealotry).

To start with a disclaimer: I haven't pirated The Hobbit (or indeed any other movies since my student days many, many years ago) and have no intention of doing so.

But on the other hand, after sitting through the first one, there is no way on Earth I am going to sit through the second one in a cinema. If I ever do watch it (which is a bit 50/50 given what a bad adaptation I thought the first one was), it will be in the comfort of my own home in a format where I can pause and resume at will, breaking it up into more manageable chunks.

I don't actually dislike going to the cinema; I'll happily sit through 2 hours or so of movie. But if you want me to go for a 3 hour+ bladder-bursting ass-numbing epic, then give me the opportunity to pause it for a while and go for a walk around in the middle.

Hell, I can still just about remember when longer films used to have an intermission during showings in a cinema. I know that's not an idea that's popular in the days of cram-'em-in multiplexes, but it might be worth bringing back for films like these to lure people like me back to the theatres.

Yeah, I've noticed that as well whenever the subject comes up. If pressed, the "sufferer" will usually come up with some reason as to why the test wouldn't be valid.

In my case it was much simpler. The device was either making a loud high-pitched noise or it wasn't and I didn't want to prove a point or get sympathy, I just wanted it switched off.

Oh, my other bug-bear... those "teenager repellant" buzz devices that some shops have used to prevent teenagers hanging around outside their store (on the basis that teenagers have a higher hearing range). I'm in my mid 30s and I can hear those - and they're extremely unpleasant. I'd love to see any store owner deploying one of those arrested for assault. The "classical music" alternative is far more civilised.

Much more fun to go to the other end of the spectrum - something as ludicrously grim and dark as possible. Say... Warhammer 40k?

In which case, your Space Latte will cost you 30,000 eternally tortured souls of the damned. Or if you have a loyalty card, you can get it discounted to 15,000 litres of blood for the blood god and 3,000 skulls for the skull throne.

I wonder how much of the occasional health panic that springs up around wifi - and indeed other technologies - can actually be attributed to the high pitched hums that can be emitted by badly manufactured devices.

For instance, when I moved home last year, my new ISP - Virgin Media - provided me with a router when I signed up with them. Their "superhub" - basically a rebranded mid-range Netgear home router - shipped with a cheap and nasty plug adapter, which was prone to emitting a high pitched squeal. Google will turn up plenty of forum threads on the issue if you're interested. Anyway, because it was right on the edge of my hearing range, it took me quite a while to work out what was going on. Until I did, I suffered several weeks of sleeping problems, headaches and nausea - pretty much the typical symptoms associated with cries of "wifi is harming my health". Swapped the plug adapter for a better made one and everything was fine.

Now admittedly, I've always been sensitive to these things. When I was a teenager, my dad had a job that meant that there were often medical devices (monitors, defibrilators etc) used in training course in the home. One weekend he had brought home a monitor device that emitted a particularly horrible hum and left it switched on for testing. Nobody else in the family could hear it, but it made me quite violently ill. He refused to believe that I could actually hear anything until I talked him into a blind test where I went into another room and then shouted "on" and "off" as he toggled the power on the device.

So yeah... while schools should be pushing back on the idea that wifi can harm childrens' health, I do think a lot of them might want to check whether any of their electronics are giving out high pitched squeals like that (particularly as childrens' hearing tends to be more sensitive to these ranges).