The report does tell us:

Make no mistake; the live music industry grew in 2008. More events, more bands, more tickets and importantly, higher ticket prices. Breaking it down to basic supply and demand economics, and given the scarcity embedded in its model, the live music industry is somewhere you really want to be right now.

My emphasis.

Perhaps the figures include all the tickets all those suckers bought for the triumphant London return of the "king of pop".

Or maybe this year's new music isn't as boring as last year's (I pretty much gave up buying CDs when I found they were all bland and soporific).

That's quite a report, in its gushing marketingese. I note with delight that "heritage act" has supplanted "senior citizen" as the euphemism for "old age pensioner" or "old geezer".

The Provosts, Regents, President, Deans, and department heads of my institution are concerned that they can get and send email, that neither the administration stuff nor the website is hacked, that no screw-up risks escalation to a PR disaster, and that it doesn't all cost too much. And that other people don't bitch about it, and all in all that it can be left to run itself -- because they have more than enough other, IT-unrelated concerns of their own. As long as they can plug their own laptops into the LAN they don't care what hardware or software the masses are using.

In the relevant committees, you're likely to find deep conservatism, even from people who themselves use Gentoo or whatever. Elementary classes in "computer literacy" are likely to be in mere secretarial skills, and their teachers can argue for MS software on Windows as they can truthfully say that this is near ubiquitous in the corporate world. Students and staff want to use software with which they're already familiar, which for the huge majority will mean MS software. Staff find it easier to tell people who are mystified by spreadsheet problems to look up the matter in an actual book on Excel than to do so in a non-existent book on Gnumeric. Still, there's no reason not to install FOSS in addition to the shrinkwrapped stuff, and so my institution has OOo, Gimp, etc sitting unopened on just about all of its computers.

Sales in Germany of Acer and Asus net/note/newtbooks with Linux should at least be higher than they are here in Japan -- where they are zero, as neither company condescends to offer a non-Windows option. You can get certain models of Dell n*tbooks with Ubuntu if you look for them online, but there's no mention even of them in the stores. Ask for Linux in a large computer store (e.g. Yodobashi) and you'll be greeted with something between incomprehension and mild alarm. This "free market" of ours is truly a wonderful thing.

PLA Daily ("China Military Online") is brought to us by Apache, so it would appear that at least one military has already got on board with free and open source software. I'd guess that the PLA could deliver better coding value for money to the Pentagon than could KBR.

Unless the talented Mr Cheney has yet again kept something from us, the shuttles aren't expected to run MS Office, Photoshop, World of Warcraft, Conficker, etc under Vista. So perhaps they have enough oomph as it is.

Astrotit would be a welcome diversion during my daily commute. It's just a CGA game for DOS, though, so I don't suppose it would qualify.

The article tells us: “At the end of the circuit's life the components are mechanically disassembled and recycled which means a lower carbon footprint compared with the shredding and incineration of traditional circuits.”

There's a link from that, too, but I don't see any specifics on this mechanical disassembly process. Just another task to be performed by the underpaid Chinese underclass, or would we actually be encouraged to pull our own elderly computers to bits?

"claims of copyright over works hundreds of years old"

No, certainly not. Instead, claims of copyright over "original photographs taken within the last thirty years".

And the letter is clear. Add fear if you like, but let's skip the uncertainty and doubt: there's no need to call anyone first thing Monday to "establish just what they think they're doing"; whether or not you or I agree with it, what they're doing is clearly explained here.

Yes, true, but as of a year or so ago (the last time I looked) the light of an LED was bluish or weak or both.

Thank you for a reply that's fair about my own message and that's thoughtful and interesting.

I have to say, though, that I don't "buy" your argument. Like everything else within reach, the Moon doesn't seem to hold even the promise of a promise of long-term habitability. And as long as it doesn't, acquisition of skills and technology to make it habitable seems like (peculiarly expensive) pie in the sky.

I'd agree that the Earth is on its way to becoming uninhabitable. But as even remotely realistic alternative places for habitation haven't yet been found, and as terrestrial degradation might not be out of control and with sufficient will and effort could be contained, I suggest allocating as many resources as possible to ensuring long-term terrestrial habitability.

Why send people? (The article doesn't explain.) 6.6 G$ would indeed be less than I'd wildly guess it would cost to send humans; but it's still a lot of moolah, and presumably a lot of that would be for a human-required payload. How about devoting just one measly little gigabuck to robot design, and then sending robots instead?

For enhanced automotive stupidity (extra length, extra ugliness, extra thirst, all-around extra arrogance), try a car with a 27-litre engine. As a bonus, you also get an extra hammy narration, so all in all it's just what your inner nine-year-old craves.

A reality check for all the litcritty and ther types who like to suggest that Gibson somehow created the web in this novel: Tim Berners-Lee and CERN created it.

The much-quoted descriptions of "cyberspace" in this oddly soporific novel may or may not be interesting but they're hardly prescient. Cyberspace is described as "unthinkable", but here we are thinking about it. There are "huge, shining, cities of data", uh, where exactly? Et cetera, but let's not labor the point.

For me, Neuromancer worked well as a sleeping pill; your dosage may vary.