I remember when all this was fields....

Yeah, I think you're right - we all want the newest games (music, video, movies, tv) the moment it comes out - but if you can discipline yourself to wait you can get it at a bargain price surprisingly soon.

I'm not so sure they didn't.... there's no DRM on their OS (no activation, no keys, no problem re-installing it on more than one Mac). Compare that to MS who practically accuse you of piracy before you run your first update.

The DRM they do have (in the Mac App store, iOS apps at least) is so low-key that most people don't even know it's there. I can buy an app once and install it on any and all iOS devices, again and again, with no concern at all. If it's a Mac app, I can install it on up to 5 Macs at once. Neither of these is likely to encourage me to go out and break the DRM, so it's serving its purpose of preventing me 'handing on' a copy to a friend.

The same with Movies, TV & Music - you can play them all back on all your devices, stream them to your friends' apple devices, everything short of hand over a copy. You can even burn a CD of your music with no DRM at all, if you like. I agree that it's more intrusive here, but because the limitations are reasonable (don't give it away, but you can do anything reasonable with it yourself) there's a much lower incentive to break the DRM.

Of course, this only holds true if you stay in the Apple ecosystem, but since most of their customers do - I bet most of them don't even know what DRM is, or why it's bad. I know I'm talking to Slashdot here, but remember we're not the typical users.

So in short, it's working for them, because of the decisions they made - customer comes first (as long as you stay in the walled garden) as opposed to trying to prevent each and every 'lost sale'.

You need an internet connection to download it anyhow, why not just install it right then?

At least Steam doesn't make you be online whenever you boot the game up.... like some DRM.

Or - and here's a radical thought - buy the game (so as to show support for the game you 'really need' to play) and then pirate it to get the 'critical feature' of being able to install it from your EM-shielded bunker? The makers get to eat, you get to add your perceived value, the pirate 'community' gets to show that actually they're NOT hurting sales, everyone wins.

Similar story with my 2009 Honda Civic - it's got a USB plug (actually a proprietary adaptor, but they provide a dongle to make it USB) for the iPod integration. No promises are made about iPhones, but my 3GS has worked perfectly so far. The Bluetooth works a treat too for making & receiving calls, ducks out the music properly and hasn't let me down (although the voice dialling is useless, it can't read the phone's address book properly, so I don't use it).

I plugged the lightning cable in and the iPhone 5 works just fine, as does anything else with a dock connector. If all else fails, there's an aux-in 3.5mm jack right next to it.

The government of the time (and I'm not a fan of theirs) believed they did the best job for the taxpayer - they had a resource (bandwidth) and got a great price for it from the private sector. Do you blame the seller on eBay when all the other bidders push the price too high for you?

And of course, they botched the sale of all our gold reserves, but that's a whole different debate.

The operators bid high as the auction happened at the peak of the DotCom bubble, and the money was flowing nicely. Of course then the bubble burst, someone woke up and said 'you paid how much? we still have to buy all the hardware yet!' and they didn't invest as much in the infrastructure as they should have, so 3G took longer to show up than originally hoped. You can understand why they're not going to fall for that again...

There's a slightly angry summary on WikiPedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecoms_crash

Not a trick question - but now you're exactly where you were before you tried to fix it...

The OP was pointing out that just loading the new Kernel isn't always an option - depending on the environment, you might find it easier to stick with a working, well-understood configuration than introduce the risk of the unknown.

Game of Thrones, Season 1 (UK experience):
1. Open iTunes. (no Amazon VOD service over here)
2. Search for 'Game of Thrones'.
3. Filter out podcasts.
4. Discover it's not available.
5. Buy the Blu-Ray or DVD instead (which only recently came out, but OK).
6. Realise that it's technically illegal to copy them onto a mobile device.
7. Know that I'm being screwed over 'because they can', and start making justifications for an impending download.

Season 2:
1. Not available online, or in any stores.
2. Ah, it's on Sky Atlantic (their rebranded HBO channel) only one week behind the US.
3. But that channel is not available on cable, only on satellite.
4. Decide I don't want to move my phone, internet just to get one channel.
5. See step 7 above.

Hat tip to the Oatmeal.

Hear hear. From Kickstarter's own FAQ (oddly, no-one's quoted this yet):

Who is responsible for fulfilling the promises of a project?

It is the responsibility of the project creator to fulfill the promises of their project. Kickstarter reviews projects to ensure they do not violate the Project Guidelines, however Kickstarter does not investigate a creator's ability to complete their project.

Creators are encouraged to share links to any websites that show work related to the project, or past projects. It's up to them to make the case for their project and their ability to complete it. Because projects are usually funded by the friends, fans, and communities around its creator, there are powerful social forces that keep creators accountable.

The web is an excellent resource for learning about someone’s prior experience. If someone has no demonstrable prior history of doing something like their project, or is unwilling to share information, backers should consider that when weighing a pledge. If something sounds too good to be true, it very well may be.

So there you have it - caveat emptor. If you throw money at a stranger, based on a promise, it's down to you. Most of the Kickstarter projects I've seen have been 'hey fans, you love our website, help us make a book' kind of things, which would certainly bite the owner in the ass if they let you down.

It's a good book (as you stated) and I bought it off the back of that review...

And he probably therefore has a different one on every site...

Of course, his email's still out there for all to see, which is embarrassing. But at least he won't be frantically scouring Facebook to get rid of all the stuff 'he' posted :)

I know you're being funny, but a 'home user' probably won't know why they need to do that (or even if they do need to do that), let alone go looking for it.

A name that has some connection to what it does is useful, but since you're never going to guess it from nowhere (I need a video editing application, let's google for 'videdit'? no...) it's not required.

That said, a dumb-sounding name won't help you - until you're already popular, then it doesn't matter any more. Think about Linux, it's just a weak pun on the creator's name, and happily a near-anagram of Unix... hardly a 'meaningful' name like FreeBSD (with all due respect to Linus of course) and yet the name is never even talked about these days, everyone just knows what it is. Same with GIMP, how you can name a free 'clone' of photoshop after what Wikipedia calls "a type of sexual submissive in BDSM who may wear a bondage suit" and expect to be taken seriously I don't know (although I used the early versions and it did feel like I was being treated like one). But it's big enough now that people don't care.

I just did a search for 'PCB linux' and it's the top hit on Google... If I search for 'PCB program' I get a few others first, but it's still on the front page. Obviously if you just search for an acronym you'll get results relevant to that first...

If I look for 'video editing linux' however, the top hit is a list of 5 apps from 2009 (which does mention kdenlive 0.7 to be fair), and the second dates back to 2007, so I suspect neither is that useful if you're looking for advice on the best one today. (Searching for 'video linux' just gives you loads of hits for playing, as you might expect.

I have the same problem - remembering the passage from 'Hitchhikers' talking about how buttons on equipment gave way to touch controls, then to gestures... Meaning you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same station.

So either you have to accept that someone will change the channel every time they stretch (or throw their hands up in exasperation at a missed goal) or introduce a 'get the TV's attention' gesture. Yoo-hoo, I'm waving at you....

I see they're talking about using voice too - so I guess it's that, but how are you going to turn the volume down when it can't hear you over the sound of the movie? Or when someone happens to speak the keyword in a show you're watching? (Which reminds me, if anyone had that 'clapper' thing, did it turn your lights off whenever the ad for it came on?)

If someone gets it right, I'm all for it - but I just don't see it. 'Who wants a beer?' *hand goes up* *tv changes to Lifetime* *thirsty guy gets beaten*. I'll stick with my Harmony remote, to replace all the others - and I don't even need a webcam on 24/7 in my living room, with all the privacy implications that has.

Mark

PS We once had a TV at school which was had an ultrasonic remote (this was something that came out either before or in competition with IR). One of my classmates discovered that their sneezes were perfectly pitched to the 'change channel up' signal. Sadly it was hay-fever season, so they had to sit outside while we watched something about Henry VIII and chuckled uncontrollably whenever we remembered it.

Actually the channel 4 item doesn't mention botched redactions - they're talking about the parts of the document you can read.

They even say:
"UK submarines compare poorly with these benchmarks, with the ability to tolerate only a structural failure equivalent to a..." Unfortunately the rest of the sentence, along with most of the following two pages, are blacked out in the released document.

So it was the Daily Star who tried the old trick of copy-paste and got lucky.