Actually, the PC games market is having a bit of a resurgence, witness the latest annual Steam sale and the high quality multiplatform releases that are coming out on PC as well as console.

Since the days of the PSX, PC gaming has waxed and waned with the console cycle. Most current PCs with separate graphics cards can easily match a PS3 or Xbox in terms of performance and so publishers are willing to take the time to port AAA titles; when the next generation comes out the PC will be ignored again for a couple of years.

In the Q&A at the end they mention they don't have the app signing keys, so you can't use this to boot hacked games. The keys they have allow them to sign the OS meaning we can install Linux again. If I understand it correctly, Linux booted using these keys will be able to use the RSX graphics chip too!

Apparently you could use this exploit to find the app signing keys but these guys have no interest in doing that. Somebody will though.

You're railing against the basic issue of provisioning. Even on fixed line ISPs you get a certain limit (or "unlimited") for a certain time.

Selling someone an allocation without a time limit is a nightmare. What if you end up with large amount of unused data allocation? Potentially it could all be used at once, leading to service disruption for regular users. Also, pure PAYG data usage is a bit of a problem. You don't want people turning up and using large amounts of data out of the blue which is reflected in the relatively high charges for PAYG data compared to on a contract.

The examples you gave are clear cases of entrapment. Vice officers will do controlled buys of drugs in order to obtain a surveillance warrant but in most jurisdictions the sale to an officer who asked for drugs wouldn't be considered evidence of intent to supply; the defendant could argue that they were simply in possession and wouldn't have sold had the officer not asked and it's up to the prosecution to show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the defendant would have sold.

That's why undercover officers who nab dealers for selling to them are careful to never actually ask for drugs, they allow dealers to offer them and then accept the offer. That distinction might seem meaningless to you but it's the difference between simple possession and intent to supply.

Seems fairly unambiguous to me.

People have been gaming slow-start for yonks; I remember when you could ACK flood a server to increase your download speed. Server admins hated it because it slowed the site down for everyone else.

Um, you only get that if you're changing files inside a privileged location. It's actually less intrusive than Unix style operating systems where in any sensibly configured default you're tightly confined to $home and everything else requires sudo; UAC protects the Program Files and Windows directories.

I'd actually prefer UAC to be more restrictive.

Also, where does it actually require you to confirm four times to change a filename? In 7 it takes 2 and that's because I keep UAC on high. In the default configuration it only asks once to confirm privilege escalation for a filename change in the Windows directory.

Meh, I have half decent onboard audio; I say half decent because if I amp it up too much I can hear the noise.

I don't really care, however, because I have an external 5.1 amplifier. If I keep my output low I don't hear any noise and can amp it up my surround system to the point where it's offensive to my neighbours and harmful to my ears and still have clean sound.

If I used headphones more often I might care more about the noise levels though.

The main thing that I found interesting about this article, however, is that the cheap sound card had a flatter frequency response. I think I'll consider purchasing a card simply for that!

The Android Train Times UK app is actually pretty cheap at a fiver. Being able to see the departure / arrival boards as widgets on my home screens has saved me from many hours of sitting around waiting in train stations.

You copy your app onto your phone via it's data cable, or maybe by using one of the many apps that let you mount SMB shares, or some other method. You then go into the options on your Android phone and check the "unknown sources" box, which allows you to install apps from non Marketplace sources. You then find said app using a file manager app or somesuch and install it.

No rooting required. You do need to root to get certain functionality apparently, but I have a debranded T-Mobile HTC Desire with loads of apps installed and I've not had to root it.

Prices in the Android Marketplace are in whatever currency the developer chooses.

Lacking journal access, I wonder if this is the Nutt paper where he jokes about MDMA being less harmful than horse riding?

It shows the blatant hypocrisy of the whole War on Drugs when all the leading scientific experts who have been hired by the government for the purpose of assessing the risks of drug use end up quitting because the politicians dislike the results they produce.

Er, what?

Proxima Centauri is about 4ly away which is still thousands of years travel time with our current tech, and our solar system doesn't have a radius of 2ly.

Civ IV had required a pretty decent system at the time it came out too. However, hardware has moved on a lot in the past five years so most systems should easily play it.

I've not played Civ 5 yet (gotta wait till Friday due to living in the UK, boo-hoo!) but I bet Civ 5 will run much better than Civ 4 did on bottom range systems, due to the "board game" view mode that turns off most of the fancy graphical effects.

Tony Blair actually won a bet with Prince Charles that hunting would continue after the "ban". As long as the hounds don't actually kill the fox it's all still legal and even if they do it is, as you point out impossible to police.

If only the state took the same attitude towards cannabis laws. Of course, smoking weed isn't a favourite past-time of our ruling class...

Google is late to that party: Blackberry and iPhone had full Exchange support before Android.

Anyway, Exchange allows admins to do a remote wipe, does it not?