The UK was going to switch off analog FM too, but then they discovered that

1) Most FM listeners are in cars

2) hardly cars have DAB radios

3) DAB radios hardly ever work in cars

4) If they switched off FM, the car drivers would NOT by DAB replacements.

The current plan is to leave FM radio switch of "till after the next election".

I have listened to FM on my phone twice in two years. I listen in the car all the time. If FM is turned off, I would probably listen to the pirate stations on FM. I surely won't by a DAB radio. My mum has three DAB radios. It is mostly a matter of life style.

As other posters have said "Follow the money".

Nvidia's drivers do work 100% with Linux.

No they don't. Not even near to 5%. I have thrown all my Nvidia kit away. It DOES NOT work with Linux in any useful way.

"Nouveau" does not boot to a sane state, and even the command line functionality is worse than a Lear-Sieger ADM3A dumb terminal on a bad day. As for their propriety drivers - they work sometimes, if the wind is blowing the right way, and you are prepared to forgo security updates.

I would not touch Nvidia products with a barge pole.

Disclaimer: The last game I played a game on a PC it was "Colossal Cave". My idea of fun with a PC is trying to win real money by writing PHP that works, not paying money to get pointless high scores. When I say valve, I mean a vacuum tube.

A protest is not a riot.

It is once the law enforcement agents start battering people with night sticks.

the vogons aren't about to attack

Damn - I was stock piling bottled water and Spam for nothing!

Please Sir, can the Darleks attack instead? (As in SCO)

If your data is worthless, dont bother to back it up.

As for keeping H/Ss powered down - a good percentage will never spin up again, or mysteriously lose their servo tracks or something. How long have we had SATA? How much longer will we have it?

Tapes can be read after 30 years (I know, I have done this myself). Over 30 years, the drive technology may change a bit, so you probably need to keep your old drives, and SCSI is more than 30 years old. One drive will write a lot of tapes. Perhaps a few thousand before the heads wear out, and then its down to Ebay for a replacement because it is a previous generation (3 tapes a day for 3 years - 1,000).

If you were the compliance officer, where would you put the transactional data from your bank? On a USB stick under the bed is NOT the right answer. If your data is worth keeping. LTO is the way to go. Three copies, on 3 different tapes, in each of three different states.

Has anyone ever managed to READ a terabyte of paper tape? With CRC checks?

In this particular case, its pretty clear they were negligent. However, the fine was minscule in terms of impact on the company compared to the fine that would have been imposed on an individual for (say) jay walking.

It is a terrible idea to make an employer responsible for everything an employee does.

No, in most of the world, including the Mafia that is how life is. That is what company directors are paid for. They have the responsibility to see that these things cant and don't happen. In this case, they took no steps whatever to protect their customers private data which they had no legitimate reason to keep.

A more reasonable approach to the crime would have been to determine that (a) the data protection law was broken by the company and (b) as the law was broken, the concept of limited liability, as provided by civil society does not apply (c) therefore the directors are personally responsible for the loss of data and are jailed.

Disclosure: I am European.

I dont know, but they only need to keep on the computer the fact that they have verified it, not the actual verification process. Here in the UK, banks are in the habit of verifying your id by asking your mother's maiden name and your place of birth, which for most people are readily available from Facebook (probably how they verify the data).

The directors are very highly paid because of this responsibility. Allegedly.

I have tried writing in India Pale Ale, but I assure you - drinking it is more fun.

The 6502 was years before the 6802 or Z80. The 6800 was designed by the same people. After they designed the 6800, they realised that processing strings on a 6800 was hell's own job cos it only had one pointer (although it was 16 bit). The 6502 had two 8 bit pointers and could therefore do a string move or compare quite painlessly and any fool could write a Basic interpreter for it in a couple of weeks.

There was a 6500 before the 6502 (I had one) but it used a weird technology that meant it drew almost all its power from the clock lines (two phase non-overlapping clock) and the interface voltages were also non-standard, so the 6502 was magnificently better. It was cheaper because of volume - the die size was almost exactly the same - the chip was almost exactly the same. (I think they got some major order before it was even available for general release), and there was a second source (Rockwell).

The 6800 was a superior processor if you did not have much string processing to do. The 68000 was an entirely different beast.

Please can I have a couple of your flying pigs?

They do ... It is like bitcoins. The first few are big fat juicy coins, then later ones come along. They are tiny fragments of the original, but the old and the new are all worth more because of the total amount of digging for coins.

All the new patents are for insignificant mods to already trivial inventions. However, they are worth huge amounts of money because [lawyers]. Or the books are cooked by accountants.

Or I have drunk too much brandy. Not sure which, but I will know in the morning.

My "Research" shows that 52% of 12-13 year olds don't actually understand the words "porn" and "addicted" and 86% of teenagers lie when answering questions about sex or violence.

I have not conducted any research over whether politicians are stupider than they look. It appeared relatively pointless.

A previous research project of mine showed 100% of heroin addicts ate cornflakes at lest once as children.