I've got a couple of Macs along with the usual iPhone and iPad combination and while the upgrade to Yosemite had some issues for me these were entirely related to older software with incompatible kexts and resulting kernel panics on a regular basis. Once I found the offending item the panics stopped and the machine affected has been fine since. I was a beta tester on Yosemite and have used it as my primary OS since the start of the beta and all in all it has been way better than the likes of Tiger which was terrible when it came out (you could only open a shell once out of about five tries up until 10.4.7 which fixed it) so I don't think the quality is getting any lower in my experience.

I've used the Mac's built in Disk Utility multiple times to image my HDs onto new SSDs and then they've been a simple drop in replacement but you're right, the activated commercial software may well refuse to run.

Adobe uses FLEXnet I believe and that does take a fingerprint of the hardware specifically to stop users from duping discs. The company I work for also uses FLEXnet and when a customer encounters this, their software won't work on the new drive and they have to reactivate on the internet with their original license key and often they run out of activations in which case they need to call our support line so we can identify the old dead activation from their old drive and release it for them.

I was buying CDs from 1986 and I certainly had discs which were 70 mins long even then so there certainly were discs longer than 45 mins. It was true that some discs threw the early players for six, but worse than that was the utterly terrible sound of both these early discs and early players. Without oversampling, the brick wall filters produced horrible audible artefacts, and there were real problems with the ADCs used in mastering the discs too. CDs sounded really rough throughout the 80's and it wasn't until the 90's that we started getting recordings on CD that were even close to audiophile quality, plus there were some nice players at that point which paid attention to the analogue components and PSU isolation to prevent electronic noise getting through to the speakers. I had a 16bit 16x oversampling, 8 DAC player at the time which was the first player I had heard that really did sound decent (Cambridge CD2) and compared to the usual CD players it was amazingly good. The whole digital is digital thing was wrong when it came to everything after the DAC, and even the DACs made a big difference. The first time I heard the oversampling players compared with my first gen Sony it was a revelation and the Sony got dumped shortly after with the Technics MASH unit, and then that got dumped for the Cambridge.

The main problem with the replay of vinyl in the future will be getting a working turntable because belts and other polymer components degrade over time just because. My current turntable is 25 years old and it still works fine but I worry about the drive belt and cartridge. However, the strong demand for vinyl suggests I'll still be able to source replacements for some time to come, just as I can easily replace the 6L6 valves in my amp (also 25 years old) whereas a transistor amp of that age would likely be junked if it failed. As for CDs that failed, I was a LaserDisc owner (still am, don't like to get rid of old formats) and laser rot was well known with those analogue discs and it also afflicts CDs where the aluminium oxidises and no longer reflects so the disc just stops playing. With LD it was obvious when it was happening because you got colour flecks on the screen, but with CD it should play fine until it doesn't.

Anyway, I'm preserving my old equipment and formats for the future as best I can. Sadly, it looks like my NAD cassette deck may have had it if I can't replace the capstan belt which literally fell to pieces when I tried it. Getting the transport apart and back together to put the replacement in is going to be an interesting exercise based on what I've seen having partially dismantled it. Like CDs, tapes don't have a long shelf life so vinyl may well be the best format for long term storage.

One last comment on the degradation of records - what you were hearing was the mould release agent, basically like a grease layer to allow the pressing to be removed from the mother easily and each time you play the record you move that into the grooves where it picks up dust and also smothers the fine details. Remove that stuff with a solvent and you'll find the vinyl doesn't wear out and it will sound brand new. I've run many 'worn out' records through a solvent cleaner and they come out amazing. A good turntable (mine is an Opus 3 Continuo, in fact it is the prototype for that model) will not suffer from rumble and will also minimise surface noise such that many people couldn't even tell it wasn't a digital source due to the lack of background noise, especially on a cleaned and cared for LP.

I noticed our local JB hifi has got a whole section of vinyl so had a leaf through. Most of the albums I already have on LP from when they were new and they cost a lot but it is still nice to see. The real problem LPs had back in the late 80's was the quality of the pressings because they were so mass produced and the vinyl was thin plus they were trying to squeeze a CDs worth of music onto the LP so you got shallow grooves and crushed dynamics making them sound much worse than they could. Given the choice between CD and those terrible LPs from that period the CD is hands down the better choice. If these new pressings are done right, they should sound very good assuming the source material is good and I have a few direct to disc LPs which are incredible. I don't tend to use my turntable these days but I have still got it, plus my collection and hope to have the right space to set it up because the experience of listening to a record isn't just about the quality but rather you end up listening to the whole album as a complete piece of work where with CDs or MP3s you would focus more on tracks

When I was training for my pilot's license, we had a flight sim set up with Xplane and MS FS. I was awesome on FS but found Xplane much harder and much more like my real experience in the Cessna I was training in.

While early computers had very limited graphics and usually no sound, the arrival of colour and sound (er beeps) resulted in a large number of games and kids at the time clamoured to get a spectrum, C64 or whatever because it was a games machine and nothing else to them. Sure, you could program them but very few did. I started on a Commodore Pet (horrible BASIC) and went through the Sinclairs, the BBC Micro and then onto UNIX machines skipping PCs entirely (at least until Linux came along) and what I appreciated about all these was the ability to program them (same goes for Linux) but I was a minority.

The sad thing is once you got to PCs and GUIs, programming was largely a thing of the past. My son just got interested in computers and asked me to teach him to program so I pulled my actual Spectrum out and gave it to him. Sadly, age hasn't been kind to the hardware so the modulator failed and wouldn't display a picture. I bypassed that and got composite video out but in the process the keyboard membrane cracked so I had to order a new replacement (yay for retro computer fans) and it works again. He's getting on well and hasn't really shown interest in games on it. I did load up Manic Miner for a laugh but it was awful. I forgot how precise you had to be.

I just wish this was a real Spectrum with a keyboard. As it stands, meh. Emulators are also hard work without the real keyboard.

I can't be alone in not liking this film. It wasn't the science (there was obviously a lot of work done there) that bothered me, and besides which with Sci Fi you always get a 'gimme' or two (warp drive, transporters, technobabble etc) but I really didn't feel anything with the story. It didn't draw me in, it just dragged. This wasn't what I was expecting as I had been looking forward to this film since I saw the first teaser. I see so many people going on about who great this film was but I can't help but wonder what it was that I missed?

"Oh look, MS is embracing open source. Isn't that wonderful?"

Maybe open source is embracing MS? That would put the cat amongst the pigeons to say the least. Just who gets extinguished in that scenario?

4K does not have 4x the resolution. I don't care what sounds sexier, there's truth in advertising and 4K is only twice as sharp. You want 4x sharper, you need 8K and don't worry, once you've spent a good chunk of cash on the 4K set, they'll be there telling you it is obsolete and you need to upgrade again to 8K because, because, oh whatever, give us more money you peasant!

You have twice as many pixels on each axis, so 4x as many pixels on screen but resolution is only 2x higher.

"MS says they have 75% market share for x86 servers (I've no idea if that is a legit statistic). Macs are barely a blip in desktop/laptop market share. Win 8 and Win 8.1, which according to comments in posts like this is the worst OS since Win ME, each has greater market share than all versions of Mac OS combined."

I can believe that MS has 75% market share for x86 servers simply because you can replace a whole host of Windows servers with a single Linux box - I know, I've done it multiple times. When it takes several machines to do what a single *nix box can do then sure, you're going to get high market share but that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing a good job. This is similar to their claims for IIS when it is just hosting parked domains.

MS has a bigger problem than that though because they're failing to break out of the jail of desktop in any serious way. Xbox cost a fortune and while the 360 did OK, the One is struggling badly compared with the PS4. The Windows phones are a joke, as are their tablets. The desktop may not be going anywhere soon but people have so widely embraced other technologies like Android and iOS that the desktop has little leverage any more. They simply can't use it to control the world and stop people leaving. Windows 8 was their attempt and it is an abject failure. 9 may be a decent version of Windows but really they've got no growth left in them. MS needs to get away from the idea of owning the platform and focus on developing software because they don't have the leverage to succeed the way they did back in the 90's and 00's. The sad fact is, the software they make which isn't supported by their OS isn't really all that good. Can they write good software without the tie in to the OS? I don't know but the signs aren't good.

The funny thing is I remember reading back in '97 that the whole world would ditch UNIX and switch to NT over the following few years. Without Linux, maybe that would have happened but now the spawn of Linus has really spoiled their day, especially Android despite their bogus patent claims. I agree with the other poster, if they had been broken up back in 2000 I suspect the world would have seen a lot more innovation and maybe Apple wouldn't have had the chance to grab the lion's share of the profit and overtake MS in the value stakes.

I find it funny that MS is now the only major OS vendor that isn't running on a UNIX base. Seems like an uphill struggle as the world passes them by. They should do an Apple and virtualise the old Windows code in a classic environment and switch to a UNIX base. Or just stop trying to make operating systems altogether and focus on software.

There are a few similar services starting up down here. I had a look at Quickflix because they have a client for my smartTV and TiVo but all they have to offer are old BBC shows which I already own on DVD and their movie selection is woeful even compared with what we can get on AppleTV. Worse, the compression is too high so what they do have looks terrible. If they had the vast array of stuff that Netflix has then they might have a chance but without it they're going nowhere. I don't subscribe to Netflix as I've taken the approach of buying or renting what I want to see but if it was legitimately offered here I would be interested.

Seriously, not only are they whining about being 'hacked', even when they find out what really happened and that they got an album for free they're still not happy and are still indignant. It is pathetic. I made a point of giving the album a listen and you know what? I like it. I was pleased to get it and I've played it a few times. The media are fanning the flames for all they're worth too. Definitely time to go back to dumb phones for dumb users.