What drivel. No wonder you ACd. Microsoft sell a platform, Valve had a enterprising idea 10 years ago that used the platform and it's been a success. Now Microsoft want to get into Appstores, in typical "me too" Microsoft fashion. This is a threat to Valve's business and so like a responsible company head, Newell is working on a plan B, in case MS decide to make it much harder for Steam to exist on Windows.

Microsoft got paid through Windows sales, it is in their interests to make that platform appealing. They even took the piss by forcing newer Windows releases on gamers using arbitrary restrictions. Do Adobe pay Microsoft every time someone buys Photoshop?

I don't think you know what irony means. And what's the RRP on SteamOS?

Rush? You've had an SDK for "iOS" since 2008. If a version of MS Office ever appeared, I think you could call MS' reaction positively glacial.

Xscope is a surprisingly great Android browser, considering I never hear anyone mention it. It has a great feature that renders all white page space in black and text in grey to prolong your battery life.

Supports flash, if that's your sort of thing (with push to load), adblock and has an incognito mode.

It wipes the floor with chrome, Firefox and opera for gestures and full-screen browsing. Really, do we have to stare at an address bar all the time on a mobile device?

Union flag, unless Apple's web server is hosted in a floating datacentre somewhere in the Atlantic.

Then you have a problem with the configuration of your laptop. I play back 20-50Mbps 1080p video everyday, on a system with an Atom CPU and ION 2 GPU. I've thrown a few 60fps files at it too and it never drops frames.

The PS3 is nothing special in this regards and it's actually a terrible choice as a general video player because Sony have abitrarily limited its container and codec support.

Is this a joke post?
We have just changed it. We got a conservative government in all but name, even though only 36% of voters wanted them.
Before that we had a Prime Minister that no-one voted for and before that, well, Tony Blair.
Voting doesn't matter now. All you have to do is make sure all your pals in corporatown, your lackies and whatever poor saps who believe what they hear in an election campaign, vote your way.
Then it's 4 years of pretending you give a shit, while changing the legal landscape in favour of said private business pals, then off to your cushy consultancy job and your multi-million pound homes in Surrey.

Correct. The copyright holders do not want this to happen, or precedent will be set and the law will be reviewed. Far better to scare the common folk into compliance with "You wouldn't steal a car" and important-sounding legalese messages every 30 seconds, reminding you you're probably a criminal for ripping that Pingu DVD.

I posted this above, but depending on your requirements, Blu-Ray on Linux may not be that tedious.

MakeMKV will take care of ripping the stream for you and Handbrake will transcode from the mkv. Personally, I prefer to not transcode, which means I have the Blu-Ray title in my XBMC library and ready to watch in 30 mins or so. I don't have a huge Blu-Ray library, but I've yet to come across a title it cannot decrypt.

Mostly, I don't need subs, but if you want to transcode and need subtitles, there are methods that aren't painful. Because XBMC is so flexible, it can support a myriad of subtitle formats. If the subtitles add-on for XBMC cannot locate a suitable sub from one of the many online sources (which is rare in my experience), there are several tools that can export the subtitle stream from the mkv into a format XBMC is happy with.
Basically, there are no barriers for me now and although it's not perfect (I'd prefer to be able to buy my media in an open format to begin with), at least I can now enjoy the brilliant high-bitrate video streams of Blu-Ray format in a way that's extremely convenient to me.

I use the same setup and until fairly recently was in the same boat regarding Blu-Ray. Have you tried MakeMKV? Granted you'll have to invest in a BR drive for your PC, but they are not expensive. Now I can enjoy the product I want (the content), in an un-encumbered, transferrable format that's a bit-perfect reproduction of the feature. Also, if I want, I can transcode it to whatever format I feel like.

When I see news about services like Paramount's new online store, I have to shake my head and wonder what on earth the content providers are smoking.

PC gamer here, I'm ready for it, as is my modest-spec PC.

100GB of storage has an equivalent cost of, what, 5 dollars/pounds/euros?
Please stop shafting the customers that have been your bread and butter for over a decade.

Your point is valid for the other examples you give, but someone should point out that Apple does not DRM its AAC files in the ITMS and hasn't for years.

They wont care about this at all. They are not going after Geohot because he used his PS3 as a paperweight, they are going after him because they claim he altered the embedded software running on the PS3 and redistributed it illegally. This is my understanding, so add a pinch of salt to taste.

As you point out, this happens all the time and not always to the detriment of gameplay.

One super-famous example is the quake series. For some reason (perhaps to allow more effective dodging), characters can move more quickly side-to-side than they can forwards and backwards. An unintended consequence of this was strafe jumping, one of the game's most fun features.

Good developers recognise what their playerbase enjoys and what makes a game fun. The rumour is that John Carmack even tried to remove strafe jumping from quake, because players looked stupid, jumping around like rabbits.