Although I can't remember specifically which Middle Eastern country it was, one of in Richard Dawkins documentaries he did go and speak to some people. I think it was either Palestine or Israel.

This is a particularly good point.

To use windows as an example. You wouldn't expect the usage of windows to change that much during your usage of a particular version. XP, probably my favorite (if such a term can be applied to windows), stuck with basically the same layout in terms of desktop, menus and directory structures. It never evolved substantially throughout its life. Ubuntu on the other hand (and a whole host of other GNU/Linux based distributions), can change it's look and feel substantially between different versions (ie, every 6 months). I don't think that windows would have been a success (in commercial terms) if it changed so much so quickly.

Whilst I accept that there are very good reasons to move forward, the issue I see is that not enough effort is put into keeping existing users happy. We want to keep up-to-date but we don't want our experience of the system to change too much. When Ubuntu was still using Gnome 2, you got a fairly nice progression. Gnome 2 improved but did so quite slowly. You also got a chance to say yes or no to wizzy 3d effects. I, and I suspect many others were happy with a slower improvement and this is probably better than the occasional but much bigger jumps that MS would have done with windows.

Do we have reports of other PCs being released? Where's the latest posting regarding a new Dell laptop?

You can always tell when a politician is lying, his/her lips move. They would have said anything to get elected. Whilst I accept that the world is not static and that pledges such as these cannot always be honored, you do feel that there was little intention to keep to them. The problem is that they're all at it. No wonder we distrust politicians so much, they really are lying to us about these things all the time.

I think it's simply because this function is built into modern TVs. When the PS3 was launched, there was no such thing as a smart TV so being able to stream on the PS3 was a useful feature. Sony just decided to remove an unnecessary piece of s/w from the system.

Whilst I can't comment on the political issues around the success of betamax, I don't think people manage to compare the situation very accurately. Sony continued innovating with betamax for quite some time and were often first to market with features. All betamax videos had excellent shuttle search function, due to the fact that the tape could remain spooled. Whilst VHS would do this eventually, it took some time. When I first had a VHS video, it seemed like it was constantly spooling and unspooling the tape. Another feature I liked from later models was peep search. This allowed the recorded to start playback of a tape whilst you were doing a ff or rew. I had a VHS that could do the same thing but it took about 5 seconds to spool the tape before it would show a picture. Sony also allowed you to put index points on a tape, very useful when you had 3 or 4 TV episodes on a tape. Betamax was the first to introduce hi-fi (not just stereo) sound. In general, betamax offered features that were ahead of VHS or never available on VHS. I feel I should point out as well that an L-500 tape was a two-hour tape and an L-750 was a three-hour tape, at least that's what I had in the UK. Quality wise, whilst I would generally agree there wasn't a lot of difference between the two, I would still say that at any one time, a new beta was better quality than the equivalent VHS. One last thing, I saw Sanyo and Telefunken betamax players.

Whilst there are many aspects about the film I, Robot that I have problems with, this very issue is covered when the female scientist is scared because Wil Smith decides to take manual control of the car they're in.

This is how the world will end. People frightened or otherwise wary that they won't be able to do anything without falling foul of an EULA.

There's no doubt that Nintendo have made a few mistakes with the Wii U. For a start, they needed a better selection of games available at launch. The top tier games (such as Pikmin 3 which is brilliant) have only recently started to appear. Whilst I understand that Nintendo would want to launch a range of games over several years, there has been too long a wait to get to games such as Mario Kart and a new Super Mario game.

However, Nintendo have shown with the Wii U that they are still prepared to take risks when it comes to their offerings and try to develop new ways to play games. I can't yet be sure that the Wii U controller is the best way to play a game because I don't think there have been games out yet that really exploit it but at least they're trying.

Sony and MS however could not have come out with more vanilla consoles. Both are basically glorified PCs. Whilst I'm sure there is some business logic behind this, I would like to know where the next generation of cell processor is? Where are the new and clever control mechanisms? Sony would seem to be churning out a slightly modified dual shock (presumably so you can't use your old ones) and MS are basically using Kenect again. So, PCs and the same controllers that were used before.

For me, I've yet to see anything from Sony that will let them loose my credit card details again. From MS, I get the impression they're not interested in attracting new gamers, they want new customers to use all the non-gaming services as all the existing customers are assumed will want to convert.

I think the money saved will be lost elsewhere. Like it or not, a large part of car ownership is aspirational. This move will make your car more like a utility and you'll probably replace it less often as a consequence. After all, what's the point of having a high performance engine if your computer is going to pull away from traffic lights in an economical way. That's not to say I don't think this is a good thing, it will make roads much more safe. However, the concern I have is regarding regulation. If there is an accident, who is liable? You, the guy who serviced the car, the company that built it? And thinking along these lines, who will be authorised to service the car and what controls will exist to prevent people using the car if it's not serviced or not serviced by an approved service company?

There are a number of issues with other religions. Fundamentalism often means that there is more likely to be violence. I'm not sure I've heard of fundamentalist Quakers but I suppose it's possible. The issues that normally come about are because of very strict adherence to your own belief and the in inability to tolerate anyone who does not conform.

With respect to your comment on Communists, this reminds me of something Steven Weinberg said (although I heard it first from Richard Dawkins) - "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion". The point of this is that the communists that killed religious people were not doing so because of a religious belief, they were simply bad people. When a scientologist does something bad, they may or may not be a bad person but its possible that they feel compelled to do something bad as a consequence of their belief.

There's a reason why this sort of belief only dates back so far, It's because of the discoveries of science. You go back more than a hundred years (and definitely before Darwin) and people really didn't know how old the world (or universe) was. As science has revealed that the earth is far older than the bible would have you believe, so Christians (and I presume some others from other religions) have become less comfortable and started to become more vocal.

I can remember using an application that consolidated results from several engines so that you got results that were a bit more relevant.

I thought we were in this period now? The problem is that we come across new sources of fossil fuels and that just puts things off again. I think the discovery of these new sources of gas has caused multiple problems. I can't see mankind changing to sustainable sources of energy until we've burnt all the forms of fossil fuels we can get our hands on.