That kind of behaviour tends to happen when there is some kind of monopoly in effect (e.g. owning the fibre connections). When a market is operating well, you'll get companies trying those kinds of shenanigans and then being out-competed by other companies.

I think the premise of the study is flawed. Spending on R&D is not the same as innovation although there is some correlation. e.g. Companies might be able to get away with spending less on R&D as they are able to license the relevant patents rather than having to duplicate the research.

However, most patents aren't any use as most of them ARE obvious to someone skilled in the relevant discipline.

Possibly. I suppose it depends on what kind of wavelengths they use.

I reckon that autonomous cars will have some kind of radar that can easily see through rain and fog, so they should be able to carry on driving, but maybe at a reduced speed to allow for the conditions.

I thought AMD chips are competitive in some parts of the market (not top-end, though). The last chip I bought was an AMD A10 - 4 cpu cores and 6 graphic cores on the one die. It saves having to buy a separate graphic card and the graphic cores have full access to the same memory that the CPU cores use which I think is an interesting architecture.

Absolutely. I typically purchase e-books when I want to support the author (e.g. Warren Ellis, Charles Stross) or when it's easier than finding an illegitimate source. However, a lot of the books I read are by dead authors, so I don't feel much guilt in depriving their heirs of a few pennies.

I like the convenience of ebooks as I don't have to worry about carrying around a dead-tree book and can instead just use my phone (or kindle etc) which is generally lighter. I recommend using Calibre to transfer e-books around if you don't mind breaking the Ts&Cs.

I hope that'd be the case, but I worry that it's not considered "digital property", but just "digitally licensed to you".

How dare you say that! We've been more inept for much longer than the USians. We'd make sure that a random doctor loses his unencrypted laptop with all the data on it.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. Bruce Willis raised a fuss a while ago about not being able to leave his iTunes music collection to his children. The Ts and Cs state that the license to listen to the music is strictly non-transferrable. (He should have just "pirated" it instead).

He's referring to Australian Woolworths which is a big supermarket chain. Over here in the UK, Woolworths as a general/department store has been out of business for a few years. I believe the companies are unrelated, but I haven't looked into it.

I just can't see that autonomous/AI cars will be any worse than human drivers and I think they'll be at least an order of magnitude safer.

With unusual situations, the AI car should be programmed to find a safe (don't hit anything) route and if that's not possible, it should reduce speed/stop in a straight line as that will allow the speed to be reduced quicker and safer than by swerving. I can't see how stopping in a straight line would lead to increased liability for the manufacturer unless the vehicle was really badly made.

It's possible to think of situations where stopping in a straight line isn't necessarily the best course of action, but then human drivers make really bad choices all the time and they don't generally have trouble getting insured.

Well, we really missed all your insightful, on-topic posts in the months you were gone. Thank the lord that you're back here with some more of your erudite posts.

Don't forget about Rolf Harris and his wandering hands.

I never used to wear a helmet on my bike either, but have taken to wearing one as I started doing longer distances. In truth, the safety aspects of cycle helmets are over-stated as they don't really provide that much protection against typical bike accidents. I always think that gloves are far more important on a bike than a helmet as pretty much any time you come off a bike, you'll use your hands.

Anyhow, as I wear clear protective glasses when cycling, I wouldn't have any problem with a similar design for a HUD. I imagine that the higher speeds of a motorbike might make a difference, but I've seen bike riders wear prescription glasses under their helmets, so I don't think it's an insurmountable problem.