If Microsoft want to make a home media device for use in people's main living rooms, that's fine. It's actually quite a good idea. But such a device cannot be principally viewed as a games console.

I don't know about the rest of you, but aside from the occasional multiplayer split screen session, I play console games on a dedicated screen, either in a bedroom or computer room. I cannot play a game in a main living room, on a screen which in in demand by others for watching TV, films, or even browsing the internet. It's nice that this device can do so much, but flipping "channels" to whatever everyone else wants to watch is not conducive to the 4-6 hour gaming sessions I would like to have.

Maybe they're going for the complete casual gaming market here, people who will flick over to Angry Birds or whatever. But even the most passé of run-of-the-mill gamers is going to spend an hour or so playing shooters online, and are not going to be inclined to flip over to daytime TV, or browse the web in the middle of their frag session. I just cannot see this working en masse.

Some may call it anti-social, but to me playing video games is closer to reading a book than watching TV; it's principally an individual experience, and the living room is not the place to have it unless you are specifically playing co-op. I don't think Microsoft are serious about the Xbox One as a gaming console. It appears to be principally oriented around completely orthogonal capabilities.

If reporters come to understand that the administration came after them on a fishing expedition, which is what this was, they will not be happy.

Reporters are, on the whole, pretty unintelligent and shallow people who write the stories they are told, in the way they are told, by their editors, and who without such direct instruction quickly lapse back into gossip, lattes, and twitter feeds. I doubt most journalists have even heard of this story.

If Holder knew about Breuer's decision not to prosecute any bankers -- he did -- then he should fired for that alone. Unfortunately, Holder is in his position precisely because he did know this, and because he will uphold the law in as dysfunctional a manner as the administration desires.

Sometimes I think the only reason they are getting away with this is because Obama is the President and liberals and progressives are unwilling to challenge him, and conservatives are secretly cheering the whole thing on. But secretly, deep down, I understand that this is all just fallout from September 11th 2001, and that the United States of America will never be able to go back to the way it was.

Which is a big problem for the rest of us.

It really is blackmail. This is a threat with menances in order to get someone to comply with the sender, and it is not a reasonable way of enforcing the request. If they simply send out the letters, while questionable in other ways it is not blackmail. These threats however are genuine straight up blackmail. I'm not sure whether this is criminal or civil offence in the US, but in the UK you'd be in a lot of trouble for this.

So in both absolute terms and per-capita terms, the richest 10% pay the most tax.

Since you seem to have all the figures, what's their effective tax rate then?

The top earners are also the most mobile and "international" members of society, so the unfortunate conclusion is that countries have to retain those top earners, and one way they do that is to give them a fabvourable tax position. While they pay lip-service to stopping evasion, most countries would prefer to have the richest paying some tax rather than losing them and getting no tax at all.

Why bother. These people are giant hoovers-up of wealth. Their mentality, greed, and influence on politics destroys societies. Most societies would reap the benefits of these people leaving in droves.

Slashdot: Where no energy source can be allowed to pass unmolested.

What exactly is the non-racist explanation for that lack of proportionality?

The BB gun kid was excercising his American right to hold arms; The science student was engaged in an act of Godless, materialist alchemy.

The UK has not made any friends by passing this law.

Well, the media companies are delighted with it.

We are Reagans children!! We are the Masters of the Universe!!

Uncle Reagan promised us money! Why is the Government getting in our way!??! This Dysfunctional world is our God given Birthright!!

Looking back over your career throught most of the 20th centruy and into the 21st, have you ever observed certain knowladge, techniques or disiplines fade away over time?

Are there ways of doing or thinking about physics and mathematics which were prevalent in the past, but which are no longer common knowladge? How do you compare the abilities and backgrounds of modern professors and graduates to those of the past?

Running a business is a skill entirely different from engineering.

Indeed. But do you extend that to the point where the majority of the board members of the world's largest computer software company cannot actually read, write or understand software?

If I was offered a board position in a company called MicroSoft, "Microprocesser Software", and I didn't know anything about software, I would decline the position on the principal that I was unqualified to represent the shareholder's interests. At least I would; I'm not naive enough to believe that such concerns apply in contemporary boardrooms.

Forget Sinofsky. He was one guy and W8 has been coming down the tracks for what, four years now?

The blame here lies with Microsoft board of Directors. Windows 8 wasn't some backroom project, hardware spinoff, or specialised division. It was the company's flagship product, its core product, whose success literally makes or brakes the company.

And the board has fubbed it; Bigtime. The whole project was a disaster since its inception, and despite the recession it's very clear that the entire iDink paradigm Windows 8 attempted to hoist on users is so bad, so awful, that ordinary users are literally giving on on buying PCs full stop. A competent board would have been on top of this, foreseen the problems, and had them resolved before launch. We are now 8 months into launch and Windows 8 is a beached whale leading the whole PC industry pod onshore in its wake.

The first thing that needed to turn this around -- before any resigns, Service Packs, interface revamps, or marketing campaigns -- the very first things is that a swathe of the board needs to go. There's a cohort of bankers and industrialist there who probably have no idea how to run their own industries, let alone a computer software company. If my experience with Ireland is any indication, I imagine these directors are serial board hoppers anyway, so they won't be missed.

Microsoft is a software company. It needs software people on the board. Engineers, programmers, computer scientists, etc; with management experience, but who actually know what software actually is, and how it is developed, sold, and used. If MS puts qualified people in charge they can begin to turn the boat around; but they stick with the current shower of corporate BSers at the helm, this whale will stay dying on the beach for a very long time.

Banks.

It's probably takes a year or two to really train a good clerk. But nobody keeps file clerks anymore, so whatever man.

It's clear that the increasingly low standards seen throughout the US justice system have their origins in the normalisation of previously extraordinary Drug War practices.