It's not sudden; it's been the seller's responsibility since more-or-less forever.

Here's the thing though - and I'm using the UK as an example seeing as I live in the UK.

Virtually no retailers - certainly none of the major chains - will honour anything beyond the first 12 months without a fight, and most people know very little about their consumer rights so accept this. Sometimes they won't even honour the manufacturer's warranty, instead pushing the customer to deal directly to the manufacturer.

I don't think this is a case of a few bad apples; I think it's a case of training from head office clearly stating "This is our aftersales policy. Follow it or be fired."

Which means that Apple stating clearly on their website "You've got six years to take it up with your retailer" is going to go down like a lead balloon with a lot of retailers.

The keyword here is "Back in the days".

Precisely nobody wishes to go back to those days.

Thing is, this guy knows what the NSA is capable of. I wouldn't be too surprised if he outed himself precisely because the alternative is to mysteriously commit suicide a couple of months from now.

Not completely there yet?

Take a look at the Apple TV.

Note that it does not receive broadcast TV. It does, however, hook directly into iTunes so you can buy or rent TV shows.

It does not have much in the way of onboard storage - enough for an OS and that's about it. It streams whatever you want to watch from either other systems on your home network or the Internet.

It has one video output - HDMI. Which, I'm sure you know, provides encryption.

It can also playback files you have in an existing collection, but that's a relatively small part of the package. It'd be trivial for a firmware update to remove this functionality.

Oh, it's a gorgeous small box. Tiny thing. And the UI is a joy compared to virtually every other set top box I've ever seen. But it's pretty much exactly what you're describing and it's available to buy today.

Google have always been pretty ruthless about culling services that aren't getting enough traction, but in the last year I think it's been more visible - and rather than being just services that few people are using (Wave), it's been targeted at services that can be somehow monetised or otherwise made directly relevant to the business.

Off the top of my head:

  - There's no longer a free Google Apps for Domains tier. Existing domains have been allowed to stay but nobody new can register for free.
  - Those who are still on the Free tier have had ActiveSync turned off. Works for existing devices, will break when you try and set up a new one.
  - CalDAV is in the process of being discontinued. Quite what this will mean for iPhone owners is anyone's guess - it still works at this stage but I wouldn't be too surprised if Google are using this behind closed doors as a bargaining chip with Apple: "You want all your iPhone users to be able to sync their devices with Google? Well, I guess you'd better stop suing all the Android handset manufacturers."

You'd be surprised. Very often, two companies that you'd think compete are actually aiming at subtly different customers and can achieve more by working together.

Doesn't need to be a back door - forensics products to crack phones already exist:

http://www.msab.com/app-data/downloads/Release_Notes_(English)/XRY_release_notes_6.5_EN.pdf

Depends on your definition of "effectively control reproduction".

If you mean "effectively control reproduction forever" - you're absolutely right.

However, it has never been intended to achieve that. What it's intended to achieve is twofold:

  - Control reproduction sufficiently that a significant proportion of the market will say "Meh - too difficult. I'll just buy it".
  - Control reproduction for long enough that anyone who wants the product badly enough to get hold of a copy in the first couple of weeks post-release will have no choice but to buy a legitimate copy.

BT provide routers to their customers; I imagine the great majority are still on the BT-provided router.

AFAIK, BT have yet to provide an IPv6-capable router.

What makes you say that?

Virtually every country in the civilised world already has a requirement for telcos to support lawful intercept.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes, you are.

I'm generalising hugely here, but as a profession, most IT people (whether it's in software engineering, systems administration or management) can be extremely dismissive of sales and marketing.

This is a huge mistake.

If you're selling a commodity (a commodity is something where the product from one company is much the same as the same product from another company - gold, copper, coal and bananas would be examples of commodity items) - you've got to persuade people that it's somehow worth buying from you rather than any of the other people selling essentially the same damn thing. And commodities tend to have very slim profit margins because as soon as you find a way to knock £0.02 off your costs and pass that saving onto your customers, your competitors do the same thing. There is a damn good reason that every major supermarket has an enormous advertising budget, and it ain't because they like throwing money at newspapers and television stations.

If you're selling something that isn't a commodity and never will be - there's lots of business mentor-type folk who wouldn't get out of bed for less than £1000 per day, even out in the sticks - you need to persuade customers that you really are worth £1000 per day. If your customers get the remotest inkling of an idea that you're not worth that sort of money, you'll be out of a job very quickly indeed.

Then you have things that aren't really a commodity, but your customers think they are. A hell of a lot of technology falls into this category. You're trying to persuade your customer they should be buying software that lets them do X, Y and Z - but they've seen a boxed product in their local branch of PC World that claims to do the exact same thing for a tenth the price. If you can come up with a quick, easy way to resolve this that doesn't involve learning an awful lot of sales theory that doesn't always work - there is an entire industry that will happily write out 6-figure cheques to you.

It's even worse than that. Cakes are VAT free.

Biscuits (cookies in US parlance) are VAT free unless they are covered in chocolate. If they're covered in chocolate, they're a luxury item and therefore VAT'able.

Jaffa Cakes are small cakes. So small, in fact, that they are the shape and size of a biscuit. They're covered in chocolate and sold in packs of about 20-odd in the same aisle as the biscuits for about the same price. They're not VAT-able because they are classed as a cake.

Only if your private key was stored on their servers could Google do this.

It's a relatively recent innovation, but ISTR reading of a few JavaScript implementations of public-key cryptography, which would open the door to GPG-encrypted webmail without having to put your private key on a third-party provider's server.

He said "get in", not "hack in".

There is a process known as "lawful interception", and it's existed for the telephone network for decades - it's a term that covers the legal and technical framework that allows government to intercept phone calls. Something similar exists in most countries worldwide.

In short, in most countries the government can demand that local telcos assist in tapping telephone conversations. There may be various bits of legal paperwork that need to be filled in first, but the upshot's the same - the telephone company cannot say "No" to a properly submitted demand.

I know nothing about Israeli law, but I would not be surprised if Israel had extended something similar to email communications.

Google have an office in Tel Aviv, so Google can't turn around and say "We're an American company; you can stuff your lawful intercept request".

You're absolutely right, but unfortunately the world where everyone upgrades their systems so as to remain in support doesn't really exist. There's still plenty of Windows XP systems out there and I don't doubt there will be this time next year.

Hell, only a few months ago I was asked to quote on replacing a Windows 2000 SBS server with something brand new. The business owner was practically slapping himself on the back for being so fantastically clever at getting 9 years life out of a server which he'd bought second-hand. Of course there isn't a direct upgrade path from SBS 2000 to anything remotely modern, so all the money he'd saved would go on consultancy fees to deal with that problem...