I think the UK is very lucky to have the BBC. Although a lot of its content is dumbed down it still produces some excellent journalism and debate that is worth watching.

Interesting you should complain that news agencies have agendas but then get your news online instead, where it either comes from said agencies or from biased and unverifiable bloggers. I agree with your point about foreign news agencies though, they are worth checking just to avoid getting too narrow a focus on your own little corner of the world.

Maybe you were lucky, but most places that world never existed.

For example the London Blitz is often held up as a golden time when Londoners came together to support each other and put two fingers up to Mr. Hitler. Actually crime was rampant and they had to close bomb shelters during the day because kids vandalized them. Looting of bombed homes was common, and organized crime thrived.

To a similar extent that Apple does, yes. Allow me to explain.

If you install iOS 7 on an iPhone 4 you don't get all the features. A lot of stuff just doesn't work, it needs certain hardware or a faster CPU or something.

Similarly with a Galaxy S you don't get all the latest Android features, you get a subset via updates to Google's apps. When they update Maps or Gmail you get those updates. You also get updates to Samsung apps, including their desktop suite (equivalent of iTunes).

So yes, the Galaxy S is still updated and still a damn good smartphone.

I suffer from CFS that makes it hard to concentrate at times. During those times I can't watch TV shows because I can't follow the plot and quickly get fed up. It seems watching some TV does require focus.

Just reading his WW2 history at http://www.bairdtelevision.com/war.html
http://www.bairdtelevision.com/colour.html
first colour cathode ray tube
A form of 3-D television, "the Phantoscope"
High speed transmission of images (fast facsimile) "A whole newspaper could be transmitted about the world in a matter of seconds" later seen in the USA without making any mention of Baird.

Apple often is the retailer of their own products. They were selling people extended warranties that they didn't need because they were already covered.

Battery life depends on how you use the device. Some people will stay on the same battery for a few years, others can wear theirs out in one. For example li-po cells have a limited number of recharge cycles which is extended if you charge them slowly and rarely drop below 50%.

I replaced by GS3 battery last month. The old one was mostly fine but I found that if I pushed it hard during the day it would need a top-up by late evening, so I shelled out all of £8 for a genuine replacement. I wouldn't want to give that ability up.

Well, fine, but don't forget that many of the cool new features don't work on the iPhone 4. You are not much better off than someone who just gets new features via app updates for their older Android device.

My friend is still using his Galaxy S which is of about the same vintage as your iPhone, a bit older perhaps. Still gets feature updates, still happy with it.

Have you ever taken LSD? It's an experience that cannot be described to someone who has not; there is no frame of reference. Trying to describe an LSD trip is like trying to describe what the color red looks like to a man blind since birth. It's called a hallucinogen but you don't really hallucinate, rather you misinterpret your senses, which completely overload your brain. A normal brain filters the senses, LSD removes its ability to do that. When you come down you can't really remember exactly what it was like; your brain is not the same.

Yes. Many times. I even spent a year and a half incarcerated in my teens for my LSD adventures. You need to keep in mind that your description is your take on your experience. You didn't have my experience, or anyone else's for that matter. No consensuality. No repeatability. I might have seen flaming leaves; you might have smelled polka dots. I might have found the experience discomfiting; you might have found it revelatory. Or infinite variations of a similar disjoint nature.

Of course not, unless they believe that the experience is real.

I think you're selling the theater of the mind quite short. Again, your experience is not my experience. A well written book will can transport me (and let me admit here that I own a literary agency, and am the son of one of the golden age SF writers, a hugo, and other, award winner... I know at least a little bit about well written books.) For that matter, you're selling theater short. Take a horror movie. Why do people scream when watching them? It's just a movie, and underneath that, it's a complete fiction, and they absolutely know that going in. Yet they scream. What's that about, other than accepting the experience as what's actually happening? I mean, either that, or they're faking like a bunch of fools pretending to speak in tongues. Which -- quite frankly -- I don't buy. Screams and other reactions are too common and too well aligned with what's going on on-screen or on-stage to be that kind of fakery.

I can't agree with your diagram at all

That's fine. You're entitled to your own opinion; you just aren't entitled to mine. Looking at the rest of what you said there, particularly your idea of how many scientists are religious... I'm also compelled to remind you that the real world disagrees with your perception. You might want to look into that.

Are you being dense?

No. I'm thinking, based on what info Apple has provided so far on this specific machine, rather than making assumptions. You should try it.

You have six TB ports, which are Mini-DisplayPort compatible

You're making an assumption here, when Apple has, this far, said the machine can drive three monitors. Your assumption may, or may not, be a good one. I, on the other hand, am not making any assumptions. However, if it turns out that all of these can drive monitors, that's good, but then that leaves me with firewire drives, which isn't.

Where do you put put it? You put the new Pro and an good external RAID box, and maybe a nice potted plant, in the huge empty space on your desk left by not having a huge tower case full of fans.

You assume I want a raid box. I don't. You assume all this will have a smaller and safer footprint than a current gen mac pro. It won't. You're going to need power strips, power bricks, and HD bricks *at a minimum*. As for space, the old Mac Pro (I have an 8-core, externally physically like the current gen), and do you see it inconveniencing me here? No, you don't. And I don't plan to go there, either.

Zworykin and filling patents for good US brands is all the history you need to know.

You're OK with six cords for six monitors, two cords for mouse and keyboard, but not one cord for a raid array? Come on...

note: I didn't say anything about a raid array. I just said HD.

Q: What happens when I pull a monitor, mouse or keyboard cable? A: Nothing. I put it back and go on with life. No harm done.

Q: What happens when I pull a drive cable? A: Anything. I could lose a lot.

Q: What happens when someone steals my mouse? A: I get a new one, no problem.

Q: What happens when someone steals my HD? A: You don't wanna know.

In reality, one cable is not the same as the next cable, now, is it?

Encapsulate this Mac Pro core cylinder inside a normal chassis of your choice, that has all the hard drive mounting space you could want, and contain all the wires that you're worried about your cat or Bubba unplugging. You can even bolt your custom chassis to the desk.

There are some issues -- like power up and down access -- but it's not a bad idea at all, really. Case with a big exhaust fan on top. If the cylinder fits inside a standard case. Or -- perhaps -- someone will build a solution so this machine is reasonable to use. Seems like a market opportunity.

Are you telling me that your cat keeps unplugging your mouse and keyboard too? Or has your solution been to go Bluetooth for those and invest in Duracell?

Yeah, my cat has unplugged my USB stuff many times. There's a fair bit of it. Powermate, MIDI control surface, microscope, scanner, oscilloscope, SDR, DSLR, guitar/bass input, keyboard... the mouse, happily, is bluetooth. See no reason to deal with a tail there. It's pretty annoying when I get "catted", but rarely even comes close to reaching the level of crazy that would be experienced if data on a drive was damaged. IMHO, drives belong in a safe, secure, vibration free environment. Which my desk most definitely is not. Other's milage may vary; but mine doesn't. I actually like your case-around-a-case idea, though.

but DVI is limited to 8-bit color while the displayport can supply the monitor with 10-bit color;

That's perfectly fine. The human eye can't discern a 1/256th step when the entire range lies within the normal human brightness capability without iris variance (which, if your monitor is adjusted correctly, is always the case when looking at one.) Try looking at a 256 level greyscale on a high quality linear (meaning, probably not an LCD) monitor one day; you simply can't pick out a single change -- and your eye is most sensitive to greyscale changes. You're even less able to tell the difference of one step out of a 16 million color range; compared to your rods, your cones kinda suck. :) Where extra bit depth actually benefits you the most is in the data of an image so you can recover very low contrast detail and stretch ranges without creating banding; not in its final display. And my DSLR and editing software have that handled quite well.

All thunderbolt ports are half PCIe and half displayport, meaning all 6 are also displayports. You can drive 6 2K monitors off this thing.

That's been the case, but the ads for this thing talk -- consistently -- about being able to drive three monitors at up to 4k. It's quite possible that they didn't hook a graphics engine to three of the ports, but instead, only the general bus stuff. Not saying they did or didn't, just that the marketing to date on the Apple site and at devcon really doesn't lay this out explicitly. So until they say "can drive six monitors directly", I'm not assuming that's the case. And, if it *is* the case, then I'm left with firewire for the drives -- desk-bricks -- which makes me pretty unhappy, especially when the current model has no such problem. So does the flash boot drive. I'm not yet to the point where I trust flash to survive for long, limited writes and etc (and on a system that writes logs constantly!), and although the flash is apparently replaceable, a replace and reinstall of the OS, plus possible disruption of apps... that's not exactly my favorite vision of the evening, you know?