Not this mouldy old chestnut again.

A free market doesn't preclude criticism of any of its participants, regardless of whether or not you are free to choose not to buy

The best bit is how wonderfully appropriate it all is. They're suffering because Apple placed the aesthetics of the building above everything else (to the extent of removing their post-it notes).

And the icing on the cake is that it's happening because they're using their iPhones in the same manner as the countless smartphone zombies their product helped spawn.

Generally, rotating knives are preferred for architectural purposes.

So, they're identical to each other, "unstable" and "invade" other creatures' patch by "rolling in and taking over"?

I think we've just found... The Cray Twins.

Jobs was always a sociopathic dickbag himself, though. Remember how he screwed over Woz on the payment for his "Breakout" design? The guy was undoubtedly a visionary, and that vision may have been at odds with IBM's stuck-in-the-past mainframe-centric approach, but that didn't mean he was a nice guy, and his computers-as-an-appliance vision (from early on) doesn't sound that far from where we ended up.

(For example, Jobs didn't want the original Macintosh to be expandable, and the designers had to effectively "sneak" a way to make the memory expandable beyond the original 128KB behind Jobs' back).

It's ironic that Woz- very much a genuine hacker type- ended up not just creating the first step away from that mid-70s build-your-own-kit microprocessor scene (and along Jobs' road) with the self-contained Apple II (#), but that the company whose early success he enabled went on to become almost the antithesis of the hacker ethic.

(#) Not that I'm saying that the Apple II et al- or the later personal computers that led on from them- were a bad thing for most of us (quite the opposite), but they *were* more off-the-shelf than what came before.

Indeed. Always struck me as ironic that one of the most highly-regarded publishers of the 1980s- which had a reputation for good-quality games and crediting their authors- went on to become the complete antithesis of this.

I've heard some pinpoint the change to the early 1990s, around the time of the 16-bit console era (Mega Drive/Genesis and SNES). It's probably not coincidental that- in hindsight- this is around the time they showed the first major signs of what would later become a hallmark- their reliance on franchises- with new versions of the John Madden games coming out every year or so.

But I suspect it's also no coincidence that this would have happened around the time founder Trip Hawkins basically left the company (according to Wikipedia, his involvement was reduced significantly from 1991 onwards (in order to focus on the ill-fated 3DO) and he finally resigned from the board in 1994). From what I can tell, the original company reflected his vision, and it wouldn't be surprising that with him gone it may have lost its soul.

How honest would you expect them to be, given that mining via JavaScript is going to be horrendously inefficient and likely to use many, many times the value mined in increased electricity used by the client?

They'd also have to be clear that using the website is likely to run down the user's battery significantly faster on a laptop.

Then again- maybe that was your point. You can't do something like that honestly without highlighting what a bad idea it is, and that it'd be far better if someone finally got micropayments to work for random websites.

Knowing that people hate you for your sexuality and getting abuse for it from strangers and (depending on your background) former friends and family? Or alternately that they'd hate you if you were truthful about an unchangeable and fundamental part of yourself that you have to keep covered up every day of your life? (#)

Hmm, yeah. I guess that sort of thing might screw some people up.

Oddly, this would suggest that the actual issue is how homosexuals have traditionally been treated...

...making people like you the problem, not homosexuality itself.

(#) Both of which were the case in most Western societies until recently, and *still* aren't as bad as the hostility homosexuals in many countries continue to face today- e.g. fear of being tortured or killed.

I'm not sure how it would do that over HDMI either...

It's a (rather appropriate) variation of this well-known Onion article.

As for the original article, it came out before Gillette launched the Fusion razor which *did* have five blades. The fact that the parody became a reality doesn't make it any less ridiculous; on the contrary, it shows that Gillette's razor blades have become so ludicrous and marketing-led that no-one above the age of sixteen should be able to take them seriously any more...

I mean, I thought the fifth blade on the back for "hard to reach areas" seemed like a good idea for a few seconds until I realised the obvious point that they were only "hard to reach" because the shaving head itself had become so ridiculously bulky.

"Hey, check out the picture on my shiny new 8K TV! It's great, isn't it? Look at that detail! I could never go back to 4K now..."

"You know, it'd look even better if you weren't still using the composite video input..."

This was the first flight simulator I ever played.

"Identify visually contacts at a long distance" on *that*, you spoiled gits. ;-P

Just as likely people who think they're taking advantage of the greater fool theory a la Tulipomania. (Bearing in mind I'm pretty sure hardly any of the people involved actually thought tulip bulbs were really worth anywhere near the sums involved).

It probably doesn't help that Atari's "golden age" IP (late 70s to mid 80s) has been mined, rehashed and generally exploited non-stop for nostalgia-heavy purposes for the past 20 years at least (e.g. this updated "version" of Centipede Hasbro released in the late 90s).

Beyond a certain point, the novelty of having the exact same games from your childhood sold back to you for the hundredth time must wear off. I mean, I saw this story with the same old "Atari's back" playbook and wanting-to-have-its-cake-and-eat-it retro and modern approach (when we all know it's not going to be a PS4) and I just thought, yeah, it's Flashback Mk 2/3/4/whatever from Infogrames masquerading as "old" Atari, and who gives a toss?

Besides which, I've heard it said that many of the people who were into games from that era have now passed the peak of wanting to indulge that nostalgia, and the market has moved on to the late-80s and 90s consoles.

(And yes, bear in mind that much of the 90s are now long enough ago (i.e. twenty years!)- and the children of that era now old enough- that they're getting nostalgic for things that belong to the PlayStation era- deserved or not. For example, people talking about the original "Independence Day" film like it was some f****** classic instead of a bloated, dumb, jingoistic, effects-reliant heap of cornball garbage. I guarantee you that 99.9% of these people are those who saw it as kids and still judge it through the same eyes they did as an 8-year-old).

You could argue that the successor companies formed when it split (Atari Corp., the consumer division, which Jack Tramiel bought and Atari Games, the remaining arcade division) were legitimate heirs since they pretty much continued the business of the original Atari Inc.

That said, even Atari Corp. had less continuity with Atari Inc. than I once thought; Tramiel pretty much got rid of the existing engineering staff and replaced them with his own people, and the low-budget philosophy that produced the "Power Without The Price" Atari ST from mainly off-the-shelf components was very different to that of Atari Inc. which produced the once state-of-the-art (and correspondingly expensive) Atari 800.

Regardless, both Atari Corp. and Atari Games- and anything resembling a direct continuation of the original Atari's business beyond ownership of the IP- are now long gone themselves.