From TFA

As your faster-than-light ship sails through the cosmos, it’s not alone. Although we often think of space as empty, there are loads of high-energy particles shooting through the void. The University of Sydney research [PDF] indicates that these particles are liable to get swept up in the craft’s warp field and remain trapped in the stable bubble.

That's why you have a deflector dish! Don't these guys even _watch_ Star Trek? ;)

P.s. we don't mind a few sacrifices. The kind of people who liked this type of Nokia phone (and I think you'll find there are quite a few) held onto their old monochrome 3310s for as long as possible like their lives depended on it so really, it's fine if it's not got a SuperMegaBrite(TM) Retina Display pushing 400ppi. It's okay if it's a bit thick and a bit ugly. Really :)

When I think Nokia, I think "phone that is reliable, built like a brick shithouse and with a battery that lasts all week or more, and can pick up the faintest whiff of a signal and make it work"

Never mind making "yet another smartphone that is only 2 molecules thick and with a battery that lasts a whole 4 hours!"

Do smartphones if you must, but make it the same way you used to make phones. Make it a rugged beastie that the highly destructive creatures known as "sales reps" won't keep handing back to the IT department with shattered screens knackered batteries broken buttons and chunks missing. Make a phone that can connect to Exchange but that our CEO won't brandish angrily at us while shouting about terrible battery life and dropped calls. Trust me, we'll love you for it and we'll buy lots.

Ta.

I've just noticed this (having read up a bit more about how they're really in the belief of everyone involved there *not trying to be evil* but just kind of trying to raise funds, I decided to stop worrying and carry on, and heck, download the latest version)

Lo and behold, before the download it asked whether I'd like to donate something. In what I consider a stroke of sheer genius, they let you allocate it to whatever you consider the biggest concerns (I went for hardware support and upstream co-ordination plus tip) in quite a direct system of voting with your wallet. It's a brilliant idea because indeed it did entice me into donating which I think I last did about 5+ years ago. Money placed where mouth is, and I hope they'll find success with this and maybe not feel the need to stoop further into dodgy advertising territory.

Funny how everyone who wants to stop supporting Canonical ends up using Mint. Mint is derived from Ubuntu! So yes you're getting a desktop that you prefer... but you're still indirectly supporting Ubuntu/Canonical.

Agreed.

Interestingly I'm faced with the same dilemma as when I got into Apple stuff - while Canonical, much like Apple, are getting more and more evil... their OS is by far the most polished. Everything just looks and acts fantastic, from the fonts to the window borders to the dash to the "app store", it's just beautifully done. Other distros are clunky by comparison. So there's always this question of "how much of your freedom and privacy are you willing to give up for all this polish?". Very tricky indeed.

Tempting but the thing is Mint is based on Ubuntu. If you don't want to support Canonical (which I'm starting to wonder myself - they're starting to drift towards Facebook and Apple styles of evilness, pushing at boundaries, seeing what they can get away with) then running something that relies on them probably isn't the best idea. Better off with something Debian based, or Arch, or such like.

Ah right, I sit corrected. No minimum that I was affected by :)

There's also the Farnell-owned CPC, which is a lot more open to consumers (they even have a recently expanded shop now in Preston that you can wander around and browse in) and I note that they're using the "register to express an interest" model for those who prefer that to pre-ordering.

I pre-ordered from Farnell with no issue at all. No minimum amount, no company details (it's geared at that, but I ignored it), and "Home / Hobby" was even an option in the list of job roles.

Indeed.

Got to find it amusing that it takes in-depth research to prove the bleedingly obvious, and quite surprising that it triggered debate IMO

People rarely (if ever) get rich by being fair, honest and following the law to the letter. They get rich by being "go-getters" and not letting anything stand in the way.

It's all in getting away with it. The more someone can get away with trampling on people, breaking laws / morality etc without repercussions ("getting away with it" includes internal sense of guilt/remorse), by nature, the further they will succeed in getting what they want while others who get away with it less hold back.

You could go right the way back to cave men. The one who knocks everyone out and has the meat to himself isn't *nice*, but he's still the one who didn't go hungry.

eBay.

And the reason everyone uses eBay is because everyone uses eBay (biggest audience - can't really get out of it because who wants a smaller audience for the thing they're trying to sell?)

Since eBay own Paypal and receive some nice additional fee payments from it, they tend to ban other payment methods (try even saying you accept Google Checkout - they will block your listing) and so Paypal thrives.

Now, why they don't get bitten by some sort of anti-competitive law of monopoly abuse like MS with IE I don't know, but there you go.

Showing people that we care about each other should happen all the time, that's true.

Don't know about the gift-giving thing. There are ways to show that you care that don't involve how much money you throw at someone (and sometimes even if you do care about them a great deal, some are difficult to buy things for). To me, some nice words and a bit of time together are worth hundreds of the "things" we exchange.

... as like the things that fly through them (planes).

On average and statistically, the safest (it's got true industry experts in safety and security behind it precisely because their business relies on it - in-house usually hasn't)

But when something does go wrong, it affects a lot of people and makes a mess.

Watch out for the Kazon. And the Vidiians. And species 8472. And the Borg.

Yeah it's that point about lack of demo for me. That seems to be the norm now that we have all the "app store" distribution models (iTunes Store, Steam etc). You're supposed to just "know" if a game is any good, that it will work well on your PC properly etc and gamble £30-50 on it. No thanks - if they can't be arsed to make a demo, I'll make my own.

Of course, once you've got a pirated version working it's up to discipline and morals to buy it. I would, but tend to be in the minority (I'm the sort of person who drives the speed limit. Almost no one does that). Maybe writing demos would help reduce it a little, or maybe there's not enough "pirated it for a demo and now I have it I might as well keep it" activity to justify the cost of making one which is their choice.