Note there is no mention of types of job. As somebody who grew up and went to university (Computing no less) in England and now lives and works in the US, I've commented to friends and family that people in the UK with a degree will look at certain jobs and consider it below them. On the other hand, I've met plenty of people here in the US who couldn't find the job they wanted when they graduated so they took a job as a waiter or in retail to give them an income while they looked for something they actually wanted to have a career in. The unemployment system in the UK makes people feel like they can turn down less than their perfect job even though they are unemployed.

Incidentally I don't know a single person from my university Computing class of ~120 that isn't employed. I've seen some exams from other top 50 universities and they would lead me to believe that for many universities in the UK, the problem with the computing courses is the content (one paper I saw has an essay question "Why do we need programming languages?"), rather than the social ineptitude of your average computing student getting in the way of job interviews (which was my first thought).

"Hello? Mr. Smith? Will you be at home between 2pm and 5pm tomorrow? Excellent, you package will be delivered between those hours. Thank you."

Why is it that people run these numbers and assume that say, efficiency stays stagnant. Heat in almost every use of energy is a by product that is the result of inefficiency in converting all the energy. I'm certain in the next 300 years the efficiency of our appliances/computer/electronics will drastically increase and therefore, drastically lower the heat they output.

It's not the cooling fan. My xbox 360 is silent. You just have to install the game, it's the optical drive that's loud. Install game -> optical drive never runs.

Used to play FPS on PC. Console is just less of a pain in the ass to keep up to date once you pass puberty. Agree that XBOX is superior to PS3 for FPS as the controller design and response is significantly better. Would still prefer a PC if I didn't have to shell out my own hard earned cash only to find I have to wind down the graphics till the game looks crap 6 months later. The benefit of consoles is that if the game is published for the console, it will run.

Towards the end of last year I bought a Samsung Fascinate on Verizon. It only had the Bing search widget, no Google search widget, even though it's an Android phone. There were plenty of ways to work around that problem (yes, Bing was a problem for me, no matter what MS do their search engines consistently fail to provide me with relevant results, maybe I'm just difficult) like simply adding google.com as a bookmark in the browser. Couple of extra taps but not impossible.

Around the same time a number of my friends bought the same phone. They had the same complaints about Bing and no Google search widget.

A few months ago, Verizon finally pushed the Android 2.2 update to the Fascinate which included the Google search widget. I now don't know a single person who uses the Bing search widget. Attempting to force people to use your products through deals with various vendors is not the way to build market share.

Does anyone else get the impression that Steve Jobs has a tendency to just open his mouth and respond to everything immediately rather than actually checking with somebody in apple that knows more than he does? I mean, sure, it's part of his job to publicly defend apple against malicious rumors, but sometimes it's not just rumor...

gah! typo... "picture quality WOULDN'T be weighted very heavily"

I can think of at least 2 reasons why Blu-ray hasn't succeeded. The first is that research shows that picture quality is less important if you are actually enjoying what you are watching. Interestingly, enjoyment isn't so much linked to the picture quality as the quality of acting/animation, the script, plot, etc... At the end of the day, we don't care that much about whether things are a little less sharp. Heck, that's part of the reason there's such a market for poor quality copies. If it's a good film, you're still going to enjoy the slightly grainy rip you bought from a dodgy guy on the street. If it's a crap film, it doesn't matter how good the picture quality is, it's still a crap film. I can hear people already saying "But you'll enjoy a good film more if the picture is better!" Meh... If I weighted all the factors involved in enjoying a film, picture quality would be weighted very heavily until the quality drops to the point where you can't really see what's going on.

Secondly, Blu-ray appeared at the same time as many of the online streaming services that are now becoming so popular. It's a matter of convenience. I know it's probably good for me to get out, get some sun, while I go to some rental place or shop. However, I have to pay per disc that way, as opposed to the flat rate I can pay Netflix. This also alleviates any thoughts that I may have wasted my money on a film I won't enjoy. Don't like that bad action film you're streaming? Stop it and find another... problem solved. No need to go spend more money and make another trip.

If I write a site and it validates and displays perfectly in every browser other than IE than imo it's IE that's broken. Standards should be defined by the majority and now that IE usage has fallen below 50% across all versions, that should no longer be Microsoft.

I really should have emphasized the sarcasm and personal frustration of "Who told them parenting wasn't hard work?" I agree with everything you've laid out. Too many people don't realize the work required to raise a child. I do infact love that there is a charity that will pay drug an alcohol abusers to be sterilized so that they can't have children. It may be controversial but at least somebody is being proactive about improving this messed up society.

... that parents are buying their children (who clearly aren't yet older enough to understand financial responsibility) expensive pieces of technology so that they don't actually have to parent or spend time with their children. IMO it's becoming far to common place for parents to sit their children in front of a TV or video game so that they don't have to keep them occupied. Who told them parenting wasn't hard work?

I'm not saying Apple hasn't been somewhat irresponsible for making it so easy to run up bills but a class action lawsuit is a little extreme for something that the parents are equally, if not more responsible for.

GrooveShark is an excellent US alternative to spotify and apart from one or two labels who's items don't appear in the library (most notably Pink Floyd) they have legal arrangements with most of the big labels. Certainly you can find any recent hits on there and a significant collection of more classic (and classical if you want) music.