Common sense is very often wrong. I'd rather have some data to work on than just making a vague guess based on an emotional response to a situation I don't know enough about. "Common sense" has been responsible for some very bad decisions, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Spock#Sudden_infant_death_syndrome

You are one of the 10% then. Most people use their PCs to look up the lottery numbers and make barely literate posts to Facebook.

I think tablets ARE the way of the future - they do everything that about 90% of people use their home PCs for. I'd love to have one so I don't have to traipse off to the PC every time I want to use the web but while my PC works it's just a waste of money to fork out £££s to replace something that works perfectly well. But in the current climate, I'm not spending money on things I don't need. I'm sure I'm not the only one and I think this is the reason they aren't selling like they should.

None of the thermostats I've seen (not that I've looked that hard) have the one feature I want: a button that raises the set temperature by 2 degrees C for 30 minutes and then lowers is back to normal over the next hour. It would please the ladies who want an instant blast of heat while not annoying the chaps who don't want the house heated to tropical levels all day when it doesn't get turned back to normal.

What he did in the past doesn't change the fact that he seems to have turned into a troll, repeating the same untruths over and over again like a broken record.

He's not much of a "patent expert" if he can't tell that this case is not about patents. Maybe "clueless troll Florian Mueller" would be more accurate?

... "another expert, who actually knew how computers worked, was unavailable for comment - he was laughing too hard to speak coherently".

You could go further and not actually bother to release the film. There's no need to go to all the trouble and expense of actually getting it in cinemas or on DVD. Just allow a copy to leak onto a torrent and sue everyone who has ever seen it.

We could use the generated electricity to power desalinisation plants.

Mine has been around for 800 years now. Hopefully it'll last at least 25 more until I retire.

I know you are trying to be funny, but it's worth pointing out a couple of things. None of those other things are as immersive as video games. These are kids, remember? They really do learn from experience. The effect will be far greater coming from an activity that totally absorbs your attention by allowing you to take part in it. Actual violence is provably more effective - kids that grow up in violent households usually become violent themselves. Lastly, I don't recall the last time someone said that actual violence was OK while video games are not. Humour works best when it keeps some sort of tie with reality.

What a strange article. Lots of words, but no clear meaning comes through to me. He seems to be taking one sentence from a Canonical license and saying that it proves there's lots of problems for open source because copyrights fwibble a gwabbit. Well, if he's making up stuff I might as well start making up stuff too. Copyrights are what keep open source open - i.e. you can't ignore the license and stop other people using the open source code you distribute without breaking copyright law yourself.

I really don't see the problem. Contributed code where copyright is assigned to the company can be distributed under a license specified by the company it was contributed to. How is this different from any other company that takes in code? Code that is already under the GPL stays under the GPL - you can't hijack it for your own license, thanks to the copyright laws. If Canonical start being bastards and distributing copyright-assigned contributed code under a non-free license then people will stop contributing. The stuff they have already distributed under a free license remains free forever and they can't revoke it.

Exactly! Who needs to write cross-platform stuff? It's much better to re-write the code for each OS and device. That way the developers get paid 6 or 7 times for the same code. What's wrong with that?

You forgot: "Fucking great advert splatted in the middle of the screen, on top of the text." No idea what it was for. As soon as I see one of those I close the tab.