Having worked on similarly ancient high power devices. It's not just changing a single thyristor. At these power levels everything has to be critically matched and tuned. Get it wrong and the instant you draw any significant power it goes bang.

Also, that will be part of a bank of similar units which also have to have pretty similar characteristics or one will take all the load, and guess what? Bang!

So if you can't get or manufacture an exact replacement you'd have to replace the entire drive module.

Last year I thought /. was headed for the cliff to oblivion.
It seems someone not only found the brakes, but also the steering wheel.

Dunno about that. I've got CDs and DVDs I've had for years - and the machines to play them - all if perfect working order. the only reason I haven't bothered with recent DVDs is they are crap content.

Phillips have a very long history if making things as difficult as possible for everyone else. Going right back to their early TVs and radios.

The parent organisation should maintain a networked data store that all it's reporters have a write only password for.
Data is then sent via ssl. No other encryption software of any kind on the laptop.
Absolute minimum of services and a tiny hard drive, with no swap file/partition.
Reporters should only use a plain, single view, text editor that doesn't store parts of a working document to file, and can be made to direct send the data without ever touching the hard drive.

A classic of it's time.

The F-35 is the 'all-in-one' printer of aircraft and equally unable to perform any of its roles most effectively.

... says a lot about the posters, and nothing about the OS. Personally I think coders should be obliged to write at least one significant project entirely in assembler before being allowed anywhere near high level languages. You pretty quickly lean to program defensively when just the slightest error results in total melt-down.

I bet this OS doesn't have any buffer overrun issues!

There is always a lock-in there.

I'm still using my iRiver H320. It works perfectly, has plenty of space on the mini HD and I was able to replace the battery about a year ago.

Nice physical buttons that can be navigated without looking.
Standard 3.5mm plugs.
Presents as mass storage on USB.
Handles mp3, Ogg-Vorbis, Flac, Wav and some vid formats (can't remeber which - never use them)

So much disdain, and even outright hostillity towards the Pi, yet it continues to confound its critics with its popularity.
I wonder where the disconnect is.

It seems ther've finally caught up with what was possible on Linux over 5 years ago. Virtual desktops too. How very, erm, usual!

One person, with no such decision authority, and who co-incidentally brokered Microsoft's move to Munich wants this to happen.

I wonder why.

Seems people are more interested in the tech than the actual content. If I'm listeing to speech my attention is on what the speaker is saying, not where in the room they appear to be. If it's music, I'm more interested in hearing all the instruments and the dynamics than any positioning that I wouldn't know about anyway.

If you have visual cues then this positioning information will be more effective than playing with sound phase relationships etc. If you don't have such cues then does it matter at all?

To be worthwhile, something like this has to be the first; the best; unique.

This is none of those.