[sic]

What's wrong with "All broadband's half off"? It's a contraction of "All broadband is half off", which seems fine.

"dreary"?

The "dreary cowboy one", really? One of the best in the series, I thought.

appliance?

What kind of joyless automaton says "fire appliance" instead of "fire engine"?

Xbox Live

Speedball 2 was re-released as a download game on Xbox Live quite recently. There's the option to play with the old graphics or with pointless new graphics, but it's still the same game underneath either way. Still fun!

washing machine

My old Nokia candybar, incredibly, survived a full washing machine cycle in my jeans pocket. I took the cover off, gave it a blast with a hair drier, and left it a day or two, and when I put it back together it was totally fine.

cause and effect

"The lack of social skills which makes one so good at working with computers"... I'm not sure there's actually a causal relationship there, you know.

Ultrawhatnow?

Since the article itself acknowledges that "ultrabooks" haven't become popular, it might have been nice to give we readers some hint of what the hell they are.

You can't have a "market of Facebooks". The value of Facebook is strongly tied to the fact that all your friends use Facebook. If Facebook start charging, and half your friends quit Facebook for some free alternative, then Facebook loses value for you too, so you're more likely to quit, making Facebook lose value for other people, etc etc.

You can't (practically speaking) play blu-rays on Linux, so you need at least a blu-ray player. Myth supports UPnP/DLNA to a certain extent, so it may be that you could at least watch existing recordings with a suitably high-tech blu-ray player. However, do check first whether someone else has that particular player working - Myth's implementation of UPnP is a little flaky and might not play along.

As has been suggested above, I'd recommend building a living-room-friendly PC. If you build it in a nice case and get the remote control working properly then it's just another black box under the telly. That's been my approach. I'm particularly pleased with this gadget I bought to let the remote actually switch the PC on and off - http://www.simerec.com/PCS-2.html - no affiliation, just a happy customer.

write-mostly

For desktop users, there's a nice trick you can do with (at least) Linux software raid - "write-mostly" mode. Put an SSD and an old-fashioned hard drive together in a mirrored pair (RAID1), and set the conventional drive to "write-mostly". Then, all reads happen from the SSD, but all writes are made to both disks. You get the read speed of SSD without the reliability worries. Write speed takes a hit, obviously, but, you know, it's a trade-off.

Support commitment

Customising Linux for a particular laptop isn't as simple as just hacking a few menu items away, though. What happens when a security vulnerability is found in the package you customised? Users with a mainstream distribution will get a fix automatically. Your laptop users won't, unless you're prepared to set up your own package server, and keep patching every new release of every package you've customised. Certainly that's not impossible, but it's a bigger commitment than the author suggests.

verbose

"the race to lead the fight to be the top selling current-generation console"... wow, someone's winning the race to lead the fight to win the day to rule the roost of redundant redundancy.

usage patterns

RROD is often triggered by overheating. If you get an exciting new game, or new peripheral, and suddenly start playing on your console for much longer periods, then you're disproportionately likely to suffer RROD.

just get a Harmony

The Logitech Harmony costs about half as much as this.

The Harmony keeps track of which device is switched on at any time, so e.g. if you switch from "watch blu-ray" to "play xbox", then it knows that the TV is already on. It only really works well if you put all the original remotes away and use the Harmony exclusively, so that it can keep track of what's going on.

If this Gear4 works the same way, then it's deeply flawed for anyone who co-habits, since presumably you don't want to dedicate an iPhone to this exclusively. If it *doesn't* keep track of which device is turned on, then it's not nearly as good as the Harmony. Lose-lose.

Too late

Adam & Joe (BBC6) already made the best possible Quantum of Solace theme, featuring the immortal lyrics:

"I want a Quantum of Solace,

But no more than a quantum.

I know they do big bags of solace,

but I don't want'em"

Act of violence

Part of the problem with cases like these is that using a taser isn't as viscerally obviously violent as, say, punching someone in the stomach. People seem to forget that zapping someone with a powerful electric shock is an act of violence. If, reading a story like this, you're in any doubt as to whether shocking someone was appropriate, consider whether a kick to the gut would have been appropriate.

fire sale

So these books you're flogging at 40% off go all the way up the Feisty Fawn, the "latest release" - is it a coincidence that the next release comes out this month, and these books will go out of date?