Server space

"but the content each week comes from The Economist's servers"

At the moment, maybe. I'm betting that they want to push that content into Apple owned servers though.

Digital content being delivered with a cut being taken... huh. I really hope no-one explains to Steve Jobs how the Internet works - he may insist on hosting the Internet for iFans...

Interface

I'm just wondering what sort of interface your PC would need to be able to even cope with that bandwidth. Given PCIe has a limit of 1GB/s on each lane... you'd need 64 PCIe x16 cards by my reckoning.

Plus where on earth are you going to store it? Process it?

Only on live streams

"After all how do you prevent Johnny foreigner from taking content they have paid fuck all for"

Strictly speaking, I could live in the UK, watch iPlayer legally and not contribute to it by paying a licence fee.

A licence fee is only required if you watch the iPlayer's live broadcast streams. Rightly or wrongly, if you watch anything historical (including Eastenders that started 5 minutes ago), you do not need a TV licence.

Chortle

Good one, mock someone for getting it wrong, comment on irony, while ironically completely getting it wrong yourself. He didn't hack Facebook - he *used* Facebook to find personal information, with which he could use to reset the passwords to their *email* accounts. From there is where he found nude pictures.

Look at the palm of your hand please. Closer... closer... closer... <smack>

But,,,

My mum's maiden name *is* Beeblebrox! What do I do? :-)

I do much the same with "Where were you born?". Some answers to which I've given being "an oilrig", "the back of a Capri as they didn't make it to the hospital in time" and of course, "Narnia"

@undefinedNaN

"Challenge: What's 1+2?"

The beauty of that system though, is the good proportion of people who would set that challenge would probably have "5" as the response.

re: missing point

I'm not really missing the point - the flash point is a compromise between safety and usability. You want as high a flash point as possible, and as low a flash point as possible for the conflicting requirements. A flash point of 60C allows for a reasonably easy burn (difficult to ignite from cold though, hence the triethylborane injection at start up) - but once it's burning and has a reasonable flow, it's a perpetual cycle. It also allows it to act as a safe(r) coolant.

The other factor (and the other part of the compromise) is survivability. Engines and fuel tanks are much safer with high flash point fuels - they don't blow up so easily. Loading a plane with hydrogen (at the extreme end) is bloody dangerous when it goes wrong - witness the Hindenberg and Challenger. The higher the flash-point, the lower the risk of explosion - supersonic flight is a dangerous enough place without adding to the risk.

Your ideal fuel for ease-of-light is flammable. Your ideal fuel for safety is combustible.

Re: Ashland, KY?

KY will unfortunately be a luxury he will be without while dropping the soap :-(

An effing disgrace that this man was even charged, let alone convicted or jailed.

Because..

They created JP-7 for a reason. It's got a fairly high flash-point of 60C, whereas propane has a ridiculously low flash-point of -100C ish and would be useless as a coolant.

Mind you, I think there's a reason you and I aren't jet engineers :-)

Bud

Budweiser (the US one) is possibly one of the cheapest beer to make, and massively marked up = Yanks raking it in from idiots. Of course, if they will make it from bloody rice, it's no wonder it tastes like used urinal blocks.

Still, just when you think they can't make it any worse, you get Bud Light, and the utter abortion that is Bud Ice <shudder>. I sometimes wonder why I didn't like beer in my youth, and then realised why - I grew up in a place that served Tenants, Bud and Rolling Rock.

Nowadays, I'm in the west country and suddenly every pub has a glorious variety of breweries, including my new favourite, Bath Ales. Pint of Gem, lovely... In fact if a pub only has a row of Stella, 1664, Carling, Strongbow and Peroni, it's an indication to walk out.

@ Number6

The only exception I've found to the "say no to Yank beer" is Sam Adams.

Na

A Wells Bombardier would be far more appropriate - and a much finer ale..

Me too

Paul - you're not the only one who misread that. I thought of flying d!ldos and was rather fearful!

Oddly, flying shurikens, I'm ok with... especially if it's aimed at American beer drinkers..

Steve?

Steve? Steve Jobs? Is that you?

Not to mention

As far as I'm aware, the Beeb have seemingly yet to come up with a way to watch live BBC coverage on iPlayer when not using Flash. Was confused for a while when friend's iPad could watch all iPlayer programmes except the live feed until it dawned on me...

re: OtherOS

"Yes. I'm pretty sure that fail0ver and other real hackers will simply stand down if they re-enable OtherOS ... which is the reason they started hacking at the PS3 in the first place!"

On the other hand though, they may carry on - at this point the die has been cast and Sony have shown they will happily drop the axe and force an ultimatum of PSN or OtherOS. Who's to say how long it would stay if they did reverse their decision?

Sadly, not that they'll change their mind and restore it anyway..

They could block it...

Have been thinking about this with my tongue out for a minute or so and I've come up with a solution Sony could use.

Essentially, the problem is that if they change the encryption keys, all previous games will likely now fail to run (you have to block any code that has been signed by the old key - except the legit stuff, which you've no real way of identifying).

However - most games auto-update (or alert you to new versions) with patches. If Sony can get all their publishers to push out a new patch, job done. The problem is getting all the publishers to support a patch for their back-catalogue - no mean feat, especially as some will have been orphaned by now. Alternatively, you could have a whitelist of approved games that have the old encryption key - which assumes Sony know their back catalogue inside out (presumably they do).

Or lastly, they could just reimplement the "Other OS" option, the removal of which seems to have caused this hacking crusade in the first place. Especially as I doubt they have a leg to stand on by suing these people.

@erox

Have you never got into a car in Winter then?? As a meat-bag, you are the primary cause of moisture in the air (your breath for example, or bringing in general moisture from the ground - not uncommon in Winter), which will condense on any cold surface. Usually this is the windscreens as they're in touch with the external conditions - it's why you have to stick the heaters full on and aim them at the windscreen. All other cold materials in the car (iPhone) will take the role of condensing your breath.

Also - the only way Apple would be refusing a repair, is if the moisture indicators had been activated (pink things in the earphone socket and 20-pin connector).

I agree... but..

You've just invited a lot of hi-fi folk to complain that CD isn't lossless, it's sampled at 44.1KHz to recreate frequencies up to 22KHz (and lops off the higher, undetectable to the human ear frequencies, but those which can obviously harmonise with the audible frequencies). It's also got a bit depth of 16, which effectively limits the dynamic range to 96 dB. There will then be a mumbling about vinyl, an incomprehension of Nyquist–Shannon sampling theory, mutterings of not knowing you're born, a rustling of anoraks, followed by a swift down-voting of this post - possibly yours as well. Fortunately I've upvoted yours to try and cancel some of that out.

But I agree, as a digital format, CD seems to be the only generally available lossless format. Until FLAC is widely available (to buy as a digital source) it's the only consistent format. Hell, even if iTunes were to sell Apple Lossless tracks it would be a start.

Cheers :-)

re: *Sigh* CRB FUD

"If there's a record of you giving a DNA sample (I'm not even sure if this will appear on a CRB check) it might be queried ('Oh, it says you gave a DNA sample, what was that about', 'I volunteered when the police put a call out to help with their enquiries'), again, it won't be a barrier to any form of employment at all."

On an Enhanced Disclosure, it will be released as an "investigation not leading to prosecution". It won't say "came in as part of a voluntary 000's-wide campaign" - it will imply you were a suspect. You're relying on the person interviewing you to believe your story. Consider if you're interviewing candidates for a job where there are two strong contenders, practically equal but one has an "investigated as part of a murder case" on their Enhanced Disclosure, vs one without, who would you employ?

"Anything related to violent or sexual crimes will almost certainly be a barrier to employment, and quite rightly."

Shoot your argument in the foot why not? This *is* related to a very violent crime. Or at least after the mists of time have descended, it certainly will give that impression. I think you're being a bit naive and blasé with respect to what future governments, police forces or employers will do with this information if it's there. Unfortunately nobody trusts the police to remove your DNA sample afterwards, or to ensure it doesn't tarnish your CRB. Not to mention the thin end of the wedge wrt civil liberties.

It's called..

.."statutory rape". The idea being that a 13 year old boy is legally incapable of giving informed consent, so in the law's eyes it's still non-consensual.

Nobody is confusing the issue - in fact the argument exists that as the child grows older and develops maturity, they grow to realise that it was in fact non-consensual and the trauma gradually grows.

Never understood

Never understood why the double standard exists that a 13 year old boy wouldn't be traumatised by this experience. If the genders were reversed, there would be no question of whether an "alleged victim" existed.

It may sound Penthouse Forum to you, but carnal relations generally require a degree of emotional maturity. Chances are slim it wouldn't exist here. Even though the boy may also be thinking "wa-hay!" at the moment, you've no idea what damage has been done to this child - emphasis on child.

Quantum leap in reliability

Shirley if SSD's undergo a quantum leap in reliability, there's an equal chance they'll become even more unreliable?

No that seems low

Strictly speaking, you expect all hardware with known "wearing" factors to fail eventually - so presumably the failure rate would be closer to 100%.

The 35% failure rate is meaningless without the timescales.

They have

That's exactly what the hybrid disks are all about - a moderate SSD-like cache in front of a large rust-spinner. It does cater for failsafe - it's a non-volatile cache, so even if the power is cut, the SSD cache survives.

Of course we seem to be charitably ignoring their first attempts a number of years back that seemed to offer no speed boost which then crashed and burned in the history of failed endeavours - presumably the caching algorithms are better these days, but let's not pretend this is a "new" thing they're trying.

Malvern

Malvern is unfortunately being punished for unleashing Cher Lloyd on the world... I think the sentence is about 4-5 years. ;-)

Worse

It rebooted and...

"Keyboard not found... press F1 to continue"

Internal beancounting practices

Depending on your IT policy, you can make "simple" depreciation calcs. For example, we straight-line depreciate our kit over 3 years. Presumably at that point, it's zero-cost and avoids the whole "market value" argument, so as long as it's 3 years old, just give it to staff.

But then, IANAL or indeed a beancounter. The simplest answer has already been given above, which is leave it chained to a lamp-post. "Alright! I got me a bed.."

Yes, now try reading it

DLNA is bugger all to do with DRM. Try reading the article, or even using DLNA equipment and you'll maybe stop being convinced that the world is out to get you. It's an extension of UPnP AV, and many people, myself included, are using it in their homes right now with no DRM.

What did you miss?

Are you confused about what DLNA is? Where else are you getting the impression everyone will watch Youtube clips on this?

Ice

Ice is normally transparent. The ice you're used to seeing though, is normally translucent due to the little pockets of air that occur naturally in water.

A good example of clear ice, is that in an icicle, probably to be found hanging from your gutters around now.

@MJI

An electromagnet on a toggle switch at the end of the endoscope would be equally ingenius :-)

Almost..

"I, me, personally, have no need for, do not want, and see absolutely zero use for any of the afore-mentioned "let's rip off the consumer" goods"

See, you're halfway a geek - it's thinking all that, yet buying one anyway that makes you a geek :-)

Solution #2

I dearly hope that Mr ISP brings the following solution to the table:

"We can sell a discounted copy of Net Nanny if it helps?"

Why on earth would an ISP want to build a highly complex system off the back of a government imposed sanction? If it were wanted by the public so badly, an ISP would have launched it as a product.

My only hope is that the Tories don't really like public service ideas, and prefer the markets to take care of themselves...