0.3% increase? And inflation is what, just now (worldwide)? So music sales are still on the way down...

> Where are the Pink Floydds? The Queens? The Guns n Roses?

There's still a lot of big (as in, can play to full stadia) bands going, but whether they are to your taste or not is a different matter. The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Muse, Coldplay (not my cup of tea mind), The Killers, Florence and the Machine, Radiohead (still touring!) and Jack White to name but a few.

While I fully understand many of the comments here, I still do feel a bit for the artists who create the stuff that everyone thinks they should get for free (or at least, be able to buy once and then sell for the same amount).

I suppose the market is just changing - artists should make their money from touring, right? Although, I'm not totally clear how authors will make much money doing that, but the likes of the Arctic Monkeys should be ok!

(Yes, yes, I know that the big companies get by far the biggest slice of the pie, but I assume the writers get something - but that will be much reduced if people don't pay for as much stuff. Artists/Writers = Good, Big Companies = Bad, but stealing from the Big Companies = stealing from the artists and writers too. :( )

We are given a choice at work

Fortunately, we're given a choice between matt and gloss here at work (we're all developers with 2 or 3 screens).

NOT A SINGLE PERSON (out of 20 or s) has opted for gloss... I think that tells us something. :)

That reminds me - I forgot to re-enable Java in my browser since the last time this happened. Happily, that means I don't need to do anything now. Seems I don't really need Java enabled in my browser these days.

No-one wants smart watches?

The article wrote: "But that begs a question about just why anyone is targeting a market with products it seems no-one wants?"

No-one wants? If that's the case, why did the Pebble Bluetooth Smart Watch kickstarter gain more than 70,000 pledges and more than $10,000,000 in funding?

Personally, I'm not interested in them - but to say that no-one wants them is clearly untrue.

Is it not an "obvious" thing anyway?

Well, it seems a little obvious to me. In the physical world, you can make something bigger by stretching it, or smaller by compressing it - like the design on a balloon. The pinch gesture is an obvious analogue for a touch screen. I realise that double-tapping can also work, but it doesn't make the pinch gesture any less obvious.

* Disclaimer: I clearly know feck-all about patenting things. ;)

Well-known Wikipedia-hater in Wikipedia hating shock!

Herpdiderp, I guess.

I programmed in C++ from 1987 until 2005, when we switched to C#. I still do have to maintain our old legacy C++ code from time to time.

My personal opinion is that switching from C++ to C# was the best thing we could have done! Most of what we were doing was UI code, and C++ is frankly totally crap for that. It's pretty good for device drivers and graphics libraries and other low level stuff. But for anything else, it's truly awful. And I say that from a position of having a GREAT DEAL of C++ experience.

Yes, I read - and understood - the seminal C++ books "C++ Templates" (Vandevoorde/Josuttis) and "Modern C++ Design" (Alexandrescu). Oh. My. God. To think I used to think it was all so cool - now I just think the language crawled up it's own arse and died... ;)

Bus stops in Edinburgh have QR codes (there's an android and ipad app to give you the arrival times for the next few buses at a bus stop). The QR code takes you to the bus times app.

Anyway, I think it's a good example of a QR code which is NOT used for advertising.

(Can't edit my previous reply)

I meant to mention: My wife's pretty much stopped using her Kindle at home now. She always uses her Nexus 10 instead.

Nah, I don't get any eye strain at all. I spend all day reading computer screens - I'm a software developer!

I tell you what I do find makes the most difference - using a 10 inch tablet rather than 7 inch ones (including the Kindle). Reading on my wife's Nexus 10 is amazingly better than reading on a Kindle.

The Times Newspaper seems to like the Nexus 7...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20608145

Seems the Times Newspaper likes the Nexus 7, since they'll give you one for £50 if you take out an 18 month sub for the newspaper. (Seems like a good deal if you were actually going to read the Times...)

>Something sporting a Tegra 3 and running JB4.2 ain't "low end".

But when it only costs £159, it HAS got the low-end sown up, when the other "low end" tablets are a similar price but with much lower specs.

>>Microsoft, true to its name, is a software company which does not do well when it attempts to do hardware.

In fairness, XBox and the Kinect did ok. In fact, isn't the Kinect the fastest selling consumer electronics device ever?

I got one of these as an early christmas present for my wife. I was going to also use it to learn a bit of android development, but I can't prise it out of her hands, so I had to get a Nexus 7 for my dev work. :)

The display is amazing, and watching high-res films like Timescapes is awesome. The non-metal case is nicer to hold than an iPad (I don't have an iPad but some of my friends do, so I can compare!). I guess that's really a matter of taste though.

Overall this is an amazing tablet; very glad I managed to snag one.

Nexus 10 32GB is out of stock too, after one hour. 16 GB is still available at the time of writing.

I managed to snaffle a 32GB one - after accidentally ordering 2 due to horrible Play store timeouts and so on. I cancelled the extra one - perhaps I should have kept it for ebay and $$$ profit... ;)

Meaningful statistics?

I'd have thought that the frequency with which new updates for a browser are released has a very major impact upon the proportion of users that are up-to-date. Firefox has had a lot of updates (I think) so perhaps that's a factor that needs to be taken into account?

@Neil Barnes: What century do you live in where you need to pay for a radio license?

"Ten... Shit Apple Pad Mini alternatives"

"Because they won't fit up my arse anything like as well as an iPad mini!"

There, fixed that for you. :)

This review predates the Nexus 7 price changes...

The review wrote:

"An 8GB A110 will set you back £180 which is a tenner more than the equivalent Nexus 7 after you add post and packaging – the 8GB model only being available from Google’s Play Store. If you want to buy a Nexus 7 over the counter, you have to go for the £200 16GB model, which may give the Acer an edge in the impulse purchase stakes."

However, the 8GB Nexus 7 has been replaced with the 16GB model at the same price. So you can buy the 16GB Nexus 7 for £159 or the 32GB one for £199.

So now the £180 Asus has 8GB less storage than the £159 Nexus 7... Which probably means almost no-one will buy one.

Just wait until they try to grab iPlayer over here. :)

"Metro" makes me think of the Paris underground rather than New York...

We have Impala and Elephant mentioned in the same article. Surely we can get a Tame Impala joke in there somewhere?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Usage_share_of_web_browsers_%28Source_StatCounter%29.svg

That is all.

Possibly just officially announcing the 32 GB Nexus 7 (plus new pricing plan)?

Apple crumble time in the UK at least...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19989750

"Apple has lost its appeal against a UK ruling that Samsung had not copied the design of its iPad."

Funny thing this free speech lark.

If I come up to you in the street and follow you around repeatedly calling you a worthless cunt, a sack of shit, and so on, I could be arrested for behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace...

Posting really nasty stuff on a tribute page set up by other people (rather than on your own page) is somewhat akin to following someone around calling them a worthless cunt.

Natwest suspending "Get Cash" app - any info on The Reg about this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19857243

Interesting - but I don't remember seeing anything about this on The Register... Did I miss it, or does anyone have any further details?