Why wouldn't you pay for a service you enjoy so much? Besides that, I would not pay for last.fm, since I think their service and range of music is still way to limited to justify paying for it. Lucky we still have good old FM radio.

That's right. Usability is the standard. Everyone can say whatever they want, but Apple is making huge profits with no real competition, because all the other hardware/software makers are still competing with eachother for more and more "features" hidden behind countless amounts of sub-menu's.

There is no relation to Linux, the same can happen with Windows servers. Actually, they are supposed to be easier to manage, right? Your argument is completely flawed. Or you are just ranting, in which case your post is WAY overrated by its readers.

Those Windows guys will quickly learn Linux, they are without a job anyway, and when the economy recovers they can start administrating Linux servers. Its like evolution, but in the digital world. Those who adapt survive.

Too bad they don't tell more details. Their software can withstand lots of problems: network partitions, data center outages, failing routers, etc. This time, a new piece of of algorithm apparently did not do a very good job at redistributing data at the time of the data center failure. I'd like to know what it tried to do? Did it try to push too much data to one single location, causing that location to become unresponsive, in turn causing it to start redistributing data as well? I'm glad they didn't loose my email. But I think now is a good time to start making backups using IMAP.

But who will do this cracking? Not the average Joe. And more important, will future hardware be more restrictive and a requirement to consume DRMed media? Of course there will always be crackers, but not everyone is willing to go through all the trouble. The popularity of the iTunes store proves that statement. And with that, DRM is at least for a large part effective.