I, for one, welcome our new Disney overlords.

This is essentially an upgraded Samsung Gear VR, and it can only run the Gear compatible apps.
So if you've got a Google Cardboard, Google Daydream or a Samsung Gear already, well, you're not missing much here.

If you go through a startup incubator, please be aware of the following:
Investors will want three things from you - a business plan, an exit strategy and at least 70% ownership of your startup (probably more actually)
Investors may not want you in the startup company in the role that you had in mind. ("What do you mean I can't be CEO of my own startup?")

Business incubators offer 'free' seeding money, but you often won't get it until 1 or maybe even 2 years after incubation starts.

A good business incubator will bluntly tell you what you need to do/change to make your startup successful.

There is such a thing as incubator 'sluts' - companies that literally bounce from one incubator to the next, barely scraping by on the seed money from each.

Personally, if I were to launch a software startup, I'd build an MVP in my spare time and then shop around looking for investors/clients/incubators to take it to the next stage.

A tablet offers 'instant' gratification with a low learning curve and only requires minimal dexterity. Bored with that app? Here's another.

LEGO requires patience, spatial reasoning and planning, imagination and dexterity. Bored with those blocks, well, you're going to have to wait until your
next birthday. Can't fit the blocks together? You're going to have to keep trying until you get the hang of it. Can't find that yellow block you need to finish your duck? You'll have to keep digging around in the big pile until you find it.

You can see why kids spend more time on tablets right? It's laziness.It's easier. Effortless. Also, lazy parenting. Especially when kids are small they need a bit of help from mum and/or dad with LEGO and building blocks. Don't need much help with a tablet...

I'm lucky, both my kids love LEGO, but I still have to monitor how much time they spend on the tablet.
My youngest son is nearly 2yrs old and loves the CITY LEGO trucks, and watching his dexterity improve just from playing with those and pulling them to bits is nothing short of amazing.

Also, what they fail to mention here is that building blocks are not for all kids. Some kids just don't get it. Just not interested. And that's got nothing to do with modern technology because I saw that lack of interest in some kids more than 20 years ago.

Last but not least, there's been a big fuss in the media here (NZ) about kids going to school and lacking the dexterity to hold a pencil, being unable to recognize their own written name, etc. From memory technology got the blame as well. Not enough time spend interacting with mom and dad.

Koha...is not quite a gift. It's many things.
Sometimes it's a voluntary donation, sometimes it is not and you'd better pay the koha.
Sometimes it is used as a blatant bribe to grease the wheels. (but koha sounds so much nicer than bribe doesn't it ;)

Traditionally it's food, but not these days. Cold hard cash thankyouverymuch.

(True story - koha in action ;)
There's a band that travels the North Island here and plays in the various small town pubs.
With each given pub they have a choice; voluntary door charge (koha) or, the pub pays them a flat fee up front.
This band always goes for the flat fee, with the exception of one pub not far from where I live.
When they play at that small town pub once a year, they always ask for koha at the door.

I asked the band members what was so special about that pub?
The answer:
"It takes us six months to smoke the koha"

Haven't played the game yet but judging from that advertisement,

If I compare it to Mtg:
- no interaction during opponents turn
- no resource management
- no trading of cards
So...the three things that give Magic it's depth and appeal are missing...hmmmm...not sure about this.

For some reason I read that as:
"Cthulhu Might Have Spread Life Through the Solar System"

to which the answer is: Probably not.

So here I am, with my Samsung laptop, just installed the 8.1 update. Almost everything works hunky dory,
(see my comment history - VLC broke, and I've got a stupid warning watermark on my desktop that I can't get rid of)

and here's a vague article implying IE11 messes up certain websites that I use often...

Let's check it then.

Start up IE11 (Second time I've ever used IE on this laptop. Huzzah. F*ck it's slow)
google - do a few searches...looks good to me.
gmail - log in, check email...can't see anything weird...
maps then? Nope, all good.

So what is supposed to be broken? Can anyone give me concrete examples?

I'm not going to create an outlook account BTW, stuff that.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Java/web dev. I am not a fan of MS. I'll probably get down voted as a paid MS shill because I'm not jumping on the slag of MS bandwagon - I wish, I could use the money ;)

Upgraded my laptop the day the update became available in the store...have only noticed two odd things so far:

VLC is dead. Crashes immediately, then gives error about failing to send an error report. Yay. Uninstalling and reinstalling made no difference. Double yay.

Pictures used for wallpaper, screensaver, login screens, etc changed after reboot. Bizarre, but easily fixed.
I should note that I had to google how to change some of these back to original settings, as not all of these are changed from control panel. and the actual
setting I was looking for is hiding behind a GUI element that doesn't look clickable. That annoyed me more than anything else.

Laugh and joke all you want...

The way the political system works here (NZ) it is actually entirely possible for him to become an MP.
We have a small population and the minimum threshold (under MMP) for a party to get seats in parliament is quite low.

It is unlikely he'll get there, but it is not impossible.

An old programmer once told me that insurance companies run on OpenEdge (aka Progress), and old versions at that.

Gigabytes of proprietary spaghetti code <<shudder>>

I'm not putting my hand up to fix that.

They need one of these...

http://imgur.com/gallery/7s0ALeF

Haven't read the article, but at first glance I would say that:
It is inevitable that the unaltered document is pirated and made available online, and given the availability of both original and altered version, it should be trivial to detect the subtle differences, and undo them.

Or, better yet...
Would it be more interesting to start adding your own random subtle alterations to e-books when you re-distribute them?

Spotify
Pandora
iTunes ...
pick one.

I'm not sure which one bothers me more...

A) It is a scam. 78000 people fell for it. Thanks for your money.
or
B) It is not a scam, but the project never gets anywhere. Thanks for your money.
or
C) It is not a scam. They get to Mars. Based on some arbitrary selection process any one of these 78000 people may become responsible for a good part of the genetic makeup of all future Martians...