The only power that Do Not Track is as a means of making it clear that a user has a particular desire not to be tracked. An advertiser can chose to respect this choice, and will do so if a minority of motivated and technically inclined users make their desire clear - they don't lose out on much information, and they get substantial goodwill for it.

If Do Not Track is the default, it is no different than not having the bit at all - it's just a useless header that has no meaning. If an advertiser has a stance on tracking, they're not suddenly going to change it because browser vendors have stated they don't intend for their users to be tracked.

Given that the LG Optimus 2x - also known as the Star - benchmarks pretty impressively, I doubt a Nexus S overclock will put it to shame. In the quadrant benchmark the Nexus S has been noted as obtaining a score of 1474, whilst the Star scores 1759.

Assuming linear scaling from 1ghz, the Nexus S would obtain 1769 with android 2.3 whilst the star manages the previously stated 1759 with android 2.2 which has received fewer performance optimisations. Whilst this is only one benchmark, the more graphically focussed ones favour the Star's tegra (nVidia) processor to an even greater extent.

Therefore far from putting the new dual core Optimus to shame, I would argue that an overclocked Nexus S can just about keep level with it whilst using a faster OS version on benchmarks that favour it. Hardly putting the Star to shame...

Why? All the items that count can be earned by playing well/regularly - these micro-transactions are exactly that: single, small transactions to buy the odd item that you haven't got yet and can't be bothered to wait around for.

This is how the BBC reports online - single sentence 'paragraphs' under headings that are closer to where you'd really divide paragraphs. I'm not sure why you're so outraged, news reports in general use short paragraphs and fragments. The NY Times, for example, frequently uses single sentence paragraphs.

It makes articles easier to skim and ensures a consistent style between journalists, I'm not sure what your issue with it is.

It isn't either/or.

If your 180 watt graphics card cannot function without drawing less power than that, you have bigger problems. It would, for example, be drawing 180 watts in any modern composited desktop (windows 7/compiz/kde 4/os x). Fortunately, graphics cards don't always run at 100%.

Regardless, it's not either or - code can be made more efficient and be hardware accelerated. One of the real advantages of interpreted code is that we can make sensible and reusable decisions on how best to use hardware to run it.

Right, and if piracy wasn't so prevalent those people would take a step back, realise they had to put some many aside to actually use their rig and buy a less ridiculous machine.

I came here to post pretty much the same thing. The other problem with apps, and often movies, is that they become 'obsolete' quite quickly to some degree. Apps in particular will have a new version released requiring an update fee to be 'current', presenting a good incentive to switch - and may well require such an update for the new version of an OS.

Movies less so, but I know that I rarely rewatch films more than a few times unless they're particularly good ones. This is reflected by the 75%+ discounting on amazon that makes it relatively cheap to repurchase the good parts of an old collection.

Right, but the same applies to Mac ports - they're generally treated equally since they both essentially require similar technologies for graphics/audio/networking - and the new Steam for OS X is exclusively native games (if you consider the handful of Flash games to be native I guess).

That, and if there's one thing we know about Valve it's that while they may take their time, it's generally pretty polished by the time they're done with it.

Cedega is a hacked up fork of Wine which is itself an incomplete and buggy implementation of Windows APIs on linux - why would you have similar expectation of Valve's official ports? Running portal on a Mac right now, it's infinitely superior to anything achieved through emulation.

You come up with some fair points, I'm not so sure they're relevant though.

• In a short space of time they have achieved what's approaching a mobile application monopoly, and have come up with a load of very restrictive policies to make it difficult for developers to target multiple platforms, so in this way restricted compiled apps are far more anti-competitive than open spec web apps.
• They're not forced to use those tools - but are forced to use Apple's APIs and languages, which severely limits the ability of 3rd party IDEs to differentiate themselves. I'm not sure where to access the current version of the developer's agreement, but wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of restriction to xcode.
• I'd say if anything that's more abusive - selectively blocking out the competition but letting it in elsewhere when they benefit your platform. Also - point six has nothing to do with monotouch, they've added every new set of APIs within hours because they directly reference them.
• Apple's policies ensure that if a developer wants access to their market then they're not going to be able to easily reuse that code elsewhere, handicapping other platforms that are themselves barely worth targeting because they don't benefit from multi-platform development. In that sense they could be seen as expanding a mobile application monopoly into a mobile devices monopoly.
• Right, but Apple's policies are trying to remove viable alternatives for users interested in mobile applications.
• Right, but that applies to pretty much any government regulation. The issue at stake here is whether the consumer would benefit from Apple's restrictions and consequent control over developers and consumers being lifted. In my opinion they would.

• I think it really comes down to whether or not their dominance over mobile apps is sufficient to count as a monopoly - and even if it isn't currently, it could well become one with expansion into the MID market with the iPad.

Why do we have to assume it's HDTV ruining things? Maybe there's a point of diminishing returns at which it makes more sense to focus on things like contrast ratios, refresh rates, viewing ratios and additional features. Maybe the average resolution is going down while size goes up because that's how consumers want to spend their money?

Maybe your average consumer or business just doesn't have that much need for a single display larger than 1920x1080 or so? In specialised applications multiple screens are frequently at least as useful, and I know many people who still find 1280x1024 perfectly adequate. Obviously at smaller sizes every additional pixel can be a big benefit, but this is less of an issue at desktop scales.

There are plenty of specialist screens with higher resolutions, but if 1920x1080 or so is a sweet spot for the average consumer - allowing 1080p video, two side by side pages, more than enough space to view any webpages etc - then higher resolutions won't benefit from economics of scale.

Your last link didn't work for me, any idea why not? I'm absolutely sickened by how illegitimate and utterly out of touch with the voting populace this government is. It's been nothing but scandal followed by absurd legislation marred with gross incompetence for years now.

Which would be precisely the reason they made this change in the first place and does nothing but prove them right. If you want to stick it to the man (as with all piracy), don't buy their products, send them an email and maybe try to draw some media attention to the issue. Sure the impact might be small, but at least it's a positive one.

Pirating just convinces the corporations that stricter anti-piracy measures are the answer, and frankly they may have a point in this case given console vs PC piracy rates. If you don't think the game's worth what those who made it are asking for, show some self restraint and *don't buy it* rather than ruining things for the rest of us.

Their hand was pretty much forced when Geohot hacked it in the first place. Since their console is already in third place, rampant piracy could destroy the motivation for other publishers to release on their system. This firmware demonstrates that custom firmwares are possible and I'm sure it won't be long until people are allowing playback of disks from external HDs or whatever.

I'd rather this hadn't happened but the Other OS feature is of little use besides the option to run code on the Cell, and in that case the latest firmware is probably not needed. Ultimately Sony reached out to the hobbyist community with better access to their hardware than any other recent console has provided, and somebody has come along and ruined that.