disappointment

'tis a fine product but $190 for an extra 48Gb of storage? Can we not kill this practice already? I was pretty pissed that Google pulled the same stunt with the Nexus 7. It's 2012. Flash storage is cheap and widely available but Google and Apple (and probably Microsoft) don't want us to have it. It's very irritating behaviour.

No point trying to decide what to do about the consequences of a lack of free will. If you can decide whether or not to punish someone, they can decide whether or not to offend. If they have no choice in their action, neither do you.

The thing that always bugged me about Golden Balls (aside from the terrible name) was the way stealers would act like it was just a game when they had in fact taken thousands of pounds from another person through deception. Certainly it was legal and even encouraged by the format of the show but it was never the right thing to do.

I've seen people immediately regret doing it when they see that their opponent shared. They seem more upset about it than the loser and tend to cite an expectation that the other person would steal as their reason for stealing, even though this makes no logical sense. It was a fascinating but horrible ending to sixty minutes of otherwise tedious viewing.

A number of companies seem to have policies against in-store photography. Supermarkets don't want their competitors getting accurate data about their pricing. Usually, it's the ones that offer loyalty cards so they can track their customers more effectively.

I have no idea how a branch of McDonald's in the centre of a major tourist city expects to be able to keep any secrets but it may simply be a company wide policy. Someone should update them on just how small, cheap and effective actual spy cameras are these days. Not to mention phones.

"BA’s biggest rival, Virgin Atlantic, also faced complaints over privacy after it was alleged that one of its employees had leaked celebrities’ flight details to a paparazzi agency."

That sounds much worse. What BA is doing - Googling their clients - is, at worst, overzealous.

Believe it or not, we had PDAs back then. And before that, we had pocket TVs.

As interesting as these results are, I don't want to play the game of keeping score of what foodstuffs, activities etc. cure and cause various illnesses. I will try to have a balanced diet and keep active in mind and body. Beyond that, I have yet to be convinced that power playing my lifestyle according to such research papers as happen my way would provide a statistically significant improvement to my long-term quality of life.

I hope doctors are able to make more effective use of these results than I am.

There are plenty of easy ways to legally buy and download movies - certainly a lot easier than torrenting. See Netflix, iTunes, Google Play etc.

It would be both nice and pragmatic if they would drop the DRM that is clearly doing nothing to combat piracy. This is not going to achieve that.

It is true that some games and most porn are produced with the intention of exploiting additive behaviour. There is certainly an issue here. This article sheds practically no light on that but instead takes a rambling, anecdote-strewn approach that starts with a conclusion which it scarcely even bothers to try and support.

There is no evidence given of an actual problem existing on a significant scale in society. There is no mention of any other changes in society which might also account for the supposed phenomenon. Addiction is viewed purely as a cause and never a symptom of depression and social exclusion.

I would love to see a proper assessment of the impact of these industries on society. I would love to see more recognition from the more reputable producers in these industries that some unscrupulous companies gain financially from having an addicted consumer base. And I would love to see constructive and practical ideas for how to improve the social impact of these industries in the future. I'm getting none of that here.

The snarky article was so dismissive that it actively failed in its stated mission of we-try-it-out-so-you-don't-have-to. I was particularly put off by the way the author described video parties. "Facebook or Google+ could easily replicate it, if they wanted to." Well that's the entire Internet dismissed in one sentence.

What an application like this could do is enable people who understand journalism and statistics but not design to get into making infographics. Even charts and tables are meaningless if they're compiled by people who don't understand what they say.