Its a bit sad but the obituary is often the best article in the economist. In this case it was a very fitting tribute to a tech hero.

I disagree, but that doesn't mean that I don't turn to the obituary page immediately on receipt of each week's issue.

jfb: bringing down the median subscriber income of The Economist for 20 years.

I've helped drag down the median for about 10 years myself.

I wonder if their subscriber income stats aren't heavily bifurcated.

I always felt weird doing this. Almost always I turn to their Obit page when I get a new issue. Glad to know I am not the only one who does it.

I usually start with the funny letter to the editor. (Usually the last letter printed.)

Based on the tone of the article I guess it was destined to be this weeks obituary, but Qaddafi died just before they went to press. So unfortunately it looks like dmr's obit is only online, unless they run it next week.

Yep, Quaddafi got the obit in the Android app, at least.

..and probably Crown Prince Al-Saud has the inside track for next weeks obit I'd wager.

The print version of The Economist did cover a nice item about Richie in the letters section ("The death of a tech genius")

> Its a bit sad but the obituary is often the best article in the economist.

That's not sad. That's actually the case for newspapers in general.

The apple rumour mills are already spinning at full speed for this one. Only 9 months to go! or is it 10 months?

Its not just math but also legal definitions/terms etc that can create traps.

I disagree with you that founders who are not across this deserve to be victims. It is impossible for founders to be across everything and intricate law and finance math is likely to be one of these area's. While a lawyer/business broker etc should be consulted in all of these cases sometimes even your lawyer can let you down and you're none the wiser.

At the end of the day I think that investors who deal in tricks and traps are on the same level of scumbag as the dodgy bankers/Enrons/Madoffs of this world.

I wouldn't be surprised if it gets packaged into windows/office.

coming soon, skype editions, starter with no video, professional up to 2 people, enterprise, and 90 days trial edition.

and all current skype will be called skype express, with 5 minutes call limitation.

or skype name will be changed to, microsoft windows video and call manager.

That would mean they'd have to get rid of Office Communicator (the professional version of Windows Live Messenger) to make room for Skype.

I quite like the browser. While it kind of creates a bit of a walled garden effect. The truth is that most people browse the same websites most of the time. The potential with Ravens approach is that they can leverage that.

Quite often people will browse about one topic and then want to go to one of their other sites to get a different perspective, or to watch a video of it etc. It would be good if there was built in "search" where it can work out what topic you are reading and automatically search your other main sites for the same topic. Then you can click between your main sites to get each perspective/content on that topic.

I wonder what the optimal fatigue level is for your potential customer. Is it when they are more worn down and willing to go along with your recommendations or when they are less worn down and they have a more satisfactory experience making choices that are right for them?

I've noticed a lot of car dealers around here are now open until about 9:00 PM.

Perhaps some in China are not familiar with the wine bottle and how hard it is to put the cork back in.

Actually, the argument from the reactionaries in the article is very much aware that it's hard to go back and add censorship after services launch. Their argument is that before allowing any services to launch, censorship tools and suppression capabilities need to be already in place.

They already are in place, the only thing that will work is having all content that is published being approved first. Good luck with that.

Chop off the bits that are sticking out with a razor.

My read on China is that there is a weaker society culture while also having a stronger family culture. This probably means that a lot of startup financing will be from families as the middle class grows and there is spare cash around.

Word of warning just by chance my OSX hard disk was corrupted today. Luckily I had my Snow Leopard OSX disk so that I could use the disk utility to check what the problem was and attempt a repair. I had to reformat but it has made me think that keeping the disk around would be a good idea.

I suspect that Apple would suggest that that was what Time Machine was for.

But physical media is still nice. Supposedly you'll be able to buy a USB install for $69 next month.

I have given up on TM because it chews up my external drives at an alarming rate. I have had three hard drives die in the last 2 years because of TM. My other drives of the same brand that didn't have TM are just fine still. Either I have extremely bad luck with WD drives, or time machine is just not a reliable backup mechanism (I'm inclined to think the latter). Plus, the drives have to be HFS formatted which is also a con for me (that I am willing to live with in exchange for a reliable backup solution).

Is anyone else experiencing these kinds of problems with TM?

I've had the same drive hooked up to time-machine now for the last year and a half if not longer and haven't had any issues what so ever.

It is a custom enclosure with a standard Seagate hard drive. Works wonderfully.

I've only been using Time Machine for about a year but my hard drive just crashed last week, conveniently three days after my MbP's hard drive. I've found it useful for restoring individual files, but I wish there was a way to customize the frequency of backups- plugging it in once a week is hardly ideal.

You can change the frequency, but you have to use an external app. There are a number of ones out there, for example: http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/ or http://www.klieme.com/TimeMachineScheduler.html

Note: I can't remember which one I tried so I can't recommend one, these are just quick ones I found off Google. I do remember as I used them that despite scheduling it in the App, time machine would incorrectly display "Next Backup: Tomorrow" or something like that.

I'm sorry, I have genuinely no idea what you're talking about.

Time machine is free. Apple isn't making money from that. You're thinking of Time Capsule, which is an external disk people often use with time machine.

Apparently it's not too hard to make a bootable Lion DVD:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/18/make-an-os-x-lion-boot-d...