I'm sure this should read "SkyNet" instead of Skymarket and hence the only inaccuracy in Terminator was caused by Windows not being selected for the US Military's AI experiments in the late 90s.

I'll get my tin-foil coated coat...

"It's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!"

...but according to Terry Pratchett, million-to-one chances work nine times out of ten.

Call us back when it's actually possible for a third-party to have an independent implementation.

Until then, this is just business as usual. New versions of office have yet another file format that is guaranteed to be impossible to import and export. Just calling OOXML a "standard" won't change this.

Surely one of the national bodies has some integrity left? Or is this just confirmation that standardisation has become like every other walk of business life - hard cash talks - any thought of honorable behaviour (you know - like having a standard that , I don't know, was actually implementable by someone else) can just get stuffed.

"If bands only make money from live performances, why bother having any high quality recordings made? Yes there's an argument that music downloads and radio play will act as a taster to encourage paying punters to go to concerts, but why bother producing CDs and DVDs (or whatever replaces them)? The tasters can be low-resolution loss-leaders suitable for radio-play and downloading, if you aren't going to make any money from them, why bother with anything better?"

I think you need to think again at why people become musicians. Hardly anyone says "I think I'll take up a career as a pop star". If you are a professional musician it is very likely that you have to play every week - that's what it means. Musicians are generally artists first - they make music because they have to, not because it will make them rich. You also have to consider that the cost of creating content has fallen dramatically. You can have a pocket multitrack recording studio for around 120 quid! As for quality - you would have to take extra steps to reduce the quality and make your music sound worse - not a good advert.

In short, we are never going to run out of musicians. The RIAA and BPI didn't exist while Mozart was around and I seem to recall one or two pieces of music by him. What we are going to run out of is the music industry itself. Record labels, who exist for the purpose of creating then duplicating music (making records if you remember) are simply not necessary in a world where the initial recording can be made on a cheap computer, and the duplication costs have gone to virtually zero.

The music industry will look different, yes. Different could well be better and healthier. I think it would be a much better thing to have lots of bands that we go and see live, and decide for ourselves that we like them, rather than a few that we all "consume" because we have been told by industry marketing that we should.

Could be that demand for HD-DVD is accelerating or it could be that selling off the old model at $98 meant a lot of people bought it as a great, cheap upscaling DVD player with HDMI out.

I bought a PS3 as a blu-ray player AND as a games machine. Currently the score for me is 15 blu-ray movies and 3 games.

We could sit and argue all day about PS3 vs standalone blu-ray players vs HD-DVD players. We could argue about stupid Toshiba vs Sony battles (Actually Toshiba+Microsoft vs almost every other CE vendor)...

But as Andy says above, watch what happens with actual movie disc sales. After all, if the content industry decides blu-ray is where the action is, and stops producing HD-DVD content, it's over.

I might buy one out of curiosity, but by the time you've got 10 USB sticks this would look bloody stupid. And if there is only one or two songs per USB stick? Do they seriously expect me to keep my music collection in a box of USB sticks? Have they even tried iTunes or any modern piece of music organisation software?

Or in short. No, I do not think this is a good idea.