From the "well, duh" files

The Apple watch has apparently flopped initially, after worldwide sales have been in the order of 3 million units.

Apple are apparently sufficiently embarrassed about this that they have carefully omitted the sales figures from its latest financials, and tried to justify this by claiming that "the information could be used by competitors".

Yeah, that's a major concern - Apple's competitors might stop making the bloody things if they realised they're basically a gadget looking frantically for a justification for their very expensive, fragile, inconvenient and functionality-free existence.

Seriously, guys - the things are $500 minimum for the basic model, and they don't do anything useful!  The screen is too small to actually interact with, and the remote functions for messages/phone etc are analogous to the remote controls you used to be able to get for car stereos - you know, so you didn't have to reach 18" to the stereo itself.

The sole use I can think of for the things is turn by turn navigation, and since you've already got to have the iPhone to use them, it's $500 to make a little arrow appear on your wrist.

Sorry guys, if they were $100 I'd have one.  At $500 for a device that's not waterproof and is yet another goddamn gadget I have to charge, it's a loser.

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I also see the media is gushing about a new report from the Department of Communications showing we're a nation of scurvy pirates.

Of the people who do consume media illegally, the survey found they would likely stop infringing if legal content was: cheaper (39 per cent), more available (38 per cent), and had the same release date as other countries (36 per cent).

Wow, what a surprise!  So in other words, what would stop us pirating media would be that it was available to purchase at a reasonable price!  Who would have thunk it?

But perhaps the most telling part is how even the government acknowledges how out of touch rights holders are in combating piracy, noting that, “rights holders’ most powerful tool to combat online copyright infringement is making content accessible, timely and affordable to consumers”. 

Something rights holders seem hell bent on not doing.

Of course not, because the industry is run by a set of old men who probably wear ties to bed, who are so used to their business model of being able to skin pretty much whatever they want out of the sheep consumer, that they don't want to give that up.  They'd prefer to deny the reality that technology has given people the ability to tell the industry to jam the pricing up their cardigan, and just steal their product with relative impunity.

I know that personally my VPN has it looking like I'm in Sweden via a provider that keeps no logs, and I've now abandoned torrents for Usenet - no tracker, so no Maverickeye spying, and the Usenet provider doesn't keep logs either.

That's not a bulletproof solution, but it doesn't have to be.  It just has to be adequate to meet the need, and the industry is too happy picking low hanging fruit to bother about anyone taking any sort of precautions against these clowns.

The industry might also need a fresh pair of pants after reading the numbers on this article.  MPAA, meet HORNET - TOR on steroids and Red Bull.