Posts by C. P. Cosgrove

LOHAN sees bright red over Vulture 2 paintjob

Gorgeous !

From my own model building experience, all this painting and sanding - it's the dust, you know - is thirsty work. Have one on me !

It's going to look gorgeous !

Chris Cosgrove

Backup software for HDD and Cloud

Secure and cheap

The original poster wants safe and secure off-site back-up in case his house burns down - entirely understandable.

Apart from the initial outlay, this method is effectively free. Two external HDs of appropriate size and keep one of them in a friend's house. Do a back-up and swap it with the one that is in the friend's house.

I looked at cloud storage, and once you get beyond a few Gb it starts getting a little pricey for the private user. I've got about 450 Gb of photos alone floating around my system. It may well be a different situation for a business. A local company I worked for once upon a time - haulage and warehousing - had a fire one night which totalled their offices and the warehouse complex. Because of back-ups, they were working again as soon as they had a couple of PortaCabins put on site.

Chris Cosgrove

Google patent: THROAT TATTOO with lie-detecting mobe microphone built-in

Good in parts !

The best bit about this article was the mention of 'Arrogant Bastard'.

I'll drink to that !

Chris Cosgrove

Cameron pledges public access to list of who REALLY owns firms

“Life is about to get much more difficult for corrupt politicians, arms traders, drug traffickers and tax evaders."

This is one of the finest non-sequiturs I have ever come across. With the exception of arms traders, none of these groups are set up as companies, listed or otherwise, so a register of ownership will disclose . . . nothing. And I have not heard the likes of BAE being discussed in the same fields as Starbucks, Google and Amazon.

Chris Cosgrove

Do dishwashers really blunt knives

Dishwasher - what's that ?

My wife has a dish washer - it's called Chris ! But that doesn't matter because I do most of the cooking and the knives are MINE !

Hot water from the tap to clean, and a rub with a steel to sharpen. The only one that shows signs of rust is the tattie (sorry - potato) peeler, and I haven't worked out how you sharpen one of them yet. Anyway, the rust comes off after the second spud and the human body needs a certain quantity of iron in any case.

Chris Cosgrove.

Great Britain rebuilt - in Minecraft: Intern reveals 22-BEEELLION block map

This could be useful . . .

As a fairly enthusiastic if not very competent simmer, I could see this being very useful in other games, such as building simulated railway routes. If you got the geography, all you need to do is lay the tracks, dig the embankments and tunnels, build the bridges. Wow !

The hardest part I always found was building the bloody scenery !

Chris Cosgrove

DRAMA at 75,000 FEET: Our Playmonaut's TERROR PLUNGE from EDGE of SPACE

Have one on me !

Superb quality imagery, and the equipment is obviously built to Victorian standards of engineering margins.

Chris Cosgrove

Brazilian TV show accuses NSA of spying on oil firm based on leaked docs

Employment opportunites ?

I was amused by the sits vac advert for GCHQ situated beside this article, but surely the slogan 'Explore another World' is incorrect ?

Should it not read 'Explore this World' ?

Chris Cosgrove

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

Ummm . . .

"Metropolitan Police Service Counter Terrorism Command is now carrying out a criminal investigation, which is at an early stage."

Fascinating. Against whom might they be preparing this (possible) case ? Against the heads of NSA and GCHQ for crininal negligence ? For breaches of the Official Secrets Acts ? For aiding and comforting terrorists ?

Or are they working on behalf of Data Protection Commissioner, preparing a case under the Data Protection Laws ?

Chris Cosgrove

Are you for reel? How the Compact Cassette struck a chord for millions

Compatibility

Re: LDS, above

It wasn't that the Philiips Audio Cassette wasn't stitched up with patents - it was. The genius of Philips was to say anybody could use them or make them, but they had to comply with Philips' specifications. Philips after all was, and is, a hardware company. the more cassettes out there, the bigger the market for players and recorders.

This is the way to grow a market.

That is not to say the cassette was perfect, it wan't. But it sure as hell was convenient ! Happy Birthday !

Chris Cosgrove

'You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back'

It's not what you know, . . .

I could believe that some middle ranking - Inspector, Chief Inspector - watch commander at Heathrow deciding to pull Miranda off his / her own bat. Among other things, that is probably what they are paid for.

What I do find difficult to believe is this same middle ranking police officer being in a position to phone up No. 10 and the White House just to let David and Barack know what he is going to do.

After all, this was a purely operational matter for the police, wasn't it ?

Chris Cosgrove

Seagate's shingle bathers stalked by HGST's helium HAMR-head sharks

Why helium ?

As has been pointed out two or three times above, monatomic helium can leak through very small holes. If you can build a case to keep helium in, then you can build a case to keep everything else out. Why not evacuate the drives ? There would be even less turbulence and buffeting in a vacuum.

Just a thought - I freely admit I know virtually nothing in practical terms about how you build hard drives.

Chris Cosgrove

Ultimate Radio Deathmatch: US Navy missile-defence radar vs 4G mobile mast

Call me stupid

Call me stupid, but since this is a shipborne radar system unless the US Navy is planning on mooring their ships in Downtown Washington DC, New York harbour or San Diego where is the conflict ?

Last time I looked, radar and mobile phone transmissions are virtually line of sight, I just don't see the conflict unless the Navy does plan on using these radars in the above locations. Further, since these radars are anti-air and anti-missile radars, if the Navy do need them in say the upper reaches of the Potomac then there may be more immediate worries than a lack (or excess !) of phone signal.

Chris Cosgrove

UK the 'number 1 target' of online gangsters in 25 countries - e-crime report

Another nail in the coffin ?

Another would-be nail in the coffin of free speech and independent thought ?

I agree, crime is crime and the police should be resourced properly to deal with it and the banks etc. should report incidences of even low level fraud - otherwise how do the police build up a picture of the scale of the problem. But since when was having a different opinion from someone else, even our Right Honourable Home Secretary, an offense ?

As has been said often enough, one man's 'terrorist' is another man's 'freedom fighter'. And when I consider some of the things I did as a 16 or 17 year old - I'd get a five stretch for them now. Homemade explosives ?

If I was an active terrorist in the UK at the moment, I would be campaigning hard against the proposals of the Scottish Parliament to complete the dualling of the A9 from Perth to Inverness. After all, some 12 or 15 people a year die on this road and that is more than the average killed by terrorists in the UK since 1945.

Chris Cosgrove

NASA gets red-hot shots of Sun in action as IRIS goes online

24 Hours ?

It might not be foolproof, but 24 hours notice allows you enough time to, for example, ground all aircraft and would certainly allow enough time for almost all equipment to be disconnected from the mains. That's about the best you can do in circumstances like that.

Chris Cosgrove

UK discovers Huawei UK staff auditing Huawei kit: Govt orders probe

Not original !

Isn't this report just a little similar to the recent Committee of Parliament being assured by GCHQ that they always adhered to the law ?

Chris Cosgrove

The facts on Trident 'cuts': What the Lib Dems want is disarmament

I know Lewis Page used to work for the Gray Funnel Line, and even I once upon a time wore a green and brown suit and carried a rifle for Her Majesty - if only on a part time basis - but there is an old military principle of 'Honour the threat'.

I have to ask myself what threat are we honouring by keeping nuclear weapons ? I find it difficult to think of any realistic nuclear threat against the UK in the present day. It was different during the cold war - British ports, airfields and other installations were a vital part of NATO basing and reinforcement and therefore were justifiable targets to the Warsaw Pact forces, but we are no longer waiting for the Group of Soviet Forces (Germany) to come charging through the Fulda and Weser gaps.

I agree with both Lewis Page and Robert McNamara that, in terms of bang for buck, nuclear weapons are the cheapest way around of killing people in large numbers - but you need large numbers of people to kill before the investment has a potential pay back. And killing people in this sort of quantity has gone out of fashion, thank God ! Nowadays we get upset if two or three squaddies get blown away in Afghanistan.

Leaving aside the question of how fighting a war in Afghanistan is doing anything to improve our security, or further British interests, the sorts of war we are gearing up for today seem to be rather infantry heavy and the Government is reducing our establishment of infantry with a gusto. I know infantry are relatively expensive - they have to be paid on a regular basis and training them and keeping them trained is expensive, but they do at least get used !

No, I am a long way short of agreeing that Britain gains anything useful from having a nuclear deterrent. Still, I do agree with Lewis Page on the subject of carriers and catapults !

Chris Cosgrove

Click here for hot live SPEARS test action

Congratulations !

Congratulations on what appears to have been a very successful flight.

Due to the timely reminder yesterday I watched it in real time and you almost managed to complete the mission before coverage of Le Tour began. One eye on a TV, the other on the computer screen. I will raise a glass to your success and my thirst !

Chris Cosgrove

UK.gov's digi-by-default plan slammed: Show us the savings - MPs

Pick up the slack ?

"Instead it has insisted that libraries, job centres and other public places will pick up the slack."

This whole scheme terrifies me, not because of any great direct impact it might have on me personally but because of the 7 million or so with no experience of using the internet. As the article points out, a large part of this 7 million comprises the poor, the elderly and the sick, who are the ones who need access to the benefits system most.

I am fortunate that I live in an area where local government cost saving policies have not impacted greatly on the library service and in our nice shiny 18 month old combined library, community centre and Council office we have 12 computers available for public use. That is all well and good, but leaves one hell of a training problem for the 7 million with no internet experience. I am one of the trainers.

I teach basic computing as a volunteer in the library and at the moment I am the only such volunteer. Most of my 'students' fall into the elderly category - I have had at least one who was in her '90s and learnt quite successfully - but a surprising number have considerable difficulty in grasping that you need to log-in to the computer with one password and then - for example - log-in to your e-mail account with a different one.

I fear that people like this are essentially going to be cut off from the benefits system. And these have been people with reasonable command of their faculties. How about the seriously handicapped - my sister-in-law who is confined to a wheel chair, my neighbour who is blind ?

Chris Cosgrove

How con men snatched £100,000+ in iPads and other kit from IT disties

Crime doesn't pay ?

Isn't there a zero or two missing off this report ? Even assuming that the £100,000 quoted - ignoring the + - reflects the wholesale value of this kit and therefore represents the sums that might be achieved on the bent market, over 18 months that is £ 65,000 pa.

Unless it is claimed that all this was done by one criminal mastermind on his / her own, it sounds to me like an awful lot of work for not very much return. Filing paper work; generating credit references; premises to accept delivery; finding punters to buy the gear - Nah, I'll just stick to my pension thank you.

Chris Cosgrove

IT design: You're not data, you're a human being

The blind

There was an interesting, almost throwaway, remark in that article on the lines of 'Considering the blind when designing web-sites'. There must be hundreds of readers of El Reg who design or operate web-sites - I run two myself and will admit I have never given anything other than the most passing thought to users with physical handicaps. Yet one of my neighbours is blind so I have less excuse than many.

How do you accommodate people with severe physical handicaps ? I suppose adding sound to your links would be a start, But how do you make a Club program readily comprehensible ? I could see it being necessary to make every date a separate 'sound bite'. How I would do this within the size constraints of a 'free' hosting arrangement suitable for a small Club, that too escapes me !

Chris Cosgrove

MoD signs Microsoft mega licensing deal for 180,000 PCs

One Hundred and Eighty ?

180,000 licenses. doesn't that equal 180,000 computers ?

That's getting close to two computers per member of the armed forces !

Chris Cosgrove

PRISM leaks: WTF, you don't spy on your friends, splutters EU

Naive, or what

Of course you spy on your friends and allies. Two reasons. The first is that you know where your enemies are - they are your enemies, but you don't know when your friends are going to change sides. The second is that it is generally safer and easier to spy on your friends and allies - they tend not to think you are going to do it, and the penalties for getting caught are less.

Naive, or what ?

Chris Cosgrove

El Reg rocket squad poised to select Ultimate Cuppa teabag

MILK ?

You put milk in it !

I just lost all interest

Facebook foolishness foils (un)civil servant's squirm up greasy pole

" and a third got themselves in hot water by making political comments on a personal Facebook account."

Just because you are a Civil Servant you are not denied personal opinions and beliefs. Pascal Monett, above, may be right about Civil Servants not being allowed to comment about the government but a distinction can be made, I think, between 'The Government' and politics. So long as such opinions are expressed on personal accounts without identification to a government department, I cannot see where there is a problem.

Chris Cosgrove

MPs demand UK rates revamp after Google's 'extraordinary tax mismatch'

HMRC's reputation ?

I don't see where HRMC's reputation comes into this - their job is to enforce the ( byzantine ) tax laws that Parliament ( = MPs ) create.

And further to one comment earlier, the record shows very little corruption at operational levels in the British Civil Service. Ill equipped, under trained and under funded are different matters.

Chris Cosgrove

LOHAN team regroups for second pop at SPEARS

Good luck !

And a gill of rum for the heroic replacement Playmonaut in case he decides to join the Navy and ditch again !

Chris Cosgrove

Ex-Microsoft man plans brand of consumer marijuana 'fine cigars'

How's about ?

Soul Windows . . .

Fibre boosters trip the light fantastic with 800G BPS LINKS

Long way for a shortcut !

I will admit I do not know exactly where BT's Adastral Park is, but Ipswich to London = 410Km ?

A quick glance at my mapping software suggests 85 - 90 miles, say 130 to 150 Km. Not that it isn't an impressive achievement - I would like a small share of that - but how are they routing it ? Via Leeds ?

Chris Cosgrove

LOHAN is GO! Reg spaceplane BLASTS OFF on 14 September

Good luck !

I'll raise a glass to your proposals. That's an ambitious schedule of work for a high tech garden shed operation !

All the best, and here's to the health of the second playmonaut.

Chris Cosgrove

Schmidt: Don't like our tiny tax bills? Google this... 'Change the law'

Level playing field ?

Leaving aside the bit about tax avoidance being legal, I am interested in David Cameron's statements about creating a level playing field for the international taxation of global companies.

While the objective makes eminent sense - if all countries operate similar ( and hopefully, simplified ) tax systems and charge broadly similar, or even identical tax, rates then the incentive to imaginative accounting would be greatly reduced. but a proposal of this type is essentially of the nature of a price ring. The problem with all price rings is that while they are in the long term interest of all the members, in the short term it is in the interest of one member to break ranks. Which is the cause of their renowned instability.

On top of that, how would our worthy Competition Commissioner in the EU take to price fixing on that scale ?

Chris Cosgrove

Fried-egg sarnies kick off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge

Scurvy anyone ?

First, I wish you well with this challenge.

Second, I would not want to be on a diet like this for very long - it seems to be awfully short on vitamins. There are some very nasty vitamin deficiency diseases out there which are largely a memory in Western Europe - scurvy, ricketts, pellagra to name but three.

As one or two commentards above have suggested, get out there and start foraging !

Chris Cosgrove

Bogus gov online test tells people on dole they're just SO employable

Fun, fun, fun

I just went through this out of ( morbid ? ) curiosity, ticking 'Neutral' to everything. Got told that I am creative and go out of my way to visit museums, art galleries etc.. There is some truth in this - I visited Louvre-Lens two weeks ago ! Haven't had as much fun with a questionnaire in years !

As a reliable indicator of work skills ?

I am reminded of a former neighbour of mine who was nearly 60. He had had a slight stroke and was blind in one eye. The local Job Centre sent him for an interview as a security guard on a building site !

Chris Cosgrove

The gaming habits of Reg readers revealed

What piracy ?

I have to admit that I am now numbered among the ranks of the 'Silver Gamesters' but I don't have any pirated games.

The most I will admit to is having a couple of No-CD cracks for old sims that were never meant to run on a 64 bit operating system, but I bought the basic software. I also have a bunch of add-ons, most of which are shareware or freeware, but I also I have some for which I paid hard cold cash.

Chris Cosgrove

Report says #Facebook #to #adopt #hashtags

re : M. Gale

If you think that's bad, try logging on to your e-mails from a French cyber cafe. I must have wasted five minutes the first time I tried it - then I looked at the keyboard. Still, could be worse - I believe the @ symbol is a special character on Italian keyboards.

Chris Cosgrove

Reg readers brew up the ultimate cuppa

Body ?

3 to 4 minutes ? Wimps ! Tea must have BODY !

I have previously mentioned the delights of NATO standard tea - after sitting in a haybox ( roughly, a thermal container, originally hay lined ) for up to three hours, but I am reminded of a shop I worked for when I was about 20 where the container for brewing tea was one of those ginormous old fashioned kettles and tea-breaks took place in two shifts.

Fill with water, bring to boil, add 3 - 4 tablespoons of tea ( leaf, not bag ), and allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Serve to first shift. Refill with water ( do NOT empty out ), bring back to boil. Add another 2 tablespoons of tea, let simmer until second shift comes in for their cuppa.

Now that tea had body !

Chris Cosgrove

BRITAIN MUST DECLARE WAR on Cervinaean menace

Venison ?

Delicious !

Especially the liver.

Slice into smallish pieces, coat with flour, fry, serve with fried onions, mashed tatties and any other vegetable of your choice - superb.

And there I was thinking this was an IT journal, not Good Housekeeping. Doesn't change the fact that venison is delicious.

Chris Cosgrove

DWP denies major IT problems with One Dole To Rule Them All system

Coercion ?

I posted a comment on Kelly Fiveash's last article on this subject ( 7+ M no internet access ) so my position is already known, but -

"an increasing proportion are made online." and "We need to tackle the digital divide, and this is a very good way of doing it."

This sounds remarkably like coercion. I have an elderly neighbour who is blind. It is so easy for her to claim benefits on-line, and to argue on-line about the correct level of her benefits.

Chris Cosgrove

Bacon sarnies can kill: Official

That tears it !

Oh dear !

Two bacon sarnies this morning, with brown sauce, washed down with a mug of black tea. Unhappily, from that excellent cafe at Penrith ( England ), not the champion cafe between Perth and Dundee.

A pint of Fuller's 'London Pride' this evening, and currently working on a medium dry martini.

It would seem I am not long for this World. I can only reassure myself with Groucho Marx's belief - 'No man goes before his time'

Chris Cosgrove

Health pros: Alcohol is EVIL – raise its price, ban its ads

The Scottish position

The AC above is incorrect about Scotland banning Sunday drinking - what we did was invent the 'Bona-fide Traveller' and provided a steady income for bus hire companies. You had to travel more than three miles from where you lived to be considered 'Bona-fide' ! You were not allowed to drink within three miles of your home.

The debate about mininum pricing has raged longer here than elsewhere in the UK. While personally I am in two minds about it, I agree with others above that it should be done through taxation rather than making retailers set a mininum price. If it is to happen, I would rather see any increased take going to the public coffers than to those of TESCO, ASDA etc.

For myself, I am inclined to agree with Stacy of Holland, above. There is a lot of very good beer brewed in the UK, but I am still glad that I manage to get to Belgium a couple of times a year.

Chris Cosgrove

Official: More than 7 million Brits have NEVER accessed the interwebs

This is a real problem

Having a sister-in-law who is fairly seriously disabled perhaps makes me more aware of the difficulties facing people in her position. She, however is not computer illiterate, but there are a lot of older people out there who are.

I think it is time to start leaning on my local Councillors to see what can be done about setting up a help group. Perhaps I am lucky in that I live in an area which, at the moment at least, has an adequate supply of libraries all of which have public use computers. Perhaps we need to set up a more organised training and help system locally.

Chris Cosgrove

El Reg contemplates the ultimate cuppa

Army issue anyone ?

From choice, I drink coffee, but that is not a widely available option in the British Army.

From the graceless days of my youth, coming in off stag at 0300, cold, wet, miserable, somewhere in Germany to find a haybox of 3 hour old tea which has been stewing, complete with tinned milk and sugar, but it's hot, it's wet, and it was delicious !

I have no idea what brand or variety of tea came up in Army compo rations, nor was it ever brewed with any great style or distinction, but it was a life saver.

Now, if only it had been served with a nice bacon sarnie with a dollop of brown sauce . . .

Chris Cosgrove

BSkyB to flick switch on network-level smut-'n'-violence filters

Good-bye 'Bleeping Computer'

I am in the first year of using the Sky broadband and phone service, I switched last Summer after betting seriously tee'd off at my previous ISP ( No names, no packdrill - but they are no longer Britain's worst ISP ! ), and I am reasonably satisfied with their performance to date.

I hope I will be able to opt-out of any filtering scheme. Last Spring, I had occasion to use a computer in my local library for internet access - to access Bleeping Computer for advice and information. No go - 'Access denied - material of a sexual nature' !

Any filtering of this nature tends to be broad brush.

Chris Cosgrove

Customer service rep fired for writing game that mocks callers

Hunh ?

Sounds like a straight case of Unlawful Dismissal to me, or the Canadian equivalent.

Isn't the Canadian civil service unionised ? As well as their call centre employees. Let me in there !

Chris Cosgrove

Opportunity celebrates nine years on Mars

It was the M25

Has anybody else noticed the toe prints at the bottom centre of the photo, or the shoe print at the left hand edge centre ?

Chris Cosgrove

El Reg man: Too bad, China - I was RIGHT about hoarding rare earths

Monopoly anyone ?

Tim Worstall is correct in that as soon as any monopolist starts exercising monopoly power, it is up for a challenge. In the long run the only extra margin an existing monopolist can make is that margin created by the costs of entry into a market. These can of course be huge.

A fair few years ago, I earned a degree in Economics ( I do not call myself an Economist ! ), and my final year tutor had a professional interest in Monopoly. Leaving aside the 'natural' monopolies - water, sewage, etc. - I remember him saying that he and his colleague in the field had only ever found one manufacturing monopoly. This was a tiny company somewhere that made that blue chalk that those of you with a mispent youth will recall is used for chalking snooker cues !

Dogged's remark about paying paying public sector employees a lower but tax-free salary is, I regret, in error. Public sector employees' tax affairs vary as much as any other group's, and it is fairer to pay the 'market' rate for a job and deduct tax than to pay all of them a lower but identical salary.

Chris Cosgrove

Copyright trolls, biz scum, freetards - it's NOT black and white

Re: Reality v Morality

The two posts above, by David Hallett and AC sum up the argument quite nicely. As a former shop steward and life long trade unionist, I have a serious interest in getting paid for my work. But in an era where almost anything can be copied for the price of a few keystrokes and / or mouse clicks, this is becoming difficult. And, I will admit, like most people I am not completely innocent.

The fact is the choice appears to be between 'Not publish and not get paid' and 'Publish and not get paid'. This is not much of a choice and points up the argument that if creators of original work in whatever sphere do not get paid for their creation, they will stop creating it.

AC has a valid point - that copyright law is there to protect the creators of work. Certainly, you can argue about the reach and term of such legislation, but the hard aspect is how do you enforce it in an acceptably non-intrusive manner ? Judging from many other articles and comments in 'El Reg', nobody is willing to consider deep packet inspection, or to pay for it, to enforce copyright law, but a law which cannot be enforced might as well not have been written. Most people do not go speeding in built up areas not out of a sense of consideration for the inhabitants but because there is a realistic chance of getting caught, with the consequent fine and penalty points.

As I said in my earlier post, a not overly intrusive form of enforcement is the hard part.

Chris Cosgrove

Yes - but . . .

Matthew 25 makes a good point with his suggestion of non-transferable rights but this goes nowhere towards answering the problem of how does a creator of some original work get remunerated for it. This is the sticking point of this whole argument.

I too have created original work, which I know has been published on the web, but by people to whom I have given permission to use it for their personal and / or charitable purposes. But what do I do if I find Tom, Dick, Harry or the BBC publishing my images ? Basically, lump it.

One approach is that of organisations like the Performing Rights Society, except for the significant share of income absorbed by the administrative costs. Another is the many times proposed charge on media, from cassette tapes through to DVDs. This suffers from the drawback that it is possible to publish without using physical media and has similar administrative problems. I do know that I cannot afford to sue the BBC should they decide to publish one of my photos without asking first, and I am not up for the costs of tracking down Tom or Dick or Harry !

I think we are all agreed that there is a problem - we may not all agree what the problem is - but an effective and not overly intrusive solution seems to be beyond us all at the moment.

Chris Cosgrove

Google avoids tax with ‘Double Irish Dutch Sandwich’

Byzantine ?

The Byzantine nature of tax legislation is a large part of this problem, competition between nation states is much of the rest of it.

While the complexity of tax legislation boggles the mind, and probably provides more revenue for lawyers than patent litigation, as long as one state taxes businesses at a lower rate than another, then companies - who are out to maximise after-tax profits - have a perfectly understandable incentive to move their earnings to a state with a lower tax rate. And the subtleties of transfer pricing provide the perfect mechanism.

Contrary to what was claimed at a British Parliamentary Committee the other week, it is not a moral problem, it is a legal problem, and Governments write the laws and negotiate international agreements. The solution lies in their hands.

One of the basic principle of tax legislation was settled in the Victorian era when My Lord Justice determined 'That no man ( or company ) is required to arrange his affairs for the benefit of the Inland Revenue'. Perhaps all that can be said is that these international companies are complying with My Lord's judgement.

Chris Cosgrove

ROGUE PLANET WITHOUT A SUN spotted in interstellar space

A young planet ?

I am a great admirer of James Blish's 'Cities in Flight' series - they sit on a shelf in my living room - but isn't the age estimate for this planet, as quoted, a bit odd ?

50 to 120 million years seems very young for any planet in this neck of the galaxy.

Chris Cosgrove