Posts by Bod

Mexico? US? Just don't go there, warns EU health chief

Re: Ignorance is bliss

1918 hit a population with poor health care and living standards

Mexico has poor health care and living standards

H1N1, even in a new strain, is very well known and researched, and treatments exist in most countries with decent health care to deal with it (at least no worse than the usual deaths in vulnerable groups due to Flu).

So it's not hard to see why there is scepticism. It is however irresponsible (of the media) to go around spreading essentially FUD about millions of potential deaths for a situation which is largely unknown and unproven at this stage (referring back to the lack of concrete proof that all the Mexican deaths are actually due to Swine Flu).

Statistically westerners in countries like the UK have more to fear from getting out of bed in the morning, eating your breakfast and crossing the road. Do we have mass panic over this? No.

And as said, it's sad that we get panic over a tiny amount of deaths and infections due to this and yet don't care at all at the millions of deaths due to TB, Malaria, etc. It's sickening really.

Videos of SkyTone's Android netbook appear online

Slow maps

Very sluggish loading of that sat view on the maps. Seems like loading it over a GPRS connection, or maybe that's what they used!

The stylus navigation around the maps seems awful. A lot of tedious scratching about to scroll the map a short distance. I think a touch screen without stylus could work better especially with two finger support. With fingers you just have better gesture control.

Joost puts self in shop window

Tech wasn't that great

Quite what anyone sees in Joost now I don't know because they dropped the P2P anyway. Joost is just another (and far less popular) YouTube now based on plain old Flash.

P2P was trendy at the time, but the proof was in the eating. It was sluggish, slow and unreliable.

Stuff like BBC's streamed iPlayer has since shown how live video should be done (just have to look at the quality and speed of their HQ stream on even 5 year old PCs and a none too special broadband connection to see how amazing their technology is).

P2P is flawed for mobile devices too. As has been demonstrated with Skype. It requires hefty processing in a handset compared to plain streaming and heavier data usage. Sadly Skype is still vastly more popular in the VoIP field than the industry standard SIP which is supported on most modern phones with no hassle or heavy processing and data requirements, hence why mobile manufacturers are still keen to squeeze Skype on their devices.

UK.gov to spend £2bn on ISP tracking

Insanity

As if the centralised database wasn't bad enough, to now insist that the data must be kept in the hands of private companies, somehow linked together means that control will be sloppy and data will almost certainly be leaked or abused.

How is this to be policed? Surely ISPs will be required to have appointed and security vetted (by the gov) individuals who are responsible for keeping the data safe and can be trusted.

What happens when ISPs go tits up or get taken over?

Who is to say that MyISP doesn't employ an extremist terrorist who will have access to this data?

But then as far as Jackie is concerned, we're all extremist terrorists anyway until proven otherwise.

Nokia's Ovi absorbs WidSets

Re: "Ovi"

Ovi = Door (Finnish translation)

Apple rides fanbois to popularity crown (again)

@Ian Tunnacliffe

"and you price it at a small premium"

Other (very debatable) points aside, this one fails utterly. In no way is it a "small" premium.

However, what value is a survey anyway that places Apple along sides the likes of HP/Compaq! ?

NASA: Clean-air regs, not CO₂, are melting the ice cap

Greenland and Antarctic

Problem even with Greenland and the Antarctic is the models assume that all the ice will melt and will somehow slide over some of the biggest continental land in the world into the sea, not at all accounting for the land structure and mountainous terrain of the Antarctic in particular where much of that water will form inland lakes and seas..

But wait, there's more!

The Antarctic is typically sitting down at -40C kind of temperatures except at the extreme edges and only in summer where it might push towards 0C.

Predictions are for "as much as" rises of 5C. Now maybe my maths isn't great but -40C + 5C = -35C. Still far too cold to melt!

But wait, there's still more!

The ice sheets in the center of the Antarctic are as much as 3 miles deep. Ice has an insulating property that keeps the core cold for a long time. That's why it takes a lot longer to defrost a large slab of ice than it is small chunks of ice of the same volume. And still it assumes the whole of the Antarctic can leap from -40C to 0 (frankly if it can do that the rest of the world will be burnt to a crisp!).

Trekkies enjoy surprise Star Trek premiere

Re: Preaching to the choir?

Exactly. Plus I'm sure all the fans who were remotely interested in watching the film are those who have decided they'll like it anyway. And anyway they are likely kids under 25 who are less familiar with the old shows and movies, actually liked 'Enterprise'(!), and more likely to accept this continuity abomination 90210 teen movie, and are wowed by fantastic effects that gloss over the fact it's pissed all over established history.

Microsoft killing free XP support next week

Patches until 2014

Suits me. XP is Microsoft's best OS to date and that keeps it alive until then. Few corporates want to touch Vista with a bargepole and with lessons learnt about Vista, few will touch Windows 7 for many years after launch, assuming it's okay (and of course typically wait for SP1 or better SP2).

Unless Win7 is gobsmackingly better and performs as good as XP on current spec PCs (I doubt it will), I see no reason to upgrade short of my PCs dying.

Bucks village repels Street View spycar

Re: Evil Google Maps

Your number plates are available for all to see on the street anyway, and registration details are available for any of the public to get.

Given the vast amount of images on Street View, the audience for your particular number plates and anything else related to you is going to be very small, unless you draw attention to it, are in some way in the public eye, or live in a famous area. Probably less people will be viewing those images than all the people who walk and drive up and down your street every day!

That's what people don't get. Just because the images are there, doesn't mean everyone's going to look at them. It's not like publishing those photos in a national newspaper (or even a local newspaper).

Prat

"Resistance leader Paul Jacobs explained: “I was upstairs when I spotted the camera car driving down the lane. My immediate reaction was anger; how dare anyone take a photograph of my home without my consent? I ran outside to flag the car down and told the driver he was not only invading our privacy but also facilitating crime.”"

Utter Nimbyism combined with FUD (privacy bit) and an outright lie (crime bit).

These people have far more to fear from the local council using anti-terrorism laws to spy on them whilst they fill their bins, along with the hordes off CCTV that they seem perfectly happy to accept "invading" their privacy... in public.

The only fear from Google they've got is if they've been cheating on their other halves and get spotted by the camera. If they're in public they have just as much chance that someone could have spotted them anyway.

Dumbasses.

Sky broadcasts live 3D pop concert

Why?

Still just don't get why they think we need a 3D TV service.

There are far more things Sky need to sort out with their existing service than waste time and money on what is still a gimmick decades after it's heyday, no matter how many times the industry tries 3D.

When we get holographic 3D projection or similar that gives us a true 3D experience without needing glasses, then maybe 3D might be worth bothering about, but that's decades or more away.

Lloyd-Webber calls for clampdown on ISPs

Said it before...

... and I'll say it again.

Prove to me that the "losses" due to online piracy are genuine losses. How can you prove that these people would have bought the genuine article if piracy was not an option? I seriously doubt you can.

Move on and adapt. Like Spotify. People want the perception of free and easy downloads, so give it to them and find a different way of making money. The old concept of paying of a physical product is dead.

The good that can come out of this is that artists get frustrated by their revenue from the "Industry" and may seek alternative options through independent sources. Many are doing this already, and are finding they get a much greater slice of the pie also.

The real pirates are the big studios and labels who rip off the consumer, rip off the artists, and then complain when people try to rip them off.

Playmobil Bible faces wrath of lawyers

Their attitude...

... seems similar to a certain other company that makes mobil toys. That is expensive mobil phone toys (yeah, just fetching the coat).

Sure Mr Jobs hasn't bought up Playmobil ?

Pics show North Korean rocket ready to go

nuke threat

Fuss about nothing unless a certain country pushes them.

Like with Iraq before them, I'd have more trust in a well organised but repressed dictatorship society (as it was under Saddam), far more than a tribal, fragmented, disorganised nation that harbours real terrorists (like Iraq and Afghanistan are now).

The lives of their people may suck, but there are better ways to sort that out than threatening a paranoid nation to the extent they'll chuck a nuke at you.

Street View ghost spooks Cardiff medium

Paddington Bear

Odd that the main image has been removed. Maybe Paddington himself complained !

Given the location...

"This woman is very smart - but she is dressed in clothes that you just don't see these days unless it's in a period drama on TV."

Period drama, or perhaps a certain BBC sci-fi that's based on that very location ;)

Knee X-ray biometrics plan to fight spoofing

Skiing

Can see I'll be hauled over every time I go skiing and bugger my knees up then.

What about amputees though? When you run out of limbs to identify you with, what then?

Atlantis finally go for Hubble mission

Re: Standby...

Discovery is still up there, due back tomorrow so I guess they'll be too busy dealing with that one to be getting Endeavour ready (which itself is probably being prepared for it's ISS mission in June).

Why no Lego Doctor Who? fans demand

US market

Last time I checked, LEGO (not LEGOS as the yanks incorrectly call it) is made by a Danish company and features many Danish styled items (buildings in particular and as I recall the trains used to be based on Danish trains, not American or even British).

Stuff the yanks, and as for the lead character changing, surely that's better for sales as they'd get new kit to flog every few years.

However the real reason will be that 'Character' have most the rights to any toy merchandise.

But hell yeah, Doctor Who Lego any day please :). Better still Doctor Who Lego on the Wii !

ID cards not compulsory after all, says Home Office

Brit passports in the EU

The UK is opted out of the Schengen treaty, which is what lets EU citizens cross borders without needing to show a passport. Brits also can travel around the EU without showing a passport, unless they return to the UK, in which case a passport is definitely required for entry.

Same goes for Ireland, although crossing between Ireland and the UK doesn't require showing a passport generally.

In practice, going from the UK to Europe generally will result in a request to see your passport anyway, even if you get a rather "am I bovered" look from them.

Sex crime 'lie detector' pilot could prompt wider use

grubby overcoat and a unicorn

"I'm getting a grubby overcoat and a unicorn"

That's a sure way to get you on the sex offenders register ;)

Mine's the grubby one with a paper unicorn in the pocket.

Online retailer offers Sim-free iPhone 3Gs

@Matt K

"I'm no shill for O2 (God forbid) but isn't half of the attraction of the iPhone deal the unlimited data? Why would anyone pay £550 and then fork out for data usage on top?"

Might be you have no O2 coverage, or you have a better "package" on another contract and don't want to change it, or you want to use the iPhone on PAYG, use worldwide or cheap local sims overseas, etc.

Though of course you could buy the O2 version and get it unlocked, but you are paying the same ultimately to be tied to a contract you may not want.

If this was any other manufacturer however the sim free price would probably work out cheaper than the subsidised price + contract, at least for some people depending on usage.

EU legislation

About bloody time that Apple were brought to book over this one. As much as they stomp their feet about unlocking and messing about in any way with their beloved phone being illegal, they cannot ignore the EU legislation that most if not all other phone manufacturers comply with.

Police ad urges: 'Trust no one'

Orwell

Heard these ads on the radio recently and just confirms yet again that Orwell's 1984 continues to come true. It just got the date slightly out that's all.

Won't be long before I'm stopped for using a camera I'm sure. I already get dirty looks and now those people are encourage to report me for being suspicious.

BT names first 29 exchanges for fibre rollout

Re: crap copper

"you can have 10g or 40g fibre to the cabinet but of the last 100 meters to the property is still crappy shared and thrice sliced bellwire then you're still going to get crap broadband."

The connection from cabinet to house is a dedicated connection. The cable itself isn't much different from cat5 cable and that's rated high enough for fast lan quality (with no shielding), definitely at up to 100 meters.

Cable (e.g. Virgin) however is another matter. They use fibre to cabinet also (not to home as many believe), but the remainder to the house is shared coax like antique old thin Ethernet, with the downstream signal broadcast all over your neighbour's cable and the modem filtering out the traffic specific to you. Upstream is a little more dedicated but a limited resource, but it's still going over cables that are essentially joined to your neighbour's houses and are vulnerable to dodgy signal quality due to poor installations and unterminated connections in their houses.

iPhone 3.0 beta reveals mixed blessing

Where's the antitrust ?

If Microsoft were to include new features in their OS that essentially kills off a 3rd party app, they'd be bashed with antitrust suits very hard, and all the Apple Zealots would be sure to make their opinion heard about why Microsoft (sorry "Micro$oft" or "M$") are rubbish and everyone should "just buy Apple".

London to get EV charging post network

Time

The Achilles Heel of EV is the charge time. If you're running low on juice and need to be off somewhere quick, you're not going to want to wait 20 minutes (and I bet that's an average as surely it varies per battery, car make and manufacturer. Or are they limiting it to 20 mins, so you it won't necessarily be a full charge?).

Then you've got all the home charging. That'll obviously be slower and likely you have to charge overnight, but do you really want a cable running out of your house overnight? Or if they provide charge points outside each house, what's the betting some little runt will mess with the cable, or your neighbour nicks your connection and thus charges on your leccy bill?

And then of course, we're being warned that we won't have enough power production in a few years time. Where's the juice going to come from?

Flawed idea. Hybrid with regenerative breaking charging and similar is far more sensible so the car can charge on the move. Either that or fit all the roads with a massive induction network!

Apple iPhone to get OLED screen, claims mole

Ensured obsolescence then

If like many OLED screens for portable devices it has the same lifetime limitations, then that's a sure way to get your iPhone users to replace the phone when the warranty is up. Just need to match the warranty to the lifespan of course ;)

iPhone 3.0 adds cut-and-paste, search, new dev toys

Re: No 3rd party background app

"The "NO 2 APPS RUNNING" screamers should know the catch here is that 3rd party applications cannot run in the background, which is fine, as the only application most would want running at the same time would be music playing while they browsed the web or something."

Wouldn't work in the Nokia Sports Tracker scenario then. The beauty of this kind of app is you can have it sat in the background tracking your every movement via GPS, and yet can work on other foreground apps at the same time.

Okay, Nokia provided this one, but by the sounds of it such a similar app on the iPhone will come from a 3rd party. So means foreground only.

As an example, when I go skiing, I use Nokia Sports Tracker, launch it, put it in the background, and go off down the slopes leaving it running most of the day. It's constantly tracking and whenever I stop I can dive in to other apps (e.g. I might want to browse the web in the restaurant, or I could be stopped on the slope and want to view a PDF piste map). Similar is when doing walks or cycling, having a document with a route plan or guide open, whilst tracking at the same time. There's a mashup kind of potential too where you could have independent tracking apps feeding data somewhere. e.g. Google Lattitude and Sports Tracker, or either of those plus a navigation app (in Nokia's world, e.g. Nokia Maps), whilst driving to combine nagivation and tracking.

These are just a tiny example, but there are hundreds of other potential cases where you want a 3rd party app in the background (Google Lattitude being a prime example and the reason why Google has not offered it for the iPhone yet).

Until you've had the ability though you probably won't realise just why you need it. If you're coming from another phone platform it becomes an obvious omission. It doesn't exactly encourage migration to Apple (but then competitors aren't Apple's potential customers. Apple devotees are).

Upping the ante

"Apple upped the ante when it came to mobile phones, which other manufacturer made a phone that was completely touch screen, which company made it so easy to install and uninstall applications on your phone and which company made it so easy to use your music library, that did not need you to scroll though thousands of tracks, instead you could just flick through your cover art and select the track! Which phone allows you to resize photos just using two fingers!"

Other manufacturers were too busy concentrating on making phones do what phones do best. Making calls! ;)

What Apple provided was a very sexy sleek UI which beat the crap out of all other manufacturers. It is very nice I will admit. But it's just the same as everything else with Apple. It's like Safari 4. It is now (after much complaint about earlier Safari versions) Google Chrome but with shiny fluff you don't need. Looks nice, but that's about it.

For all the sexy UI, the iPhone won't give me a GPS mapping application that caches entire continents worth of preloaded maps so I don't have to use an Internet connection to look at maps, provide navigation, and won't let me jump out to fire up the browser, read a Word document and/or do GPS sports tracking at the same time the map app is running with GPS active. Sports tracker mulit-tasking in particular on Nokia devices is great. Have it stay in the background tracking whilst you do other things on the phone, even listen to music, make calls & surf the web.

In fact Google Latitude is noticeably still absent from the iPhone. Why? Key to Latitude on a phone is multitasking, so it can update your location regardless of what you are doing on the phone and even if it's sat in your pocket sleeping. Even my 3 year old S60 based Nokia can do this with a fraction of the price and power.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343380,00.asp

No background apps then

So still stuck in the 80s where operating systems just ran one program at a time then.

"extra strain on the processor would cut down battery life" so they say. My arse. Process and thread switching algorithms won't necessarily stress the CPU and battery any more if done right, and especially if background tasks are throttled. They might slow down the foreground app as both contend for the same resource. However a lot of background apps, if well designed, don't need to be thrashing the CPU all the time anyway, they can just chip in during idle time if they're not doing anything urgent.

Besides S60 and Windows Mobile seem to do okay with it (biggest problem for them is memory, not battery life when it comes to background apps. The real killer for the battery is comms). Though of course those phones have the luxury of being able to swap the battery should it die on you and you're not near a power supply! ;)

It's not even that it's not a multitasking capable OS. It is (or the kernel is). It's just that as usual, Apple dictate what users and developers can and can't do with their products. That's what makes them so different from the likes of MS, Nokia or maybe even Google. Apple's products are a bit like buying a show home where the developer insists you can't make any changes to the interior of the house. You just have to live with their design.

Really I think Apple just fear letting developers do what they like because suddenly their products won't perform as amazingly well as they'd like. Then people start realising just why Apple kit looks so great. Smoke and mirrors.

BBC botnet 'public interest' defence rubbished by top IT lawyer

Criminal offence

"A criminal offence has taken place - they should investigate it. Pure and simple."

I've had several cases where criminal damage has been done to my property. Just sitting on my arse isn't going to get it investigated. If someone asks if they are going to do anything about it they would definitely say no, unless someone files a formal report.

If you want them to investigate it however, you are entitled to report it to the police to see if they'll investigate. Armchair moaning isn't going to get them to do it ;)

Please consider carefully though as you and I as the taxpayer will be paying for this investigation and the result of any trial, no matter what the outcome ! Do you *really* want that just for a petty point? Wouldn't it be better them chasing after the real criminals?

according to a top IT lawyer

Yeah, and I can see many top IT lawyers are lining up to take on any potential case against the BBC, and I doubt they're doing it out of any sense of moral justice ;)

Whilst yeah it's technically a bit naughty, really it's a fuss about nothing that helps the media and lawyers make money from the story.

Who loses from any potential case? The taxpayer. Whether they win or lose, as it will be Police/State vs the BBC. Both tax payer funded.

Just drop it and move on. The best thing about this is hopefully the more clueless PC owners in the UK (the majority) will have seen this and realised just what is possible. Hopefully taking action to make their PCs more secure and maybe will understand a bit more about where spam comes from and learn to ignore it.

Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu-ray Disc player

No Ethernet, no Profile 2, region locked

Same old "who needs it" argument trotted out, but no one will stand for not being able to use all the features of a disc to their maximum potential once and *if* Blu-Ray reaches mass market.

And for that price I'd expect it to do the whole show!!

Not to mention that no Ethernet = No easy upgrades.

But then region locking makes it a non-starter for me anyway, but the same is true of all Blu-Ray players (Blu-Ray region locking that is, not DVD region locks which can at least be hacked in some models).

PS3... yawn. Noisy, overpriced and expensive to run as it consumes power like a PC and not a low powered dedicated player, and still you have to buy a damn remote separately (which doesn't work with universal remotes anyway as it's Bluetooth)! No DTS-HD MA bitstreaming so can't take advantage of a top-end amp's own (potentially superior) decoding, etc, etc. Simply put it's a games console at the end of the day with Blu-Ray shoehorned in to push the Blu-Ray agenda (and let's be blunt here, Blu-Ray only exists because of the PS3 and yet the PS3 has suffered greatly as a games console from the Blu-Ray push when Sony should have concentrated on the gaming platform and a cheaper price).

But all academic anyway. 5 years life left in optical discs. Illegal downloads are already showing just how good HD downloading can be (and they arrive quicker than RoyalMail takes to deliver the post), so it only needs the infrastructure to develop enough to support legal HD downloads at sufficient quality. Yes, it's not there at the moment, but the Internet has come a long way in the past 5 to 10 years and it will continue to do so.

Opera promises netbook and mobile Turbo boost

No need on netbooks

Even if you're unlucky enough to get a slow GPRS connection on a dongle, you can still load normal web pages in reasonable time. There's no need for server caching and rewriting (breaking) of web sites to render on a netbook.

The primary reason for slowness on a mobile is down to the speed of the phone itself and the browser, not the network connection. Plus a big reason for content rewriting is to modify for such a small display. Most netbooks have a display sufficient for "full" Internet browsing.

Of course Opera must stand to profit from it somewhere (through advertising or some sneaky analysis of their caches to flog to marketing companies etc).

Personally I still don't trust them for the same reason I don't just MS with IE. It's not open source.

And for a netbook, Chrome is definitely the best browser due to simplicity and maximum real estate (with Safari 4 close behind, though it has some pointless eye candy bolted on).

DARPA to build nothingness detector for tunnel sniffing

Does that make it...

... a spacial anomaly ?

("Gravity gradiometers measure tiny spatial variations in the pull of gravity")

Quick, send Janeway in to investigate!

Mystery chip found inside talking iPod Shuffle's earphones

Rubbish buds

Well if Apple want to lock consumers into rubbish ear phones, that's their problem.

Or maybe it's a tactic to reduce the quality of iTunes downloads as decent third party phones will show up the flaws.

National Express to 'ban' trainspotting

Gates

The real reason for gates is to cut down on the cost of ticket inspectors, combined with the fact that they are reluctant to challenge people on the trains now for fear of being attacked. I don't know if the policy still exists, but some areas in the south east where stations may not have gates (or the gates are open after certain hours), they will not fine you on the train but instead just let you purchase a ticket, because of the risk to inspectors if they kick up a fuss.

However this brings me to my beef about gates. Gates at Waterloo! Aghhhhh! Since they introduced those there are now huge queues to get on and off a platform, especially as half the gates aren't working.

BBC botnet investigation turns hacks into hackers

So, did anyone actually watch it?

Rather than going into a Daily Mail moral outrage mode, did you watch it (it's on iPlayer now also I think) ?

Legality aside, it was a very interesting programme. In part for seeing just how advanced and professional the botnet software is. As Click's audience includes a lot of far less IT savy people, I'm hoping this will serve as a wake up call. It's amazing just how many people don't really understand how spam is sent and still believe spam mails are personally sent to them and they feel they have a need to read, reply and act on the spam.

It is also nice to see the botnet includes the ability to destroy itself. I'd be all for illegally using a botnet to kill the botnet.

@mactards and lintards

All you need is a web server (e.g. Apache), and php, and if you're careless (like many web admins are) you can become part of many botnets that target flaws in open source cross platform products, such as php or the apps that are installed on Apache and php based servers.

And don't for a minute think that the chances are low due to it being OS X or linux. Just looking at my server logs on my linux web server and on a daily basis there are hundreds of attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in hundreds of (mainly) php applications.

5 years or more ago I used to see attacks aimed at IIS. Now it's all php attacks and that means you mactards and lintards are the target (yeah, I know Mac users are less likely to run servers, but some do, and some might have a mini web server installed as part of some app that provides a web admin interface which is probably worse if it's not updated frequently enough).

Sure, the OS security may not allow the hacks to get into the core of the system, but the surface APIs exposed within php and Apache once hacked is often enough to add the system to the botnet to spam millions of others.

Enjoy.

Robbie Williams, Billy Bragg et al say downloads aren't illegal

Contracts and copyright

"Not entirely true. Any work that you create while under contract, is automatically the property of your employer unless otherwise agreed. Most artists do their recording _while under contract_ ie they sell their rights in advance, in exchange for facilities and occasionally a cash advance."

It depends on the nature of the contract. The automatic thing is that by default copyright is assigned to the creator on creation of the work.

However if you are an employee, your work becomes the IPR of the employer and thus the copyright (i.e. the "creator" is the employer). If you are not their employee but instead produce some work, perhaps under contract (e.g. commissioned work), then you hold the IPR unless otherwise assigned as part of the contract.

It's why most IT "contractors" are required to sign IPR agreements to ensure their work is the property of the company commissioning the work, as they are not automatically bound by an employee relationship.

In the case of artists, it is often the case that their copyright is under licence to the publisher, rather than totally assigned to them. The copyright still remains with the artist who creates the work, and the licence gives permission to use the work (often exclusively) with some limits and a potential expiry which returns all control to the artist.

@But its not illegal anyway..

"No-one is going to get prosecuted for "downloading" music, as downloading isn't against the law. Its only "making available" - eg: uploading which is against the law. Nice to hear the musicians in support though!"

UK law it is. Downloading is a form of copy and you have right there breach of copyright, and there's no fair use in UK copyright law (unlike in US).

However it seems odd that they haven't gone to the extent as with kiddie and hard or "extreme" porn and decided that downloading = distribution (though if you download with P2P then it is distribution). Though with porn they go further and consider downloading to be "making" the porn, which of course carries harsher penalties and attracts better headlines in the press. I suppose they could go the same way with music and consider you are "making" pirate copies and distributing them.

Anyway, when it comes to music they just need to realise that there's no way to beat them and the traditional music distribution model is flawed. Try something else. On-demand models like last.fm and Spotify appear to be the way forward.

Besides, how different is downloading to the days when we'd tape stuff off the radio or copy our mates records and tapes?

Whatever happens, I just hope the record companies get shafted and the artists start to get a much bigger (and deserved) piece of the pie. It's the record companies who are the real pirates and have been for decades, long before the Internet.

Windows app store breaks old ground for Microsoft

Price

$99 for a bedroom hacker might be a bit expensive. For small business professionals looking for a cheap outlet for apps with someone else doing all the selling and hopefully a prominent store, $99 isn't all that much.

Better option than trying to promote your little website through Google's ranks or using any of the thousands of pop-up, banner-tastic, malware infesting download sites and hoping to get revenue off adverts (or resorting to adware in your own apps!).

Question is, if you want to offer stuff for free*, do you still have to pay up $99. In fact can you offer open source freeware through the store?

* - as a consumer I like free, as a developer I'd prefer people pay! :-D

UK gov gets twitchy on Google feature creep

Good for the goose

So tracking and sharing information on UK individuals by CCTV, number plate recognition, ID cards, and (the proposed) road toll tracking system, is perfectly OK, but god forbid Google offer a tracking service which asks the user if they want to turn it on and highlights the privacy issues and also by default shares the information with no one!

And what about Yahoo! and FireEagle ? They have a lot more integration with stuff like Facebook where clueless teens will just happily click OK on all the boxes allowing them to share their location at all times with their friends, friends of friends, parents, teachers, peados, etc.

Not to mention the dozens of other location based tracking services.

However, the scary thing with Google Latitude is the way it has your home WiFi access point mapped (try Latitude on a desktop with a WiFi connection and see what I mean!).

3D TV by Christmas, hints Sky

Don't see the point

Why are Sky wasting money on this? 3D was a fad in the 60s and is still a fad today. Just who do they think is going to be interested in this? The market will be limited to handful surely!

Nuts. Why not concentrate that money on making the Sky+ and Sky+ HD EPG actually decent, i.e. with proper series links that actually link *all* series and across channels, ability to have wish list / keyword / metatag recording, and something infinitely better than Anytime (e.g. like Suggestions on TiVo which is based on your viewing likes and dislikes, not what Sky want to force on you and then find you can't watch because you don't subscribe to the relevant channel, but it'll eat disc space for it anyway) ?

Better still, add support for online content, iPlayer etc.

And why not also concentrate on making Sky+ HD boxes reliable. Stop putting dodgy components in the boxes to save money for a start!

3D! Pah. They're as nuts as Lucas.

Taiwan supplier fingered in Apple touch-screen netbook rumor

sub-$500

"We don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk."

Err, Steve, ask Samsung.

What he really meant though was

"We don't know how to market a netbook and con people into paying $1k for it"

Though if they flogged a $1k netbook, Apple nuts will still buy it. One of the few groups of people who are actually prepared to pay more money for things, not less. They even may be too embarrassed to be seen paying sub-$500 for something!

Paris - wouldn't be seen dead paying sub $5000 for something.

Nokia sweetens juice-monitor app

More than just an energy profiler

CPU, memory, network performance, signal strengths (inc WLAN), and much more.

Very useful developer app and does far more than some 3rd party apps which cost money!

I wonder if Apple release this kind of stuff (and for free!)? ;)

@Steve Evans - re, 2 & 3. Indeed. And more so if you have poor or no 3G signal and the phone is set to GSM and 3G. It will frequently hunt for a 3G signal and back to GPRS, which will sap the battery in no time compared to just sitting on 3G or GPRS alone.

Skype to give away wideband audio codec

SIP

Main thing with SIP is it needs packaging by operators really to sell it in an easy to use form. i.e. by using an app on a phone or PC that the consumer just installs and it configures everything for them.

e.g. Gizmo on Nokia mobiles. Includes a Gizmo account and configures pre-existing SIP services, with a funky UI wrapped around it. Makes it easier to use for consumers.

Problem is there are so many operators and few are popular. Some of the bigger names that are associated with traditional telecoms companies charge too much also. Skype is unfortunately what people associate with VoIP even though it's a single service locked to calling Skype users (for free) and proprietary inefficient protocol.

Fanbois will abandon iPhone for Palm, says Wikisugardaddy

Unlikely

As much as I'm not raving fan of Apple, there's no way there will be mass desertion. Apple fans will just buy the next new Apple product, no matter what it is. So long as it looks cool on the coffee table or office desk.

Palm may have a good device though. We'll have to see. Problem is the market is going to be flooded with similar devices by then, making the iPhone and the Palm fairly average. The Apple fans will be looking for something else rather than a sexy phone.