Posts by brianlj

Apple and publisher pals hold up US and EU watchdogs

"This price was set by the publisher"

@Chris Gray: Yes, some Kindle books ARE more expensive than paper- or in some cases, hard-back. Why? Well, you'll see on Amazon's page for them, the little phrase "This price was set by the publisher".

In other words, the reason the price is high is because of the cartel that Apple et al are running. Amazon can't sell them as cheap as they want to.

In fact, the precise point of the El Reg article. :)

Chinese social sites lift post-coup controls

Going forward?

Going forward?

Oh, you mean in future! You do realise, don't you, that you can omit the execrable phrase 'going forward' and your sentence will still make sense? After all, it's unlikely that they could be facing a tough time in the past, isn't it?

Apple coughs $5m for multitouch patents

Is it because Twitter has taught me not to waffle?

@MurderMostFowl: "going forward"?

{sigh}

WTF is... up with e-book pricing?

Iain M Banks - Surface Detail

'Surface Detail' mentioned in the Reg article. Check the reviews on Amazon. It's AWFUL on Kindle. Inappropriate hard-hyphens in the middle of words, mysterious line-breaks where there shouldn't be any, missing paragraph breaks where there SHOULD be one.

Shoddy.

Facebook bug spills name and pic for all 500 million users

Re: Best privacy policy

"The best privacy policy is to assume that anything that you publish on Facebook is public."

Exactly the way it is with Twitter. If you post something on Twitter, you should realise that it can be seen by ANYONE. That certainly tempers what I say on there.

It didn't stop Paul Chambers being shafted by the CPS at his #TwitterJokeTrial though.

Robot negotiator ends tense Colorado siege

I, for one,

welcome our new diplomatic robot overlords.

McKinnon’s mum 'snubbed' by Home Secretary

The extradition treaty is NOT lopsided

Before I start, let me say that personally, I think that Gary should be tried in the UK. End of.

That said, the extradition treaty does NOT appear to be lopsided in practice. At least, not in the way that most people seem to think.

Alan Johnson gave some figures during the Select Ctte hearing: 39 people extradited from the US to the UK with no quibble at all from the Yanks. None have been held back.

OTOH, there are 7 people the US wants the UK to handover to them who are presently being held back from the US because their case is up before the EUCHR.

If the extradition treaty were unbalanced in favour of the Yanks, you would expect those figures to be the other way around, wouldn't you?

Cambridgeshire makes road charge last resort

Lincoln vs Cambridge

I drive in both towns regularly. Compared to Cambridge city traffic lights, Lincoln city ones are absolutely hopeless. The phasing is wildly wrong, delays are introduced for no reason at all and ones which should vary according to time of day, don't. It's almost as though they just installed them and left them on the manufacturers default timings.

About the only good thing the lights in Lincoln do is to manage (on a purely timed basis) the tidal flow system on Canwick Road.

The Twitter storm that saved freedom of speech

The Judge?

If you look on that fount of all knowledge Wikipedia, you will find an article on that respected firm Trafigura.

In that article, you will see that other respected organisations, such as, for instance, the Norwegian Broadcasting Company, are also interested in Trafigura.

The petition is already there

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/PressFreedom/

and, surprisingly, Peter Carter-Ruck himself has signed it.