* Posts by regprentice

50 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2010

UK contractors planning 'mass exodus' ahead of IR35 tax clampdown – survey

regprentice

Tesco, Asda, morrisons etc are currently being taken to court for equal pay claims because they paid shop staff a lower rate than they paid warehouseman. The expensive lawyers are asking the court to consider whether (as the law states) the work done by a warehouseman and a shop worker is of equal value, or provides an equal contribution to the company.

I'm intrigued by the idea that, if my ex-employer decides that the new rules effectively retrospectively put the contractors I worked with inside ir35, effectively making them employees, then presumably it was unfair to pay me a different rate than them to do the same job. Especially as I was interchangeable with contracting analysts and on more than one occasion was 'swapped' with a contractor as I wanted to do the work they were doing at that time for my personal development.

Taking account of redundancy rights, sick pay rights, pension etc I reckon that only takes about half the difference in equivalent daily pay. And that's completely disregarding the preferential tax treatment for contractors.

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

regprentice

Re: Filthy Lucre

The longest serving 'temporary' contractor I found Sr rbs was 24 years. I personally know at least 10 with 10 years +

regprentice

Not much in the way of staff benefits at rbs.

They dont pay a pension contribution as such. When they give you the job they quote a salary of, say, £55k a year. Then you find out that they really mean a base salary of £42k with an extra 15% to cover your 'value' and another 15% which represents your gross pension contribution. They don't make any employers contribution to your pension whatsoever. You can let them pay the 15% into your pension, or just take it as cash if you want. However when they do something important like calculate your redundancy they use the lower salary figure as that's in their favour.

My most recent bonus was the princely sum of £1000. I've had 3 bonuses in 10 years despite exceeding the median grade consistently. Incidentally my salary was frozen for 7 years after 2008 then my recent pay rises were 0.25%, 0.5% and finally 1% last year.

I'm not sure what staff training you are referring to. Aside from the determined to lead programme, which is basically an handbook of "management behaviours" they want to enforce, there is a negligible training. Around 7 years ago they stopped paying for external courses and shifted their focus to 'on the job' learning. Which basically means learning from other people In your team by hassling them, that's learning to do your Job, not learning a transferable externally recognised skill you could take somewhere else. They did lay on a cv writing course when I was made redundant.

Yes I was paid for holidays. Ironically the thing that attracted me to contracting was being able to take more and longer holidays.

There are no staff benefits. No staff mortgages, even the free staff current account was withdrawn around 3 years ago. A benefit worth the princely sum of £9.99 a month.

I did say at the top of my comment I now contract elsewhere. And I didn't suggest contractors don't pay tax. Like most people I quote my gross salary if I discuss it, seems fair to me to use the gross day rate as a comparison.

regprentice

I used to be a permanent member of staff at RBS, now I contract elsewhere. A contractor will earn broadly twice as much as a permanent member of staff. I was taking home £55k when others in the same job as me contracting were being paid £400 a day outside ir35.

So a contractor doesn't get some emoyment rights, but they do get paid substantially more money than a 'permie' even if they end up Inside ir35. Some people look on it as employment rights being optional, they'd rather have £40-50k in extra cash a year than paid holidays, sick leave or redundancy rights. In fact I worked for 10 years alongside contractors earning £400-500 a day (used to be 500 then they cut rates by 10% twice) and after ten years I walked out with around £30k in redundancy money, when one contracting BA I know on £500 a day probably took home around £500k more than me during that period. Like many, this specific contractor managed more than 10 years continuous contract extensions in the same role at RBS.

To answer your question these contractors could negotiate onto a permanent contract with holiday pay etc. But they would need to take a 20% pay cut to pay the PAYE rate of tax, another 50% or so to take them down to the same pay level as a normal permanent member of staff in the same job, and then there is a fair chance the Inland revenue would see their move from contractor to permie as an admission they should always have been permanent and go after them for the extra tax on the last 10 years wages (in the example of my contracting colleague above)

How to lose a UK contractor in 10 days: Make them commit after upcoming IR35 tax upheaval, apparently

regprentice

Re: It's not that hard

That's the crux of the matter. 10 years ago a handful of IT professionals were self employed contractors. Today radio presenters, courier drivers, Uber drivers, all shades of temp staff from gardeners and cleaners to the head of marketing at my old job with 100+ staff reporting to them are all 'self employed contractors'. Largely to save the employers national insurance costs and keep employee rights to a minimum.

I work as a BA. Recently when visiting my agency I was sat next to a groundskeeper about to start working for a council who was waiting for help registering with an umbrella company. Even school janitors are at it now.

Boring as she goes at Sage? Oh no, no, no! Shares slide as sales slip below forecasts

regprentice

RBS have just bought cloud accounting provider free agent with a view to peddling it as a freebie/bundled service with commercial banking. That'll royally screw sage if the banks move in that direction.

Samsung's Galaxy 9s debut, with not much other than new cameras

regprentice

Re: "you can only capture 0.2 seconds in each burst"

Do we though?

I've never seen a tablet better than the equivalent flagship from the same manufacturer.

Just now I read an article 'rumoring' that the galaxy tab 4 might have a Snapdragon 835 processor....that's last year's processor! Why would I sit on my sofa and pick up a tab 4 if my s9 is noticeably faster?

As processers get faster the difference may be less noticeable but I've only ever owned one tablet (Samsung galaxy tab 2 10.1) and using it was like wading through treacle compared to the phone I had at the time. If I'm going to consume media and game on a tablet it needs to be better than my phone...

Dodgy parking firms to be denied access to Brit driver database

regprentice

They do though. I'm Scotland the best advice is to simply ignore the letters.

It's a speculative punt on the dodgy firms part, a reasonable proportion of punters must pay up,probably when they get the letter that looks like it's from a legal firm (but isn't).

What enrages me is the advice given by the CAB, MSE, Which and so on is to pay the fines. Absolutely nuts and a clear indication of how spineless these organisations are.

Sick burn, yo: Google's latest Pixel 2 XL suffers old-skool screen singe

regprentice

I had an lg g4 which i felt had bad screen burn. Then i realised over time that the shadow image changed and it seemed to be more of a shadow of what had recently been on the screen than a permanent burnt image. From looking at forums it seemed to be a common issue.

Samsung Galaxy S8: Slimmer bezels, a desktop mode – and yet another me-too AI pal

regprentice

Lg G6 dead already?

Been waiting for LG to release more information in the last month since they launched the G6….several kicks in the teeth for us in the UK…

· Still No UK release date

· No audio DAC for UK

· No wireless charging for UK

· No promo offers (free Google home, free lcd tv) for the UK

LG managed to keep a unique USP (a virtually bezelless 2:1 screen) for 4 weeks, during which time it failed to ship a single UK unit. Now LG have lost my sale to Samsung, and potentially 000's others.

IMHO The only compelling reason to buy the LG G6 vs the S8 now is on price ( presuming LG have the sense to price low, no idea yet) and potentially as an option for people who don’t want to be forced to have a curved screen.

LG, Huawei unwrap 'Samsung Galaxy-killers'

regprentice

Quite disappointed with the G6. I was effectively expecting a something comparable to the recent V20. Particularly the DAC. Very disappointed to find the DAC has been removed from the European model...and wireless charging also.

Its about on par with other current handsets (820 chip, 4 gig ram, 32 Gig storage) but these are due to be replaced soon whereas the G6 is fresh out of the box. In 3 month there will be plenty of 2:1 ratio handsets, LG havent done anything else to differentiate themselves....assuming of course that this handset doesnt suffer from bootloop.

'I'm innocent!' says IT contractor on trial after Office 365 bill row spiraled out of control

regprentice

Only a headline articl because of (what i assume is) the contractors mugshot.

On the pictorial evidence - guilty.

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

regprentice

I dont think this kind of thinking is limited to zuckerberg or facebook. I work for a large bank where every app, product or 'interaction' is life changing, unique, revolutionary. Zuckerberg just has it worse than most other ceos, in direct proportion to the value of his company presumably.same logic applies to apple.

My employer 'lifted people out of poverty' last year by not paying me a bonus and instead using the bonus pool cash to start paying cleaning/admin staff the 'living wage' instead of the 'minimum wage'. Tart up a change you were going to have to make anyway as altruism.

I pity the poor bastards now at facebook who have targets set around this new mission statement. Not cured aids by lunchtime? Your fired go work for bebo.

View from a Reg reader: My take on the Basic Income

regprentice

The issue with UBI is that no one really understand how much it will be.

the only realistic uk proposal was from the Green Party which set UBI at about the state pension rate, or circa 6K a year. Additionally looking sites like RSA or Basicincome.org and Looking at the numbers and understanding the subsequent proposed changes to tax it is in effect saying that we will do away with the initial tax free band and give you the equivalent in cash. This largely washes its own hands and gives a UBI of circa £3k a year.

Speaking to the man in the pub there seems to be a perception that UBI might produce an income of circa 20K a year, or 'how much might i need to live comfortably without working'. There is a big difference between those two numbers.

My other concern is that wages will normalise and , after a while, drop by the amount of UBI. to put workers back in the position they were in prior to the introduction of UBI (Though that naturally happens if its simply the withdrawal of the free tax band)

UK cops spot webcam 'sextortion' plots: How vics can hit stop

regprentice

Re: Nice, let's blame the victim

'if you've never been approached by an attractive women on the Internet then you're probably not using it much.'

Nope. Not once. And ive been one handedly shuffling my way across the net since the mid 90s.

Scotland's Skyscanner sold to Chinese rival Ctrip in £1.4bn deal

regprentice

Re: Politicians, eh?

'Don't know the details of this latest one, but hopefully the grunts will get a slice too.'

I had an interview at skyscanner in 2007 (when they were in a small townhouse in Leith). they seemed an interesting place to work and they spoke about employees sharing in a potential flotation the following year (though that evidently didn't happen). no idea whats happened to them as they have got bigger but hopefully the core staff have got something out of it.

New MacBook Pro beckons fanbois to become strip pokers

regprentice

Some absolutley insane pricing on those new Macs.

£500 price hike overnight for the base macbook pro? before 6pm you could have the base model for £999 (899 in many retailers) now the base touch panel model is £1499. They've kept a low 'non-touch' model at £1250 but as far as i can see thats effectively the same model as existed previously at a 25% premium.

Some of the hardware decisions are poor as well - No Pro model can be specced with more than 16GB of memory across the entire range. Decreases in processor speed on like for like models. Dropping the SD card reader.

I've just read that apple sold less Pros that it did rose gold iwatches - its going to be a long slow death for the mac pro i think, apple clearly no longer care about selling them.

incidentally the pricing isn't just brexit as other countries (Canada and Germany in particular) seem to be complaining of similar% hikes on the mac forums.

Microsoft: We're hiking UK cloud prices 22%. Stop whining – it's the Brexit

regprentice

Re: Just the tip of the Iceberg

Tell me about it. Just back from a week in ireland and ive spent the morning weeping quietly while reviewing my online visa bill, not quite as bad as it could have been but only because i spent the holiday assuming £1 = €1.

Fifty quid for fish and chips by the beach for a family of four....

Fujitsu to axe 1,800 jobs across the UK

regprentice

*Sigh*

reading this board I could swap out the word fujitsu for the name of any of my last 3 employers. sign o the times.

Google tells popup ads to p*** off on mobes

regprentice

Between these large ads, banners for advising cookie use as well asother floating taskbars/menus many websites are difficult to navigate or read on even a decent sized phone. Especially when these ads seem designed to get in the way of normal navigation to trigger 'false' clickthroughs.

I clicked on the article in the hope that this was to deal with the increasing problem of full page 'popup/popunder' type ads that seem tobe prevalent now...'your system has 24 virus and will self destruct in 2 minutes. Not malwRe on the device and seemi gly pushed by google ads.

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

regprentice

Re: Losing money?

'The DVLA should have actually increased the amount of money taken in due to the double month taxing scam.'

Agree with this 100%.

The dvla are clearly being disingenuous about non compliance. If the real drop was due to accruing 12 month direct debit payers then they would actually be able to strip that number out and quantify its impact on the numbers.

Its a bit like an honesty box really. 11Mn in saved admin to find that having a paper slip in the window was actually an inducement to honesty worth 1/2 Bn.

URRGH! Evil app WATCHES YOU WATCHING PORN, snaps your grimace

regprentice

In order to run the amazon appstore or another source such as humbe bundle its nescessary to make the permissions change described. Certainly while amazon were giving away a free app a day i couldnt be bothered to switch this option on and off every morningso left 'allow unknown sources' switched on as i assumed i would not be stupid enough to knowingly download anything else.

That said ive noticed a significant increase in aggressive popup ads which appear to look like the google play store offering the current popular title (that vaguely porny looking one with kate upton in the adverts). Presumably these entice you to install a malicious excecutable.

They’re FAT. They’re ROUND. They’re worth almost a POUND. Smart waaatch, smart waaatch

regprentice

In my view smartwatches have one major flaw. Other people can see my notifications without me realising.

Some texts are ugent, some are useful, some are offensive some are private. All those types of message may come from one person so its difficult to sort those i want flashing on my wrist.. I.e. my wife has recently texted/called me to tell me....

- my 2 yo daughter has fallen down a stair case

- the painters are in and she needs a bar of chocolate on the way home if i want to live

-why hasnt my bitch boss hasnt let me out of work yet.

One of those messages is important the other two could cause me problems if they flash up on my wrist in a team meeting in full hi res view of others.

Montblancs system which sits on the inside of your wrist and can be fitted (in theory) to any watch seems to me the only useful iteration. Unfortunately they got v1 wrong lets hope they make a (thinner, higher resolution, cheaper and more featured) v2.

Fiat Chrysler recall BLUNDERING could lump carmaker with $105m fine – report

regprentice

Wow !

I've been getting emails from gmc onstar for a couple of years. Someone with the same name as me seems to have bought a gmc truck in canada and through a form filling error i have ended up getting his email. (My email address is just myname@hotmail.com)

I havent taken an interest before but looking back over the emails i've been getting this is probably the more worrying one... But they are also sending me 'onstar diagnostic reports' every month that i assume tally up milage/mpg etc...

'no-charge OnStar1 RemoteLink®2 mobile app. This ingenious app allows you to start3 your vehicle from anywhere, so it’s ready and comfortable when you arrive to it. Plus, RemoteLink can do so much more for you. Other features include remote door lock/unlock, vehicle diagnostics and navigation. '

As i have the linked email address presumably i can reset the account? I would have previously assumed that GM would be bright enough to have some security control, a bit like bluetooth pairing?, but having read this article i'm not sure they are that bright....

It's OK – this was an entirely NEW type of cockup, says RBS

regprentice

Some careful wording in that statement. Seems logical to assume that the 'file from a 3rd party' probably relates to a 'related' third party. In factit probably relates to a file and team which would probably been 'internal' a few years ago but can now conveniently be reffered to as an anonymous '3rd party'. Its probably rbs india or accenture or similar.

The last time there was a major cock up there was much talk of 'coming clean' and 'full disclosure' when the full facts were available but then when things went quiet nothing happenned. Save for some chat about ca technologies contributing to cover rbs's fine there has been no clear admission of the previous fault, how it happened, who was to blame or who was ultimately punished. Dont expect anything diffrent this time.

Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge in Vulture's claws: we find looks AND brains

regprentice

My wife hit her 500gb data allowance on her contract yesterday and was clueless as to how she had done it. A 'kids mode launcher' called Zoodles, which she thought was keeping the phone safe from tampering, was actually streaming sesame street videos from you tube. The app offered such a small selection of poor quality video files we had assumed they were stored locally.

I think a lot of people will buy these handsets blindly assuming they have an sd slot and not work out they dont till tjey get home. Think returns will be high.

For me personally an sd card does lots of things...it allows me to move my 'daily' music collection between my phone/tablet/car stereo/ pc with ease.... it means i dont lose my pictures if my handset bricks (which has happened to me in the past) ... android file transfer doesnt work between my mac and my s4 so its the only data transfer solution that makes any sense.

Im due a new co tract in mid may and will be looking to the release of the l4 or z4 to replace my s4... which is a shame as i was genuinely gutted when i finally saw the specs for the s6 edge.

Grand Theft Auto V: Violent, sweary and amazingly ambitious

regprentice

Fair criticism of gta5 tbh

was quite excited to play it but in the first two hours i found the experience slightly frustrating. Ive had missions fail to trigger the hud/gps to show the route to the next location... ive found the contextual controls quite unresponsive (5 attempts to open a garage door because i wasnt in quite the right position)..and the third person view is still a pain with the characters running in arcs to get round obstacles and generally its still pretty buggy feeling ('oh you want me to take cover behind THAT crate... not any of these other perfectly safe hiding places)

basically its an 'arcade' version of gta using the hud from rdr and the shooting mechanics from max payne 3. Ive yet to see anything to convince me this gta is more less linear during missions. Compared to a recent 'open world' title like far cry 3 its a disappointment.

Even the 'adult' strip club sections are pretty tame...amounting to a 'press O to touch the semi naked stripper... if you do it when the bouncer is visible he will throw you out.

Bill Gates: Corporate tax is not a moral issue

regprentice

There is no legal obligation to maximise shareholder wealth - it is an economic idea known as shareholder primacy initially proposed by the economist milton friedman.

It has become the standard of economic thought on the primary objectives of corporate entities and is being challenged by ideas of corporate social responsibility.

What this means in practice is that companies think you will get a warm fuzzy feeling if they maximise shareholder wealth BUT ALSO make token charitable donations.

Reports: New Xbox could DOOM second-hand games market

regprentice
FAIL

In some senses you can compare the second hand games market to fractional reserve banking.

Everyone in the chain resells the game after they have had their 20hours of use... user 1 sells at 90% of value, then user 2 at 80% of value and so on... As others have pointed out this cycle allows a reasonable proportion of new titles to be sold at the £40 bracket as users trade in 2 fairly new titles in exchange for a 'newest' one.

A bit ike a bank taking in 100K of deposits and using that to lend you 100k , then the next person 90k and then the next 80K and so on as would be the case with a 10% reserve requirement. Ultimately this props up a house price bubble as banks lend more than they have, and NEED to keep lending to keep the cycle moving... much like the new game price bubble. (I know high end console games have always been £40ish since the mid 80's... so they havent risen to subsequently fall like a true bubble... but surely games are due the kind of 'price realignment' suffered by CD's DVD's, ebooks etc)

Unfortunately software houses are now trying to chase these incremental price points and dropping the software price almost daily. Look at the retail cost of the new tomb raider game... literally halved in 4 weeks from the date of release and its been on a slippery slope since. What confidence does the initial buyer have that they are paying a 'fair' price. What confidence does a softwarehouse have that they can recoup their investment or be rewarded for their hard work in producing a decent and fairly ambitious game?

If you want a window into the prices Sony and M$ think they can charge have a look at the PS store. £60 for a new (download) title, when i bought a second hand physical copy of far cry3 for £12 they were still selling far cry 3 download for £60.

Interesting to see what comes of the steam console.

Amazon-bashed HMV calls in administrators, seeks buyer

regprentice

Haven't been in an hmv for years - got done for shoplifting from one at secondary school.

They used to be quite lax with selling age restricted content to schoolboys...and when they clamped down I didn't have any choice. I used to have a copy of emmanuelle which lived under a bush next to school and went round most of my year. Its probably still there. Memories.

Anyway.. they had that coming and this as well.

Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? How to avoid a crap IT job

regprentice
Unhappy

Mmm, what's that smell: Coffee or sweat? - well, in most places i've worked where people have been as anally retentive about coffee as they appear on this board, then the sweat itself smells of coffee. There are whole offices which smell like there must be a dead tramp lying under an unused desk.

I remember once standing next to an FD at a urinal in such an environment. The stench of sweaty filter coffee coming from his bladder was so vile my eyes watered and i was blinking like a newborn calf. He thought i had had bad news, as i was visible shaken, and proceeded to give me a manly pat on the back without first washing his hands.

Natwest's Get Cash app pulled, but NOTHING to do with frauds

regprentice
Thumb Up

I know people who loved this app and are gutted the option is withdrawn.

They use it instead of giving their kids access to their bank cards. Little Timmy wants 20 to get leathered on white cider at the local park with his friends... just request a 20 cash withdrawal from the atm next to the park..write the six digit number down for little Timmy and he can take the cash out himself on the way there.

Man the floodgates! David Cameron takes to Twitter

regprentice
Facepalm

Tragic

Commentards turning this forum into something from the money saving expert benefits forums.

Aren't we all missing the utter majesty of this new 'internet ' and 'twitter' invention... the ability to tell the prime minister to fuck off to his (electronic) face.

Surely this is the pinnacle of mankind's achievements.

Motorola Razr i hands-on review

regprentice

Been waiting for a bezel-less phone/PDA for years. And I'm still waiting.

seriously... a true edge to edge screen doesn't have a bezel of any kind.

Idiots.

RBS: June's tech enormo-cock-up cost us £125m

regprentice

£125mn... 17.5mn customers..... so just over 7 quid each for customers who, in some cases still cannot reconcile all of the transactions on their accounts 6 weeks later.

Does pose the question 'how did you manage to prepare a set of accounts?

That's £2.50 per head less than o2 voluntarily paid out to customers impacted by 24 hre outage.

As an employee of Ulster bank I'm absolutely ashamed to work for rbs. Frankly the devestation they have caused in eire should be subject to a criminal prosecution.

Space: 1999 returning to TV?

regprentice
WTF?

nope... ive googled barbera bain and i just dont get it

Yes, there's a Tech Bubble. But that's OK

regprentice

Who are zynga ? Fuck knows !

A bit of googling indicates They are the people behind those awful browser games and they appear to rely on 'micropayments' .... Another bubble facebookers can poke til it pops.

Exactly the same kind of cretins who used to charge £5 for ringtones and preyed on the gullubilitybof a generation of 13 year olds

Bodycount

regprentice
Joke

treasure island dizzy

Wow codemasters are still going !!!!!!

Think the problem here isnt that the game is crap, but that the.right price for a codemasters game is £2.99. Sure it would have got 90% at that price point.

One-third of US consumers will buy an iPhone 5

regprentice
Happy

Subsidy

""I'm waiting for a galaxy s 2 and I didn't pay a penny for it over my tariff"

That's tosh - you need to look at the SIM free prices to compare accurately - the Galaxy S 2 is basically the same price as an iPhone 4."

Yes this is true, but I can generally get my carrier to bear significantly more of the up front cost of an android handset than an iPhone. It is quite possible to enter into a decent 1yr contract for a galaxy s2 and pay less for the handset and the years tariff than for the sim free cost of the handset alone had you bought it somewhere like expansys .

With cashback and employee discount through my employer my 24 month contract for a galaxy s 2 works out around £16 a month equivalent, which is even less than the simplicity contract I had my 3GS on.

regprentice
Facepalm

I know ?

Android to licence iTunes ?

Jesus that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. I've just given up a 3GS and the main reason was how fucking frustrating iTunes is to use ! Bring back drag and drop!

Also I think that android bs iPhone is a slightly diffrrnt consumer proposition in the uk, I'm waiting for a galaxy s 2 and I didn't pay a penny for it over my tariff, which was significantly cheaper than the iPhone equivalent (28 quid vs 40 a month )

Apple plans to prune iPhone 3GS price

regprentice
Happy

Crapple

I'm on a 3GS just now and don't see much incentive to move to a 4 . Nothing doesn't work so far on the 3GS. The user experience will be identical for the £218 users as it will for the 4/5 users unless something dramatic happens with the 5's specs.

Personally I won't be upgrading til the storage goes up to 64gb, or it can wank me off, whichever of the two comes first...

'I caught a virus from Murdoch's organ' – famous secret hooker

regprentice
Big Brother

Facebook clowns

Everybody does it ....

Yes I'm afraid they do, it's only really apparent if you are on a network which blocks facebook et all. My work does this, and I've had to click OK to blocked link messages as many as EIGHTEEN times on a legitimate website page before my network has blocked All the crap. Even the financial times is at it

iPhone 5 gets iPad 2 chip and souped-up snapper

regprentice

Shuffle

These incremental upgrades are not going to tempt 3GS users unless apple bite the bullet and upgrade to 64gb capacity.

Apple iOS 5 and iCloud examined

regprentice
Facepalm

Yawn

£20 to 'legalise' £25000 of downloads .... Not sure we've thought that one through.

Betfair promises problems are behind it

regprentice
Flame

Seethe

The new site is filled with crap and a nighare for slow connections.

I'm dissapointed to see that they were down this

Morning again, it's becoming a farce. For a site which encourages it's users to trade (ie place various bets during an event, not to bet on the winning outcome, but to take advantage of price movements a la the stock exchange) it's simply unacceptable.

I've lost money and many others have too. If there was a viable alternative betfair would be knackered.

It's like putting your gran on a life support machine and coming in one day to find the nurse flicking the power switch on and off repeatedly because she was bored

Xbox 360, PS3 prices to fall this summer

regprentice
Thumb Down

GRaaah

recently both the recent xbox 360 and the slim 160gb ps3 have been sold at £160 by supermarkets. you can sometimes pick up an older 360 secondhand with short warranty for the same as a round of drinks (£40). In fact try even GIVING away a wii after you get bored of it?

The prices should be in freefall because of the constant refreshing of the lines by sony and ms. each new iteration creates a 2nd hand market for the previous one. it should not take an analyst to work this out.

iPhone 5 rumors: bigger, smaller, cloudy, keyboard-equipped

regprentice

I will not conform to your title fascism

I think we should be looking to the new nano as a comparison to any forthcoming iphone nano.

This would keep consistency across the brand, but would also offer a very apple like touchscreen interface but with minimal 'appage'. Noone complains they cant play angry birds on a nano, if the iphone nano is sold in the same way then user expectations should be similar.

I would expect (and have always wanted) a candybar style phone wityh a good touchscreen - becasue then this would also be much more similar to the 'proper' panavision widescreen ratio. something the same shape and size as a bog standard nokia candybar handset but with a touchscreen.

I just dont know if i can give up my big screen now though. But i suppose i'm not the target market for this device.

Cambridge chap's todger topiary gets the chop

regprentice
Joke

Ooh matron

Having tried for a 'phallic vegetables' google image search and hit places by mistake I was still amused by the result...

( and who reviews hospitals btw ?)

Places near:

Glasgow, G73 ▼

Local > Phallic vegetables

Glasgow Royal Infirmary

84 Glasgow St, Glasgow

20 reviews

"Good first section looking at basic skills and principles of patient care." - medicaltextbooksrevealed.com ... "They will receive the best of care!" - glasgowonline.co.uk

0141 211 4000MapDirections▼

Apple updates MacBook Pro notebooks

regprentice

Core 2 duo still

Appalling that a brand new 1k computer still ships with a core 2 duo processor. I was waiting for an i3 at least for the MacBook / cheaper MacBook pro but I've been wasting my time.

Here's hoping for a sensible update to the vanilla MacBook soon

Steve Jobs uncloaks the 'iPad'

regprentice
Jobs Horns

paradox

If this is just an oversized touch, then it will still need to be synched with itunes?

I would be looking at this as a replacement for my netbook, but if i get rid of my aspire one , what will i synch my ipad to?????

Using itunes is an unholy nightmare for pc users. I bought an iphone and could not move my library from my old nano into my iphone despite owning all the music. i cant connect my iphone to a second pc without it threatening to delete the contents of the handset. In the end i used my netbook like a giant hard drive for my iphone only, and add and delete music from the folders on my C: drive then synch 'everything' to my iphone, it is by far the easiest way to manage itunes.

This paradox will stop a lot of people buying one unless the pad functions more like a Mac/PC and less like a ipod.

Praying in vain for drag and drop.