Posts by Roland6

Brace yourself, network admins, Amazon Video just hit 200 nations

Re: Peering? Isn't it a "Sharing" economy now

The market is currently in it's grow phase and hence everyone is simply trying to carve out a niche for themeselves. Consolidation comes later...

Don't panic, friends, but the Chinese navy just nicked one of America's underwater drones

Re: South China Sea

By the way, giving the Queen Elisabeth to the yanks on loan in that area is starting to sound like an "interesting idea".

Shame it's not due to enter service until 2020, but then I suppose better late than never...

Murdoch's 21st Century Fox agrees £18.5bn Sky takeover deal

Re: And no doubt..

THEN you will get Murduck whispering in the PM's ear ... that the BBC needs to change ... until eventually the licence fee is removed and we're forced to have a dish and pay Sky £450 a month to get the current FTA channels

Actually, I expect Sky will try to get the BBC licence fee bundled into it's charges, on the basis that the BBC is just another content provider. what this simple change in the way the licence fee is collected will result in Sky controlling a significant proportion of the BBC's budget and thus give it leverage over the BBC; just as it is using Ofcom to gain leverage over BT whilst at the same time stitching up Virgin.

what owning 100% rather than 40% will give extra to NewsCorp

Well, effectively this deal takes Sky private, so from Sky's point of view it enables it to lose profits in internal accounting and offshoring, whilst at the same time continue crying to Ofcom as to just how unfair the UK market is and can they do something about breaking up BT - who must be doing that unfair practice of using internal accounting practices to hide the profits of derived from OpenReach...

If Ofcom had any brains and backbone they would place an infrastructure investment levy on Sky et al. £3bn pa is probably in the right ballpark for fixed line, plus another few billion for mobile...

If only our British 4G were as good as, um, Albania's... UK.gov's telco tech report

"Look at the geography of Albania and get back on that."

And what is the geographic 3g and 4g coverage in Albania?

Looking at a population map, I suggest you need to provide coverage to less than 30% of the country (ie. to most of the lowlands) to give coverage to 80+% of the population.

However, a look at the mobile coverage maps available on the internet, it would seem the geographic coverage is significantly less and highly restricted to particular cities and road corridors...

Reading the report, it would seem the criteria being used to determine 4g service availability and thus provide a county ranking, is highly suspect. But then given Lord Adonis's involvement, this is hardly surprising given his past performance over HS2...

Microsoft quietly emits patch to undo its earlier patch that broke Windows 10 networking

Re: You want control of updates on your Win10 PC? Easy!

Just disable the windows update service and reboot.

Then when you feel like it's safe to do an update run, you know what to do.

Whilst this may seem sensible advice, it is in fact one of the best ways to cause future problems.

Firstly, before you turn off the update service, you need to be sure that all downloaded updates have been installed. Having particuallr installed updates hanging around can cause problems when you decide to update other software and will cause problems with any future Windows updates.

Secondly, with the update service turned off, unless you are disciplined, it is very easy for a month or two go by and before you know it your system hasn't been updated for over a year. Just had a Windows 8.1 system that hadn't been updated since June 2015 (updates were turned off due to the release of GWX), it took the best part of a week to get this system fully updated and restored to full working order. Installing all updates was the simplest way of getting the required updates and their precursors installed, However, as we know during this time MS have released updates to the update service and a few hundred updates, which give Windows Update a problem and cause a system to seemingly hang for a few days whilst it sorts itself out...

Personally, I'm happy for most important updates to be auto installed, with only those that touch the network adaptor and/or stack getting put to one side and being applied with great care - lesson learnt with XP and still applies to 7, 8.1 and especially with 10 which is known to have an update service that takes exception to AV software...

Re: supporting my elderly father with his windows 10 machine

My parents have an old white macbook, after about 10 years it's just getting to the point where they will be thinking of replacing it,

If your parents are in their 80's then enjoy the fun and games of upgrading them :)

People in this age group, whilst not unable to learn do prefer to use stuff and methods they are familiar with - hence why when migrating from Windows to Linux say, it is helpful to provide them with a desktop and application suite that provide a similar UI to whichever version of Windows and applications they've been using.

Re: ,So there's an online fix for not being able to get online?

Can you create a live USB of Linux Mint or ZorinOS to try on his equipment?

Whilst this is a good idea, it doesn't go far enough.

From all the available evidence this is an issue with Windows messing up it's runtime configuration. In these instance's the challenge is getting Windows to reset and start up correctly. I mean how do you achieve the same effect as using "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew" on a running Windows box from a Live USB?

Given where David Black is coming from, the Live USB needs to be able to control the running of the host OS (treat host OS installed on HDD as a VM?) and provide him with remote maintenance access, also wholly independent of the host OS...

Re: ,So there's an online fix for not being able to get online?

"My feeling is that every Windows PC should be supplied with a short, helpful user guide to the shell commands that may be needed, and how to use them, in case of emergency."

Pointless for the average Joe; bit like the idea of self-driving cars handing full manual control over to the human, who until that point has been playing with their mobile...

Given, we were able to get a full OS complete with GUI into sub 1MB of RAM back in the 80's. I suggest we should be able to burn a complete PE recovery OS into the BIOS (This means the recovery OS is available for those occasions when either the HDD fails or is unable to boot into an OS.). User need only press the button typically engraved with cogs, spanner etc. that many vendors put on keyboards for maintenance mode to gain access and undertake various actions, such as uninstall updates, fetch new updates, enable remote access etc.

Cisco to kill its Intercloud public cloud on March 31, 2017

Makes you wonder just how viable all the other 'public' cloud services really are.

Or are we seeing the beginnings of a market split between those who have spent big to create a really big offering, eg. Amazon and Microsoft, and those who have focused on the enterprise private cloud niche. With those in the middle failing because they were neither one or the other.

Microsoft announces 16 years of support for Windows, SQL Servers

Interesting to note the omissions...

Interesting to see the list of eligible products:

• Windows Server 2008/R2 Standard, Datacenter, and Enterprise

• Windows Server 2012/R2 Standard and Datacenter

• Windows Server 2016 Standard and Datacenter

• SQL Server 2008/R2 Standard, Datacenter, and Enterprise

• SQL Server 2012 Standard and Enterprise

• SQL Server 2014 Standard and Enterprise

• SQL Server 2016 Standard and Enterprise

And note the omissions:

- Small Business Server 2008/2011

- All MS enterprise applications other than SQL-Server.

Perhaps behind this is recognition that DB servers are long life beasts and hence don't need to be updated every couple of years and hence this can be turned into a revenue earning stream.

Re: Sounds kind of like,

"Nice server you've got had there. Shame you've already upgraded to Server 2012 and Windows 10."

HMS Illustrious sets sail for scrapyard after last-ditch bid fails

Re: Shame @Trigonoceps occipitalis

"Making a navalized Super Tucano is a trivial engineering task."

I think material scientists would take exception to "trivial". By no means impossible but I suspect most metal components may need hardening against salt water.

Given the earlier comments about the suitability of older technologies in modern conflict situations, what would be relatively trivial would be the continued manufacture of the Harrier jump jet - given the work has been done and: the manufacturing capability is still available, as are pilots with experience, and the ships (such as HMS Illustrious) that can take them with little or no without modification...

Re: I am enough of a naval history buff...

True, but a lot of the right sort of ship. ... Any point in our entire 200-mile limit can be reached by one of the few remaining fast RAF jets within about 10 minutes from take-off.

You falling in the trap of forgetting the British overseas territories and Crown dependencies, these aren't within 10 minutes of RAF Anglesey...

Re: I wish I had the money to buy Her...

I am surprised someone found a shipyard to dismantle it.

Who said it was actually going to be dismantled anytime soon, it was sold to a "Ship Recycling" business... Compared to the price of London apartments, £2.1M seems quite a bargain for the amount of temporary accommodation it provides - which was it's main use when moored on the Thames in 2012. Given winter is rapidly approaching and there are rather a lot of displaced people in Turkey, I can certainly see a use in the short term for such an asset.

90 per cent of the UK's NHS is STILL relying on Windows XP

Re: The fault is the operating system

The usual expectation for an OS is to make a one off payment (not too expensive, obviously) and then have open ended free support. People also generally expect to pay for a software package and just keep using it.

Beyond a certain point this is not a finacially viable model for the supplier.

That hasn't been the case in the commercial non-Windows environment where software was always priced as an upfront purchase cost followed by annual licence and maintenance/support fees.

Whilst the PC world has expanded computing to non-traditional IT user groups, namely: homes and small businesses and has done so through a one-off upfront payment, when it comes to business'es the traditional annual fee model has been applied, even by Microsoft.

Say bye-bye to net neutrality next year, gloats FCC commish Pai

Re: Although the hours are longer, truck drivers and miners make that much.

No I meant $100k just for the 1/2 day a week.

So modest... I seem to remember Tony Blair (a long forgotten UK PM) gets that sort of money for a single after-dinner speech...

For God's sake, stop trying to make Microsoft Bob a thing. It's over

Re: Yeah, okay, but...

I presume you're not very good at GTV? as with a full Win10 PC in the headset and wireless connectivity, I doubt the batteries will last very long...

Brit telco EE's ads banned for 'misleading' 4G speed claims

Re: Pretty good

On 100GB/month tariff which seems enough.

Obviously not got kids who like watching YouTube, The Grand Tour, Xbox/PS4 gaming etc... I got my wake up when over the Easter holiday fortnight the kids download approximately 71GB's of stuff.

Prior to getting unlimited FTTC (which happened a couple of months prior to the above mentioned event), I only had a Three dongle and juggled SIMs to get 30GB pcm at a reasonable cost.

Interestingly, one of my clients (with typically 8 users per site) survives without worry on a 100GB pcm service.

At home I get on my EE 4G handset: 6kbps down / sub 1kbps up (yes that is a 'k')

My Three 3G phone reliably gets: 4+ Mbps down / 1+ Mbps up.

Part of this is down to the mast preferences. the EE handset seems to favour the old Orange mast, whereas the Three handset favours the old T-mobile masts...

However, when it comes to voice calls, the EE phone wins hands down every time...

Fortunately, a little over a year ago we got 40/8 FTTC...

Hackers actively stealing Wi-Fi keys from vulnerable routers

Re: MAC filtering, all that does is create trouble for legit users.

I have WPA2-AES turned on as well AND our wifi does not broadcast.. You to have to know it is there and it's precise, non standard, name.

Turning off the broadcast of SSID is even more pointless than MAC filtering. It was discredited as a security mechanism pre-2006...

Ofcom fleshes out plans to open up BT's ducts and poles

Re: How many times?

BT / Openreach have a vested interest in keeping multiple copper pairs to each premise from the exchange.

Of cause BT have a vested interest in maintaining the (predominently) copper paired network. This is because they have Universal Service Obligation to provide telephone services, which due to current Ofcom regulations can not be replaced by fibre.

Currently there is no universal service obligation on data services. However, if look at what Ofcom's other hand is working on, we can see that the only reason to disentangle Openreach from BT is to enable the placing of a universal service obligation for fibre-based data services. Which given what has happened to-date, would indicate there is no real mileage - other than short-term opportunistic gains from laying your own fibre infrastructure - your money is better spent lobbying Ofcom to push Openreach to delivery FTTP/H - which is exactly what Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone have been pushing for.

If Ofcom really were interested in creating a market, they would make it much more attractive for Virgin and others to lay their own infrastructure that isn't based on a network topography that dates back to the 1870's.

Citizens Advice slams 'unfair' broadband compensation scheme

Re: "Compensation" is crap anyway

Openreach failed on to install mine on _13_ separate occasions over a 5 month period. The best compensation I had was moving to another ISP after getting fed up with the lies from BT and TT(*) about people coming out or having knocked on the door with noone being home, etc.

I would assume that "no one home" etc. provide reasonable grounds for refusing compensation, hence it would be illuminating to see what compensation payments , if any, were actually made. Because surely, someone at BT (retail) and/or TT would have been monitoring new connections, since they can't really bill for a service that isn't connected and thus between them they lost 5 months of billing income. Similarly, at Openreach, ignoring compensation payments, 13 consecutive failed engineer visits are unrecoverable costs.

Depending on the level of compensation, I can understand TT being laid back as collecting the automatic compensation payments could well be more profitable than actually providing a service...

Depending on how long ago these events happened and whether you still have the relevant appointment references, it could be interesting to get your "new ISP" to make a request to Ofcom to investigate...

Re: Don't lets facts get in the way of some BT Openreach bashing!

I see El Reg have corrected the article's title etc. changing the focus from BT Openreach to the Ofcom defined UK's Broadband Compensation Scheme, which is the focus of the CAB press release.

The CAB press release can be found here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/how-citizens-advice-works/media/press-releases/broadband-customers-left-out-of-pocket-while-suppliers-are-compensated/

This seems to be an extension to their response (https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/policy/policy-research-topics/consumer-policy-research/consumer-surveys-consultation-responses/automatic-compensation-in-the-telecoms-market/ ) to an Ofcom consultation on automatic compensation (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/automatic-compensation ).

Don't lets facts get in the way of some BT Openreach bashing!

"Consumer rights charity Citizens Advice has slammed BT's Openreach for being too slow to compensate customers."

Openreach's customers are the companies that supply broadband (and telecoms) to consumers/customers/user organisations - some of which are the people CAB helps.

Thus the issue isn't the fact that BT Openreach automatically compensates broadband suppliers/resellers - according to Ofcom overseen contractual terms, but that the broadband suppliers/resellers don't automatically pass those payments on to their customers.

So please explain how Openreach's compensation scheme is 'unfair', given it is the broadband suppliers who are not passing the compensation on?

Windows 10 market share growth just barely has a pulse

Re: @Lee D @CompUser

The issue isn't so much the non-existence of enterprise Linux desktop, but the seeming lack of progress on enterprise Linux desktop and associated systems. Given MS's behaviour towards business and enterprise users really since the EoL of XP, it is not just a little surprising but actually of concern that we haven't seen a significant increase in activity with vendors promoting enterprise Linux desktop environments and in the numbers of organisations either using Linux desktops or seriously evaluating them.

Re: @Lee D @Doug S

I agree the door is closing on desktop Linux and all that goes with it, in the Enterprise.

Given the general reaction to Win8 & 10 by businesses, I expect the business world to generally do as they did with XP and delay upgrading from Win7 until after the official EoL. Hence why I think the door is still open...

As for Enterprise's considering Win10, whilst the basic OS has been around for a little over a year, MS only really finally delivered a version of Win10 that can actually be said to be Enterprise ready last month (ie. version 1607). (Yes, I know they announced version 1507 back in August as the first business ready version, but it has taken MS a few months to get it 'stable' for actual deployment...).

Also before you commit to a Win10 rollout, you do need to get your head around the CBB and LTSB deployment constraints MS has placed on them and decide if your organization can live with MS's dictates and the costs these will cause your business to incur during a period of high uncertainty (ie. Brexit).

Re: @Lee D

and 7 is supported three more years.

I do hope that the open source community uses this time well, as Win7 EoL is a big opportunity to get into the enterprise.

UK's new Snoopers' Charter just passed an encryption backdoor law by the backdoor

crippled cryptography

There is no requirement to cripple crytography!

In both the draft bill and the final act it is clear that what is being requested is that those ie. CSP's, who perform communication encryption and decryption actions provide the mean's whereby the unencrypted communication is made available to a man-in-the-middle inspection.

So you are free to use 256-bit and double encryption to protect your communications from eavesdroppers; however, if the end-point of the encrypted connection is in the UK, TPTB reserve the right to ask for a tap/intercept to be placed on all (unencrypted communications going into the VPN/encrypted pipe and coming out of that pipe).

It's not difficult really. For example, my WiFi AP operates a full WPA2-PKI service - according to 802.11. However, only the over-the-air communications leg between client device and AP is actually encrypted, all communcations between the AP and my router are subject to separate encryption - currently none. Hence simply placing a network monitor on the AP's LAN port would be sufficient to satisfy the demands of the IB.

Re: Food Standards Agency given power to read everyone's browsing history

But the food standard agency really do have access to your browsing history now.

And...?

Didn't you know they and all the other agencies listed in the bill already had access to this information if they so desired? I suggest you read the draft bill for details.

Re: Warrant Canary

You place a factual statement, which is not illegal, on your website.

Err, it might be best to post the public warrant canary on a foreign website (shades of the spycatcher case) and control it via a 1x1 traffic light pixel on your own website.

Adblock again beats publishers' Adblock-blocking attempts

Re: More People Need To Block Ads!

Re: Until a tipping point is reached, the ad industry will not reform themselves.

From my readings on other behavioural change, it would seem that 25% is a good rule of thumb. At this point people's perceptions seem to change and begin to treat the 'new' thing as normal. Hence given usage of adblockers is between 19~21%, I suspect the ad networks are working so hard currently to block the use of adblockers is an attempt to prevent the tipping point being reached...

UK's Universal Service voucher scheme urged to shift monopoly away from BT

Re: I'm not sure they understand what a USO is. It's an obligation on a service provider (BT in this case) to do something that they otherwise wouldn't choose to do.

Whilst the current market grew up with BT having a USO for telephony, a concern must be whether it is appropriate to extend this to broadband; as it would effectively undermine the business case for many of the alt-net's. I suspect the politicians don't understand the real implications a USO would have on the market...

Re: BT Thieves

"Surely we name the timescale and then BT have to show us their plan will, having laughed their head off name a price and indicative timescale?

If our timescale is unreasonable, then it can be negotiated."

That is basically what happened the last time, with BT giving a price and indicative timeframe for 100% FTTP that made the politicians go weak at the knees; after some hurried backtracking and face-saving negotiations the BDUK program was announced, swiftly followed by additional funding to address some of the last 5%...

.

SQL Server on Linux: Runs well in spite of internal quirks. Why?

So which is it?

What is SQL Server on Linux? It appears to be essentially the same code as Windows SQL Server running on a compatibility layer

...

Despite running the same code as on Windows, the Linux product does not have all its features.

Surely the whole point of this is to enable the installation of the SQLPAL - just as we install Wine, VirtualBox, Docker etc. today then you get out the standard SQL-Server install disk (for Win Server) and run setup.exe. As surely SQLPAL presents to SQL-Server a virtual Win Server xyz environment just like a traditional VM?

Or is SQLPAL also doing some post-install tweaking of SQL-Server, just like the accelerators MS shipped with Virtual PC.

UK.gov flings £400m at gold standard, ‘full-fibre' b*&%*%£$%. Yep. Broadband

Re: Just out of interest,

Granted it's a lot of work but plenty of other countries seemed to have managed the equivalent and provide their populations with decent speed connections.

The headline data is highly misleading. For example, for the UK the data shows the impact of fibre. I suspect those on fibre are getting significantly higher speeds than the 13Mbps average. However,because the UK has a very large installed base of ADSL of which around 5% gets sub-2Mbps, the average is pulled down.

We shouldn't forget the internet connection speed Akamai is reporting on, isn't what the infrastructure is capable of supporting, but what the customer has selected to satisfy their needs and budget constraints. This even with 100% of cabinets upgraded to FTTC, the UK's average connection speed may not fully reflect what is available on the ground.

If the UK could simply pull the plug on the ADSL service, the average connection speed, as recorded by Akamai, would probably jump to circa 40+Mbps - enabling us to congratulate ourselves whilst turning a blind eye to the vast majority of homes that didn't have access to fibre...

Re: Last 5%

For those that say "why do you need more than x%" - ...

4K streaming is coming, for a start. Multiple people in the same house will want to do that.

That may be so, but that doesn't mean the government/taxpayer should be paying for the necessary infrastructure out of the tax pot...

Re: What are people doing that needs fibre?

A family of four will swamp a 40Mbps line just with base level streaming, background browsing software updates, etc.

In my household with two teenagers who are into multi-player Xbox games, Amazon Prime and YouTube, plus parents who think nothing of video calling/conferencing and running concurrent RDS sessions; we've yet to top out our 38Mbps FTTC line. However, I am aware that there are times when contention beyond my FTTC circuit causes things to slow down - and does it really matter that a Win10 image download or the recent Xbox update takes circa half an hour rather than a couple of minutes?

So whilst I don't doubt there are households who can swamp a 40Mbps line, I suspect they are (currently) very a small minority.

Surprise, surprise. BT the only Universal Service Obligation provider in town

Does anyone know exactly where the change of "ownership" actually is? If it's where the local cable goes through the exchange wall then Openreach's "ownership" doesn't actually extend all that far.

Not sure if Openreach actually "own" anything:

"We're responsible for the first mile of the UK access network - the copper wires and fibre that connect homes and businesses to local telephone exchanges. " [Source: https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/home.do ]

So I would agree, Openreach may 'own' the local cable, but not the rack and equipment in the telephone exchanges it connects to (and being pedantic, it potentially doesn't own the street cabinets...).

Hence I agree, I can't see how BT, the operator of the national broadband and telephone network, could deliver on the USO, if Openreach were to be separated.

Re: Calling our bluff, are you?

So which foreign telecoms operator do you want to see buying a demerged Openreach?

China Telecom?

That's a pint of Tsingtao..

White said BT has been "looking in its rearview mirror" at competitors such as Virgin's £3bn scheme to extend ultrafast fibre broadband to 17 million homes by 2019, which she said has helped BT up its game.

BT doesn't need to look in its rearview mirror, due to Ofcom's obsession with competition and thus the regulation of BT, BT's preferred position is to be in the rearview mirror of the unregulated players, as then they can't complain (so much) about unfair competition from BT....

UK warships to have less firepower than 19th century equivalents as missiles withdrawn

"The guns on HMS Dreadnought topped out at 22km. And that's assuming they hit what they were aiming at."

Whilst they might out gun a Dreadnought, I would not want to be anywhere near the target receiving the attention of a Dreadnought's 12-inch guns...

Personally, given the main role of the RN seems to be psychological power projection, it might better achieve it's intent by commissioning some new WWI warships - as they certainly looked menacing.

NHS IT bod sends test email to 850k users – and then responses are sent 'reply all'

however it would be interesting to consider the same thing happening on a O365 account.

Surely the O365 'gods' will have distribution lists that disable reply/reply all...

IPv4 is OVER. Really. So quit relying on it in new protocols, sheesh

Re: Where I am working right now

Re: "Dual-stack is a well-understood stop gap for legacy systems."

Well the basic operating principles are well understood; however, I suggest we have some way to go before we can be sure about security. It would not surprise me if we see more attacks that use a combination of IPv4 and IPv6 to exploit cross stack vulnerabilities.

Re: Where I am working right now

Dear Technical Manager,

re: "According to new research, that point was actually reached several years ago."

Please detail the impact this had had on our business, as surely if what you say is correct our existing customers from these regions would be unable to access our website and place orders. Likewise, since we email invoices to our customers we would be unable to invoice these customers.

re: " we need engineering time to deploy this and budget to buy new equipment to replace the obsolete stuff we currently use.

Please add this into the budget, or put it in the risk register together with your reason for delaying."

I thought you were responsible for managing engineering time and IT budgets and risk register, if you are having difficulty, I'm sure we can recruit someone with an MBA to help out.

CFO.

Re: What new protocols are IPv4 ONLY?

Reading the IAB statement and RFC 6540, it would seem the big problems are: Firstly, the need to review, mainly the pre-IPv6 RFC's, to ensure they correctly refer to 'IPv4' rather than 'IP' - given when they were written 'IPv4' was 'IP' everything else was 'experimental'. Secondly, it seems the master RFC that defines the current suite of RFC's that define the current IPv4 & IPv6 profiles and thus the current "Internet Standard" RFC's needs to be updated to take account of IPv6...

As for the request: "The IAB expects that the IETF will stop requiring IPv4 compatibility in new or extended protocols.". In most cases, this won't be an issue, however, for as long as IPv4 is widely used I anticipate there will be the occasional need for an IPv4 specific RFC to address some issue, such as security.

Otherwise, the only two areas, within the IETF remit, where new protocols might be written as IPv4 only are:

1. Those intended to enhance the IPv4 network layer protocol suite, namely protocols designed to carry IPv4 addresses etc. as part of their payload.

2. Link Layer protocols that assume they only carry packets and hence need to interface to an IPv4 network layer.

Naturally none of this prevents protocol implementors and application programmers from using the various API's in ways that only support IPv4 or IPv6.

WileyFox Swift 2: A new champ of the 'for around £150' market

Re: It's all in the details

Agree it is all in the detail.

Recently I've had cause to research the use of a smartphone as cycle/bike computer, which dropped me into this problem, asking questions such as:

Does it support OTG, Bluetooth 4.0/Smart, ANT2+, GPS...

Does it support a reasonable number of bluetooth sensors eg. heart rate monitor, cadence, speed, power, plus headset for hands free music/calling.

Etc. etc.

This made me realise that we now at the point where the smartphone has gone beyond being simply a 'smart' phone, it was now in some use cases more of a cost effective, highly mobile compute and display platform; just that both manufacturers and reviews have yet to wake up to the market change...

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Re: wrong turn

'it's not permitted to sell the seed within gardening clubs.'

seriously?

The Woodland Trust in their work potentially fall foul of this regulation, as they are dedicated to protecting the UK's ancient woodland and creating new woodland from seed and cuttings sourced wholly from within the UK (and ideally reasonably locally to the planting).

The mostly get around it by encouraging volunteers to go out each year and collect seed, which they then plant and distribute to organizations and community groups wishing to plant their own wood.

Re: They had one job....

should I be worried about my copy of Caesar's Conquest of Gaul?

Depends on where you file it - I suggest keeping it with Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" amoung the management and leadership books.- it's where I keep my copy of Robert Taber's "The War of the Flea", right next to "Winnie-the-Pooh on Management".

Re: Good job... or not...

I would agree, I didn't quite get why WH Smiths took the seemingly more difficult route of adding filters to the auto imports of wholesalers' catalogues, rather than the simpler one of scanning shopping cart contents, for which they could most probably adapt an existing shopping basket scanning tool.