Posts by Dave 15

Universal Credit? Universal DISCREDIT, more like, say insiders

Re: All this pain might be worth it ...

@LoyalCommentator

The 'lucky' ones have mainly worked damned hard to have their own house, and even harder if they have managed to put money away as well. What they haven't done is had holidays, been drinking down the pub, smoking like chimneys etc etc because if they have they wouldn't have the money.. There are of course a very very very small umber who happen to know the right person at the right time and are CEO of some bank or other... but they are such a small number that while annoying they aren't really relevant.

The hard workers pay for their house and savings with sweat and time, they then see both taken away in taxes, funding old age or other things while being told that they have so much money they don't need the money that is given freely to the lazy feckless few who you see pissed as parrots every night of the week.

If the welfare system was actually doing the job you allude to - helping those on hard times - then I wouldn't mind. And no, I don't have a house, I don't have thosuands (or even hundreds) in the bank, I do work 2 jobs and a lot of hours - so one day I might - but a massive chunk of what I earn is taken in tax to pay for the rest.

Re: Skills and fail

Impossible to implement in the couple of years its been hammering around, heavens I could have implemented such a simple system in a couple of evenings at home. It really isn't - and shouldn't be - rocket science or difficult. Its a database with some numbers and a rule.

Re: Whoopsie.

The problem with a minimum wage is that it doesn't take into account the minimum cost of a reasonable life. Such things as housing, getting to work, washing...

The problem for this country is that successive governments have massively increased the costs -

Housing, the selling off and not replacing council houses coupled with unlimited publicly financed rents has pushed rental up, rental yields up and therefore the price of houses up by an enormous amount. Add the blunder in the last budget with more housing lending and the prices are not falling to match the fall in wages.

Energy - for getting to work, washing, keeping house warm etc. has been a complete disaster ever since 'privatization' with more or less unrestricted hikes in taxes and prices. My latest gas and electric bill suggest a cost of £200 a month (on a summer bill!) for a tiny 3 bed semi with top notch insulation and double glazing and heating that has been off the entire time!

I can not, can not under any circumstance, compete with a guy in India who pays a few pence for a house, nothing for heating etc. if I have bills like this and the only competition is price.

Government needs to become radically cheaper. It can do this by cutting staff hugely - so a single flat benefit for all, a single flat tax on all that is earned, nothing more - no bbc licence fee, no road fund licence, no council tax, no vat, no any of the others.

Questions

What company was employed to build the IT system (which of the big boys), where was it built (UK, USA, India?). how much money has it cost (so far) and estimated cost by the end? I'd love to know this because I dare say there are many many small UK companies who would have done the job right for less using UK engineers in a fraction of the time but were overlooked in the purchasing decision because of the lack of foreign sales trips, back handers and of course 'seats on the board'

Seven snazzy smartphones for seven sorts of shoppers

Buy a phone with a bloody great battery?

Why?

Why not buy a phone with an operating system and applications designed to eek the best out of the processor and battery.... oh yes, I forgot, that was toasted by Elop wasn't it?

Galaxy S4 way faster than iPhone 5: Which?

And?

And does this mean that the samsung actually works better with less swearing from the user who is p***d off at waiting days for something to happen? I don't have an iPhone and won't - in much the same way as I don't have the iphone clones that are being made today. I want a phone with a proper keyboard, a proper button to take a photo/video with, proper buttons to zoom etc. Most of all I want to press the buttons and have a reaction in a time I don't notice - instantly to my eye. What I hate - and hate more than anything else - is a smooth plate screen where you can't get anything done because you get no tactile feedback and the screen takes an age to update.

It makes me swear. It makes me swear when my computer takes 5 minutes to get to a usable state when I switch it on, it makes me angry when I want to take a photo on my camera phone and it takes it 10 keystrokes to unlock and find the camera app and 2 minutes for it to init the camera and be ready to shoot.. The 808 has a dedicated button to take a photo - it opens the app, sets the camera, focuses and takes the photo in less time than it takes me to find the camera app button on a Samsung. (And I've not tried an iPhone, but I'm pretty sure the experience is as dreadful on that as it is on the Samsung)

Hey mobile firms: About that Android thing... Did Google add a lockout clause?

Re: Google apps optional

Symbian is NOT used anymore, you can still get the 808 pureview and a few of the last of the smartphones, it is not, repeat nto being used in any 'feature phones'. S40 is still used in feature phones. The last few UI's made the two look very similar but the S40 will not run Symbian applications - the 808 pureview, n8 etc. will.

Nokia were creating a linux phone (by the strange method of cutting down an android software stack and replacing the UI... strange I know) but that was canned last year (when the last massive wave of redundancies were announced).

Nokia has just two OS - windows (which it is using increasingly on lower end devices in a vain attempt to get some numbers) and S40 which it has on occasion dubbed a 'smartphone' in order to make its numbers look slightly less pathetic than they would otherwise be. It has nothing else, nor anything else up its corporate sleeve.

Elop is a one track pony - a lame half dead one going the wrong way on a street leading to the desert and an ocean to drown in, but he is just that - one track. I daresay that having persuaded the EU to fund Nokia's purchase of Symbian and its subsequent destruction (by himself) he will end up a bloody site better off than you or me when Nokia eventually dies.

Re: Google apps optional

I doubt there is any written contract - none of the forked tongue folk at the top of Microsoft or Nokia are quite that dumb. BUT they are all chums on the same golf course... as normal, not what you know but who you know,.

Re: Google apps optional

Symbian was a UK smartphone OS - created from psion software and its epoc32 OS and the input of a number of companies. At one point you could get a Sendo (British company based in Birmingham) with Symbian (with Nokia's S60 UI) - so you could get exactly what you wanted.

Unfortunately the Apple loving BBC and Rory 'Apple' jones did such a good advertising job for Apple that they had a heavy part in the damage to Symbian and Nokia that left it all wide open to the intrusion of the idiot Elop who then persuaded the EU to give him the funds to buy Symbian and destroy it totally in favour of his American chums... oh well - when history is written the Americans will once again take full credit for a British invention and no one will question it.

Re: Oh, this old chestnut

Wouldn't be too sure... the manufacturers tend to share engines, gearboxes etc etc etc around these days.

Re: So in other words

You are right, Apple ships with what Apple wants and thats tough shit on everyone else, and indeed it controls the only way you have of putting a competitive product on its phone - so you're really stuffed good and proper.

But, Apple having a dominant monopoly? When? In the early days there were plenty of Symbian competitor phones - and damned good ones at that - pity that the BBC trashed them, then Nokia's new CEO trashed it... after getting the EU to stump up a pile of our cash so he could ensure that his trashing it would clear the path for Microsoft.... despite the failure of the policy costing Nokia very dear - and probably in due course destroying what is left of the company.

IT mercenaries and buy-to-let landlords are my HEROES - here's why

Re: Interesting article

Pay over the odds? Not a chance. Devon and Cornwall are prime examples at the moment. The local companies are all claiming there are massive problems with lack of talent and demanding all sorts of 'action' - but - I notice that none of them - not one - is paying the national average wage while expecting to get qualified IT professionals with 30+ years of experience in the very latest technologies... amusing if it weren't so misguided and sad.

Re: Nothing Has Changed

Theres more now... 'affordability'.... recently I was told that I couldn't afford a mortgage whose repayments were 20% less than the rent I was paying...

And another bank decided that I could only afford a mortgage of 90% of my annual permanent salary because I was paying maintenance for my boy... never mind a 3x or 4x salary mulitplier try a 0.9x

Tosh

Moving from rental is longer and more costly than moving between purchased houses. 6 month minimum rentals, massive deposits, lag between moving and getting the deposit refunded, huge costs associated with 'referencing' and the delays there - not to mention the hassle of finding a house where your kids and pets are acceptable to the landlord.

Selling up and buying are much quicker in any market where the price is sensible.

The problem at the moment is the very over inflated house prices - pushed up by buy to let landlords who make a colossal 'killing' out of over inflated rents - sustained in large part by the same landlords over inflating the purchase price in the first place.

When will business and the government learn that we (the normal plebs) need somewhere to live, something to eat and fuel to get to work, the company that employs us will need energy for the office. So by uniting to increase energy, fuel and food costs by the 'green agenda' and propping up unsustainable house prices the government policies are the reason companies are shutting and moving abroad and are the reason for the unemployment.

Yahoo! joins! rivals! in! PRISM! data! request! admission!

Re: Don't they realise that the cat ...

PGP keys...

Interesting... I wonder how many of the various snooping programs coming out of the USA, China, Russia are designed to dig out your private pgp key so they can decrypt your communications with less effort.

Swedish watchdog: Google's chocolate cloud? Nej, not private

I refused to take part

For the reason that the British government was spending British tax payers money on paying an American company to provide data on all British households to the Americans.

Nothing came of that refusal despite the dire warnings about court proceedings etc.

I think I was entirely right, and think anyone who complied with that ridiculous census was stupid.

The British government should be spending British tax payers money on British companies and British workers - every time it spends our money.

Don't wait to check your parachute until you're out of the plane

Almost all work is credit these days

You do work, invoice and if you are lucky after 30 days the company you invoiced might think about starting to process the possibility of maybe one day getting the requisite approvals for the finance department to consider maybe they might possibly put the cheque in the post at the next cheque run if thats not too overfull already...

So you might if you are really lucky get paid in 6, 9 or 12 months.... Alternatively the business will go out of business - yours or theirs - meaning they get something for nothing... well something for your expense.

What is needed is NOT insurance, it is for all UK business to simply stop trading with anyone at all until the government bring in some legislation that means people are paid for the work they do in 5 or 10 working days maximum. Its not that damned difficult. The Germans have laws around this - a payment is late after 30 days - anything after this is base+5%. Personally I'd make it 5 days and base + 200%.

Bone up on fresh EU privacy law - or end up in the clink, IT biz warned

Re: Re :- BONE UP ON FRESH EU PRIVACY LAW

Yup, such an empty and airheaded piece it could have been written by any of the blond BBC reporters... what a c*** article, nothing of substance at all.

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

Re: Damaged HMRC's reputation?

The quote came from Hodge - whose own company has managed to avoid paying tax by some pretty underhand techniques... pot calling kettle? Nope, she is an MP, therefore quite above being wrong obviously. And the voters, yup, they are so damned stupid they'll be flocking to put their mark next to her name next election, and the one after that... Or maybe - the conspiracy guys might guess - the ballot papers have no effect on the outcome.

Desperate Venezuelans wiped clean of bog roll

Re: Who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of London?

Only one answer - do as I do, bake your own. The stuff sold packaged as bread is disgusting - though I admit that some supermarkets rather revolting offerings are better than the truly repulsive offerings from the leading manufactures of white/brown/wholemeal mush in various forms - baps, rolls, sliced... all of which are singularly so disgusting I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would give money for them

Facebook, Microsoft beg Feds: Let us tell users what YOU asked for...

Re: Don't get too excited ... or more dead civilians

Who says? Frankly it is possible that the security services have been wonderful - but there aren't many reports of arrests and convictions.

Frankly we lived through the American funded bombing of London every Christmas by the IRA, Al-queda only exists because the Americans created and funded the Taliban and later al-q.

Look at the approval ratings of the various presidents, pm's etc etc and realise that creating an 'enemy' and then taking 'strong action' against them is a way of fooling the majority of the thick and stupid, ill educated plebs in these 'democracies' into changing their mind and keeping these presidents in power and you realise what it is all about.

And...

And so what, we now all know we are being spied on by the USA. Any or all of our requests that go that way, all the email via MS servers, gmail, or any of the other are all spied on, all our google searches etc etc. And, even if they weren't going via the USA it is pretty guaranteed that anything in Europe is already copied to the USA anyway - whatever jumping up and down eu commissioners do, or reassurances by Mr Vague.

Even then people forget - all your flights, sea tickets, car journeys, bank accounts, farts, random rantings in the street are all recorded and poured over. 1984 is nothing against the reality...

We're losing the battle with a government seduced by surveillance

Re: False positives

Plenty of people died last century to protect freedom, the lazy have given it away without a whimper. Threaten someone with something - even if it just isn't true - and too many cave in immediately.

Terrorism? My arse frankly... The Americans have funded just about every terrorist group in existence in their deluded fight against the plebs having a reasonable share of the rewards for the plebs hard work. What wasn't funded for that fight was funded because they were fighting the age old enemy - the British, look at the billions of pounds and tons of weapons sent to the IRA for just one example (not to mention everyone in the old empire who could be roused to fight the oppressive empire).

No the Americans are plain dangerous - always have been - they are as religiously lunatic as any group (lived there for a while - 1 pub, 15 churches - says it all), prone to over exaggeration - especially of how great (awesome) everything they do is (even when it is demonstrably not).

Forget phones, PRISM plan shows internet firms give NSA everything

so who will crowd fund some alternatives?

I don't see why we shouldn't produce a search engine, voip service, etc etc outside of the USA (and outside of the lacky Europeans for that matter - maybe we could do it from somewhere nice, warm, sunny and pleasant) and offer people a service that DOESN'T have ANY access to the data for government - mainly by just not storing any of the data anyway!

All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters

Written to talktalk

Pointing out that I think they are misguided and won't be buying their 'service' - if enough did that they would rethink

Morality

It is of course totally moral to accept back handers for favours rendered, giving your neighbours kids a job, employing someone of dubious past performance, fiddling expenses, or making the rules so that you can put as much of the publics wonga in your back pocket as possible.

But these people know far more about morals than you do.

Why

Why should you have the blocks - why not try using your judgement - don't search for 'child porn' or 'beheadings' and don't look at websites with names like www.choppingheadsofchildren.com or whatever

You know, there are plenty of books and magazines out there that I don't want or approve of. Yet I don't call for the shops to be divided and split up lest they should be there in front of me and offend me. There are plenty of people who offend me, and certainly lots of dress styles that do, no one offers to filter them out for me (unless google glass will start doing that).

Re: "how to deal with age verification online"

Good for her, she probably also lied about name, address and everything else. Just as I do when accessing pages that demand to know who I am (such as the BBC). This is one very very very good reason to resist any form of 'id card' as eventually you would be required to 'log in' with it... and then when it was stolen you would end up being accused of all sorts.

The fact that we can (and most do) lie routinely on the internet is one damned good reason that this will fail. My wireless is also deliberately unlocked so anyone can use it - that way it is going to be damned difficult to prove anything done via it was done by me.

Re: the real question is

Yup, the British public are basically as thick as two planks and will accept this with open arms.

Just as they did with CRB checks and all the associated bullshit to protect their kids, and 'elf and safety' to ensure they are in no danger.

And look what they've achieved...

Sports clubs that no longer have clubs for kids because it is too much of a PITA

Youth clubs closed

Pervs STILL getting into schools and the remaining places with access to kids because they have enough interest to go through the hoops and aggravations the rest of us can't be arsed with

Then if you do take your kids somewhere they can't actually touch anything, climb 6" to see something, sit on your shoulders, stand on something that might move, not be seat belted in... and consequently they get no excitement out of it - when I was a kid I used to go to the GWR depot, wander about among the oily waste and help people clean rust off the engines, cut bits of metal, shovel the coal on while the train was moving, pull the whistle etc etc etc (as early as 9 years old).

And the expense... first I had to have seatbelts in the back of the car for kids, then a car seat, now it has to be a rear facing seat, then when they are 6 months a new forward facing seat (yup, used to have one that could go either way but you can't get them now), then a seat for larger kids then a booster seat (both of these ugly and massive constructions only achieving an uncomfortable version of an adult seat and almost as safe as the seatbelt clip I used to use to make the adult seatbelt fit correctly). This makes a mint for the 3 car seat manufacturers but has saved how many kids from injury? Probably none if truth is told.

Re: @ chris n

I don't know what Chris is searching for but try....

"naked ladies being beaten" and I'm sure something would turn up... personally I've never accidentally found porn (have found it deliberately). Nor - as I guess have you - have I had porn or violence thrust at me while searching for various things to help work, travel, holiday, helping the kids with homework or other non-porn style activities.

Re: That's enough

Available will shortly become enforced. Then you will have to 'prove' you are 18 to have them unblocked. Then somethings will be so bad you can't have it unblocked. Then we are exactly where everyone predicts. It is NOT good to have any censorship.

Frankly I have not found porn by accident. I have not found porn while searching for work things for example, or news, or information about places I'm visiting etc etc. If kids find porn it is because they are looking for it - largely because of something they were talking about at school. When I were a lad (someone had to go here), we didn't have the internet but we still found porn in the newsagent etc. Perhaps not quite as severe but still we found it. Most free porn is not much worse than the old newsagent stuff even if you are looking for it.

So the big brother state has won

Just like China, North Korea and other dictatorships around the world our dictatorship has managed to introduce censorship. Right now it is banning porn and violence because the stupid majority will buy that this is 'good for them'. Next it will be anything the government doesn't want you to see... that will be anything that disagrees with its view.

The problem with 'democracy' is that it is run by the privileged few and supported by the uneducated unwashed stupid idiots and those in the middle who can think but are powerless just get shafted with the bill.

BBC boffins ponder abstruse Ikea-style way of transmitting telly

I assume

This is part of a process where the BBC will eventually claim that you can watch broadcast tv if you have anything at all in your house, therefore you can't escape the licence fee by not having a recording or tv type device.

So we will all have to pay the increasing amount of money for the talentless tat and propaganda they broadcast

Unemployed? Ugly? Ugh, no thanks, says fitties-only job website

Damned good idea

I stand zero chance of not being hung drawn and quartered on the ugly tree, but I think it is a wonderful idea. Frankly when I am on a plane being addressed by a stewardess I want a pretty girl (preferably with a brain) because I will see her several times on an average flight and frankly some over weight lard arse with acne, bad breath and sweat stains under the blubbery arm pits really is quite disgusting.

Similarly for bar girls, waitresses in restaurants and assistants in shops. Frankly even the girl on reception is more of an up lift if you want to say a cheery hi as you walk in.

Hopefully the people recruiting for such roles will use the site, but I sadly reckon that with todays 'politically correct' culture where we are all supposed to forget the aesthetics and not mind sitting next to an overweight frump for hours will win out and keep employing the trouts.

Cameron eyes 'non legislative options' for more spook snoop powers

Which lobby group are paying Cameron for this?

It certainly makes no sense from a crime fighting or intelligence point of view unless it will go far far further.

What about the mobile sims you can buy over the counter for cash without the need to give name address etc. Or those bought abroad and 'roaming' here. What about stolen devices? Are those using these devices for unsavoury purposes so stupid they wouldn't just waltz around these stupid impositions?

Modern smartphones and most of the feature phones will happily go anywhere on the net.

No, the reasons to want these extra powers have nothing to do with the state reasons. Its about controlling the masses, scaring the masses into submission, cowing them so you can make your rich mates even richer. This was the same under Labour as it is now. Some industry group have worke out they can make a stack load of money off the back of this and are paying the senior politicians to ensure it happens. The politicians pocketing yet another fortune jump on any possible excuse - from blaming the murder of a little girl to the murder of a soldier - its sickening.

Websites to 'close' for China's 'Internet maintenance day'

China today, UK tomorrow

As we in the UK (and to an extent the USA) continue to allow our governments to ban 'child porn' and 'extremist' websites we will find the governments will get ever bolder an more an more will be banned as incorrect and immoral until we don't have a maintenance day because such sites will not be allowed to exist.

Relax, Hollywood, ARM's got your back: New chip 'thwarts' video pirates

In the good old days

I would buy a record, tape, CV or DVD,. if the machine I used to play them broke I could buy a new machine and continue to enjoy the film/music I had purchased. It appears increasingly the case that technology companies and 'hollywood' are attempting to make it such that when the machine breaks I have to buy everything again... and the machines break after about 2 years tops because the battery is buggered.

All in all eventually the public will just stop buying totally and rely entirely on ripped off copies on the internet

Netherlands Supremes squash iPad design patent

It is sad though....

It is very sad that manufacturers are producing product so similar to each other that there is a need for this sort of thing. Really it is quite pathetic that Samsungs engineers couldn't design and create a product that is better than the iPad, the iPad really isn't all that stunning. Much the same is true of mobile phones - the number of near identical looking phones in the shops is depressing. Even Nokia have started making their phones look pretty much like yet another buttonless featureless slab. 10 years ago there were flip, folding, chocolate bars, then the more exotic designs - especially from Nokia where sometimes entire querty keyboards would fold out ready for people to message...all of it is now lost to the unusable flat screen bit of glass... and no, I can't use one of them while walking down the street with its lack of buttons and feedback... its horrid - even in a train or taxi they are near impossible - and I don't spend enough time sat on the settee at home to want to use one there.

Living with a 41-megapixel 808 PureView: Symbian's heroic last stand

Re: Lots of Symbian users still out there...

If you look at the Symbian based phones that were sold, the reliability and longevity of those devices, the range of them (keyboards, touch screens, small, large...) then it is of little surprise that the new comers just don't have the same numbers of current users.

If you want a smartphone with a proper keyboard what can you buy? Only an old Nokia. Even the 808 doesn't have a proper keyboard. I guess there might be an iphone at some time, or a windows phone eventually or maybe even an android out there that has a numeric keypad that I can use when I am walking, but when you walk into the phone shop on the corner they basically all look the same - a lump of plastic around a screen with a single button at the bottom. It is not what I want, and I am not the only one who sticks to an ancient Symbian because it is better than the modern replacements.

Re: Broadcom GPU

And you think that Android, iOS and Windows don't suffer from the same?

All software has bugs and some are intractable. All of these 'OS' run on phones with a variety of hardware - I suspect there are bugs on one windows phone that don't show on others because of this. It is the same thing for any situation where the entire h/w spec is not permanently fixed. No reason for this to cause any problem with continuing with Symbian

Re: symbian vs windows phone

Strangely enough winphone is NOT a young OS.

I was working on it at Microsoft in the '90's and it had been going strong for many years before that. It used wince underneath with the windows mobile just really being applications on top. I also worked on epoc32 and later symbian (the same thing). Epoc32 was built from the ground up to work on battery devices - to have high performance, long battery life, safe applications (no trampling out of the end of strings etc) and be safe when the battery dies unexpectedly. Largely speaking it achieved these things well.

The typical symbian phone comes stuffed with goodies that you have to buy for iphone, android or windows.

Re: Theory why it's Symbian only

Pretty much what was done for Symbian. The pictures don't go through the OS and the processing is done on the graphics chip. But you have to have an architecture that allows that and windows doesn't.

Re: Theory why it's Symbian only

Nokia couldn't afford Eflop, he is why Symbian sales went off a cliff - that infamous burning platform email when Symbian sales at the time were actually increasing (sales were up though market share was down as more competition entered the market - market share at the time of the email was markedly higher than current iOS market share).

Microsoft does not allow Symbian the flexibility to do a repeat of the amazing camera on a windows phone. They've scrapped their linux (even the later incarnation of a cut down android platform), they now have a S40 developed in China but losing profitability slowly and an out of the box Microsoft offering that the market doesn't seem to have taken to. It is possible Microsoft may yet get it right, but they have been at it for years - since mid 1990's - and have still failed.

The sad thing is that Symbian actually is a good platform in a number of ways, slightly quirky in some as it was developed a very long time ago by Psion software - a British company - as 'Epoc32'. The S60 UI mess wasn't Symbian, it was entirely Nokias own creation. There was a touch screen version - way back in the '90's there were touch only, keyboard only and a combination UI's designed and built. UIQ - Sony Ericsson - made a decent touch screen only variation - long long long long before apple or google did anything at all.

Apple and Google have both done decent enough jobs, they learned what was and wasn't working in a mature market and did that. The Symbian devices were cutting edge, they were the original smartphones, but for a little more get up and go in the management at both Symbian and Nokia the UI could have been fixed many years ago. As usual though the management became too bogged down in their own importance, in having engineers filling in timesheets, project managers explaining why over Christmas the timesheets showed they didn't have enough people on the project (doh - people didn't work on Christmas - as I explained every single year I worked for Symbian). The product managers spent too much time drinking wine with Nokia and not enough time working out what needed doing. The whole thing stagnated with it taking months to do stupid unnecessary things and no time at all being left to do the obvious. Its a shame, under different management things could have been so much better.

Hot new battery technologies need a cooling off period

Re: Holefully someone can answer this

Actually you can create artificial petrol using the sun as a direct source of the energy required. So yup, a super idea - of course not one the government would take up as there are insufficient backhanders and bungs involved.

Costs

Still have to charge the battery - as many have pointed out this is not always going to be easy - and it seems that it is unlikely to ever be properly quick.

Fireless steam has a potential to offer a better outcome. A steam container can be charged quickly (e.g. at the equivalent of a petrol station), It can be insulated to provide storage for overnight even in cold conditions, could potentially be filled at home (even by taking the tank inside if you don't park on a drive),

The technology exists and is very cheap. Fireless steam locos were used for many years in industrial settings such as munitions factories where a fire wasn't so useful. These often did whole days of work hauling hundreds of tons of material around between charges.

Microsoft exposes green users' privates in web quiz snafu

web 'engineers'

seems they are usually paid tuppence h'apenny, and are either very stupid or given extraordinarily stupid specs to follow.... user must type in his phone number... why??/?

Paul Allen buys lovingly restored vintage V-2 Nazi ballistic missile

Re: @Jefe

Yup, we know, but lets be honest it is all now a long time back, they tried to flatten parts of the UK - and really apart from Coventry failed, we did flatten large chunks of Germany - and I do mean flatten, there is a vast difference between the damage of the Blitz and the removal of many large cities from the map. (Coventry really was their only major success).

Personally, I like the 'don't talk about the war' bit... you started it, no we didn't, yes you did....

Woolwich beheading sparks call to REVIVE UK Snoopers' Charter

Re: The guys were already known to the authorities

From what I understand the nearest cop shop was a few feet away.

Anyway, I suspect sacking half the police and crushing their cars would save more lives (including those of newspaper salesmen) than it would cost.

Re: Here we go again...

I doubt very much that locking all the police and their cars up would make a great deal of difference.... except of course in preventing threats being made by the police to cheese producers who occasionally create a single few minutes of wild entertainment and fitness activity on a Gloucstershire hill

Re: Right.

Of course Just beheaded.... would hardly help prevention.

As we pointed out the first time they tried this Stalinesque bull, it won't work and it won't help. Boris has sunk any hope of election as anything beyond baffoon hair consultant by suggesting the police had 'compelling' arguments in favour,