Posts by Law

Motorola Milestone

camera... indeed

"... capture easily blurs unless you hold it extremely still."

This is the dissapointment I faced with my Hero... it's the only disspointment I've had with the phone so far, unfortunately, it's also the one that people notice - we have a fairly new baby, and these days if we don't have our proper camera with us, the phone just doesn't cut it unless the sun is shining and we are in it!

Droid looks good though, I'm almost annoyed I didn't wait... but I get a Nexus upgrade next year now so I'm not that upset!! ;)

Google contradicts self, confirms own Googlephone

*sigh*

*unlocks hero screen - notes contacts widget with top 5 contacts on there with pics*

So that's pull down to unlock and one click for my phone, I could also go the usual route of unlock, phone, scroll, tap to call.

On my iPhone it was slide to unlock, phone app, scroll down or tap favorites-tab, tap contact, tap call. Or you could also buy one of those one-click contact apps too from the app store...

Its really just a question of how you grow to use your phone, not just crying because it's not the way you want it the second you buy it (if you actually did buy one) especially when the os is as customisable as most modern mobile phones.

Microsoft PR outlaws iPhone talk

phew

I thought you mean't the table scene when somebody holds a gun to somebody elses dingleberries! :(

It's friday - CHEERS!!

it's a sad day

"one can imagine Microsoft is pretty bored of hearing comparisons to the iPhone by now"

Let's all be honest - most of us are bored with the constant iPhone comparisons now, even iPhone owners are bored with it. The main reason for this is because every media outlet, whether paid for by Apple or not, seem to squee at the mention of the iPhone, and make unnecessary comparisons.

Having said that, microsoft really shouldn't just be putting their fingers in their collective ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA"... they could learn a couple of things from the likes of the iPhone and newer android ui's (like htc's and moto's blur).... just as many manufacturers have *learnt things from microsoft.

* I can see the jokes based on that statement but I'm being sincere here, please no fanboy remarks for or against either of them!! :)

Facebook urges public exposure in 'privacy' revision

another "old settings" user....

... had all the old settings checked.

Maybe it's country dependant? Thankfully - they also maintained the hundred or so applications I'd blocked, as well as invites from people who annoyingly invite me to everything, even though I've never accepted any!

Parcelforce fails to deliver for Windows 7 lovers

maybe...

...the os check is a relic of an old payment system that used activex or something...??

Personally, I find any system that closes users off needlessly like this an abomination on the web, and people should just avoid parcel force and give the useless website as the reason.

Abbey's online account website usually moans about how your browser "might not be supported"... but at least it lets you have a try at loading it, and normally, it works fine...

Spook firm readies Virgin Media filesharing probes

+1 for the reply proble... ooops!

sorry! :)

The real solution would be for you to get a reply notification icon to replies/new posts since your last visit to that page, and have these new posts highlighted when refreshed. With the update icons in your control panel you won't have to keep hitting refresh on a page... and maybe some option to list by date and a view all instead of paged view when in a discussion too.

Must admit though, I share your pain - the new threading is a bit of a bugger when looking for updates... for long discussions the splitting of posts into multiple pages only adds to the frustration... my old method was to keep pages alive, and hitting refresh once the page reloaded it would jump to my last position... now it's always messed up so gave up.

HTC's next-gen Android flagship phone to debut Feb 2010

agreed

prefer phones without the physical keyboard now... although I would say in portrait the iphone keyboard is a little better than the hero's, thought I'd stop pressing fullstop instead of space eventually, but it seems nearly impossible to not hit it accidently, for me anyway.

I'd say hold on a bit longer than feb's hero 2 too - see whether Apple bring out widgets and new iphone design in march or whenever their developers conference is on this year.

erm... but it is coming to hero 1...

so it's not stuffed - they've already confirmed they are working on 2.0 for hero 1.0! :)

A (hopefully) early build has been leaked too, with re-tweaked widgets too... I say hopefully early build because apparently it has the ui lag of the original hero firmware, I've a feeling they won't rush the release of a laggy firmware though, so when it comes it should be fairly solid.

2009's Top Android Smartphones

erm...

"Perhaps those who claim no lag have nothign better to compare it against, but using it along side the iPhone it's clear as day."

I've got an iphone and 2 hero's on my desk right now... ok, so one is pink (the wifes), but still, neither have lag compared to the iphone, even pre-3.* updates. Perhaps your hero is faulty? Or you are using the non-EU Hero? Think they use different firmwares no?

Hero processor

You guys should really re-look at the Hero... I know it's probably because I have one now, but the processor seems to be just fine, the previous firmware was extremely laggy but that was fixed, so seems like a sloppy code issue than a processor issue, even with 5 screens of quite heavy widgets my hero is working smoothly and without lag.

That said, I completely agree on the whole iPod/Music apps... the iPhones music player was much nicer, but it probably helped that it auto-sync'd music from itunes too, so I used it more. I think the music app is the area they should concentrate on now though, just like the ui was before the latest update, the music app seems a little laggy sometimes - and they really need to stop defaulting to 3d coverview style, it's horrible, and I think that is the main culprit for the lag... just a simple wall of album art would be nice, and have the 3d stuff as an option for those who need to pretend it's a floating line of cds.

I can't decide whether I should wait for double twist to add auto-sync to their application for playlists, or to write my own mono or objective c app to do it for me... but that really isn't htc's problem I don't think..

Windows 'openness' hailed in Nintendo game defeat

oh dear...

Not that I'm against modding, I have a couple of R4's for my ds lites, awesome little things.... but I don't think the judge really understood what he's proposing here.

It can't be long before somebody sues microsoft in france now - first for blocking 3rd party memory cards (locking out other manufacturers from your platform), and second for crippling features like install to hdd if you get caught with a modded box... I'm can only imagine the judge will then be telling microsoft to be more like Nintendo, who openly embraced homebrew on their platform via flashcarts, once they were told. :)

iPhone to become Blighty's favourite smartphone

@ drh

Pretty much - I loved the phone until the 3.* updates, once they hit, my phone went from near perfect to extremely unstable. I know it isn't the case for most iPhone users, I have friends who haven't had the issues I've had, but some who have. I got hit hard by battery and lagging. At times, the phone wouldn't "slide to answer", and once or twice the phone just turned itself off. Every new update patched some issues, while creating new ones - so in the end I just gave up. Factory resets , settings resets, reflashing, even jailbreaking didn't remove the issues I was getting.

Sad really - it really is a nice phone. But I'm free to cross back over whenever they introduce background apps and an iPhone equivalent to osx-dashboard or android widgets. :)

Interesting...

I just ditched my iPhone and got a HTC Hero. I'm still using my o2 iPhone contract, once that's over, I will see what upgrades they have to offer me.

Love my android phone, there's very little between them really - I miss the slightly better portrait keyboard on the iPhone, and the o2 account app... that's really about it.... oh, and the dock capability for my speakers, but that's nothing a new hifi system or second hand nano won't fix. :)

Johnson refuses to intervene in McKinnon extradition

*sigh*

Doesn't matter what camp you sit in, whether he's getting what he deserves, or he's a political scapegoat - I just can't help but feel really bad for the guy - I couldn't imagine being in limbo for nearly 8 years (if he was arrested in 2002?).

Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring system

Not to split hairs, but VM don't cap, they throttle!!

I perceived throttling to be a major ball ache, but pretty quickly found that it works well, for me at least.

Downloading at 20mb for about 8gb to get the night's worth of immediate 720p tv I want to watch before my tea is even half-cooked, then it's 5mb for other stuff. The throttle also lasts a few hours - then you are back at 20mb, and even then it's only throttled when you do it at "peak" times. I've had them for almost a year, and so far been much more stable than Be/o2 were when I used them.

The reason I gave VM another chance? Even at the throttled 5mb, it beats the crap out of the service my bt line is offering me - which is "up to 3mb"... so probably about 1.5mb since my street and house are old! Hilariously, the 20mb connection isn't even the fastest speed vm offer to the street.

Never been a big fan of NTL, or Virgin, but they have actually improved their broadband since I last had a go in 2006 - and I'd accept a 3-hour throttle at a faster-than-average-adsl speed, to being a BT customer again any day - and on top of that, it's cheaper than anything I buy when you add the line rental costs.

This DPI tech is useless against encryption, which I use for my copyrighted stuff... it's my unprotected stuff like facebook, messenger, work email, that worries me.

@ Gareth RE: @ John186... Simple - Get a Mac #

*slap*

He's joking about "Get a mac"... he doesn't mean an Apple Mac, he means the migration code isp's provide so you can move from one isp to another quickly.

I don't think MAC's are useful for the majority of VM customers though, since most of them will be cable customers, not using the VM adsl stuff.

Paris - because she probably didn't read the actual comment, just the title too! :)

Reg readers reveal their holiday toilet texting plans

I do enjoy these

I do enjoy these roundup of witty/funny comments. I had hoped Ms Bee would have kept hers up, but unless I missed it, one never appeared on Friday, ruined my whole weekend. :'(

I suffer from ibs, so unlike Anon 21.30 - staring at the walls in deep zen contemplation is usually not an option, it's either keep occupied with fb/solitaire/el-reg - or my colleagues hear a grown man cry. Calls are a no no.

I know of at least one colleague who takes reference books from the bookshelf, on one occasion, he took one of my books, for an hour... I shall be leaving it whenever I part ways with the company.

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

RE: @Headless Chickens #

I can see how you think somebody refusing to hand over a key is the same as refusing entry to your property, but an encrypted file is not a house, and that comparison only works in this particular situation. In this case, the guy refused to give up the key, yes, but anybody can plant an encrypted file on your pc at any point.

My laptop will have tons of small 1-3mb files from years ago on it, generated by an application I wrote for work... I've since forgotten what the passcodes I chose were. I have encryption scripts from years ago written in python from university, and output files from them - but I don't have the keys for them anymore, as they were provided by the lecturer on the lab days.

Anyway, my point is that not knowing the key is not the same as refusing entry... but the police will assume you are withholding the key, and if you genuinely don't know it, then you are in violation, and that is why people should be worried.

Inglorious Basterd...

I watched this film last night... it really is starting to freak me out just how nazi like our police are becoming... and did you notice that the "jew hunter" looks an aweful lot like Jack Straw when he smiles???

Me thinks it's time to put on a merkin accent and take a few scalps...

Oh - and "One file encrypted using software from the German firm Steganos was cracked, but investigators found only another PGP container." made me lol @ gchq... and at how awesome it is that this guy is at making them so frustrated that they lock him up, then commit him!

Murdoch puffs Microsoft over Google

Oh dear god el-reg, what have you done?!?!

AGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

another funny

Just reading a story on Sky News website (linked from Google News fyi murdoch) - hilariously, they have a satellite image of the flood affected areas with a disclaimer "Google Maps Image".... so I guess it's alright for Sky to use Google services, but not alright for Google to use theirs... hey ho.

@ Andrew Halliwell

I was sat here giggling at that fact, wondering why nobody else had mentioned it! :)

Microsoft stands tall over Xbox Live lawsuit threat

RE: Tough

"TV episodes I can understand - there's more than enough product placement in your avereage American TV show - plus most people now have DVR's - I can't remember the last time I watched live TV, (BBC News excluded), nor can I remember the last time I saw an advert."

Oh I see, so because you're stealing from the networks who paid for that tv programme, with money they mainly get from advertising in ad breaks, it's alright - because you benefit... well then, clearly the rest of your rant wasn't all bullshit.

I can only assume you've never had an xbox die on you, or had it carve a groove into your game. Or have kids/siblings that treat your games with contempt... or even (shock horror) two xbox's in the same house, but can't be arsed carrying your games case up and downstairs everytime you want to play on it...

@ Original Ash.... actually, the "kids" tend to cheat these days by running networking hacks on you, not editing game content. That's still a PC niche I think... As far as I know, the 360 mod is just reflashing the dvd drive to boot backups, not run homebrew code.

Best moddable console ever was the original xbox - you modded that for homebrew, things like xbmc, installing new dashboards with awesome features like installing many games to the hdd, loading your entire game library without switching discs is very VERY nice, emulators, ftp file server, just tons of possibliities. None of that can be done on the 360... at some point people were getting their live accounts suspended for sending game-saves to each other for achievements, hardly cheating other than the hollow victory of having a stupidly high gamerscore?? lol... but that was their live accounts, didn't require anything more than a hdd lead (which microsoft supplies on request), and didn't mod the actual console in any way.... console banning from live is different - your account is still active, and as of this latest banwave and firmware update, it doesn't just affect your live service, and that's why this class action thingy is being put up now, for better or worse.

If it was about cheating on live - they could just limit your gold membership to silver when running from a banned console... no online play, they could also increase security when you are connected in matches online to stop idiots from kicking you out of matches using networking hacks, and patch game glitches quicker so people don't sit below floor level and shoot up through it and you have no way of stopping it... but they keep getting bigger and bigger class upgrades.... but, alas, they dont! :)

it's not so much the Live ban that is bothering alot of people..

It's the corrupting of profiles when moving it from the banned on, the disabling of installing to the hdd too, and the resetting of valid bought licenses on the machine of arcade games.

Live is a service, they have a right to refuse service - but those other features are not a service, they are part of the consoles core functionality... breaking some core functionality of a console without permission should be seen as vandelism... also, microsoft never warned people that the console would be limited, other than with a ban from xbox live and voiding of warranty.

That's just my opinion... but microsoft should be worried.

Apple voids warranties over cigarette smoke, users say

RE: Awfully funny....

"...coming from a company whose CEO used to drop acid. I wonder what OSHA says about that?"

I'm assuming it would say don't force your employees to do what you did in your private life... same as any company. He's not forcing his employees to smoke in the office, or banning them from doing it in their own time off premises, I don't get how his taking acid, and a health and safety regulation are related other than jobs works at Apple... ?? It's like claiming that a rule stopping employees from blowing each other openly in the office is somehow wrong because at some point the boss pulled one off in their room??

To all others - as much as we all giggle when el-reg pushes the idea of an apple cult - the employees there really are just employee's, not slaves, not servants, not mind-washed followers, just workers. Jobs is not some apple god, not emporer of the minions, not some acid-pushing hippy, just a ceo... we all giggle at the cult thing, really, we do, but it really does make me wonder how thick people are in the industry when they actually start believing these jokes, it goes from wonder to dislike when they then begin heckling people with things like iphones, macs, windows, linux, anything googly, and pretty much any device/service that some mindless commentards take a disliking to for some reason or another.

Shame on you all *hits on nose with paper*

+1 for not repairing smoke damaged machines...

... but Apple should specifically say in their terms something like "while we attempt to repair all machines when possible, if a machine is heavily affected by damaging environments (i.e. heavy smoking, masturbation, etc) then we may refuse repair on the grounds of employee health risks or user inflicted damage"...

Stained keyboard - for obvious reasons.

Santa menaced by sex offender postie

spookily

My son recieved his first santa letter this week, I'm in the UK... the letter was addressed to him, and it didn't say who it had came from or where from - just Santa.

A quick google search, and it's turned out it was an NSPCC service... evidently it must have been a friend that gave our sons details to them for this free santa letter.. I think.

He's 7 months old... having I think I prefer the US child-opts-in version than the completely anonymous "we know you have a child, now try to figure out who we are and who else knew!" system the nspcc seem to be running! lol

Not being a daily mail reader - I'm sure my son is safe... for the minute.

on the other hand....

... parents not willing to take the risk could just tell their kids they will post it for them and do the reply themselves... those willing to accept the minute chance of have little johnny fiddled with, use the non-anonymous service that has been provided since the 1950's.

And the guy quoted saying "we live in different times"... no, we really don't, you just think you do - pedo's arn't a creation of the 00's, they were here long before then, as was privacy intrusion, the difference is that the people who ran it and those who used it, were all willing to give out or use this information to perpetuate a lie for the kids. Don't blame the times just because you're scared of being bum-raped by lawyers! :)

Vampires not good role models for Catholics, declares Vatican

explain to me...

... who the f*ck asked them for their opinion in the first place?!

disclaimer: I've never seen Twilight/New Moon/Old Moon/Half Moon/Dawn... whatever it is the kids are watching these days.

Arkansas cop tasers 10-year-old girl

Gotta love em...

"Noggle clarified: "We didn't use the Taser to punish the child - just to bring the child under control so she wouldn't hurt herself or somebody else.""

And for my next trick, I will impregnate my wife tonight, to avoid getting her accidently knocked up over the next 9 months or so.

Seriously - tasing somebody to stop them from hurting themselves...

Intel Israel rolls out the barbed wire

easier solution

.... they could just leave isreal and setup shop somewhere else... there are plenty of other regions in the world that are cheap as chips to make... chips.

Personally... I hate the fact that we do sunday shopping hours here in the uk... it must suck for the people there at intel who actually need to work a few extra hours a week to feed their families...

Google's Chrome beta for Mac expected early December

yey

Was a FF user until the memory hogging and load times made me drop it for safari, lately safari has been freezing alot when first loading web pages, so I tried the dev release of chrome (on osx) - I've only found one site that it has issues with - it's stable, fast, light, and impressive really.

My only problem is when you first install, it copies all your bookmarks from safari/firefox... but then the bookmark manager isn't part of the dev release - so I've not been able to remove the thousands of bookmarks I've got in the bookmark bar... with any luck, theres a manager in the beta! :D

Loud sex a human right, says loud sex woman

thats nothing...

... at university I had a housemate who would leave his bedroom door open when him and his girlfriend (who made sounds similar to that of a seal in pain) would come back from the pub together.

When I realised another housemate had asked them to keep it down once, which is why he begun leaving the door open to add extra annoyance to us, I decided something needed to be done.

Luckily, being a take charge kind of guy I made sure a link to his porn folder on his pc popped up one day on his desktop - and after a long night of seal clubbing on their part the girlfriend decided to check her emails, discovered said link, and we were noise free for the rest of the year.

Mean? Yes. But he had it coming...

iTunes sync comes to Moto's Droid

not to be too picky or anything...

... but shouldn't this article read "doubleTwist add support for Droid" .... it's iTunes syncing, true, but the title is a little misleading, I read it and instantly assumed motorola had done an iTunes plugin or something. The doubleTwist team is decent and big enough to warrant it's own name in the title of an article aimed at their nifty sync product.... just saying! :)

Hisense 1080p Media Player

DTS? BR ISO? +1

I too would like to know whether this thing can actually decode the DTS stream rather than just pass-through to an amp. The reason is I have a wdtv, and it does everything I need except dvd menu's, and dts decoding. I was planning on just getting the new Live, but I'd rather save a bit of cash, and try this for £60 instead.

The dvd menus arn't such an issue, but the dts decoding is the only reason I'm upgrading - so if it can't do that it's pointless me buying one.

If it doesn't do dts decoding then if anybody can recommend another box that does do dts decoding and dvd menu's... doesn't even need to be networked, I just copy video from my macbook to a 2.5 hdd anyway, at a sub-£100 with a half decent interface would be awesome. :)

World's first iPhone worm Rickrolls angry fanbois

give the guy a medal... sorta

He's actually doing the jail-breaking community a favour - ok, so having the worm reset the pic to ricky is a tad mean and unnecessary, but I guess it forces the kind of person who leaves their default password on to really think about what their phone is actually doing.

I'm waiting for my Dext to be delivered - once it turns up, my jail-broken iPhone is gonna be wiped and sold... although I should point out not because of this worm!! :)

'Something may come through' dimensional 'doors' at LHC

don't worry people...

... optimus will save us, and to prove it, I expect photographic evidence provided by el-reg... thanks guys! :)

Motorola Android 2.0 phone Europe-bound

it gets uglier the longer I look at it... :(

... I liked the design of the Dext or whatever it is, but this one just looks like a prototype, like they've not got round to making it presentable yet... what was their thinking on putting the D pad on the right too?? Why would anybody go against years of training from games consoles and almost any other device that demand it be on the left??

I'm in the market for a new android phone to replace my iphone which I've grown to almost hate in the last few months since the 3.* updates... looks like I'll be going for that Acer "Liquid" A1... shame really.

Also - I hate it when they change device names for Europe... Droid was fine here... although I'm not sure if it was a legal thing, like preexisting trademarks etc.

Palm Pre evicted from iTunes (yet again)

RE: Do none of you guys have any friends?

"You know, the sort of people who buy a new computer when the power lead falls out?"

No - nobody I know is that stupid, even my 70 year old father in law isn't that stupid... he's asked me to fix his computer when it didn't switch on (power lead fell out, ironically) - but he's never gone out and bought a new computer.

"Palm are writing software... "

Correction - Palm are making tiny modifications and falsifying device id's.. there is no real writing of software on their part. Actually, they are misusing a standard so they can plug into somebody elses software to do something that the software writer (Apple, not Palm) didn't want the software to do. If it was somebody doing that to my application, I'd be pretty annoyed too - especially when that other person was using this hack as a sales feature over my own product.

"... to help their non-technical customers who don't want to have to use one application to buy music, and another application to copy it onto their iPhone. That's a perfectly reasonable (and laudable) thing for them to do."

If the user wants the experience you speak of, then they can modify their purchasing to fit with that. Buy a Nokia (it Comes With Music apparently), it also has WMP, Winamp, and iTunes plugins. Same with any other major manufacturer really.... incidently, they all work with double twist! ;)

"Apple are writing patches to punish customers who dare to buy someone else's hardware."

Actually, it's not punishing customers - if you buy from itunes then the mp3 (if aac then you right click on the track and select "make mp3 version") is movable to your Pre, or any other device, providing you didn't buy a DRM track, which the customer wouldn't do if they expected it to play on a Palm Pre anyway (DRM sucks, but that's not the issue here). You seem to think that because Palm have said "sync's with iTunes" in the news, and then told their phone to lie to iTunes and say it's an iPod, that Apple are somehow wrong for not wanting that.

"They've always done that (just look at the buggy crap that is the Windows versions of QT or iTunes)."

Buggy versions?? lol - iTunes is buggy in both Windows and OSX... I actually wish Winamp or Amarok would get their arses into gear and do a decent port to OSX. Recently I've had tracks dissapear in my itunes library, entire artists being renamed as somebody completely different, and once or twice iPhoto and iTunes have crashed out whenever I plugged my iPhone in. Incidentally, Quicktime has sucked on any operating system. This is not them punishing people, it's just poor programming - but at least they are attemping to make something, unlike Palm in this case.

"Apple are morally in the wrong, but they don't care, because their shite doesn't smell."

But they arn't morally wrong IN THIS CASE... ok, in other cases they would be, but in this particular issue they aren't the wrong party.

FYI - I'm assuming their shite smells really bad - especially if Jobs is a fruititarian... eek!

RE @ Daniel 4

"And the Pre software would go "oh look, someones asking me to erase myself. I'd better do what it tells me".

I'm guessing you're not a software engineer."

lol - you'd be surprised!! ;)

Oh what the hell, I'll make a proper comment

I have two points to make...

1 - As much as I hate this fact, iTunes is not open source, and just because it comes pre-installed on macs and can play music files, doesn't mean Apple are somehow obliged to support everybody elses devices. It's their software, they get to write it how they wish. In this regard, they are not in the wrong. Just like in windows, if you don't like the limits of their media player, you can install another one, just having the thing installed in the first place doesn't somehow lock you and your music to just them.

2 - As much as I hate it, Apple seem to be releasing patches specifically aimed at crippling whatever sync hole that Palm are using to pretend they are an iPod. This means that for some reason I'm alot more frequently updating iTunes, potentially exposing myself to new bugs (like random tracks dissapearing from my lib, or tracks duplicating themselves within albums and overwriting the older one). That to me, is where Apple are being tossers. Fine - patch your software if it closes a security risk, or fixes an annoying bug - doing extra work to cut somebody out when you should be fixing actual bugs is why I'm annoyed.

In the end though, Palm are just making themselves look silly, and opening themselves up to lawsuits for no reason. It would take a decent developer less than a day to write a half-arsed app that parsed an xml file, gave the user a checkbox of playlists/albums/artists to copy across, and initiate the copy. I don't see why Palm can't spend a few hours doing that, rather than hacking usb id's!? Surely it's far easier just to do the app and forget this whole mess. Nokia did it, RIM do it... it's not hard. I can only conclude they do this because it keeps their little phone in the news a little longer... even if it is for the wrong reasons.

+1 for doubleTwist

Agreed - they should be punting double twist... it's a decent app, I downloaded it so my wife could sync her HTC Hero with playlists from my iTunes library, worked perfectly, including album art (which I usually set myself, not using Apple's covers).

Watford council punts parents from playground

RE: The other side of the coin

ODFO - Maybe the parent's don't want to leave their kids in the hands of people they don't know and therefore don't trust is just because they are being good parents!!

Also, and forgive me if I haven't learn to hate mine yet as my kid is only 6 months and therefore I'm a newish parent, but I'm guessing the parent's may actually want to spend time with their kids on their day off work, even if it is only watching them play with other kids in an adventure playground.

If the council offered a place to sit and watch but not interfere I'm assuming parents would be less bothered by it (glassed-off coffee shop?)... I go to a paid-fun-house with friends and their kids, adults usually sit and drink a coffee while watching their kids play, some adults (myself included) will help theirs or their friends kids through some of the more difficult bits.. nobody raises an eyebrow, and the park self-manages itself.

I'm just wondering, if you leave your kid at this place and are forced to leave them, an overworked worker there doesn't notice your child leaving through the front door (it happens, kids are quick and sneaky) - then the kid gets run over (it's busy london), or pulled into a car (as a commenter said recent attempt in the area) - exactly who is to blame? If there was a place to watch, you negate two problems - one, parents enjoy their kids, and like to watch them play - two, parents will more likely notice their child slipping out a door, and therefore the risks of kids going missing or getting out are minimised. Seems like a small change can solve a big issue here, whatever your reason for not liking the current system.

El Reg launches 'Comment of the Week'

@ Sir Runcible Spoon

... It's a dumb & dumber quote (I think)... thought with the Bee being as feisty as she is, it was fairly appropriate. :)

so tell me...

... is this going to be written and presented in the same style as Robin Lettice's weekly comments section, only with added camel balls and one moderatrix's rapist-wit??

The old weekly comments roundup used to be the highlight of my week* - and while these figures may not be accurate, or based on anything concrete, I'd say when you stopped doing that roundup, commentard turd-spurts rose 59%, and intelligent/witty comments declined 33%.

Maybe commentards of the week who make it to the roundup can have a golden icon with the dangly camel balls appear by default next to their names, like el-reg staff get their own vulture logo...

* ok, not the highlight of the week, but a nice finish to a long, long week in IT

Copter icon - as I assume you will not be using Royal Mail to deliver your juicy balls

Guardian loses half a million CVs

Errrmmmmm....

"2) Contact a credit reference agency: Callcredit, Equifax or Experian provide suggested steps to resolve the situation and prevent it happening again."

Prevent it happening again? What are they going to say, trust any online or government agency with your data!?

These agencies and job sites need vetting now anyway - they've got away with dodgy data sharing activities for years. I haven't uploaded or applied to a job in over 3 years, and despite cancelling the one account I did create all those years ago (Reeds Recruitment), my details are being passed between every dodgy agency in the UK, usually suggesting jobs in the place I was moving away from 3 years ago, 250 miles away from where I'm living now.

Hilariously, I'm always very aware of dodgy check boxes and t&c's, and will always opt out of being shared with other companies, but for some reason, all these agencies seem incapable of telling me where they are getting my details, insisting I must have signed up to them at some point, which is total crap. Ah well.

Apple Magic Mouse

@ Thomas Davie

9 GCSE's, 3 A-Levels, 1 HND, 1 BSc(hons), 5 years in the industry..... and it never occured to me to try that when playing with the new macbooks in the shop.... I may quit IT, I'm obviously not suited to this profession anymore! :'(

Not sure why I never thought of it... maybe I assumed it would attempt a multi-touch gesture or something. I will give it a try this weekend, if I can stomach it, it may be time for an update! :)

Thanks for the tip. *crawls back under a rock*

They are missing a trick...

... if they put the older style macbook pro trackpad on one of their dinky wireless keyboards I'd buy one instantly (for a macmini hooked up to a tv)... I'm talking about the button pad, not the new buttonless ones. It's makes more sense to have a trackpad in the living room than a mouse anyway, plus they get to do 4 finger swipes etc.

Traditionally I've not been a big user of trackpads... so I bought a bluetooth mouse (logitech - mighty mouse sucks balls) when I got this laptop years ago, but once I got used to multitouch gestures I've barely used the mouse... now I have the 3/4 finger gestures it is actually more annoying being restricted by a mouse. The fact a tiny "magic" mouse can't support the 3/4 finger gestures means they should think about doing the pad-on-keyboard thing, just please, for the love of satan do NOT make the whole pad physically clickable - that's the only reason I've not updated my laptop this year... it's an abomination - it does nothing for usability, there's nothing more annoying than having to keep the pressure on a pad for the click*, as you scrape your finger across to drag something from one folder to the other.

* ok, you can tap and hold the pad without the pressure, but what happens when you hit the edge of the pad and need to let go!!