Posts by 5.antiago

Whinging Brits reflect on epic Oz road trip

Nice

That's not Gary Frost, that's Patrick Stewart...

When I was there I saw quite a few roos but no emus :-(

Nokia: The first year of the Elopcalypse

Sigh

Yet again, there seems to be a group of haters who sweep through the comments board on any Nokia/MS story and up-vote slavering, raging nonsense. I'm not as technical as some on here so I enjoy reading the technical analysis of why WP is supposedly worse than Symbian/MeeGo etc etc, but these people just fail to look at the wider commercial picture. Nokia was heading into a commercial dead-end, and was forced to make a play.

Look at Samsung - they make half their cash now from smartphones now (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/28/half_samsung_earnings_from_mobiles/). That's how important the sector is and Nokia was just not going to make it unless they made a significant change. Rage all you want, but consider at least how upset the "loyal Nokia customers" would have been when Nokia stopped producing smartphones at all.

Most of the anti-Nokia/MS stuff I read on here completely ignores commercial reality. Good products fail all the time because of commercial realities (sadly). Nokia has to operate in the real world, not a market that exists only in the mind of technical folk.

Nokia launches Windows Phone range

Well...

...They don't look too bad, hey?

Apple's US bid to ban Samsung tabs hinges on design

@Stuart Castle

"Try marketing a Cola flavour drink in a red can with white text in a certain font and a wavy line. See what happens"

Supermarket own brands deliberately ape the design (both packaging and product) of branded market leaders, in every category. Nothing happened.

'Leaked' FBI Anonymous/LulzSec psych profile is bogus

You don't understand whistleblowing

Are you suggesting that typed-up copies of controversial secret documents are acceptable? Anything but the authentic original documents isn't good enough because real whistleblowers are attempting to affect real change and this requires buy-in from everyone else to actually make that change. Typed-up copies persuade no one, therefore there is no change.

Facebook IPO slated for September 2012

Eugh

Eugh. Another company with a dubious customer care reputation prepares to shackle itself to the whims of greedy shareholder speculators who only care about quarter-on-quarter growth at all costs.

It can only be worth $70billion as long as it has users, and shareholders will happily screw users for "growth" so that they then can cash out themselves.

Ballmer: Windows Phone can win third place in mobile!

Simple

Because the first one needs to be done perfectly otherwise it really will be one of the biggest cock-ups in corporate history, as opposed to merely being a cock-up in your own head. Also, nothing was promised until at least Q4, and September is in Q3

Funny

"The Brits are famous for employing underpaid, undereducated, lazy and ineffectual sales staff"

Britain is a well-known country, true, but I always thought it was because at one time we owned the largest empire in history. But now I know the real reason. Thanks!

Why Android houses should give Google the 'fork you'

A heap of increase, anyway

Using the figures in the article, I have:

iOS: 2.7 -> 6 = 122% increase

Android: 1.4 -> 8.1 = 479% increase

Combined: 4.1 -> 14.1 = 244% increase

Not sure where their 144% increase is from. Including the stats for Blackberry/Windows 7/other platforms, maybe it comes out as 144%?

Anyway, the main story of these figures for me is the relative growth of Android versus iOS. In just 1 year. If you had a high-end phone to sell you had better stick Android on it, else you're automatically playing in a lower league. It's the key to the big game

For a hardware manufacturer to consider forking Android they need big balls, a tonne of cash and content ready to deliver. Amazon has all that, the rest probably don't have all three.

*Defining* the game, still?

Just my two pence on one particular aspect of the article:

"But if the game is hardware-plus-software-plus-cloud, as defined by Apple"

I agree the game is hardware+software+cloud but I don't think it's "defined by Apple" anymore. Consumers want those those 3 things, sure, but not necessarily from one company. It is possible to get these things from providers working together in their specialist areas. Apple have successful innovated and built the whole category but the game has a life of its own now (as a successful category should) and there's room for more than one approach.

Apple's approach still attempts to cover the lot. They attempt vertical integration, proprietary formats and customer lock-in *all the time*. But with Android and the me-too's only seconds behind in the race, I'm not sure at all that this approach has the long-term legs to make it. Other companies shouldn't necessarily aspire to this business model of complete ownership.

"Yes, this requires the handset manufacturers to become highly proficient in software, something they historically have not been"

Yes, quite

Revenues double at Facebook, says source

Sigh

Just so long as we're not expected to bail out any banks when the bubble bursts...

'New laws not needed' to block / censor Twitter et al

Twitter will be fine

Politicians might well fear the likes of Twitter, as they allow voters to chat easily with each other. It would be a dangerous game to take a too heavy hand with it

After Jobs: Apple and the Cult of Disruption

Disruptive = ...

Disruptive = making products that come to dominate existing market sectors (e.g. iPod, iPod Touch) or new products that create and dominate whole new market sectors (iPad, and arguably the iPhone too)

Apple have a good track record in being "disruptive" so I'm happy to forgive them on insisting on calling it "disruptive" even if it is jargonistic bullshit, as you say. A disruptive company = a company playing the game of "new replace old" well.

Essentially, a company with a good business model...

Yes boys

Didn't he hire some people who effectively fired him?

Free Ride: Disney, Fela Kuti and Google's war on copyright

Separate "Distributors" from "Creators"

Good interview I thought, Andrew

My thoughts on the music industry are that they are looking more and more like parasites each passing day. There are content creators and content shapers (musical producers) and then there are content distributors. It's these content distributors who constitute what I think of when I say "music industry".

To my mind the role of content distributors is becoming obsolete. I wonder how much piracy is driven by the price of music being perceived as too high by the end-user, and I wonder whether the prices are kept high because of the need to pay these increasingly-obsolete and protectionist middle-men.

Nobody is arguing that content creators should not receive money for their work! But a lot of people are annoyed that the distributors are shoehorning themselves into a situation where increasingly they no longer belong. In the past content distributors did vital work - it was an essential partnership between creator/producers and distributors. Distributors shouldered the costs and risks of producing the physical media and building the market channels, in return for a significant cut of the profit. Is that partnership needed today? We're entering a new phase where artists don't need labels as much as they used to, and eventually won't need them at all.

My question is, do the distributors still deserve to take a cut? What is their place in the music production process? What benefit are they bringing to the original creators?

Sky wins TV riot battle

Meh

I hated the whole Mark Stone contribution, it was far too loaded with his own personal opinion on things. He kept asking leading questions, clearly pushing his own "clever" analysis. The question "Is this fun?!?!?!" was the only attempt to speak to any rioters throughout the whole evening and was clearly never intended to elicit a response.

His interview with the two Clapham residents (after the police turned up) also irritated me for the same reason. They kept on giving him answers that didn't fit his theory: *yes* there were locals present, *yes* there was a clear political under-current, *yes* it's a lashing out of some kind, *yes* it's more complicated than mindless robbery, and finally *yes* you could go and speak to the rioters if you want. Stone kept on twisting and turning to shoehorn in his ideas even in the face of contradictory eye-witness testimony. Finally, he actually put it down to a difference of opinion, and Sky didn't show the last part of the interview again.

The visuals were excellent, but I wish the news would fuck off with their bundled simpleton views. I only watched Sky because I wanted to follow what my FB friends were watching

Anonymous and LulzSec spew out largest ever police data dump

Yep, all fixed...

So in your world, the very idea of turning evidence against family and community is much worse than whatever crime they were actually committing. Curiously hard-line opinion there...

Of course, you're right that in some communities informants are seen as traitors (I'm thinking places like Belfast during more troubled times), but to conclude from that they "deserve everything they get" is deeply simplistic

@ Daniel 4

"Really? I'm not going to download this 10g of data and try to mine it to confirm my suspicions..."

It'd be difficult, certainly. You'd hope they have a column somewhere in the data where it says 'Criminal' or 'Innocent' :-D

"...but I suspect that most "informants" are criminals themselves who sold out their mates."

Check this out: http://www.drtomoconnor.com/3220/3220lect02c.htm. It's an interesting source of information on who constitutes an informant and the ways you could segment them. Turns out it's not so simple as 'Criminal' or 'Innocent'.

The best quote from my perspective is: "Cultivated sources typically include people doing business around an area where criminals conduct their business. Examples include taxi drivers, hotel employees, airline employees, automobile salespeople, doormen, gun dealers, bartenders, private investigators, apartment managers, package delivery employees, and proprietors or employees of restaurants"

My opinion on this depends a little on how much of the 10gb is made up of these kinds of people

Oh, and if you can find other or better sources of info on the topic, please share them.

"I have... minimal sympathies. It would be unfortunate if retribution were taken against them, but we aren't talking about "old ladies on council estates." They fall under a different class all together. They're also usually less likely to be vindictively hunted down by the multiple felon who was sold out by one of his own."

There's a little bit too much "guilty of something once, guilty of everything always" vibe in this idea for me, and even then it doesn't justify condoning violence against them since the act of informing is usually for a greater good, isn't it?

"<snip stuff about cops being accessible already> Of course! But that's a FAR cry as claiming that their lives have been endangered."

There's something in that, of course. I'm specifically separating the value in publishing informants' details versus police officers' details.

"... now I wait for my own wave of downvotes. *sigh* ;)"

Just wait til you comment on an environmental story on here. Jeeeee-sus!

Perhaps...

And the rest are just incompetent pricks :-D

Stupid down-votes, again

@Richard7

Sad that your comment has got 2 down-votes, it really shouldn't. Releasing information on informants is indefensible. It's significantly different from releasing information on police officers; the majority of informants are everyday members of the public, like old ladies on council estates.

Trying to justify how they may be safer in the long run if they are put in immediate danger now doesn't quite work for me.

@Steve Brooks

Massive critical thinking fail from you. Basically, you've based your estimation of the skills of other people on an analysis of your own, then added in some massive assumptions about their probable behaviour based on this.

"Fact is, the information doesn't appear particularly hard to get a hold of"

Depends if you are an extremely computer literate criminal. Perhaps that is an area to study, whether levels of computer literacy within the criminal world are significantly higher than in the general populace...

I'll hazard a guess that the vast majority of criminals do not have the skills to hack into anything. But I bet a lot of them are capable of downloading a list of addresses, going to the house and throwing bricks through a window.

"These guys have done a favour for a lot of people by exposing just how easy it is to get information"

No, they really haven't. I would have preferred to learn about the failings of our law enforcement in a way that didn't put innocent people in danger, or utterly undermine relations with police and normal people.

There are clearly real problems to fix - I think we should try and fix them in a way that doesn't break a load of other stuff at the same time

That ignores any kind of context

--> I can guarantee the answer is "ask the beancounters" <---

No, that's way too simplistic. If you really need to have all of this rolled into a jazzy little soundbite, then I suggest that we ask the beancounters "what did your boss tell you to do?"

Hackers dump secret info for thousands of cops

Distinction

"They have all our info and have no qualms about using it. Now we have theirs"

You missed the distinction.

I'm talking about informants. You're talking about members of the police.

If you want to call the police "Them" then fine. But informants are usually "Us"

Retro-justification

"At least this way it lets the informants know they are not safe, and cannot trust law enforcement."

But that's the wider point, that's crucial for all of us and society. Informants *do* need to be kept safe, and *do* need to be able to trust law enforcement.

Clearly they have not been as safe as they should, but that's always been the goal. Now the goal cannot be attained.

There are better ways of highlighting the dangers to these informants than actually putting them in more danger. Before they were in a bit of danger, but now they are most certainly in absolute danger.

Well done, power to the people! Stick it to the man! Oh, wait, there are youths setting fire to a car in my road but I best not report it

I dunno mate

"They started doing it for a laugh (or Lulz if you must), and they're still doing it for a laugh"

I dunno about that mate, try following a couple of them on Twitter. There's a whole lot of "For the People, For the Greater Good" harping going on.

We are anonymous, we are coming for you, the rights of the people cannot be trodden down by those with the power, etc etc etc.

I think some of them are certainly buying into this rhetoric, it's picking up steam but not necessarily any sense to go with it

Someone to die?

Jesus mate, how about a middle course?!

Hack in, nick stuff to show it's real, but then *don't share the bit that puts normal people in danger*

I'm sure that some informants are like the criminal rats in the moves, but I'd bet that most are normal people, pensioners on council estates, that sort of thing.

If somebody does die, public cooperation with the police will skydive. Despite the obvious problems with the police organisation, we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater

4 thumbs down?

Not sure why your post has got 4 thumbs down - I guess that proves at least 4 Register readers can't see the wider context

Exposing informants completely undermines everything. Remember Wikileaks, and the claims against them that the releases put people in the field in danger: it turns people against the idea. (It doesn't matter that it's not necessarily true - mud sticks and people will use it to get others on their side when they file their "Anti-Freedom" bills into Parliament/Congress.)

It's counter-productive. You can't claim to be fighting the good fight while putting common normal people in danger. It's just like NOTW claiming to be the soldiers' friend, while hacking the families. It reveals that the true agenda lies elsewhere

I hope this release isn't true, I appreciate it needs to be confirmed

Hacking scandal starts to spread beyond News Corp

The PDF report isn't about hacking specifically

It's about the more general trade in personal information gathered by ethically dubious methods.

For me, the rankings table on page 9 is kind of like a general score of journalistic integrity. Unsurprising to see Daily Mail at the top.

Interesting to see that even Maire Claire makes the list. Just what the hell is wrong with our media?!?!

Shale gas frees Europe from addiction to Putin's Pipe

Was waiting for that

Haha, very good! I was wondering if someone would comment on that. He really has ruined his reputation, hasn't he?

Nevertheless, toxic groundwater remains toxic no matter who points it out.

(His alternative career of intellectual portrait artist has foundered on the rocky shores of common sense, but Hari does remain a journalist. He's not bad at it, to be fair)

Just burning up more stuff

I was put off the idea of shale gas extraction by a Johann Hari podcast where he explored the local environmental impact of the process, like toxic groundwater, etc. It sounded really awful.

I'm no environmental expert but it sounds to me like shale is only the way forward to the kind of people with an interest in keeping things more or less as they are, burning up stuff.

Rupert Murdoch was never Keyser Soze

This is interesting!

"They're as stupid as they think we are."

BTW, I really like this phrase

Anyway:

Someone said above, "the past is a country, but it was a real place and we all lived there". This of course references the famous saying but it's a excellent choice of quote because it's really relevant to the idea that newspaper owners can(/could?) drive public opinion and it's relevant to what you're saying here.

We're now entering a new phase of public communication, and we're all becoming gripped by a new mindset, a New Media mindset. And it has a whole new bunch of challenges riding in on the coat-tails that, as you suggest, we really shouldn't forget. We're living in what will be a foreign country in 10 years time, and they'll talk about how we thought things are supposed to work.

But before we tackle all that, before we tackle the death of privacy and the implications of recording and cross-referencing everything, I want News International and Associated Newspapers to burn. The current media model is a rot in our society

Rescue privacy before it vanishes forever

Yes!

Haha, yes! Exact same reaction.

The last article I read from Matt Asay was on the future value of Facebook hitting $1 trillion. There was a massive negative reaction (myself included) in the comments. I felt that his article reflected the opinion of someone caught inside a Silicon-Valley w*nk circle

This article is more more balanced, and actually addresses one of the reasons why Facebook will struggle to achieve the suggested valuation. People will tire of exchanging their data for access when they start questioning the value of the services they are paying for against the costs which are only now starting to become apparent

Kudos to you Matt, this was interesting

Value of privacy in a nutshell

"The other danger I can see coming is that people aren't ever going to be able to reinvent themselves, atone for their past mistakes, or just get a fresh start in life "

This is what real privacy means to me. We have all done this, no?

This is my main worry about the "storage of everything" - your personality somehow gets stored too, and you can become trapped by it. People genuinely change/reform themselves (for better or worse), and they should have the space to do so

People who say "only the guilty have nothing to hide" are deeply, deeply mistaken

'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

At AC 21:41

Aye, ok, maybe I was too quick to associate your comment with the "science knows nothing" simpleton brigade, so sorry for that. I still think your expectations for these models are a bit off though, but I'll try to justify this without calling you a fool this time:

You seem to suggest that an environmental model must be completely confirmed as utterly accurate before we act on it, and that there's no way to confirm this accuracy until decades later. The latter is technically true of course, but in the meantime perhaps the arctic ice has melted just like most of the models had always suggested, and the population then accuses the past governments of rampant & obvious stupidity because "now look where we are!" etc.

The reality is that models get updated and reviewed into more sophisticated (i.e. less wrong) models as part of an ongoing process. Just like when they're modelling probable environmental stresses on a building prior to actually constructing it, they don't wait another 50 years until a real earthquake knocks down some kind of test building they put up to confirm the model. At some point you have to just say "OK, go" on the grounds that the model is correct to within a statistically significant degree

"I would imagine that a model would have to have a few years of having it's results occur in the real world before you believe what it is telling you about the distant future" I broadly agree with this, which is what I meant when I said that a problem is with over-extrapolation of the results. (Continuing the earthquake/engineering modelling example, there are many many years of data on structures that survived or fell that drive the current "mature" models) So I'm as concerned as the next person every time I hear "ahhhhh, but it turned out we didn't include THIS!", and I wonder how much the political/media/corporate pressures are driving these predictions of doom. I think the answer is more research and less grandiose predictions.

My underlying point here is that we should be careful to separate criticism of environmental modelling with criticism of what people are saying it all means and how we should subsequently behave. People are very quick to blur it all together and they end up distrusting everything.

We'll never get anywhere if people are conditioned to automatically call "bullshit!" every time they see some scientific research.

PS, I think you had a typo and you meant to say: "[If a prediction doesn't come true] you SHOULDN'T be beaten up for questioning that model" <- I agree with you here too. That's science, right?

@ AC 13:34

"without telling me what it has successfully predicted in the past...."

Genuinely stupid comment. Using computers to model and analyse data in the fields of medicine, social science and the environment have saved millions and millions of lives. Computer processing and mathematical models helped put a man on the moon.

You are a fool, and your sweepingly ignorant statement has actually made me angry. Why are people so anti-scientific method these days? How and why has it become so fashionable to be stupid and small-minded? I despair

Modelling is a technique done by humans, and use computers as a tool for this. And humanity has a strong track of successful outcomes using the technique when bolstered with computing power. Fools like you just expect too much

The problem with these particular environmental models is more to do with the complexity of the situation they are required to model, and the subsequent over-extrapolation of the results.

LulzSec says it will partner with media on Murdoch emails

Well...

I am reminded of the day it was announced that the NOTW was to close. The mainstream press was happy to highlight the scandal of too-close media and police links. On the *same* day, these same organisations reported that Andy Coulson was to be arrested the following day, thereby demonstrating that their own links to the police are pretty close!

If they think no one will notice the irony, they'll do it...

Also, there is a place for hacked information to be used in journalism, but Julian Assange can tell you about that better than me

19,000 papers leaked to protest 'war against knowledge'

Totally agree

I had this same shift of opinion myself. For me, ever since I learnt the words "vested interests" I have found the concept illuminating and appropriate when analysing situations.

I since expanded the concept to include the vested interests of normal people, who just have bills to pay, not just the typical "Big Tobacco" style evil corporatism. We're all trapped by something.

Once again, what we have here is a group of people with their source of income tied up in keeping things as they are, even as the sands shift around them. But it takes imagination and courage to leap out of an intellectual mindset, so we should take that into consideration when we discuss the JSTOR folks wanting to hold on to their model

How LulzSec pwned The Sun

Woah

" I hope this ultimately cost us all some Internet freedoms after the backlash"

That should have read "I hope this DOESN'T ultimately cost us all some Internet freedoms after the backlash"

Oooooooopsies :-( Maybe that little slip got me the thumbs down...

Yep

Yep, like that time we banned slavery. Of course, it was just a passing fad

Oh, and do you remember that time we gave women the vote? The British public certainly does latch on to some odd notions sometimes, we're just a whimsical and fanciful bunch

@ AC 12:37

"I'd rather LulzSec and Anonymous find the weaknesses NOW and reduce the potential long-term damage"

This is interesting I think. We're all watching and cheering now, but wait til the next generation of hactivists get stared. We'll have Christians hacking richarddawkins.net and PETA hacking into the FB accounts of people who step on snails.

We won't be so keen on hacktivists then, when we don't agree with their message. And while I hope LulzSec continue to push site security up the agenda, I hope this ultimately cost us all some Internet freedoms after the backlash

This whole thing here, hacking into the Sun, has implications for free speech and our rights to publish our views online

LulzSec say they'll release big Murdoch email archive

Couple of questions please

I have a couple of questions:

So, if they do have emails and they release them and there's some super-big bombshells in there, what are the legal implications for their use as evidence? Can NI just claim they are faked?

A more techie question follow-up question - is it possible to confirm they are real emails? (I.e. not faked ones designed to rile up public opinion for the lulz...)

Ta for any response

Schmidt preaches 'deep integration' desire with Facebook, Twitter

Interesting, but

Interesting points here, but I would add that I know a few people who aren't on FB. For these people, I've either got their email address (stored in my Gmail contacts), or I've got their mobile number (stored in my Android phone).

Facebook has a closed email system and it doesn't make my phone's OS, so it can't be as flexible as Google can be. Potentially, Google+ might take off because it's part of this wider platform, a platform that could organise all of my contacts in a much more effective way.

As an aside, I think Google is looking to be at the centre of connecting people, the one-stop shop where you click a person's name and you get the choice to ring, text, email or PM; communication that is device-independent. And I think Google is better placed than Facebook to be at the true centre of things

Google: Go public on Profiles or we'll delete you

RE Nothing to hide

"Do they? What are you hiding?"

You know, stuff...

Things like: opinions on topics and people that I have since changed or grown out of; employment history from times when I didn't really care, purchase history of products that indicate my behaviour (e.g. rizlas); social connections with people that other groups of people might disprove of.

In fact, anything that falls into the category of something I won't deny if you ask me directly but that I would prefer to just remain unnoticed

It's not just the obvious stuff like your address and NI number. Privacy is a serious issue. You feel will naked when it's gone

Nothing to hide

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

Everybody has something to hide though

News of the World TO CLOSE

Wonderful... Just wonderful....

This is just wonderful news. I can hear the creaking bones of old media.

The Fourth Estate lost its soul a while ago, so I view this as a slight resetting of the wheel

WikiLeaks sues Visa, Mastercard over 'financial blockade'

@ Ian

No, they may drop customers quickly when they are credit risks but they do not drop merchants so easily. Did you not notice, this is *worldwide* news? A lot of people see this as unprecedented, and are alarmed by the implications. To dismiss this as SOP is to ignore the elephant in the room

You've skipped over my point too. Why exactly does WikiLeaks pose a business risk to credit card networks?

@ Ian

Credit card networks don’t just “drop” customers, it's not SOP. E.g. famously, they didn’t stop you donating to white supremacists or other similarly dodgy organisations with your credit card. There has to be a big reason to drop a customer.

We agree roughly on the central point: “When you add it all up, Wikileaks is bad for business and not worth the potential risk.” That’s actually pretty close to what I said the first time. But I’m interested in knowing exactly why they thought WikiLeaks was so very bad for business that they needed to take such drastic steps (BTW, I’m not calling it illegal)

I initially proposed that it could be because they didn’t want to be tangled with the national security complications; if this is the case then I feel it’s an overreaction which will damage their brands. Then I mentioned that given the establishment’s track record in many areas, I understand why some people are concerned. (This bit you called my conspiracy theory. It’s not my theory). But your own theory is an even better one, and becomes a nice “conspiracy theory” itself.

Shouldn’t you be interested in knowing why financial institutions believe an “attack” by WikiLeaks would cause so much damage that they’ve got to get their strikes in first? Shouldn’t you be interested that credit card networks are doing their part to shut down an organisation that you admit yourself isn’t technically illegal? According to your theory, financial institutions are just drawing the wagons around, SOP. But since the WikiLeak “attack” will be a release of their *own internal documents* which are sent in by internal whistle-blowers, shouldn’t you be interested in why they are reacting so aggressively?

So what’s in those documents that’s going to blow everyone away?

I think you should be interested in that, that’s all

But what drives business sense?

"It's just good business sense to pull away from Wikileaks."

There's something bigger here though, because it depends on what the cost to the business actually is and where it's coming from, which ties right into the whole mission of WikiLeaks

I agree that it was a business decision to stop supporting WikiLeaks (certainly not some kind of ethical decision!), but it's what guided that decision that's critical.

It's very possible that senior management in one company believed customers would abandon them in droves if the brand would became associated with WikiLeaks and all the complications that might come from that, as you say. One company went, the other immediately followed. This makes sense, and no conspiracy is needed to explain their behaviour

But I think we can all agree that the US government has a strong track record in shady manipulation to suit its interests, which is the kind of WikiLeaks was set up to expose. It would be typical behaviour - more of the same - if the US government & other vested interests had put pressure on Visa & Mastercard and threatened real consequences on them if they didn't cut off the money. It's a legitimate worry if this was the real cause of the Visa/Mastercard decision.

I personally think Visa & Mastercard have done damage to their brands with this

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

Great article

Great article

Reminded me of Charlie Brooker and Newswipe. It makes you laugh first, but then it makes you sad for our society

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

Highway Code = law?

"http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070108

Pedestrians don't have priority in the UK... Dispite what some think they have just as much responsibility as any other road user."

Your statement is a bit wrong. Pedestrians do have priority, in two different meanings of the word priority (and it's not clear exactly which way you are meaning it).

They have priority in terms of "right of way" - as soon as a pedestrian steps on the road they have right of way and other road users are legally obliged to avoid them. I'm sure there are legal conditions to this i.e. not knowingly acting in a way that predictably might cause an accident by stepping out unexpectedly, but in general pedestrians are the protected group. The Highway Code might have a bunch of rules for pedestrian, but most of them are actually just guidelines.

Also, the article uses the term priority within the context of traffic lights, which is different from how you are using the word priority (I think). What the article is saying in fact is that pedestrians DO have priority and it's causing jams.

You've linked to the Highway Code but that's mostly not law, just sense. The only laws for pedestrians on your link are marked with "do not/must not" in bold (and a legal reference), the rest are just to keep safe and to guide courts in establishing liability for accidents and insurance purposes. It says so in the introduction to the Code itself

What sealed Nokia's fate?

REPLY TO POST: REMEMBER THE IPHONE 1

"sold like hot cakes and was missing loads of features listed above."

What a brilliant comment.

There's a reason why geeks don't run marketing departments.

"Tell the developers to stop writing apps for our OS because we couldn't launch this product yet anyway, it has no cut and paste function"