"As reported in the Doncaster Free Press."

--

And what's with all the love of censorship and the acceptance of this kind of insane officialdom pomposity? Quick assessment: do people blow up airports due to snow-closures or as revenge for poor administration or is this hyperbole? Do serious bombers offer to cancel their mass-murder plans if the snow is cleared from the runway in time for their holidays?

A random twitter about getting the airport open is not the same as sending a letter to the airport saying you're you've put a bomb somewhere in the building because the local mullah told you that all westerners must die. It isn't a hoax - he isn't pretending he's going to do it, its hyperbole!

Just because officials have been making fools of themselves in the recent past by exaggerating any an all threats and handing out out-of-proportion punishments is no reason to allow them to go on doing so. They need reigning in and reprimanding for wasting public funds and paying attention to twitter.

The only thing worse than the stupidity of the officials involved in this actions is the stupidity of supporting them in their stupid ways!

After running a W7 RC for a while I suddenly started getting messages that I wasn't using a genuine operating system.

I already knew that, but I was rather surprised to see MS come out and admit it!

I suspect someone just wants it approved for use in principle. Once you have a precedent, you can expand it to do what you really want later.

Once you've cleared any "expectation of privacy" the field is clear for all sort of things, like phorm.

Oh look, our dpi host now has an automated torrent-joining plugin! Now it has a web destination plug-in and we can send information to Google/MS/Apple/Bad guy du jour to help with their search engine/iTunes suggestions.

I'm beginning to feel like Ian Paisley in my reaction to things like this...

I have to agree with Henry - there is no greater threat to users purchasing content than having access to it over the internet and feeling that they have already paid for it via a tax.

Seriously? No privacy rights for using employer-provided facilities?

I'd hate to have to use your company toilets!

I would imagine most people understand that company email runs through company servers. and is thus not "secure." I would not expect telephone-usage-monitoring to be any more than commonly expected - i.e. they can ready the bill (destination numbers, call length and cost), but not get transcripts of messages or conversations.

I thought this was under a .co.uk domain?

That'll be "Father Christmas" please! And a bowler hat.

Indeed. As for the big two: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

As for the danger of kiddie-porn and terrorism. Should we compare the damage done by terrorists vs the damage done by our own armies? How many have died? How much more will we sacrifice and destroy in the name of anti-terrorism?

Sometimes you just have to accept that bad people will do bad things and that legislation "so it will never happen again" is not an acceptable solution. Hard case make bad law, and this is one of the worst. Jailing people for annoying the authorities makes the us no better than the Americans are with regard to McKinnon.

I'm yet again saddened and disgusted with my own country.

According to Christianity, nobody but Jesus is a good role-model. Twilight was never likely to come close. I suspect the RC pronouncement was more of, "this stuff is rubbish, don't promote it to your children" than "Having considered all things I say unto thee, keep thyself from the cinema of Twilight for you will burn forever if you see it."

The RC church may shrink from portraying its "heros" in a bad light but the the christian god doesn't. For example, David shirks his responsibilities by "leading" his army from the safety of his palace, sleeps with his general's wife and gets her pregnant. When he can't get the general to sleep with his wife to cover his tracks he has the general murdered in battle and marries the widow. Abraham passes off his pretty wife as his sister in case the king wants to have sex with her and murders him to get to her. God's own people whine continuously despite having been freed from slavery by him. Eventually they kill his son. When that happens, all Jesus' closest friends ditch him and run, denying they even know him. Christianity is not about heros and good people, its about bad people and the lengths God goes to to rescue them.

And Newsflash, you can make moral arguments and assertions with fictional characters. As others have pointed out, one of the issues dealt with is prejudice which is a really popular subject to deal with because only the Nazis and BNP go there, so everyone in the audience feels good that they aren't gassing millions of Jews or using the word "nigger." I suggest that sex before marriage is more of an issue which might actually be relevant to those watching. How does the film treat that? I suspect its just telling people what is trendy and they think they already want to hear. However, do you really want to create a sexual bond with someone who wants to keep open the option of ditching you? God said, "Don't do that, someone will get hurt. Commit first, then, go for it like rabbits!"

And yes, Mr Cowell (along with pretty much all western culture) promotes a moral vacuum, I suspect because if you can get people to stop making value judgements, you can sell them anything.

MS: Sorry sir, the government says you have to buy Windows7not XP.

Chinaman: "Buy" you say?

"We made a mistake but we have massive code reviews and cash with which to make amends."

"See how hard it is to avoid the virus of open source? Even the professionals don't always get it right. Can you really afford to make a similar mistake? You could end up with all your code belonging to those commies out there."

"It's much safer just to stick to proper commercial software. We'll make sure you don't have to deal with such nasties."

Its whether you want to be the one spending the money to do it

And according to Darwin, we're all guilty of in-breeding as a glob of slime is our ancestor.

The "god squad" don't know how life was made. The "geek squad" don't know how life was made.

With the current assertion that a few degrees of warming will pretty much wipe out life on earth, it appears that life is rather unlikely.

In fact, has anyone calculated the probability of getting from the big bang to humans by chance? It might be worth doing that before spending money on seeing if it happened twice.

Don't send nude pics of yourself to anyone!

Don't even take the photographs!

No, it won't ruin your life if you "accidentally" did and you're 12 years old unless your family is into honour killing.

Not sure about Islam, but this has nothing to do with Judaism or Christianity.

Exodus 20: [If you want to be God's people,] Thou shalt not commit adultery... Thou shalt not bear false witness.... Thou shalt not covert thy neighbours ass (really!)...

As for wanting more forgiveness and less punishment... in the Bible, God takes your punishment when you say sorry, but you do have to say sorry, not lie about it and at least make an effort not to do it again.

Personally, I'd suggest that anyone who has the self-control to remain a virgin until married may have the self-control to not cheat afterwards. I'm not convinced that lying and deceiving your partner on your wedding night is really the best start.

Perhaps wedding-night virginity is an admirable goal. Would you rather have someone to learn sex with from scratch, or someone who is comparing you to previous partners? Perhaps there is some bonding process involved in sex which weakens when applied to multiple partners.

Of course, I don't think this is relevant to the Egyptian outcry. I suspect that's just the protection of pride and privilege - the antithesis of the abrahamic religions.

@John Savard - you sir, owe me a keyboard! :D

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Well done sir! I haven't had such a good laugh in ages!

After seeing those "I'm 8 years old and I'm a pc." ads on telly, I'm steering well clear of this one.

Does anyone else think "Chandler" when "Bing" is mentioned. Ooh, cool association. Not.

'tis a game played by HP warehouse staff to see who get get a mention in El Reg...

"The media is the message."

The solution is generally: download -> print

Amazon would probably have been better off settling with the rights-holder and just stopping further sales.

true.

But "unsupported" and "not allowed" are different. They could allow portable apps installed locally but not support them. They could even go as far as providing a list of "allowed but unsupported" software and a repository or links to get them.

£250 to re-image a call-centre PC? I'll have me some of them "razor-thin margins" thank-you very much! Or maybe its a revenue opportunity more companies will take on-board - provide rubbish tools to employees and then fine them when they discover that there's a better way...

I seem to remember an el reg article where the police accused someone of being a terrorist because they were off the grid.

Didn't use a mobile? Its Belmarsh for you, sonny boy!

Anyone who wasn't prepared with their packed lunch, but who has discovered its still cheaper to buy boiled eggs and a loaf of bread than it is to support the corporate rip-off merchants flogging egg sandwiches for £2 with an ingredients list which has "bread" listed in quotes, at the office from their mini-vans.

I have to get up at 5:30am to beat the commuter traffic jams. I am not getting up 5 minutes earlier just to boil an egg!

But no, I've never bought one.

It isn't what you've done that is wrong, its the way you used a computer system to accomplish it which is forbidden.

This doesn't appear to be a public statement, it was a private email to Blears, not a comment posted on a bulletin board.

There's no such thing as a non-political statement. "Sit down and have a cup of tea." is a political statement if the person you are with someone and you are both supposed to be in the house of Commons supporting a government bill.

Perhaps there's something I'm missing here, but this doesn't appear to warrant a sacking.

I saw a PC World advert the other night which said that their core2 dual-core systems enabled you to rip CDs even faster to load them onto your ipod.

I seem to think that is actually illegal in the UK.

Easy target for the RIAA I would think. I have a mind to complain just to make a point.

lots of channels, lots of repeats, dvr, why bother buying anything?

Mines the 14" one with a single speaker. If the plot and dialogue are rubbish, there's no point making it bigger.

Maybe its part of the "I'm not successful enough to own Apple products" advert campaign...

See, now we know MS edits wikipedia to give itself favourable comments, I don't really give any pro-MS comments on these pages any credence either.

Oh, the issue isn't about which browser should be available in windows, its about punishing MS for past abuses of monopoly power. It isn't about individual user's choice of browser. Its about the possibility of Apple doing better in the past if MS hadn't behaved as it had. It isn't about a browser, its about MS's business practises which just happen to involve a browser. In this light, adding another "repository" to windows-update seems reasonable enough.

Convict Apple or Redhat or Novell of abusing a monopoly position and I'll support the inclusion of an IE repository for OSX and Linux too.

Ok, not really, but the idea is there.

Make your netbook linux distro look quite different from windows, but reduce the options to make it easy.

Of course, if the netbook manufacturer has to do their own ARM linux distro work, they may find that the windows license isn't that much more expensive and a whole lot less trouble.

Hear! Hear!

I'd add "wireless telephone headset" for talking while cooking. Computers and greasy hands are not a good combination. Store the recipes on your computer and print them out for the kitchen.

A backup is defined by intent, not format or medium.

copy boot.ini e:\boot.ini may be creating a backup or it may restoring a backup to its original location or it may be part of a config dump to aid tech support troubleshooting.

Backups are strange things, consider how they were done in the 80's: "How ya gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance? Get yer backup off the wall!"

That'll give the industry experts something to ponder.

is currently dispensing a smooth creamy substance and a flake.

Who care about the data?

The technical difference maybe slim, but the popular difference goes along the lines of:

Religion: supreme allegiance given to a being considered to be non-human.

Cult: supreme allegiance given to a human or human organisation.

Philosophy: no supreme being to give allegiance to.

Someone has mentioned that religions publish their practises, whereas cults and businesses tend to keep them secret. It rather reflects your priorities and attitudes to others. Rather than focus on the definition of a cult, try looking at organisations' priorities and attitudes.

I'm not sure about other religions, but Christianity is *not* about rules for living. As St. Paul said, "I resolve to preach nothing but Christ crucified." Its all about what God has done for people in terms of restoring the relationships between people and Himself and amongst people to what He originally planned. The "rules" tend to be either a direct reflection of His own character (don't murder, steal etc) or a way of teaching people something about Himself - animal sacrifices describing both the pain from breaking the moral codes and foreshadowing how He would take the ultimate punishment (demanded by his justice) on our behalf. It was the only way for God to give humanity free-will, while maintaining both justice and love.

The rules are just God's way of saying, if you love me, you'll love how I act. Here are some guidelines to follow if you want to act like me. If you don't love what God loves, you're free to do your own thing. He'll spare you the discomfort of eternity with people behaving in a way you don't like by making this life the only one you'll get.

When considering a world-view, look at the supreme authority (Christ, Buddha, Allah, self) and determine which one is the most worthy of your allegiance.

Here's a piece of ancient advice: "Thou shalt not!"

They would have both been happier.

It might be be dodgy, but I can easily imagine a situation where 4 routers were purchased to be used as wireless access points.

3 external disks and two cameras, I can see that too.

Maybe they have gamed the system, but its such an inconsequential issue compared to bombing people in Iraq, eroding liberty within the UK and other atrocities.

Its ok to be annoyed, but I'd rather they claimed a few thousand in dubious expenses and stopped killing people. For some reason, padding expense claims seems to outrage people more than killing rather a lot of people in the middle-east. One prompts calls to change our constitution, the other is rewarded by voting them back in again.

Time to re-assess our priorities I think.

It isn't Mac vs PC.

Its OSX vs OtherStuff

You pay for the ability to run OSX.

PC users may care about hardware specs, Mac users care about their OS interface, apps and integration. Probably the hardware interface too. :)

I sense outrage in The Force.

I was going to suggest a more secure solution than they use, but the leaks appear to be a rather good thing.

If Intel had behaved ethically instead of doing whatever it thought it could get away with.

Paying people not to sell a competitors goods? Phrase it how you want, what made them think that was ok?

And I have to agree with the first poster. Those who are modifying their behaviour on account of a bribe that ought to be fined too.

How about a new rule, saying that those companies assessed to have significant monopoly power has to publish prices per given quantity and stick to those? Anyone who shops them to the authorities gets to keep the difference which is taken from a fine.

No, not Yay for europe. Really strong boos for the current incumbants in Westminster.

Do you really think europe would be any different than westminster if they had the power westminster has?

It would be a whole lot harder to reverse an action at a european level than at a uk level.

Stop cheering europe and vote out those in Westminster and you could write a handwritten letter to your rep at westminster (and their opposition) telling them you will vote against anyone who carries on like this.

In my neck of the woods, I was rather hoping that the homicidal were put away. That's how it works on CSI anyway.

I'm a nice guy and married too, so stuff evolution, maybe its *gasp* cultural!

Its just the same as the Americans (who like to murder each other) and the Canadians (who don't).

Its as if killing just one person is ok, but if you kill lots of people it suddenly becomes unacceptable.

Both groups appear unpleasant to me.

Blocking a fringe website certainly won't stop it happening again and sets very unpleasant precidents for how censorship is created in the wider world.

And thinking of it happening again, hasn't anyone heard of Cambodia or Rwanda? It seems a bit late to "make sure it never happens again."

Or maybe they just meant, "never happens again, to Jews."

"Help me Obe Wan..."

I suspect the writer's concern with consensus is that the science is not as black and white as the political consensus - i.e. politics is not reflecting reality.

My personal concern with "consensus" is that it appears to be the only people are willing to do things. Intolerance is the rule and all opposition is shouted down and drowned out. This is both an unpleasant social development and it removes that most important element of science, the ability to challenge conventional wisdom. I would much rather university professors who have doubts over AGW receive funding for their research from independent sources than have the oil companies be the only ones willing to stump up the cash for the investigation.

As for how someone's espousal of Christianity might influence their policy on this, it might prevent general nuttiness. Humans are caretakers of the earth and its resources, not its owners. They have a responsibility to look after it and not to consume or horde its resources excessively to the detriment of others. That has many implications which might affect policies from CO2 emissions to taxes and development aid.

Tux, one of the natural wonders of the world.

At Bletchley park they used to crack the encryption used by the enemy. A jolly good job they made of Enigma too. If we really have that many "enemies within" that we need this mass surveillance, I suggest we start asking the government what they are doing that annoys so many people so much.

I don't have a problem with warranted interceptions. How hard can it be to tap someone's ppp stream coming in over ADSL at the ISP? You don't need massive data slurping. Of course, any serious threat to national security will be using proper ipsec vpns which GCHQ will fail to decode anyway. So they'll be left with monitoring either incompetents who aren't much of a threat or the general populace. Now that looks fishy. I'd like some hard numbers on "convictions gained for (attempted/conspiracy) murder" where the cinching data came from this sort of activity and could not be gained in another manner.

Governments - until they consistently look as though they are on my side, I don't trust them.

Yeah vegetarians can be just as fat and unhealthy as meat-eaters, sometimes even more so, but its generally the lacto-ovo ones. You know, the ones that still eat animal products.

Have you ever seen a fat vegan?

@Tony Green: You'll find that when you tell people something they know to be true but which they really want to disregard, they always get a bit aggressive.

To be healthy you need a balanced diet. You don't need steaks, chicken, fish, butter or cream for that. It might be convenient or delicious, but you don't need it. And there is quite a lot of evidence that eating it can (not will) make you sick.

Tombstone: there's no avoiding it isn't a race to get there!

Apple needs to pay up quickly. Personally, I can't see why payment details aren't all electronically setup when the app is submitted - it all seems a bit fishy.

Having said that, if you're a small developer dealing with a brand-new system from a very large corporate you will have payment problems whether its Apple or not. Any small business *must* have contingency plans for late payments. You're small, you will not get a completely fair deal. Face up to it and deal with it or go out of business. Having only one source of income will get you every time.

Hypocritical? I think not.

These words indicate some sort of moral judgment regarding the content. Apple is a corporation and behaves like all corporations - it follows the money regardless of ethics.

Don't confuse inconsistency of approval (which will be based on what Apple thinks its consumers' morality might be) with morality. In the same way, Walmart maintains a "clean" product line in its shops because it is selling to people with children, while at the same time hammering down its purchasing costs to the point of reducing suppliers to absolute poverty. This is not ethical behaviour, this is pragmatic, situational ethics.

Regardless of what the law says, corporations are are *not* people, they are a legal fiction. They are inherently unable to make moral judgments for either good or evil. Their actions tend to be consistent with lowest common denominator ethics because that gives them the widest market and the greatest income.

Apple's premium product placement means that it doesn't attack the widest market possible which allows its staff to (slightly and occasionally) make non-lowest common denominator sales decisions. This is unusual and may be reversed, but it fascinating to see the discomfort this decision causes to some people. "If I can't get every obscenity possible on my iphone then Apple is rubbish and I won't buy their junk."

And on a slightly different note... the album is called "The Downward Spiral," what makes you think its a good idea to follow them all the way to the bottom? Look at the lyrics. Who would have thought that there is so much business to be had from selling self-loathing and a desire to remove yourself from the gene-pool? Perhaps a Darwin Award should be considered.

Its interesting that The Downward Spiral is around 15 years old. Mr Self-Destruct appears to be keeping late. Life seems to be just too good to end it all just yet. Now there's hypocrisy for you. Oh wait, this is the music industry. It isn't real, its just business. Nothing like Apple at all.

At least with Apple you know the agenda is to make money. Personally, I find the music industry with its pretensions to reflecting "real life" while financially preying mostly on teenagers rather more disgusting.