More battery life please

The iPhone 4 does pretty much everything I want it to right now, with one exception - if you happen to actually *use* the thing, the battery life sucks something awful.

I'd happily see the new version be half as thick again, if it meant I didn't have to keep a spare charging cable in my car, at my desk, at work etc...

Re: Online distribution costs are not Zero

Given that most of the costs you're listing are applicable to print versions, and the publishers already have a web presence, the *actual* cost of selling an ebook is still in the order of pence per copy. Subtract the cost of printing and distribution and an ebook version should be free when you purchase a paper version.

Please God, do it...

Nothing would make me happier than to see this odious turd and his hate filled propaganda machine disappear from search engine results

@Grease Monkey

As someone who is also a motorist, motorcyclist, cyclist and pedestrian, and who pays an extortionate amount of road tax, I'd like to point out that yes, motorists DO indeed literally own the roads. In fact road tax revenue and fuel duty covers the amount we spend on roads dozens of times over. If cyclists feel like chipping in towards the cost of maintainance, signage and lighting, and perhaps I'd be more sympathetic.

"I would say dangerous, illegal and arrogant behaviour from car drivers outnumbers other road users about 1,000 to 1"

Are you for real? Is your house in the middle of a stock car track? Perhaps you could consider that it's because car drivers actually outnumber other road users 1000 to 1. I commute into Bristol every day, and it's a rare day indeed where I don't see some cyclist on a suicide mission, running lights, swapping lanes and hopping onto the pavement at will. Granted there are also ditsy car drivers who do silly things, but it's the cyclists that *deliberately* ignore the law whenever they see fit.

Simple solution?

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying here, but wouldn't a far more PR friendly move have been for Amazon to:

1) Stop selling copies of both books on the Kindle store.

2) Compensate the rights holder in full for every copy that was sold, even if it means paying over the standard rate.

3) Sue the shit out of the distributor that put it there in the first place, thus retrieving all the money spent at 2).

4) Tell the world how great you are and how you stood up for your customers.

Right now the amount of business that they have lost must be way in excess of the cost of compensating the rights holder for a few thousand books.

Ummm....

Could have been an interesting video, but I found myself irritated by the number of times the presenter stopped to say, "Ahhh", "Ummm" etc...

Phone looks nice though :-)

@raving angry loony

Perhaps if we can find a reasonably good looking *male* heir to a fortune of billions who:

1) Films themselves shagging and gets it realeased all over the Internet.

2) Gets their Blackberry hacked on a semi-regular basis, revealing celeb phone numbers (Note the IT angle...)

3) Appears to be a thick as pigshit, yet...

4) Earns a fortune just for turning up at parties and acting as thick as pigshit...

... then I'm sure there would be equal coverage in The Reg. The closest I could imagine would be if David Beckham suddenly turned into a porn actor. After all, he already has the perfume brand and the fuck ups with text messaging... ;-)

Lily Allen?

FFS, NO!

Every time that gobby pisshead screeches her way through another agonising performance, I want to shoot my TV...

Must be true...

... it has the word "Quantum" in it.

On the other hand, any fule know that to really get results, you *always* need a tachyon pulse. That shit worked for Captain Picard about 30 times...

Ugh...

... no thanks. Even smaller screen and *less* functionality!

Now if they announce a 32Gb iPhone, I may be tempted by the Dark Side...

Translation...

1) My idiot child broke something / I tripped and fell into the TV.

2) I don't have contents insurance / They wouldn't pay up.

3) I want money to prove it wasn't my fault / Waaah! Pay me, pay me, I'm not a retard who can't read instructions...

$5m would buy a seriously impressive TV. WTF was it made of, diamonds?!

Errrrr.....

'The browser's planned list will be targeted at users that Microsoft considers not "web savvy".'

Errm, surely the "not web savvy" won't know *how* to install IE8.

The "web savvy" amongst us *won't* install IE8...

Sensible...

Not that I give a toss about Ross / Brand-Gate, but to be honest it was starting to seem like, "Ooh look at me. I said a naughty word. Aren't I edgy and cool".

Maybe I'm getting too old, but Stephen Fry strikes me as an excellent of example of someone who can entertain without having to return to the playground.

Now I'm off for a mug of cocoa and a nice lie down... :-)

So, to recap...

1) Goth Vampire Slut (GVS) wannabe shags bragging fop.

2) Fop brags to grandpa with forty-something teenager in studio.

3) GVS retains Max Clifford, public are suddenly outraged.

4) More people complain than actually heard the show.

5) Fop leaves to do more work with Channel 4.

6) Forty-something teenager gets three month holiday.

7) Max Clifford gets large percentage of fees.

8) Everyone is bored shitless.

Now can we STFU and move on? Pretty please?

Ahhh... Smug Mode...

Picked up a set of SE110's at Play.com last week when they were on offer for £17.99. now they're back to £49.99.

Chuffed I am :-)

Get a grip FFS!

Even the most sheltered Mary Whitehouse admirer should know the type of humour you're going to experience on Top Gear by now. TG has been demonstrating "Viz" style material for ages, and I thought it was hysterical. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

I await the Daily Mail's response, and the Sun's, "We're backing our Truckers" sticker campaign with the usual degree of disdain.

Paris, because she's demonstrated the ability to take a heavy load before...

Sheeaaagh! Riiiight!

The Blu-Ray Disc Association have their heads wedged firmly up their orifices... The only Blu-Ray players people are buying at the moment are the ones that come bundled with a free PS3 ;-)

There's no way "the masses" are going to be blowing a chunk of wedge on a Blu-Ray player for Christmas, when experience tells us to hold out for cheaper prices and *much* cheaper discs. Plus there's the small matter of wanting to stay in your house and afford to eat...

Re: Combined Heat and Data

Sorry Dave, I think you'll find that several Universities with a Cray-2 in the basement were using this concept to heat the entire campus about 20 years back...

Flames, 'cause, servers are, like, hot...

@Elmer Phud

WTF is a "dog-ear"?! Do you mean bookmarks? Because it does those.

Also it's just fine for left handed people. That's why the page turning buttons are on both sides of the device!

FWIW I think it's an excellent bit of kit, and two other people who have seen mine have gone on to buy one the next day.

Agree with the Waterstones prices though, what a piss take! Unless eBooks end up less than half the price of a paper version, they won't be seeing any of my cash.

@Ryan, Highnote

Sorry, you lost me the moment you used the word "monetized"...

It's a small company and you've already become infected with Management Speak.

@Nobody called that on the electoral roll...

Means nothing, you wouldn't find me on a searchable electoral register either. If I was called Hugh Jass or Ivor Biggun I'm pretty sure I'd opt out too.

Re: "That's why you have firing policies"

It's not harsh, it's plain common sense. As long as the employee is paid for outstanding notice / holiday, are you seriously telling me that they would *prefer* to work their notice period?

A friend of mine got an interview for a rival IT company, and when offered the job, immediately informed his PHB. An hour later he walked out of the building with three months pay and was able to start his next job a month early. He called it his, "disloyalty bonus" :-)

Advice for Mr McKinnon...

Plead guilty as fast as possible and then kiss as much ass as you can, otherwise you're going to the big house until you're a pensioner :-(

Whilst I can't condone his actions, neither can I condone this Government's blatant USA brown-nosing by refusing to prosecute him over here.

Give it a few weeks...

... and the new Sony reader will be available on this side of the pond.

In a frankly staggering move for Sony (Anyone remember OpenMG?), they have enabled it to read the ePub format which is NOT a DRM locked mess. Also they have got a deal with Waterstones to sell content that WILL be discounted on the print price (not *enough* of a discount, but it's a start).

Of course they still have their own proprietary format as well, but it's what I would call "reasonable", in that you can register the device with 6 machines. Throw in the fact that it's an MP3 player, it has SD and Memory Stick slots and it doesn't look like a Fisher Price toy, and I think the Kindle could have some decent competition at last.

Disclaimer: Despite my apparent fanboi'ism, I don't work for Sony or Waterstones. I *do* however like the idea of saving 3 kilos on my holiday luggage by having all my books in one reader!

Re: "In my case..."

Call them before you go, and tell them where you're going, and the dates you will be there. Works for me.

Still torn...

Having played with a friend's JesusPhone, I do really like it, and I'll probably be called to the Dark Side once my current contract is up.

I have to agree with the first poster though - Sending an MMS shouldn't be beyond the capabilities of the phone, and to be missing something as basic as Copy and Paste seems bizarre. The signal issues will be rectified ASAP I assume, as they have actually acknowledged the problem (right?).

If those issues get resolved, I'll be all over it like Paris on a webcam :-)

@Nile Heffernan

Seriously mate, take your phone back and get another one. It sounds like a definite case of a corrupt memory module.

Re: "Logic"

Could be that these traders have dealt with someone in Salesforce. I've never known such a bunch of pushy arrogant wankers.

Just 10 days into our trial of SF, we were so sick of the daily telephone calls that we switched to SugarCRM, and all has been well since :-)

Not-so-budget fares

A week or so ago there was an article on "The One Show" I think, where they costed up flights for a family of four with luggage across the "budget" and regular airlines.

After factoring in the luggage fees, booking fees, handling charges etc etc from the budget lines (fees that were included in the regular airlines), it turned out that Easyjet and RyanAir were more expensive than BA for EVERY combination of flights they tried.

As I understood it the budget airlines have already been ordered to include all fees up front in their listings, but they're dragging their heels for as long as possible because it's "technically difficult". Well boo fucking hoo.

Yes you can get the occasional good deal, but unless it saves me about £100 I'd rather travel with an airline that doesn't ban staff from charging mobile phones to save money...

@Robert Hill

"So, you expect APPLE to write-write and fix the author's apps if they are malware or malicious?"

No, where did I say that? Try re-reading this bit again:

"If it's actually *faulty* and could cause problems to your hardware, then fix the problem and offer the user a free upgrade at the publisher's expense."

So if APPLE wrote the app, then, yes, I would expect them to fix it, and free of charge too. Otherwise I would expect a free fix from the developer, or a refund at the very least.

Sorry you don't seem to be famliar with the Sale of Goods Act, but if a product is not fit for purpose or is faulty, you have the legal RIGHT to a refund or replacement. What part of that do you object to?

Paris, again...

@Ben Jamieson

Ahem...

"Steve also confirmed that every iPhone calls home every now and then, and that the company can uninstall applications that it decides are no longer appropriate."

So, who was the moron again...?

Just how far through the article did you read before putting your FanBoi suit on?

Paris, because that's you, that is...

@Hedley Lamarr

You seem to be missing the point by an utterly huge margin.

Once you pay for something, it's yours. No if's, no buts and no fucking small print either. Let's try a few analogies and see if they strike you as acceptable:

1) You buy a DVD from Amazon. Due to a manufacturing mistake, it's region free instead of locked. When you go out, someone from Amazon comes round to your house and takes the disc out of your player. You ask for a refund, but nobody *ever* gets back to you.

2) You buy a car, and pay the dealer to fit a new stereo. It turns out to have an electrical fault which may cause a problem, so shouldn't really have been fitted. The next time you take your car in for a service, the dealer removes the stereo without asking and won't tell you why or give you a refund.

A model I would support would be along the "Product recall" scenario for cars. There's potentially a problem with something about your car. Dealer contacts you and it is rectified at dealer's (manufacturer's really) expense.

If you buy an app from the store, and Apple later decides that they don't like it (perhaps it does something useful like rewrite the shitty bluetooth stack), tough shit, they should have screened it before selling it. If it's actually *faulty* and could cause problems to your hardware, then fix the problem and offer the user a free upgrade at the publisher's expense.

As for "Funny how most iPhone users absolutely love their purchases", of course they do, they don't know (or care) about what's going on behind the scenes. However, this is a tech site you Tard, so people here are concerned.

Paris, because she likes getting shafted as much as you seem to.

@Andrew Abdul-Malek

"No need to say anything, 2012 will reveal all."

The Knights Templar are sponsoring the Olympics?

Good job I waited...

Well, to be fair I also couldn't be arsed to pay £100+ to buy out of my current contract in order to move from one shit network to another one...

@Neil Barnes

The difference is that a Pub is by definition a *Public* house, so you can reasonably expect your conversation to be overheard.

Your telephone line and Internet connection is not only considered private, but there are legal safeguards to stop people listening in on your communications.

However, for some reason I can't fathom, some ISPs and Telco's seem to think that as long as they pretend/ensure that they don't know exactly who is on the phone, that makes it all right to listen in. Dozy fuckers...

Bristol sighting.

Good grief, of all the places to take your expensive camera equipment, Stokes Croft in Bristol is not it!

I wonder if the street view footage will just show a pack of hoodies approaching with a socket set :-)

"Criminally Unfair"? WTF?!

You want to buy something that's bigger than another product in the same range. It used more material to make. Why *shouldn't* it cost more? People don't complain that a large cake costs more than a small cake, but because the subject involves breasts, the PC brigade are going to say it's discriminating against the "Mammary Enhanced" to charge more.

Personally I have been worshipping at the Church of Many Pies for some time now, so my jeans might take 10 or 20 percent more material to make than a skinny bloke's. How is it unfair if the price reflects the extra raw materials used?

Paris, because her bras must be cheap...