I actually agree with the idea of an ISP based filtering service, providing that it's opt-in for customers (heck, why aren't the ISP's offering this as a chargeable add-on I'll never know). Not everyone in the world is technically literate, and anything that makes it easier for parents to make valid choices for their children is a good thing.

Unfortunately, this moderate middle ground is getting swamped by the "Censorship is evil" vs "Porn is evil" battle, and both sides are ignoring their chance to compromise.

The policy is much more sound than trying to make things "more secure", for example watching your system more closely so you know what's supposed to go where in terms of traffic, and paying attention to file access times and patterns would be far more effective in terms of damage limitation than trying to keep "something" out.

It also conicendentally means paying a lot more people to sit there and just learn the system's behaviour on a normal day.

One of the reasons I haven't updated my Android app in *ages*, I don't want the new features, I just want to read my FB wall and post comments.

I wish it were profitable for developers to make these kind of applications far more modular in nature, letting us pick and chose the functionality we want, instead of having their latest idea shoved down our throats

So, we can save £100M huh.... but only if you pay me £110M for my consultancy services :P

Looks like a promising idea, being able to use the same core for both a smartphone, tablet and a TV trims down the expense, though I'd imagine not by a lot given that screens comprise approximately 50% of the cost of a device, and you still need to include some basic processing power to recieve and authenticate the connection.

What I would be interested to find out is the effect on battery life; particularly as each component presumably carries their own power supply.

I don't want "smart", I want reliable, non-instrusive and controllable technology. Why on earth would I want some developer sitting in an office on the other side of the Atlantic deciding what I really want to be doing now is waking up, because I woke up at this time three days running.

There's an alternative conclusion to draw, that people who are drawn to most heavily using the Internet prefer iPhones or HTC phones, and also prefer the newer technology. Much more likely than the phones themselves being responsible for the increase in the use of data.

This guy is an idiot, petrol taxes in the developed world hit the poor far harder than the rich. The rich can afford to purchase the latest, fuel efficient vehicles, keep them maintained better and also pay far less % on traveling costs.

In fact, you could go so far as to argue that petrol taxes are one of the factors that reduce social mobility, if you can't afford to travel in a cost effective manner, you can't seek out new employment opportunities outside your local geographical area. Even if you get a job interview thanks to the Internet, it often proves impractical to get there, or to relocate if you can't afford to drive.

Of course, all it takes is a couple of key controlled, mechanical switches in place and you can cut these vulnerabilities right down.

Ok, so another study shows that there's been a gradual change in average temperate over a period of time, but have reached no firm conclusions as to the cause of the problem.

My pet theory has always be simple thermodynamics, more people, all burning off more energy to run all the myriad of gadgets, machines etc that form part of modern life, means a higher average temperate.

hmmm

You know, this sounds like a BOFH tool for catching out the idiots who bypass the password policies

Sounds like...

... someone's punting a proof of concept device to sell to the CIA, assuming they haven't already got drones that do this :)

So they'll always throttle the top 5%

Ok, so what happens in a situation where everyone is abiding by a sensible amount of data usage? The way the article is written implies that they'll still throttle the top 5%, even if they reduce their data usage....

In effect, if you're in this demographic, you might as well keep sucking down as much as you can because unless you stop using the service entirely, you're gonna keep getting capped.

I predict that...

An incredibly large number of John Smith's will invade Google+ over time. Try catching *that* in an auto-filter without getting too many false positives

Micropayments

It doesn't necessarily mean processing the credit card payment each time you want to watch something. Chances are, it'll be an account balance you top up (minimum £5 - £10) that you eat up on the various services.

It can't be a good idea

Any system that over-rides a driver's ability to crash their car willingly will only end up causing an accident eventually.

A car should always be in the driver's full control and these systems are far too excessive! Warnings, yes, automatically taking control of the vehicle no!

Unfortunately...

.. there's money to be made in selling our details to advertisers. As long as advertisers are willing to pay per impression, instead of per actual click, then these businesses will continue profiting from making us take part.

Ok, so if it grabs your browsing history...

... deleting your history, cookies and all other files reguarly works too right?

Well it is a World of Warcraft patch day

... all it'd take is one poorly programed query in the initial updater and suddenly you've got a few million people all hunting for addresses that don't actually exist!

It's the problem with a software changeover

No matter how much planning and testing you do, switching this kind of software will always be painful. You've got to retrain your entire staff, work out the best way to use the new features, learn how to adapt your business processes to the way the software expects it to run and so on.

Working for a company that sells this kind of software, it's *never* as smooth as you'd like it to be, but the improvements are seen in the long term, usually 12-18 months down the line.

Odd

This story sounds exactly like something created to undermine the idea of bitcoins and happens just days after they're publised for the first time.

Maybe they should stop and think

... instead of denying that figures are dropping, stop and consider that perhaps their ever excessive feature creep, combined with repeated attempts at forcing users to take on their latest privacy busting "improvements" without their consent or knowledge are costing them money.

so let me get this straight

They want to let us associate our official identity with our online persona's, thus giving cyber ctiminals even *more* reasons to steal them. Combined with the fact that these private companies are outside UK control or sovereignity and we have a receipe for disaster!

What's slightly more of a pain

If you're someone who uses a dozen or so different passwords, actually remembering which one you used on that site without being able to check exactly *which* one you used.

It's not the only recent feature creep

Did anyone else know that Groups no longer send out an invite, instead your friends can automatically add you to any group they choose and it automatically posts this information to your wall as if *you* chose to join the group.

What's worse, it automatically signs you up to receive emails from the group

http://www.facebook.com/help/new/?faq=147058305366686

Hmmm..

... does offer some interesting possibilities regarding scanning a woman to produce a totally contoured set of lingerie though, particularly if you can design an algorithm to give the best possible profile

I have no idea what the engineers were thinking

Who on earth thought that your mobile phone is the place to put this technology? Where's the advantage over a contactless credit or debit card?

Not convinced

Sure, nifty idea, but without a proper feedback from each key it's less than ideal.

If it were me, I'd have stick on "keys" that can still register a contact with the touchpad underneath, don't have to be massive and if they're transparent you can still get the benefit of the customisation underneath.

Sounds like ....

... someone seriously cocked up their exchange rates! Maybe they replaced the US Dollar with the Zimbabwe dollar :)

The author's missed a trick

You can use a 3D barcode link for an app inside an article and thus share the link in exactly the same way as having to type the URL manually. That's where the app stores still offer shareability, all that's missing is a handy little "about" screen inside the app to bring up said barcode so you can display it on screen and let a friend automatically download the content by scanning it.

Soon as app developers get that sorted, it's all rainbows and unicorns!

Is it me or...

... the email address they're sending fom look like spam? Just the thing to really panic people after mystery app lands on your phone

The trouble is

It's just a cynical marketing ploy by Game, they know that the titles being offered need a purchase from EA to get it to work as advertised, but I bet they won't even consider making that clear to the consumers. What's more, with "second hand goods", there's less protection for the consumer when the item has been clearly marked as such, so those duped won't even be able to take the item back.

Well duh...

All the points given are basic interviewing advice, I'm surprised at some of the comments so far that try to argue against them. Well, actually not surprised, this is after all the Internet where people will argue against *anything*, particularly "IT Professionals" who are used to being more right than you.

I hate titles

The project has some interesting avenues that could follow later down the line, and I'm sure are the real reason the IBM researches persued this in the first place. For example, being able to feed a bunch of rules on financial transactions and then load up the raw data of a companies financial records, and have the model spit out any irregularities would be one possible use.

Ad's may be necessary...

... but they should respect that I'll click on the damn things if I'm interested and not charge companies for impressions that in actual fact represent me going "oh fuck I'm not buying XXX because it has an invasive advert"

Well done

You've now got a better connection than me and I live in a fairly busy 100,000 odd person town (though at an edge)

They're missing a trick

Why not just have a textured touch screen surface with slight give in it, nothing major, just enough for most people to feel where their hands are on the screen. Then you can hone your typing skills in the same way you can with a physical keyboard

They're still missing the point

The problem with "getting online" isn't that it's particularly expensive to do, what the problem is that it's *hard* for many people to do. A PC is still a fairly complex machine, and whilst for many of us, it's intuative, there's still a good group of people who just don't want the hassle.

What's really needed is a device like an iPad where it just works to be given out, something that'll work akin to the television where you can switch it on, press maybe a couple of buttons to tune it in and get on with using it.

It's a good idea

If they can combine it with the idea of external graphics cards and extra storage in the keyboard section, you could replace your PC and PMP with a single device.

It's been like this

...ever since they switched from Protx to Sagepay, the change of name bought with it failure after failure after failure. Only one you can definately say wasn't their fault, and that was the fire at the Paddington telephone exchange, the rest seems to be deep mismanagement and failure to adaquately test their unwanted "improvements" to the system.

Free Speech

In the UK we do NOT have the right to Free Speech, in fact, what we have is the right to say anything we want PROVIDING it isn't proscribed by law and boy is there a whole load of things we can't say, such as slander, defamation of character, hate speech, threats (counts as assault if you're believed) and so on.

Seriously, why do people feel the need to speak up for a right that we've practically never had because it's not the way our laws have worked.

Ummm

Correct me if I'm wrong, the point of being a naturist is the desire to be free and uninhibited with regards to wearing clothes, and in fact one of the arguements is about desexualising nudity. It *shouldn't* matter who sees you naked if these are your beliefs, and they should be if you're at a naturist resort.

All this "intelligent" design....

... is effectively eroding our distinctive and unique natures. More and more I see programs that take away options and instead provide us with a "smart" interface that ensures we all more or less present ourselves the same way.

With Google putting this feature in, they'll guide results towards the ones that make them the most money, and leave other interesting but less profitable avenues wondering where on earth all their traffic has disappeared to.

Ummm

Maybe they missed the fact that the reason it was unsuccessful was you couldn't run it in the browser of your choice without an instrusive "plug in". No way did I want to switch to Google Chrome or use the Chrome plug in just to get this to work.

Which is a shame really as it was an ideal method for play by internet RPG's

So with all those USB devices...

Where's the ultimate in netbook USB hubs to connect all of those things up at once? :)

Theft by finding?

I'm not sure about US law, but in the UK there's certainly a viable prosecution for "theft by finding", simply put it's still stealing (or recieving stolen property), even if you find it on the street (buy it off a bloke who found it on the street).

All in all, he's been pretty silly and all this story shows is the legal wangling you expect from the US courts system.