Posts by Ian 11

Orrin Fail.

Orrin Hatch was even blunter. He said: "I have become increasingly concerned about the growing body of evidence that foreign regulatory agencies are unfairly using their review processes to impede the business of American corporations.”

RegisterFail was even blunter again. He said: "I have become increasingly concerned about the growing body of evidence that foreign military forces are unfairly using their might to impede the existence of foreign cultures and their sovereign rights.”

They have a point

Obama has done nothing for his nobel prize.

...and you missed the most important part.

You can currently only buy the UK version from Amazon's US site at Amazon.com meaning you'll get stung with hefty import duties. If you order one, expect to pay upwards of £30 on top of the price you pay once it arrives in the country.

You'll also not be covered by UK consumer laws should it break and will be left with no recourse past the 1 year warranty Amazon US offers.

Better to wait until Amazon.co.uk is offering it, then you cant get screwed.

Well, unless they do the $1 = £1 think most companies do.

There is a simple solution.

These companies should just move their operations and registration to Europe where such idiotic patents are unenforcable.

Yay for populist measures!

...except, the population is stupid.

The problem is this, many speed cameras do work and do in fact make roads much safer by forcing people to slow down. Similarly congestion charges do cut congestion, and also cut pollution- even if you don't buy the global warming argument it's good to have cleaner air, better moving roads and so on.

No one likes congestion charges, no one likes speed cameras, but they really are a necessary evil for a population that can't act sensibly by itself like that here in the UK. So here's the crux of it- those who oppose these changes don't oppose them because they have done any research into whether they work or not- they can't, because they do work. They oppose them because they're the ones that want to speed, who believe they can drive safely at high speeds and only find out they in fact can't when they kill someone, they oppose congestion charges because they want to be able to drive their kids half a mile to school in the chelsea tractor and not see any repercussions, despite the fact that en-masse, they're holding up business users, making them late and as such, actually causing real cost damage to the economy.

I hate the nanny state, but the fact is, in some areas, large parts of our population really cannot sensibly look after themselves. I applaud the Tories commitment to opening up data on cameras so that yes, some can be removed where they're truly stupid, but their commitment to no more cameras at all and to scrapping congestion charges is idiotic.

Coupled with the fact the Tories have announced no anonymity for criminals and they're finally showing their true colours- equally as idiotic as Labour after all, just in different ways. Either the criminal justice system works and someone does their time and comes out rehabilitated, or it doesn't work and you keep them locked up. You don't release them then tell people who live near them about their crime else rehabilitation is pointless, and we've seen so many times how wrong these things can go, particularly when vigilantiism becomes part of it.

I'll be interested to hear if the Tories announce any technology related policies, if they're not different to Labours dated, ignorant and inept technology policy then we're basically just getting more of the same next year and might as well just keep Brown in as it's the same difference, not that I'm suprised of course. If only we lived in a non-FPTP, two party state then we might see real change.

Source?

What was the source of this story? When you say "the Chinese media" which Chinese media would that be?

I'd just kind of like to see this in it's original context!

What the fuck

Is a Zio fruitcake?

Is Zio some American brand or something?

No-win for the IWF

The fact the IWF can end up in such no-win situations is evidence enough that the existence of the IWF is in fact pointless and a waste of time.

Safari

Ballmer is right about Safari at least, it's been around a while but has failed to get much growth and as a web browser isn't really improving much feature or quality wise to change that. It speaks volumes that even the most viscious of Apple fanboys often shun Safari in favour of Firefox- Apple fans shunning an Apple product in favour of a non-Apple product is a sure fire sign that Safari is indeed a crap browser. It's growth in these stats can be attributed almost entirely to the iPhone, where Apple uses anti-competitive practices to ensure Safari is the only real browsing option.

Chrome on the other hand is relatively new, is improving a fair bit, and has strong market penetration relative to it's age. It's much more of a threat then, perhaps even more so than Firefox. It's penetration is small because it's new, it's penatration relative to age is massive though and it's growth compared to penetration is impressive.

But, needless to say, Firefox is still favourite to take the lead right now if anything is going to topple IE. In the long run though, I think what we'll see is Firefox, Chrome and IE having roughly equal share with the likes of Opera and Safari remaining footnotes, or in Ballmer speak, rounding errors.

We already have the solution

But the Tories and Labour wont implement it because it means less power for them. The solution is of course proportional representation. The most common argument against PR that comes up is that you lose local representatives but what use is a local representative if he doesn't actually represent my views in any way as is the case in the current first past the post system?

It's well known and has been proven in numerous studies world wide that in first past the post systems turnout is always lower and the reason is blatantly obvious why- whose going to turn up to vote if their vote doesn't count?

In the 2005 British elections the Electoral Reform Society estimate that 19 million votes were thrown away on safe seats, that's 19 million people ou of the voting population whose vote simply was meaningless and did not count- is it any wonder turnout is low then? In this same election Labour were able to gain effectively 100% in power by having an absolute majority whilst only getting 36% of the nation's vote. I'd imagine most people can see there's something wrong when the ruling party is in power against the will of 64% of the population, as that's the situation we're in now, and will be under the Tories too.

There is another argument against proportional representation that comes up but it is also a weak argument. The argument is that if no single party holds absolute control of parliament then it can be hard to get agreement to pass laws. Well, this argument is clearly stupid because why the fuck should laws be passed if the majority of the population don't agree with them? This is actually a plus, despite being often spun as a negative in a non-sensical way by those defending FPTP.

The final argument that is most prominently used by FPTP supporters is that proportional representation means fringe parties like the BNP have more power- it's true, if the BNP get 2% of the vote, they get 2% of the power. But so what? What the fuck does 2% of the power matter in the face of people who hate, say, Labour, having to deal with the party they hate having 100% of the power?

It's not hard to fix the UK's voting problem, PR is the primary solution. But it would also mean Brown wouldn't have 100% power with only 36% vote, and Cameron wont have 100% power with only 38% vote or whatever he ends up getting.

Whilst 19 million people cannot enter a vote that counts, we do not live in a real democracy. Make the UK a real democracy by switching to proportional representation and you'll get more people bothering to vote and interested in politics. Of course people will be apathetic if they have no power to truly vote.

Imagine if it were the other way around...

...imagine if Microsoft made IE load the web version of Office instead of Google apps when you visited the Google apps site.

No doubt Google would be crying their eyes out about that...

About time

It stinks that 90% of lottery funding goes on "art projects" which offer no value and that no one other than an extremely small niche of the population actually give a damn about.

It's about time lottery money went on something wortwhile.

"Strike back"

lol @ "Strike back"

How the fuck are they striking back? They're simply doing what they should've done in the first place and doing what Google wants them to do, this isn't striking back, this is bending over and doing the right thing. Talking back to make yourself look rebellious doesn't change that fact.

Well

At least we know which company sponsored CoolBrands existence this year.

Yes Apple Marketing Machine, I can see you quite clearly hiding behind that dumpster next to the CoolBrands office, you can come out now.

Question

Which country has much rural, untouched terrain, contains many poorly educated people who are deeply religious, paranoid about a relatively new government and are armed to the hilt?

No, it's not Afghanistan, it's America.

Isn't it funny how America is, what America hates? The reason middle America and the Taliban are such big foes, is because they're actually just too much the same.

They're right...

They're right, but then, with Cameron's "For the family!" attitude, I was under no illusion that he really cared about liberty anyway. It was always clear to me that Cameron would still fall hook line and sinker for the "think of the children!" arguments each time someone wanted to create a new system that checks your every move to make sure you're not a child raping terrorist or whatever.

Cameron will be better than Labour of course, but it's been clear to anyone who can make up their own mind and see through blatant political spin for a long while that the Tories aint going to roll back much of what Labour has done, I expect no improvement in CCTV and the Tories in their database rollback only mention 2 out of about 9 major Labour central citizen spying databases that must be rolled back.

This is before the election too though, we all know that governments get worse, and more paranoid and controlling of their voterbase as time goes on, so I fully expect by the end of Cameron's reign that the Tories will actually be no better than Labour for mass destruction of personal freedom in the UK.

Still, at least when Cameron's fresh it'll give us a couple of years break from the freedom raping measure Labour has been hitting us with on a weekly basis.

Translation

What they really said:

“Mylifemyid was one of a number of attempts at indoctrinating young people into our surveillance society. However, as our work with young people is still continuing, it was decided to wait and publish the picture we want to publish at the end of the process when we've actually figured out how to indoctrinate young people now we've realised they're not as stupid as we actually thought.”

Sounds like an idiot.

Pandas haven't driven down an evolutionary cul-de-sac, they are perfectly fit for their environment and haven't been dying because of an inability to fit their environment, they've been dying out because humans have been killing them, even if not directly in some cases.

But this sentence gave some clarity:

"Go into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with a flamethrower and torch all of the stupid bureaucracy that dogs our farmers," he ranted. "Let's start organising fair pricing for UK farmers."

Oh I see, so he's one of those idiots who thinks farmers are somehow hard done by? Those will be the same farmers that have been polluting our streams and destroying our countryside on an industrial scale for the past hundred odd years or so. Meanwhile they've been bringing up animals in the most insanitary conditions and mingling them at cattle markets causing mass spread of disease amongst their cattle and then forcing the tax payer to pay for the inevitable cull, and then whine about compensation on top. They then of course blame badgers, because hey, I mean why not? they're there so it's obviously their fault, and expect the tax payer to fund the whiping out of badgers from parts of the country too? They complain about being poor, but are all multi-millionaires simply because of the amount of land they have available, let alone the profits and compensation they've effectively stolen on top.

But worst of all, the fuckers drive their tractors, at rush hour, down single lane roads, managing to bring massive detriment to the countries economoy by wasting countless man hours making people let and causing mass pollution by forcing people to chug along the roads for longer periods.

No, here's a better idea, let's cull our farmers and this idiot at the BBC, and get our farm products from abroad. What would this achieve? It would save wildlife in the UK (badgers), it would allow reforestation, it would cut pollution in our rivers from pesticides, it would boost the UK economy in that we wouldn't lose millions of man hours a year to farm vehicles travelling on roads at the most idiotic of times, it would mean we could actually get something out of the French farmers rather than just paying their subsidies, or provide work for asian/african farmers that are poor and actually need the money, and will actually farmer in a responsible way.

Save the pandas, destroy farmers (and certain idiot BBC folk).

So?

She'll only claim the fine on expenses anyway.

@ jof

So far Microsoft's comments have been on the ball, pointing out idiocies in the HTML5 spec, so if Microsoft is steering it in directions it considers advantageous then please, let's have some more because apparently Microsoft seem to understand better than anyone else involved in the spec so far what needs to change in it. Google, Apple etc. have been cheering it along with various idiotic decisions kept in.

It's a strange world where we have to rely on Microsoft to try and fix a horrible spec.

So it's official then

Any amount of bollocks counts as a scientific study worthy of media attention and that can be sold to subscribers.

Time to setup my scientific paper subscription site I guess, article number 1: People who write papers for pay for sites are full of shit.

Great news.

Whilst it's easy to imagine this was done for some easy political point scoring, for the first time in many years I'll give Labour the benefit of the doubt on this one. The fact is, nothing stopped previous governments doing the same, but they did not.

The Labour government is abysmal, but finally after years of failing at everything they've done something right for once.

Bullshit

Apple systems are secure and flawless they don't need security patches.

The local Mac zealot told me so.

Mandelson

The RIAA probably told Evil Lord Mandelson that there was an illegal copy of the latest Britney Spears MP3 flying down the cable so Mandelson ordered his Royal Navy to cut the cable.

I say his Royal Navy because well, he's clearly the one running the government nowadays, despite that being against the will of the entire population.

Sarkozy...

...is an evil little poison dwarf.

Why do people like this ever even manage to get into power? Not only is he incompetent at his job, but he is also a corrupt little manipulator treating the public like they're stupid, paranoid about something that frankly just does not matter - his height.

@ The First Dave

The verdict is in? According to who exactly?

Sorry, but your suggestion that they don't need to use the word "alleged" is false, you incorrectly assume that the word of a Texas court is wholly accurate, just as you suggest the word of a court in the Netherlands presided over by Scottish judges is wholly and absolutely accurate.

Just because a court rules something does not mean that it's true or correct. Courts are not infallible entities, on the contrary, as has been seen on many occasions, they're very fallible.

Even then of course you assume that everyone has the same standards, certainly I put about as much trust in a Texas judge as I would George Bush telling me he went to Iraq to liberate the people. In the EU, Microsoft would certainly not have been guilty because patents of the type pushed by i4i are unenforcable.

Going to a district court known for being friendly to patent trolls to get a ruling and using that ruling to suggest truth is as dishonest as saying tommorrow is due to be hotter than today, so global warming is worsening at an even more rapid rate than even the most pessimistic studies.

Are you one of those people who believes in god because the pope, living his life of luxury at your expense told you he was real too?

Ah so that's why the Zune failed up until now.

The Zune show was being run by an RIAA bod whose now going back into the fold.

If anyone fails to grasp the way forward for the modern music industry and associated devices it's certainly not RIAA folk.

This can only be a good thing for Microsoft if they actually get someone in who understands technology and how it relates to music and other digital content instead of a clueless RIAA puppet.

10.5hrs

My Eee PC 1005ha does 10.5hrs. Well, at least it's rated to, no device actually achieves what they say the battery life is, but relatively speaking the battery life is impressive. It can get me from Heathrow to Toronto and last the check-in and departure lounge wait to boot!

Nice

38% markup on price over the US price for UK customers, 15% of that is VAT, so effectively the UK is being charged 23% more - that's nearly a quarter more for the PS3 for no reason whatsoever.

That alone is enough to put me off buying it, I'd rather choose not to be completely and utterly taken for a mug personally, especially as the new UK price is still higher than what the XBox 360 was 3 years ago (You could get it for £229.99 back then).

This is pretty funny

Why is it funny?

Because this guy, who was actually really causing harm to industry by depriving them of real, quantifiable sales by actually trying to profit from the crime got find 10% of people who caused no measurable damage in sharing 23 MP3s.

So the moral of the story is, if you're going to commit piracy, make sure you profit from it and deprive industry of real actual sales, because apparently downloading the latest Britney Spears MP3 is more damaging than that and so gets a higher punishment.

Timms = Only smart person in Labour?

"However, as it will be an election year Timms, who recently replaced Lord Carter - author of the Digital Britain report - told journalists that a short bill listing popular measures was more likely to be pushed through ahead of UK voters going to the polls."

Yeah okay Timms but have you told Mandelson about that? he doesn't seem aware as he's currently working to push through the most unpopular parts of all after his dinner data with a movie industry boss.

To be fair...

It was a Tory govenment in power at the time.

Churchill was in charge in fact, certainly sheds a different light on the "Greatest Britain of all time" doesn't it? God forbid the world know the "Greatest Britain of all time" was only slightly less of a fascist than Hitler and Stalin.

Solution: Use OpenDNS

Yes, OpenDNS does exactly the same thing, the difference is if you use OpenDNS then you requested that rather than had it foisted upon you.

It also means your ISP which you're already paying a monthly charge to isn't milking more money out of you but this time without your permission through ad revenue.

What if you don't have a split socket?

I see a lot of comments here and on the net about how you can install this iPlate, or how you can cut the bell wire, but these all seem to talk about if you have a socket with one of those lines across the middle.

My socket just has a flat faceplate, with only a marking in the top left, the old BT logo, the first one shown in BTs checker linked in the article.

Is there anything I can do to achieve the same effects? Can I replace this socket with one of those NTE5 ones that can use this iPlate thing at all? Does anyone have any links or info for those of us that doesn't have one of these plates that's required or the iPlate but still has to suffer shit speeds?

Fact not accusation.

"She rejected the accusation that the extradition treaty between the US and UK was one-sided."

The US has accepted only 70% of UK extradition requests, the UK has accepted 90% of US requests. It is therefore not an accusation that the treaty is one-sided, it is outright fact.

Harman then, is either a disingenuous liar or incompetent. Then she wonders why there aren't more women in cabinet? perhaps because all those so far (i.e. her, Blears, Jacqui Smith) have been the most incompetent muppets to grace British politics in the last decade? That's not to say male politicians are more competent, but it seems foolish for her to play the sexism card when she's incompetent because even if Brown's government is sexist, she's hardly arguing from a point of strength when they can just point out her, and her colleagues incompetence.

Get some competent women in government please, then we can really see if it's about sexism or incompetence. Currently one can only assume it's the latter, because competence to do the job is surely more important than what sex, race or religion someone is to satisfy some arbitrary equality quota incompetent people like Blears think should be imposed?

Still, not meaning to go off-topic too much, just a rant about Harman who looks like she's trying hard to be the new Jacqui Smith after Blears managed to do such a good job of being the new Jacqui Smith that she got herself into the roll of government laughing stock and out before we'd all finished celebrating the real Jacqui's departure.

The extradition treaty is one-sided, period. This is fact, not accusation or suggestion.

Cool

Our judicial system is as corrupt as our government.

I know it's a dream and wont happen but I hope the Tories when they get in next year sack every single one of these complete wastes of space in public sector, quangos, the police and the judiciary that Labour has managed to get in place.

It's sickening that Labour has corrupted this country to it's very core, yes I know the Tories are no different but oh well, one can always dream.

If only there was a party with a chance of getting in power that was actually not corrupt.

Flawed.

Anyone buying a PC over $1000 is almost certainly a gamer as any non-gamer would realise they don't need to spend that much on a PC, or in fact, even half that much for what they would want to do.

Gamers for the most part build their own PCs, and so wouldn't be included in the NPD stats.

It's dishonest to say that Apple has 90% of the premium PC market then, using stats that don't take into account 99% of premium PCs because they're bought as individual components and assembled by the user.

It should come as no suprise that of high end machines that are bought outright are Macs, because only a Mac user would spend that on a machine they wont use for gaming. The extortionate cost of Macs artificially changes the category the systems belong in. They're still used outside the premium/gaming category, but end up artificially in the premium/gaming category based on price alone.

But of course, this is the problem with categorising on irrelevant factors.

Why is this news?

I used to work in local government. I can guarantee that this happens every day across the country to laptops in some council or another.

Oh wait, it's news because the ICO is actually doing it's job for the first time since it's creation. I'm sure it's a one off though.

Farmers.

It makes me smile to see that in some way IT is causing farmers some inconvenience.

Just like I, as an IT worker, am caused inconvenience on my way to or home from work by their tractors trundling along busy single lane roads at 15mph during rush hour EVERY GOD DAMN FUCKING DAY.

Yes, I feel the scales have tipped ever so slightly towards balance in the universal battle between IT workers travelling to work and farmers, well, just being inconsiderate arseholes as usual.

Eat that farmers! Just wait until your tractors are computerised.

The Monster Raving Loony Party had the best policies - keep farm vehicles on farms, especially during rush hour.

@ jon

RE jon 44:

"What I'd like to see is scrapping of all but 1 or 2 manned aircraft models (incase of jamming) and waste money on drones, choppers and infantry equipment instead."

Jamming should be ineffective, there's no reason unmanned drones can't be autonomous enough to land themselves should they lose communication. More importantly though they can be communicated to via satellite (hence why most Afghan/Pakistan predator operators fly them from Nevada), this means any jamming signals would need to come from above the drones between the sat link and the drone. Not many countries if in fact any other than the top 2 or 3 super powers have this capability.

Oh and if anyone's interested, the $1.75bn was for a mere 7 extra F22s. 7 extra F22s is hardly going to cripple the USAF now is it? $1.75bn is a massive saving though. It's not suprise then they voted to cancel it, that's a lot of cash for a benefit that is effectively negligible. If it had been 50 - 100 jets they may have had a point, but 7? The cost/benefit ratio just doesn't make financial sense by any measure.

Wow.

Someone I used to go to school with killed a pedestrian by driving 50mph in a 30mph zone and he got less of a punishment than that.

WTF!

This country is fucked.

The BT guide to being really shit at marketing.

Why is it each time BT reverse an idiotic decision they insist it's nothing to do with the public distaste for that decision and simply for "other reasons"?

They cancel phorm and say, "Yeah but it's not cos we care about privacy".

They move call centre staff back from India and say "But it's not cos we think we were giving a shit service".

Are staff at BT really this incompetent? It would've been a massive marketing win if in each case they'd instead have said:

"We have decided to reevaluate our position on customer privacy and as part of this effort we are taking a number of measures including ditching Phorm"

and:

"We are moving jobs back to the UK from India to offer customers are greatly improved customer service experience"

It's like BT puts refusal to accept that yes, it was a mistake to do certain things above actually trying to make customers like them and hence consume their services.

Either BT is doomed to fail with this arrogance, or it's monopoly position is so strong, and so secure it feels it doesn't matter what customers think and it's always right about everything even if millions of customers tell them they're wrong.

If it's the latter, it's time for the government to step in and disband BT.

I'll put it another way..

As some people don't seem to have the technical understanding to see what has been "copied" here I'll explain the issue differently.

The problem is that the data that this company has produced is effectively just a copy of the way the mobile phone works in the first place, that is, the phone must know what piece of memory is where to work with it. What this companies program does is store a record of what is where much like the phone must. So effectively this company is suggesting they have copyright on data that they've copied from the real original manufacturer through reverse engineering which is clearly nonsensical.

I do not believe errors are a sensible argument for original work or content else the music industry would be even more screwed than it is now in that you could claim an MP3 of a CD audio track isn't a copy of their material because it's a completely different set of binary data due to the MP3 encoding.

I'm not sure what the relevance of the OS maps case was, it's irrelevant as original material was copied in the OS map case, whilst the police have indeed copied original material here, they have copied it from a copier. This is akin to a pirate suing another pirate for downloading an MP3 off them on a P2P sharing site rather than the original producer of the music not caring at all.

Again a guilty verdict against the police in this case would effectively create a DMCA like atmosphere in the UK but without the provisions for acceptable reverse engineering (i.e. to create a competing product). You could not reverse engineer Exchange to produce an Exchange compatible competitor to Outlook for example, this is a bad thing.

We do not have software patents in Europe as in the US so simply copying a method for storing and reading memory references would also not have any standing in patent law.

Again I hope the police win, not because I support the police, but because I do not support the repeated flagrant abuses or attempts at abuse of copyright law by many companies, especially when as in this case, the companys product in question is based off the same sort of reverse engineering of another companys product that they're complaining about in the first place.

Better theory

"It also ignores the point that cybercrooks often profit from undisclosed vulnerabilities."

Who wants to bet this is actually the reason for the hack?

They make it look like a legit group with a legit concern in the hope people will listen, but the real reason they want to halt full disclosure is because it's harming the profits of online criminal gangs due to full disclosure cutting the amount of money they can churn out of an exploit before it's fixed.

We've known for years that some companies can take years to fix an exploit unless their hand is forced to fix it earlier through full disclosure. This group probably want to exploit that for profit and full disclosure just aint helping them do that.

Scary

These guys are scum and deserve what's come to them, but I'm concerned that you can now be jailed for expressing your view.

This is a slippery slope and we need to be wary of that. Members of the BNP might be next - still horrid people and most people wont complain, but when the BNP becomes an acceptable target what's next? UKIP? It'll be a slow change, but there will undoubtedly be people who would like to see this precedent go further and eventually slide towards being able to jail anyone who doesn't agree with the most mainstream of views.

This is effectively the situation in Iran now - post something that doesn't agree with the main political party and it's jail time. Let's really hope this isn't the start of the UK down that path, free speech should be protected, anyone who isn't already a racist isn't going to be turned by these people's comments, reading their stuff I found it rather comical that people could be stupid and ignorant enough to suggest the things they were. They certainly didn't convince me of anything other than the fact they were complete and utter idiots not worth listening to, they certainly weren't a threat worth jailing unless the police could provide evidence they were going to go further than just expressing views online, but if that were the case then that's what they should've done them for.

What do you expect?

Not encountered his posts before, but judging by this article he's an American and a Republican.

In other words, he's the worst kind of idiot.

Bad news.

I detest OFCOM, it's a waste of space that's achieved nothing positive and dodges the difficult issues that it exists to deal with (i.e. Phorm).

But Cameron's Tory government is too pro-creative industry and the fact he suggests telecomms will be handed over to the department of sport and culture only further cements this.

It was only a few months back Cameron suggested he'd put someone from the creative industries in charge of the UK's telecomms future too and a year before that a speech to the BPI about how he'd clamp down on piracy for them using technical measures (of which none exist that don't cause severe detriment to internet access for everyone).

So here's my concern, Cameron is showing more and more he wishes to mix telecomms and content and if we've learnt anything from the BPI/IFPI/RIAA/MPAA who influence or control these groups it's that these are groups that would put a failing business model over everything from human rights through to a countries technological health on the world stage.

If Cameron follows through with his hands and gives big media control of the UK's internet and technology policies as he's so far suggested he will by way of all his comments then the UK will officially be part of the technological 3rd world, and without a good technology base the rest of the UK will spiral downhill too.

I'm pretty pro-Thatcher, I think doing away with subsidised industry (i.e. mining) was great for the economy and the right thing to do and something the French would do well to learn regarding their subsidised farming industry holding their country right back. I'm not convinced Cameron is even in the same league though, he does not seem to have any grasp of how to make the UK a world technology leader and everything he's said so far will leave us in the metaphorical technical dark ages with more power for big industry to infringe on human rights than ever before.

i guess I'll be voting Lib Dem next election as I would never vote Labour and Cameron seems to be a horifically bad leader when it comes to policy even if he's a good leader when it comes to charisma. Charisma can't run a country though. If the recent expenses scandal taught us anything too it's that there are also still too many bad apples in the Tories, the idiots that ousted Thatcher in the first place. I would gladly vote for a new Thatcher government tommorrow if it was possible however, hers was the only government that has been technologically and economically forward thinking in decades.

You missed an important category

You missed the "Fire hazard" category.

As there have been reports of iPhone 3GS becoming too hot to hold and getting so hot they actually glow with the heat I think it's safe to say the Pre wins this one, and frankly it's such an important category in general it's enough to swing a win to the Pre overall.

What use is a phone if it risks setting on fire as the iPhone 3GS does?

yawn.

"Works for Iceland.

But then they don't go round the World insisting they're a serious military and economic power."

Yes, that would be the same Iceland whose country has just collapsed and is now desperate to join Europe to try and save themselves? We've seen how strong they are.

"I've no desire to be subsumed by default into a greater Europe when "Johnny Foreigner" is dictating the terms."

Why? Do you have some evidence that "Johnny Foreigner" is worse at making decisions than our leaders? Certainly as far as civil liberties go the EU has done a better job of protecting our civil liberties in Britain than our own leadership has.

The fact is, people need to get over their Euro fears, Europe as a combined state would be the only state in the world capable of standing up to the US but also standing up to Russia and China. Instead right now we have these disparate nations with disparate militaries getting held to ransom by Russia over gas every single fucking year.

Europe has a strong combined history and we should be proud of that, we've been allies and enemies for years and now we have a possibility to tie closer together allowing us to have the potential for the biggest, healthiest economy in the world, the strongest military and the best standard of living for the citizens of all of Europe.

...or we could just carry on being a nation of xenophobes as Europe steams ahead without us and we look even more puny and laughable on the international stage and America controls what we do anyway, oh wait, isn't that exactly what you wanted to avoid? Oh well, too late I guess.