Netherlands

This surely isn't much of a surprise. Is there anywhere in the Netherlands where it's even possible to live as far from an exchange as one can in rural England or Scotland? Take any small, modern,homogeneous densely-populated country (NL has 2x population density than UK) and you'll find better availabilitiy of services than in a big equivalent.

cheap and complex?

So, if cheap and complex is bad, does that mean expensive and basic is good? That could explain a lot about Microsoft's business moidel...

consumated?

so skype has been well and truly fucked then?

Fire?

I reckon it's just a sting operation to catch the folks who looted TVs in last month's riots...

I smell a scam

Who in their right mind is going to leave a jagged spike of metal in their hand while they look for a camera to get a suitable photo? Wouldn't most people's first instinct be to just swear, yank it out, and run for the first-aid kit?

hardly *market* jitters

Just jitters in the share price of one company. Apple isn't the whole market (yet).

I hate to say it, but...

I think Aston Martin's showing this year might have more to do with a certain "Just Married" drive down the Mall than with Jimmy007.

Seemed like a pretty standard Labour message to me, completely devoid of content. He should be congratulated on its length, though. Hard to beat.

Junior programmer?

If I quit my job every time I finished a program and then found that the project had been cancelled, I'd have to set up a tent outside the JobCenter.

telecoms regulations

"stop breaching telecoms regulations by issuing bills to consumers for services that have not been provided. "

Sorry? Is "breaching telecoms regulations" Ofcom newspeak for "fraud"? . Maybe instead of asking them nicely to stop, they could have hauled their CEO into court? Or would that have been too much like hard work for that bunch of regulatory incompetents?

slow urban areas

Amazing. Places with lots of people using the internet have the slowest download speeds.

Isn't that a bit like discovering that places with the most cars tend to have the biggest traffic jams?

Scan the barcode, pay for it via an app, and trigger the security alarms as you leave because a checkout operator hasn't cancelled the security tag? I can see that working. Not.

PayPal thinks it can do this cheaply because it doesn't have the overheads of a bank, but those overheads are there for security and protection. As usual, when the new boy thinks it can solve a problem better than the folks who've been doing it for 50-odd years, it generally means that they don't really understand the fine details of the problem. Wait until the first time someone gets conned, and discovers that theyt have no legal protection, because Paypal isn't a bank.

Clever Lester's Impressive Test Of Rocket Ignition System ?

"passed"

I think you'll find that BT, like most other service providers (gas, etc.) uses the "passed" terminology to indicate the number of *potential* houses they can supply. i.e. if they cable a street with 50 houses then they have "passed" 50 houses, i.e. 50 houses which can get a connection if they want, no matter how many are current customers. It has nothing to do with copper/fibre differences.

The Dong!--the Dong!

So in future, before we have sex with someone we'll have to see if they glow in the dark?

Maybe Edward Lear was right all along, and I thought luminous *condoms* were weird.

Ah well

I used to trust Zagat. I suppose it will now rate based on advertiser clicks :(

At daybreak?

Smugglers waiting for daybreak? Lazy sods, what is the world coming to. "the darkest night is the smugglers time".

Super soldiers next?

What next, overclocked squaddies? They only last for a war, but get so much more done...