See what you can't do

Isn't there a monopolies issue here? A large number of people are effectively being denied access to arguably the two top smartphones on the market. I could jump ship to O2 but having just bought an O2 mobile broadband dongle (which I shall be returning imminently) it seems unlikely.

PS: If you are tempted to go for O2 mobile broadband my experience is poor coverage; ludicrous software that tries to take over your machine (e.g. [mis]manage all your wifi networking) and then GPFs if you do anything 'unusual' (like resume from suspend) - no distinction between weak network and authentication errors. Oh and I still haven't managed to connect even once whilst out and about.

@Stu4

"I'm mid 30s. Look mid 20s (maybe its being single ages you less). I earn approx 90K a year. I am reasonably attractive looking, swimmers build. I have fast cars, nice motorbike.. I sky dive, scuba dive, fly my own aircraft. ... All in all, I'd have thought I was a decent catch."

Not sure about that. I hate you already and I have only just met you.

Pointsec

I banged on and on about whole-disk encryption for ages and my company finally brought in PointSec (not due to me tho!). It is absolutely great and almost problem free. The only disadvantage I have come across is resume-from-hibernate takes somewhat longer than before - regular booting is not noticeably different.

Unfortunately we have the stupid password expiry policy that many big companies have ... password expiry is a kind of religious mantra that I don't understand. Every single person I know users weaker passwords than they would like to because of password expiry policies. So that's what I'll bang on and on about now.

BTW I note a lot of laptop advertising lists wide-angle viewability as if it is a good thing. Surely it is nearly always the opposite?

Even the word 'grey' ...

... is unacceptable, with its connotations of half-way to being a black market. Why is it that companies can exploit globalisation and consumers cannot? I suggest if the companies keep using the term 'grey imports' we should call their operations 'grey manufacturing'.

Lucky?

Is this lucky? or unlukcy? I can't decide!

Old Timer's Disease

We'll all end up like that sooner or later (or die in the process). You just can't predict old(er) people. My mum is a silver surfer, and was the one who showed me that you can put the windows task bar in a much more sensible position (i.e. on the left). She responded to constant arguments in their walking group about how far they walked by using a GPS.

However, despite her intelligence, long term readership of the quality press, and general online savvy, she comes out with the occasional corker: "You can't give your 14 yo daughter 20 quid a week ... we only gave you 10 when you were 14!" Inflation seems very hard for some people to grasp. I guess one just loses one's cognitive flexibility as one ages... where was I again?

Bing = Obvious Name

Surely world+dog realises that Bing is a recursive acronym for Bing Is Not Google? I'd have plumped for Zing though.

Dvorak

That is all.

Weird Maths

So, less than 5% of the items they bought were counterfeit? I'm amazed. Surely that shows that e-bay is not that bad after all?

17% of the items were 'not for sale'. What? Do they mean free gifts, test samples etc? Tough luck. Surely people have the right to sell something they legitimately own, whether or not it is marked 'not for resale'

Loreal's real problem is that nearly 50% of the e-bay sales are of grey imports. Well tough luck again. Corporations exploit globalisation - why shouldn't consumers?

Most interestingly though, what was the 287th product? Hopefully rounding error, because if it's not legitimate, not grey, not fake, and not a non-sale item - what on earth is it? :-)

@Jake: The Sun Inn

I think you may be thinking of The Sun Inn, Osmotherly - which I think is in the Moors, not the Dales.

This had unbelievably good food for a while (you ordered what looked like slightly expensive pub grub and got Cordon Bleu) you were waiting for Jeremy Beadle to jump out at the end of the meal.

However, I heard that the reason it was so excellent is that a Michelin-Starred chef at the nearby Cleveland Tontine sacked a member of his kitchen, who was then reinstated by a manager with whom said staffer was having an affair. Result: Chef collects up knives and hat and walks to nearest pub and offers to do food for them.

It was pure heaven whilst it lasted.

Anecdotal, I know but

I have bought or encouraged family and friends to buy tosh laptops (from Morgan normally) and they have all been very happy. My company tend to use lenovos - the old stinkpads. Not only impressive build quality but surprisingly tolerant of knocks, drops and even spills. Not that *I* treat *MY* laptop that way, of course, but I know colleagues have got away with taking amazing liberties with their hardware.

I know a lot of people have opined that 400 respondents is a too small sample size but my response represents knowledge of dozens of machines and I should think some respondents response is based on experience of hundreds of machines: asking El Reg readers is a bit different from an owner survey.

Glory? I think not!

Without detracting at all from the courage of the complainant I note the following [MY CAPS]:

Lord Justice Jacob praised Ferguson for taking a stand against the company at GREAT PERSONAL FINANCIAL RISK. "It is one of the GLORIES of this country that every now and then one of its citizens is prepared to take a stand against the big battalions of government or industry ... were she ultimately to lose she would probably have to pay British Gas's CONSIDERABLE costs."

Surely it is one of the huge iniquities of this country that in taking any organisation - or even well funded person - to court you take on an unlimited and uninsurable liability. This largely constrains such actions to those in society who have nothing to lose and those who have a large surfeit of capital. The 'middle class' are effectively forbidden recourse in law.

My ex wife received, over 8 years, a six figure sum from the Legal Services Commission, to bring a succession of child residence and financial cases against me. She will never have to pay it back, and despite the fact she lost every case, I have to shoulder the enormous debt that I accumulated in contesting these cases. Naturally, solicitors given access to unlimited funding, either through the LSC or by virtue of the resources of their client, attempt to win their cases by outspending their opponents. This seems to me to run absolutely counter to the requirements of justice in this regard.

off topic: pounds and ounces

Please let us keep the ounce! Just redefine 1oz = exactly 25g and 1lb =20 oz. That makes an ounce slightly lighter, an a pound slightly heavier but keeps Ye Olde English tradition alive and gives us more useful measurements for cooking (1g useless for anything but salt, 1kg useless for anything but potatoes). I'm sure the Germans have a Pfund which is exactly 500g.

Campaign anyone?

What????

How could google possibly afford to serve free (well, advert-supported) searches if they emitted 7g of CO2? The fuel costs would be phenomenal if the searches needed this much energy. I bet he has calculated it as if only one person is using the servers at a time.

Even if this is true, which I bet it isn't, how much would it cost to drive to the library to look things up?

750GB in my SKY HD box

Sky HD box ships with a 300GB drive of which Sky take a big chunk for 'anytime' where they control what gets recorded. That leaves you with less than 30Hrs of HD recording. I swapped my drive for a 750GB samsung on the day I bought it and it has worked perfectly until recently when I have had a few glitches. All solved by BRS (big red switch) reset, or Planner Rebuild on the hidden menu (services -> 4 -> 0 -> 1 -> select), and generally the box works pretty well.

But fair play to Sky, people - they are entitled to tell you 'if you did this, you did it at your own risk' but they are still trying to address the problem. Of course I'd like to be able to plug in a nice big 1TB+ array into the E-SATA socket on the back (which doesn't function afaics) but I have to say both this box and my old 40 (now a 250) have delivered very good value for money. I would buy a new box tomorrow if I had to (and I'd upgrade it before plugging it in).

N and L

... are adjacent on a sensible keyboard, where they occupy the positions of L and P on the qweerty keyboard favoured by those who like to strain their fingers.

... real Amazons were famous for their bravery --- cutting off one of their breasts to be better warriors. This Amazon seems to have cut off its own balls by mistake.

Scientology is a cult and its 'elite' are the dregs. They exploit the vulnerable with a bogus 'religion' that was invented as a money making gambit. I got sucked into doing one of their 'questionnaires' once and realized it was a set up. I used the randomizing function on my watch to fill it in and was later told that it showed distinct personality traits. When I challenged them as frauds I was physically ejected from the building.

Not AC because 'm not frightened of frauds and nutters.

Dr John H Woods

WEEE = scrap metal

I always take my WEEE to the local dump, and they always tell me to toss it in with the scrap metal.

The Wrong Hands?

"Creating huge databases containing personal information is never a risk-free option as it is not possible to fully eliminate the danger that the data will fall into the wrong hands."

Such as those of the government?

Some religious types

My son's mother's parents had a hissy fit when he defended his brother who had said 'For God's Sake!" He was made to sit on the stairs and miss his tea (he is 12). Fortunately he lives with me most of the time, in an antitheist household.

However, a great friend of mine, who is a _real_ Christian (i.e. always has homeless people sleeping on his floor, always working in a soup kitchen etc) was horrified when I told him and simply said, quietly "do you think Jesus would have made him sit on the naughty step?" He opined that a small minority of religious people, whatever their faith, think that religion is about rules for others and not about how you should live your own life.

When I first read this story I had the knee-jerk reaction of an antitheist, compariing it unfavourably with the R:FoM affair - if Sony had had the guts to stand up to Christains, why not Muslims? But by the time I had read all the comments I had changed my mind. However much you don't respect / disrespect other people's beliefs, why not avoid offending them if you can easily do so?

As often with El Reg, the comments are the best reason for reading. Now, let's all share the love and keep our conflict where it belongs: within the confines of video games.

Smalltalk

Thats all.

Fellatio Kills ...

... on the motorway.

But honestly, what a faithtard.