Re: This planet is an endless source of amusement

But it's such a shame the neighbourhood is going down.

Re: Sadly

"Obeying the rules and doing nothing wrong doesnt necessarily mean the same thing."

Too true: "I was only obeying orders" did not prevent many from being executed.

Re: Lucky

It's not fair, actually knowing what you're talking about. It's much better to slag someone off because someone you met in a pub knew someone on Facebook that said they killed kittens for fun.

Re: 'Cost' for an e-book

@Pen-y-gors

Indeed they are overpriced, so much so that I have gone back to buying paper books secondhand unless the ebook version is reasonably priced.

Re: beyond a joke

Overweight, yes, flimsy, no.

Re: beyond a joke

Have you used it?

Re: I wonder how much of the opposition matches mine?

I am a private pilot. I cannot remember the last time anyone asked to see my passport when flying between here and France.

Re: So, when do YOU start the posters and the street signs ?

@ The Big Yin

I contacted mine, for all the good it did. He didn't quite say 'think of the children', but it came close.

For anyone that's interested, here are his honeyed words:

"Communications data is vital for the police in their fight against crime, including serious offences such as child abuse, drug dealing and terrorism.

It is important that we get the balance right between upholding civil liberties and the right to privacy and protecting the public by maintaining the ability of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies to access vital communications data in an ever more dangerous world. Communications data has played a role in 95 per cent of all serious organised crime investigations and every major Security Service counter-terrorism operation over the last decade. Already a quarter of communications data required by the police and agencies can no longer be acquired because the relevant data is not available at the necessary level of quality and timeliness – we need to halt and reverse this.

I would like to make it clear that the Government has no intention to provide the police and others with new powers to intercept and read e-mails and phone calls. The proposals do not weaken current safeguards or checks in place to protect private correspondence. There are no powers to share this information with private investigators or journalists and indeed there are serious sanctions for abusing access to personal data. What it does allow is the police and intelligence services to access this contextual information on the internet in the same way as they can currently access it via telephone records. Under no circumstances will these proposals authorise the interception and storage of the content of a communication – what was written in an e-mail or said over the telephone. That will always require a warrant signed by the Secretary of State.

As you may be aware, the Intelligence and Security Committee and a joint committee of both Houses recently conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Communications Data Bill. The Home Office considered the recommendations of these committees and will be accepting the substance of all of them and re-drafting the legislation on that basis.

I hope that I have gone some way towards addressing your concerns. Thank you for drawing this issue to my attention."

The terribly depressing thing is that they're all as bad as each other.

Re: Looking for more?

You want to see my border collie doing agility; slow, she is not.

Re: Once again, people miss the point ...

Couldn't agree more. I now see if anyone is selling a second-hand 'real' copy of the book, it's almost invariably cheaper, often much cheaper, so I've gone back to doing that. It shouldn't be necessary.

Re: The welsh lobby

Well - and I'm just guessing here - it could be that it's because a sizeable proportion of the UK's population lives in London or its environs.

But fortunately, my MP has told me that I have nothing to worry about and the data collected would never be misused. Phew!

I recently moved from an HTC Desire Z to a Lumia 920 and the battery life is certainly better than it was on the HTC. If you're not big on apps - and I'm not - it's a great phone. Maps are superb, so is voice, internet, email, messaging...couldn't care less about anything else.

Re: richard.cartledge@snc.ac.uk

@boltar

If I could vote you up ten times, I would.

Re: I can't wait to see...

@Michael Habel...and, in English?

Re: Me not buy Windows for a loooong time.

@Destroyallmonsters:

Don't be silly.

Re: @Homer 1 (was:Misplaced admiration)

Michael Parkinson bought me a pint once. Honestly.

Re: Lies...damn lies...and statistics.

@Ben Rose:

Stop it, stop it! You're using facts and that's just not fair. Please stick to prejudice and emotion in any future discussions.

Brilliant post, thank you.

Re: "low lying Pacific Islands"

Stop it, stop it. We can't allow facts to be used in this argument.

Re: No bathrooms

@AC 28/02 05:33:

A good post. I, too, was a sufferer and found that for most people, depression was a joke disease, no, not even a disease. Until you've been there, believe me, it's no joke.

Re: King Jimmy's Wiki-mess

Evidence, please?

Like so many others, I accept that there are occasions when Wikipedia is baffling, inconsistent, biased or just plain wrong. However, for most of the stuff I'm interested in, which tends to be scientific, it's a useful resource and I should be very sad not to have it.

Glasses really can be half full, you know.

Re: Wikipedia as a reference? ...

@John H Woods

I'm baffled anyone saw fit to downvote your very sensible post.

Re: Who cares?

Wow! Do you know where I can get one?

Re: A somewhat harsh editorial...

Being an old person who uses his phone for phoning, text, email and maps, and little else, I have to say I love my Lumia 920 and it's got a great camera. As you say, it integrates well into the world of Exchange, and that's just what I want. Battery life's pretty good, too.

You say 'wouldn't see a benefit in funding commercial stations' as if it were a bad thing!

There is almost always something better to do than watch tv, especially ITV.

Re: They were warned.

Unbearable? Maybe I have my fortitude than you.

Re: Unsurprising really..

Couldn't agree more. I lost my HTC Desire Z and bought a Lumia 920 cheap on ebay. It's great, it does everything I want it to do and the battery life is certainly better than the Desire. The call quality is better, the GPS is much better, Nokia Maps - terrific. The only thing I really, really miss is the proper keyboard of the Desire.

Re: We've had wind and solar power, like forever.

And fortunately, as all proponents of hydrocarbons know for an absolute fact, oil/coal will NEVER run out and can only get cheaper as time goes on. So there is no point whatsoever at looking for any alternatives.

Re: Surprisingly

I think you use the word 'rabid' correctly. If you truly feel this strong about a piece of IT equipment because it does not fit in with your dogma, you have a problem and should seek help.

Re: Now if only

Couldn't agree more. TV is largely drivel no matter what the resolution. There are other ways to pass one's time.

Baffling

That people should choose a service based on the interface of the software rather than the content.

Re: I am going to University in sept this year.

Based on what experience? I'm guessing nothing as convincing as actually using it?

Re: New features...

Couldn't agree more. I did a trial, but their content, compared to Lovefilm, is decidedly lacking. I am not so desperate that I can't wait for DVDs in the post.

Re: 'The UK attitude is it is inherently less safe with a third party'

I wonder what you do for a living?

No one is going to take such good care of your property as you will.

Re: well thats a surprise

"The only downside is that you will have to get to grips with Linux and its command line interface to actually get it working more or less." Well, for an awful lot of people, that's a pretty big downside.

By the way, 'you're getting', not 'your getting', and the correct second person singular/plural in English is 'you' unless you especially want to sound like a teenager.

I love my Thinkpad, and since I upgraded from Win 7 Pro to Win 8, it's even better. I don't care to enter into a pointless Win 8 argument, but the reality is that it starts up and shuts down quickly and as I spend most of my time in email, browsing or using Mathematica, I find it difficult to get that fired up about the change in UI.

Re: Brits are so outraged by Amazon,

@Petrolhead

That's fine if you're absolutely ok with them making use of UK services without paying for them. I am not.

Re: Come on Valve, work on linux, ...

You should realise that you will get downvoted here for telling the truth.

Re: Hearts and minds

For years I thought it was my pa, but I think you're right, it probably wasn't.

Re: Or could it be....

Works for me. I've almost stopped buying ebooks, they're ludicrously priced considering their many disadvantages. I now find the book I want and then see who's selling it secondhand. I got AN Wilson's excellent book The Victorians, in hardback, for £2.90 including postage. Ebooks are a great idea, but wildly overpriced - and difficult to lend. Lots of good free stuff, though.

Re: Something doesn't add up

@Mike Flugennock

So, you spent a lot of time scraping viruses and rootkits out of your system did you? How much time? Be honest. I support 100 Windows desktops - not massive, I know - and haven't had to do that once yet, in ten years.

As for updates, you say that as if it were a bad thing. Do Apple not have updates? Oh, yes they do, and they constantly try to reinstall that pile of junk iTunes which I really don't want to use.

I would love to see an honest, properly costed analysis of these 'huge savings' that people talk of, or is the reality 'I just have to have a Mac because I'm, you know, creative....'?