Now there's a surprise

So let me get this straight, a company providing escrow services releases a study to promote the service it provides? Colour me shocked.

Enhancements from the MBP?

Odd, my 2006-vintage Macbook also has a magsafe power connector and magnetic latch...

Windows 3.1 added support for long file names

Did it? I could swear that was 95...

For the *nix users

I've been running it quite happily under Wine for a week or two. No complaints.

@Jamie

"after having partaken in some herbs" ... "I use that money to pay for service at say a petrol station"

Surely not a good idea to be driving having "partaken in some herbs"?

I know what sort of "updates" we'll get.

"50" to become "30", "40" to become "20", and "30" to become "must have man with red flag walking in front"

Sigh.

The old argument

The "you can't build your way out of congestion" argument always comes up with this sort of story. Of course you can. There are a finite people with driving licenses in the country, which isn't that far off the current traffic levels. So unless we all suddenly develop the ability to drive several cars at once, where is this extra traffic supposed to come from?

Much of the congestion is due to the fact that our road network hasn't been significantly enhanced since the 1970s, other than the odd white elephant (M6 Toll anyone?). Add to that the already bursting at the seams train services, and the fact that buses anywhere outside of large municipalities are next to useless, and the whole "oh, we could let people drive on the hard shoulder" idea is like icing a burnt cake. The idea of charging for the privilege of sitting in a traffic jam is just insulting - as if anyone does that for the fun of it?

Why oh why

Why on earth do phone manufacturers persist on having those horrible tiny loudspeakers built in? The sound quality is always terrible, and the only people who use them are chavs on public transport. A headphone socket would be perfectly adequate.

Then again, the advert for this phone shows exactly who they are aiming it at...

Somebody call Roy Walker

"Say goodbye, Mr Fish."

He's waving.

Just the job

If they're still doing the offer when my current 3 year-old Sony Ericsson kicks the bucket, I'll be right along there. I don't need a camera, MP3 player, radio or kitchen sink on my phone, so a basic model for a fiver will do me nicely. And as for PAYG costing more - I currently top up £20 about every 3 months, so there's no point in me paying that much a month on some daft contract.

So yes, there's definitely a market for this sort of thing. Not so long ago, a retailer I worked for stocked a basic Samsung model for £20, but gave away a £10 gift voucher with each one - they flew out.

I used to work in a hardware store...

...the number of people we'd get in who'd been sent by their bosses to buy these items.

We used to pass them over to particularly gullible members of staff who didn't know any better - "The gentleman would like some Tartan Paint, can you show him where it is? We keep it by the Hammerite..."