I'm glad I'm not

I'm glad I'm not in charge of the project to move the whole of Google from GFS to GFS2. Good luck to whoever is. I hope they are wearing massively reinforced underwear when the time comes to press that button!

Did this

I did this for several years during school and later university. It's a perfect job for all the students who are complaining there are no seasonal jobs to go around because of the recession. Of course, it's hard, physical labour and involves wielding a big, heavy, very sharp knife so the Student Union/Elf'n'Safety brigade would probably put a kibosh on that!

Syringe?

You're planning on launching a hypodermic needle to a high altitude and then let it fall back down to earth?

Greed with above

£70 bought me a Casio Exlim with 8.1mp, a case and a 2GB SD card. It's fast, the image stabilisation works a treat and 90% of the pictures it's produced so far have been 1st class - and that's in the hands of my (nearly) 60-year-old mother for whom I bought it as a birthday present. For £170 I'd expect the camera to take the memory card out, load it in the PC, copy the pics over, select the best one and print it for me (though I am a tight-wad).

Dead simple

A) Don't buy them

B) (in the UK at least) a Warranty does NOT limit consumer rights - even if that is exactly how most companies try to use them. I had a repair for a disintegrating stylus silo on an XDA MiniS rejected because the water sticker had activated and this "invalidated the warranty". I pointed out that my repair had nothing to do with water, I wasn't applying under the warranty and if O2 REALLY wanted to stand up in court and claim it was I'd be happy to give them that opportunity. A manager promptly appeared apologising profusely etc. etc.

Re: Nigel Callaghan

I don't get your "Really this is only a commuter and pottering round town vehicle, so with annual mileage of perhaps only 5K" and "We need a leccy car with a 500 mile range minimum". My Clio is used primarily for commuting with a bit of running around (we have a larger "family" car for when the kids need transporting). I have a relatively short commute of 35 miles (round trip) but it still does 12,000 miles a year. This is an absolutely perfect commuter car for anyone with a round-trip commute of 80 miles or less (bit risky pushing it to the full 100!).

Also, our council provides free parking spaces with free re-charging for electric cars (not sure how the justify that, but that's a different discussion). So, for £15k (£20k less the government £5k subsidy) I can drive to work, park for free, have the car charge for free and then drive home without the battery even getting close to running out. And, as long as I'm reasonably careful, I should be able to get a couple of trips out of it at the weekend without having to pay to recharge it at home.

For 12,000 miles at 9p a mile plus a saving of £4/day parking I'm saving £2000 a year. So the car is basically free within 7.5 years (yes, ignoring running costs!). Where can I put my name down?

@ Chris W

> That's exactly the sort of thinking that falls into the hands of politicians pandering to the masses

Marvellous. How glad I am to have someone like you looking after my best interests (i.e. whatever you tell me they are). With people like you to tell everyone what to think and correct them when they go wrong it won't be long before the evil politicians all fall on their swords and we can go back to living that free life of endless summers, jumpers for goalposts and cheeky scamps having their ears tweaked by the local bobby. God bless the queen, guvnor!

foxmarks

It's not only been available in Foxmarks for years (minus the history synch) but, as Foxmarks is cross-browser, I can synch it with IE8. And yes, there are sites that look better with IE8 or only work with IE8 - all Microsoft ones, obviously, but it's still handy to have all my bookmarks and password history waiting for me on the odd occasion I fire it up.

Sorry, Opera who? No use claiming you invented something if no-one ever gets to hear about it!

Re: Silverlight

It's flash for the six month trial. Silverlight thereafter (if successful). and no, I don't have the foggiest why they're doing it that way around.

Git Wizard 1

It is, after all, an entirely pointless stunt designed to garner maximum publicity.

Genius!

Certainly beats the occasion I ordered a 3-in-1 printer and printer cable from Amazon and the cable arrived in an identical box to the printer (and at the same time). Was too dumb(founded) to take pics unfortunately.

Eh? Sacrilege

Whilst there are a few snobs around who would sniff at the idea, fine malt should ALWAYS have a drop of good, warm water added first. Particularly if it's one of these high-strength special bottlings.

Right, with that off my chest I can carry on and read past the first line now.

Be interested to know what they had in mind by "Career Development"

The only career development I've ever been aware of was to go from being in a technical role to being a people manager with the odd bit of technical work thrown in to stop you getting bored. And, having seen how god awful most technical specialists are at people management (the classic case of being promoted out of anything you are good at until you find something you can't do and get stuck there) I've turned down every attempt by my company to "promote" me into management.

I don't need it. I get those sorts of kicks outside of work by being a parent and a mountain rescue team leader. In the office, I'll stick to doing what (I hope) I'm good at. I don't need the hypocrisy of spending years complaining about how crap my bosses are only to become a crap boss just for a few extra grand a year. And I'm happy to admit I would be a truly terrible manager.

Not quite the gist

If you listen to the whole interview he isn't saying we have enough camera's or that we should never increase. He's just saying we have too many camera's for the resources available at the moment. We should stop for a while and plough that money into people, training, systems and procedures so that we can start making the most of the CCTV cameras we have today.

He didn't actually say it but it was implied that he would then be happy for the crappy, poor quality cameras to be replaced and for new, high-quality cameras to go up.

To suggest he was in some way anti-cameras or believed there were enough does not represent what I heard when I listened to the whole interview yesterday evening. He was quite clearly pro-cameras and believed there was an assumption amongst the public that, when crime takes place, someone will be watching on a CCTV camera and the perpetrators will subsequently be caught. He clearly believes the public backs ubiquitous CCTV.

Re: Weary

Unless your house it about a mile long would it not be quicker to walk to one of the other PC's, lookup the recipe, print it off and walk back to the kitchen?

And if your house is a mile long a) Well done, b) Why are you cooking?

@ OkKTY8KK5U

"Not that I haven't submitted bug reports and even voted on them - it just becomes clear that the devs don't care. Just like the Microsoft response "shut up and deal with it" to complaints about the execrable "ribbon" they inflicted on their users. "

Did you ever consider that it might just be a case of not everyone agreeing with your point of view? I believe MS published the results of user studies into the ribbon interface and those who didn't like it amounted to about 4.5%.

Sorry to disappoint your obvious sense of self-importance but, far from sticking our heads in the sand, us developers do listen and we tend to act on what the majority of users want, not just what you want.

Re: Bilgepipe

> If I want Firefox then wouldn't I have to install IE first

No. Most magazines come with a DVD filled with umpteen different browsers. Also, how many people only have access to one PC nowadays? It's a very simple matter to download (as an example) the setup.exe for firefox from another PC in the house or a friends computer, stick it on a USB key and then run it after installing Windows 7.

Although I think the whole thing is ridiculous. No one is making Apple remove Safari from OSX. If a user REALLY wants a different browser on the PC before they buy it there are any number of PC builders who, I'm sure, would be only too happy to stick Opera/Firefox or whatever on there to get a sale.

For people who know nothing about PC's, Microsoft bundles a browser. For those of us who know what we're doing, the choice is there. I really don't get where the problem is?

BBC Interview this morning

There was a very funny interview on BBC breakfast this morning. They did there usual job of getting two polar opposites to argue the toss. One, a children's author (never heard of him, never heard of his books) and the head of a teaching union. The first, deliberately leading question went to the author with the obvious expectation that he would be frothing at the mouth about this afront to his reputation.

The interviewers were quite visibly pissed off when he cheerily admitted he thought the plan was an excellent idea and saw no reason why he shouldn't be vetted in the same way as everyone else.

Clearly, the researchers had not done their jobs. Rather than a slanging match we ended up with an intelligent, articulate author presenting a well-reasoned argument. Most un-BBC.

This is what I've been looking for

We've been wanting an all-in-one with a decent sized screen that can be wall mounted for a while now. Lets hope, like the home XPS range, this comes in 24" varieties.

Fraud

To the couple of posters asking about this not being flagged as fraud or irregular activity, as others have mentioned, this amount almost certainly never existed in any financial system. It's just an error in the way the report was generated. Those fraud detection systems monitor transactions as they come in and look for certain patterns (a common one being several consecutive payments for a small amount - to check a "generated" number is actually an active card).

So no, VISA would not have flagged this up as fraud and blocked the card.

Re: Hollywood is overpaid

So might I suggest you stop paying $60-80 for a movie and $100/month for your telly? It's no use complaining about Hollywood. As you rightly point out, it's YOU who are paying the ridiculous salaries so grow a pair yourself and stop paying them!

Amazing

So 40.8% of SMEs intend upgrading to Windows7 within 15 months of it's launch? I find that incredible. I quite like Windows 7 (then again, I didn't have any major problems with Vista) but I won't be making a business case for our company to upgrade to it. That not too far from half of companies plan to before the product has even shipped I find almost unbelievable.

Could be nice

Might be okay - you'd need to play with one, find out the battery life, is there an SD card sot etc. - but I don't think I'd pay over £100 for one. You can get an Elonex Webook for £99 so I don't see why you'd pay 60% more for one of these.

It's a tricky one

On the one hand, he is inextricably linked with Apple to the point where his health has a direct impact on the share price. On the other, he's just a bloke and perfectly entitled to take time off to look after himself without answering a load of questions.

In this case, I'd probably suggest Apple ARE out of order but not because they didn't publish every detail of Jobs' health problems. Any public company that has become so completely reliable on one individual without an obvious line of succession is in breach of it's duty to it's shareholders. I'd say the shareholders themselves should see this as a wake-up call and should be asking the board where the backup plan is?

Sounds familiar

I've been using the plusmo app from cricinfo for ages on my Windows Mobile phone. Not only does it cover all that the ECB app does, but I get the usual ball-by-ball commentary from cricinfo. Not sure if it's available for iPhone yet but well worth a look if (like me) your corporate internet policy blocks sports commentary (for some reason, they don't believe following the Ashes, ball by ball, is work related).

Oh, and very low data useage as well - for those not on unlimited* data bundles

* unlimited data bundles are limited to whatever the hell we say they are so tough.

"pre" boiled?

As the prefix "Pre" means BEFORE, surely a preboiled egg is an egg before it's been boiled. Or, in fact, just "an egg". If it's also been shelled I would hope it arrives in a little plastic bag.

A few years ago, the idea of someone selling boiled eggs would have been surprising. Today, it's rather "meh". I know catering wholesalers have been offering such for a long time. Sandwich shops will happily buy cheap, boiled, shelled eggs for making egg-mayo etc. But at 45p per egg, I can't really see these taking off.

In fairness

Their analysis will be somewhat unrepresentative. The average shower waste doesn't include several pints of blood.

I'd have thought

...with all the focus on that list on healing illness, repairing organs and living forever, a larger planet, food replicators and/or human sterilisation had better be pretty near the top of most peoples wish lists.

I don't fancy living for ever on a planet with a couple of hundred billion others all fighting over the last remaining scraps of food.

Oh, and for me it has to be teleportation. I could teleport into the bosses office, slap him across his smug little face and be out of there again before he realised what had happened.

Re: Anonymous Coward @ 10:54

I'm with you. I've been coding since the early 80s and the assumption has always been the users are morons and there is no such thing as common sense so you have to verify EVERY piece of data you allow into your system.

I can't remember who said it but I think "Idiot Proof? Idiots are surprisingly resourceful!" sums it up quite well.