Perhaps he should be 'interred' for his own protection - geddit?

I'm told that the scratters from our local estates sometimes gather cigarette ends from outside local pubs, where the now-banned smokers stand, and drop them at burglary sites to pollute the DNA evidence. The funny bit is that most of the local pubs where they collect those from are pretty exclusively patronised by crooks and drug -dealers anyhow.

The Really Big Hard On Collider? I want to know where that's located please. Sounds much better than the puny efforts of Paris and her mates

I second the call for a brown (funny name that) paper envelope icon. There's way too much casual corruption in our system these days. I don't think there is a lot of overt corruption, but the 'we have always done it this way' gradual creep of institutionalized corruption.

Like MP's expenses as a classic example.

The Payroll Vote (look it up).

Our political system is corrupt top to bottom but it just doesn't realise it. Intellectually and morally corrupt, not so much direct bribery.

What's wrong with collecting and filing the DNA profiles on all unsolved crimes, then when poor Joe Public is arrested and swabbed

- check to see if he's one of the wanted ones

- if not, delete the sample

Since by all accounts the great majority of crimes are committed by a small number of diehards this would quickly sieve most of them out AND act as a big deterrent to someone guilty but as-yet -unpunished to not do anything that might lead to arrest

Since I care, frankly, much more about preventing future crimes than those already commited (you can't uncommit them and punishing people seems an expensive waste of time) doesn't this actually achieve what we want?

Maybe I've missed something ... sure someone will enlighten me

Was he interred in the lagoon?

I've long supported the tradition of beer and curry myself, with devices named tiger, landlord, cobra, balti, korma, roti ... it's enough for a modest network as long as you don't fall into the trap of naming the currently-hottest one vindaloo or phal only to be embarrassed a few years later when you realise it's now as comparatively spicy as a raita.

Here if ever the case was the need for legislation (and an outside body controlling it) which places a duty on ministers not to indulge in contracts which, in the view of the courts, contains clauses tantamount to poison pills. If a minister willingly signs a contract which unreasonably constrains a later change of government, they should be legally responsible for that with severe criminal penalties.

Job done.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Good f***ing riddance.

I don't believe all this cock about having to be in Westminster. Yes, in the 18th century there was little choice - but there is increasingly little need for a physical presence in a place like the houses of parliament nowadays.

One of the businesses I'm involved in no longer has any office at all - all staff work from home and with a mixture of VoIP, Skype, instant messenger, email, phone and shared online documents we communicate much more effectively than some companies where everyone commutes into central offices. A member of staff moved to Dubai and the only difference was that he got his salary tax free rather than taxed and the company stopped having to pay National Insurance for him. Apart from that there was zero noticeable change on the work he did or the way he worked.

If the MPs got their act together a similar thing could replace a large amount of the 'we have to be there' cobblers they seem to believe. It's time for them to change working practices rather than sticking to their outmoded antiquated working methods.

That'll be a swarm - how bees reproduce. The colony grows in spring, produces a new queen or three and a goodly chunk of the existing bees plus a queen go and look for a new place to colonise while those that remain in the original hive reproduce like fury to make up the numbers again.

It's a strange time of year. I lifted the lids on my hives yesterday and instead of the early-season numbers I expected they were bursting at the seams replete with swathes of honey. Mind you, the rape is already in full blossom locally so it's probably all rape honey that will set solid now the weather has turned cold. Time to split them and double the numbers before the beggars swarm.

.. would be some proper scientific action.

The amount spent on the National Bee Unit can't be judged in context unless we actually know what happens if we lose the bee population. Ok, I'll be sad if my colonies die but it's not the end of the world for me. However, if that badly affects the overall food chain that is REALLY SERIOUS. And all I have ever seen is speculation as to what it would mean in practice. How much of our food is critically dependent on bee pollination and would anything else fill the gap?

Alongside that it would seem a useful precaution to siphon off a gnat's cock width of the ridiculous billions being pissed away on ID cards and Connecting for Health and invest in some serious work to try to breed Varroa-resistant strains (ideally) or failing that, a miticide that actually works. And whilst on the case for that, try to find out whether we really do have other problems affecting the bee population since as far as I can tell all we really have is a lot of anecdote and confusion at present.

There's a limit to what amateur bee keepers can do no matter how motivated they are. Protecting the security of the food chain however - now it seems to me that's one of the reasons you might want a government.

Shock, horror - OMG - an unencrypted feed! Who would have thought that they would ever exist?

Apart from EVERY F*CKER who had a steerable dish in the nineties. There were hundreds of clear feeds used for TV news gathering, even whole columns dedicated to spotting them in the satellite magazines of the day. On a poor day for official programmes, it was often more fun to point the dish at, say 1 degree west, and watch the UK-US news feeds then see them pop up edited on the news later.

Now things have gone digital they are more likely to be encrypted but when Diana went titsup that was probably the exception rather than the norm.

Give us a break.

I thought the US power supply was typically two-phase 110volt. Low power circuits run on 110 volts off one phase, high-powered heating and cooking equipment uses both phases for 220v.

In that case, no transformer is needed, though a 220v spur would be needed off the distribution board into the garage or wherever.

If the rogue 'secure' site serves up a certificate for www.bankofamerica.com that certificate still isn't going to be signed by a trusted Certificate Authority so the punter will get a warning pop-up. Some will probably click through so the goal will have been partially achieved.

To overcome savvy users you would need to get a rogue certificate signed by the CA. That's not going to be easy for an obvious name like bankofamerica.

However, given that you can get a server certificate for peanuts nowadays just by waving a credit card and if you go for a domain name like bnakofamerica.com (i.e. a typo) or, as Alliance and Leicester seem to do, direct to an unrelated domain name (mybusinessbank.co.uk) then it will be a lot easier to have a domain with matching and signed certificate. It takes an alert user to spot that one.

Lots of scope for tricking the punter here! This looks like a pretty nasty vulnerability.

"only .uk domains require manual intervetion ot a $35 charge per NS change"

Eh? Last time I did a nameserver change it was free. Admittedly years ago I signed up as a reseller for Nominet, but all I have to do is send a pgp-signed request and it's entirely automatic.

Who is charging you that much to make such a simple change?

"Given the use of anti terror law to freeze Icelandic bank assets there is no doubt that this mega database will eventually be put to use against benefit fraud and parking fines"

Charlie mate - that's why they are doing it in the first place. It's nothing to do with terrorism it's to do with tax collection, benefit fraud, money laundering (in distant 3rd place) and then anything else they can do to stop us doing what they don't like.

That warning label is hilarious! Please please please start selling some of those with sticky backs on peel-off rolls!

PAN PAN is the approved way of writing the Urgency call. If you take a look at the Civil Aviation Authority (that's the UK one) document CAP 413, "Radiotelephony Manual" chapter 8 states:

1.2.2 The pilot should make the appropriate emergency call as follows:

a) Distress 'MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY'

b) Urgency 'PAN PAN , PAN PAN, PAN PAN'

Yes, it's based on the French (apparently) but not spelled that way in the official blurb.

Out of interest - in what way is email connected to running websites? Mail servers are typically in no way related to web serving and are usually in entirely different locations on completely different networks.

This sounds (on the face of it) like complete and utter bollocks being spouted by a clueless numpty.

People should ask for the circuit diagrams too. It's not good enough to calibrate these things on standardised samples and then argue that that 'proves' they are accurate. For all we know the software has arithmetic overflow or underflow when converting the a/d converter values into parts per thousand, it may have provable race conditions, dependencies on date/time or any one of dozens of typical software-only faults. Similar voltage-level dependencies could easily exist in the analogue circuitry - only a detailed design review by honest third parties can give good assurances to the contrary.

The fact that they won't hand the code over strongly suggest that it's never been quality audited or properly reviewed and may well indeed have dozens of stupid bugs in it.

I don't want to see drunken drivers get off, but neither should they be subject to randomness in their convictions.

If you go into the civil engineering profession, there are consulting engineers who you can hire to keep your contractors honest. They'll watch the contractors like hawks to make sure they aren't cutting corners or stitching you up in other ways.

Software development is still in the dark ages on this - surely a large project like connecting for health should have a whole bunch of auditors and inspectors whose only job is to check that the contractors are doing what they were contracted to do?

Why doesn't the software industry yet have that kind of specialist at work?

As this web page convincingly points out, it's very limiting at these higher frequencies:

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2001/08/20/1/?nc=1

I mean, earth-moon-earth using the moon as a passive reflector - how pathetic! No wonder they stuck to such a low frequency as 24GHz.

Alumini - is this a new term referring to those who encase themselves in tinfoil or are wearers of hats thereof?

But I know not of this DMBS of which you speak. May we be illuminated?

... how long would it be before we ever found out? And how many insecure keys would the world have by then?

In my business, if I don't deliver what the customers want, I starve or go bankrupt. I can't moan or berate my customers for being disinterested in my products.

It seems to me that politicians are in a uniquely privileged position and I'm unimpressed (I don't know an obscenity strong enough to really substitute for my diplomatic wording here) by their complaints about low turnout.

I have a solution: we know the going rate for the job of MP, Minister and so on. That rate should be paid to the incumbent pro-rata to the amount of the electorate that ACTUALLY VOTED for the lying cheating bastard. No, not the percentage that voted, the percentage of the registered electorate that actually voted for that person. So, if the PM's salary is a notional 150,000 or whatever and 40% of a 30% turnout voted for him, he gets 12% of the rate.

That's fair don't you think?

Watching the BBC report on 't telly last night, the spokesman said he was the prof in charge of the pilot and that the hydrogen was made by cracking water using wind-generated electricity.

Nowt about cow-pats.

I can't believe this is true. Although my period as a member of IST/41 (the BSI panel that is reviewing the fast-track document) was short, there was an air of intellectual honesty that gave me some modest pride being a part of it.

I really find it incomprehensible that the BSI panel might have changed its recommendation. The draft standard is truly, truly, appalling.

I will be fascinated to see if the rumor of a 5-1 change of mind is really true. If so, there will be a lot of explaining to do.

And I'd point out to anyone reading this that the panel is only advisory. If you feel that they have made a mistake, give the BSI a call on +44 (0)20 8996 9001 or email them at cservices@bsi-global.com

The ICT/-/1 (that's really its name) committee that actually decides the UK vote is only advised by IST/41, it doesn't have to abide by what they say. The BSI is supposed to work on consensus. If enough people call or contact it to tell it that it's made a mistake, it is supposed to do something about it.

If you care, get off your backside and tell them. I have already. Their vote is due in on the 29th. You have essentially one day only to influence them.

No they f***ing don't. Not any more. Maybe in the 18th century when there wasn't telephones, emails and video conferencing they did, but just as my company has had to innovate and cut costs and move towards distributed management and telecommuting SO COULD THEY.

In fact I'd love to see House of Commons votes run so that the MP MUST be in his or her constituency, in a hall with several hundred voters watching, for each parliamentary division. Then the lying corrupt creeps would have to explain exactly why they just voted for ID cards, or going into an illegal war, or whatever to some members of the public instead of hiding behind the whips or pretending 'it wasn't me'.

Surely the Marvin? Now, how can I also work the number 42 into this?

I notice a couple of posters citing Planet Rock as a reason for listening to DAB - and I'd agree, but the bad news is that's one of the ones that didn't get enough listeners and is about to be chopped.

WTF did the BBC choose to transmit its crown jewel comedy material (Radio 7) in mono? Beyond belief.

Apart from the possibility that there IS such a thing as colony collapse disorder (still the subject of some debate, though it's accepted that there is some evidence) the biggest worry for most beekeepers is the blasted Varroa mite.

There are no good remedies for Varroa, most are only partly effective and the mites are becoming resistant. Integrated Pest Management is the buzzword but it's a serious pain to do: applying different treatments at different times of year and having to do things like put drone comb in the hive then take it out and freeze it (varroa mites grow on the brood and prefer drone to worker cells) . That helps you to manage the infestation levels but not eliminate the parasite.

Some of the allegedly more effective treaments tend not to be authorised for use in food production by regulatory authorities. And of course, the main reason for keeping bees is honey production for resale.

So, yes, there are unauthorised bee treatments.

I don't claim expert levels of knowledge here, but I do keep bees and I have tried to keep up to date with my reading on the subject.

There is no shortage of doomsayers predicting the eventual disappearance of honeybees in substantial tracts of the world. The European varieties are all susceptible to Varroa, the Asian ones that aren't cant live in climates like most of North America, Europe etc.

Given the evil temper of my current crop of bees, I reckon they'd take on the Africanised lot and give 'em a seeing-to. Hard-working bastards too, they were out in force yesterday despite it being February in freezing fog, I have no idea where they are finding all the pollen at this time of year.

Oh yeah, where do I save £5 on my VAT return?

I file the blasted VAT every quarter and there is no promise of reducing my cost to them by doing so. I have demand for non-payment here as well because the morons lost my payment for the last quarter though the filing went in by electronic means and they can't find the money - at least if it went by post and they lost it, they would lose both the return AND the cheque.

It's awkward, inconvenient and though it saves them money, costs me nothing but time.

Wankers.

Is for everyone to change their name to Harry Tuttle and offer up praise for the benificent wisdom of the ruling classes whilst bending over waiting to be rogered

Remind me how many people these terrorists have killed exactly ... according to http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/accidents/casualtiesgbar/roadcasualtiesgreatbritain2005

there were approximately six people killed each DAY on the roads in the UK (the statistics will not have changed greatly from 2005).

Can we expect to see a similar response to that? I'm amazed nobody has called for these killer machines to be removed from the roads immediately, with only politicians and their drivers authorised to use the deadly streets and avenues.

Bloody hell - you would think there was no world before GPS. Yes, it's brilliant. But a must-have? There were maps before. There were accurate time signals before. I'd be pissed off if my TomTom didn't work. But I wouldn't starve to death and I don't think, given the fucked-up state socially that Europe is in, Galileo ought to be no. 1 on the priority list. It's just a dick-waving exercise for empty-headed politicians (apologies for the tautology there).

The answer from Ofcom is should be quite simple: if you don't tell us where it is, it's not licensed.

I have to tell Ofcom where my amateur radio station is located on pain of losing the licence; it's in the terms and conditions.

It's perfectly simple to do the same for the scummy toerags in the telcos. Be a laugh to see one of the execs getting banged-up for a breach of the Wireless Telegraphy Act.

Until recently Google maps have been clearly within the last 3 years over my bit of East Anglia, 'cos I could see the kids' trampoline in the back garden. I'm not sure when they switched but now the map is showing trees I cut down when I moved in 5 years ago and the previous owner's car in the drive.

Google - this is NOT progress!

Measuring the impedance of the battery usually means measuring not the voltage and current (which gives the impedance of the load, not the battery) but the internal resistance of the battery which tends to rise as it discharges. So you would watch the drop between open-circuit and on-load voltage and combining that with knowledge of the characteristics of the battery, divine more about the state of charge than you could know otherwise. To be really smart, that could be watched with time and the battery characteristics learned by observation rather than programmed-in.

And yes, with DC, impedance is the same as resistance but since with AC it's not, it's more generic (and saves thinking) to talk about impedance unless you want to be very specific.

.. is what a friend of mine from Amlwch claimed was the motto of those with over-developed ovine tendencies.

My old boozing buddy John Kettle swore that if he ever had a daughter he would call her Lydia.

My mum had a friend called Eva Upjohn.

There's a fairly accurate article about the Dinorwig pumped-water storage setup on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station

I was on a tour of the place a few years back when the man at the control desk said 'shall we wiggle the National Grid up and down a bit?' and demonstrated how Dinorwig's output is used to regulate the frequency of the mains supply in the UK.

Obvious what you should call this kind of new coinage (and in truth pretty much anything that emanates from Orange's marketing folk), a 'fuckwitticism'

Licence payers are entitled to have BBC content delivered using open standards for which anyone so minded can implement a player.

If the BBC can't find such a standard, in years gone by it would have developed one.

If it doesn't want to do that, don't ship the content.

It's that simple. The issue is not about software running on any particular platform, it's about using a proprietary and encumbered format for which there is no possibility of someone developing their own player to make it possible for punters using any particular platform to benefit.

This argument is not about open source it's about open STANDARDS. That's what makes many of the people angry.

Perhaps it’s because some of us actually care about quality. Weird and perverse I know — but if you would like to know some of what's wrong with OOXML then a good place to start is the outcome of the British Standards Institute review panel.

The work is being collated on a wiki at http://www.xmlopen.org/ooxml-wiki/index.php/DIS_29500_Comments

for everyone to see. Further material is to be found at

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070123071154671

And these only address technical deficiencies in the proposal, not the big question of why, when they knew it existed, Microsoft didn’t propose a version 2 of the ODF standard that incorporated ODF as a proper subset.

Interestingly, it’s probably impossible for anyone to conform to the current ECMA document (I can’t bring myself to call it a “standard”) since it is internally inconsistent and at present it would appear that some 10% of the examples of XML it quotes are invalid.

For it too contains petrol, gas cylinders and nails.

Actually unless the reporting about this 'bomb' has missed out the crucial element of charge to detonate the above, my garage is MORE dangerous than the London car 'bomb' since it does contain a modest quantity of nitrate explosive too in the shape of my clay-pigeon-shooting cartridges. Oh No! Perhaps Al-qaeda 0wn3 my garage!!! Hi ho, Hi ho, off to Gitmo I go ..........

Yet more ridiculous posturing from the government then.

Most weeks my local rag contains a story about some inbred idiot from around these parts who has drowned himself and some friends in one of the roadside drains (they are big and deep in East Anglia, for 'drain' read 'river') after drinking twelve or so pints of lager.

That would typically put him at 4-6 times over the existing limit of 80mg/100ml

Yep, reducing the limit to 50 mg/100ml will REALLY make him think.