Legal?

But if it's all legal, where, I ask myself, is the problem? Have we gone down the morality path here? As someone else commented, tax AVOIDANCE is perfectly legal. If the powers-that-be are unhappy about companies and individuals structuring their affairs to avoid paying too much tax, then change the law. Until then, stop grand-standing and trying to name and shame - especially as the words, pot, kettle and black come to mind with certain high-profile names, who just happen to be in politics, also allegedly trying the same "tricks" (I use the word loosely).

Cracked!

Another huge database just waiting to be cracked open. I can see hackers and spammers rubbing their hands in glee, as I speak. When will they ever learn?

Beasties

Let's hope there are no nasty hitherto unknown beastie bacterias lurking locally, ready to leap out and destroy mankind!

Penalty?

It's my understanding that if the word "penalty" is actually used on the so-called ticket, this is illegal. The "fine" is nothing more than an invoice for parking and should be treated with contempt. It is not a legal document and is merely a civil matter, despite the way it may be made up to look like an official notice. There is no compunction to actually pay these so-called "fines", as they are purely dressed-up extortion threats. I had one in the post after over-staying my welcome by a few minutes in the MacDonalds car park at one of the major airports. (Despicable that DVLA are allowed to disclose vehicle keeper details, but that's another story!). I ignored it and then received a further letter from a so-called debt collection agency which, strangely enough, just happen to share the same address as the original parking "enforcement" company. Odd that. Ignored that and never got any more. There are numerous postings about such companies on a Google search and many suggestions available how to deal with these sharks.

Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!

Paranoia

Sheer paranoia......That is all. Over and out.

I can see people playing games with the system and inserting repeated naughty words like "bomb" and the like in mail titles just to see what happens.

Age

A-ha! This can't possibly be true. After all, the religious creationist nutters are quite adamant that the earth is only a few thousand years old and who would dare to disagree with that, for fear of being struck down by a thunderbolt or coming to a premature end, compelled to live in an oven for all eternity? (Snigger)

Fake?

It may be a staged thing just for the street view camera. Has been known to happen.......er......so I understand!

Good riddance

Sorry folks, couldn't stand the woman but then, why should I apologise for disliking somebody who was too full of her own importance for her own good; false, pompous, overbearing, condescending, patronising, shallow, self-righteous and possessing a completely misplaced superior attitude over everybody else. How she lasted as long as she did as prime minister is totally beyond me. Must be something to do with her toadying cabinet ministers - most of whom were tarred with the same brush in my opinion. Every time she appeared on TV, with that particularly irritating smugness and an equally nauseous whine of a voice, I felt like hurling something at the screen. Quite the worst thing that ever happened for Britain. Brought the country to its knees.

Crikey, chaps

I hardly watch any telly anyway here in the UK (rubbish production values, so-called "arty" shaky camera-work and constantly repeated shots in what are supposed to be factual documentaries etc.) and my consumption will probably drop to zero if any more ads start being force-fed over the ether. Dawkins preserve us!

Above the law?

Once again, it appears that Apple thinks it can do as it likes. The law will bite back, you mark my words.

Times are hard

Retail bricks and mortar? I thought that was a dead duck these days with everybody buying on line. UK stores have had a hard time recently and I have no reason to think that anywhere else is different.

Cheeky chappy

Rectum?

Damn nigh killed 'em!

That was the punch line of a very old joke. Just thought you'd like to know.

Pardon me

How can he be "pardoned" if he has not been convicted of a crime?

Originality?

Does it need to be original? I have a suspicion that all the little quirks that gave the original series the character it undoubtedly had and made it eminently watchable will be ironed out. Some do NOT succeed in a re-make or film. Take Hitch-hikers Guide, for instance. They were struggling to make characters that didn't look like the TV ones (Marvin, the paranoid robot, for instance) and they failed miserably, in my opinion.

Financially viable scheme?

Probably cost 'em more to follow-up and process than the actual fine.

State interference again

Here we go again. The government really loves grandstanding and trying to nanny people under the pretext of "think of the children". Do I detect just the merest hint of cynicism in this post?

I wholeheartedly agree with other posters that it is parents' responsibility to regulate what their children get up to - and that includes what they see on the net and what they do with their mobile phones. It is NOT necessary for the government to think they can intervene in their citizens' everyday life at the drop of a hat. Far too many do-gooders floating around, it would seem.

Ex-BT man here!

Ha! Thought I recognised that building! When I was living up that way, the broadband wasn't as bad as what this chap is getting. Seem to remember about 5 megs usually, although I wasn't a huge distance away from the works. As an ex-BT (or "Post Office Telephones") engineer, that was one of my areas to look after, along with Lenham, Harrietsham, Hollingbourne and Ulcombe for "subs' (subscribers, as customers were then known) apps (apparatus) and line" maintenance when exchange stuff was clunky Strowger and the internet wasn't even a twinkle in someone's eye. I was never more surprised than when we actually got broadband at all on an exchange THAT small, with only a few hundred customers, having lived with dial-up for some time. The exchange building is in a very strange and isolated place too! A bit spooky at night!

Will it stop the snoopers?

This will do the UK government's "snooping charter" no good at all. (I'm very glad to say!)

A what-tube?

Good job he didn't call it an i-Tube. Apple would have probably called a patent up on that!

Over-reaction

Sentence is way.....WAY.....OTT and out of all proportion to any alleged harm. Worst "crimes" than this are punished with a lot less severe sentence, which makes no sense to me. Hollywood and their cronies would doubtless like to hang them - and probably in public too!

Old hat - unfortunately

Can't see this working. Folk are too lazy to sort out their best pics and delete the rubbish, let alone having to deliberately make the effort to go to a store and have them printed - especially as most home printers can make a passable stab at photo printing on the right paper. Nope - fail, I reckon.

Different option

Can't they use satellite?

Spam or not spam?

Depends on your definition I suppose. I use Mailwasher Pro and find very little to "wash" these days, thank goodness, even though I have several accounts. I have to visit my Hotmail web pages every now and again to check the junk folder in case something legit has slipped in there and, again, there isn't a lot there either apart from the odd 414 scam! G.Mail is much the same. Effective filters can be created to send spam straight to the trash if needs be. I use Spamgourmet to create disposable addresses containing a company's name if I'm suspicious, so it's obvious if it's been passed on, although some sites throw up an invalid address error, or similar, sometimes and I can't use it. My biggest current annoyance is actually Amazon. Their persistent marketing mails are really OTT, with their "recommendations" based on previous purchases but whether that could be defined as spam is probably debatable. Most times, I just delete their stuff on sight, as it gets a tad tiresome.

Paranoia strikes again

Most governments are somewhat paranoid about the net (to put it mildly) and the Chinese are no exception. It allows free speech and we can't have that! Ironically, I understand that Chinese politicians have been accused of corruption and wrong-doing themselves, so the words pot and kettle come to mind.

Peanuts

£102,000? A mere drop in the ocean that certainly won't give anyone at Apple sleepless nights!

Snoopers

I sometimes wonder, from my UK viewpoint, if all the world's governments are in collusion with their obvious hatred of the internet. They all seem to be going down the same path, giving the excuse that a little snooping here and a little legislation there will miraculously stop terrorism and crime in its tracks, which (like the shambolic American TSA) it certainly does not. It's just a excuse for a government to keep tabs on its own citizens. My MP seemed less than enthusiastic when I urged him to oppose the UK "snoopers' charter", saying that there must be a balance struck between privacy and detecting terrorism, etc; "but it was kind of you to let me know your opinion". Total twaddle, I call it. I read elsewhere that any government spying will probably make out-and-out villains even more difficult to have their collars felt (something I've been saying for ages!), driving them underground, as they go for encryption or use a VPN - something I am looking at now - and I'm no terrorist or crime baron! This gradual erosion and chipping away of civil liberties, privacy and free speech has got to stop. My opinion? .......Despicable.

Censorship?

Whilst it's blatantly obvious that sex offenders should be caught and appropriately punished, I'm a little uneasy about this article. If they've been through the courts, where is the authority to cut them off from gaming? Smacks of arbitrary censorship or summary execution added on to the original court sentence but not by the court. Isn't that what they're for? On that basis, the Attorney General could surely decide, on a whim, to cut them (or anyone else, come to that) off from anything else in every-day life? Can he do that? Doesn't sound quite right to me, looking at it from a UK viewpoint.

Noooooo!

Seems I'm not the only one who mistrusts our friend Mr. Cloud. A lot of things can (and WILL) go wrong. I prefer to do my own back-ups on my umpteen external hard drives spread over two desk-top machines and a laptop. Something that hasn't been mentioned is the sheer volume of data that needs to be sent over an internet connection to transfer files to the cloud, not to mention the time needed to do it, bearing in mind that upload speed is usually considerably lower than download speed. My music collection alone currently sits at approx 165 gigs. To send that little lot up the pipe would also drive a horse and carriage through my ISP's data limit, so I shall not be indulging any time soon.

A tad excessive?

Seems a little OTT to me.

Two words

Richard O'Dwyer

Hypocritical rhetoric

Ha! After SOPA and the like, the words "pot" and "kettle" spring to mind!

Speaking of old computers....

This also might be of interest:

http://ict1301.co.uk/1301ccsx.htm

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/kentonline/news/2012/october/23/flossie_the_computer.aspx

The owner of the farm where Flossie is housed has, unfortunately had to sell the property (the original Darling Buds Of May series location) and a new owner is in the offing, so the future of the machine is uncertain. Flossie is normally on demonstration on the same day as an annual charity classic car show at the farm that I am involved with (slightly off-topic, I know!), so the whole event may be in jeopardy.

Another sell-out

I still fail to see why he had to capitulate and do all this. Makes the old blood boil. What the have the Yanks got to do with this? It's now worrying that a precedent has been set.

Seen elsewhere: "He agreed to stay in touch with a correctional officer over a six-month period as part of the contract."

Oh my - what a naughty boy he's been. The Yanks should have been told to push off in no uncertain manner when they wanted extradition. Nowt to do with them in any way, shape or form, as he hasn't committed any crime on their soil and USA laws don't (or shouldn't) apply to UK citizens. Does this now mean that USA jurisdiction (or any other country's) now extends to every UK internet user? Am I likely to be carted off to foreign parts to have my hands chopped off for criticising some far eastern royal family, even though I am not a citizen of their country. have never been there and never had the slightest connection with anybody in that country? The mind boggles.

Film biopic of who, exactly?

I really don't know why this film is being made. The guy was just a "difficult" CEO of a company that has made millions by conning folk that their kit is better than anybody else's. So much spin and high-grade cattle excrement, it's unbelievable. Still, if the fanbois really want their wallets made considerably lighter by buying Apple when there is a whole lot of stuff around that will do just as good a job, if not better, than I suppose that's up to them. As far as I'm concerned, Jobs was no icon, to be worshipped like some religious deity. He just wanted tight control over the products in order to milk even more for servicing and the like. In my opinion, the world would be a lot better without the arrogance of Apple.

Total rubbish.

Bit of desperate moral blackmail there. Definitely a touch of straw (Jack?) clutching as well. Real out-and-out villains would probably be a bit more savvy and use encryption to hide their tracks effectively. This is all about more government surveillance and control, if ever I heard it. I expect they'll now make it an offence to use encryption. Someone's already been banged up for refusing to reveal an encryption key or password.

Looks like old technology

Nice diagram of a tuned circuit there! Where's the EF86 valve? ("Tube" to our brethren across the pond!)

MP letter

I wrote to my MP, urging him to resist this bloody awful scheme and got back a lot of wishy-washy, non-substance about achieving a balance. It was, however, kind of me to let him have my views (so he said). What ever happened to the rather quaint idea that an MP is acting on behalf of his/her constituents and their wishes?

Deluded

And I'm the Queen of Sheba!

A PC is less expensive.

Thought Apple stuff was an arm and a leg - not a kidney!