Ooooh, memories!

This all reminds me of visits years ago to Nelsons Butchers in Red Lion Square in Stamford, stacked high with wonderful pies and other goodies. And after a quick Google I find they're still there and now sell on-line - yippee!

As soon as the diet's over, I'll see if they're as good as I remember.

The important thing is that a bowl of stew with a sheet of cardboard 'pastry' popped on top (as served in far too many pubs) is NOT a pie!

what about the other 10%?

So the guarantee is there for the 90% who live in the 10% of the UK land area covered by major towns and cities - what about the other 10% who live outside the larger towns? With government trying to deliver as many services as possible electronically they will soon assume that everyone (well, everyone who matters) will have mobile broadband - and tuff to the rest of us. 99% coverage would be a rather better target to aim for.

Interestingly, in terms of access to public services, we accept the need to ensure disabled access to buildings with ramps, lifts etc ( and a jolly good thing too) - but in fact only about 1% of the UK population is in a wheelchair.

Go on, do a proper job...

Go on Ozzy, go for the biggie - cull Ofsted, and that's another £200+ million saved.

Hmmm?

...and yet there are STILL people out there who want to have anything to do with this bunch of control-freaks? Weird. Do they inject some sort of long-lasting hypnotic chemical into the aircon in Apple stores that induces lifetime worship and loss of critical facilities?

Watch out when they start offering free Kool-Aid with each purchase (although the lifetime limit of 2 drinks won't be a problem...)

what's a netbook?

The fundamentals haven't changed since the girl on the beach first got her netbook. The whole point was that a netbook was small, simple and cheap - you used it in odd places for a bit of email and a bit of surfing, and perhaps writing the great 21st century novel, but the important thing was CHEAP. Ideally sub £200, which means that it's the sort of thing you don't mind taking to the beach and possibly losing it or getting sand in the works, or even using while in the bath. And it isn't a laptop replacement - it's as well as, not instead of. Once it gets bigger than a 10" screen, has a vast HDD with moving parts rather than a small SSHDD, and costs over £250 it becomes an underpowered laptop, not a netbook.

This bit of kit may be quite nice, but at that price it's not a netbook.

And if it doesn't work...

...he offers a full money-back guarantee!

Actually, I remember a similar scam being run in Peterborough (of all places) back in the eighties, when some people were worried about Soviet nukes hitting Molesworth cruise missile base just down the road. Council turned down the planning application and it then went to a public enquiry - we had great fun looking for valid objections on planning grounds - e.g. if it's classed as residential property (which it obviously is) then it has to have adequate car parking for all the residents, sufficient windows, and, given the numbers, suitable outdoor play areas for the children! We argued that in fact there wasn't a planning 'Use Class' for nuclear bunkers and the closest we could find was 'Blood boilers and Fat renders'.

The question of the money-back guarantee was raised then as well...

Really useful review, thanks.

Just confirmed once again that I have absolutely no need of a smartphone, whether Android or from the Blessed Jobs! I'll stick to a simple mobile phone (that can both make and receive phone calls and texts - brilliant!) and a real computer for any serious work. Saved me a fortune - ta!

Old books

Google say that they only show snippets for books that are still in copyright, but they also only show snippets for books that are years outside copyright (even under the American 'Mickey Mouse' continuously extending copyright periods) - and there's no apparent method to appeal and to point out to them that a book published in 1880 by an author who died in 1903 is NOT in copyright! This makes me very, very irritated!

Iontach!

'nuf said

Olympics?

What has providing wireless for the Olympics (R)(TM(C) got to do with Ofcom? The Olympics (R)(TM(C) are just another sports event, albeit a ridiculously big, and insanely expensive one, that will do untold damage to British sport and cultural provision for years to come. If existing WiFi coverage in the area is inadequate for their needs then the organisers need to make the appropriate arrangements with the various providers to upgrade the service, at their expense. Purely a commercial matter, nowt to do with Ofcom or anyone else.

And anyway, why does someone running a marathon or swimming 100m actually need WiFi?

I blame the parents...

Interesting - 87% of the parents ARE aware that their children have these profiles, and do nothing about it, despite the rules about being over 13. Can't really blame Facebook then, can they?

Hmmm?

"The reports were generated on "House 17," an IBM AS/400 server ... that had no link to the outside world,... the server pulled partial information from a separate AS/400 that was linked to the Depository Trust Company and other third parties.

How does it pull information from a machine that it's not linked to? Am I missing something here? Or is this a new form of invisible network?

'Most' of the population

Sounds good - give 100Mbps to 51% of the population (those in the major cities, the low-hanging fruit for the providers) and leave the other 49% to send messages via runner with cleft stick. That's the Tory way! Let's concentrate on satisfying the needs of the many before the greed of the few. What the country needs is decent broadband for *all* the population. Let's concentrate on getting 8Mbps to everyone before we give 100Mbps to the lucky 51%. Faster would obviously be nicer but what will people actually do with 100Mbps? Download a DVD in a few minutes? Why bother - it's going to take two hours to watch it!

BBC3?

It's obvious that BBC3 is targeted at those younger persons whose brains have been so addled with drink and other substances that they can't remember that the programme they're watching now is the same one they saw yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that and three times last week, and twice the week before. Wouldn't it be easier to have BBC5,6,7,8,9,10 etc - with one channel showing '2 pints of lager' on a continuous loop, another showing 'Being Human' on a loop, another with Dr Who etc.

Does anyone have any statistics on how many times each episode of Dr Who has actually been transmitted?

Okay, I know it's not just the Beeb at fault - how many times has each episode of Poirot appeared on ITV3.

In fact, come to think of it, shouldn't the Tories be asking 'Why Digital'?

Wot?

No SSD? No Linux?

Funraising

Sounds a jolly good idea - we all need more fun in our lives - let's all raise our fun levels. Personally, if someone donated $600K to me I could have a hell of a lot of fun [please send donations to my Paypal a/c, assuming they haven't shut it down]

How effective is this?

"Stop and search under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is an important tool in a package of measures in the on-going fight against terrorism."

Are figures available on how many people have actually been convicted of terrorism offences following an initial arrest after incriminating material was found on them during a stop-and-search in London under section 44?

Right-ish, but years too late.

But the first batch won't be delivered until 2013 - and British forces are due to start pulling out in 2010 or 2011, so how many troops will still be there when the first Chinooks arrive. And the rest won't arrive for years after that - so how exactly will this improve the situation in Helmand over the next couple of years? Why do I think of stable doors and bolting horses in this context?

And let's face it - the elephant in the room of defence spending is a certain WMD called Trident - axe that and every squadie in Helmand can have his own private Chinook (with en-suite bathroom and gold taps)!

Bye-bye DVLA

"...that allowing the public access or use of specific communications services could make them vulnerable to fraud, the theft of personal information or other attack" - so given that DVLA flog the details to anyone, or give them to dodgy Bulgarians for nothing, presumably DVLA online will include one of these wonderful pop-ups? - which IE and all the pop-up blockers will presumably block anyway as it's coming from a different address? And if it isn't will be ignored by everyone anyway.

Don't they have ANYONE in ACPO who knows how real people actually use the interwebs?

What a total waste of time and our money!

Not practical?

So they say a gatekeeper is 'not practical'? Why not? Given that the access can ONLY be for "serious crime, terrorism and illegal immigration" investigations (and so we're not talking thousands a day here) then it's totally practicable to route all enquiries via an appropriate office in the Met.

Meter readers?

What are these mysterious 'meter readers' of which you all speak? When the job was farmed out to some external business I think the quarterly reading happened about once a year - and this was after I'd gone to the trouble of putting the meter outside to cut down on the hassle of 'we called but you were out' cards. Most of the time I was just getting an estimated bill. Now I just read it myself and phone the reading in (or go via their website).

This is another case of government interference and overkill. The argument for saving costs on meter reading doesn't work because they don't read the meters anyway. The argument for giving people minute-by-minute readings of their consumption doesn't work either - well, it does, but one can buy a box that does that for less than £50 - and they are very effective - I'm really conscious of how much electricity I'm using now, and go round and switch things off. We don't need mega boxes at £250 each when we can do it for £50. The only extra is the remote control of our houses - which I have no particular need of - but the control freaks obviously love - and it means that they can just avoid providing new clean electricity generation capacity. So much easier to just ration what we have.

The expensive solution of course is to buy a lot of batteries and plug them into the mains and then run your house off that - they can stop them charging at peak times but I'll decide when I switch things on and off!

Or of course just get a load of PV cells and say goodbye to the grid for ever.

Tan ar y Comin?

And who could forget him in 'Tan ar y Comin/Fire on the Common' - filmed twice - once in Welsh

and once in English (i.e. not dubbed) and he had to learn his Welsh lines phonetically 'cos he didn't speak a word of the language of heaven. Not brilliant, but a damn good try! Heddwch i'w lwch...

Eco-friendly? Hah!

An off switch doesn't make this eco-friendly - unless it's soldered to be permanently off (and then it's just a waste of manufacturing resources).

No-one really NEEDS a 46" TV. OK, this one is quite efficient (compared to some) but it's still sucking up 166W when it's on. What's wrong with a 26" TV - and sitting a bit closer to the screen!

How????

How can they spend that much on a database - no matter how many bells and whistles you add at the end of the day it's a customer database (okay, the customers are scallys, but that's basically what it is)

I really think we need to set up the ElRegReaders Consultancy plc and underbid all these rip-off merchants - and we might actually deliver something that works as a bonus!