Re: WebKit alone

Just like there was no problem when everyone was using Trident back in the bad old days?

Re: Times are hard

They are dying because people go to the retail stores to look at the product, then buy it online.

If they die off completely, people won't be able to see what the product looks like, and then they might not buy it. That is why it makes sense for companies to have retail stores as part of their advertising budget to showcase their products.

There is a difference between tweeting to say you've bought for example a Findus hosemeat product, and actually placing the order for frozen horse by sending a tweet to the supplier.

Re: BBM vs iMessage

The main difference is the installed userbase. If you are a teenage girl, iMessage is no use to you because none of your friends have iPhones, they have Blackberries and use BBM.

Allow / encourage parallel importing. Then people can buy a container load of fondleslabs in Hong Kong, ship them to Australia and sell them for less than the official channels.

Re: Damn.

I guess it is more comparable to the 11" MacBook Air. $100 more than the Surface, but with keyboard included and not detachable, and no touch screen.

Same as when O2 switched some 900MHz bandwidth over to 3G, they will still work. There aren't so many 2G phones these days so they don't need as much bandwidth as they used to.

Re: Plain English for us dummies?

Probably not. EE's 4G is on the 1800MHz band. Vodafone has hardly any spectrum in that range.

Re: But.. all of Apple's shops are different?

The design in the article looks like their shopping centre stores. Certainly it looks like the stores in both Westfield Centres in London, Brent Cross, Arndale Centre Manchester and Trafford Centre Manchester.

The Regent Street, Covent Garden and Buchanan St stores look a bit different. They are in old buildings and cover more than one floor. One thing those stores all have in common is a glass staircase.

Re: Glue

No they don't. They have wired tag things stuck to the computer that beep very loudly if you remove them. You can lift it off the table, but you will deafen everyone in the shop if you move it more than about 15 cm.

Re: lol

That sounds a bit like OS/2 to me. Yes it probably was the best operating system available at the time, but where is it now?

Re: YouTube would need to offer a better way to find content

If I had to choose between a YouTube subscription and a BBC subscription, I would go for YouTube as a matter of principle, as unlike the BBC, Google don't constantly send thugs and threatograms to my house.

Re: Re-ThornH

If you are on-site and want to record measurements, a fondleslab could be useful. Likewise if you are with your customer and want to show some design ideas, you could use a fondleslab, though I suspect traditional dead-tree paper might be better because you can leave it with them.

Re: My PI

And if you need the cable *now* rather than when the postman next passes your house, then Currys Essentials hdmi cables aren't too much of a rip-off.

Re: Mmmm

In the Spamhaus case, they replied to the state court saying it was a matter that should be considered by a Federal court. Then they ignored the Federal court summons.

Re: Hmm...

That is the case in the US, where individual farms are typically the same size as Wales. In most of the rest of the world, we get more energy out than we put in.

Re: The real story here

The $13bn profit is a 2.1% return on their market capitalisation. Before the share price went down, it was a lower return than that. A 10 year US government bond will give you 1.83%.

You can have the best company in the world and still have a share price that is too high for what the company is worth.

Re: "Post-PC Era"

People buying new PCs to replace an elderly or broken one are not as profitable as people buying one for the first time.

Re: The Downside Of Being Fashionable ....

The share price is based on the assets of the company + the present value of expected future profits. The fact that profits are the same as last year means that future profits are expected to be lower than what they thought they would be last year.

Re: We are not doing anything illegal or immoral

I don't know about the koran, but the bible says it here:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022&version=KJV Matthew 22:21

17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?

18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.

20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

21 They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

22 When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.

Re: You have to admire the cheek

They lend it back to the home country, at usurious rates of interest, which means they get to spend the money, and reduce their US tax bill.

Re: There's no issue here.

You would use Wifi for data on the phone when in range, but getting voice calls over wifi is a bit more difficult, especially if you want incoming calls to hand-over seamlessly between wifi and 3G outside the house.

Re: Surface Pro will also fail

"I can't see spending a thousand bucks for a tablet when you can get a great laptop for that price"

I think you are making much the same mistake that Microsoft is making.

You don't buy a tablet because it is cheaper than a laptop. You buy a tablet because it is easier and quicker to pick it up to check emails and the latest news on El Reg than it is to do it on a laptop.

Re: Surface Pro will also fail

To be honest there is no reason at all to buy either of them.

I have an iPad, a MacBook Pro (and a Galaxy Note, Windows 7 desktop, Windows server and SuSE Linux server). I use the correct tool for the job I want to do, and what Microsoft still don't get is that laptops and fondleslabs are used for different things, and therefore require different user interfaces.

Not quite as simple as that.

You have two offshore companies in different tax havens. Lets call them Google Finance Co and Google Property Co. You have the trading company in somewhere like Ireland or Luxembourg, and a service company in the UK.

Google Finance Co lends the money to Google Property Co. Google Property Co rents the building to Google Service Co. Google Trading Co outsources work to Google Service Co.

The tax rate on rental income for an offshore company (20%) is lower than the tax rate for trading profits for a UK company (24%). Rent is an allowable expense for the service company. Loan interest is an allowable expense for the property company. Interest received by one offshore company from another offshore company is outside the reach of the UK Exchequer. The service company has to be competitive with outsourcing providers in countries like India, so it won't make a lot of profit, if any.

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot? - yes, by releasing Win 8.

"It has a poor driver model (each hardware device usually wants a specific driver installing)"

Huh? Is that any different from any other operating system?

"It only runs on Intel."

Not that much of a problem for its target market of Intel computers. Previous versions have run on Power PC, Sparc, Alpha and Itanic. Nobody wanted to buy them.

"The directory layout is crap - "program files(86)" - Users/My Documents" etc. No! I want to work from a subdirectory that hangs directly off "C:\""

You can work from a c:\ subdirectory if you really want to. Other operating systems have similar directory structures, albeit with different names.

"Also, compared to, say OSX or Linux operating systems, Windows 7 has an utterly terrible command line. Unix command line is simply a must-have for power-users."

Have you tried PowerShell? Certainly it's not the same as Bash. I find it does somethings better, some things not quite so well, but overall much the same.

Re: Is this a Verizon press release?

Vodafone owns 49% of Verizon, so yes, they are the US version of Vodafone.

My PHB hires companies like that to do security audits because they are big companies, so they must be good.

Re: Trevor Moore

He was at Comet before those two ...

Re: And once again, gift cards are not being honoured

Legally once the warehouse man (or woman) goes to the shelf with the picklist (it might be on a handheld computer, doesn't matter) and lifts the goods of the shelf, they are legally yours and they must give your them. If they have not been picked off the shelf when they go bust, then they are not yours, and they don't have to give you them.

Re: It was only a matter of time

A monopoly on the distribution of dead tree newspapers and magazines. I stopped reading dead tree computer magazines when I realised that I was reading things on it that I had read on places like El Reg about 2 months ago.

Re: Wonder how much tax HMV paid

They pay 20% VAT on their sales though, unlike Amazon's Channel Islands based Indigo Starfish which sold CDs and DVDs until the VAT loophole was closed and the Luxembourg based Amazon MP3 store which pays 3% VAT.

Actually there is a major problem with the current punishment regime.

A lot of people set up a new company, trade for about 2 and bit years without filing accounts until it gets stuck off, and then get away with not paying any tax on the profits, because the company no longer exists, and therefore HMRC is unable to collect the tax. The fines that Companies House levies don't get collected for the same reason.

Also, there is no legal investigation into the actions of the directors.

Re: What a surprise!

If you think Windows 8 is hostile to keyboard/mouse input, then you haven't tried using Android with a keyboard/mouse

http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/03/review_netbook_toshiba_ac100/

But then Google don't claim that it is suitable for use with a laptop.

Re: The other shoe dropping...

The malware can contain the rooting script ...

Re: (untitled)

I can't really see how you could make the iPhone any smaller and still have a useable touch screen phone. Whereas, it is certainly possible to have a phone that is smaller than the S3. On that basis, I think there is more chance of a 5" iDevice than something smaller than the iPhone.

They could always use their super-accurate TV detectors

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/06_june/24/licensing_detector_vans.shtml

It says they have them here, so it must be true. The BBC operate to the highest possible standards of honesty and integrity. They would never make inflated claims in a press release.

Re: Oddly enough...

I guess the big difference is that over here, you can say what you like about the Peterloo Massacre, and you could even back when it happened. If you were to suggest that a similar event took place in Beijing about 24 years ago, the Chinese authorities might feel the need to block you.

Re: illegal already

It would work actually, except that HMRC would want to tax the profits on your BVI company under controlled foreign company rules. Starbucks gets round that because the offshore company isn't controlled by a UK resident.

Re: Go right ahead...

No. If Microsoft Ireland ships out Windows 8 boxes to the UK, they don't have to pay any UK corporation tax on the money they make from them. Foxconn China certainly don't pay any UK tax on the fruity devices they ship here.

Re: Like, they wouldn't want to sell stuff in the UK any more?

They already have that rule, but for the companies listed, the revenue from UK customers isn't UK revenue, it is Irish revenue. Then the Irish company pays the UK company to provide outsourced support. What sort of money is suitable for that contract? I guess it has to be competitive with an Indian call centre, so that is a good starting point.

Re: Go right ahead...

Well the Amazon Kindle Store for example is based in Luxembourg. That doesn't stop Amazon selling ebooks here, and there is absolutely nothing the UK government can do about it. Amazon can pick whichever EU country they like to set up shop for any reason, or for no reason.

Re: @Cyborg If you've got a TV big enough for this to make any difference,

You can compress a blu ray movie to about 5GB without any noticeable drop in quality. Quadruple the size for the extra pixels, and you still have plenty of space on a standard blu ray disk.

Re: Specs: Does it penetrate walls? Useful range?

Does it penetrate walls? Not a chance

Will it penetrate a human body standing in the way? Not a chance

Useful range in air is limited by the fact that Oxygen atoms will also get in the way, so in many ways it is probably less useful than infrared.

Re: That's the plan that sunk Kodak...

I am that niche market, but I got a Canon IP8500 to do the printing. That particular model is long since discontinued, but still working just fine for me. When it comes to replace it, I will get another Canon or maybe an Epson printer.

Re: Oh go on, I'll feed em...

On internet facing servers, the number of linux machines is around the same or a bit higher than the number of windows machines. If you are a botnet operator, those sorts of machines are much more valuable than desktops.

Yes, but you can get a pay as you go SIM for cash in a supermarket without telling anyone who you are.

Re: re. Bootnotes

Trying to think how to explain it in terms a non-musician would understand.

Beat - you should generally be able to bang the table or your foot or something at a regular speed, and the changes in notes will generally fall into that beat. In a lot of music, the drummer will do pretty much that, in classical music, the conductor will wave a stick to keep time.

You may notice when listening to the beat, that one beat in every four for example is stronger than the other beats. That stronger beat represents the beginning of the bar.

In Britain we generally use words based on italian words to describe note lengths. These are as follows, with each one half the length of the previous one in the list

Breve, Semi Breve, Minum, Crotchet, Quaver, Semi Quaver

The Americans use english translations of the german words. These are as follows, with each one the same as the equivalent position in the previous list

Double note, whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note