Hmm...

As a professional storage person, I completely fail to see how Apple expect to be taken seriously with Promise, I mean, I don't even use their stuff at home (anymore!) If I were going to take a server manufacturer, who didn't make their own storage hardware, seriously I'd expect HDS, IBM, EMC, possibly HP.

Apple have to realise that their main competition is Windows and Linux servers, probably running on Proliant hardware which has Stoargeworks. They must do better.

Pirate radio in London

There are a lot of people commenting here about interference, as if it never happens. I don't remember much about radio transmission from uni, but I do remember about side bands, where, as previously mentioned, you get transmission spikes up and down the spectrum. The types of transmitter that are used by pirates probably don't meet the required standards...

As an aside, the frequency that radio4 transmits on in Reading is (was?) a pirate radio station in London. Also, the frequency that radio 4 transmits on in London was a pirate radio station for about 2-300meters on the train leaving Reading for a few weeks, really clear and pissed all over radio4. Not good.

@Forth...

Yep, Forth, not fourth, my goof, late night internet not condusive to bothering to ignore the Firefox spellchecker when it's obviously wrong.

@George Schultz - The victorian one with the rail lines over it is known as the Forth Bridge, as it was the only bridge there until the 60s (if memory serves) the other one with the road over it is known as the Road bridge. No matter what wikipedia, that bastion of truth, says, it is the Forth Bridge.

Interestingly

Teachers are subjected to CRB checks to make sure that they are ok to work with children, the thing is that the children don't have to undertake CRB checks and these are the people most likely, in a school situation, to be sex offenders. A classic being, 16 year old box has sex with a 15 year and 10 month old girl, if they get caught, he is labelled a sex offender, the News of the Screws will publish his picture, his life is fucked. Somehow though, a 40 year old man can have sex with a 16 year old girl (who isn't his pupil), and providing there is consent this is legal. It's fucked up.

Hmm...

I hope both sides loose on this one.

1) If you are using ADSL/Cable, it's a contended service, if you are a *big* p2p-er you will impact other users of the network. Why should they suffer for your pirac^h^h^h^h^h legitimate hosting of files?

2) Comcast are in a bit of a bind here, becuase I don't think anyone would object to them performing normal traffic shaping at peak hours to preserve 'normal services' such as web surfing etc. (not sure if this is effective against p2p, my networking is a bit rusty) but why should they fire off their own packets to mess with customers p2p software?

Actually...

@Mark Matheson

"...

It's totally untrue that the Forth bridge was painted continually. That would be a logistical nightmare.

The frequency of the trains and the amount of safety equipment required to do such a job makes it a very slow process. But if they did do that, you would never see the bridge without tonnes and tonnes of scaffold hanging off of it.

..."

Have you seen the Fourth bridge over the last few years? It is totally (well, not quite) covered in scaf. It's not like the 'good old days' when you didn't have the H&S.

I have family in St Queensferry, when visiting, you could often see workers going in and out of the little hut thing in, if memory serves the 1st cantalevered bit. I am pretty sure that they were stripping and painting it constantly up until the early 90s when the trains were privatised - I seem to remember a Blue Peter all about its painting probably Peter Duncan.

It seems like a good idea to have it painted once in every long time, but I can't help thinking that Balfour Beaty wouldn't be the company that I got to do the work... *metronet* *cough*

Oh and another thing...

It's the bloody Fourth Bridge. There is no structure named the Fourth Rail Bridge. Why would they have called it the Fourth Rail bridge when that was the only bridge over it at this point at that time?

Hmm...

If I were going to publish a subversive pamphlet, I think I'd go for laser/inkjet print for the master copy, then photocopy the rest from that master.

It does look like, what with laser printers being very good these days, the law enforcement people wanted to be able to trace counterfeits of banknotes. (they are distributed over the whole page and this isn't implemented on inkjets, which would be useless for counterfieting). Now the question is, was it ever intended for other law enforcement agencies?

Now answer that question considering that the easiest explanation for the vast majority of conspiracy theories is incompetence. In this case - they just didn't think what else it could/would be used for. Or maybe not?

Never attribute to malice, what can be more easily attributed to stupidity.

@Keith

I wasn't suggesting it wasn't a usefull service, but if you live in France, do you pay a licence fee? If not, like it or not, you're not entitled to any of the beeb's content (with the exception of certain parts of their web site, world service and streaming/listen again radio), I'm not sure if you are entitled to any of the rest free-to-air in the UK, although I suspect not.

If the service allows UK free-to-air stuff to be uploaded outside of the UK, there are obvious problems with copyright there. This is because the copyright owners sell many programs to other broadcasters around the world and this would (slowly at first) erode their income stream. It has also been mentioned that the site used advertising, both the advertisers within programs which have adverts and the TV companies are not going to be happy about this, because you may end up with inappropriate or conflicting advertising next to a program that you are downloading. Also if this is the case, it would remove the argument that 'it's like lending a mate a recording' because it would mean that a commercial transaction is taking place.

PS. As a pedantic point, the beeb aren't really going to care that much about you not seeing adverts, for obvious reasons.

Legallity

It's all very fuzzy legally, but as I understand it, you are technically not allowed to keep a home video recording for more than 28days. Obviously this isn't enforced.

The problem with this service is that the beeb et al have just spent the last God knows how long negotiating with the owners of the copyright of the programs over repeat fees etc (all actors, most at least, get extra cash for repeats) so having just negotiated this there is absolutely no chance that they'll allow a site like this to operate. Also, I don't think it specifically said in the article, but were these all free-to-air channels, if not there would be obvious objections form the channel owners.

Meh, that's nothing...

I'll see you all! I used to work in lighting, there is nothing to compare to untangling a collection of DMX Data cables, single phase mains (13, 15, 16, 32 and 63Amp) three phase mains (32, 64 and 120Amp) multicore mains and the occasional multicore analogue -10v. All of these cablies are covered in a load of raver sweat (possilby also mud, if outdoor/festival) piled on a floor covered in God knows what, all at 7am in the morning after a 12hour rave. You also have to coil them properly (NOT OVERARM!!!) sort them and put them into the correct flight cases.

I claim cable king.

@Mark...

"...The point is that Cliff would not be enjoying a continuing stream or the ongoing pleasure of creating his own music if it had not been for his teachers.

So if the normal method of paying for someone doing something for us (like, entertaining us or teaching us) is a one-off payment then to gain more, more work must be found, why doesn't this apply to Cliff et al? He doesn't do a lick more work to get the single "Devil Woman" to the public, so why does he get paid?..."

Teaching and creative arts are different things, they work in different ways. Being a musician [analogy alert!] in much more like being a small inventor, you can choose to be like the guy who invented matches and let everyone have your invention for free, or you can be like Henry Crapper (IIRC) who licenced the Turbo-flush toilet flushing mechanism. There are many inventors who can't afford to exploit their inventions and licence them to others, who produce them on the inventors behalf. These licences, like in music, last for a certain amount of time, after that they are considered 'fair game'. Another example of this is how the pharma industry works, develop a drug, produce it for however long you are allowed to, then accept that generics will be made.

We won't get good musicians, making interesting music, if we don't have a licensing system for music. (This is unless somehow a benefactor system starts up, which is highly unlikely.) The majority of popular music will either end up being computer generated pop-tat, or guitar bands. You can't make descent music without descent instruments/equipment and you can't get them if you can't make money from your music.

If you don't like the current licensing terms (and I am not suggesting they are anything like perfect), don't buy from BPA/RIAA, that is the surest way to bring about change in the system. If, however, music is consistently stolen from them, this only serves to suggest to them that their output is worth bothering to steal and therefore worth their while promoting the bands who make it and prosecuting the people who steal it/offer it for theft.

@Mark

Did Cary Sherman do any work copying the disks sold?

Not sure who she is, so I can't comment.

When Cliff Richard learnt how to sing or play music, did he continue to pay his teacher for the benefit this learning has had on his wealth?

Cliff would have paid his teachers on a per lesson basis, this is how teaching is paid for (do you pay your school teachers now you've left? no?) There is no requirement for payment after the event.

Did Britney spears mix her latest CD and if not, is she giving the studio engineers a continuing payment for making the CD listenable?

There are two ways that studio engineers are paid, one is per session, so no further payment required, the other is by sales, so in answer possibly he is getting payment, although it would more likely be from the label, rather than the artist. It is the same with session musicians.

...

Next time you flush your lavvie, tip the plumber for the benefit of a free flowing toilet.

No need, you pay for the design work done in the toilet, particularly its flush mechanism, when you buy the toilet - you don't seriously think that you are only paying for the constituent parts do you?

Intentionally left blank

"People talk about infringing human rights but what about the human rights of the shopkeeper who is seeing his business collapse because groups of unruly teenagers are driving away his customers? The noise is only emitted over a 15 metre radius and no one is taking away the rights of teenagers to walk away."

So what he is saying is that the Police are unable (unwilling, lets face it) to stop groups of kids loitering an intimidating people (some people are too easily intimidated, but that's another matter), but that it is alright to counter this failure of law enforcement by taking the law into your own hands an preventing everyone else under 30ish from having their right to free association. The Police aren't going to prevent this from happening, because if they did, they would have to start moving on kids who are causing a nusance, far easier to get someone else to do their job for them.

This is, obviously, not mentioning the sudden lack of people under thirty shopping at the shops where these devices are installed, causing, err, a drop in customers...

Shami is bang on with this one - take something contraversial like this and replace 'the kids' with another minority group, if it sounds racist/sexist/homophobic/generally bigoted then it's not right to treat 'the kids' in that manner.

Grow up.

So they're going into 2nd life, buying a moby then phoning people in the real world to say what, "I'M IN SECOND LIFE, NO IT'S RUBBISH!"

@Chris

"...Just goes to show how daft the 'friends' concept is on social networking sites. People collect them as badges of honour to validate their pitiful existence and give meaning to their empty, howling souls..."

Not got many friends on facebook then, Chris?

Me, I've got a shitload ;)

Secure email systems

I used to work for a large UK financial company who dealt with pensions, we decided to stop using postal transfer of data, but weren't about to use standard email. In order that all of the little pension schemes, who couldn't justify getting a leased line or ISDN into our company to transfer their data, we setup 'secure email' basically just browse to an SSL web page, identify yourself and post the document from there, all the apps hosted in the DMZ of my company, minimal effort required on the part of the customer. Why can't someone like Equifax do this?

Hmm...

I don't know about anyone else, but I want the Police to have to fill out a whole shitload of paperwork if they exercise their powers, then we can see which they use and when. I don't want people stopped randomly in the street with not even any suspicion required. I don't want the police to monitor my communications, or anyone else's without having to fill in a ream of documents. It is their job, if you want to go back to 70s and 80s police methods, this would be the quickest way to do it.

On a personal note, my garage is near a well known local dope-dealing spot, has been so for 20odd years. I don't want to get stopped with no recorse every time I go to get my car because I am target demographic (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant 30something) for the customers. If I have a form saying that I've been stopped and get a collection of several, I can do them for harassment, if I don't they are free to do whatever they want and bollocks to my right of free association etc.

That is all...

US Vs British prudishness

"...Who was it that had an enormous public back lash over an arse being shown on some TV show recently?..."

Odd that America also produces some of the most fierce porn in the world, as well as being some of the world's most reactionary anti-wardrobe-malfunctioners.

Err...

Everyone talking about not having to prove innocence in UK law. That would be criminal law, not civil law. Any prosecutions would be brought in civil courts, which is probably better all round because it's not always possible to lay your hands on your licences (all of them at least) and it's a balance of probability thing. This way, the BSA members won't get a prosecution out of companies who, on balance of probability, have paid up, rather only from companies who have, on balance of probability, ripped off their software.

In other news

It appears that 47% of the UK population are the sort of fucktards that don't read newspapers, don't watch (or listen) to the news and wouldn't understand it if it published their identity to the world.

They still have curtains though.

Arse

According to Britt on Wonnathan Woss last week, she had an arse-double, because she thought her booty was too large.

Hmm...

@David

"What happens to any UNIX IP they may own if they are bankrupt?"

It would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. I'd wager it'll be either a major high-tech company, a benefactor, or an IP troll company looking to capitalise on it...

Hight-tech (probably IT) companies, this may go well, although I'd imagine a few have a claim on it anyway (IBM, MS & Novell have all owned it at some point AFAIK)

Benefactor, not really that likely

IP Troll company, not good.

I have to admit, I'd laugh my ass off if MS bought it, that'd be entertaining at least (even if only reading comments here and at Slashdot).

@Ross

Or, they could build two nukes, test one, then happen to mention that they have another and a delivery system for it.

I'm not saying that this is what they are going to do, just that if I were wanting to come onto the stage as a nuke power and not wanting to get beaten up by the bigger boys, this is what I'd do. Maybe I'd also make the other side think I was a bit crazy, possibly crazy enough to set it off.

@C.B Legier

"..."I suppose I should also point out that a certain domestic terror group here in the UK was, until around 9/11 funded pretty extensively by a certain star spangled country over the pond..."

Do you have some truth to back that up? If we were so intent on funding them, why were we so intent on tracking him in 1995 after the surfacing of the "Oplan Bojinka" which was funded by the leader of that so called terrorist group?

Die Michael Moore, die!..."

He is talking about the widely held belief in the UK (not without evidence) that the US funded the pIRA. This has been discussed in, amongst other US organs, The New York Times, when opinion pieces after 9/11 started to suggest that the Provos aren't actually freedom fighters sticking it to The Man, rather a bunch of dangerous terrorist criminals, who probably shouldn't be funded or given weapons.

As for Michael Moore, if you read any of his books, you'll see that he is rather deluded abuot the whole pIRA/Freedom Fighter/Terrorist thing as well. Lots of stuff about how they are misunderstood nice chaps, very little about punnishment beatings, organised crime, smuggling, nailing people to pavements, murders, cover ups, training the FARC.

Hmm...

Without wanting to take either side, becasue it's all 6 of one half a dozen of the other:

"It's unfortunate Iran continues to test ballistic missiles. This regime continues to take steps that only further isolate it and the Iranian people from the international community." Is hardly "Instant Condemnation", more like 'uhm, meh, I wish they wouldn't do that sort of thing'

However: "Given the firm commitment of Iran's foreign policy to the principles of peace, justice, respect for the rights of nations, and peaceful coexistence, there is no reason for anyone to worry," Isn't really that reassuring, because they don't recognise Israel as existing.

Both sides need to chill the fuck out and stop prevoking each other otherwise that war that they aren't really having in Iraq, (oh no, really, they're not at war, really), will end up being a very real war in Iran and none of us want that.

Can someone tell me...

How is it that the government can't run their own IT consultancy? I mean, it's not as if there isn't enough requirement in the public sector to keep at least couple of major consultancies running. If it's done as a government agency you get all the benefits of internal IT departments, without the profiteering and badly treated staff of external companies like EDS, but you also get benefits of scale that you would with an external company. Once a project has been designed, the government consultancy work with the department who have commissioned it, to install and handover. If the department is too small to have their own IT people, have a government agency who runs the IT for all the small departments, like outsourcing, but with Public sector.

@Overinflated opinion of themselves AC

You obviously haven't worked for much of your 15 IT years in the oil industry. If you think that shell, or any other oil company, can operate without IT you are sorely mistake. They need to model their oil fields, in order to be able to design the pipelines so that they don't end up with loads of wax clogging them up, or the gas separating out of the crude etc. etc. All of this (as we as Chemists/Physicists/Engineers) takes a hell of a lot of processing power and storage. There is also the development of renewables that goes on in most (non-American) oil companies, lots of simulations etc. going on here.

Take the IT out of most companies, oil included and they are fucked. Yes, the oil companies will have made a lot of money from the high price of oil, but that price also (to a fair extent) reflects the cost of extraction and transportation. It is a lot more expensive to get oil out a warzone than Russia for example (politics notwithstanding.)

While you may not have the right to have a job dished out to you, you certainly have a right to be treated in a fair manner by your current employer, unions are a great help with this as who is going to bother to listen to an individual who objects to being sacked because of an outsource? This is the whole reason that unions exist. It is very rare to see the 70s style militant union outside of local government and the RMT these days. Unions are why most private sector employees don't get below inflation pay rises most of the time.

Your argument that if the IT guys at Shell are skilled enough they should be able to get other jobs doesn't stand up either, because most deals like this involve moving jobs offshore, there are therefore less jobs to go round and while some IT work is easy and anyone can do it you only need to specialise a bit and then you remarkably reduce the amount of people capable of doing a job. Helldesk would be a good example here compare a company helldesk with skilled staff, usually in the UK, and one with script readers, usually in India, which one gives more value for money? I'd go with the skilled one every time.

@Joe Stalin / Hot To Annoy A Vegetarian

No plants that I'm aware of produce vitamin B12, but there is this thing called Marmite, you may have heard of it? It's 100% vegaterian and full of B group vitamins, B12 included.

B12 is also found in dairy products, which are vegetarian, not vegan however.

That was easy, got another?

Just goes to show

There is no Pravda in Isvestia and no Isvestia in Pravda.

However, PITA are most definately not a 'hug a whale for Jesus' outfit, they are dangerous nutters who refuse to condemn violence, but have somehow managed to get a silky smooth image from the patronage of people like Alicia Silverstone, who probably knows nothing of their activities in and around the Oxford Animal house or HLS. Don't mix the rest of us Veggies up with them, although thanks for the picture, 'tis appreciated.

err...

Without wanting to be too much of a pessimist, this isn't (yet) a victory for Linux, until they have completed a relatively painless transfer and stayed with Linux in the long term without major problems. (That's not to say it isn't a big achievement for Ubuntu.)

I wonder what they are doing with their bespoke apps? Have they all been re-written? If so, I strongly suspect that the stated savings are bollocks, if they are run on Windows based VMs/Terminal Servers this isn't so much of a Linux victory.

Ah well, it'll be interesting to watch, if we see anything else about it...

Interesting

I do and have worked for large financial companies in the UK for the last ten years or so. If I shared my ID/password with someone I would be liable for whatever happened with my account while operated by someone else.

This is why greater use of single sign-on technology and 2 factor sign on (RSA tags etc) should be used. If you (as is offen the case) can logon to your workstation then have to logon separately to other systems, that makes it very easy for people to logon to other systems mainframe/minis/unix etc.

@AC

I have no intention of going into advertising and I'll concede that if the sole objective of advertising is getting your name across as much media as possible they have done quite well here. But: just because some of the French press are criticising Sarco doesn't mean that all of the French criticise him, there is a very strong cluture of keeping personal life and politics apart in France, dispite Sarco having been rather more public than is usually the case the rest of the French politicians will not be happy about this (dispite what they say publicly) and you don't want to wind up the ruling class the wrong way, especially as a foriegn company... On top of this, they are attributing words in an advert to someone who has nothing to do with their company, this again is pretty bad form. In the UK the ASA would get this pulled instantly (it's a shame adverts don't have to be pre-approved by them, then we wouldn't have today's Ryanair "naughty schoolgirl" ad) in the UK, you can't even have someone impersonating someone else in an advert, let alone using someone's image without their consent.

So, overall:

10/10 for press coverage etc.

0/10 for ethics, quality of advet (it's shit) and advert likely to cause court case etc.

Cooling

I asked some bloke at Storage Expo, whose stand was advertising these, just what they mean by 'just add water' and exactly how much water you need to pump through one of these cases in order to cool it. Also, how wastefull this was and if you need to stick processed water or any old water (I live in the South east, so our water is so hard it's basically Chalk solution - not very good for pipes!) He said, in a slightly embarrased, "err, well actually..." tone that you in fact get a 2nd container with all of the water cooling equipment in it....

(Of course you can probably supply your own water from your datacentre coolers, but if you've got a datacentre, why wouldn't you just make some space inside?)

@AC

"...You can keep your s--t music, and your s--t films. We don't want them...."

So why is everyone downloading them?

The problem is that people do want the bland tat that is being pumped out by the mainstream ents industry, the industry is rightly pissed off that people are getting it for free, but saying it's all shit and not worth it doesn't wash. It also says to the ents industry that the stuff they are producing is good and wanted by the general public, giving them the impression that the only problem is that they need to stop it being downloaded illigally.

I suspect it'll change soon, like the late 80s where the Indie scene first popped up, you can see, just by going to somewhere like Glastonbury, that there are plenty of really good acts, many on mainstream labels, who look like they are about to make it big. There are also loads of old Indie acts playing it on the gig scene. Hopefully the mainstream will not contest it this time, like they did in the early 90s with Take That et al.

Tossers

This is what you get when you are too cheapskate to employ a proper advertising agency. A lot of low budget, ahem, "easy" companies seem to fall into this trap.

This wouldn't be acceptable in the UK, but in France this is a stupid thing to do, because they really don't do the whole personal life being brought into politics thing.

Err...

Just an observation, but: The Spitfire was very nearly canceled because it wasn't thought to be a necessity, AFAIK the only reason that its development carried on was because it didn't use too much metal.

Sorry, what was that about killing the Eurofighter?

It's not the current enemy, but the future ones that we have to develop the equipment to deal with.

In other news...

97% of all statistics are made up on the spot, to prove a point.

Oh, FFS think a bit:

A few points:

You may be able to get a response from a card with non-legit equipment, but who is going to be able to convert that into a transaction at the bank? Only legit merchants, who aren't going to risk defrauding people left right and centre, because the bank has their name and address.

The article didn't mention, but you are also required to enter your PIN randomly (I've got one of these cards because I work for a bank who are trialling the service) currently we are looking at about 1 in 10 transactions being PIN auth'd. If a single terminal cancels all or most of the transactions that require a PIN it will be automatically disabled, and presumably the Rozzers called in.

Contrary to, what seems to be, popular belief the banks really don't want to fuck all their customers, this isn't about moving liability onto the customer, it's just something that is accepted as a good idea.

Having said all this, there is no way that cash is going away for many many years.

Speaking as a Vegaterian

GROW UP!!

(I'm not sure that two exclamation marks are enough, but I don't want to tip myself over the edge into the insanity enjoyed by these miserable wannabe-hippie-dogooders.)

Hmm

Wasn't there a proverb about a fool and his money?

Also Chris W, I think that he'd of got more out of £375k's worth of drugs and booze than he will out of the plate.

Personally, I'd of gone for hookers and blackjack, a la Bender.

@CH4, CO2 / John

Power from farm slop (anerobic digesters to create Methane to then burn for leccy) is fairly common - there is even a storyline in The Archers at the moment...

Cows

AFAIK - Cows (& Ruminents in general) don't fart that much, they mainly belch, hence the interest in the mouth-gas

The research into 'Roos was because they have a similar diet to cows, but don't produce the save Methane, this turns out to be because of an enzyme in their digestive systems, so the research is looking at introducing that to cow feed. Or sumfink like that.

Also the cow methane / flying thing is not comparing like with like, unless all your planes are at ground level or your cows are at about 11Km up.

@john / others

I would love to see OS/2 open sourced, but you have to realise that there are many (mainly financial) systems which require OS/2 to remain static and stable. Many banks still use OS/2 on their legacy ATMs and in legacy branches, indeed if you look in any major bank's datacentres you will hard pushed to find one without OS/2 systems. OS/2 can therefore not, under any circumstances, be open sourced until the last customer has migrated from it. This is for two reasons (not to mention any legal probs):

1) The banks are fucked if IBM compromise the security of OS/2 by making it open source. Basically a system that has never had scrutiny from 'modern' hacking techniques (buffer based attacks etc) would be laid open to all to poke around, with no scope for official IBM updates. This will affect the end user just as much as the bank.

2) IBM won't open source OS/2 as long as banks are the remaining active customers as they don't want the Z, P and I series and Lotus Notes/Domino markets to vanish overnight. Let me assure you if IBM open source OS/2 the banks will drop them and all of their products, hardware or software as soon as they possibly can. After all - if they are prepared to open source a still used product, what else would they do?

It's a shame but it'll never happen.

French law

The law they put in place may seem like protectionism (it probably is), but if you go to any French town you don't see their supermarkets or major chains taking over, there are always indipendantly run shops. It's not like over here in the UK where you are pushed to work out which town you are actually in because all high streets look the same these days.

You have to ask yourselfs what you want, nice looking towns with interesting shops run by locals (as well as a few larger chains) that aren't being driven out of business by aggressive supermarkets and their internet equivilant; or, as in most UK towns: mobile shop, bank, mobile shop, discount shop, Next, shoe shop (schuh, natch), dixons, another bank, tesco metro, boots, Greggs, Pret a Manger, sainsbury's local, etc. etc. And a couple of massive out of town supermarkets.

The French made their decision, we made ours, or at least the supermarkets et al made it for us, I know which I'd rather have.

To (mis) quite Douglas Adams

The scientific research they are conducting is something along the lines of "how many whales can a fleet of ships with rocket powered harpoons kill in one season."

Well

I for one welcome Mecha-Farmerzilla.

He can help with that pesky giant dinosaur/moth problem that I've been having recently.

Err...

As mentioned above, it's like sueing MacDonalds for making you fat, CiggiesCo for getting you hooked on the fags or a brewers for making you alcoholic, all of which (I think, not sure about the brewers) have happened.

Also: "...However, Davey refused to name "John Doe" in pre-trial discovery, "putting him at risk of a contempt-of-court charge"..."

But crucially not putting him at risk of a broken legs charge, dealt by Mr J Doe. Who says there isn't honour amongst crims: Nobody likes a grass.

IR Points

It doesn't seem that out of the question that a tram system may have points that are controlled from the cab of the tram, either by IR or radio. All you need to do is assume that the points aren't switched the way you want them and explicitly switch them to the correct direction whenever you approch. There would be no need for security in the points control system if trams don't go over the maximum safe speed (ie the max speed you can be switched from your current line) for the points when they cross.

I suspect what happened here is that the scrote, sorry teen, switched the points when a tram was halfway over the points, cuasing derailment. It's not too long ago that tram systems had manual points which would have been controlled from the street (IIRC). Trams are not like rail systems in that they don't tend to have signalling systems.

As for giving him a job, a kicking would seem more appropriate.

Howz about

The manufacturers making their laptops component upgradeable, that way you don't have to splash for a full laptop every time you want a processor upgrade or if you damage the screen. What if the mobo was upgradeable/swappable as most laptops are "too slow" way before their screens go out of acceptable quality. This way you don't throw all of the manufacturing energy away each time something needs to change.