Engineers are not really regarded as professionals in the UK - which is probably why nobody cares about Tommy Flowers and why I have been working on Germany for the last decade.

Pay

Another reason why people might work at GCHQ for such low pay is that they may also be getting some holiday money/perks from another country's security services.

Russia Today...

...seems to be Russia's equivalent of Fox News - but even nuttier. Whenever there is some really bad stuff happening somewhere in the world, Russia Today always seems to hit the nail squarely on the thumb.

"If you get caught, you give back the money and start a new scam."

Maybe not. From the article: "Viktor Pleshchuk received a six-year suspended sentence..."

If he breaks the law now, he gets the original jail term - in a Russian prison.

You haven't been paying attention! Microsoft says there are 235 patents being breached but won't say which patents are involved. As others have commented, were Microsoft to reveal which 235 patents they are talking about, it is quite likely that the world + dog would find prior art or other reasons why Microsoft's claims are invalid.

Re: Dreadful

"...the slightest bit sorry for this woman"

Ms Johansson is a professional actress near the peak of her profession, enjoying the fame and fortune that accompany her success. As such, she is likely to have number of people employed to help her maintain her fitness, appearance and public image - their advice and her own experience should tell her:

a) not to have any nude photographs of herself anywhere;

b) if she must have nude photographs of herself, keep them somewhere very safe.

No doubt there are many other attractive and talented young actresses who would like to have some of the opportunities enjoyed by Ms. Johansson and who would be prepared to take more care of their public image.

Why does it matter?

If you happened to be a dissident in a country with no democracy and a poor record on human rights and justice, you might be quite disconcerted that databases of Google, Skyhook, etc. could be used to determine your location. Your dismay might be heightened when men in balaclavas kick in your door and cart you and your family away, never to be seen again.

Re: Society doesn't need this...

"There's no room in society today for people who insist on peddling ideas contrary to those of the masses."

Such people would be guilty of thought crime and wrong speak.

"We need to re-educate people like this..."

...in Room 101.

Luckily, Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights give us all rights to freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

Form factor?

"Tablets have certain dimensions and characteristics that are dictated by the form factor."

Haven't we already established that in the "evidence" that Apple presented in the Netherlands court, they had doctored the photos to disguise the fact that the Samsung has a different form factor than the ipad?

He's not necessarily an idiot.

"The boom times for house prices are over..."

Exactly - which means rental returns are actually very good at present. The housing market has highs and lows, much like the stock market. However, If you take a long term view, well maintained property in a popular location gives a reasonable rate of return and you always have the asset to sell.

My pensions funds are worth damn all because administrators didn't see the need to pass on high returns in the boom years and have had only excuses every time the stock market tanks. Gordon Brown's raid didn't help either. The drip feed of small sums seems to have mostly benefited the pension companies and the IFAs.

@Robert E A Harvey

"I'll buy from somebody else.

good luck with that"

Navigon, iGo, Trafficmaster, .....

Re: The ECJ will stop them in the end...

Given that Levis already did this with Tesco and Costco at the ECJ, it seems surprising that they are now trying to get a court in the USA to make a ruling this time around. Maybe Levis reckon they would make more money from a case in the USA.

"Old" Offline Gmail still there

The "old" offline Gmail still works in IE with Google Gears installed - but many browsers are not supported, including Chrome.

Free iPads

...or:

Several iPad trolleys + boltcutters = several iPads gone

Re: The most dangerous thing you're likely to run into in the UK....

Yeah - it wouldn't be anything in the countryside. A handgun might come in handy if you had to hike through certain parts of UK's larger cities - but carrying a handgun, a taser or even a knife is out of the question in the UK.

More rail than road in Siberia

"And I'm not sure the position is much better on the Russian side - it's a long way to Yakutsk (~2,000 miles)."

Yakutsk is already on the Amur-Yakutsk Mainline, connecting the Trans-Siberian Railway (from Moscow) with Magadan, on the Okhotsk Sea.

As the route at Tynda is not so far from the Chinese border, I guess the Chinese might be interested in the rail link for sending freight, eastwards and westwards.

FAT32

"If they stop using FAT32..."

I am surprised none of them has taken this route and used a different file system. The file system in use is only significant if volumes are to be mounted on another system - and there are ways to get around that issue.

Funny you should say that...

I've just bought a Viewsonic Viewpad 10s for just over 200 Euros. It is directly equivalent with tablets sold under several different brands and can be flashed with ROMs from popular forums. I chose the version without 3G and GPS, as I don't need these features but it comes with HDMI out, a 10" capacitive screen and a 16GB microSD card included. They didn't include the USB male-male cable that is needed for flashing though.

@So, they are just about to do what they have been telling India they *CANNOT* do?

"What they cannot do is intercept data between the BB and the server."

...and the servers for India might not actually be in India - they could be in the UK, for example. That would mean that the UK authorities could intercept Indian BB traffic but the Indian authorities could not. This could also be true for several countries in continental Europe and the Middle East.

TOR and Proxies

TOR and proxies do feature in some of the lists of banned IP addresses and networks used by some organisations. Obviously, it is a game of Whac-A-Mole, with new addresses popping up all the time but the blocklists catch a reasonable chunk of undesired traffic.

Busy roads, etc.

When a new road is proposed somewhere quiet, it is not uncommon for locals to object to the anticipated noise and pollution - which seems fair enough if it will negatively impact their lives and the value of their properties. If you choose go to live somewhere where there is already some noise, pollution or similar annoyance, that's a different matter.

The assumption of many seems to be that, as wind turbines are "green", there cannot be any problems with them.

Ice throwing

I would be more worried about ice throwing. There was a house in Germany or the Netherlands trashed by a large chunk of ice that fell through the roof, after being hurled from the local wind turbine.

Heathrow and noise

If you live within a certain distance of Heathrow, the airport operator has to subsidise sound reduction measures for your house e.g. on my house, secondary double glazing. At least, that was the situation when I lived there about 10 years ago.

Unlimitied lies

"Let's put to one side the issue of whether unlimited should mean unlimited."

No, let's not put that aside, as it is at the heart of the issue. If any ISP wants to market something as "unlimited", then it should be as described, unlimited. There may be many perfectly good reasons why ISPs need to set limits but they should be honest about it.

A similar issue arose over "lifetime warranty" some years ago, where some manufacturers, having used the promise of a lifetime warranty in their marketing, retrospectively decided that a "lifetime warranty" was only valid for few years - until a court told them otherwise.

It is perfectly reasonable to have various constraints and limitations when selling goods and services but it is fraudulent to lie about or conceal those constraints and limitations in order to sucker people into a purchase.

Unlucky bastards

...especially as the rates for contractors appear to be slightly less than when I was contracting there 15 or so years ago.

It may be funny if one of them is named after Sir Winston...

Even funnier if it was named after Nelson.

Re: Formatting a punch card

"I suppose that it would involve another piece of card, and a bit of glue."

Punch cards tended to jam if you stuck anything on them. However, splicing paper tape was quite common. I can remember using a device which we called a "micro VAX" - this thing held two ends of paper tape in place while you spliced them together. It came with a little tool with which to manually punch through holes in fresh tape covering a spliced joint.

Microsoft Security Essentials

"I thought MS were doing AV now - not that I know whether it is any good or not - I've never tried it."

Yes, free and actually quite good. It is not particularly "heavy" and MS seem to keep it quite up to date.

Has it changed from being a general post office to something else?

Well, yes - it has changed. Parcel business is shared with several competitors and the letters business has been in decline for many years, with the increasing use of email and other forms of communication. The Post Office is as much a bank as it is a post office.

Systemic problem

"why not just turn over to the backup routes while fixing the problem?"

Because you will still be connected with the same centralised systems, which have all had the same dodgy update.

Re: Socialist, much?

Lucas did not lose 20 000 000 USD because someone else sold some helmets and made up to 30 000 GBP, so the damages claimed and awarded in the US were fictional. In other parts of the world, claimants have to prove the levels of damages which they claim, not simply pluck large numbers from thin air. That is the issue with US justice in this case.

Lucas's substantial wealth is relevant in that, by pursuing an individual over such a small sum, he looks like a vindictive bully.

"...using the molds and materials Lucas owns the exclusive intellectual property rights to"

Ainsworth owns the intellectual property rights as it was he that designed and built the original helmets, using his own materials - apparently, this is more important than being rich, having expensive lawyers and well-known friends.

Re: It's also a blatant display of ISP's analyzing your traffic

As I understand it, the use of traffic shaping devices that may use deep packet inspection to identify traffic classes is perceived quite differently from straightforward packet capture as the former does not imply storage of data for later analysis (by people).

how would they know the difference?

Deep Packet Inspection. There are traffic shaping devices which look into packet payload data to identify the type of traffic e.g. Bittorrent using a port associated with http traffic (in order to get through a firewall restriction) can be identified by looking for certain details in the payload data. This can then be used to place all P2P traffic in a separate class from 'real' browser traffic.