@Trey Pattillo

"And ALL information of a public organization is "public" information"

In the USA maybe, but not in the UK. Ever heard of Crown Copyright? Also, in some cases, publicly owned organisations can compete with each other (and with the private sector) for contracts, and the information they hold is "commercial in confidence" just as it would be in any other setting. And then there's a further distinction between state-owned and state-funded.

Oh, and by the way, "organisation" is spelt with an "s" on .co.uk websites :)

good responses

Well done to Zynga and Facebook for patching their apps so quickly. Makes a change from the Microsoft attitude of "ok, thanks for telling us" followed by deathly silence for a few months until a patch appears.

how long did it take...

...you to come up with this sentence?

"But Adobe's products undoubtedly allow picture editors unprecedented latitude in touching up models. "

re Chrome for Linux

"Does this mean Google will finally release a version of Chrome for linux?"

No, it means they've tried and failed to get Chrome working on any existing Linux distro, so they've had to create their own just to get the browser working on Linux.

BT's reputation...

...will be forever tarnished by the fact they even *considered* implementing Phorm. They've made a good decision today but should never have let it get this far.

unaware?

"That's the Edgware Road branch of Woolies in London, seen in better days and evidently unaware of the terrible fate which awaits it." Looks pretty aware to me, given the huge "sale" posters and the covered-over windows.

Another fuss over nothing

Firstly, "just as bad" isn't saying they *are* bad, it means the same as "just as good". She did not call the class "bad" as reported, she just likened it to another class. It's like saying "El Reg is just as bad as the best website I've ever come across" - does that statement say El Reg is bad? No, it does not.

Secondly, doesn't "bad" mean "good" in some forms of slang anyway? Similar to "wicked" etc; think Michael Jackson...

Paris because she's bad...

@Ian Ferguson

"If I don't want my privacy invaded by Google, there's an easy solution: Paste posters of my face ALL over my house!

Then Street View will show nothing more than a giant blur where my house was."

So then we'd all know where you live - the only house with blurred faces all over it. As things stand, there might be a picture of your house on the internet but nobody knows it's yours, so your privacy is perfectly in tact. Streetview != privacy invasion. Please get that straight.

(And no, I don't work for Google)

Money making machine

Thad is right, the reason for this is just to keep the Microsoft Money Machine working. If they were really interested in producing a decent operating system they'd concentrate on making one excellent system rather than trying to resell the same old rubbish with a few minor improvements.

Interesting how this news comes out on the day the next version of Ubuntu is released...

What's the alternative?

"This could limit the RIPA-empowered investigation of offences such as dog fouling and restrict the use of surveillance to offences like fly-tipping and rogue trading."

This is bad - councils (and the police) don't have sufficient resources to manually police every street corner and potential fly tipping site. Dog fouling has serious health implications and fly tipping is a major problem in the UK. While I don't want to see CCTV replacing real police patrols etc., CCTV is the only realistic way to gather enough evidence to prosecute fly tippers etc.

Search and advertising partnership

Yahoo! = search + advertising - there's nothing else to their business. So this "partnership" is more of a "merger", which will essentially equate to a "takeover". It's just symantics, the outcome is the same.

I'm with Pete

I studied maths at uni for 4 years and have a masters in it - yet I would show symptoms "such as tension, nervousness, concern, worry, edginess, impatience, confusion, fear and mental block" when asked to tackle mathematical tasks in such circumstances too. It's not maths people fear, it's tests, exams and experiments like this one.

@Wayland Sothcott - "Small ISPs who go through BT"

It will no doubt vary from ISP to ISP but according to official responses from some of the ISPs on this forum: http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/showflat.php?Board=freenetname&Number=3281353&fpart=all&vc=1, it applies to BT retail only, so other ISPs won't be forced to adopt it by BT.

In the case of Madasafish, they have no plans to implement it at all. I'd try Googling your ISP's name with the word "phorm" in the search string and see what comes up.

"We've never had problems before"

Oh yes you have. The Citrix plugin doesn't work at all under Ubuntu, for example. Since I changed my OS at home, I now have to email them with any payment requests, since there's no web based interface available for me. There's nothing technically challenging about the Windows 2000 application that couldn't be translated into a straightforward (but secure) standard web form.

Before anyone else says it...

Save your money, install a Linux distro instead.

Why the hidden camera?

Do we know why the check-in staff had a hidden camera secreted on their person? Given that it would be picking up all the names etc. on the flight itinery, I think that's a bit dodgy. What were they planning to do with the recording? I'm assuming they weren't just recording on the offchange of a loony passenger turning up...

Techy TV plot not too realitic

So what's new? Do I detect a slow news day at Reg HQ?

Japanese research vessel

You mean, they took a break from whaling to do some actual research?

"You may catch them there before they're gone"

They're gone.

Aero?

I prefer Wispa.

small, fast and stable

I was going to simply type that and say Firefox already does that - but actually this sounds like something much better. I hate it when one page is taking ages to load and Firefox freezes while it tries to load it, and I can't view the other tabs. Once again Google seem to have spotted something good and figured out how to do it better.

Being open source, we can also check that Google aren't using it to watch our every move. And, hopefully, we won't have to wait too long for Firefox to incorporate everything Chrome offers.

What a load of tripe

"As far as I know it would be perfectly legal for me to make a copy of a Rolex watch if I had the skill."

Nope, not if you use the Rolex brand name, logo and any other registered trade marks on it. And not if the design of the Rolex has been patented.

Similarly, it would be illegal if I made copies of my favourite CD and gave them away to my friends - or posted the same music on t'internet for anyone to download.

"Passing on a copy of something is only theft if money exchanges hands for the copy". Nope. By passing on an unauthorised copy of something the recipient should have paid the originator for, you are denying the originator funding that is rightfully theirs. In other words, you are taking something that belongs to them away from them without their permission. That's theft.

Why all the "sadly"s?

Sadly, there's nothing sad about the fact that the system, sadly, works. If you seriously can't, sadly, get behind of the wheel of a car without, sadly, committing a criminal offence (that's what speeding is, sadly, in case you'd sadly forgotten) then, sadly, you shouldn't be driving. Sadly.

Nothing to see here

The previous offering was definitely milking it, but this one seems quite innocent to me. So there's a species of bird called the "great tit" - that doesn't mean the BBC are trying to insert some childish innuendo every time they write those words. I think Lester needs to take a cold shower and calm down a bit.

Good move, beeb

The BBC have long held a policy that they won't provide stuff online that's available elsewhere (at least, that's the reason they gave for shutting down their free fantasy football service - I haven't found anything quite like it since), so this accords with that approach - there are hordes of other places for the fascists to go and voice their narrow opinions.

The forums were a great idea but they *were* overrun by a vocal minority of right-wing extremists, most of whom were almost certainly not Today listeners. (Judging by the level of illiteracy on the boards, very few of them would actually understand much of what's said on the programme).

Idiot

What a stupid thing to do - the more he launches these silly legal cases, the more publicity it drums up, drawing more and more awareness of the very thing he's so desperate to hide. Get over it, Max, move on.

poster

Note the poster in the picture above the urinal, complete with detailed instructions and diagrams. Knowing what the queues are like sometimes on long haul flights, I don't think many passengers are going to have time to read that lot.

As for the design itself - what's the idea, grip with your knees and pee through the whole? A little bit of turbulence and it's wet trousers time.

I'll get my coat... to cover the embarrassing stain

Good on Google

There's absolutely no need for OOXML, there's already a perfectly sufficient standard. Microsoft just need to comply with it.

But then, MS and compliance with standards don't really go together, do they?

Microhoo

Looks like this one is winning so far. A squllion quid and/or a big legal battle to whoever snaps up Microhoo.com first, then

Er...

This isn't a merger, it's a takeover. The resulting company would be called "Microsoft". But if that's the case I think we should pay homage to Yahoo! by forever referring to the new outfit as "Microsoft!"

Long live exclamation marks!

Poor blighters?

Beardy Branson would charge them a fortune for the privalege

(Chose the Linux penguin just for the fish link, if you're wondering)

BSOD

Let's hope it works reliably, or else "Blue Screen of Death" could suddenly take on a whole new (and literal) meaning

re: They're merging

What, like building societies? I'm thinking Nationwide and Anglia, that became Nationwide Anglia for about 5 minutes and are now... Nationwide. Looks more like a hostile takeover to me :)

Small steps

One of my personal soap-boxes, this. How hard could it be for browsers to recognise <centre> and "colour" and treat them the same as <center> and "color"? It would take pretty much no effort at all to allow English words (as well as Americaneze ones) in languages like HTML. So why doesn't it happen?

Paying twice

There are already organisations WITHIN the NHS that can and do offer services like this at no cost to PCTs and Trusts. A lot of money has been wasted by allowing private companies to take NHS data and then charge the NHS for viewing them in a slightly different way. That's all these companies offer, and it must stop.