@ AC re Horsham

Horsham may be "urban" but it's just a market town in the middle of no where (I live there as well) - but what about Billinghshurst or other villages just outside that are part of "Horsham District"? They are all served by the Horsham exchange and I'm sure they'd appreciate better broadband.

Everyone has it wrong ..

.. a mobile phone should just be a phone, with SMS if you're lucky.

Take the Motorola F3 for example. It's slim and stylish but it's just designed to be a phone. OK so it has vibrate alert and polyphonic ringtones but it's no frills. And thanks to it's e-ink based screen the battery life is huge.

Best thing of all? £25 from major retailers or about £10 on eBay. Damage it? No worries, just get another.

Do we really want to stop these pregnancies?

We already have an ageing population (not enough youngsters to pay taxes by the time I'm old enough to need a pension) so do we really want to reduce the number of births even more?

Didn't work with the 105" Panasonic ..

Probably because Panasonic have a "feature" where you have to press and hold the standby button. Cycling through loads of them within 70 seconds isn't going to be long enough to switch it off.

Why not the E4200 ?

Why would you buy the Adamo over the E4200? Already an ultra-light 12" model which, going from the photos of the Adamo, doesn't look any thicker and can be upgraded to quite a powerful machine (max 5Gb RAM etc.)

Are you sure about the AF?

I've got the older model which uses the same AF system.

In my case the camera does tell you which AF spot it's using because it flashes it red, very briefly, when you half press the shutter button.

I'd be surprised if they've ditched this on the newer model so are you sure you haven't just missed it?

It'll only go under again

An article about this on the BBC News site also added that Shop Direct are having problems of there own - having recently made quite a few staff redundant.

You really think ..

.. the BBC don't spend money on R&D ? All those "I'm glad they spend our money on TV than silly innovations.." really don't know what the BBC do.

They spend a *HUGE* amount of money on R&D every year. A few years back they spent a fortune on developing a plasma TV with a company called Delphi - which to be honest was really pants anyway. Did sell a few units because of it's "Developed in conjunction with the BBC" sticker but wasn't worth the huge price tag.

What is the obsession with Cut'n'Paste?

I've never ever missed having Cut'n'Paste on a phone - what do you think it is, a word processor?

My N95 didn't have it, my current LG didn't have it, our BlackBerry fleet at work doesn't have it .. can someone please explain?

Never believe contrast levels

As all manufacturers measure contrast ratios in different ways you can't use them to compare sets. Some only turn 20% of the screen black, some a more equal 45% .. they use different methods of actually taking the readings ..

It all looks very impressive on paper but you can't beat actually watching a DVD of your choice on various screens in store.

@ BLoad

You think KPMG are bad? You're just lucky it's not BDO - they shut down every company they go into with no intention of delivering stock.

At least other companies sometimes try and keep the company going to sell it off as a going concern. BDO are the lovely company that made me redundant from unbeatable.co.uk in 2005 so I'm bound to hold a grudge :)

@ TimM

I get "Play High Quality" on Firefox (and on a Mac) so it's not dependant on browser or O/S.

The one thing I did notice is that it's not available for all shows.

ICO

The Information Commisioners Office has a lot of guidance on this kind of thing, mainly geared up for CCTV usage and you have to learn it all if you are a CCTV Operator.

For example, I can't put a camera on the side of my building if it captures people walking up and down the street and that come no where near the building. I can only keep it for a period of time that is appropriate (i.e. how long do you think it'd take you to work out a crime had been commited - don't keep it for longer than that) and you have to respecet everyones right to see footage of themselves.

That's right, you can write to your local Supermarket and request a copy of any footage that contains you. They'll charge a £5 admin fee or something but it's your right. Likewise you could write to your local council and request a copy of all footage of you walking around town.

If you see it and suspect that they shouldn't have it, for example it's more than a few months old, you can speak to the ICO and ask them to destroy it.

And most importantly, they can't use it for any kind of commercial gain.Whether or not the same applies in her country is a different matter.

@ Neil Stansbury

Since when did you need planning permisison to put a dish on the side of your house? Not since the 80's at least - planning rules have an exception in them letting anyone put a dish on a house unless it's a listed building or in a conservation area.

@ Nano Nao

Sky's new EPG (for HD customers only at the moment) offers all of the features you describe - except the bit about unreserving the HDD space.

I work in an IT Support office ..

.. with a girl geek genuinely called Jen, a tall bloke with big hair that's very much like Roy (including the attitude) and someone who is a spitting image of Moss (complete with the dressed by his mum look)

To me this is just like watching out department on the CCTV.

@ Dick Emery

They could easily prove you have a colour set if you push them hard enough - so try not to be to mean.

With a simple application to a court they could request access to your property. And lets be honest, the BBC wouldn't be refused that by the government.

The best way, certainly if you genuinely don't have a set, is let them come to your house. You may complain about your liberties etc. etc. but once they've been they stop bothering you. My partner just had to do a doorstep interview two years ago and they've not been bothered since.

Clearly ..

.. no one has tried to use GPS on the Nokia N95. The longest cold start time I've ever experienced and it's only accurate to about 5 miles.

While GPS on a phone might be very handy to work out where you are when lost, or for geotagging a photo, I'd not rely on it for Sat Nav. When I did attempt to do so with the N95 it constantly kept switching between the motorway I was on and the A road about 50 metres to the left.

In comparison my TomTom 730 locks on really quickly and never decides I'm on a completely different road.

He can't do math though ..

Voting at this station since 1997 .. that's 11 years not 15.

@AC "Screw this...

Why are all the IT Professionals the worst when it comes to conspiracies?

So you use an RFID blocking wallet (more money than sense there) but what about the RFID tags that clothing manufacturers sew into the clothes you buy so they can track it around the warehouse, while it's on the road and then on the shelves? Do you walk around covered in tin foil?

And what about the fact that you can be tracked by your mobile phone with or without your consent? Thanks to the fact that it handily broadcasts it's ID every so often and that's easily picked up by the right hardware. Or are you one of these people that switches off your phone everytime you go into a building?

Really, some people just take things to far .. people that worry like this obviously have something to hide.

Geneva

Paper ticketing works perfectly in Geneva so who says we all need to go contactless?

It helps that they don't use any barriers and don't really do ticket inspectors (except on the yellow boats crossing the lake) .. nice and simple - pay for the number of hours you want to travel and that gets you unlimited travel on any form of transport during that period. Strangely you don't get as many people trying to travel for free as well ..

Even better, as a tourist you get all that free during your stay.

@ Tom Paine

Actually VbV knows more than just your name, which you rightly say you've just entered into the website .. it actually presents you with your unique VbV id, generally 8 characters or so which does contain, or at least part of, your surname but also some information you haven't entered - a random character and a few numbers normally.

OK - it's another thing you have to remember if you want to use this as a marker for a genuine request but if your bank just uses your surname then they have implemented VbV badly.

Vodafone

Well as it's the same photo that Vodafone UK now have on-line I would imagine it is accurate.

Young COBOLers

I'm a COBOL programmer and I'm only 28 - and yes I worked on the Y2K problem for a local council at 18.

Only because the college I went to still used COBOL as the higher level language (Pascal in the first year) until 1999 when they switched to VB.

At the time most of the ATM backend systems used COBOL and I'm sure some of them still exist so we do have some demand still.

So how do I apply for my US work permit?

Is fraid that hard to spot?

All it takes is a right click on the iframe to check it features SSL.

And a fake site is going to ask me for the whole password, not the standard 3 digits of said password. If you don't realise that then you deserve to have your details stolen.

iMac

Got meself an iMac about 4 months ago now and opted for the 24" powered by the 2.8 Core 2 Duo Extreme (the top model at the time).

To be honest it wasn't much more expensive than a similar spec Dell XPS or other brand "power PC". It helped that I didn't buy any extra ram from Apple (about £200) but spent £30 at Crucial and now have 4Gb.

Would I go back? Well I've got MS setup via Boot Camp for any unforseen programs that I must have that I can't get on OS X but I'm much happier with it compared to XP or Vista. OS X is definately much faster. I'm not a "Fan Boy" as I am still happy to use Windows at work but the Mac is far superior.

Some of you ..

.. are as bad as the chav.

You walk past what appears to be an agressive dog, so you deliberately go back past it but this time with something to injure/kill it with ?

Sounds like you just want an excuse to kill it and are hoping it will go for you again ..

@ Larry

"Let's call it what it is, that is a GPS"

Not quite. GPS (Global Positioning System) tells you what your current position is based on a bunch of flying things in the sky. That's your static position (which can be updated in real time). You can buy a GPS device that has no route planning - typically used by ramblers or other people interested in outdoor pursuits.

SatNav takes advantage of GPS to plot a route from your current location (this is the GPS bit) to a destination you select.

Looks just like ..

.. a thin client.

And if you buy a decent enough HP terminal (other brands available) the specification and price isn't anything that new or unusual either.