* Posts by kevin elliott

50 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Mar 2007

Anonymous hack showed password re-use becoming endemic

kevin elliott

Missing the Point?

The point here is that it's impossible for ost of us to use multiple secure passwords. They're impossible to remember. And the more uncrackable they become, the less useful they are.

And as for trusting a piece of software to generate and manage passwords... That could be compomised at some point in the future, if it's not already...

Password technology has outlived it's usefulness for secure applications. For low secuity needs like web forums, it's good enough, even with re-use.

We need secure keys, not the ones in the unix model, but something I can carry around with me, plug into a networked computer anywhere, and be able to access all my secure accounts safely by typing in a simple pin for the key. Citrix have a system like this, but it's not universal. And generally restricted to a single company.

Oracle slashes software prices on own iron

kevin elliott
Grenade

Anothe way of looking at it

Another way of looking at this is to see it as a public admission that Sun hardware is crap..... But I'm sure the fanbois won't like this.

Ellison roasts HP chairman for 'absurd lie'

kevin elliott
FAIL

Bad for Both

A public slanging match like this does nothing good - and looks bad on both HP and Oracle.

This comes across as being personal, not business - and when senior execs of public corporations put personal issues before business, it doesn't bode well. For either company.

Microsoft loses chief software architect Ray Ozzie

kevin elliott
Unhappy

Rats leaving a sinking ship?

Pity, that guy has talent. But it seems that Balmer's the real problem. Just pisses off the guys at the top who should be driving the company.

As for trashing notes - just remember how good/radical it was compared to anything else when it was released - and for years after. IBM bought Lotus for notes, and effectively trashed the other poducts. Blame IBM for Note's stagnation - they've milked the product for many many years - and have done very little to develop it.... Like any other innovative product, if you sit back, the competition overtake and leave you sitting.

Larry Ellison to buy EMC?

kevin elliott

More than likely

Seems like a goer to me. Based on these figures, EMC is seriously undervalued.

And Ellison needs to put Hurd to work on something worthy of him. So stretching a little to buy EMC makes a lot of sense. And that'll fuel the drive to be bigger than IBM/HP.....

Meanwhile MS sit on the sidelines, pretending to be the good guys - and have comlpetely run out of steam. They have to be vulnerable in the forseeable future...

Abu Hamza ruling clarifies McKinnon case

kevin elliott

Polanski...

If the Swiss can decline Polanski's deportation for what most of us would consider a much more serious crime, then surely the new govt. can decline this request.

Oracle bricks up BI customers

kevin elliott
FAIL

Create a mess, then brag about a locked in solution

Yup, Oracle have done that. Talk about spin.

All I can say is: SAS

Feed curry to sheep, boffins suggest

kevin elliott
Boffin

Ignoble Prize Candidate?

Useless reesearch into a useless topic, possibly well curried out. Must be a prime candidate.

Beeb, British Museum face smut issues over saucy pot

kevin elliott

How?

Just tell me how, as a parent, I can keep reasonable control over what my kids get exposed to at other kids houses? On hand held games at school?

And what if the generally applicable standards of age restrictions are not suitable for my kids, precisely because of the content of the games and what it does to them.

And I remember, as a teenager, doing things I wasn't allowed to.... Pubs, X movies.... All behind my parents backs.... Guess you did/are doing the same. Only things in those days were nowhere near as bad. Or as violent.

And my kids are doing the same, but with really bad effects, precisely because of those violent games, that are legal fo their age, even though I won't have them in the house. I guess you'll learn first hand, one day. .

kevin elliott
FAIL

Insanity Rules

While I can understand what this law is trying to do, the wording is, to say the least unfortunate.

We bought a book for our kids that explains just how and where babies are made. One of the pics in the book is of Mum & Dad making love, while a kid happens to see what's going on - something all parents have been through - or nearly been through. I can't remember the exact words, but the caption suggests that it'd be better not to disturb Mum and Dad.

Great, so an educational kiddies book now becomes pornography - just as well I don't live in the UK any more, cos I wouldn't throw this out just because some fools wrote the laws wrongly. But I'll have to seriously vet any literature the kids want to bring on our next trip 'home'.

No laws about computer games that let kids blow people to bits, with lots of blood, flying body parts though. Even though the kids become really nasty and aggressive after playing them....

Sick, sick, sick......

Sergey Brin: 'We screwed up' on Street View Wi-Fi grab

kevin elliott
FAIL

Why/What

So far there's been no justification for writing/using this code. And no statement of how they've used the illegally collected data...

So now Google need to come clean - Why did they write/embed the code in the first place. And what have they already used the data for?

Simlpy 'fessing up, partly deleting and trying to get away with it is not good enough. Especially as they've already lied about what they were actually collecting.

Bitbucket's Amazon DDoS - what went wrong

kevin elliott
Coat

Knicker Elastic

Seems like the problem is really the elastic that Amazon use in their products. knicker elastic is outdated and doesn't have the stretch & resilience of pure latex products..

Company wins US patent for podcasting

kevin elliott
WTF?

Amazing

So what is episodic? It's divided into parts/occasional/unpredictable/impermanent/temporary... It doesn't have to repeat. And the patent says: "...one or more episodes..."

The guys didn't develop anything, just wrote a concept on a form and submitted it. And probably heard the concept being bandied around in the newsgroups and decided to squat.

And by this patent, any company or person that provides reports or other data to it's customers, and asks them to collect is covered.....

So effectively the US patent office has not only given these guys a patent in podcasting, but also telephone directory distibution, magazine distribution (e.g. ad on tv, go to you newsagent to collect), bank reports, estate agent reports, vehicle delivery..... You name it, anything where the originator gets you to collect and the channel could be described as dedicated.

Even doctor's reports.... You know - Phone rings, you answer & hear , "Hello it's Doctor Xs surgery here. Please call in to collect your test results......."

And what about windows update - or any other remote, automatic updating system.

Hang on, wouldn't el reg count as episodic data... and isn't it's web site dedicated to epsidoci data.... And isn't the notification by changes to the home page - and we collect by clicking on the link - which is, of course, dedicated to delivery of the episode.....

So that makes the internet prior art.... among all the other examples I've quoted.

This is the most stunning example yet of the sheer incompetence and stupidity of the US patent system.

Telegraph.co.uk succumbs to typo irony

kevin elliott
Boffin

Glass houses indeed....

Quote:

'And so to The Daily Telegraph, which reported online Thursday how a UK judge slammed lawyers for excessive fees after they'd represented a woman who'd prosecuted her former employer over repetitive-strain injury.'

....which reported online Thurday........

I rest my case.

2008 goes into one-second overtime

kevin elliott
Coat

Damnation

My watch will be fast again..... And every time they insert another of those leap events, it brings my date and time of death forward.... Life's short enough already, why don't these guys think?

Time to leave, methinks

Coat, cos I don' want to listen to guys who don't get the joke trying to explain it to me...

Budget airlines break new rules on opt-in website pricing

kevin elliott
Unhappy

About time.

I booked some tickets through the Orange Monster's web site earlier this year and it was anything but Easy to navigate through to the end of the purchase without buying or getting conned into one of the many unwanted extras....

And if you board at an airport where you're bussed out to the plane, your priority boarding means nothing more than first on the bus - not first on the plane.... Is that a con or not????

Still I suppose you get what you pay for, but if you miss the opening specials when they publish thei new schedules, they're anything but cheap....

Bet they lose my luggage for posting this...

Company sues Facebook over somethingorother

kevin elliott
Thumb Down

Hardly new stuff

People have been doing this for years... The application was filed December 2002. This appears to be a case of patenting something operational systems were doing a long time ago.... And then trying to screw people. Sadly someone granted a patent.... When will this nonsense stop?

The madness of 'king cores

kevin elliott

You don't need a hypervisor

No need for a hypervisor in a data centre - we've been running on multi processor/multicore machines for years and are used to shoving large numbers of jobs through at teh same time. No need for VMs either - even if they've also been around for donkeys years. Just need a decent OS (NOT WINDOWS) a decent scheduler and a workload manager to stop resource hungry apps from stealing too much and blocking the rest of the machine up.

The big benefit of virtualisation in a data centre is to insulate apps from machine failures/unavailability, and facilitate maintenance and upgrades. Particularly when you're running a lot of small, relatively unreliable (compared to mainframes or top end unix boxes) machines.

French record labels sue, um, SourceForge

kevin elliott
Thumb Down

Bloody File Sharers

I'm sick to death of the theives that refuse to pay for music.

If you like the music, stick your hand in your pocket and get some money to the guys who made it - all the way down the chain to the musos who performed. Otherwise wait for it to come on the radio - or don't listen to it. But don't come up with feeble excuses for stealing, like justifying it on record companies' over pricing (even if it's true)....

As for the law suit - well it's frivolous, stupid - BUT WILL COST THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY A LOT OF CASH DEFENDING IT..... So now the open source community as well as the musicians and other workers in the music industry has to pay to support or defend the mentality of the many undesireable members of our community.

So I'd like to ask - how many music and video file sharers will stick thier hands in their pockets and hand over cash to defend Source Forge????????? Do I detect a deafening silence, broken only by the same lame putrid excuses for theft? Thought so.

Thumbs down for the court case and the theives.

Geeks whup Marine ass in Call Of Duty 5

kevin elliott
Coat

Codswallop!

I'll get my coat

UK asks to buy next-gen spy planes from US

kevin elliott

Am I being too simplistic?

Why not just take a few standard big airbuses - like the 340, put in a pile of extra fuel tanks and all the electronics - and air to air refuelling. Cheap parts, a european supplier - and proven range and reliability and low operating costs.

Oh, silly me, I forgot - BAE Systems (or whatever they call themselves these days) are trying to get out of airbus...

Royal Navy won't fight pirates 'in case they claim asylum'

kevin elliott
Pirate

Why have a navy?

Pointless having a navy if you're not going to fight piracy with it. Really sad when training exercises are more important than getting a few pirates.

Perhaps the real problem is that if there were british casualties, there'd be hell to pay and the mealy mouthed politicians would be incapable of explaining. And who'd have to foot the bill for damage to Her Majesty's fleet?

Hackintosh maker bites back at Apple

kevin elliott
Thumb Up

Remember Amdahl

Amdahl already did this with mainframes... IBM refused to licence their then MVS operating system to Amdahl on pretty much the same grounds that Apple are using.

Amdahl screamed unfair.... And IBM lost. and Amdahl made the competition for IBM. IBM finally killed them and other competitors by moving to a new 32bit architecture that Amdahl didn't have the funds to develop competing systems for.

Apple sell very expensive boxes. There's very little in them that isn't bog standard PC architecture. There's no real technical justification in their stance - just financial, by protection of a (small) monopoly. Fair competition would be good.

I'd love to see apple put their money into making OS/X available for any of the pieces of kit that Linux and XP run on. Would make Vista's problems look trivial for a long time. But they won't. Lock-in and exclusivity are their game. But it isn't going to happen - unless challenges like this succeed. Too much money to lose.

I think Apple are being very clever here - Sexy O/S. Sexy, but way overpriced hardware. Restricted hardware set to minimise support issues. And a clever marketing campaign to convince people that buying on looks is cool, even if it's costly....

& before you ask, I run a mixed & legal XP/Linux setup at home. Now to wait for the Apple fanboys to vent their rage as I've attacked their holy grail.

Hotmail dies on both sides of the Atlantic

kevin elliott
Stop

First time

I've been using hotmail since it was first released last century. This is the first significant outage I've seen.

Give the guys credit for what they've achieved so far. It's a credit to them that the system is available worldwide 24x7 over many years, almost without interruption. How many of your corporate networks could manage that?

There's no justification MS bashing over this.

& remember - you don't pay for it.

Stopblair.eu tries to halt Tony's march on Brussels

kevin elliott

Who should do it

Better that he gets the EU job than a crack at the UN - the damage won't be worldwide....

IBM snubs OS/2 open source plea

kevin elliott

Happy memories

OS/2 multi-tasked so well... I remember running 20 different lotus spreadsheets concurrently - just to impress an interviewee. If they open sourced the code, we may finally get a version of WIN that would multi-task properly.

I remember changing the colours in the task bars.. Amongst other places

On a security front, my bank's ATMs still run OS/2. Imagine the hackers/crackers paradise if the OS was open-sourced...IBM would have to produce more patches than M$ just to stave off the hacking onslaught.

Good idea, but I guess it has to be a non-starter.

Small mainframe vendors huddle against IBM

kevin elliott
Unhappy

Plus ca change...

When will these big bullies learn?

IBM have been trying to kill their mainframe business for years, despite the money they extort for it, now they're getting back to their old dirty tricks against the smaller guys. I was a big supporter of IBM against SCO, but not here.

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

kevin elliott

Even Easier

There's a great way forward & b3ta should consider replacing the competition - but as follows:

Get someone/people to draw a few reasonable likenesses of whatever he's called now. Images could be hand drawn, painted, or created using a drawing package. Further they could ask people to donate images to the competition on which they hold the copyright

Offer these as source images on b3ta for parody/satirical purposes

Relaunch the competition, with the restriction that only the papproved source images may be used.

Windows random number generator is so not random

kevin elliott

Stating the obvious

So what's new? When I started in computers nearly 30 years ago, I was told the limitations of the so called random number that were available. Even before this I remember the great fanfare that greeted the latest Ernie - the computer that picks the winners of the premium bonds in the UK, but time has shown that it's no truly or pseudo random...

The big problem is that it's been chosen as the feed for SSL encryption, despite well known limitations. Perhaps they thought it was good enough... Perhaps they didn't think.

There's a good wikipedia article on random number generation, suggest people read it, in it there's this quote:

'John von Neumann famously said "Anyone who uses arithmetic methods to produce random numbers is in a state of sin."'

Don't give booze to elephants, sobs Paris Hilton

kevin elliott

Marulas

So what's she going to do when she hears about the Southern African elephants that pig out on marulas ( a local fruit) which then ferment in the beasts' stomachs and gets them - naturally - paralytic?

Cry buckets over that as well?

Ukrainian eBay scam turns Down Syndrome man into cash machine

kevin elliott
Unhappy

Unfair Article

This article paints the bad side - but leaves out Ebay's actually doing.

My Ebay account was hijacked without my knowledge, ebay picked it up, changed the password and let me know (roughly) what was going on and warned me that I may get some warning messages as a result of the fraudulent transactions. I should ignore them.

What confused the issue was that the initial notifaction from ebay was in german, so I had difficulty understanding it and was suspicious of phishing/other fraud.

The article's author knows this and has seen the correspondence, but has conveniently left out ebay's side - I wonder why. Perhaps it makes the story better, but ebay deserve a fairer article.

Ebay are facing some very sophisticated fraudsters. Detection/correction is difficult. The ebay phishing schemes are sophisticated and convincing. Ebay have gone a long way to enable us to verify the validity of messages purporting to originate from them. As I've found out, fortunately without suffering loss to myself or my rating, ebay are activly working against these scams. Perhaps they could do more, but articles like this paint a very one-sided picture.

Dan it's time to redress the balance - do a piece on ebay and what they're doing to fight the scammers, I realise there'll be limitations on what you can publish, but they deserve a fairer press.

Controversial Russian Business Network drops offline

kevin elliott

spammers

Take a look at www.fspamlist.com, especially under export.

Camelot pulls scratchcard amid numerical anarchy

kevin elliott
Flame

The Paris Hilton Angle

Is clear - it's the ill informed posting here, denigrating a bewildered Mancunian lady, while they demonstrate their own ignorance of the matter - and then wander OT, displaying more ignorance and misconceptions.

I've rarely seen such an incorrect volley of comment directed at a genuine and understandable mistake - and I've been around the web for a long time.

If you don't know what you're talking about, then don't say it. Even more, don't point fingers.

Downing Street's website, the e-petitions hit tart

kevin elliott

Search Bots

One has to ask if the search bots were excluded from the stats... My guess is that 90% or more oft he hits would have come from them, so the question becomes - why don't the bots attend any more...

Dead dog floors 68 Namibian villagers

kevin elliott
Flame

Get Real!

Remember where this took place - rural Namibia, where the tribespeople would have virtually no education, no concept of where disease comes from and little or no concept of hygiene. Health care is close to non-existant - except for bush clinics and the odd charity doctors rounds. Chances are the people are also subsistence farmers.

Meat is meat.It's for eating.

Animals have no rights - except to try and run away. That's the way life is there. Accept it and stop bleating from your comfortable western homes. The people in rural Namibia are still living in mud huts, cooking on open fires and using the bush for toilets. Women work hard, pregnant ones work hard up until the moment of birth, have the baby and then get back to work - no lying around in hospital for a few days 'recovering'.

Chances are that eating dogs that have died of disease is a common event. Just this time it didn't work. It won't change, but the world jumps on it as a major event. Understand what's happening there and stop moralising or judging from a western viewpoint!

L1NUX number plate roars onto eBay

kevin elliott

To Be Expected

Limux users are sufficiently mature and above fan boy nonsense like personalised plates.

Says a lot about the users mentality. I'm surprised that anyone's prepared to pay even a tenner for a L1NUX plate, never mind bid a grand.

What's the point?

Mind you I've never been able to understand the mentality of people who pay good money for personalised plates - so perhaps I'm missing something.

Museum drops Watson talk in race row

kevin elliott
Unhappy

Why?

Is the world not prepared to discuss controversy.

One could argue that different races produce people of differing physical size by comparing chinese and norwegians

One can argue that different races produce people of different physical ability - look at the large numbers of black athletes at the top of their sports in multi-racial societies....

However these are absolute measures based on speed, stature etc.

There is no real absolute measure of intelligence - intelligence testing is fraught with problems related to age, education, culture, language - and the lack of a basic definition of intelligence. Is a gifted mathematician less intelligent because his language skills are poor?

I have no problem with the debate - if fair and equitable terms can be found for it. But I question the need or benefit of it. Statements like this fuel the racial strife that we desperately need to do away with - whther it's black/white or muslim/serbian or german/jew or english/pakistani......

Watson's doing himself and the world no favours by propounding stateemtns like this. I lived in Africa for many years, I met a wisdom amongst its people that would be hard to quantify in IQ terms. Saying blacks are less intelligent is a stupid (pun intended) and pointless statement - it's not provable and not helpful.

Ballmer: All open source dev should happen on Windows

kevin elliott

Microsoft Can't Sue

For microsoft to start sueing over patent infringement would be idiotic:

1 There's no guarantee the patents would hold up in court

2 There's no money in the OS companies to make a campaign worthwhile (unless IBM were to buy Red Hat...) - except for Novell...

3 Judging by the Riaa and music infringement, public opinion would be swayed so far against MS that sales would be heavily affected

4 If MS went against OS, other big guys would be forced to step in with their patent portfolios and use them against MS

5 If it turned into a protracted battle, there'd be so much attention on MS that it would create an opening for Apple to move from a trendy, but not so sensible alternative, to a real, everyone's buying it - no legal battles - product.

6 The head of their patents/IP operation is ex-IBM. He knows just how much is waiting to be thrown at MS if they do more than shout...

So far better to posture, shout and intimidate, rather than bring any real actions to court. To do so would weaken their position considerably and be committing commercial suicide. It'd be MS vs IBM, Sun, HP, Red Hat, Novell Apple as well as many others. .. i.e. MS vs the world.

kevin elliott

Out of Ammunition

It's clear that Ballmer is worried. Very worried. If all he can do is bitch about unproven patent infringements, threaten litigation, bad mouth red hat and facebook, without having anything positive to say about where Windows/MS is better and worth the expense, then he's pushing a lost cause. Vista's close to being a flop, despite the spin they're putting on it's weak sales. Office hasn't really improved for years, just more and more bloatware.

One of the arguments of the weak is abuse and it's interesting to see posters here calling him a loser.... He didn't get where he is by being a loser...

Wake up guys, MS is still ahead of Open source in many areas (& I run Linux at home), but is it worth the cost? Ballmer has a serious fight on his hands, has realised it, and he's doing it the only way he knows - head on, mouth open and leading with his chin. He's not got a lot of things left to fight with, Open Source has caught up - mostly. Ballmer doesn't seem to have a good long term strategy, but bad mouthing him won't make things change faster - or get him to change his style.

Microsoft, like the RIAA needs to change it's business model - or die. & then we can kiss goodbye to free service packs, free bug and security fixes, free hotmail, free apps... .net is really about payment for use, & it won't be cheaper. Meanwhile OS is moving to commerical models (Suse, among many others). What happened to single payment for life licences (like Norton AV used to have?). They died, mostly, to be replaced with revenue generating period licences... MS will follow, & so will Open Source it's just a matter of time.

Acer plans renewed effort to drag up PC prices

kevin elliott

Ferrari

Acer has to be the hi end brand because of their Ferrari machines... This makes Packard Bell into Fiat, with a little space for a consumer performance brand equivalent to Alfa Romeo... Perhaps Gateway could become this brand. Holy cow, a B&W Alfa pc???

787 unsafe, claims former Boeing engineer

kevin elliott

Simple

Take a leaf out of the car manufacturers book -

at the end of the test cycle, fuel up a prototype, cover it with checkered tape, load it with crash test dummies and cargo/luggage and then crash it.....

& if that's too expensive, what's human life really worth?

Dell Ex-CEO Rollins to get $48 million cash

kevin elliott

Wait a Minute

Normally stock options have to be paid for at a price that was defined in the past & any profits may be taxable.

Your article is misleading - it doesn't say what the options will cost (if anything), it just implies he's getting a huge windfall.... Or is he really getting a huge share tranche for nix?

IBM to win $200m supercomputer contract

kevin elliott

Ironic

I find it strange that a machine that'll be used to study global warming will, because of it's huge power consumption & cooling needs, be contributing significantly to the problem.

Petrol latte for Kiwis in dairy biofuel push

kevin elliott

Misinformation:

Just adding alcohol to petrol does not increase power output. Perhaps retuning and adjusting teh carbs/fuel injection may allow higher output, but on it's own it can't. In fact alcohol has less carbon/hydrogen per litre than conventional fuels, so fuel consumption will rise.

I lived in South Africa, where all petrol sold contained a percentage of alcohol. Alcohol in petrol has downsides - corrosion being one, the alcohol/petrol mix attracts water and this causes rust in fuel tanks, bad corrosion in carburettors. Many people needed to replace the carbs on their cars because of this.

It's so bad that after a few years of problems, Sasol in south Africa released special treatments for carburettors to inhibit the effects of the alcohol/fuel mix. Fuel injection systems were, as far as I know, not affected. Steel fuel tanks also rust very quickly, leading to rust particles in the fuel, carb blockages and if there's one fitted, early fuel filter blockages.

Brit spooks: Yanks are frightful cowboys

kevin elliott

Not me Guv - Honest

Lewis' article speaks volumes, as much unsaid as said.

The British reply reads like a bunch of schoolkids, caught red handed and then trying to pass the blame. Trouble is, it's not schoolkids caught in a bit of playground mischeif, it's big bully's breaking the law and wrecking peoples lives based on no more than suspicion.

The process of law is there to stop the kangaroo courts, lynch mobs and physical abuse of earlier times. Perhaps these people are suspected of terrible crimes - or are thought to be contemplating them. Does this justify abuse at any level? Under most western law a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

There's been an international outcry over the Libyan treatment of the Bulgarian medics, human rights abuses in Serbia, Africa, South America, but the US seems to think it's OK for them to do the same... Hypocrisy rules!

The end does not justify the means

Night of the Living RegisterFly: Randy Travis concert in jeopardy

kevin elliott

Cheap

The dig at Randy Travis was cheap & nasty, not witty.

In general I like El Reg's flippant, irreverant style, but this didn't make the grade.

MS update sends PCs 'haywire'

kevin elliott

It's only a matter of time

MS' policy of distributing patches this way has worried me for a long time. The risk is that a duff patch, which gets through testing, can kill millions of machines worldwide.

The other risk is that someon will crack MS' auto update system and use it to distribute malware...

Sooner or later this will happen - & the current problems will pale into insignificance as we are forced to restore from backups, then attempt to patch the old installations from MS' now overloaded servers and an overloaded web....

Time for a rethink methinks.

Deutsche Telekom profits plunge 58%

kevin elliott

Not Surprised

Deutsche Telekom have relied on their monopoly for too long. The result has been bad service, poor provision of infrastructure and a focus on customers only as far as selling is concerned. Their organisatoin is ludicrously complex, doesn't know from department to department what the other is doing. Sound familiar? Just like BT, who's tender mercies I suffered from for a few years. Their competitors offer better services at considerably lower prices - often despite being forced to use the infrastructure supplied and maintained by DT..

My attempts to get broadband in germany over the last few years have been a farce. On and off DT contacted us trying to sell it. When we enquired if it was available, we were told yes - only for no kit to arrive and no follow up from DT. Our subsequent enquiries - when we could find someone who knew something about it always revealed that it wasn't available to us as we live in a small village. Meanwhile friends and colleagues a few kilometers away had the service. Eventually after about 3 years of fruitless offers we heard through the local authority that it was available, but that the sales people at DT may not know about it - so be persistant if an order was declined...

Finally able to place an order, we did. The kit arrived, the line was converted & we had the service - but at too low a speed. Calls to support got nowhere - except to say the technician had tested the ine & It was correct. Then the broadband disappeared with no explanation - eventually after repeated calls it was restored, still at the slow speed a few weeks later. Eventually the speed was corrected - but how we don't know.

DT have concentrated on foreign investments for far too long - and have lost sight of their roots - the domestic market. I pity the staff - they have some excellent and friendly people, but the structures and policies prevent them from working properly.

US team creates malaria-resistant mosquito

kevin elliott

Insanity Prevails

In an attempt to suppress malaria, we're risking a major disaster here.

Mosquitos have proven to be impossible to eradicate without major habitat destruction. So we engineer ones which breed better than the exisitng pest, don't currently carry malaria, then release them.....

Experience of previous methods of biologival control which have gone sadly wrong should tell these 'scientists' that an approach like this is high risk with serious consequences. A little mutation here and there in the modified Anopheles and we'll potentially have hordes of fluorescent mosquitos floating around the world, biting and breeding... Killer mosquitoes anyone?

Charges dropped against former HP chairman

kevin elliott

US Law isn't worth the paper it's printed on

Seems as if those who administer the law have lost he plot. The attorney's negotiate, the charges get dropped before a properly constituted court judges the issue. If Dunn et al were innocent, why were they so afraid of appearing before a court? Could it be that they were afraid of being found guilty? And what about the new chairman's impressively failing memory?

Meanwhile yet another tale of US corporate misdeeds gets whitewashed.

Or maybe as Orwell said, 'Some are more equal than others', I bet most of us couldn't afford attorney's that could get us off a rap like this.