No, I think it's safe to say that the constituency of Wii, PS3 etc owners is larger than that of the 'openistas'.

In the real world, the BBC has to keep its content providers happy in order that they agree for their stuff to be shown via these new channels. No matter how valid or invalid the reasons content providers have for doubting the security of a given system, if they have these doubts then the content will be pulled.

So, the choice comes down to a content rich service which keeps the corporates happy and is accessible in a way that is acceptible to 99.9% of potential users, or the openistas have their way and we get less stuff but keep 100% of people happy.

There's so much whinging that goes on on this topic - ten years ago we didn't have iPlayer on any platform, or PVRs - we'd only just got our mits on digiboxes for pete's sake. Now we can watch programmes on our TVs, through our games consoles, PCs, Macs, phones at pretty much whatever time we want. Yet we're still annoyed because it doesn't function on a tiny minority of people's setups? You lot want the moon on a stick you do!

Sorry, but I seem to be missing something here, but if you're a legitimate UK user, what's the proem with using iPlayer and free adobe software? I'm confident that this will piss off maybe 0.1% of legitimate users who have willfully decided to go down an unsupported path - if you fly without a parachute then don't go whinging when your plane stops working.

You wouldn't expect to be allowed to rollerskate down the M1 just 'cos you'd paid your road tax, would you?

...or it never happened.

Agree that it looks good, in a production-version-will-never-look-like this kind of way, but the drivetrain arrangement is all screwy.

If you want just to pootle around town, short-range electro-style, then front wheel drive is fine (even preferable, but you want RWD (or at least a rear-biased 4WD) out on the open road when you want to have fun. So this car is completely arse-about-face.

Not surprised though - just more evidence of Peugeot's move away from fun, light, cheap transport to slow, dull-witted family stodge.

Sigh...

... assisted by deputies Bob Poultry and Billy McChickens

Mine's the one with the rubber chicken in the pocket.

...is a special Microsoft web search app - "Bada Bing"

Sorry, somebody had to.

So, Company X says that their pitch was better than Company Y's and that they should have got the contract. Stop the presses.

Fact is, if Nissan's average is 60g/km with the Leaf counting as 0g/km, then their argument is disingenuous, as we won't have achieved 100% zero carbon electricity generation in the UK by 2012, not to mention the carbon cost of the manufacture of the batteries and their transportation from the far east to the UK, all for an event lasting a few weeks.

And yes, economics are a valid consideration. It's your taxes they're spending.

Some rogue T-Mobile employee will probably sell the spectrum off to the highest bidder soon anyway.

<--- Where exactly is this????

Woah, yes, lets all hold back the march of technology 'cos some people are blind in one eye. While we're out it we should bin those mobile phones 'cos of deaf people, or people with no hands who can't jab the buttons....

...at his crappy grammar.

Seriously though, big corporation behaves shittily to the little guy. News at 11.

Yes, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, and I have an iPhone, and I'll continue to use them because I, like everybody else, love the shiny.

If you really can't tell the difference between a DVD and Blu-ray, then I think you need your eyes upgraded to HD. Do you still run your computer at VGA resolution?

As several others have said, cars twenty years from now will continue to evolve in the same way as the past twenty years. That is, 20% bigger, 20% heavier and 20% more efficient. I would stake both gonads on cars of the future having wheels, doors and steering wheels, and we won't be sharing them from "hubs" - that's what's known as a 'bus' or, if they come to you, a 'taxi'.

Special contempt for the movement sensitive controls. What the feck do I have now? See, how the merest flick of my wrist makes the vehicle change direction, and the slightest twitch of my foot can make the car go faster, or slow down. Silly cocks.

Apple (and for that matter RIM) have strong sales for their smartphones, Palm have seen theirs fall through the floor. Maybe they should concentrate on making their products better, rather than trying to hang on to Apple's coat-tails. The much-hyped Pre is no iPhone beater, so they should grasp some reality and invest in the next one, and try and do a better job than the iPhone, instead of beating their head against this brick wall, whatever the rights and wrongs.

Wimps, should've turned it up to 11...

This all really peed me off when I heard it on the news this morning, because we get the same nonsense every damn year.

Never mind the BBC banning the BNP, ban the bi-annual time argument.

"Drivers are not free to do whatever speed THEY think is safe."

So, you'd rather have someone in whitehall deciding what is safe at any given time on a given stretch of road than the person sitting at the wheel? Strewth. Lets just all give drivers blindfolds and have a centralised "Department of Driving" in London where people are emloyed to remotely control people's vehicles on their way to work...

Speaking as a "vulnerable road user" - that is, someone who covers over 80 miles a day on a motorbike, there are many things that bother me more than the guy doing 90mph in his silver BMW 320d on the M4, such as:

- People smoking and flicking fag ash out the window into my face

- People pulling out of junctions or changing lanes without looking

- People texting their mate whilst doing the above

- People who don't realise that filtering on a bike is legal

- People who camp in the middle lane with nothing on their inside doing "a few miles an hour below the limit"

- People braking suddenly for speed cameras...

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. All the above have caused me to fear for my life. Someone else speeding never has.

As for being policed - we are policed by common consent, and where the law being enforced is unreasonable it will fail regardless.

Oh, and to all this people who decry this plan as being populist, isn't that what a good, democratic government should do - that is, do what most people want??

Actually, this would be massively useful in lots of Africa, where the mobile phone network is distinctly more reliable than the power grid. So, whilst you may be finding imagination a bit of a struggle, I'm sure some people would manage...

People still use HAM radio? This kind of feels like a battle re-enactment society berating the MoD for driving longbows out of the infantry...

Seriously though, what's the bigger constituency here, HAM radio enthusiasts or powerline kit users?

Fingers will now fall off

It's getting there, but until they can come up with something for ~£20-25k that can do 100mph* , has a realistic range of ~200miles and takes less than 30 minutes to charge up, I'll not be remotely interested. Nothing else looks as good as the Tesla Model S at this at the moment. My bike does my 75mile daily round trip at realistic motorway speeds* getting ~80mpg, meaning about £6-7 quid a day on petrol, and it cost me £3k to buy.

*70mph is the speed limit, but you stand by the welsh approach to the Severn Bridge at 8:30am and count how many cars go by doing less than 80mph, it'll be 9:30 before you have to use your second hand.

Hoots mon, we all wear Tam O'Shanters and kilts and eat three deep fried mars bars every day whilst buggering a sheep. I wonder if El Reg is based in London by any chance? It is? Well there's a big fecking surprise. Why don't you toddle off home in your bowler hat and don't forget to tip it to the pearly kings and queens on every corner while you munch on your jellied eels.

A decent range on electric only for your workaday commutes, and the trousers to do a proper job on longer runs when required. Makes the new-gen Prius look a bit rubbish by comparison, considering Toyota's muscle. Now all they have to do is sell it for half the price and I'd seriously consider it.

Perchance the third type of charging is the regenerative braking system? I think we can rely on MMC to be able to count...

Paris, 'cos even she could probably count to three on a good day.

For us brits to get the right meaning from your septic contributors. Maybe you could start with pedophile vs paedophile?

Too many icons! Chose a random one.

Your aim is off on this one, sir. I'm a staunch defender against the corruption of language with mis-spellings, so I must point out that it was the 'merkins who devised the word 'aluminum' in the first place, which was then corrupted by the limeys to aluminium.

And oh yes, the car's fine but they've just stuck an XF in the replicator and set it to 125%. Meh.

A 2009 Honda CBF 125 (which I'd see as a competitor) will do 70mph with only 11bhp, plus get 100mpg if Honda can be believed. It's also available second hand for about £2k.

I agree that 'leccy vehicle designers have to get over the whole "bleep bleep, I'm an elcrical thing from the FUTURE" message and make bikes and vehicles that look like existing ones if they want this to go mass market. Tesla have the right idea with their Model S.

Badgers indeed.

I think I'll cycle. I'm sure those new lithium batteries are eco-friendly to manufacture too...

The cop "invited the situation" did he? No - she did: She drove dangerously, disobeyed reasonable instructions, abused the cop, and then - literally - invited him to taser her.

I can't square her behaviour with being "elderly" either. Old, perhaps, and certainly a grandmother, but the only qualifications for that are failing to die for a long time and both you and your offspring figuring out how to have sex, and I don't see why either of those should automatically demand respect, particularly when she's acting every bit the spoilt brat in a potentially lethal situation.

I'm as much against police brutality as the next man, but if you break the law, get caught and then whine and argue the toss then you deserve everything that's coming to you.

"If teams want to mature the tech then they should be allowed too."

Nope, this would be a dumb idea - the problems with having some with and some without were well indicated in Turkey, when Kovalinen (I think) royally fsked-up the last complex under pressure, allowing Barichello to get past, only for Barichello to be robbed of the rewards of his efforts by the dumb boost button on Kovalinen's car. Either you have a standard unit for all cars or none at all. At the moment it's just a get out of jail free card for poor driver/car combos.

Paris, 'cos she's full of dumb ideas too.

As a biker my life is threatened daily by people who think they have a god-given right to do anything they like on the road and not accept the consequences. The sort of sh*tty attitude this woman exhibited to someone simply doing their job is indicative of a generally bad attitude towards other people in general that can be potentially lethal in many ways.

She's already endangered her own life, that of the officer and probably other road users as well. Could the officer have used different/less force? Maybe, I don't know - I wasn't there and I doubt anybody else here was either, but she put herself in the wrong by speeding in the first place, she had to ber restrained somehow, and a taser is as good a way as any.

Sorry, but £30k for a small hatchback with a 100 mile "suburban" range? That really isn't mass market.

Well done for trying, and they're getting closer - £15k and a 200 mile range and you may just about get me interested, but for now the answer is no.

I think wind farms are beautiful, and would be glad to have one on my doorstep. The landscape there was bleak before - now it's the opposite - a symbol of hope for the future. Yes it's a small step, but the symbol and intent is important too, so El Reg et al really shouldn't be running it down.

...to have a Dilithium-powered car. Can any of you clever clogs tell me how heavy the battery would need to be to power an average sized car at Warp?

When I read "power" I understand it to mean "supply the electricity for". If it said "meets the energy needs for" or even "powers and heats", then your criticism might be valid - but it doesn't, so it's not.

Criticising this for not meeting total energy needs is a bit like criticising a bicycle for not being a good helicopter.

I would have thought, even in these 'modern times' that assuming people called Angela are female is a fairly safe bet...

Do you:

a) Spend hours and hours of coding, testing and evaluation to emulate, through software, the defficiencies of old pieces of hardware, to achieve an authentic replication of those pieces of hardware using modern kit, or

b) Go to your local pawn shop and buy an old telly to plug your computer into.

Sheesh. I suppose with a) you at least don't have to go outside and interact with people...

...the matching recording device - then we could have Strange Days coming true. Hurrah!

I should, of course, point out that the discrepancy in years is not El Reg's, rather Andrew Dismore's. In a matter as serious as this, I'm glad that the defenders of our liberties are unaware of what year it is.

Paris, cos she probably doesn't know either.

Much as I sympathise with Andrew Dismore, but I can't help but feel that his timetable is being a little unfair to HM Govt.:

"we would expect the Government to write to us with their initial reaction to the judgment by 4 January 2008 and with their proposed response to the judgment, including any proposals for general measures which the Government considers necessary to remedy the breach before 4 March 2008."

Much as they should have been able to see it coming, asking Wacky Jaqui and cronies to respond to the judgement before it had been given is probably a bit sharp

in order for someone to stop within the distance illuminated by dipped headlights they'd have to be driving at about 30mph. Driving at the estimated 60mph on a motorway late at night is perfectly reasonable.

Driving whilst pissed up, totaling your car and the going back to it to collect your phone across a pitch-black motorway is tantamount to suicide, and the fecking idiot deserved everything he got.

Why is nobody on here having a go at him for driving dangerously and DUI? He endangered his life and those of many others. I suspect there's prejudice by commentards here against the peer because he's "posh"

Didn't they go bust years ago? The worm could have chosen a much newer/more expensive laptop to destroy - that would have been much more amusing.

Just beacause 305 million people do it , it doesn't make it right. I can equallly point to the billions of Indians for whom the official spelling is the British version, not to mention Australians, New Zealanders and every former British colony in Africa. And if you want to start quoting references at me, I daresay the OED might outrank dictionary.com as an authoritative source.

The point I'm REALLY trying to make though, is that "pedophile" can mean something something completely different, but "Paedophile" can only mean kiddie-fiddler. Come on, for the sake of clarity it's only one extra keystroke.