This is a highly speculative article, assuming that because these drones can carry weapons that they will.

While I wouldn't put it past the Home Office to want to do this, I'd be surprised if the Police were too keen.

Here in the UK there is a strange dichotomy, we seem perfectly happy to be watched all the time, but the idea of armed police is an absolute no go.

Riot police in the UK don't even use water cannon, and rubber bullets haven't been used by british police in decades. There are a few areas which have introduced a handful of Tasers, but these are used by specialist armed response units, not the average bobby on the beat. The idea of launching anything potentially dangerous from the air seem highly unlikely when they don't even use it on the ground.

Of course that doesn't stop the police from being violent, but when they are it tends to be national news for weeks after. See the death of Ian Tomlinson and the controversial "ketteling" technique used at the demonstrations in the summer for good examples.

The UK Police are currently trying desperately trying to improve their public image after a lot of bad press from the 2009 demos, and the ongoing harassment of photographers and the abuse of the Section 44 Stop and Search powers. Doing something like this would put them back to square one the moment it goes wrong.

So while not impossible, this report seemed to be highly speculative and purely designed to get clicks and build paranoia.

For all their flaws, the UK police are not actually idiots, and in a land where police are not armed, and using a baton in a riot is considered heavy handed, let alone water cannon and rubber bullets, launching Tasers from the sky would be public relations disaster.

I think it's more like the water company investigating you because your oil tank has a leak which is going into the local water supply.

I think this is a really good thing, and it would be nice to see it being done more.

Most of the time all that's needed is a bit of education and a virus/malware scanner. Most people spewing this crap don't even know they are doing it, so letting them know is doing them a favor.

Gah, apostrofail.

That should be "and its fundamentally circuit switched systems"

This isn't about getting rid of your phone and giving you a software phone, it's about ripping out the core of the phone network and it's fundamentally circuit switched systems, and replacing them with IP based packet switched systems.

You'll still be able to plug a plain old telephone into the socket and make a call.

This is the same idea as British Telecom's current 21st Century Network project. When your line terminates at the exchange, it no longer connects to a circuit switched system, but to a packet switched network. For the end user, nothing much changes.

This is a massive project but most of us end users will see and hear few differences. In theory it should allow the phone companies to do more interesting things with their networks, and may help improve broadband coverage/speed (although that remains to be seen). It massively simplifies their infrastructure by carrying all traffic over a single packet switched network, rather than multiple circuit switched systems.

"Smith calls on Nintendo to stop this annual upgrade madness"

Why? It's not as if Nintendo are making it incompatible, they are just providing a better product that plays the same games. It's like shouting at Apple to stop with the "annual upgrade madness and do something truly innovative" because they release a new MacBook every year.

It's not as if someone is making you upgrade (or did I miss something). In the case of the DS variants, they have (as with the Gameboy) been largely compatible between minor version changes.

And this cretin seems to be under the impression that designers just sit down and say "right, this morning we need something truly innovative" and it just happens.

Truly innovative ideas come along once in a decade, and both the DS and the Wii are examples of that (whether you personally like them or not).

Both the DS and Wii are also fantastically popular still, why should Nintendo muck around too much with the winning formula? If they did he would probably be complaining because he couldn't play his existing DS games in the new "innovative" system

Whether it resembles an AK47 or not, it still looks like a scary looking piece of kit to the untrained eye. I know nothing about guns, and while it looks comically oversized, I wouldn't automatically assume it was fake.

As a part-time theatre tech, I sometimes have to transport fake guns for shows, and I always do it discreetly. Just because I know they are fake, doesn't mean other people will, or indeed should know. It's not like people take classes on gun recognition at school. Unless you have an interest in such things, I don't see why you would know what different guns look like.

Reminds me of that girl who strolled into an airport with circuit-boards, wires and blinking lights attached to her jumper, and was surprised when security got rather twitchy. It might not have looked like a bomb to you and I, but to the average person bought up on a diet of Hollywood films, where the bombs always have sticky out wires and flashing lights (and beep, just to let you know they are there), it certainly looked suspicious.

At least in this case the police were a bit more calm and restrained once they figured out what was going on.

In what way is this protecting people? Presumably they were only supplying this stuff to people who paid for it, not projecting it onto the side of schools or posting it to small children.

I don't understand this attitude of protecting people from things they want to do, and I don't see why the state should intervene (assuming all the parties involved consented).

It seems to be the same logic as used by opponents of gay marriage, who claim that it will somehow destroy the institution of marriage. How will someone else getting married to someone of the same sex, in any way change yours or anyone else's marriage? In the same way, how does the production of this material (again, assuming consent on all sides) "degrade us all"? It doesn't degrade me, I had nothing to do with it, don't watch it, and am unaffected by it. This whole idea of "someone's doing something I don't like, therefore I can object and stop it" is just narrow minded control-freakery.

With three comments, this article has already been tagged with "nutjobs".

Grow up. Chances are you know someone who has (or will develop) one of these conditions to some degree, even if you don't know it (which is likely if you are that much of a jackass, they probably wouldn't tell you).

I don't normally do angry rants, but sometimes I'm surprised by the juvenile and compassionless attitudes of some people on /.

You are right, being able to watch youtube videos it not very useful.

Unless it's a youtube video about treating a livestock disease, or better techniques for planting.

Or perhaps being able to contact someone at the market *before* you set of on the three day trek to sell your crops/animals so that you know it's worth going and that you'll get a good price, rather than getting there and getting stiffed because you have to sell to *someone* but there's a glut.

Seriously, this isn't about being able to watch Star Wars parody videos on YouTube. It's about communication. In large, thinly populated countries, with terrible physical infrastructure, and sod-all education provision, communication can make a huge difference.

Mobile phones are massively popular in Africa, incredibly useful for farmers and traders, allowing them to organise, and work more efficiently. They have made a very real difference to the way these societies operate.

Remember, unlike the developed world, which is replacing otherwise functional communications infrastructure with the Internet, the developed world is jumping straight to it. This isn't about having the internet in Africa, it's about having any working communications system at all in Africa, and at the moment the best candidate systems are mobile phones and the internet.

This feels a lot like history repeating itself - It's Napster all over again...

Music industry sues P2P service -> service loses -> service turns legit -> becomes irrelevant -> gets replaced by something better, and less centralized.

I'm curious what's going to come next, but I suspect this turn of events will spur on some interesting technical developments.

Good point, actually I'd pay extra for that :)

Lots of people seem to be assuming that this is you paying the network to extend their network for anyone to use.

It isn't.

If you read the article (I know, radical), you'll see that only four phones, which you need to register, will be able to use the femto-cell. So no, you won't be providing your neighbours with improved service over your own connection (unless you register their phone).

While it's pretty expensive, I'd actually be tempted by this. I can't get a reliable mobile signal in my flat, because of the construction of the building (mobile reception outside is fine).

Of course, it doesn't say if calls made over the femto cell are cheaper than over their network. I would hope they were, it would mean I could pretty much ignore my landline, which I only use because I can't be mobile reception.

In other new: Computer "used for computer type work" shock!

I mean this is a really neat little hardware project (reminded me a uni hardware project I did), but the bit about the Dell is just fluff. What's so amazing about using a netbook? it's just a small laptop.

If it was being run off a trinary mechanical computer powered by a hamster then *that* would be quite interesting.

Actually, I think I have a new project....