Should Gemalto be sued by people who use their cards & other products on the grounds that they did not adequately secure their computer systems and thus let in outside crackers to steal the encryption keys ? That the crack was done by GCHQ/NSA does not really alter things -- they were cracked. The point of this is that successful legal, and expensive, action would make all corporates treat security properly; this would have great benefits -- more than just keeping the spooks at bay.

The only problem is that to sue Gemalto the plaintiffs would need to demonstrate that they have suffered. This might be hard, although insisting that they were all given new SIMs might be a start.

enlarge human ears ? If so, Disney would sue!

Individuals, not corporations. Think photographs as an example: if you copy a corporation's picture and put it on your web site - you will be hammered; if a corporation copies one of your pictures and uses it - nothing will happen; you can complain and will just be ignored.

Quite. I have not watched a television at home for several years. I do watch Dr Who & similar on the iplayer (which ought to count as TV), prob 20 hours/year. I'll watch a bit more if I am stuck in a hotel.

Now: ask me how much time I waste on the Internet, that is a different story :-(

TFA says that the school is called ''Kermit Elementary School'', I was expecting the name ''Hogwarts'' - silly me!

With all the delays I hope the first and not the second.

Whatever happens: congratulations and thanks to a team who have done so much over the years!

I was not talking about routers & servers at home - but the Internet backbones and the servers that people will be downloading stuff from and wanting to do so at higher speeds.

We are going to need to upgrade all of our servers and network routers!

I wonder what the latency will be ? (OK: to somewhere close in the UK)

It is the seventh most abundant chemical element by mass in the universe, but most of what was on earth has evaporated away.

People are accepted as prophets, it is a title given by the religious hierarchy. That the $deity does not exist (in any verifiable sense) does not really impact on their role in the religion. You need to be able to understand things as others see them, even if you do not agree with their point of view.

Please learn the definition of the word prophet. It is a person - separate from any deity that they speak for.

John Postel wisely said:

In general, an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior.

The same is true in human discussion. It is (generally) good to limit what you say to what will be acceptable (not overly offend) others, but at the same time accept that people may say things that you do not like. Being gratuitously rude about others and taking offence at trivia is the best way of starting fights.

That is not to say that there are people & ideas that do not deserve to have fun poked at, especially those that are intolerant of views other than their own or are hypocritical — this is the area that satirical magasines work in ... readers need to understand that and be more tolerant than they might do to others.

I completely disagree with the pope claiming that religious ideas need special protection. They do not. Their effects on huge numbers of people means that their ideas should be strongly tested, not above criticism. But: given his position, there is little else that he can say.

Oh prophets exist, Muhammad being alive (well, at one point) is a historical fact and can be verified. Proof of the existence of the deity that these prophets speak for is what you should be asking to be shown.

All the more reason for these lectures to be delivered all over the country. They can't watch all of us ... Oh, wait :-(

in discussion about him or his views ? I have a few suggestions, can you add some more: twat, stupid politician, brain-dead Maryland politician, moron with more money than sense, Voldemort (he who shall not be named), Muppet, Pillock, plonker, Wazzock, Berk, Maggot, arsehole, eejit, git, ....

Maybe all media should now only refer to him by one of the names above - I wonder what he would say then ?