All the best bits of HP were spun off by Carly into Agilent Technolgies, and to me they are the true Hewlett-Packard and not the faceless box-shifter that bears the HP name today.

I used to work in a lab a number of years ago, and almost all the instruments were made by HP. Whenever we were purchasing new equipment, we didn't even consider the competition because we knew we were getting the best. Also, whenever new instruments were purchased, they always came with HP workstations and printers.

I suppose their only redeeming feature is that HP servers are still pretty good, but their volumes and margins must be suffering since virtualization became popular.

I worked in a UK university CS department for four years in the mid 00s. Foreign students turning up for a couple of lectures then disappearing was a huge problem. Not for the university of course, who didn't give a shit as long as the fees were paid. Even if the fees weren't paid they were simply kicked off the course but this was never communicated to the UK Borders Agency.

Since then I've been told that the universities have had a royal boot up the arse from the government and are to inform immediately if a foreign student has poor or no attendance. What we're seeing here is probably an overreaction to this.

On the contrary. Their graphics division is what's keeping AMD's head above water right now, and is still turning out competitive hardware. Also we wouldn't have had Fusion, which is more attractive than any of Intel's offerings for cheap laptops.

Despite this, sadly the end is near for AMD. People have always said that Intel needs AMD to survive to avoid any anti-monopoly action but I'm not so sure now. The battle lines have been drawn for the next chip wars and ARM is much better equipped to take on the might of Intel.

I don't get it, why would you want ******* as a password?

.. and the reason is not efficiency or performance.. Intel enjoys huge (50%+) margins on x86 CPUs that simply will not be tolerated by the tablet or mobile device vendors. Contrast this with the pennies that ARM and their fab partners make for each unit sold. Even Intel's excellent process tech can't save them cost wise when you can get a complete ARM SoC with integrated GPU for $7.

Which is surprising if you consider that AMD has been a victim of this kind of behavior in the past.

Colin Pitchfork was the first person ever to be convicted on DNA evidence. That was as a result of voluntary mass-screening and suppose it's natural for the Dutch police to follow suit especially if they have no leads.

Making mods or custom maps is only viable when you can run your own servers on which to play them. Nowadays most new games have servers that are run by the game publishers themselves, if this is the case how do you persuade the publisher to run the mod on them?

..for a fucking software company. Wake me when a company involved in things like steelmaking, mining, transport and heavy engineering become carbon neutral.

Minor cost? An upgrade to Win 7 would be half of the original cost of my netbook. And for what? A new browser that I don't use. Or maybe the a nice UI which is irrelevent when the only icons I use are the ones for Chrome and occasionally Word. I'd have a much better experience if I spent that money on more RAM or an external monitor.

Believe it or not people are sick of the upgrade treadmill. The consumer operating system of the future is one that boots straight into a web browser from which all applications will be accessed. And people certainly won't expect to pay good money for it.

What jury? He was up before the local magistrates.

What's troubling is that magistrate said that his sentence had to "reflect public abhorrence". So he decided to play to the gallery and jail him instead of considering the case on its merits.

It's one piece of Blairite legislation that should be repealed as soon as possible. How long before it's extended to religious or political opinions?

There is little skill in playing Blackjack. Sure there's an optimum strategy that everyone should follow but I would hardly call that 'skill'.

Of course you could say that he was card counting, but if there was any suggestion of that his ass would have been out of the door and he would have been banned from every casino in the city. The casinos have counter measures to this anyway, such as more frequent shuffling or stopping players from entering half way through a shoe.

The only news here is that the casino offered a discount which negated the house edge. In other words the casino gambled and lost.

Damn you to hell, I even read that in a pirate's voice!

Brits are using withdrawing money from ATMs more than ever. Let's face it, with card fees and lack of privacy, cash will never fully go away.