Posts by newsguy

You really couldn't make this up if your tried very hard indeed. The ongoing saga which is best summed up as 'what will Apple ban today' has just got stranger than ever. Apparently all BitTorrent iPhone apps are toxic, as is the notion of superimposing your own face upon that of Jesus, not to mention a Twitter application that was refused a place in the app store because Twitter was down for maintenance when the Apple people tested it.

The BitTorrent ban is an odd one. Although BitTorrent applications per se are not illegal, and the protocol itself is put to perfectly legal use by many organisations, Apple has apparently determined that such applications are "often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights" and so has "chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store." The application which provoked all of this being something called DriveTrain which can remotely control Mac BitTorrent Transmission reviews.

Perhaps the decision not to put Jesus on the Jesus phone is more understandable, as anything that causes religious offence is always going to be something of a hot potato. The Me So Holy app would let users superimpose their own face upon those of religious figures, in much the same way as an existing app allows users to put their faces on animals for example. Is Apple running scared of anything that might be in the slightest bit controversial then? Well, you might think not given …

Strange but true. The 02 Digital Families report was commissioned in order to get a grasp on the impact that technology has on family life in the UK. Perhaps unsurprisingly it revealed a nation obsessed by gadgets, with 40 percent of UK families spending 10 percent of their household budgets on gadgets. What kind of gadgets? Well the report reckons that the average UK home has:

• 3.0 mobile phones
• 2.4 TVs
• 2.4 games consoles
• 2.2 MP3 players
• 1.6 computers

One in three parents asked said that access to email and the Internet on the move makes it easier to balance their work and family responsibilities, with just six percent saying it made these things harder to balance.

The research also showed that rather than the stereotype of kids locked away in their rooms playing computer games, more than half of the families asked said they play games consoles together as a family and a third of parents surf the net with their children. One in five parents even keep in touch with their families through social networks. In total, 60 percent of parents claim that technology such as email and mobile phones helps us communicate better as a family.

The biggest surprise, however, has to be that "most of the families we spoke to would rather cut down on food and utility bills than their internet connection" according to the press release announcing the findings. So broadband crazy Brits would rather …

Some people like to get their free Microsoft products by adopting the eye patch and a parrot approach via sites such as The Pirate Bay. Some of us, however, rather like the idea of getting Windows 7 totally free, totally legally, and direct from Microsoft for good measure.

Yes, I can confirm that simply by downloading the 2.47GB Windows 7 Release Code version direct from Microsoft from May 5th through July, you will be entitled to run it without charge until June 2010. That, to put it into some perspective, is more than 400 days worth of Windows 7 without breaking the law and without spending any money. It is also likely to mean that you will be able to enjoy a free Windows 7 experience for around six months or so after the product actually goes on sale later this year. It's not even that you are getting stuck with some wobbly early version of the OS either, word is that this is pretty much the most stable and solid Windows RC build ever.

What is more, there appears to be no limits to the numbers of downloads you can make so it will be possible to load up Windows 7 on your desktop, notebook and netbook (drivers allowing) all without charge until June 2010.

The minimum specs have been revealed as a 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM and 16GB of hard drive space, not forgetting the DirectX 9 …

Last week, former UK Prime Minister and current Quartet Envoy to the Middle East on behalf of the EU, UN, US and Russia, Tony Blair was hacked. Well, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation on Facebook was hacked according to reports at any rate. It seems that the site was flooded with abusive messages aimed at Tony and Cherie Blair rather than those promoting an understanding of world peace as the Foundation intended.

One message said "Your legacy was sealed a long time ago. You can bang your Christian drum for as long as you like" while another commented "Tony Blair was about as good for Britain as the bubonic plague." The Foundation eventually posted a notice which stated "These solicitations are fraudulent and entirely unconnected with the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation."

"Reports suggest that Tony Blair's Faith Foundation Facebook page has been defaced with references to Martin Sheen, the actor who played the US President in the TV drama The West Wing," said Richard Kirk, Fortify Software's European Director. "The fact that his page was hackable, however, highlights the need to include code auditing in the software development process, something that whoever created the Facebook application used by the Faith Foundation appears to have overlooked" he added.

File under strange but true, it would appear that 24 year old musician Gary Baker, better known as singer and songwriter Gary Go, is to play Wembley Stadium with his iPhone as musical accompaniment. As the supporting act on the Take That tour, Gary Go will be on stage on the 1st, 4th and 5th of July at Wembley. I guess he will not be requiring the usual entourage of sound guys, roadies and the like. Just a case to carry his iPhone in and possibly a mains charger lead or two.

In what is being billed as the first mobile phone gig at Wembley, we understand that this will also be the biggest iPhone supported musical gig anywhere in the world so far in terms of venue and audience size. That said, we also understand that the entire concert will not be an iPhone only affair, with a full supporting band playing live for part of his set.

Gary Go has already made good use of the iPhone in his recording career. According to This is London Go has "written several tracks for his first album using software downloaded to the phone" and "used it to recreate guitars, drums, piano and horn sections." Indeed, we understand that all of the demos for the album were actually done via a virtual recording studio installed on the iPhone. Go says "it's pretty amazing that I'm going to be using a mobile phone on stage at Wembley Stadium" …

So now we know that Microsoft is pushing out the release version of the latest in the operating system line-up, Windows 7, starting this week on the 30th April according to official sources. However, we also know from various news reports that many existing Windows users are not exactly head over heels in love with the thought of Windows 7 and many have said they will not be upgrading for at least a year.

Indeed, with software compatibility and the cost of implementation being cited as major reasons why people may not bother with Windows 7 for some time, and many admitting that they are much more concerned about upgrading to Windows 7 than they are with any problems related to staying with the now very outdated Windows XP.

It seems that Microsoft has not been slow on picking this up, and has now announced that just as the Windows 7 Release Candidate version is set to go public Microsoft is thinking about XP. In fact, Microsoft says that it will be releasing a Windows 7 add-on in the shape of 'Windows XP Mode' which will provide users with "the flexibility to run many older productivity applications on a Windows 7 based PC."

XP Mode will be a virtual Windows XP environment running under Windows Virtual PC and will enable "suitable applications" to be installed directly, published to the Windows 7 desktop and then run from Windows 7. Well, some of …

A recent survey reckoned that, here in the UK at least, while 45 percent of the working population is female only 21 percent of the IT industry workforce can say the same. And this number seems to be falling, rather than increasing, year on year. I suspect, however, that the number of women taking part in the Miss Universe beauty competition who also work in IT would be an even smaller figure. Indeed, I would have guessed at a big fat, or rather small and skinny, zero. But that was until I heard about geek girl Sophie Johnson.

Miss Johnson is a finalist in the Miss Universe GB competition, and hopes to make it through to represent the UK at the Miss Universe finals. She also happens to have come top in her year at the University of Liverpool where she studied Computer Information Systems, one of only 5 women in a course of more than 1000 students.

Sophie, who is now working as a software developer, told us "I entered the Miss Universe GB competition because I want to challenge the stereotypes about IT professionals, not to become just another girl exposing her body for 15 minutes of fame. I want women to know that you don’t have to lose your femininity to become 'one of the boys' just to fit into a technical team, or to gain respect from other men working in this area."

When it was reported this week that Professor Stephen Hawking had been taken into hospital and was "very ill" the overall mood of the media seemed to be that the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University and author of the best selling 'A Brief History of Time' book was as good as dead. Indeed, many of those reports read more like obituaries than anything else.

However, I am glad to say that the truth is now emerging and it would appear that far from being at death's door, Professor Hawking is actually in a comfortable condition and according to his first wife, Jane Hawking, who has visited him "he's fine - he's doing well. I don't think his condition is life-threatening."

Professor Hawking had been ill for some weeks with a respiratory infection, and was taken to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge on Monday for tests. The 67 year old world famous physicist, who suffers from motor neurone disease, is being kept in hospital for observation and is responding to treatment.

The iPhone is many different things to many different people. I have heard some refer to it as their cellphone, while others describe it as a smartphone, a pocket computer and even the Jesus Phone. One thing I have not heard people call it is a weapon though. Until now that is.

According to a Newsweek report the iPhone could be the "future of networked warfare." Although that report actually mentions just the iTouch by name, the software being developed by the US Department of Defense will run perfectly well on an iPhone because the two are, essentially, one and the same apart from the obvious lack of certain functionality from the iTouch.

The military rather likes the iTouch/iPhone because it doesn't cost too much in the overall scheme of things, is dead easy to use and can be put to many different tasks. What sort of tasks? Well there is the really rather obvious one of soldier-to-soldier communication on the battlefield, and also that of a handheld intelligence resources device that could include everything from language translation software to aerial imaging displays.

The translation function is a good example of why the iPhone is being touted as the next small thing to become part of the military arsenal. In the past soldiers have had access to handheld devices which provide such a translation function. Newsweek says that these have been "made at great expense specially for the battlefield." The trouble is, such devices cost …

When Facebook changed the terms and conditions of use back in February, some 70,000 members complained about a perceived content copyright grab and forced a rethink. At the time, founder Mark Zuckerberg promised that Twitter had "decided to take a new approach" towards developing new terms. Unfortunately that new approach has now been revealed, and it ain't pretty.

It involves letting the users vote on which set of terms and conditions it would like to have implemented, with a promise to abide by that democratic decision. So what could be wrong with that? As it happen, really quite a lot to be honest.

For a start, Facebook has changed the goalposts regarding what constitutes a binding user decision. Initially it was a vote in favour or otherwise that hit 25 percent of the membership, now it is 30 percent. In real terms, given that the latest membership figures reveal there are some 200 million Facebook users, that means an extra 10 million users now have to be in on the vote. Up from 50 million to an incredible 60 million, or does it? Well no, because there are yet more caveats to take into account. Only those members who joined Facebook before the 26th of February 2009 will be eligible to vote, and only then if they have actually logged into the site during the previous 30 days. As Facebook is not making the numbers of these 'active members' public we do not actually …

Well thank goodness that silliness is all over: Ashton Kutcher is the first user to hit a million followers on Twitter. The actor come TV presenter narrowly beat off the challenge from the frontrunner, the CNN account, not least because of a big publicity drive which included the likes of promising to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to the Malaria No More charity should he be successful, and video game publisher EA promising whoever happened to be Kutcher follower number one million a role in a new version of The Sims game. Kutcher ended up beating CNN to the magic million by little more than 30 minutes.

Whatever happened to the previous Kings of Twitter, Stephen Fry and Barack Obama? Just a couple of months ago the British actor and wit, plus the Presidential guy, were batting it out for the highest number of followers with just 20 percent of the Kutcher tally.

Some have said that the publicity given to the Twitter Million race proves that social networking in general and Twitter in particular have reached something of a tipping point. Personally I think that all it really signals is that celebrities, and their agents, are starting to understand the marketing potential of these sites. That, and the fact we seem to live in a world which is increasingly obsessed with celebrity in the broadest sense. I don't see it as something to celebrate, and I could care less what some celeb has eaten …

Microsoft today released the first public beta of MS Exchange Server 2010 which forms part of the Microsoft unified communications family. As the first of many products (Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 all to follow) which will form part of the 'next wave' of Office apps from Microsoft, much hinges on a good reception. So will Exchange Server 2010 deliver on the three-pronged promise of lowering communications costs, improving user productivity and transforming email archiving?

Available immediately for public download MS Exchange Server 2010 is the first server in a new generation of Microsoft technology built from the ground up to work on-premises and as an online service.

Highlights of the beta include:

Exchange 2010 provides organizations with the same enterprise-grade capabilities whether deployed on-premises or as a service, or as a mix of both. The new release simplifies the way organizations provide always-on communications and disaster recovery, meaning administrators spend less time managing their e-mail system. Exchange 2010 further improves performance running on lower-cost direct-attached storage, enabling organizations to dramatically reduce storage costs by up to 85 percent without sacrificing performance or reliability.

As e-mail volume grows, companies must address increasing compliance, legal and e-discovery concerns, but today, according to Osterman Research, only 28 percent of organizations currently archive their e-mail content. Exchange 2010 introduces an integrated e-mail archive. The new solution makes it easier to store and query e-mail across the organization using …

You might not have heard of Dave Arneson, but if you have ever played any game which is even loosely affiliated to the Role Playing Game genre then you owe him a huge debt of gratitude. The 61 year old, who died this last week following a lengthy battle with cancer, was the co-creator of the first RPG. Yes, David Lance Arneson invented Dungeons and Dragons.

Along with the late Gary Gygax, Arneson developed the hugely popular fantasy game which is generally accepted as being the first RPG to get published way back in 1974 and which established many of the 'rules' that games which followed, err, followed. Without his pioneering work in the genre, some of the most popular computer games would quite simply never have come into existence.

Perhaps Scott Hanley from Venice, Ca says it best with a tribute posting at the BBC News website which simply says "Rest easy, you will be missed... Thank you both for a way for a socially inept doofus to align with "normals". You made it possible for me to not have to explain myself..."

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has confirmed that Bluetooth 3.0 will be released on April 21st. The Bluetooth 3.0 specs are expected to allow users to see much faster speeds when used in conjunction with 802.11n Wi-Fi while we await the arrival proper ultra-wideband technology. Still, the faster link speeds will be most welcome, especially when large data transfers are required. Of course, this being Bluetooth, the user will not have to worry about actually connecting to a 802.11n Wi-Fi network, that will all be handled invisibly by the Bluetooth devices themselves through the clever use of what I am led to believe is a Generic Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) that can take advantage of 802.11 speeds using the 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer.

We will have to wait until the 21st for the precise details, and to discover which companies have new Bluetooth devices ready to start rolling out to consumers. However, we will have to wait quite a bit longer before the Bluetooth Special Interest Group gets anywhere near the 480 Mbps speeds it ultimately wants to see for the Bluetooth spec.

The US Army has successfully finished field testing the Warfighter Information Network - Tactical. Better known as WIN-T for short, a $10 billion secure and mobile broadband communications network for the modern army soldier in battlefield situations.

The 4th Brigade tests have been putting WIN-T through its paces, linking together drones and spy sats and tactical operation centers while keeping the soldiers on the ground firmly in the loop courtesy of the VoIP-alike system that works with the kind of mobile devices they carry into battle. Thanks to WIN-T these wireless devices are then integrated into the wider army network, giving soldiers in the field immediate real-time access to video footage from unmanned surveillance drones. What's more, if those drones have the capability it will enable weapons guidance directly to the target.

While these remain just tests for now, they were also the most comprehensive so far and look set to prove that the WINternet is just as much an important weapon in the modern theater of war as any gun. Provided that WIN-T gets approval from the US Army Evaluation Center it can be expected to be deployed sometime during 2010.

WIN-T Project Manager Colonel William C. Hoppe says "This is the largest and most complex user test for WIN-T and demonstrates just how critical a weapon the network is in the Army's arsenal because it is what soldiers will depend on to communicate on the battlefield."

Apple has started the countdown to the billionth app to be downloaded from the App Store. The company has put up a live countdown counter on the web which is spinning so fast I am surprised it has not flown off the page. Mind you, when you consider that in December there were 300 million App Store downloads, 500 million by the middle of January and now, less than three months later, it has nearly doubled that I guess it is not too surprising. Indeed, in December there were a little over 2 million app downloads every day, a figure which jumped to 4.75 million in January and currently stands over the 5 million a day milestone.

To celebrate the big billion, Apple is organising something of a giveaway for Mac fans in the shape of a $10,000 value iTunes gift certificate, a 17" MacBook Pro, an iPod Touch 32GB and an Apple Time Capsule for good measure. The goodies will be given to the downloader of the billionth app, although we have discovered that you don't actually have to own an iPhone or iTouch to join in the fun. You don't even have to download an app at all, it seems. Instead you can complete an online entry form instead. Actually, up to 25 online entry forms per day, and stand exactly the same chance of being the billionth customer as proper app downloaders.

Just as the excitement started to hot up, first with the news that the controversial and increasingly popular legal free streaming music service Spotify was to open up with the release of a third party developer API, and then with the actual announcement of the availability of Libspotify itself, so the reality of the situation pours cold water upon it. What the heck am I talking about? Well, Spotify is perfectly poised to cash in on the potential gap that might open up in the online music market as first Apple, and now Amazon, introduce 'variable rate' pricing for downloads. As most consumers will tell you, variable rate usually means the good stuff will cost more and the old rubbish less. Spotify has the advantage of coming with just one rate for everything, and that is free.

It is the perfect time, then, for Spotify to start to broaden its appeal by allowing third party developers to write applications for the service and create a whole raft of new features and functionality while truly opening up Spotify as a viable contender for the title of numero uno online music platform.

The trouble is, the whole Libspotify API (initially with support just for Linux on IA-32) comes with conditions attached which make it anything but open and hardly likely to propel it out of the iTunes shadow. For a start there is the small restriction that means the applications built by those third party developers …

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr got together for a rare live performance, and according to reports it would seem the bad guys thought that a spot of media friendly Beatle-mania presented the ideal time to target McCartney's website.

Security specialists ScanSafe told me that its 24/7 Web security scanners first detected and began blocking the attack on Saturday 5th April at precisely 12:36pm GMT. The attack using that most advanced and sophisticated of crimeware toolkits, known as LuckySploit. This was hidden behind an invisible iframe on the site which obfuscated malicious JavaScript code using key encryption amongst other things. This code then launches exploits which download executable programs such as a rootkit onto the victims PC.

"Once your computer is infected with a rootkit, none of your personal information is safe" Spencer Parker, director of product management at ScanSafe says, adding "This site will have been an extremely attractive target for cyber criminals given the level of attention it will be receiving at the moment. Users should be aware that the majority of malware distribution is now occurring through mass compromise of legitimate and reputable websites."

Thankfully, I understand that the people behind the McCartney website reacted extremely quickly to fix the problem. Still, I bet that was a hard day's night...

It all sounds a little science fiction, but according to scientists at MIT it seems that a virus powered iPhone, laptop and even car are all possibilities stemming from research they have been doing.

Although the potential for building batteries from viruses was discovered a few years ago, the MIT team behind the research now reckons that it has progressed to a point where the material being produced is powerful enough to power a car.

What they have done is use viruses to create both the negative and positive charged anodes and cathodes that make up the component parts of any battery. The ground-breaking use of genetically engineered viruses to create the anode and cathode of an otherwise standard lithium-ion battery could mean a much quicker and cheaper manufacturing process.

The common bacteriophage, a virus which is totally harmless to humans and only infects bacteria, has been genetically modified in order to grow into a nanowire anode only one tenth the width of a human hair.

The breakthrough, however, has been in getting the virus to grow the cathode part of the battery. The BBC reports that researchers have managed to coax the virus "into binding with iron phosphate and then carbon nanotubes to create a highly conductive material."

There are some problems that still need to be ironed out though, battery life being the main one. Currently the virus battery can only run through 100 charge/discharge cycles before it starts losing power.

According to a report in a local UK newspaper, the MK News, it seems that Google Street View is not welcome in the affluent English village of Broughton in Buckinghamshire. Apparently concerned about the potential for criminals intent on breaking into their houses, residents of one street which has already suffered a number of burglaries in recent weeks, decided to take direct action when they spotted the distinctive Google camera van in town. They got together and formed a human chain in order to block the road through the village and effectively prevent Google from capturing the images it was scheduled to take that day.

Having already captured images of 25 British cities and gone live last month, Google Street View is currently touring the UK in order to add smaller towns and villages to the service.

As DaniWeb reported at the time, there have already been plenty of complaints that the face and vehicle registration number filtering software was not working properly and the Information Commissioner's Office has vowed to investigate any complaints of invasion of privacy matters. Perhaps the fact that the ICO also made it very clear that it was satisfied that adequate safeguards had been put in place by Google to minimise any privacy risk has been partly to blame for the distinctly unusual direct action that was taken by this particular bunch of concerned Brits.

One Broughton resident told the Telegraph newspaper that ran outside to …

Love your Mac? Love Lego? Love Batman? Oh boy have I got good news for you. Yes, it would seem that a date has been fixed for the arrival of Lego Batman on the Mac. That date is April 9th according to Feral Interactive which has already had moderate success with other Lego games on the Mac such as Star Wars II and Indiana Jones.

I like the idea of being able to play not as Batman fighting the bad guys, but rather as The Joker or The Riddler or Two Face or even Cat Woman and taking on Batman, Robin and the good guys.

Of course, TT Games has already seen the whole Lego franchise take off on other platforms, and Lego Batman is no exception. However, Mac fans only have a few weeks to wait to see what all the fuss has been about. Assuming that they have an Intel-based Mac running at 1.8GHz or more and packing 256MB graphics and OS X 10.5 or later that is. If you can't wait, Apple has just added a demo which is available for download now.

Although there has been much speculation that the Windows 7 Release Candidate will finally arrive in April for testing, it would appear that actually it won't be until a month after that. Who says so? Microsoft, that's who.

According to a page published at TechNet, albeit briefly, Microsoft will be making the Windows 7 RC available for download in May with an expiration date of 1st June 2010. The page, hastily removed by Microsoft, was titled "Windows 7 Release Candidate" carried a publication date of May 2008 and included full download instructions. The page stated that the RC download would be available "at least" through June 2009.

A screen shot of the page can be found here.

Of course, some people are using Windows 7 RC code already courtesy of BitTorrent.

Although the kind of 1Gbit/s broadband service that is a reality in Japan remains but a pipe dream for most people, the Brits can look forward to super-fast 60Mbit/s broadband real soon now. National telecoms carrier BT has announced that it will be installing upgrades to no less than 29 telephone exchanges as part of a fibre to the cabinet overhaul during the course of the year.

To put that into some kind of context, broadband running at 60 megabits per second across your telephone line is around 8 times as fast as the absolute maximum BT can provide today.

The BT Openreach installations are due to go live by early 2010, covering around 40 percent of UK homes and businesses by 2012, although there are plans for trials of the technology in both London and Wales during the coming summer months.

The FTTC technology achieves the high speeds courtesy of bringing thin optical fibre from the exchange to the street cabinet, with copper lines providing the last few metres to the door. By reducing the distance, in many cases down from a couple of kilometres to a few metres, higher-frequency signals are achievable and thus more data can be carried.

In a double whammy of good news for Brit broadband users, BT also announced that it will be implementing an up to 24Mbit/s ADSL2+ upgrade for every exchange over existing copper lines.

Of course, this should all be read in the context …

I guess that it will be of little comfort to the developers who lost jobs when Ensemble Studios was closed down earlier this year, but the final game to come out of the Microsoft owned outfit has just become the biggest selling Real Time Strategy title ever to grace any of the current generation consoles.

Yes, Halo Wars has hit the big one million sales number worldwide according to Microsoft, following in the grand tradition of the Halo franchise to break records. But that's not all, according to the official in-game stats site there have also been more than 2 million multiplayer games fought and close on 120 years of player time spent fighting them. To put that into a little context, it works out to around 200,000 players fighting online every single day since the game was released at the back end of February.

Texas-based Ensemble Studios was perhaps best known for the Age of Empire game, and was acquired by Microsoft in 2001. Unfortunately, Microsoft pulled the plug on the development company on January 29th and this has left gamers wondering where Halo Wars will go from here. The game is just crying out for downloadable content, and let's face it no Halo title is complete without at least one DLC pack.

The good news is that some of the key developers from Ensemble have set up Robot Entertainment which has promised to continue to support the title. Indeed, it would …

Apple has tonight given us a sneak preview of what is coming in the iPhone 3.0 major update which DaniWeb writer Davey Winder was second guessing earlier. While Davey managed to predict the arrival of cut, copy and paste functionality for iPhone 3.0, this was pretty much a given to be honest. He also got it bang on when he said the event would "pretty much all be iPhone business" and there would be none of the mythical Apple Tablet announcements some had speculated about.

So what exactly did Apple announce in what turned out to be less launch event and more of a live press release of a forthcoming release, for want of a better description?

The answer is quite a lot really, more than 1000 developer APIs and 100 additional bits of iPhone functionality for end users. Amongst them, something that Digg supremo got wring when he predicted there would be no MMS support for the new iPhone OS. Yes, Apple is adding MMS capability so you will soon be able to send images, and audio for that matter, via the iPhone messaging application. Yay.

Search gets a big nod, with the arrival of Spotlight which brings a 'search all your iPhone' mentality to the fore by allowing users to search all the core applications such as Mail, as well as searching your installed apps and your iPod library for good measure. While Spotlight is a welcome new arrival, at the launch it …

As is to be expected as we fast approach the official launch of Windows 7, more changes from the Beta version to Release Code functionality have been confirmed by Microsoft. Although the Windows 7 team were at pains to point out that the latest update list is by no means exhaustive, it does still run to some 28 extra items.

Are you sitting comfortably?

1. Improved taskbar thumbnail overflow (the list will now view architecturally the same as the thumbnail view, but without the thumbnails, and there will be close buttons plus the menus will open on hover rather than needing to be clicked.)
   
2. Control Panel Jump List surfaces recently used items (right clicking the Control Panel icon on the taskbar will now reveal more recently used items.)
   
3. PowerShell Jump List (providing a method to load modules, launch the ISE and open documentation.)
   
4. Remote Desktop Jump List (added Remote Desktop shortcuts to taskbar with setting appearing in recent items list and an ability to pin connections in the Jump List.)
   
5. Applying taskbar settings across sessions (even if the OS is not shutdown properly, courtesy of a within 30 second write during a session.)
   
6. Multi-touch zoom (now in Windows Explorer, use to switch view modes.)
   
7. Invert Selection (now ported to rearchitected view code in Windows Explorer due to demand.)
   
8. Improved folder hierarchy movement overflow algorithm (to ensure that going up the hierarchy will always be …

The cost of an Xbox 360 is dropping like a brick, which is just as well considering so many things can go wrong with the Microsoft games console. In fact the whole Red Rings of Death thing has led to some frustrated users taking Microsoft to court.

Jesse Maiman, a Yale University student, is also going to court over an Xbox 360 but his lawsuit is not against Microsoft and his console is not broken as far as he knows. It is, however, missing. Maiman boarded a US Airways flight from Connecticut to Cincinnati with the Xbox 360 packed in his luggage, when he arrived the console was mysteriously missing from his baggage.

Most people would understandably be a little miffed at this. Most people would probably expect the airline to provide enough compensation to replace the missing console with a new one. Jesse Maiman, it would appear, is not most people.

Maiman filed a lawsuit against US Airways seeking up to $1 million for non-economic stress, whatever that might be. OK, so allowing for the fact the Xbox 360 was modded with a specialised hard drive and other components that apparently cost more than a thousand dollars I can understand the $1700 being claimed to replace the console. But a million bucks on top?

Considering that the federal loss limits for any US airline when it comes to lost luggage, or belongings lost from luggage, is restricted to a …

Amazingly, the 100 millionth Nintendo DS handheld video gaming console has been shipped. Since the original Nintendo DS launched way back in 2005, at least here in Europe, it has pretty much dominated the handheld market despite strong competition from Sony with the PSP.

Nintendo tell me that, as of the end of December 2008, there were some 83 Nintendo DS titles which exceeded 1 million global shipments, and no less than seven titles which managed to exceed 10 million shipments. Brain Training anyone? Indeed, it was games like Brian Training which helped Nintendo to reach beyond the traditional young male audience to attract girls, adult men and women and as unlikely as it sounded at the time, even seniors.

A Nintendo spokesperson says "Nintendo DS games demonstrate an evergreen quality: They frequently remain in the top-selling lists, months - or even years - after their launch."

Sometimes they even win awards, like the Nico Bellic beating Super Mario Galaxy which just yesterday picked up the Best Video Game award at the BAFTAs. what with the recent news that Nintendo enjoys half the total video games software market in the UK. it must be feeling pretty pleased with itself I reckon.

Super Mario Galaxy has beaten off the likes of GTA IV, Call of Duty 4 and Rock Band to win the coveted 'Best Game' BAFTA at the British Academy Video Games Awards last night. Call of Duty 4 managed to pick up a gong for best gameplay as well as best story and character, beating the unlucky if hugely profitable GTA IV which, despite getting no less than seven nominations, failed to win a single thing.

It was nice to see Little Big Planet picking up a much deserved BAFTA in the artistic achievement category, and Steven Spielberg's 'Boom Blox' winning the casual games section.

Other awards went to Professor Layton and Curious Village for best handheld game, Left 4 Dead in the multiplayer category and Fable II for best action and adventure title. The BAFTA for best sports title went to Race Driver:Grid and best strategy was picked up by Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution. Dead Space won best use of audio and best score, while Spore was honoured for technical achievement.

Nolan Bushnell, the man who invented Pong and was perhaps known for being the founder of Atari, was made a Video Games Fellow of the Academy.

Microsoft is tweaking the number of features that can be turned off in Windows 7, with the latest beta build adding Internet Explorer 8 to the killswitch list according Microsoft Product Manager, Jack Mayo.

In the official Microsoft Windows Engineering Blog, Mayo says "If a feature is deselected, it is not available for use. This means the files (binaries and data) are not loaded by the operating system (for security-conscious customers) and not available to users on the computer." However it is important to note that the files are actually just staged, meaning the feature that has been killed can be brought back to life without resorting to the installation DVD.

As well as IE8, you will be able to deselect Media Center, Media Player, DVD Maker, Search, Handwriting Recognition, Fax and Scan, Gadget Platform and XPS Viewer in addition to the previously 'switch-offable' items in earlier betas.

Unfortunately, there seems little chance that any of the above will be optional components during installation any time soon if ever. Mayo makes it quite clear that the "vast majority of feedback" received was to "reduce the amount of potential complexity in getting a PC running" and not to add items such as Internet Explorer to the optional components list during setup.

Despite this, I wonder just how this will impact upon the oft repeated Microsoft argument that web browser and operating system are somehow joined at the coding hip? Was this …

Crikey! And there I was thinking we were slap bang in the middle of a global recession. Things can't be that bad, I guess, if a retailer can find $5.1 million to pay for a new domain name. Yet that is exactly what Toys R Us has paid out in order purchase the toys.com domain, making it the biggest earner in the online name market so far this year.

Of course, it is not a record breaker as such. If you want to be involved in the real domain gold rush then you need a generic name associated with the adult industry which is probably why in years past porn.com has made $9.5 million and the big daddy of them all, sex.com, went for a massive $14 million a couple of years ago before the credit crunch hit.

The BBC quotes Ron Jackson from the Domain Name Journal as confirming the average sales price for a .com as being $2,688, down a hundred bucks from a year earlier.

Toys.com sold for a little more than that when it was auctioned previously, with the seller paying an impressive $1.25 million. Looks like that was one investment that the banks couldn't screw up then.

Adobe has yet to patch a critical zero-day vulnerability in Acrobat and Reader applications which is in the wild and being exploited by malicious types using malformed PDF files. Now, more than two weeks after the exploit was reported by The Shadowserver Foundation and before Adobe can get the patch distributed (it is due on March 11th I am led to believe) the situation has got worse. A lot worse in fact. It would appear that the advice to disable JavaScript in order to avoid being exposed to the risk is no longer valid after a security consultant demonstrated that there was no clicking required, no need to open the malformed file, for the bug to be exploited and code executed. That said, the current in the wild exploits do seem to all require JavaScript so keeping it disabled is good advice. Unfortunately, now that the new data has been published the bad guys are likely to rush to exploit it before Adobe get that patch out.

Security specialist Didier Stevens has shown how a file can store a malicious stream object in meta data rather than the pages of a document, and how that meta data can be read by Windows Explorer through a shell extension which generates the required mouseover tooltips to execute the malicious code.

Stevens explains that when you install Adobe Acrobat Reader a Column Handler Shell Extension is installed which is "a special program (a COM object) that will provide Windows …

According to reports, the security relating to the official Presidential helicopter, Marine One, has been breached. It would appear that engineering and comms data, amounting to a complete avionics package including blueprints, about Obama's helicopter turned up on the computer of defence contractor who also had a P2P file sharing application on the same computer. A copy of the blueprints, inadvertently made available for sharing if the reports are accurate, also turned up on a computer based in Tehran, Iran.

The good news is that the US military know exactly where the file originated and where it ended up. The bad news is that someone with the necessary clearance to have access to such information was stupid enough to not realise the risk of having file sharing applications on the same computer suggests a serious lapse in security awareness at a level that is, frankly, rather scary.

The same security company that uncovered the Marine One file has stated that there are active searches across P2P networks for just this kind of sensitive military data and not just out of Iran. It has noted similar activity originating in China, Pakistan, Qatar and Yemen.

Reports suggest that Google Earth might have put the top secret British nuclear defence headquarters, at the Faslane HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland, at risk from terrorist attack after the satellite mapping shows clear images of the facility.

The images are highly detailed and even show a couple of Vanguard Class submarines docked. Newspaper reports recount how a couple of years back Google was asked to blur British military bases in Iraq as well as certain strategic military installations in the UK on grounds of national security. I am led to believe that updates to Google Earth have meant that those previously blotted out areas are now visible once more.

These areas include the Faslane site, the nearby Trident Special Area (where the British nuclear submarine fleet store warheads) and further afield the SAS training facility in Hereford. The latter details everything from sleeping quarters to bunkers.

The Sun claims that senior officers in the military are "furious that such sites can be viewed by anyone" and that the Ministry of Defence is struggling to "maintain the security of all the UK's sensitive military sites."

A Google spokesperson declined to comment upon government requests for the obfuscation of military sites.

Given that there is even a Google Earth for mobile devices it would appear that without some kind of national security collaboration the application could be something of a terrorist wet dream. It would not seem to be a great …

The pricing is not too bad in the US market, to be fair, but I fail to see how moving from dedicated to integrated graphics can be sold as an upgrade and expect users to pay for the privilege of moving backwards.

The Consumerist is currently running a story about how a gamer was first harassed by other players and then booted off Xbox Live by Microsoft. Her crime? Admitting she was a lesbian in her gamer profile. According to the report she was harassed online by other gamers and when she complained to Microsoft was told that gamers found her sexual orientation offensive and her suspension stood.

Microsoft argues that the terms and conditions of use for Xbox Live forbid the creation of a gamertag or use of text in other profile fields "that include comments that look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate content of a potentially sexual nature."

Which is probably why gamer Richard Gaywood also found his gamertag suspended.

Is it just me that finds the Microsoft position somewhat bizarre? On the one hand it says that it takes harassment of any kind "very seriously" and strongly encourages members to report "inappropriate behaviour" so it can be investigated. Yet at the same time seems to be harassing the gay and lesbian community with its own actions.

The usual image of a stalker is some creepy bloke obsessed by some TV star, following them around and making unwanted advances. When it comes to the online realm, however, it would appear that we might have to redraw that stereotype.

New research has revealed that while 50 percent of the Brits polled admitted to using search sites and social networks in order to spy on former partners and enemies alike, women were more likely to be doing the online stalking than men.

Yes, some 62 percent of women 'fessed up to searching for an ex-partner using online tools while only 46 percent of men had done so.

Other interesting figures from this research include the fact that 93 percent of people admit to searching for celebrities online, and 54 percent for an ex-partner. Worryingly, when asked “if you have searched for an ex-partner online, have you searched for that ex-partner on more than one occasion?” over a quarter of people agreed.

The reasons became clearer, when they were asked “if you have searched for an ex-partner online, what were your reasons?” with 'curiosity' being the most popular answer, quickly followed by jealousy.

Tellingly, some 9 percent were honest enough to admit that they had done it because they knew they would not be caught by using online tools.

Steffen Ruehl, CEO of yasni.co.uk, told us "Curiosity is an interesting thing, it is human nature to investigate. It can make …

Remember last month when DaniWeb reported how some 1400 jobs were to be lost at Microsoft? These losses forming the first part of a plan to trim costs which would see a total of 5000 Microsofties facing the axe. Well now, in the most bizarre of twists, it seems that the axe is not good enough and some of those laid off workers are feeling the twist of the Microsoft knife as well.

According to letters sent to employees and now published online Microsoft is asking for its money back. Well, some of its money back at any rate. At present there are no firm numbers on how many people have been paid too much severance by Microsoft or how many letters have gone out, beyond "we’ve confirmed that it wasn’t a single isolated incident."

The letters, with monetary amounts removed, read:

"This letter is to inform you that an inadvertant administrative error occured that resulted in an overpayment of severance pay by Microsoft. We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience to you. The overpayment occured on February 13, 2009 payroll in a Gross overpayment of $[deleted] (Gross amount). The Net (after-tax) amount you owe back to Microsoft is $[deleted]. We request that you follow these repayment instructions: please make your check or money order payable to "Microsoft Corporation" within fourteen (14) days for the full $[deleted] (Net) amount identified above and mail it to..."

However, …

Apparently the 30th edition of the Collins English Dictionary will be seen, in fact as far as Bebo users are concerned it could even be fiend. Whether it is piff or naff is something only you can decide, and should you happen not to be a teenage Bebo user the chances are you will think it grim and be seen as a hater by the Bebo brethren.

What the heck am I talking about? The new language of modern British youth, apparently. It would seem that the publishers of the Collins English Dictionary, HarperCollins, has looked to the popular social network Bebo in order to track down the most popular slang being employed in daily use by the teens of Great Britain.

It got a group of teens to produce a shortlist of slang words which can be voted for by the 10 million or so users of Bebo to decide which should be included later this year in the 30th edition of the dictionary. HarperCollins researchers will then have the final say, after doing some additional research into the background of those words, as to whether they should be published in the dictionary or not.

The teenage panel decided that the following 10 words were the most commonly used and appropriate for voting:

• seen = cool
• fiend = addictive
• piff = good
• naff = embarrassing
• grim = disgusting
• stunting = showing off
• bruv = mate
• mugged = taking the mickey
• pinky = £50 note
• hater …

It's that time of year when the Mobile World Congress hits Barcelona, and McAfee has taken advantage of the fact to announce findings from new research that shows mobile device manufacturers are now spending more time and money than ever on recovering from security incidents as well as experiencing more mobile security issues than at any time before. Perhaps unsurprisingly given that smartphone numbers could hit 300 million in the market real soon.

The third annual McAfee Mobile Security Report explores manufacturers’ security experiences, concerns and priorities and indicates that security is becoming a barrier as far as service innovation and development of new business models are concerned.

How so? Well, how about the fact that half of all global manufacturers reported mobile malware infections, voice and spam attacks, third party application problems or incidents that caused network capacity issues? Or maybe that 48 percent of manufacturers agree that the cost of patching and fixing devices "significantly impacted" upon their business?

Then there was the concern shown over the security of mobile device functions which revealed some 81 percent of manufacturers worrying about mobile payments; 69 percent unconvinced by the application installation security and another 66 percent showing concern about WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Meanwhile, 75 percent did agree that carriers and manufacturers should carry the cost of security with only a minority of 12 percent thinking that users should be involved with handling security measures.

"Attempts to make the mobile ecosystem …

Has the world gone mad? Sony is getting set to launch a cellphone with, wait for it, no less than a 12.1 megapixel camera built in. To put that in to some perspective, I take photographs for publication as part of my day to day working life as a jobbing journalist. The digital camera I use has 8 megapixels which really are plenty thanks very much. Indeed, most photographers will tell you that the headline megapixel count is not as important as the quality of the lens and numerous other bits and bobs. And while Sony has something of a decent track record in the field of producing good quality camera-phones, I doubt the lens in the Idou will be anywhere near as good as the average purpose built digital camera.

Let's face it, what do most people use a camera-phone for? OK, making telephone calls and sending text messages are probably number one and two, but even when we get to the photography bit the kind of images are likely to be more a case of opportunistic snapshots than considered portraits and set pieces. That is the whole point of a point and shoot camera in the pocket, a truly portable device, and it has a lot of merit as such. But, and it is a big but, for doing that impulse snap shooting stuff you simply do not need 12,1 megapixels do you?

Well, I certainly do not at any rate. So, …

When the Resident Evil 5 demo was released on Xbox Live and managed to get itself downloaded a staggering 1.8 million times in the first week, well everyone pretty much thought that was one Xbox record that was not going to be broken any time soon. But that was before someone went and decided to get a Halo Wars demo out there to excite all the Halo fans.

The 1.4GB demo appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace during the day of February 5th, available as a free download for Xbox Live Gold members only for the first week. That did not deter some 2 million folk from doing just that in week one. None too shabby considering there are 'only' around 17 million people signed up to Xbox Live in total.

In fact, it has broken the Microsoft record for day-one downloads and that first week total clocked up in just five days rather than a full seven.

Now we just have to wait until March 3rd to see how many people buy the retail version.

Personally, I am on the edge of my seat waiting to see who will win the popularity battle between Halo Wars and the new downloadable Grand Theft Auto IV episode, The Lost and Damned, which will be available for download from February 17th.

The Chinese Government obsession with eradicating all 'lewd' and pornographic content from the Internet marches on. It all started back in 2007 when the authorities declared war on porn and setting a seemingly impossible target of purging the web of sexually-explicit images, stories and AV clips within a six month time scale.

Of course, it proved to be exactly that, impossible. But that has not stopped the Chinese Porn Takeaway, indeed we reported recently how the latest purge has seen 41 people arrested in January, along with 1250 pornographic websites closed down. Some 3.2 million pieces of 'porn' have also been deleted during the sweep.

Now the Chinese Academy of Sciences has said it will provide the authorities with an intelligent tool to uncover online porn and "lewd materials" using Chinese character recognition to identify porn content using a combination of keywords and syntax. The system apparently searches every page on any given site for evidence of pornographic materials. Alongside a database of pornographic-like words, it is hoped that this will give the cleansing quest a boost.

Of course, there is the small problem that the engine will only uncover textual pornography and cannot do anything about audio or visual content. That, it seems, is still beyond the ken of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at least for now. A spokesperson says that the crackdown will help ensure a "much healthier web environment for Chinese youth." There are no figures available for how …

The Advertising Standards Authority here in the UK has ruled against Microsoft concerning a television advert for the Xbox 360 which featured a woman with half a head watching a movie being streamed via the games console. So what could possibly be the problem with that?

Maybe there should have been a bloody big warning banner saying "your movie viewing experience could be ruined by the red rings of death" displayed on screen?

Nope, actually it was all down to a single, solitary viewer who complained that the advert was misleading. Even the banned iPhone adverts managed to get two complaints, so this one could not really have been that bad, could it? Well no, not really, as it happens.

It seems the problem was that the advert "failed to clarify that any downloaded movies were only available for 14 days or alternatively 24 hours after 'Play' had been pressed."

Ah, I see, so this was a case of idiot user syndrome then. Even the woman with half a head in the advert probably had enough brain left to realise that the downloaded movie was not going to be hers to keep for a couple of quid's worth of Xbox Live credits.

But the good old ASA disagreed with Microsoft which explained that "it was possible to download movies as the ad suggested and it was not in their view unreasonable to expect certain conditions to be attached to …

A week ago I was reporting how 'leaked' documents were suggesting that the PlayStation 4 would build upon existing CELL processor architecture with the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE). At the time I said that this was good news, not bad, in that it meant costs should be kept down and that will be important if Sony is to avoid the pricing mistakes it has made with the PS3 which have effectively hamstrung any chance of gaming market dominance despite the undoubted superiority of the hardware compared to other consoles.

Now, with one eye still firmly on the likely release date for the PS4 of either late 2010 or early 2011, my other eye has been interested in yet another well informed rumour which would seem to throw one more bit of information into the PlayStation specification speculation pool. This time it is the possibility of an Intel inside the PS4, an Intel GPU that is: specifically the much hyped Intel Larrabee.

According to The Inquirer the news of an Intel Larrabee GPU for the PS4 was leaked out around the vicinity of the Sony booth at CES in Las Vegas recently. There is even some talk of Intel doing more than just the GPU, and perhaps throwing the entire 'CPU and all' architecture into the next generation PlayStation console.

Mind you, Sony has gone on the defensive. Not just the 'no comment' defensive or even the 'we have yet to …

HP will most likely not be taking part in the 'I'm Linux' marketing campaign then.

In fact, it would appear that HP will no longer be providing customers in the UK with a Linux option for the new HP Mini 1000 netbook. Which is not the case for the US market where one of the three available versions will, indeed, be running Linux.

An HP spokesperson told IT Pro in the UK that it remains committed to the UK netbook market as a whole and it had "assessed the current EMEA market" and concluded that the Windows powered HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition "better address the market and consumer needs" and so it had determined that the only Linux option, the HP Mini 1000 with Mobile Internet Experience, "will not be introduced in EMEA."

Oddly enough, the Vivienne Tam version which runs Windows XP is the most expensive in the range and retails at around £450. Hardly in the whole netbook spirit of small in size and small in price, now is it?

According to some sources the new HP Mini 2140 will also come without any Linux option, although you will be able to pick between XP and Vista. Again, US customers do get the open source option in the shape of the Ubuntu derived Mobile Internet Experience version or SuSE.

Even the news that HP will make MIE Linux available as a download for UK users …

Surprisingly, the answer could well be yes. At least if a bunch of computer science researchers at Durham University have anything to do with it. The group have taken the 3D game engine that powers the immersive Half Life 2 game and used it to develop a realistic virtual simulation of the university computer science department. More to the point, they have created a realistic fire drill simulator which might just help save a life or two.

The idea being that the 'game' can be used to determine how real people behave when confronted by a virtual fire within a realistic environment. Indeed, although the first sim uses the university department it could be anywhere at all. A few modifications and pretty much any environment can be mapped in convincing detail. Once you know how people are likely to behave in the event of a fire by running them through the simulation, you can better prepare them on how they should behave should the real thing strike.

The Half Life engine was chosen over and above complex bespoke 3D modelling software for many reasons, including cost, speed and even special effects capability. Indeed, it only took a few weeks to model the building instead of a few months and all without having to learn new programming skills. From the user perspective, it also means that there is an inherent familiarity because most of us have played games of this type at some time or …

Who would you back in a fight? Barack Obama or Stephen Fry? When it comes to being popular on Twitter these two are the only real contenders for the title if you discount news organisations and the like. Currently, of course, US President Obama has the size advantage with an incredible 220,000 people following him. Meanwhile Stephen Fry, actor, author and the most popular intellectual in Britain, has the advantage of speed. His momentum has carried him right up to 100,000 followers, many of them added after an appearance on the Jonathan Ross chat show last week here in the UK. On that show Fry discussed how he uses Twitter, and it would seem that many were prompted to look him up, and it up, as a result. To put his Twittering success into some perspective, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, or at least the Downing Street Twitter account, can only muster 26,500 followers. Chat show host Jonathan Ross himself can do better, 43,289 followers and that beats John Cleese with 43,046.

According to The Telegraph the 100,000th Fry follower was Hayley Elliott who is following nobody but the man himself. Fry welcomed her by saying "Hi there Hayley! You are my 100,000th follower! And I'm proud to be your first. Welcome to Twitter xxx." Fry told the newspaper that he touched and pleased, but admitted that keeping up with 100,000 followers was proving to be increasingly difficult.

Obama, …

MySpace is many different things to many different people. To the young it is an online home where they can hang out, chat and discover new music for example. To Mum and Dad it is often seen as being something of a parental nightmare. To the tabloid media it is a hunting ground for perverts.

Of course, the tabloid press have never really had what you might call a firm grip on the realities of the Internet since the get go, so that kind of attitude is often treated with a large measure of incredulity. However, now it would appear that they might have had a point after all.

It seems that during the course of the last couple of years alone, MySpace has managed to identify and consequently banish no less than 90,000 registered sex offenders. The figures have been revealed following an investigation into social networking and sex offenders by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. An investigation which included a subpoena to get those numbers into the public domain.

While there is plenty to be pleased about, not least the fact that MySpace is obviously taking the problem of sexual predators very seriously and tackling them head on, the sheer size of the statistic raises more questions than answers I fear.

There's the problem that these people have got on to MySpace in the first place, and one assumes have done so in order to socialise with the young if …

This morning I awoke to read news headlines declaring the worst snow the UK had seen for some 13 years, with reports of thousands of minor accidents and major motorway networks grinding to a halt. In London the public transport system collapsed, with London Buses, Underground and trains all being taken out of service as it was too dangerous to continue.

However, one timely news alert caught my attention as it was from Sat Nav outfit TomTom. The snow had caused 388 traffic jams on major UK roads, it informed me, with the TomTom HD live traffic reporting service showing no less than 1086 miles of gridlocked traffic by 8.30am GMT.

Amazingly, the M25 motorway could boast of the longest single traffic jam between J19 Watford and J8 Reigate (where I had travelled from the night before, funnily enough) of some 32 miles at 7.30am GMT.

In terms of waiting time, however, the longest delays were showing as being between J11 of the M27 motorway and the M3 interchange at 8am GMT when motorists could expect a delay of some 1 hour and 27 minutes no less.

All of which means pretty much nobody is at work in London today. Of course, everyone has broadband so those folks with sitting at the computer type jobs get to do exactly that, but at home instead of the office. Great. You know what, I think I would rather be in my warm car, sitting in a …