Here we have room for all your letters and blog pingbacks, unlike in print. Read them! Including the debate about the iPhone's usefulness...
BANKING CODE The article is rather misleading, since the Consumer Credit Act (CCA) absolutely overrides both the Banking Code and any special rules imposed by individual banks. Under the CCA you are not liable for any transaction which was neither made nor authorised by you, and nothing the Banking Code or the banks may say makes any difference to that. This is no different from the law regarding cheques - you are not liable for any cheque you never signed yourself. The various threats made by banks to victims of fraud implying that they are liable because they have somehow been negligent (having written down & lost their PIN number, for example) are completely empty, as reference to the reports of the Financial Services Ombudsman will attest. There is not even any legal basis to the banks' frequent reference to a £50 penalty in the event of 'negligent' loss - the CCA lays down no penalty itself, and in practice few banks charge one either. Nick Steadman (no post town given)
How does it affect people using systems like Open BSD or Open Solaris? Most of these people don't run antivirus software for the very good reason that it's largely pointless. And what about people like me, who mostly use Linux Live CDs to do our banking? Are they saying this is less safe than a windows box, even with up to date scanners? And lastly why does the banking code contain advice for the customer anyway. I thought this was best practice for the banks? Mark Lester, Worcester
UNFOUND IPHONE I find it extraordinary that Mr. Arthur's article on the prospective new iPhone omits to mention the biggest deficiency on the existing device: lack of [device-wide] search. This fundamental omission of functionality makes trying to find contacts or old emails - the easiest thing to do on any other PDA - a nightmare. Those of us who bought the phone as a business machine found that it is essentially a toy for kids to hear pop songs on first, a business tool second. David Cohen, Art Critic/Contributing Editor, The New York Sun, New York
FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK Hi, just a note to point out a couple of (big) inaccuracies in your review of Rock Band (5 June). The review states that "plastic facsimiles of drums, a microphone, bass and lead guitar" are "all supplied with the game". No. You cannot buy a pack with all these instruments and the game in the UK. You can buy a pack which contains drums, one guitar and a microphone (the "Band in a Box" set) but it is separate from the actual game, which must be purchased separately. This plus the "Solus" game has an RRP of about £180, which you give as the price of the game. You can also buy a guitar or set of drums as a separate package. The review also says that "it won't work with Guitar Hero guitars". Wrong. The Guitar Hero guitars work just fine with Rock Band. It is the Rock Band guitars that won't work with Guitar Hero. I know all this as I bought the solus game a couple of weeks ago and have played it with my Guitar Hero guitar. I am currently on holiday in Florida and have just bought a set of drums for the equivalent of about £40, half the extortionate RRP of the UK drums. Your review certainly got that part right: the price of Rock Band in the UK is way too expensive. Nick Thompson, Leeds
PHORM FILLING >> seems clearcut to me - the EU will also be taking no action, which will generate a collective "phew!" at the BT tower this week. thehermesproject.blogspot.com
FREE OUR SURGERY? >> I have been practicing general surgery for more than 15 years. If my mortality data has to go online, how does government expect me to offer surgery to high risk patients? Obviously I have to look after my data and ensure that it's not skewed by those who have less chances of surviving operation. freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=206#comments
SEARCHING FOR GOOGLE ALTERNATIVES >> Well that's it then; the work I do on a daily basis is making it hard for Victor to find that perfect bijou lodging house in Italy. Time to turn off the PC and go & do something less boring instead. Because obviously only huge corporates can afford SEO. Oh, hang on [the Guardian does]. Except of course that this is utter codswallop. Indeed I'd suggest that someone at The Guardian obviously doesn't think that SEO is such a bad thing as The Guardian site appears to have benefitted from at least a quick once over from someone who understands what makes sites more search friendly. ciarannorris.co.uk
DIGG IT >> Of all the people to come up with a search engine capable of catching Google I would not have bet on Kevin Rose. My money was on Joshua Schacter but he sold to soon and it now looks like delicious is doomed. Rose gets what most other tech founders don't: people matter more than machines. I think this comes from the fact that Rose is not a mathematician nor even a coder. Digg came from an insight he had into what people wanted - to see what other people liked and who was like them. ontechnology.wordpress.com
>> Yeah, what the people really want are stories about Ron Paul, Apple & kittens falling off TVs. And buckling to your community when they break the law is a really clever way to build a business. ciarannorris.co.uk
RED HOT >> Wonder if bloodsugarsexmagik was the background music? dailygrail.com
>> once Professor Compton's idea is fully developed, it will be used for other, more interesting things than chillis, such as drug detection. Oh. Now I wish I'd never written about it. gizmodo.com
BROADBAND SPEEDS You have to empathise with Internet Service Providers in light of the publication of a voluntary code for regulating published broadband line speeds (June 6). Ofcom appears to have misunderstood the meaning of the "up to" prefix that precedes the advertised service provider bandwidth numbers. Equally, you can see that some ISP's put the "up to" prefix in the Terms and Conditions, but mostly in small wording that could be missed by the consumer. Dedicated high-speed connectivity is available if businesses are prepared to pay for it. The challenge for UK ISPs is that, having waited for a "killer app" on which to justify their high-speed infrastructure upgrade programmes, the mass adoption of online video has left many UK ISPs between a rock and a hard place. Faced with significant new demand for high-speed broadband connections service providers are faced with a prohibitive backhaul pricing model from the major UK incumbent on one side, and a commoditised consumer market that now expects bandwidth-for-free connectivity, that means they cannot build viable business models that enable last mile links to be upgraded to fibre. Until service providers solve this conundrum, delivering the highest broadband line speeds across the entire network – and at a competitive price point - will remain an ongoing challenge. Jon Pearce, Head of Product Management, ZyXEL
FUEL ECONOMY (CONT'D) The Toyota Prius is a lot more subtle than your correspondents recognise. The reason the Prius is such a brilliant car is the computer under the bonnet which is constantly trying to optimise all the resources available to it. Even on a motorway, the resources are being continuously optimised – as one descends an incline, for example, the car's energy due to its mass is captured and used, with any excess being stored in the battery for later use. Recovering energy from braking is another example. I have just driven my Prius 700 miles, mostly on motorway, from the south of England to the north and back. It returned an honest 64 mpg. The worst it has ever done in nearly 3 years was 54 mpg when I did 500 miles in France with 4 people and their luggage, including a roof box. I'm disappointed if I don't get 60 mpg on my usual mixed driving. If one understands the subtlety of the system and drives in sympathy with what the system is trying to achieve, truly remarkable results happen. And I've been achieving this for the last 3 years. Sorry to sound so smug! Steve Holloway, Chichester
