News 

Campaign begins for .eng domain

To coincide with St George's day, which is the one everyone forgets and doesn't use as an excuse to get horribly drunk, a small group of campaigners (well, two) have begun a petition for a ".eng" domain. The campaign provoked a flurry of scratched heads and sarcasm among our readers.

"What's wrong with .co.uk?" Wonders Nicomo. "If there's gonna be a .scot then, yes, we can have a .brit or even a .en or .eng. Some of me agrees but another part of me thinks this is divisive."

Electric_Wizard agreed, and did so in a laudably succinct fashion: "To me, this seems unnecessary. As do the .sco & .cym domain names. That is all."

But it's not, as proven by Mosher who had plans to take the campaign one step further: "It's St George's Day so I want to celebrate it properly by starting a petition for Geordies. As a separate nation with a strong identity, I believe we should be able to express that identity with a '.toon' domain. Just leading the pack before we get '.tyke', '.cockney' and '.scouse'. This time next year I'll be demanding a domain for my street."

UK net crime hits £500m: Government still in denial

This week also brought news that net crime is continuing to spiral out of control, despite the Government's bold approach of sticking its fingers in its ears and ducking out of sight behind the couch. The forums were less than impressed.

"A local garage was overtaken by a card cloning gang, who ripped off lots of people's credit cards,"

ADVERTISEMENT

begins cjkace. "One of the people who got ripped off got all his money back, but tried to get the police to take action. The response was that as he had received a refund from his card company, he didn't have grounds to make a complaint, only his card issuer did. The card issuers' responses was that it was too expensive to pursue these people. Credit card fraud seems to be easy money, and while banks refuse to accept some of the responsibility for instigating complaints, then nothing will happen."

SwissMac agreed: "Of course the banks/credit card companies response is to not make a fuss in case their customers stop using them. That's what they fear, and it is this fear the criminals can use to their advantage, even if in reality it is not so. Just as in so many things, the fear of something is usually far worse than the reality."

Not sure about that last part. The fear of our editor in a bad mood is by no means the fully-fledged, quivering under a desk terror we experience when he's actually in a bad mood. You've been warned.

How far can Asus push the Eee PC?

And so the Eee PC continues to swell like a body left too long in a river as Asus continues to bundle in more stuff, this time a 10in screen. The news stoked ominous postings on the forums, beginning with cheysuli.

"These machines are small and cheap. Change either one and you've lost the market. A workable laptop for under £300 is a great idea, especially for a school child, as it will run OpenOffice or Microsoft office (under XP) and can't run most games. That has peaked my interest. Make it over £300 and I might as well buy a full-blown Dell laptop for the money."

"They are daft," begins no-nonsense qpw3141. "It's like coming up with the 'SmartCar', finding it's an amazing success, then starting to build ones that carry six people. That micro PC is a success because of what it is in terms of size, weight and price. If you increase each of those attributes by 50%, it doesn't matter what you call it, you are in a different market altogether."