'That is the best tattoo of James May on a leg I have ever seen'

Quotw This was the week when Apple's plans for a Black Friday sale on pretty much everything except its iPhone were leaked to the web and speaking of iPhones, rumours were once more circulating about the elusive number 5 and how well-endowed it will be.

The fruity firm was also getting a ribbing from a new US advert for the Samsung Galaxy SII, but was doing well once more in the Great Patent Wars, winning an ITC judgement against HTC buddy S3 Graphics.

And more Climategate emails found their way into the public eye, in the rather cynical timing of shortly before the big talks in Durban.

This was also the week when Google decided that maybe solving the planet's energy crisis wasn't going to be as easy as it thought, ditching its plan to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, RE<C, with the sage words:

At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level.

Once again, even though he's no longer with us, Steve Jobs managed to grab a few headlines, this time getting into a barney with a rabbi, or at least the minister was having a bit of a barney with himself over how he felt about the man, saying first:

The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTunes, i, I, I. When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about 'I’, you don’t do terribly well.

Before his office swiftly qualified his comments:

The Chief Rabbi meant no criticism of either Steve Jobs personally or the contribution Apple has made to the development of technology in the 21st century. He admires both and indeed uses an iPhone and an iPad on a daily basis. The Chief Rabbi was simply pointing out the potential dangers of consumerism when taken too far.

A computer security expert was a mite concerned about the US government's ability to protect critical infrastructure after hackers destroyed a pump used by a water utility. Joe Weiss, a managing partner for Applied Control Solutions, said:

This is really a big deal, and what's just as big a deal is what isn't being said or isn't being done. What the hell is going on with DHS? Why aren't people being notified?

Amazon's fatalistic attitude to customers rooting their Kindle Fire fondleslab was revealed to be something of a blind, since rooted devices didn't play any video, providing ample punishment for naughty rooters, one of whom said:

I called customer service, and they verified that Amazon’s policy is not to let customers access their videos once they root the device.

Bill Gates came off a little better in court than he usually does, defending Microsoft against anti-competition allegations from Novell over office software. According to the software giant, Microsoft's gear was just better than its rival's, modestly claiming:

It was a ground-breaking piece of work, and it was very well received when we got it done.

Facebook brought Kevin Bacon closer than he's ever been before, claiming that there's now less than six degrees of separation between everyone because of the social network:

We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6 per cent of all pairs of users are connected by paths with five degrees (six hops), 92 per cent are connected by only four degrees (five hops).

And the rumour mill threw up this little gem about the network that wants a place everywhere in your life, that their very own smartphone was back on the table. With the frankly disturbing codename of:

Buffy

Meanwhile, our readers were worried that El Reg might be losing some of its world-renowned integrity when they were faced with a story of bikini-clad women swimming with sharks, causing one to comment:

I had a bad feeling this might be a story of someone going for maximum publicity by deftly combining sexy gurls with huge man-eating sharks. Luckily, it clearly has nothing to do with sensationalism and everything to do with science.

Finally, it was the week when some eejit got James May's big head tattooed on his leg, earning the YouTube comment:

That is the best tattoo of James May on a leg I have ever seen...

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