Posts by milan

Irish ISPs rally against record label anti-piracy threat

You hear that sound?

It's the sound of IRMA getting bitch slapped. Bravo to companies with backbone.

Chicago Bears fan hit for thirty grand for a bit of Slingbox

@AC

Reread the article, he claims his monthly bill is $220, not $220 a game, it's also possible he has a handset on the same account.

Can't knock the guy, he thought he was doing things the right way, it was the shipping company that should have ponied up the money though, not the network.

Authors Guild to Amazon Kindle: Shut up

numb minded but...

I have to agree that the guys brain must have taken a dump to spurt out that kind of crap in relation to text to speech. Out of all the ways in the world to experience a book, the last way I'd choose would be for Stephen Hawking to read it to me.

However the article make a spurious case against by stating that PC's have text to speech capability, it's like saying it's ok to have V8 engines on prams because cars have them, they both have wheels right? The Kindle is designed for books/magazines etc and I can't remember the last time I saw an advert for a PC that was designed solely or even partly for that.

No military mobile bill-waiver from O2 and Virgin

posted overseas

First of all, I work for Vodafone now and think that the policy of reimbursing is absolute shite, choose one or the other and get off the fence.

To those who decided this story would be a fantastic oppurtunity to bash the armed forces and gob off about 'illegal wars', shouldn't you be waving a flag (heaven forbid not the Union Jack) or placard alongside Osborne and co?

As for comparing being posted overseas by a non military employer versus a soldier being posted overseas, the non mil generally have the option of saying no thanks and at worse giving a couple of months notice while still refusing to go, soldiers don't have that option, they go or they generally end up in Colchester, even handing in their 1 years notice wouldn't do them much good.

Bunch of ungrateful twats.

Photography: Yes, you have rights

cctv

I agree, CCTV serves a much more important goal, where would we be without almost constant repeats of 'britains funniest CCTV clips'....

Muppet.

BNP leaked list claims first victims

the daily mail strikes

again..

Congrats to those banging on about the BNP as if they were the Nazi party. Go read the Manifesto. Yes they have their own share of idiots and morons, now show me a political party that doesn't.

When I read the manifesto a year or so ago it said nothing about a 'white Britain' or kicking out all the non whites. To be honest a lot of what it say in there (with a few points I disagree on) makes sense.

As for firing anyone for belonging to a Legal political party with serving Councillors around the UK, surely that's a little beyond isn't it?

Sky channels return to cable

Not left them yet.

I was going to leave for sky when they lost sky1 but a friend who did switch experienced the greatest levels of incompetence since a government IT contracter decided that user names and passwords on a USB stick was a great idea.

I honestly don't miss Sky1 anymore but it will be nice to get it back for the old episodes of SG1 and the occasional Pratchett TV conversion.

Anyone wanna guess how much Virgin will try to fleece people out of for this 'extra'?

Man threatens lawsuit after negative eBay feedback

only one action?

Odd considering that he has other negative feedbacks. As for this one hurting his business, perhaps if he had anything listed for sale it might increase his chances of selling something.

Yahoo! axes! (at least)! 1,400! workers!

Not a microshaft fan but...

I really hope that they go back with a $13 per share offer.

Android comes with a kill-switch

There goes another option..

I was seriously considering getting my sweaty mits on an android to have a play and try and support 'another option' but I don't see this happening now. I don't want a phone that reports back to the mothership so they can censor what I have on the device.

Blizzard awarded $6m in WoW bot case

@Nicholas Ettel

That's what I get for not being too lazy to check archives for the previous article but hey what's a couple of 0's, it's like...two nothings right?

Fair enough that they won the claim against him but the payout seems fairly steep.

The company spends close to $943,000 per year ...

Am I imagining things or wasn't there a recent story about how much Blizzard had spent on WoW since it went live and that figure came in around $2 million? Who is doing these sums?

OiNK BitTorrent admin faces fraud prosecution

Looking forward to them proving

that he had the intention to permanently deprive the Record industry of anything.

For the pedants..there are leech only clients out there

iGoogle personalises personal pages on other people's behalf

@Dan Mullen

I'd be more than happy to have your children. Thanks

US judge says University can ignore Christian course credits

@ Dodgy Geezer

Excuse me while I have a chuckle about the use of wikipedia as a reliable source.

Jung did not invent the word, unless of course he was around when the original Latin word was dreamed up, in Latin it means an intense dislike or hatred.

Good on the judge though, it should be up to the university about what they accept and don't.

iPhone apps selling like hot cakes

If the users are happy

with handing all the information stored in their iphone over to apple along with full control of their device, no problem at all.

I had a proper look over the contract supplied with my iphone and found nothing detailing this capability and am suffice to say a little miffed.

Massive security risk aside I'm not too chuffed with the idea of someone else poking around in my phone (that's why it never leaves my person when outside the house), Happily still in the cooling off period.

NASA: Mars is good habitat for Terry Pratchett dragons

@AC

'The chances of anything coming from Mars, is a million to one they claimed.'

But still they came?

Secret presidential briefings, oh noes! You wouldn't imagine that the upper echelons of the US government might get informed before the regular peons on something like extra planetary exploration would you?

The New Order: When reading is a crime

So let me get this straight

I download the book, let a few people know I have it and there's a good chance I'll have my plane ticket out of the country paid for by HMG?

What's that link again?

Daily Mail cites video game as proof of terrorist doomsday plot

Fantastic PR

Someone at the game publishers certainly knows how to get free massive exposure..

Virgin Media distances itself from Phorm 'adoption' claims

Spoke to VM a month ago

Nice English chap in their second line tech support. He told me that as employees they were against Phorm as they use VM for their connections at home, he also said they had a wait and see policy and would take their cue from the other two involved.

Paris because if VM take up Phorm, I'd drop them faster than she can drop her drawers

Welsh student exposed to nude webcam operators

Won't somebody think of the children..

Or, I want a chance to get something out of the job centre for nothing, so I'm kicking up a huge fuss about absolutely nothing.

Paris because...well it doesn't need explaining

Boffins chomp noggin-nobbling narcotics

If I thought it would work

I'd be guzzling them by the handful. First people to work out a relatively safe surgical method of increasing intelligence, concentration etc will see me among the lines outside.

Mega-mortuary creaks open its doors in Westminster

780k?

Either this was one of the very few value for money projects the government have come up with or there are a couple of 0's missing.

Korea's P2P pirate goes legal, targets Europe

P2P is only "illegal"

Since when is P2P file sharing illegal? I must have missed parliment passing that law.

Everytime El Reg use that line a kitten dies.

Portsmouth student peeled in potato laptop scam

I remember

Being stopped in the street when a car pulled up beside me, I thought they wanted directions.

Ello mate, we just dropped some stock off at Argos for our boss, turns out he handed over too much to us and Argos signed for the lot anyway.

We gotta get rid of them before we go back to work. I've got all this kit, Solid gold gen-uuuuine necklaces, bracelets and take a look at this corker, what a bloody diamond in that. Tell you what. Bung us 50 quid and it's yours. A few sharp words later they took off...about 20 ft to the next bloke that obviously looked like a mug.

a minute later, said mug dips into pocket, hands over cash, has something pretty much thrown out the window at him and they screech off like a bat out of hell. Said mug was still standing there looking into a bag and looking seriously depressed when I passed him by.

Dear ISP, I am not a target market

All that aside

Does this mean if I spend hours and hours searching for that perfect gift for my partners birthday, Phorm as just going to serve up ad after ad to her showing exactly what I'm getting her?

Steve Jobs unveils plans to dominate RIM BlackBerry, Life, the Universe, and Everything

Do what you say

Produce workable affordable apps that don't slow the device to a crawl. Increase the native storage on the device, lower the tariff cost/upgrade what you get on the tariff and stop bricking them intentionally.

Then I'll happily buy one of the shiny things.

Data pimping: surveillance expert raises illegal wiretap worries

Another VM contract lost

Well I've stuck by Telewest/VM for some time now. Through losing Sky1, through traffic management, even through putting up no contest when asked to divulge my personal details to Davenport Lyons so they could attempt to blackmail me.

They've had their 3 strikes, I'm not giving them the option of auto including me into this b******s.

The question is though, who the hell can I move to?

US man saved by bulletproof DVD

@ Anonymous Coward

You must have failed to read that the round had already been slowed by contact with the gunman, passing through a plate glass window and a richochet.

It's very very possible that the round retained enough momentum to pass through his coat and hit the DvD. In all likelyhood it was the coat that saved him from any harm, (slight though it may have been). It's also possible that the DvD was the final piece of resistance that stopped the round as it was pressed against his body.

If the DvD hadn't been there it's possible he may have been scratched or have a bigger bruise than he currently has, unlikely to be anywhere close to lethal though. Take it from someone who has actually been shot at far too may times.

RIAA chief calls for copyright filters on PCs

How...

Does this guy think that this would be in any way acceptable. Now would be a good time for the drugs squad to raid their offices as they must be smoking some real good stuff.

Sky broadband customers blindsided by SMTP switch-off

VM v Sky

Slightly off the article topic but when VM lost Sky One my neighbour switched to sky. I was planning on doing so as well.

Only after 4 weeks without Broadband then another 5 months of absolute hell where eventually I simply gave him the wep key for my WiFi so he'd actually have some sort of reliable internet connection did I consider myself lucky I didn't switch.

On the other hand, get their TV and Sky will give you 2mb for free.

Accenture and BAE pull out of ID card project

I'm not concerned

With the exception of knowing that my taxes will rise through the roof, the ID card price will be so high that you'll have to go without food/gas/leccy etc for a few months to buy it, I'm not too worried.

Just as soon as the first 9 year old school girl is arrested by an armed response team in the middle of her school winterval (it's not a nativity!) play for being the UK's fund raiser for Al Q (hey the biometrics match) it will all start to crumble.

Of course by this time every single bit of data about everyone in the UK will be in the hands of identity fraudsters, spammers, telemarketers and that creepy guy who wanders around your town talking to no one and singing at the top of his voice (yes even your town has one).

Look on the bright side, once ID cards have proven to be unworkable they can move onto barcodes on the back of the neck and implanted chips.

Turkey blocks YouTube, part II

@ Anonymous Coward

That's just what I'd like to see.

Although youtube is ocassionally useful for the odd funny video (and of course getting rick roll'd every damn time I visit a forum). I'm not a big fan.

Permanently block access to google and youtube (and anything else they control) to any IP originating from Turkey.

Space brains resign over efforts to attract ET attention

They've been watching all along

It would explain why big brother still gets half decent viewing figures.

Earth, the Universes longest running reality show.

Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain

This is a

joke..right?

I don't know what's worse. The whole sorry mess or that I've spent 30 minutes of life reading through it all.

Wikipedia is at best a joke, at worst a disinformation tool. Choose 5 topics that you're reasonably well versed in and then check out the corresponding pages on wikipedia.

You'll either laugh and cry yourself to sleep.

World's Dumbest File-sharer megafine gets DoJ thumbs-up

Yes she broke the law

So why wasn't it a criminal court? Why have the RIAA or MPAA never asked for criminal charges to be pressed?

Simply because the burned of proof is much higher and the way they collect the evidence would cause it to be ruled inadmissable.

The fine size is stupid, the reasoning behind it - hey, millions of other people could have downloaded it (so surely the fine should be totaling approx $1 million per track?) is absurd.

I was always of the view that you commit a crime, you go to a criminal court.

Canadian Taser death caught on camera

Scary..

That a lot of the responses are 'if you do that in an airport you should expect that kind of response'. Since when is it normal and acceptable for a guy to be killed for losing his temper?

There wasn't even a moments thought given to reasonable force - judging by the video.

It's perfectly possible for two reasonably trained men to subdue another once he is on the floor without causing serious or lasting injury, I will assume that seeing as these four were trained 'peace' officers they had at least some rudimentary training in arrest and restraint techniques.

This leads me to ask, why give him the business twice more once he was on the ground?

Shocked Shatner shunted from Star Trek XI

Will it ever stop

With that quote put into context from Shatner is looks like the right decision was made over the geriatric windbags participation.

and sorry, but DS9 comes first with Jadzia Dax, closely followed by Voyager...Seven anyone?

California teen offers GPS challenge to speeding rap

The Clue is in

the story.

Most GPS (Not Satnav) systems used for commercial vehicles are not simply satnavs. They record information directly from the vehicle and then upload this every 30 seconds or so. When uploaded it also gives a 'marker' for where the vehicle currently is when the upload takes place.

I use to work for Navman Wireless who pretty much brought this kit to the UK quite some years ago. The speed information doesn't require multiple satellite triangulation, nor does it require accuracy down to a 1m area.

For 90% of the systems available, the log is available via an online control panel for the users/supervisors, and therefore cannot be tampered with by anyone outside the provider.