Posts by Andy ORourke

Mystery fungus smacks Afghan opium poppies

Perhaps you should have used.......

The Joke Alert Icon, there are many readers on here who belive that "Irony" is something made from Iron

80% of devs chafe at Apple's App Store cash split

I Think the Field Marshall.......

was hoping that readers of the post might be able to detect a hint of irony without having to use the joke icon.

You are either American (with no sense of Irony, in which case see icon) or are double bluffing with your own ironic comment in reply to an ironic comment, I can't decide.

Salesforce extends 'sympathy' to Microsoft on Office launch

Simple

Book the Champagne Capsule:

http://www.londoneye.com/CorporateEvents/PrivateCapsules/ChampagneCapsule/Default.aspx

Or the Pimms Capsule:

http://www.londoneye.com/TicketsAndPrices/Capsules/Pimms_Capsule/Default.aspx

Or the Wine Capsule:

http://www.londoneye.com/CorporateEvents/PrivateCapsules/WineCapsule/Default.aspx

Or the Chocolate Capsule:

http://www.londoneye.com/CorporateEvents/PrivateCapsules/Chocolate_Tasting_Experience/Default.aspx

UK hot-swaps leaders - Brown out, Cameron in

He could have waited......

till after Eastenders, had the wife in a right strop that did :-)

Vodafone to introduce out-of-bundle data charges

You wish!

The phone companies / ISP's have always misused / missold packages with the use of Unlimted.

For example, my wife's new Orange contract phone came with Unlimited* text messages

See that star, the clause next to the star said these exact words *"Subject to a MAXIMUM of 3000"

I just changed from BT (Unlimted option 3) to Sky Unlimited up to 20 Meg. Now, I do not need unlimited downloads but each of those contracts was subject to a "Fair usage policy" in other words a limit. A BIG limit but a limit nonetheless. The WORST part of the move was finding that I could no longer connect to my office VPN, when I called Sky I was told that the service was for PERSONAL use only and the use of VPN's was not allowed!

OK, 5 minutes on google, a copule of regedits and I was back up and running but the fact that Sky have this limitation on the Unlimited package is shocking (or not given th weasel wording of ISP contracts!)

In short, ISP's / Phone companies will still continue to use the Unlimited* wording and OFCON will still let them

Microsoft wants pacemaker password tattoos

Wouldn't work

Look, if that password is required it is required NOW, also the patient is highly likley to be unconscious.

If you are lucky enough to be unlucky enough to be taken that ill in your home town then maybe, just maybe the A & E department might have some info on you with which they could track down your doctor to get access to your medical notes and access the password.

What happens if you get taken ill in another part of the country? it could take a long time to get hold of your records, even worse if you were taken ill in another country all together!

I know everyone is knocking this because it's Micro$haft so it must be a Fail / joke / insecure / money making scheme etc and we know they will screw it up.

People have mentioned Medicalert bracelets and that's a good idea but not everyone (who should) wears them, they could also be lost / stolen.

The idea is sound, everyone here hates it because it's Micro$oft, and I’m guessing if it was a Google idea then people would be queuing up asking where they could get their tattoo!

Police send Reg hack CRB check database

Database exports etc

Look, all those wondering why the database is allowed to be exported to Excel are missing the possibility that there is no database, just an Excel spreadsheet that some spotty office junior has to fill in when a CRB check is returned to them :-)

Think you can outdo the political mob?

I like the line.......

"Provided that is you're not a convicted criminal."

We wouldn't want any people of dubious character becoming members of parliament now would we :-)

Activision Tony Hawk Ride skateboard controller

Slow News day?

Bit late with this review arent you? I mean the games been out for nearly 6 months now (in the UK)

I found it (the board) quite sturdy and robust (easily handles my 17 Stone, 6' 3" ex rugby players frame) the game itself was quite good but trying some of the tricks can be very difficult.

Also, if you are playing this in a room with carpets, might be worthwhile investing in a Skate boarding mat, many hours playing on this and your Partner / Mum will be going mad at the bald patch appearing on the carpet!

Let face it, it's the only way a 40 something guy like me can ever come close to skate boarding, I wouldnt fancy grabbing a board and hitting the local Skate Park, the big kids would pick on me :-)

A user's timetable to the Digital Economy Act

Technically?

It appears that, under existing UK law, it is legal for the purposes of timeshifting, although no time limit seems to be applied:

Quote:

Acts that are allowed

Fair dealing is a term used to describe acts which are permitted to a certain degree without infringing the work, these acts are:

* Private and research study purposes.

* Performance, copies or lending for educational purposes.

* Criticism and news reporting.

* Incidental inclusion.

* Copies and lending by librarians.

* Acts for the purposes of royal commissions, statutory enquiries, judicial proceedings and parliamentary purposes.

* <B>Recording of broadcasts for the purposes of listening to or viewing at a more convenient time, this is known as time shifting.</B>

* Producing a back up copy for personal use of a computer program.

* Playing sound recording for a non profit making organisation, club or society.

http://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyri..._copyright_law

iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks

Catchup?

Simon, I would agree with some of your points:

"Folders is also a massive win - the main hate I have for iPhone OS is the reams of icons that just seem to randomly place themselves. This means I can have everything easily placed on one screen."

I have 3 screens setup on mine, one with my most used Apps, one with games, one with the shite that came with the iPhone I never use but Apple won’t let me uninstall! You do know you can move those "randomly placed" icons around don't you?

As for Multi-Tasking, I have long held the view that if you are doing stuff that needs true, pre-emptive multi tasking then a phone (no matter who makes it) is not the right device for you (Likewise if you need High quality video or pictures)

Advertising : Most of the free games I download to try have Ad's built in, mainly unobtrusive but some are placed so that you can click them quite by accident. If there is going to be advertising then I can see why Apple would want to be the provider of those adverts and generate (more) revenue from them

Some other commenter’s crow about Porn on other phones, no problems on the iPhone, there is this new invention called "the Internet" you can use a "browser" (Bolt, available from the App Store, is a fast, compact, history free alternative to Safari) to search for things on "the Internet" (try putting iPhone Porn into your favourite search engine (pornhub is the best, so I’m told)) and watch porn on your iPhone if you really want (so my "friend" tells me)

Cue all the screams of Shill, Fanboi etc but the only apple device I own is a 1st gen iPhone, it does what I want it to do (even after having been dropped onto hard floors and in the sink while I was shaving) and i like it, if you dont like the iPhone, don't buy one - Simples

Administrator access: Right or privilege?

I spotted the jake too

I mean, it must have (N.B MUST HAVE, not MUST OF!) been intentional, "o" is the opposite side of the keyboard, simply not possible to make that kind of mistoke!

Brown promises no change to basic tax rate

Yep, No Income Tax Increase

We will just hike up National Insurance, fuel excise duty, VAT, etc, etc, etc but you will feel good because your "income" isn't getting taxed any more.

Look, it's an election, both parties are going to be promising the moon on a stick and then when they do get into power the excuses will start to roll out.

I seriously think I might vote Lib Dem this time round, I dont want to just spoil my ballot

German group urges boycott over Facebook privacy shake-up

You said it........

The only selection criteria will be "can you pay £x for this data?"

Microsoft launches iPad-happy website for wimmin

Maybe he thought

he was being amusing without realising that there are a lot of people out there ready to take immediate offence?

Privacy service knocked offline by 'no bullsh*t' registrar

so Googleshare is a bit like

Scroogle?

Million pound Usenet indexer found guilty

Wasn't that Pirate Bays Defence?

"Had they been just running an algorithm over the internet, they could hide behind the "search results" defence"

I thought that's what Pirate Bay tried?

The main reason Google, Bing, and the larger companies arent being targeted has already been stated. They pay lip service to take down requests and they are simply too big

Segway + motorbike = futuristic dorkmobile

Don't forget old people

The very trendiest old people obviously!

Intel: Just 3,000 employees run Windows 7

You are making too many assumptions

The readers of this fine publication fall into 3 camps:

1. IT professionals who read the article, weighed the comments and found they were in broad agreement with most of the findings.

2. IT Geeks who lovingly tend their own hand crafted PC's and want to show off their prowess

3. Linux fans who take ANY opportunity at all to let you know that Window$ is the biggest pile of crap in the known universe and if only everyone would switch to "free" software everything would be OK with the world (don't even try to explain that "free" software does actually incur costs to large organisations such as training end users, sorry, Lusers and having to provide slightly more expensive support staff otherwise you will be pilloried as a Micro$haft Shill!)

US kiddies treated to Playboy TV

Wow, I must be getting old

That's nothing like Rosie & Jim used to look when I were a lad :-)

Microsoft cuts out paste

I wondered what the big deal was

I mean, I've got a 1st gen 2g iPhone and I didn't really miss cut and paste and just thought all the people slagging off the iPhone for not having cut & paste would have slagged off the iPhone regardless of what feature it didn't have that they thought was essential.

I now use the cut and paste facility quite extensivley and I wonder how the original phone could have been allowed to be released without this feature and why Apple were not slagged off more for not having cut & paste (OK, the slagging was quite severe!).

Just goes to show, you don know what you are missing until a common computer feature turns up in your phone OS update!

Not a raving fanboi, only own the iPhone, don't really rate the PC's because I was given a 1st gen iMac from work which I hated with a vengence but I do know this, I will never own a phone from any other manufacturer :-) (wife just got a Motorola Dext Blur thing and it looks nice but battery life sucks, screen sensitivity is awful and navigation is counter intuitive)

Police issue lock-up-your-chihuahuas killer owl warning

More likley to be........

An old fashioned Bi-Plane, the front of which opens and closes in a snapping manner if I recall correctly :-)

Jesus Phone to exhibit holy gift of bilocation

True, Will, what's the point?

I mean, I have an old 1st gen iPhone, I love it dearly and if I want to quickly check my email I can, if I want to search for something on the internet, I can, if I want to "Shazam" a tune, I can.

I mean FFS it is a little hand held device why would it need multi tasking. As far as I can see if I am downloading the latest fart app from the App store and I want to check my mail it still allows me to download my mail, read it, reply to it and then resume my iFart app download.

If you need a computer with proper pre-emptive multi tasking then you need a COMPUTER, not a phone (likewise, if you need high quality Photo's, you need a CAMERA, not a phone)

Paypal freezes Cryptome

PayPal is a bank (In Europe anyway)

Check it out:

http://tamebay.com/2007/05/paypal-becomes-a-bank-no-longer-under-fsa.html

PayPal IS a bank (In Europe anyway)

Look, PayPal are not very good, fees are high and they have some very questionable practices but they are a bank and as such are subject to regulations (at least in Europe)

http://tamebay.com/2007/05/paypal-becomes-a-bank-no-longer-under-fsa.html

PayPal is a bank (IN Europe)

Check it ou:

http://tamebay.com/2007/05/paypal-becomes-a-bank-no-longer-under-fsa.html

Opera's Jon Von Tetzchner on browser choice, the iphone and Google

iPhone Broser choice

I personally use "Bolt" as my browser on the iPhone, it's smaller, faster and more, ahem, "discreet" (doesn't retain any history) than Safari. Plus the wife doesn't know what Bolt is so when she wants to check my browsing habits and opens Safari she sees my innocent online life :-)

Microsoft warns over rogue Security Essentials

IT IS BUNDLED, sort of

Whe you install Windows 7 the Security centre tells you you need to find an antivirus program (obviously, it isn't installed at first) and then there is a nice link to a nice page with lots of free / pay for ant-virus / internet security downloads including Security Essentials

Worked for me anyway

Microsoft spits out 'browser choice' update to appease EC antitrust probe

Block Updates?

I saw it offered last Thursday after I ran windows update (Win 7), right click, hide this update, gone

Simples

BT blamed for Davina McCall spamcalls

You have to read the opt out VERY carefully!

A lot of them are ticked by default making you think to yourself "I'll untick that for a start" but then you look and it says "Untick this box if you do want to receive offers from carefully selected (i.e. anyone who will pay us) 3rd party companies

Then there are the other ones which stretch the english language to breaking point:

"Tick this box if you wouldn't like us to not give your details to selected 3rd parties"

Devious bastards the lot of em'

EU commissioner warms up for body scanner probe

The question is.......

Do you really think the next lot of tossers are going to do anything differently?

Aren’t you over reacting somewhat?

OK, look, if you were a celebutard or a fit bird then there is the outside possibility of a chance that someone doing the scanning might possibly think about grabbing a shot of you and selling it to the press / posting it online somewhere. If, like me you are a slightly overweight, balding 40 something who do you think gives a fuck?

My only complaint is that these wont be used INSTEAD of the normal security measures, take your shoes / belt / jacket etc off but AS WELL AS thus INCREASING the amount of time taken to traverse airport security.

So you would jeopardise your job and forsake sunning your ass on the beach for a fortnight because some chinless wonder will see a blurry outline of your body, you sir are an idiot

I hope they introduce fast lanes for people willing to undergo this “gross invasion of privacy” then I can use that and be done with security in 2 minutes and necking a beer while all the self righteous people who don’t want their privacy invaded are still putting their belts, shoes and coats back on

</rant>

Foreign objects in orifices a bigger killer than laptops

WTF

"The death - and 13 other injuries - resulted from a single incident, when a Taiwanese plane exploded on landing, after gasoline from a canister in a luggage locker was inflamed by sparks from a nearby motorcycle battery. See, the figures don't just cover notebook batteries."

I assume this was before the 100ml of liquid limit was imposed then?

Big Blue eye glares at UK workforce

When........

Are employees in the UK workforce going to realise that the company they work for really doesn't give a rats ass about them. As an employee of a multinational company you are an EXPENSE.

Every year at this time the mulinational mega corp I work for tells us how well we did, not well enough to acheive 100% of our bonus though and oh, by the way we are staring consultations to make redundancies in order to provide better efficiencies and maybe reach our targets for the coming year. Thats EVERY YEAR they make redundancies just after Christmas, sometimes in the summer too.

At this rate I calculate that there will only be sales droides and managers left in the company by 2020 and then it will fail because they wil be unable to fulfil any of the orders the sales droids managed to secure :-)

Look, I didn't day it was right and proper or fair, it is very unfair after giving years of loyal service that people are losing jobs / pensions / benefits but this is BUSINESS, there is no room for the corporation to care about you, they ONLY have a duty to their shareholders.

Street View catches Finn with his pants down

That......

Was reported in the Register the other day, highly amusing :-)

Prisoners chucked off Facebook

Of course they have mains.......

How else do they powere the telly?

Google will build 1Gbps fiber networks to the home

You said it

Even Google, with all it's megabucks could not possibly afford to roll out fibre to the home for a majority of net users. Simple economics is why this hasnt been done here (as a matter of course), it costs the debt ridden telco's too much.

I can't see BT offering fibre to the home this decade, it will be a miracle if the have fibre to the street cabinet in every area by then!

BT rolls back the night

It is quite stealthy

It came to my attention in an email which normally I would have binned but because I am coming up to the end of my 12 month contract (and about to get my MAC, Woo Hoo) I decided to read it.

It really doesnt bother me, I dont make outgoing calls that often, I know my relatives all eat their dinner between 6 & 7 pm so if I do call it is generally after 7 anyway. I am just wondering how many people actually read the email or the little enclosure for those still receiving paper bills.

There are probably many who will be caught out in the first couple of months and face a slightly higher bill. There are probably as many who never use their BT line except as a host for their broadband service.

eBay cans free P&P requirement

That's why I sell my books etc on Amazon

Firstly they (Amazon) sell the same stuff and when you list your item they seem to be able to get pretty close to the retail price for postage costs when they suggest the postage fee (although you can change it if you think the P&P costs they suggest are too low)

Secondly, I have never been scammed on Amazon over anything or been complained at because the buyer didnt read my desription of the condition of the stuff I was selling.

The people selling (and buying) on there seem to be a little more savvy, maybe not expecting the world on a plate for free.

Regulator sniffs around stonking iPhone game bills

Like Location services

I have turned off location services in my iPhone settings but there are some apps that seem to want to use them and don't seem to check my default settings. For example Shazam, I mean everytime I start this up to tag some music it insists on asking me if it can make use of location services!

I am not a programmer but I would have thought if your app needed location services then take a look at the default setting, if it's off then it's off. OK if you are a GPS or map program then you are probably going to want to use location services so ask and then set YOUR app as an EXCEPTION to the general settings but if all you do is tell me the title of that song that's playing at the moment WTF do you need my location for?

Steve Jobs uncloaks the 'iPad'

You are dreaming arent you

This is a new device so any peripherals you buy for it won't work on your 'old' iPhone

Aussie man convicted for Simpsons smut

Second Offence

I hear the first time he was prosecuted for having a copy of Nevermind by Nirvana

iPhone OS update sticks customers with premium call bills

Maybe this will open peoples eyes?

There is no such thing as "FREE" software or applications, regardless, it may be an ad sponsored "Free" application on the iPhone or a toolbar sponsored "Free" PDF reader from sourceforge.

No such thing as free, these people (developers of "free" software / App's) rely on LOTS of people wanting anything from the latest bit of eye candy to a useful utility and then clicking install, agree, yes without actually looking what you are agreeing to.

Government IT strategy confirms savings target

I'll See your £4bn spending reduction

and raise you to £5bn by 2012-13, I just need a 2 year contract at an even more outrageous salary, bonuses and a golden parachute

HMRC warned on wrong tax codes

People filing away coding notices

This is me exactly, three years ago I moved from a field based job with a car to a desk job and dutifully told our HR department I had given my car back. I then "assumed" they communicated back to HMRC so I never have bothered reading my coding notice.

Long story short, the wife opened this years coding notice and exclaimed "Why are you still paying tax on a company car you havent had for 3 years?

At least my filing paid off, dug out the coding notices for the past 3 years, sure enough there was the car. I then spoke to a nice lady at HMRC (Yes, I did get her full name) and she has rectified it for me (allegedly) so I should get a nice little windfall soon :-)

Government expects £277m from vetting scheme

Wouldn't it be nice......

If we lived in society where it could be assumed that I wasnt guilty before proving my innocence?

Report finds texting a 'valid educational tool'

It was always sunny in the summer

This being 70's and everything, sunny in the summer, blackouts because of the strikes in the autumn, snow in the winter and a loveley crisp spring.

And we could leave our door unlocked and never be burgled (not having anything worth taking)

I think the point the original commenter made was why does an 8 year old child NEED a mobile phone given that the world any reasonably caring parent would allow these children to inhabit is home, school and maybe a couple of friends houses. Would you let your 8 year old go wandering around the streets unsupervised on a weekend and think that was acceptable because they have a phone?

Google: Keep user data safe by letting us hoard it forever

Dont waste time posting simply vote

Thumbs down = Google bad

Thumbs up = Google Good

This will save you having to waste time either defending or attacking Google.

You're welcome :-)

Vomit cannon to protect vessels from pirates, paparazzi

Vomit Cannon

Here was me imagining large ships carrying stores of puke around with them to shoot at oncoming Pirates.

Maybe that could be the UK's next big industry? vomit exports, encourage binge drinking and set up "puke Points" in every town / city centre to keep copious supplies of vomit ready for use

Big Brother Blue seeks biometric anti-terror patents

"furtive eye movements"

No More discreet oggling that hottie as she wanders past you or sits opposite then :-)