Hype
I don't think the Olympics will result in Mr Jowell watching any more dodgy films than normal so the British taxpayer can breathe a sigh of relief.
176 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2007
What are the post office striking about this time? It's getting a bit boring now. They are flushing their industry down the toilet just like the unions did the British car industry.
On the plus side I've got my 2 copies of Win 7 from PCWorld. So thanks all round to the CWU! Keep up the good work lads!
Wow he didn't have to wait long before his mates rescued him from prison.
If he hit a stationary object on the motorway then he was simply driving too fast. It's as simple as that.
One rule for them, one rule for the rest of us.
There just isn't a wall long enough to line up all these bankers, lords and politicians.
"Branston's crappy traffic shaped broadband service can advertise itself as 'up to 500Tbps' for all the good it will do when you try and use it."
Do Branston do broadband? I thought they stuck to foodstuffs?
My 10mbs cable connection is brilliant and always has been. I started out with 512 and it has been upgraded over the years.
I would rather have a reliable fast shaped service than a crappy unshaped "upto" 8mbs ADSL service that never exceeds 1mbs.
If you know what you are doing the shaping doesn't really stop you downloading what you want.
"It was good, but half the people who want it now haven't actually really tried Vista, they just like to insult it"
I've tried Vista. It offers almost nothing over XP except that it used twice as many system resources. On my mates PC it uses 40% of the CPU just to run the desktop.
Why would you want an operating system that sucks the life out of your PC just to give you a few transparent windows? More secure? I've had XP for years and had no security issues. Vista isn't exactly without a few security holes.
"Not worth upgrading if you're running an ancient comp though."
So best to buy a new PC, double your CPU and memory, pay for Vista Sucker Edition and get the same performance as your old PC ... but with a few fancy tweaks to the interface!
Go on you know it makes $ense. To Microsoft's balance sheet at least ....
-- "you cannot steal something that is not there"
-- Can you steal electricity? I believe you can be convicted for that form of theft.
You can steal electricity because it is a limited resource. By using it you are depriving the owner of selling it to someone else. Every unit of electricity you use has to be generated. The cost of creating a song, film or software product is a fixed cost whether you sell 1 copy or a trillion.
Copying something digital does not deprive the original owner of the product.
File sharing of copyright material is not "theft" just as taking a picture of a car isn't "car theft".
You can argue it is wrong but claiming it is "theft" is simply stupid and misinformed.
Why doesn't Virgin Media bother doing this for people accessing other illegal content on the net? Why is it that they are taking action against people downloading music rather than someone committing a real crime like downloading child porn?
I guess we all know where their priorities lie ... but then we've known that for years.
Even if you had a new PC why would you want to take a 50% performance hit just to run Vista? MS are crazy if they think transparent windows are that important.
Why pay for multiple cores and multiple GBs of RAM when half of it is going to used to display a desktop and handle some file operations?
I'm sticking with XP. If I want the Vista experience I will pull out a stick of RAM and underclock my CPU!
I'm with the BBC on this.
Sony and MS either want the content or they don't. They don't fund BBC content or the iPlayer so I don't see why the BBC should run around meeting their silly demands.
Sony and MS have produced consoles for years now and have only just allowed half hearted XVID playback. I think that sums up their commitment to media functionality.
If MS and Sony opened up their systems someone out there would not only produce an iPlayer for their console but it would walk all over anything MS or Sony could produce in house. Just like XBMC.
It seems as if big companies are trying to bully the BBC with demands they wouldn't make of other companies. Well done to the BBC for standing firm.
I wouldn't call victory yet. They can still hassle you for your opt-in or your ISP could opt-in for you via small print.
Phorm will be looking for ways to regroup and represent their technology.
This is the bit in the movie where the heroes think the monster/robot is dead and drop their guard.
It has just blinked. What are we going to do? Stand around cheering while it slowly gets up behind us or keep kicking, blogging, spreading the word and signing petitions?
They have taken a blow and are on the floor but I don't want Phorm beaten ... I want it dead, sliced, diced, burnt and buried under a motorway bridge (or airport terminal).
"As for the region-coding of the DVDs, the only GOOD reason for this, is different levels of censoring"
This is not a reason for region-coding. The UK is in the same region as Japan, Arabia and South Africa. They all have completely different censorship systems and different languages.
Region-coding is there for one reason and one reason only. Price fixing. I have never seen a rational argument to say otherwise.
"(some blood+gore not allowed in civilized countries, some natural things not allowed in some uncivilized parts of the world)."
This seems a little snobbish. You will find in most Western countries that violence and gore is far more acceptable than "natural acts". People getting their brains blown out is far more acceptable than people getting blown. One is illegal and one is perfectly legal. Which one gets censored?
While the content providers attempt to prevent consumers paying for their content they can hardly act surprised when consumers consider downloading it.
Give the consumer the ability to purchase content for a price that fairly reflects the cost and people will jump at the chance. iTunes has proved that people will pay for stuff that is available for free.
More people would pay if the price was fair. £0.79 per track? Why is this the same as physical media when the distribution cost is so much lower?
People want to download media. They like the mechanism.
Give us the mechanism for a fair price. But they aren't going to do that because it is all about keeping certain people rich. Whole layers of the movie and music industries are redundant and they are fighting for survival. They are the coal merchants fighting electricity ... they are the farm labourers fighting the combine harvester ... they are the typists fighting the PC ... times have changed and the industry will have to adapt.
Lucky we've solved the disposal of nuclear waste problem ... oh hang on. We haven't ... but at least we've got energy security ... oh hang on we still need to buy uranium from other countries.
Once the Chinese start building more nuclear power stations the uranium supply isn't going to be any more stable than Russian gas.
I'm glad nuclear electricity is going to be 'cheap'. It hasn't been in the past but I suppose the nuclear industry have got some secret magic technology that has suddenly made decommissioning and waste disposal that much cheaper. I'll look forward to hearing all about it. Or not, as the case may be.
I've got plenty of old documents I would still expect to be able to open in the future. If M$ think this is unreasonable I guess Office 2003 SP2 is the last M$ office product I will use.
OO gets better and better while Office ... well .... doesn't.
Plus you can run Open Office from a USB stick.
Glad to see there are plenty of people who are happy to brand this woman a terrorist despite there being no evidence to support it. I guess these people are the same people that determine your must be guilty if shot by the police.
Just because the police decide to take an interest in your private life doesn't mean you are guilty of anything. This is Britain, not Stalin's Russia .... well not yet anyway.