Posts by Lyndon Hills

Apple goes auntie over slasher comic

Breakfast Club

Admittedly it's a while since I saw it, but what was so objectionable about it?

Card fraud-fearing Brit tourists carry cash

@Eddie

<quote> wad of Euros gaffa taped to my bollocks </quote>

Must make paying for things interesting. Would you want to handle that cash, having seen where it came from?

BBC iPlayer upgrade prompts new ISP complaints

HD trial

Tried HD last night. The picture quality was MUCH better, however it would play for 4~5 minutes, then stop and download some more. Sufficiently bad that I reverted to normal def, which works fine. I have 20 meg from Virgin (which I really do get at times) so I doubt it's that at fault. Maybe there's something in Safari that can be tweaked?

Forgot your ID? You must be a terrorist

No ID?

So they are unable to confirm your ID because you've forgotten your documents. They are going to add you to their database which is guaranteed to cause you trouble when you travel in the future.

Clearly any sane person who has forgotten their documents will claim to be someone else. Anybody else. The database will be even less useful, as time goes on.

Home Office minister gets tough, then gets stuck

@Andy H

nice ideas! So a 'feisty' policy would be vaguely fun, or perhaps plucky. A crustaceous one for when the government is in a bad mood. Assuming that policies are printed then fibrous would be a pretty accurate description. Spartan policies would be those resulting from knee-jerk reactions to events - producing policy best left out on a hillside to die....

Site guesses your sex via age-old web flaw

@50-50 mmmm

Remember that El Reg is 'a lesbian on-line magazine ', according to The Independent (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/06/indy_reg/), thus the female browsership is increased.

Judge sides with eBay in fake jewelry spat

@Come to Europe

In the UK we have Trading Standards laws. In a regular physical market you aren't allowed to sell fake goods, and there are trading standards officers who will enforce this. This would include car boot sales (closest approximation of eBay I can think of). I think however that if fake goods are found, then the individual vendor is liable, and there is no case against the owner of the field or wherever the sale is taking place. Aren't e-Bay the equivalent of the field owner?

not that I am a fan of e-Bay, in any way shape or form.

IPS ditches e-passport system

requirements

<quote>IPS will work with customers and industry groups "to define the market requirements for new identity checking services".</quote>

Surely there is NO requirement, at present? Once the government has passed a few new laws, there may then be a requirement.

Ohio table-shag man gets six months

re: Where's the "laid the table" joke?

Just after the mention of the "hardened" perp...

eBayer slaps $714 price tag on $630 in cash

@ Me Too!

Posting from AOL are we?

UK prisoners offered data cabling training

@ BlueR@nger

Screaming Lord Sutch is dead. Not, I suppose, that this means he still couldn't do a better job than the current bunch.

US bars ID refuseniks from planes - but not ID losers

Re: The blindingly obvious problem with this

Indeed, if someone is so incompetent, that they can't even blow themselves up, then they don't represent much of a danger to anyone else, and therefore should be allowed to travel, previous notwithstanding.

A quarter of UK adults to go on child protection database

@Research

Actually, most right-thinking people already assume that scout masters are paedophiles, or at least thinking about it. When this is force and there are no scout troops left, we'll know we were right.

Discovery docks with ISS

Sub Head?

Surely should be 'Desperately needed space shit later today'?

Cornish lingo gets standard written form

but does this mean

that we'll be able to understand the comments from amanfrommars now?

UK censor launches online content classification drive

Survey results

I'd love to see the questions that were asked to obtain these results. I personally couldn't care less if the certificate is there or not, and I suspect that most adults would feel the same way.

MI5 spy wife was Formula One chief's Teutonic thrash tart

@testman

The poster was amanfrommars. You're obviusly new here..

Government orders data retention by ISPs

Data retention

Assuming that all details are to be retained, how much data will each botnet-owned pc generate? Does a call to sync with a time server need to be logged and retained? Ping? traceroute? nimda worms?

For a decent sized ISP, this is going to generate terrabytes of completely useless garbage.

Life a mess? The Moderatrix can help

@ Mark_T

Sounds exactly like usenet, just after AOL started up. You missed Godwin's law, however, which needs it's own category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Retailers risk libel nightmare over 'no-work' database

Data Protection Act?

There is already something similar to this, but in terms of Trade Union Activists. I don't remember all the details, but I think they keep all the records on papaer as it avoids having to deal with the DPA. Presumably this comes under that legislation, so one has the right to request access to ones records, and have corrections applied?

Dope-crazed Canadians sledgehammer iPhone

Linked Site

The CannabisHub? I'm constantly amazed by the breadth of El Reg's reading. The Lesbian (lesbian) reputation was only the start....

Spread your database connections with PHP PDO

wtf?

I find the suggestion that you would develop against one db and deploy to another to be bizarre at the best. You'd have to be insane to do it deliberately.

It might be less stupid if all you're doing is CRUD operations, but if that's all you're doing, then why are you spending money on a high-end database product like Oracle?

Monroe BJ film goes for $1.5m

Head out of frame

<quote>object of her affection's head is out of the frame</quote>

Pretty poor photographer then. Oh you mean that head...

UK.gov will force paedophiles to register email addresses

Bicycles?

So presumably the guy that was caught 'fiddling' with his bike won't be alowed to sign up for any bicycle related web sites?

Where do these people come from? (the politicians I mean, bike shaggers are fine by me)

T5 opening turns into Airplane 3.0

Deliberate

So as not to unsettle travellers, the experience is the same as at terminals 1 to 4.

Famous Five film lined up

5 go mad on mescaline

This story reminds me of the comic strip production in the title. Wonder if it's kicking around on the net somewhere, be good to see it again..

Presumably the 'lashings of ginger beer' will be replaced by alcopops in the modern version, Joyoto will be happy-slapped and the dog will savage a small child and be put down. I think I'm getting the hang of this user-generated story thing, off to submit it now.

Convicted cybercrook stands for election in the Ukraine

Immunity?

Marvellous! As a politician he has plenty of opportunity for corrupt and criminal actions, for which he is constitutionally imune from prosecution! Presumably that bit was written by politicians?

Microsoft admits big delay on Home Server bug fix

@mixbsd - fixed

Home Server looks like a turkey solution for people....

BBC iPlayer for iPhone and iPod Touch is iGo

@Chris Williams

<quote>Have you been drinking at lunchtime?</quote>

Gotta love that El reg style...

Phorm launches data pimping fight back

privacy loss get over it

Do you all think that your isp has never ever done any form of packet inspection? All your data that passes over their network unencrypted is subject to being abused right now and always has been. All it would take is a nosy admin with a packet sniffer or browsing through your mail box. While I have an efficient ad-blocking strategy, I don't think this is that big of a deal. Less 'intrusive' than Google to my mind. Good interview.

WaSP gives browsers 'fail' grade

Opera 9.26

manages 46/100

EU data guardians: search engines must obey our rules

Other applications that log ip?

Why only search engines? Most web servers, by default, log visits including ip address and timestamp so are these also covered? These activities sound a little like what would be required to implement the 'three strikes' policy on file-sharing - how else is your isp to police your internet use if not by logging, and retaining, the data?

UK bank blames fraudsters for World of Warcraft ban

Happened to me

when trying to book a flight. I think it was Ryanair and my card kept getting refused. I rang the bank who told me they'd seen a lot of fraud with the site and were blocking it. 5 minutes later they let my transaction go through. I think I've flown with them since and never had it happen again.

US navy electro-cannon test successful

Video?

Seems to have been removed. Maybe it was classified?

Veggies a 'perversion of nature': Official

Last word?

Vegetables aren't food, vegetables are what food eats.

Man wields soldering iron, welds eight new devices into Eee PC

Another mod required?

I think he's running his web site on it.

BBC's iPlayer launches Christmas Day

@James / @AC

No license fee needed. You only need a license if you watch television programmes at the time they are broadcast.

Larry Page to wed on Branson's luuurv island

@George

maybe, but what a sub-headline...

Aussie-Irish boozer ejects 'terrorist' drinker

Confirmation

that the difference between Australia and yogurt is that the yogurt has a culture.

See icon, some of my best friends etc etc

How I wrote an iPhone application

Firefox

Works on FF too although the layout isn't quite right.

Girls' school head condemns bubblewrapping of kids

Disappointment

There was I expecting a jolly story of child abuse, only to discover that our language has been mutilated again....

Brown announces new counter-terror plans

More misleading stories

about the bubble-wrapping craze, apparently sweeping the Uk....

Phoenix hijacks Windows boot with instant-on

Quick Boot

Seems to me that if all you want to do is browse or email then a better answer would be a modern mobile phone.

Virgin Media stops the rot

Transparent Proxies

Where did you get this from? I've been a customer for years, running my own web server and mail server. The acceptable use policy states that web/ftp servers should be passworded but they never bothered as long as they didn't see massive traffic. They run (or at least Blueyonder did) a process that connects to your port 25 and attempts to relay mail to make sure that people running servers have them configured properly. My only problem is that some people blacklist all mail from dynamic IP addresses, but I just change my server to route mail to those domains through the ISP's servers, so it's not a big deal.

I think Blueyonder were great and I have no problems with Virgin. I am in London, where the cable network is relatively new, and I've only once called customer services, so if they're crap I wouldn't know. Blueyonder used to have newsgroups, read by their engineers, who were both friendly and knowledgable.

Fasthosts admits email destruction fiasco

Advanced only?

You had to pay extra for this to happen!

Phishers bait hook with Verified by Visa scam

BoA customers thicker that the rest?

<quote>And Bank of America customers are, of course, more likely to fall for the ruse than those who aren’t.</quote>

At first I read this as a gratuitous slur on BoA customers, but on reconsideration, anyone who falls for this scam that isn't a BoA customer shouldn't be allowed a credit card as they are clearly too stupid.

Slave kids working UK cannabis farms

Human Sprinkler Systems

Does this mean they forced to pee on the plants? No wonder skunk stinks so badly.

Nuke-frying raygun 747 all ready bar the raygun

Volatile Fules

seems a fine way to describe a plane load of terrorists.

N Molesworth.

Movie pirate forced to ditch Linux

Dual Boot?

Okay, it won't do a lot for his uptime figures, but needs must.

'Microsoft' to compensate 419 victims

Homework

I've been to Microsoft offices in Soho, maybe they've moved, according to this

page http://www.microsoft.com/uk/about/map-london.mspx they're now in Victoria Street.