Posts by Carl

The Quick - and the Dead in the Water

Stupid...

Ok, so it was pretty stupid to get caught out in this way - common sense dictates that you don't leave things like that on show.

However, I think that we seriously need to move towards some sort of accountability for the stupidity of the media agencies in cases like this. I have a feeling that my dog, not the most intelligent one it has to be said, would probably have realised the consequencies for national/international security in posting an image such as this on a website.

I am well aware - as most of us are - that there is generally a gaping hole in the location where Getty's morals should be located, but I really do think that their motives for doing something as potentially damaging as this should be questioned.

Maybe we can brand the whole outfit as a terrorist organisation and cart them all away for some Guantanamo loving - I for one would be very happy to bag them up and kick seven shades out of them...

Mr. WebTV gives games thin-client treatment

No, no, no...

I'm absolutely certain that everyone was really impressed at playing a game that was streaming from a server over the other side of the conference hall. I have a similar set-up at home, it's called an XBOX 360.

I probably have a bit of an edge though, because I can still play it when some Network Rail fucktard slices through a fiber cable and leaves me without a connection for the weekend.

Neither your article or the BBCs seem to mention whether the demo was running over the LAN or t'Interweb, so I think that we're save to assume that they didn't have the balls to give a proper demo.

Let's face it, lag can be bad enough when I have a top knacker PC running a game and all I'm sending over the wire is info about how shitly I'm using my controller, if I had to also be receiving highly compressed 'screenshots' at the same time then I think that would be a resounding fail.

Obviously, the main question is 'Will it scale?', I'm pretty sure that the only sensible answer to a question like that must be 'Will it fuck.'

Blu-ray Disc sales to hit 100m by Xmas

@Flocke Kroes

"...on average people are going to buy under 0.1 blue ray discs this year."

I think that you are getting you figures confused, surely 0.1 is the BluRay profile version? :D

Fresh privacy fears over IE 8 Suggested Sites

Better pron...

Why is this possible useful, surely it sets alarm bells ringing in everyone's head the moment that they see this new 'feature'??

Personally, the only thing that I can see that this would be even slightly useful for is finding out if there is anything in the known universe that is better than thehun for late night shuffling material...

419ers take Canadian for $150,000

O....M....G!

"I never get calls anymore from my friends."

I'm pretty sure that once they actually get up off the floor and can breathe properly again, he will be at the top of their list of people to call...

And this guy was Canadian you say?? I wonder how long ago he decided to make the move to north of the border...

No military mobile bill-waiver from O2 and Virgin

No surprises there then...

"members of the Armed Forces wishing to discuss their O2 contract are advised to contact O2 customer services, and a customer services representative will be able to advise them on their options""

...and this has the potential to be the most challenging, scary and dangerous part of your entire posting.

Mortar attacks?!?! Pffffft... try O2 customer services out - it'll be the making of you...

Harvard prof slams US nut allergy hysteria

Woo...Woo....Woo...

"STEP AWAY FROM THE MONKEY NUT!!"

Unseen touchscreen Nokia leaked

Wow...

2 for 1 on the possessive apostrophes today then....

Maybe this will be a toucher that I can get along with - as long as it is running Symbian and not WM then that will be a good start...

Pirates pee on Amazon's MP3 parade

Holy shit...

Does anyone actually read the fecking articles?

All they have done is inject a link button into an Amazon page.

All they have done is turn the following steps:

1. Browse Amazon for some music

2. Open another tab in your browser

3. Browse to ThePirateBay

4. Type the name of the music into there

5. Download the torrent from ThePirateBay

into:

1. Browse Amazon for some music

2. Download the torrent from ThePirateBay

I believe this would commonly be called a mashup - the mp3s that are downloaded in the final steps of both of these are not necessarily sourced from Amazon (most mp3s that are available for illegal download still come from pre-release/sampler CDs and are available well before Amazon or iTunes make them available).

It gets pretty tiring seeing every single article about mp3s/DRM turn into a slagging off match between tosspots that really don't have a clear grasp of the facts in the article...

Microsoft's C# to converse with dynamic languages

@sabroni

"I genuinely believe the only reason developers prefer C# is becuse it's indecipherable to most people."

As a C# programmer, I can code and understand VB perfectly well (the fact that I rarely want to is immaterial).

The fact that as a VB programmer you find C# indecipherable says more about VB programmers than it does about C# programmers, to me at least.

Social workers sacked over Gary Glitter email

Disgusted of Devizes

I logged into my email earlier on today, with the intention of writing a letter of complaint to the BBC regarding something that someone at work said that his brother had heard on the news that someone in Bedfordshire had heard Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand saying on the radio.

Imagine my disgust to be presented with this rather disturbing email! The most worrying thing is that it nearly caused me to miss the rather important email from my doctor informing me that I need to take drastic action to stop my wife sleeping with my neighbour due to the rather pitifully small size of my schlong.

Methinks that complaints of this nature will only increase as the global economic crisis causes more companies to have to 'retire' the moaning old giffers that they've been desperate for an excuse to fire for ages, thus giving them much more time on their hands...

Nissan: buy our electric cars... rent our batteries

Hmmm, hot seat?

I don't know if it's just me, but given the events of the recent couple of years, I have a real problem with the idea of a battery under my seat...

Roadpricing satnav spybox trials under way

@James

What you fail to realise, James, is that the 'dickhead' doing 50 in the fast lane is doing so because of the average speed cameras that are all around you (maybe you have spotted them when you are 'looking around at other shit').

Just a guess but you probably sit in the middle lane when the left lane is empty too...

Average Speed Cameras with ANPR

Do these actually work?

The reason I ask is because I've lost track of the number of BMW/Audi/Golf* drivers that don't actually understand what the word 'average' actually means.

I really think that some of them believe that they can go past the first camera at 50mph, drive at 120mph til they can see the next camera and drive past that at 50mph to give them an average of 50mph.

I'd like to think that stating the above would cause some of them to realise that they are in fact wrong, but let's face it they're less likely to be reading El Reg than looking at GQ, Men's Health, Heat or themselves in a mirror.

*insert other make of vehicle that comes with arsehole fitted as standard (the word 'women' will probably fit here just as well)

Lords demand DNA database deletions

Be quick

So the key is that once you've been proved innocent you need to act fast to get yourself removed before 'you' turn up on a usb key on a random bus somewhere or on a laptop sold on ebay...

Motorola legal tie to pull pricey Aura phone off eBay

Double-proof of titness?

I guess this could be some ploy by Motorola to ensure that only the cream of the crop bell ends buy this phone?

Let's face it, you'd be a tit for paying $2000 for a phone in the first place, but doing that AND signing this contract is surely reserved for BMW driving 'executive arseholes'?

Bono bikini babe party pictures loose on Facebook

Erm...

The article doesn't really need pictures does it?? Or is it such a dificulty to type Andrea Feick into facebook and have a gander yourself..

I was expecting more pics, frankly...

BBC's speak you're branes collapses under Brand-Ross sex outrage

Erm...

"The actor, 78, said he would not be reporting the matter to police. "

Just a hunch, but I don't think that even Ian Blair would be able to miss this glaringly obvious evidence...

Skiving Aussie fingered on Facebook

Self induced sickness

"Actually, he WAS sick, it was just self-induced. Does his contract specifically exclude self-induced sickness? I doubt it. Last contract I checked certainly didn't think to exclude it."

I guess that they would have to explicitly exclude hangovers, because in reality breaking your leg whilst skiing is a self-induced 'sickness'

Designer touts 'super sight' sunglasses

Ahem...

@Edward - "For the pedestrians who spot a cyclist going along on the pavement gently and considerately - try and show the same consideration, I know it's your 'right of way', but it doesn't hurt or take much effort. Stopping is a pain on a bike."

No, it's only a pain to stop on a bike when you are cycling without consideration for other people

Branson unveils Virgin Galactic mothership

Bootnote

That's a pretty profound bootnote for a Tuesday afternoon...

Who will be the next Doctor?

Tennant for another term...

@Jamie

"He is old man with a predeliction to young girls (gotta love the guy)"

Yeah, he's like the James Bond of the sci-fi world - and that bastard keeps changing too...

I think that the coincidence of 4 of the Doctor's campanions being all together in the same place (including one of them 'visiting' from a parallel universe) will be all that's needed to stop the Doctor from changing into Robert Carlyle - and the longer they can hold that off the better, really...

SMS addiction awakens 'sleep-texting' phenomenon

Dangerous ground

@AC: "It was freaky when it first started happening but now I'm quite used to it. I aren't aware of how many times this occurs when my brain takes me to the loo and then back to bed after when I don't wake up mid piss."

Try not to think about this too much before you go to bed, you might find yourself dreaming that your brain has taken you to the toilet - and that would not be pleasant...

British Columbia stray foot tally hits six

It seems to me...

...that given that all but one of the feet was a right foot, the left foot wasn't actually a left at all. It's much more likely that the 'left' foot actually belonged to some guy who couldn't dance....

On the other hand, there is potentially some black market trade going on where someone with two left feet can order a new right foot on t'interweb. Obviously, the vessel carrying all the orders was involved in some sort of mishap - if it hadn't happened, we could potentially have been investigating a spate of left feet washing up off the coast of Devon, unwanted after the 'dancing op'...

God makes you stupid, researchers claim

God made me stupid

So, as your intelligence increases, your understanding (or ability to understand) of science means that you are more likely to spot the gaping 'holes' in creationism I guess.

I always thought that the reason that there were less stupid comments on El Reg articles on a Sunday was because IT pros don't work weekends - now I know it's because they're all at church...

Intelligent Person: My god man, you are the stupidest fool I ever met

Religious Person: It's not my fault, it's this blasted book I found in a drawer in my hotel room

Intelligent Person: Oh, I'm soooo sorry for you...

Miserly marks get smart to UK phishing fraudsters

@Dennis

I've never used it but I remember in the control panel for my free hosting with my ISP there was an option to turn on the image leeching protection. So I guess that it's pretty standard fare...

Pro-smoking website redirected to 'baccy free zone

The point is....

I'm an ex smoker, so obviously I'm worse than most non-smokers...

I don't care about passive smoking being bad for you / good for you or whatever because, let's face it, everything you eat / drink / breathe is killing you these days!

However, what can't be denied is the fact that indoor places such as pubs / clubs / anywhere really are much more pleasant places to be now they are not filled with smoke.

Smokers, you can (and will) disagree with this as much as you like, but as you spend 95% of your time out in the cold, huddled together, moaning like little bitches about the smoking ban, you're not really in a good position to comment.. ;o)

Top-end Fords will be watching your rear

Easier solution

Ford could have saved quite a lot of the money that they spent on developing this by simply refusing to sell Ford cars to old giffers.

Problem solved, then all the old bastards need to crane their necks for is to see whether the bus approaching is the number 66 or not.

In honesty though, if people find it a chore to crane the neck to see if a vehicle is approaching, we should be asking why they are allowed to drive cars in the first place - if they have trouble turning their heads, they potentially will have trouble seeing a little orange light on the wing mirror as well...

BBC vs ISPs: Bandwidth row escalates as Tiscali wades in

Ofcom

Ofcom aren't on the pointy fence... they're off busily slapping the beeb on the wrists for letting naughty pop and rock stars swear on live TV during the day...

@Joe

"Now the Beebs comes in and expects ISPs to do whatever is necessary to allow iPlayer traffic to go through without a glitch"

I think it's actually the user that want iPlayer traffic to go through without a glitch which I think gives us two (sensible) options:

1. The ISP ups prices and the user continues to get the service that they are paying for. Maybe they bring out an 'iPlayer and other 21st century web based content' package that is priced accordingly.

2. The ISP absorbs the cost.

The only one I can see here that is suitable and sustainable is 1.

If Tiscali contacted Google and said 'Excuse me but youtube is causing us big problems here, we think that you should contribute something to our costs of providing access to your website', I expect and sincerely hope that they would be told to get bent. I think that the reason Tiscali are going after the Beeb is because she is publicly funded and we know that the govt like to fritter away our money.

I also don't see the issue of content providers naming and shaming why the connection may be bad, the ISPs could even work deals to turn it into advertising their new iPlayer tariffs (see 1 above).

Maybe the Beeb should ask Tiscali for a bit of cash, because users that have tried to access iPlayer using a Tiscali broadband are given the wrong impression that the iPlayer app is a bag of shit (I thought this when I first accessed it through my '8 meg' max Tiscali connection - but then I accessed it through a real broadband connection and I changed my opinion).

[Yeah, I know that 8mb max depends on the distance from the exchange, blah blah blah, but let's just say if I opened the window at the top of my stairs I could more or less piss all over the roof of my exchange, and I used to get 6.5Mb before all you iPlayer watching bastards stole all Tiscali's bandwidth]

"The Beebs' iPlayer service clearly doesn't fit the network, which wasn't designed to cope with that sort of traffic"

Very, very little of what we do now fits into the category of what the Internet was designed to cope with...

"BBC wants to flood the network"

Yes, that's what they're doing...

Hmmm.

In other news today, the Highways Agency are trying to get approval to instroduce a 'Ford Tax'. It seems that more people are buying Ford cars and this is contributing to congestion on the nations roads which are already over-saturated and unable to cope with the flow of traffic. The HA are requesting that Ford be required to pay a fixed amount of money each time one of their cars uses a stretch of road...

It's a joke, and I think that Tiscali are just trying to pick an online content provider with high bandwidth requirements and use it as a scapegoat to cover up for the fact that its network is vastly over-subscribed. Thank god that my migration should be complete by the 16th and they will no longer be my problem.

ISPs need to come to terms with the fact that users don't just use the Internet for sending emails and viewing static web pages - those that do will sign up for some sort of 'Lite' package - so they need to stop crying like little bitches and do something about it. Let's face it, the volume of traffic isn't going to go down...

Ofcom slaps Beeb for Live Earth swearing

Erm...

Erm, I personally think that the artists themselves should be responsible if anyone - if they're stood performing to a big crowd of people in front of TV cameras with the sun blazing down on them then they should probably exercise some constraint...

Why should the beeb be punished? If you crack down on the beeb for broadcasting this sort of thing then you end up with them pre-emptively censoring things like the word 'Faggot' out of Christmas songs and we don't want that now do we?

British-phono-dicks are currently trying to do similar things to make ISPs be responsible for what users do using their services I believe, and the head guy at CPW has told them to get fucked off - get some balls auntie.

Oh yeah, and with respect to the profanity in the previous paragraph if you're under 18 or reading this comment before 9pm at night, I'm really fucking sorry....

P.S. I'm sure that there would have been more than 22 complaints, but most of the kids were out suffocating people with plastic bags after learning how to do it from a computer game...

BBC races away with five-year F1 rights deal

@Rob

Well, that just proves my point about ITV ruining my viewing of F1....

I guess it can only really be the curly-haired one with the testicles somewhere around the larynx area...

Paris, because testicles around the larynx area are her forte, I've seen the evidence

Hurrah!!

Maybe I can finally stand to watch it again on a Sunday now, without fear that when we came back from adverts for toilet cleaners the two frontrunners had crashed off and Hamilton had just performed the move of the century to slip past Mika...

Virgin Media in premium rate U-turn

Hmm... I have a little sympathy

I don't like premium rate numbers for tech support - I remember when freeserve had one and that was annoying as hell...

However, as Captain Jamie says "telling you to do things you've already done" - unfortunately the problem is that a lot of callers haven't already done that, they are the issue that a premium rate number aimed to solve.

I can imagine that you also didn't like the long waits on the line before you got to speak to someone - doubtless a large reason for this was because the phone operators were busy telling callers to 'try turning it off and back on again' and other assorted goodies.

The issue is that there are far too many people through either a lack of common sense, laziness, lack of knowledge or a combination of them all who would quicker pick up a phone to pester Virgin than try rebooting or whatever first. These are similar to the people that post questions on forums asking how to find out X when the first link on a google search for X spells out the answer plain to see.

People like this may potentially think twice if it was going to cost them 25p/minute. Maybe they'd think "Why should I pay 25p/min for someone to tell me to turn it off and back on again when I can do that now for free... oooh, f*ck me it worked". This leaves the lines free for genuine support calls to be given quicker attention. Let us not muddy this discussion with opinions on whether the call will glean any useful support as that is not the issue.

The fact that they will refund the call if the fault is theirs should be good enough for anyone with genuine issues to accept.

The other system goes like this:

Dummy: "Hi, I'm having a problem with X'

Op: "Have you tried rebooting"

Dummy: "No, I haven't, shall I do that now?"

Op: "That would be good, yes, do you know how to do that?"

Dummy: "Yes, it's rebooting now"

...

Dummy: "Oh wow! That fixed it, thanks a lot"

Op: "That's no problem, the service charge will appear on your next bill as 'f*ckwit fee'."

Dummy: "But I thought this was free?!?"

Op: "Well, yes, that's true for genuine support calls. Have a nice day now, goodbye"

Dummy: "Ok. Bye"

--------------------------

One thing is almost certain, Dummy will only ever see 'f*ckwit fee' on his bill once...

Maybe instead of playing lift music and telling us how much they value our call, they could instead say "While you are waiting, you may like to do such things as rebooting your problematic PC, stopping kazaa, ensuring that your network cable is firmly inserted into the correct slot on your PC....." - potentially this would weed out timewasters?

Paris, because even she knows that 25p/min is too much to waste on nonsense support calls....

Silverlight 2.0 data and web services explained

@Pierre

"Apparently it is simply not possible to use HTTP PUT or DELETE methods, a problem that leads to hacks like HTTP POSTs that delete data, breaking the HTTP specification. This is not the fault of Silverlight, but it is unfortunate. For similar reasons, there is no access to SOAP fault messages."

"And why wouldn't it be the very fault of Silverlight, please?..."

As in, it's not the fault of Silverlight that Silverlight can't use these methods, rather than it's not the fault of Silverlight that it had to break the standard and do it anyway...

That's how I read that anyway..

Bolluxed router configuration? Click here for help

Debollux

Shouldn't everything in life have a debollux button? Put it right next to undo...

Vote now for your fave sci-fi movie quote

@B<<<2TF

"Oh. I'm sad now. I just voted, and then found out that only one other person went for Emmet Brown"

Well, that's funny, because I voted for that 30 minutes after you and there were still only 2 votes for it - so there's either some crazy flux-capacitor related shenanigans going on or someone's fiddling the figures (or you could work with me, in which case we shall be having words about 'conan'...) ...

It could also potentially be due to the overwhelming number of votes cast for this quote and the system just can't handle it. I for one know that I'll be voting again from home after work and I'll also be dusting off the old DMC-12 for a bit of vote rigging. In fact, I should have already done that, so why the hell are there still only 2 votes?????

Paris cos even she can count past 2!

Quake rocks Britain

Messed with my head

I'd fallen asleep on the sofa whilst watching Shawn of the Dead about 5 minutes before. So as well as being in that horrible just fallen asleep state, there were zombies involved as well - the results weren't pretty, let me tell you!

If we were in NZ, we'd have immediately known that it was an earthquake and wouldn't have cared - if it turned out to be a bus or a lorry going past it would've been front page news...

Obviously we have the opposite problem over here, where we immediately assume it's a big lorry, but it takes us ages for the penny to actually drop. However, at least our ladies have two legs and we can remove their clothing without having to use shears....

Microsoft and Adobe jockey on rich applications

@Geoff Mackenzie

Since when has Silverlight been windows only???

What makes people look like incompetent dickheads is their ability to type silverlight.net into a browser before commenting...

"Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows."

And there is also a version that runs against mono on linux being worked on, so it's a slight distance away from Windows only, methinks.

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

@Oliver

'ISPs aren't likely to shed many tears over people complaining that they can't play Quake III Arena on their mate's game server anymore...'

Unfortunately, we are currently in an age of online gaming - not Quake III, but XBOX Live and to a lesser extent PS3 - so, yes ISPs may start shedding tears if gamers start walking...

In fact, I recently had (and have had in the past) an email from Microsoft about special offers for BT Internet / XBOX Live... That seems more like actively embracing gamers rather than not caring...

Toshiba HD-EP30 HD DVD player

Hmmm...

Paul - "The argument that a device comes pre-bundled with 7 pre-selected movies is worthless as, to be honest, you'll watch these movies a couple of times - max. Then what ?"

As opposed to buying a PS3 that is an 'upgradeable next gen games console' that you'll play a couple of games on and then never play again??