Posts by Ash

Terminator Salvation is go for May 2009 release

Hmmm

Christian Bale was awesome in American Psycho, but not so hot in Batman Begins. I don't think he'll fit the role well...

Plus, blatant cash in.

BT pimped customer web data to advertisers last summer

@Joe K

Or, for the tabloids: "its as if they bugged your house to listen to your conversations, and play matching ads on your TV"

---

No, it's as if they bugged your telephone line, sent your conversations to a firm run by a guy who used to illegally bug phone lines to pick up your credit card numbers, played you audio adverts over your phone line in the middle of a conversation, then said "your data is safe because we say so."

Quake rocks Britain

@AC (GCSE comment)

As is typical of the current education system, you have been (partially) lied to. Faults do not just occur at tectonic plate boundaries; there is one running close to / through Dudley which is most likely a good candidate for where the shift occured to cause the 'quake.

This is not the most interesting piece of geological info about England, though. Cornwall is built on the site of a previously active volcano, which left behind its magma chamber (when cooled and solidified, called a Boss). This giant lump of granite is releasing radioactive Argon gas in sufficient quantities for living there to be equal to living on a nuclear submarine.

HMRC pays criminal for 'tax dodger' discs

RIAA, MPAA; false advertising

Piracy doesn't fund organised crime, HM Revenue and Customs does.

Openly.

Samsung laptop battery burns

Scorcher!

Guy at the factory must have enabled the HCF flag.

Mine's the one with the RFID tag destroyer.

ISP data deal with former 'spyware' boss triggers privacy fears

Last Straw

I'm dropping you, Virgin Media.

I'm writing the email as soon as I get home telling you why, the letter will follow afterwards, and i'm hitting Tor until it's cut off. You're getting NOTHING from me EVER again.

EU wants RFID tags turned off

@Brett Cammack

1) Pick up a garment in a store with RFID tags.

2) Purchase with credit card.

3) Name now linked to RFID tag.

4) Sell data mined to marketing companies.

5) ...

6) Profit!

Please bare in mind that that clothing often does not come in packages, and therefore will require to have the tag woven into the label or the fabric itself.

I fully intent to build the RFID-killing disposable camera if shops evere start using these systems, and paying by cash when I buy the item.

HMRC data debacle used to bait phishing lure

Slight misquote there

Should read "...but people must learn that there really is no such thing as a Government admitting a mistake and giving a refund."

Google to build 80,000 foot radio tower?

@G R Goslin

"we are assured of plenty of helium until the gas runs out"

Uhhh... Yeah. Good point.

Pentax Optio E40 compact camera

Good review...

... except for that panorama shot. Could have spent more than 4 seconds on it and ligned it up correctly for an example of how good the image stitching is.

But then again, when you're in a town that picturesque, you're probably looking to take pictures with a decent camera. Or drink the beer.

UK rattles 'three strikes' filesharing sabre (again)

Here's a situation for you (nothing new)

I own the ENITIRE back catalogue of Iron Maiden in various formats, some of which it is economically unfeesable to convert to a format which can be listened to on modern equipment. I therefore visit mininova or thepiratebay or torrentreactor and download the tracker for the entire Iron Maiden catalogue, because technology has progressed past the point that my original PROPERLY LICENSED media is supported commercially.

When they send me the lovely letter saying I am a nasty nasty piewat, do I write back and tell them I own the license to listen to the music, but as some of it is on Vinyl I am aquiring a digital copy, or do I ignore it?

When they disconnect me, do I sue?

Is this an issue for the ISP to decide, the Record companies to decide, or the courts to decide?

Euro MPs want criminal penalties for downloaders

Stop Organised Crime

Jail All Politicians!

Security boffins unveil BitUnlocker

Missed the details?

Is it me, or are a few of the comments so far missing some vital detail?

You DON'T need to perform the trick in a van outside; the key is cached in memory while the computer is still powered. You can stick it in the boot, drive home, and do it there as long as the battery lasts and it doesn't have some shut-down power-saving feature enabled.

Wikileaks judge gets Pirate Bay treatment

Proposal

Re-branding of the internet.

I propose the name "AmericaNet", or "FreedomNet".

Maybe even "LibertyNet".

Car net auction trio use GPS to steal back wheels

@Andy Turner

Manufacturer-fitted GPS transponder?

I understand a lot of manufacturers fit remote assistance systems which activate on the instruction of the driver, when the airbag fires etc. Maybe this system had a manual override the supplier could use.

US man saved by bulletproof DVD

A gift of a recorded TV show?

An UNLICENSED, ILLEGALLY COPIED DVD of a televion show?!

SUE! GET THE LAWYERS IN! CONTACT THE MPAA!

Government 'lost' DNA data on 2,000 criminal suspects

I agree with TheThing

They can lose my data any time they like.

Hopefully into a secure disposal facility.

Consumer group slams 'unfair' software licenses

The new, Plain English Microsoft EULA

You want to use the software on WHO'S computer?

That's right. MICROSOFT's computer.

'Suspicious comment' provokes LAX terminal evacuation

Some tit did this...

... in Birmingham Airport once (The only airport in the UK, AFAIK, where security still carry firearms; H&K MP5's for the buffs) at check in. He was asked if he had anything in his baggage he shouldn't, and he replied "Oh, just a bomb!".

He was promptly greeted by shouts of "On the ground!" while several security staff extended the stocks and hit the safety catches on their guns, and the guy almost pissed himself.

This isn't about America being thought police, but about aircraft being blown up by morons and the idiots who joke about it INSIDE AN AIRPORT.

Think you'd say you had a backpack full of explosives on the Tube nowerdays?

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

Skirting around the real issue...

Why is BlueYonder (Now Virgin) allowed to sell me an "Unlimited" 8Mb connection which throttles down to 2Mb after 1GB of traffic?

Why are they allowed to sell a portion of my 8Mb of bandwidth to someone else, simply because they don't expect me to make full use of the whole 8Mb?

Why do we keep paying them?

Of course I know the answers to all these questions; They can do what they want because the competition does exactly the same thing, and the bodies that oversee their practises agree that it's fair.

It's a choice of taking it up the wrong'un by a baseball bat or a bowling pin.

UK bank blames fraudsters for World of Warcraft ban

The day ANYBODY tells me...

... I can't spend my money how I want is the day I start dealing in gold.

If my money's no good as the currency of the nation, then it's pretty damn fine as sparkly things.

Tiny, take-apart handset enters the record books

How small is too small?

That small is too small.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1333/856357878_3b39728b22_m.jpg

Brit firm levitates floating chair

I have a bed which does a similar thing...

... with springs.

!Innovative.

RIAA chief calls for copyright filters on PCs

They will do it

You won't be asked for permission. You won't even notice.

You let it get this way by letting corrupt politicians and their corporate yes-men get into positions of power, and then you continued to throw money at them for the dogshit they give you.

You made your bed; shame you didn't pick something more comfy than broken glass. for the matress

IBM explores 67.1m-core computer for running entire internet

This is all well and good...

... but how secure will it be?

Will some clerk in the IBM Admin offices be able to mail the Internet out on a couple of DVD's?

The one with the infinite-capacity pockets, please.

Brown plans to admit wiretap evidence in court

Encrypted phone conversations

Plug in a PC with a sound output, wire your phone to accept the output from the PC and feed input to the PC, run some form of audio encryption software (Nautilus was one example I remember from YEARS ago), and recommend SS* prove that your conversation wasn't just a terrible, terrible connection.

This is easier with encrypted files, where you can just delete the extension and say "Encryption? It must just be corrupt."

* Yes, yes... Godwin's Law. Apolgies.

DHS official moots Real ID rules for buying cold medicine

@Coward

Godwin's Law.

Further, "no renting a car, buying a house, getting married, seeing a doctor, getting medical care, a million other things... etc... without YOUR PAPERS PLEASE"

Are you trying to tell me that you CAN:

1) Rent a car without a driving license and credit card,

2) Buy a house without registering as the owner,

3) Get married without providing proof if identity (baring in mind the name change of spouse is legally binding, is it not?)

4) See a doctor without having some kind of previous history (you need to transfer your medical records from old surgery's to new)

5) In the US you can't get medical care without insurance, which I KNOW requires ID

Your ID is required for all of these things.

Physicists go nuclear with online protest at funding cuts

I bet they're under great pressure...

It must weigh heavily on their shoulders.

The one with the Caffeine molocule embroidered on the back, please.

Scientists warn on climatic 'tipping points'

Shenanigans.

You're trying to tell me that from the time of the Industrial Revolution , we've pumped more CO2 and other "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere than 4.5 BILLION years of orogenesis, tectonic activity, and biological life formation?

Seriously?

Because when I did Geology (albeit A-Level), I was informed of exactly how these things affected the poles (Ice caps and magnetic), and how the alteration of the atmosphere attributes to these.

Do you folk seriously not know that the magnetic poles aren't permanent? They totally disappear for a short period of time, then reverse (over a geological time period).

Do you folk seriously not know that the Ice Caps aren't permenant? That minor ice-ages are in fact 10,000 year cycles (where the ice receeds and grows), and major ice ages occur every couple of million years (Where ice TOTALLY melts and reforms to cover large parts of Europe)?

I guess not. That's why we have all this bullshit faux-science about Patio Heaters and cow farts.

Flames for the convection heater warming my feet right now.

Iran fires rocket 'into space', plans satellite for '09

@Ross

That's a great plan, bud. In fact, it's the "reason" we have nuclear armaments; the Nuclear Deterrant (Mutually Assured Destruction).

However, the trouble starts when you remember Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other predominantly Islamic countries have a statistically higher frequency of fundamentalist populations who believe that it is the highest acclaim to have laid waste to fields of "infidels" from the West (or so the media would have us believe). They would have no trouble WHATSOEVER with nuking^H^H^H^H^H^Htesting their satellite delivery system over the western world.

Hollywood writers abandon Hollywood for web

This doesn't explain...

... why I can't find any more episodes of The IT Crowd or Top Gear online.

What about British writers?!

Cigarette ash proves a drag for Nintendo's Wii

Yet another "common sense" mystery solved...

Combine a sticky tar-filled atmosphere, dust, and components which rely on clear and precise readings via optical systems, and expect failure.

Wait until they figure out the same thing applies to heat sinks. Bearingless fan? Doesn't mean shit; it'll still jam, the heatsink intself will be covered in dust, hair, and tar, and the damn thing will HACF.

Nokia N82 smartphone

@James

Rinse it through again. Pure water is an insulator; it's impurities which cause it to become a conductor. Let it dry afterwards and it might be ok.

@Ralph B

Easy. I don't want the N95 as it's too big for the slide form-factor for me.

I do, however, want the N82 because it does everything the N95 does in a layout which I like.

That's one more sale for Nokia, and i'm willing to bet i'm not the only one who thinks that way.

Rock reveals graphics benchmark beating monster laptop

A complete beast!

Upon unpacking, however, the mass of this machine is so great it exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit and immediately forms a neutron star. Earth accelerates towards this super-dense mass at roughly half the speed of light, causing it to break the very bonds holding atoms together, and we are all converted into pure neutron degenerate gas.

Parent power pulls Woolworth's 'Lolita' kiddies' bed

This is stupid.

It's not like they were selling thongs through their online clothes store in childrens sizes.

I'm looking at you, Argos Extra!

(Incidently, I know one of the guys who took a grilling for letting that one slip through the net. He gets NO END of hassle for it!)

Scientists create 'no-tears' onion

Can the do the same for...

... HMRC data security policies?

Veggies a 'perversion of nature': Official

Shock horror probe!

Omnivorous animals require food from both animals and plants to survive healthily!

Water wet, sky up, fire hot, Microsoft sucks.

There, ladies and gentlemen, is your IT angle.

SAS extends fingerprint ID system for domestic flights

SAS fingerprinting Swedish populace!

I had images of urban-camo fatigued elite Special Forces soldiers sneaking into houses and fingerprinting the proles one by one for an ID database scheme.

Think I should recommend it to HM Gov. on a contractor basis? Save all this farse with "losing" data.

Tech support gets religion

Eh...

xkcd is better.

Blade Runner replicant checks into rehab

Alcoholism is a disease?

Funny that.

I thought any dependency on a substance was a means of escapism, a fear of the (ir)rational world, and an inability to cope with every day life.

Is this disease contagious? Congenital? Or do we just want to give these folk some reason for how they feel which isn't "You're a waste of space. Man up a little."

Blade Runner was awesome.

Employee's silent rampage wipes out $2.5m worth of data

She tried too hard.

Any BOfH knows that a rubber mallet to the side of the HDD caddy is the way to go. Try recovering data when you've got a 1mm scratch across 60% of the platters from panel-beating the casing until the server drops a brick!

5 mins tops. 2 for Server 2003.

DC Comics to kill off Batman?

Next Batman should be...

Lobo.

"Fight crime? No. I'm going to kick the shit out of puppies and drop a deuce on your nan's car. Then punt Santa into the sun."

I don't know if he'd do that, but he's just about awesome enough to get away with it.

Three Little Pigs book deemed offensive to Muslims

What?

I thought the pigs made it to the third brick-made house and were all safe in the end, as the wolf couldn't blow it down?

Maybe I got the hippie version.

Damn hippies.

Will Microsoft parachute Windows 7 in early?

What in the blue sh*t?!

They release a shitty (non)operating system late, with half of the features which made it reasonable removed, wich breaks a lot of 3rd party applications and had almost NO hardware support out of the box, and which nobody with any shred of common sense has avoided like AIDS, and then they have the audacity to flip those who did adopt it off and shake the "it'll be out of date next year" stick again!

Please, someone make a linux distro which works out of the box, plays games, and introduces decent support for developers to create apps for the platform.

We'll pay. We will pay quite a lot.

ID cards delayed until 2012

DO NOT WANT

They can kiss my pasty white ass if they think they're sticking my details on another database for some clerk to lose!

Fix THAT problem and i'll start listening.

Dwarves hidden in sports bags target Swedish coaches

Dwarves in Bags pinch Loot from Folk on Buses

That's the tall and short of it.

Mine's the one in petite, please.

MoD laptop losses expose government data indifference

They don't care because they don't have to.

We as a society have become so apathetic towards this kind of thing that they simply don't fear us anymore. We are not the empowered and informed members of society we should be. We are the impotent and weak being flogged to death slowly while being forced to watch through a rose-tinted lense.

To paraphrase a very wise man "Go back to sleep, England. Here's 27 channels of Britney Spears being a drunken idiot. Go back to sleep, England."

Former top brass call for first-strike nuke option

WOPR

THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY.

Mobile phone signals prevent sleep, claim boffins

Good study!

Nothing to do with some pillock friend sending you a text at 4am to tell you he's pulled a "slump buster" then?