Posts by Darren Lovell 32 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2008
IANAL but I think that tasers can work against a woman if she's attacked. When she's confronted/attacked by her assailant and she manages to use the taser on them, I can easily see a greasy weasel of a lawyer turning her use of the taser into assault, especially if the assailant is injured from being tasered. An even more greasy weasel of a lawyer will probably try to call for charges of aggravated assault on the basis that the woman's carriage of a taser is premeditated use of a weapon.
I reckon anybody using a taser would probably end up in more trouble than those attacking them.
"Did you know the Wright broithers did not have a pilots licence between them?"
There's a very simple explanation for that: The Wright brothers' maiden flight was the first officially documented case of powered flight therefore there were no sorts of laws, regulations or licensing for air travel. Why would you license or create legislation for something that was considered impossible at the time?
That's just about the most stupid thing I've heard in ages. Suppose I'm driving my car and through no fault of my own, I'm hit by a drunk driver or some idiot speeding? Should I be impaled to death by those huge bloody spikes too because of someone else's mistake?
Try thinking that not every driver involved in an accident is to blame for Christ's sake!
"HD capable graphics eh... that'll be handy on a 1024 x 600 screen."
Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Jerome. Incorporating HD capable graphics into a netbook will probably be done with the intention of connecting it to some sort of hi-res display, not running HD graphics on the netbook itself.
Paris Hilton is too stuck up and self important for nerds, systems engineers, bean counters, PFYs, etc. to get any chance with her.
I don't understand the appeal of her either. Apart from being female and having a half decent figure I can't think of anything attractive about her. Her big, ugly, size 11 man feet are all I need to point out that turns me right off; don't even get me started on her self-deifying personality, thinking she's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Perhaps if she becomes president, she can make use of aircraft carriers to be the first pair of shoes that fit her properly.
You can't be that much of a language/grammar Nazi if you think the sentence should read:
"That combination led to an insufficient number of customers, and bankruptcy"
It should read:
"That combination led to an insufficient number of customers and bankruptcy"
The word "and" should never follow immediately after a comma.
Incidentally, I'm not a language/grammar Nazi if anybody wants to write the sentence even more correctly.
...I wonder how long it will be until feminists, Amnesty International, paranoid parents and people with nothing better to do with their lives complain about this saying it encourages girls to be strippers and lead a life involving drugs and prostitution, all to be ended prematurely in a bloody frenzy.
No joke, I'd put money on this.
Just like the other post not too long ago with suggestions to tax MP3 players to compensate for "lost earnings" by recording studios, I think it's a stupid idea even though it's basically an extension of an existing law. Paying a tax to copyright holders that "may have lost out as a result of illegally recorded content". It sounds very much like a "what if?" tax. What about people who pay for legally obtained music? Will they be reimbursed since they've already paid the royalty on top of the tax that pays another royalty? Not bloody likely. Like I said before, such a stupid idea like this leaves the consumer even further out of pocket (at least if they're paying for their music) and the fat cats get even fatter. No wonder the world's facing another economic recession with everything becoming so exorbitantly priced by corporate avarice.
My money's on a tax next being placed on hard drives, flash media, recordable discs, disc writers and DVRs just in case their use causes copyright holders to "lost out as a result of illegally recorded content. After that, there will be a tax on TV sets, monitors, speakers, headphones/earphones just in case they are used to view or listen to illegally recorded content. "What if?" taxes are a joke.
What happened to imposing fines on those who distribute illegally recorded content for profit or the copyright holders making lawsuits against those who distribute illegally recorded content for profit?
</rant over>
7) Second hand, it would be worth less than the accessories purchased for it
8) Brand new, it would be offered with 1 year's free insurance to attract young gamers
9) Aftermarket additions to the bodywork would be made from half painted MDF/fibreglass
10) It would run on a bigger screen than in was originally designed for
Agreed. Fining people for using their phone is not the answer and I'm sure the government is fully aware of this. They can simply tax people for breaking the law this way and bleed bad drivers dry.
The best way to deal with it would be to hit the offender with a revocation of their licence and force them to retake their driving test after a given time period. Anybody who drives while their licence is revoked should face a prison sentence/criminal record and have their vehicle impounded.
With so many people's livelihoods depend on owning and driving a car, something that threatens that livelihood if they drink-drive or use their phone can't be a bad thing since it'd probably make them think twice about doing it.
I was delighted to hear about that woman who was given a prison sentence a few weeks ago for killing that lad whilst text-driving. I think it was lenient for her to be convicted of causing death by dangerous driving - it should have been manslaughter (I wouldn't call it murder since it wasn't premeditated).
...not that I agree with it.
Didn't Sony get that injunction against European importers buying in Japanese/North American PS3s when they were first released about 4 months before the PAL-spec PS3 would be released?
I think Sony's argument was on grounds of Europeans "not getting adequate quality" with grey imports.
Apple will probably come up with some other bullshit argument and win the injunction.
So what about people who actually pay for their music legitimately (FTR, I'm not a paytard)? Firstly, they'll be paying a tax for an MP3 player to ensure record companies/recording "artists" get their royalty/cut just in case he or she who buys the MP3 player pirates their music; then when they pay for the track/album, the record companies and recording "artists" get yet another royalty/cut.
The only people who'll benefit from such a stupid idea will be the record companies and the recording "artists". Obviously, paytards i.e. those doing the "right thing" will be the losers.
Surely this proves that no good deed ever goes unpunished.
What's next? Will DVD/Blu-Ray players/games consoles/TV sets/computers* be taxed even further to ensure that the motion picture companies/video game developer/satellite TV providers/software devlopers* are paid whatever royalty are entitled to?
* delete as appropriate
Paris because even she would be hard pressed to suggest something so stupid.
I think most people grossly misunderstand the concept of "freedom of speech" and it's such a cliché to hear people complain about their freedom of speech being taken away when no such thing is happening.
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak against the authorities (within reason) and not be arrested, harassed or persecuted by the authorities for doing so i.e. if you think the authorities are acting in a draconian or tyrannical manner, you are free to discuss how to ensure such authorities cannot be elected into power again without the threat of the police knocking on your door. Freedom of speech does not mean you are free to say what you like, even if it incites hatred or violence e.g. Islamist preaching against Western governments are locked up as they incite hatred and violence whereas others who preach against Western governments who do not incite violence or hatred are "tolerated".
Similarly, freedom of speech also means you don't have to give a shit or even listen to what anybody else says, provided you accept whatever the consequences of such apathy are.
Always remember that freedom of any kind ALWAYS comes at a price - tolerance.
Dare I say it, Dell do offer SSDs as an alternative, albeit with an £800+ premium over the standard 250GB, with some of their laptops but I'd imagine that the insane premium you have to pay for SSDs is the reason why most manufacturers don't offer them as an option - they might think the market for SSDs is too small to be profitable at present as the performance benefits of SSDs are arguably outweighed/negated by the cost over conventional drives for most people.
I was in PC World a few weeks ago shopping around for a laptop though I had no intention of buying from there - I just wanted a touch and feel of what there was then purchase elsewhere.
I saw a couple of laptops with almost identical specs - CPU, OS, memory, hard drive, graphics, screen size, connectivity, webcam, memory card reader, weight but one was £100 more expensive than the other and I couldn't see why apart from PC World being the kings of ripping people off. Though I wasn't buying I couldn't let this go I asked an "assistant" (note the speech marks as I use the term loosely) about what warranted that extra £100. She didn't know and just looked at the label to show her "knowledge". She said one had a GeForce 8600M GT GPU and the other didn't then I showed her that both laptops have that GPU then she said one had Bluetooth and the other didn't. Once again, I showed her that both had Bluetooth modules and the same type. Unsurprisingly, I grew tired of her not knowing what she was trying to sell so I spoke to another "assistant" and all he could tell me that was different was that one came with a rucksack - hardly worth the £100 premium unless it was lined with gold or signed by some attention seeking celebrity. He tried cracking a few jokes to try persuading me to buy one of them but I wasn't having any of it.
I didn't bother going any further because neither of the "assistants" could explain why two almost identical laptops were £100 apart for no technical reason. I was satisfied that the simple answer was "greed".
I heard another customer ask the exact same question a couple of minutes later and he too was greeted with the same ignorance from the staff. He opted to buy the cheaper model (like any sane person would with the specs being basically identical) but they told him they had no stock and that the closest store with stock was 400 MILES AWAY IN GLASGOW! The customer didn't even sound Northern, never mind Scottish so somehow I didn't think it'd be local to him.
It really didn't bode with their lack of product knowledge. I worked in retail for three years and I like to think I had good knowledge of what I sold. I can't help but feel that the female "assistant" was hired because she was pretty and could make a sale just by fluttering her eyelashes even if she was selling a dead putrid cat. The male "assistant" was probably hired because he could probably sweet talk you into a sale without knowing what he's selling. Their charms might work with somebody who has rudimentary/no computer knowledge but they'd be eaten alive by techheads.
What made things worse was the store having products on display and for sale but no local store had any stock and they had no lead time from their suppliers. Is it really so difficult to put an "out of stock" sign on the display instead of customers having to say they want to buy a product only to be told it's out of stock?
DSG deserve to lose money with their telephone number prices and incompetent staff.
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