Posts by Paul

Boffins teach football bots how to fall

Just me?

Surely I can't be the only one that kept reading RoboCup as RoboCop in that article...

Intel braces for billion Euro fine

Large fine = what ?

I see fines for companies doing the dirty in one way or another, all things that have affected end users in one way or another but what I'd really like to know is what is done with the money from these fines. It's all very well fining them for unfair practices but unless I'm mistaken (quite likely, I'm often wrong) small businesses and individuals are the ones that suffer from things like this and I'd be surprised if they ever receive a penny after the outcome.

If anyone that knows can answer, what happens to the money from fines like this?

Evil Jobs because I don't like his smug smile and God complex.

BBC Click paid cybercrooks to buy botnet

All license payers at risk?

I realise this is taking it to extremes but as a result of this act hasn't the BBC made all license payers an accessory to the crime by funding them? For those saying the paying was justified think of what else, other than botnets, Russian underground groups do and now imagine yourself helping to pay for that. I'm usually one to roll my eyes at the mention of this with everything these days but child porn is one of a number of illegal things. Do you still feel so happy and content with the BBC paying your money for this now?

HP begins selling pay cut plan to European workers

How long is a piece of string?

That's easy, twice the distance from the middle. Pay cuts are not so easy to resolve but I'd agree with the earlier poster that if there was a written, legally binding agreement that no jobs would be lost from the pay cuts it might make it easier to deal with.

New in-the-wild attack targets fully-patched Adobe Reader

Re: Try Foxit

I'll second the "try Foxit" motion. I stumbled into it, like many handy things, via Stumbleupon when it was keeping me awake one night with the "just one more click" syndrome. It's hard to argue against it when Adobe's Reader takes up over 200mb space (why?!), takes aeons to open a PDF document and requires updates once or twice a month. I'd also be curious to know why they allow scripts in a document viewer....

Romeo 419ers take Canadian women for $300k

@Iansalot

You're clearly a scammer, I offer a far superior service for $10,000.

Virgin Media trials longer bandwidth throttling

Grrrrrr!

Why not just implement a monthly cap and give users some way to monitor usage? The way the current system works, and the wording is careful about this, the top five percent heaviest users AT ANY TIME are penalised with the slower rates. This is hardly fair. If I download a few ISOs from the Microsoft TechNet website I can download anything from 250Mb up to and above 8Gb. However, I would only do this once in a while as I store them and only download new versions.

With the current system even though I only go over the threshold maybe once a month, if that, yet I'm still classed the same as those who, for whatever reasons they may have, download almost 24/7. I'm sure it sounds balanced but my usage will be nowhere near as high as others but it's slowed to a crawl just the same. Before the cries of "download overnight" come out that isn't always an option and what about those spur of the moment downloads?

As it stands I don't know what I'd suggest but it's pretty clear the network is struggling since this is the third change of the throttling timers to date by my count.

Pentax K-m entry-level digital SLR

Re: why not a bridge camera?

I'm no expert in this field so I'm open to correction but having looked at buying a DSLR (Sony A200 would be my entry-level choice) the main difference between a DSLR and a bridge camera after a removable lens system seems to be the size of the CCD / CMOS used to capture the image. The bigger it is, the better the quality of the image.

Man accused of trying to kill girlfriend with WiiMote

Time to sue Nintendo?

I know Nintendo say that you should use the strap to avoid nasty Plasma / LCD TV accidents but I don't think they suggest you use it for things like this. However, if they don't warn against it does that mean they can be sued? Like the person who sued McDonald's for not warning that his drink was hot.

First Windows 7 beta puts fresh face on Vista

Downloads stuttering?

I managed to get the 32-bit ISO from TechNet after a painful download that died numerous times on the way only to find that when you request a key it doesn't play nice and throws up an error. Anyone manage to get a key yet?

Nintendo sells metric %#@&-load of Wiis in November

Still selling fast?

I'm amazed that the Wii is still selling the amounts it is. After 2 years I thought everyone who wanted one would already own one.

Finally launched: Nokia's iPhone beater

@Bruno Girin

Probably get beaten to it but it runs S605th edition, Symbian 9.4

Nintendo introduces redesigned DS

Hinge camera?

I grabbed one of the images and adjusted the gamma a lot, it looks very much like a small camera lens on the middle hinge.

Be Unlimited pulls plug on home CCTV service

No reason given?

Erm... they gave a reason in the e-mail quoted - their contract with the provider is finishing. Am I the only one to pick up on that?

419ers crank up the menaces

I feel left out!

I'm still getting the old scam e-mails but this one has an interesting bit in it. I'm apparently being sent boxes of money by diplomatic mail, via the below mentioned carrier, as soon as I give him my name, address, passport or drivers license and telephone numbers.

"As soon as I hear from you I will let you know when the boxes will be airlifted by special Grace of God."

Who needs DHL or Parcel Force when you can get things delivered by the Grace of God?!

DNS gaffe leaves spy agency totally under cover

DNS + IIS = not best practice

"For one thing, a web server was run on the same machine (or at least same IP address) as one of the authoritative name server for nsa.gov. Secondly the primary and secondary authoritative name servers are both downstream from the same Qwest edge access router in Washington DC, instead of being properly separated."

To AC above me, best practice is to avoid running a web server (IIS I presume) and DNS on the same box as it can run into problems. Given their likely huge budget I'd be surprised if they can't afford a spare box for a web server.

Different locations for redundancy, same as others have said, only minimises chances but again, surely they have the budget to keep to best practices and not have to cut corners.