Posts by Dave

YouTube pros cash in on deaths with fake vids

@article

"the fact that they get a cut of YouTube's advertising revenue"

Excuse me? What revenue? Certainly no profit there, so surely even a million video-views isn't worth tuppence?

Philippine troops battle rampaging MILFs

WTF?

Seriously, what the feck is the Paris Hilton angle on this one?

UK MoD tries to resell surplus Eurofighters to India, Japan

Think ahead

Am I the only one who thinks it is a good idea for our Armed Forces to have a few spares? Of everything? Do the Infantry only get issued with one bullet per soldier?

Does anyone remember the Navy complaining about having too many Sea Harriers when they went down to the Falklands - they certainly weren't when they came back.

Finally, at the end of the day, a substantial chunk of that £3bn quid comes straight back to the government as tax, so stop pretending that this is a massive amount - the septics have already spent in excess of 3 trillion dollars on the Iraq war alone.

Gag order lifted for students who hacked subway card

@Nemo Metis

Finding a hole is no proof that these three are any good at coding - think about the time you spend telling professional sports men on TV what they are doing wrong, then ask yourself if your ability to spot mistakes makes you able to replace them!!

Anyway, the way that the talk was advertised means that I don't give these guys much credit for intelligence, just for being script kiddies on the right side of the law.

Microsoft Silverlight: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it

Adobe shills

I'm convinced that the only reason for Silverlight is to get Flash accepted as being 'okay in comparison' instead of everyone comparing it with HTML / JS / SVG which are all true, open standards.

iPod Nano trouser fireballs sweep Japan

@Pete

"a small number of electrical appliances"

shurely that should read "a trivial number"

Acer Aspire One A110

Battery life

Was that a typo, or is the battery life no better than I could get off an AA rechargeable? If not, then surely it would make more sense to fit a battery bay, and let you choose your own power - could even run off Alkalines if needed.

Or is this some multi-cell battery that runs at thousands of volts?

Judge refuses to lift order squelching students' subway card hack

Death of the educational system

Yet more proof, if any were needed, of how low our educational systems are slipping. University used to be about teaching students how to think for themselves, and make rational judgements about scenarios that they had not (yet) read about in textbooks.

So: these guys found out something interesting, and the first thing they thought was "Cool! lets brag to everyone that will listen about how to get free rides for life" (I'm para-phrasing, but only slightly.) What the hell did they think would happen next??

The Dutch (or was it Belgian) researchers that discovered a similar flaw had a very hard time of things, and they were far more professional / academic about their findings.

Twats like these guys are the ones who are truly responsible for the ever increasing number of stupid laws we have. It is journo's jobs to report, it is politicians job to make new laws, and it students jobs to learn and stay out of trouble!

Tiffany demands reappraisal of eBay counterfeit decision

Auction House

In this country, there is a direct responsibility for any (physical) auctioneer to pull an item from auction if he believes it is a fake. Regardless of the nature of the item.

I remember this happening on one of those day-time TV 'antique' shows: the item in question was ancient, and no-one was going to complain about it being fake - the item was more valuable as a result - but could not be sold. Not on TV, anyway!

If eBay finds a seller who lists more than a dozen items of this kind in the space of a year or so, then that is a very simple test to administer, at which point the account should be suspended pending proper investigation, anything less is turning a blind eye.

Filesharing teen gets damages reduced in ignorance claim

Required age?

Given how much argument I have just read on these comments pages (presumably from readers with above-average IT awareness, and generally over the age of 16, even 21) I would have to agree with the Judge, but exactly how old do you have to be to have an adequate understanding?

Sounds to me like a legal degree is the bare minimum!

Anyway, what was the IT angle on this story?

UK.gov pushes £50,000 fine for online copyright infringement

Sneaky...

How could anyone object to them raising the fine on 'commercial' pirating - surely no-one can justify the activities of the gangs that duplicate CDs and DVDs purely for profit.

Such a shame that the police end up using it to bankrupt 16 year old girls that can't understand the difference between Internet radio and P2P - not what we intended, but we'll bank the money anyway, thank-you very much.

McKinnon UFO hack 'looked like cyberterrorist attack'

@Nixter

I'm sure I don't need to provide much evidence to prove to you that not one single branch of the US administration entirely trusts any of the other branches. Therefore, given that so many people think that the Airforce / NASA / whoever are covering up advanced technology, why is it so hard to believe that other agencies would be investigating the veracity of these reports? The files may all say 'No evidence found' but you can bet your bottom dollar that _every_ agency has some files on UFO reports.

Gov: UK biofuel probably made of starvation, rainforests

@Editor

"biodiesels are thought by some to have much greater potential for being sustainably sourced"

That would be by idiots, yes?

Ethanol can be brewed from food/farming waste - diesel has to come from refined crops, so no chance of ever being used large scale. And as for: 'just go to you local chippy' - has anyone done the maths on litres per chippy vs litres per car / lorry / bus ??

CERN: LHC to fire first proton-smash ray next month

Learning Experience

What ever happens, we will learn something from this, if only that when two un-stoppable forces collide _nothing happens_

Lies, damned lies and government statistics

How much?

So what was the average reduction in fatalities / KSI's in the areas that didn't have speed camera's? I have often heard it suggested that they reduced as well, something to do with better cars etc.

Mind you, I would also assume that the camera's have a tendency to displace accidents - they stop you from being able to overtake a tractor safely in one particular place, so presumably people will try and overtake somewhere else, where it may well be less safe?

Home Office bankrolls plastic plod 'documentaries'

Twats

That about sums it up.

John Glenn blasts Moonbase-to-Mars NASA roadmap

@Robert Heffernan

Hydrocarbons != Oil

Useful stuff, no doubt, but absolutely not oil. (Much closer to Natural Gas, IIRC)

Dell to launch MP3 player, claims mole

Dell

Ooooh! Wonderful. Give me ten, please.

Poker-faced Ballmer explains Google beating plans

Brilliant!

"Ballmer brought on lower-ranking executives to demonstrate changes in Live Search that add capabilities such as scrolling down an endless page of search results"

Brilliant idea, now they can charge all their advertising customers more, as they will be able to display all of their adverts "on the first page of results" !!

Greenpeace: UK gov trying to strangle wind power

@onionman

Actually, Scotland already exports so much power to England that the transmission lines can't take any more, so you are half correct - new lines would need to be built, or at the very least, existing pylons doubled in size!

HP shatters excessive packaging world record

Pedant Alert

Actually, the larger container is quite clearly two boxes taped together, so that makes it 18 boxes.

@AC: 16 boxes x 2 pages each = 32 Okay?

Police seek two for C&W network robbery

This title intentionally left blank.

"they took computer software and routers"

That was carefully worded - nice to see that the copper was aware that the software could not possibly be stolen, as it always remains the property of Microsoft (except for the times when they want to work things the other way.)

Anyway, how exactly does this affect PH? Was her website affected?

Cisco takes us back to the future

My comment

"XML-based notification system"

What? No AJAX - no feckin' use then surely!

Attack of the Italian space pod parachute babes

@Paul etc

So on that piece of logic the G-force when they eventually hit the ground after the parachute hits the ground will be no more than 1G ?

I don't think so... the G-forces experienced will depend on the relative velocity of object and atmosphere, which could be massive if the object was in a fast, contra-rotating orbit, or extremely low, if dropping out of geo-synchronos orbit.

Court advisor says poem list infringed database right

@AC

AC: if you give me a £10 birthday present, does that mean that it is worthless because you gave it to me for free?

What if you give a single £35,000 gift to an entire nation, (maybe a nice, artistic painting,) is it still worthless?

Feckin' Idiot !

Judge sides with eBay in fake jewelry spat

What?

"eBay will continue to lead the industry with innovative solutions to stop the sale of counterfeits."

Since when was a little light key-word filtering innovative? What industry does eBay think that it is leading?

Verizon's open-door policy yields dip stick

Naughty

BAD journo - BAD!

Thou shalt not use non-words.

Rinse and repeat.

500 times: "Mobe is not a real word." On my desk by 9am tomorrow...

Baptist church in assault rifle giveaway

@ Mr Fury

Well, it is always amusing, in a horrific sort of way, to read the pig-ignorant views on gun ownership of Yanks who should know better - nothing like a little ex-colonial arrogance to make us all feel grateful. (Surely it is them over the pond who are ex-colonials ?)

Trousers Brown Counterpoint: Is Gordon right?

Real Problem

Nice attempt at an analysis, but the biggest issue is over-population.

Maybe we haven't yet reached that point, and maybe we have, but sooner or later we will, so in many ways, lack of food is a good thing, as it has a much more direct effect than invisible pollution.

Woman finds Lithuanian living in shed

What?

"He hadn't committed any criminal offences"

But everyone else in the country has, so he must be some kind of spy...

Honestly, the police just don't make any effort sometimes - surely those plants were potted out maliciously?

Microsoft urges resellers to play it straight, beef up revs

Rubbish

There is only so much cash in the world - if everyone paid up for the MS software that they used, then they would have that much LESS money to pay for other things.

Microsoft tells SMBs Vista isn't a risky business

Risk != Vista

“Taking risks is a part of every small business, but making the move to the Windows Vista operating system isn't one of them.”

Correction:

“Taking risks is a part of every small business, but making the move to the Windows Vista operating system is so far beyond 'RISK' that I can't find a suitable word, and will therefore have to bamboozle you with silly, time-limited free offers that may not be any use to you, either way.”

Criminal record checks: More often wrong than right

@Peter Fairbrother

You forget that many people will be checked repeatedly - these things don't carry over, if I remember correctly, so if you apply for ten jobs, then you will get checked ten times, regardless of whether those are consecutive or not.

Segway CTO scoots to Apple's design team

Apple

Maybe he is going over to the other Apple? You know - the one that used to make music?

Blind spot - the trouble with optical drives

CD Jukeboxes

Hmmm... according to the article, it is hard to build a CD-based jukebox... I know I am paraphrasing, but isn't there one of these in every pub in the country?

Prius hybrid to get rooftop solar panel

@Jeff

That's really quite simple - find out the cost of the panel, and then divide by the cheapest available energy.

Lets assume for a moment that it costs £100 - much less than the cost of a barrel of oil at the moment - therefore the CO2 emissions must be substantially lower than that.

It amazes me how many people think that there might be tons and tons of Carbon used to make a £1 product!

AVG chokes fake traffic spew

About Time

'Nuff said.

How to be an instant Web me-2.0 developer

Not enough

Where's the diagram depicting Web 3.0 (at least)

Some of us are at the bleeding edge already and need to stay ahead of the 8-ball (or something...)

BSA slams EC's 'narrow-minded' interoperability vision

Definition

From UNESCO:

"Standard 1. a set of guidelines, usually drafted by experts in a particular field of technology, that are issued for general use by national and international standards organisations."

Note the use of the work 'general', ie everyone may make use of.

A design that contains restrictions can never truly be called a standard.

'Anaconda' 200m rubber snake generator scheme gets funding

Image Caption

"Anaconda may be able to satisfy our insatiable demands"

Surely that should be 'otherwise insatiable' ?

/pedant

And where's the PH angle, or indeed IT angle?

The Moderatrix will see you now

@Tom

It's 'Kangaroo' surely ??

Alan Sugar leaves Amstrad

Business Names

So 'Viglen' must be his other middle name then?

How to beat AVG's fake traffic spew

Facts

I work on behalf of one of the larger local authorities. Not quite Amazon, but we count hits in the millions all the same.

Speaking of which, they have doubled over the last month.

Because of the infrastructure we could not implement any of the filtering suggestions mentioned so far, even if any of them did have any long-term viability.

As we host our own servers, if this gets much worse we will need to buy an additional pipe/upgrade the existing one, and no, we are not running on DSL or even ADSL or ISDN...

Our analytics package is important to us, but it is licensed per page view...

We still use IE6 for all internal users, since IE7 broke so many applications, so we can't just shun them, no matter how nice that would be for me.

I am not a shill for the register, but nor am I one of the AC's who are clearly paid by AVG. I haven't posted about this before, because my organisation does not want any bad publicity, but that does not mean that we are happy with what is going on, in fact I believe that our Lawyers are busy right now.

AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

Legal Action

Seems to me that the best thing to do is ensure that the Terms & Conditions of all of our websites are updated to disallow visits by tools similar to LinkScanner (always helps to name it explicitly) and since we now have the email of someone at GriSoft that knows all about this, we back that up by informing them directly.

After that, any mis-use of our sites should surely be actionable?