Posts by Matt Bradley

US teen cuffed for sending nude phone pics

Ridiculous religious prudery.

Does anybody else hear a the faint echoes of people with pitchforks shouting "She's a witch, BURN her!"

Stupid.

Fish snapped snacking at 4,200 fathoms

@Nigel

Because the water is also compressed, and therefore has more mass?

I dunno. Is this a trick question?

Reg reader completely loses the plot

Meh

This guy sounds like a complete twatdangler.

Apple shares plunge after Jobs 'heart attack'

Wikipedia

I guess this is another demonstration of why Wikipedia has become such a valued commodity to those who have an interest in protecting the status quo, and why they seemed so hell bent on trashing Patrick Byrne therein.

Clearly there are some people in the financial markets who recognise the value of a trusted medium which can be manipulated to disseminate a damaging rumour.

Defrauded punter says 'catflaps' to PayPal marketing stunt

@Francis Fish

Hi, Hope this helps. Try:

ProtX

Google Checkout

2CO

Worldpay

Thousands more City workers to lose jobs, says CBI

@AC 11:58

Just for the record here folks: I'm English, living and working in England and I don't work for a financial institution of any kind.

On a personal level, I'm inclined to agree with what you've said there AC: If anything, I think when we are looking for somebody to blame for this crisis, we might look to the millions of voters who re-elected George Bush at the last US election.

As regards mortgage security in the UK. I'm glad we live in a country which hasn't bought into the idea that everything can be solved by markets, and that the divine flow of money through unfettered capitalism is inviolate.

I think you rather missed my point about credit agreements, though. Credit agreements have binding terms, and in times of hardship, financial institutions are going to be much more stringent about enforcing those terms. If your mortgage lender goes under, one of things they might look to do to liquidate assets COULD BE to foreclose on borrowers who have violated their terms. I don't imagine that there would be much the welfare state could do about that, unless it is willing to underwrite the mortgage of every household in the UK.

@Louis, @Neal

@ Louis: Not entirely. Didn't those bankers pay your salary with their taxes?

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that this financial system is all interconnected, and we're all part of the problem. Finger pointing and name calling is best left in the school playground.

@Neal: Nope - I'm just a humble freelancer.

But I do have sympathy for ANYBODY who finds themselves out of a job as a result of this mess.

Most of us here will have enjoyed a couple of real "boom" years recently, but we all knew it couldn't last. I guess its the suddenness of the collapse that's caught us a little by surprise. If we find ourselves in difficulty over the next 12 months, perhaps we should look at our own PERSONAL lack of prudence in overstretching ourselves financially in an artificial bubble.

Mortgage win win? Don't think so.

"If you've got a mortgage or a big loan, start praying your bank goes under before you do. It's a win win situation all round if you look at it the right way."

Hmm. Not so sure you've thought this through. You do realise that if this happens, YOUR HOUSE is one of the assets of the bank, which will need to be liquified (i.e. settled in full or sold on) during the winding up of the bank's operations?

You'd better pray you don't invalidate your mortgage agreement in any way... like having an income other that the one stated on your application, missing a payment or two, or taking a lodger. The liquidators could be looking for any excuse to foreclose on your loan.

(A US perspective here: http://blog.midlandfunding.net/2008/07/12/what-happens-if-my-mortgage-bank-goes-out-of-business-what-does-it-mean-to-me/)

@ ACs everywhere

Hmm. I'm wondering about all these ACs who are so unsympathetic about people who work in Banks losing their jobs. I wonder where /they/ work?

Perhaps they work in retail, whose use of misleading advertising, store credit, etc, etc has led to consumers over-stretching themselves on credit.

Perhaps the work for the oil or motor industry?

Maybe the work in telecoms, who use outsourced workforces for many of their products.

Perhaps they freelance and contract for all of the above?

Or maybe they work in the public sector; whose WAGES ARE PAID BY ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Maybe they even work for the government who failed to act quickly enough to start all this?

Perhaps a few these anons can come forward, and tell us which whiter that white industry sector they work in? I'm guessing that won't be happening though...

@AC 15:23 - Sorry to hear about your predicament :(

Bear squeeze blues: How to destroy a bank

Patrick Byrne

Do I faintly hear the voice of Patrick Byrne saying "I told you so"?

Reg competition: Cisco goes isup

Content Management

Perhaps they switched over to "YCMS"

...Yorkshire Content Management System?

(Matt ov Wakey)

Right: Which one of you lot invented 'tw*tdangle', eh?

I feel so privileged

It is one thing to put new an interesting word into use, but the sheer privilege of being right here, now, at the BIRTH of a new word, watching it take flight (we've got it's OED entry right here), is a joy which makes my heart fill to bursting.

Remember, friends, when you use the word "twatdangle" in your old age; that you were here, right now, at the very frontline of our bold and free language, and rejoice!

Tw*tdangler defends Benito Mussolini stunt

Oh for shame

Headline FAIL!

Would have preferred to see: "Git Wizard Twatdangle Piss Take Defence"

Woman sues EA over 'secret' Spore DRM

Only in America?

I knew as soon as I read the headline that this would be happening in the US.

Much as I greatly admire the US belief in the power of the law, I do wonder whether this is a useful expenditure of the court's time. IT IS ONLY A COMPUTER GAME AFTER ALL!

Good grief.

David Blaine tw*tdangle ends in controversy

twatdangle

Sounds like something from TvGoHome - Are you sure it wasn't Charlie Brooker?

Cisco.com suffers lower case t breakdown

Getting rid of tabs

Looks to me like somebody tried to regex out of tabs from the documents, but somehow forgot to escape their expression properly...

Royal Navy won't fight pirates 'in case they claim asylum'

Scaremongering

Surely its a simple enough matter for the immigration office to officially deny asylum and deport somebody who was arrested by the UK for piracy?

Seems to me that there might be more to this story. Did you syndicate it from the Daily Mail or something?

David Blaine does a Benito Mussolini

Google Adsense

I notice that Google Adsense is currently punting "2008 Diet Of The Year" next this article.

Nice

How green is your supercomputer?

Ironic

Surely I'm not the only one to spot the irony that the most efficient non IBM power machine was built by an OIL company!

Mind you, who else knows better how expensive energy is these days?

Sainsbury's punts 'Innocent kids juices' for £2.99

I see

I see now why you needed to make more space for headlines on the homepage.

With solid gold "news" like this, you *really* need the space.

"Grocer Gets Apostrophe Wrong"

in other news: pope confesses to closet catholicism.

Sigh.

Ubuntu zoo preps for new arrival

Krusty Klown

^^^

Or maybe "Krappy Kookaburra"

I really wish they'd stop with this stupid naming scheme.

I guess that it'll be followed by "Lesbian Lemming" or something...

EA free petrol stunt triggers north London gridlock

@Steven Raith

Both the current BMW 3 series and the the Citroen C5 feature active suspension. BMW also advertise active aero; dunno about Citroen in this respect, though I wouldn't be surprised. "Over Engineered" is practically Citroen's middle name!

"Given current petrol costs"

... £40 worth of petrol must like... a teaspoonful?

This is the best proof of collective unintelligence I've ever heard.

I mean, seriously. We're all panicking about how little fuel we get for our money, then we all go rushing out to wait a traffic jam for £40 quid's worth?

Collective logic failure here somewhere.

Google restores Chrome's shine

@Chris

"Chrome isn't released to take market share from IE

It's been released to combat Firefox's growing market share and the popularity of the AdBlocking extensions"

Oh, how wrong you are.

Tip: try maximizing Chrome, and see how it takes up the entire screen, giving a set of task bar style "tabs" at the top of your screen. If you switched of the IE task bar, chrome effectively replaces your desktop...

Now imagine getting your email through g-mail, doing your word processing / office productivity through Google's office productivity SAS, storing your documents in the "cloud", use Google calendar to manage your appointemnts, and watching all your TV through YouTube.

Chrome isn't designed to replace Internet Explorer - the name "Chrome" isn't a coincidence. It's designed to replace your OS. Specifically Windows.

I for one welcome our Google overlords

Well done Google

All I need now is an explanation as to why the "Google Installer" tries to phone home every time a wake my machine from sleep or reboot.

Other than that, its a cracking browser. I'm starting to think that it might be better than FF 3 or Opera...

Homeland Security backs deportation with Wikipedia

@Greg Fleming

Given that you "read" the article and seemed not to understand that it was highlighting a very important instance where Wikipedia was used when shouldn't have been, I think YES, on balance, you SHOULD delete your bookmark. You're not getting any value out if this site.

The Google-isation of all the net's access points

Good News / Bad News

Good: Google are the ONLY people out there who can seriously challenge the MSIE hegemony. Excellent news.

Bad: When will we start seeing proprietary Google Office / Productivity extensions? 6 months? 12?

Internet Explorer - now with 35% less FAIL

Rendering Engine

I notice that there's no mention of them fixing (or even attempting to fix) their HOPELESS rendering engine?

Why is it that a software company with more financial resources than some governments can't manage to scrape together enough programming talent to build a better browser tha Firefox? Its laughable, frankly.

The usual MS approach. Stick on some more chrome, add a few minor "features", somehow use another 35% of your system resources, and release it a major version release.

When IE 7 hit, I joked to my work colleague that it would be funny if they fixed the CSS rendering bugs that made IE hacks work, but not fix the actual rendering bugs they addressed.

"Of course they won't do that. Only an IDIOT would do that"

OF course, I'll still have to install so I can see what a mess it makes of my CSS.

Where's the horned Ballmer icon?

BOFH: Burying the hatchet

@Jim the Boss

Oh man. You type Like Les Dawson plays the piano. It's a kind of genius.

Bear in mind that <irony> tags are practically mandatory round here. One of the first social skill that many BOFHs lose is the sense of humour.

Mine's the one with the the faraday cage and the chainmail fireaxe deflectors sewn into the lining ...

Mashed up Met Police crime maps go online

Surely

Isn't it just "Mayor Bo-Jo the clown"? Or am I missing the point?

Top-secret Android handset surfaces on YouTube

Oh dear

So some Google developer somewhere has posted video of Google's ultra secret mobile device onto the GOOGLE OWNED youTube?

I hope they didn't NEED their developer priveleges.

Man buys $1,000 worth of iPhone pixels by accident

@thomas newton, @Nordrick Framelhammer, @Stefan, @various AC's, @nearly everybody

It's unsympathetic attitidues like this when an ordinary user makes a simple mistake, which will guarantee that WWW continues to be a bold and free new frontier for theft.

Until we start dealing properly with stuff like this (by shutting it down and pressing charges where possible), and stop blaming the user for being foolish enough to be defrauded, this kind of thing will proliferate.

Well done Apple for removing this scammer from iTunes so quickly. Just like the iPhone's app blacklist, this demonstartes Apple's desire to protect their users (stupid or not!) from malware and scams. Perhaps if MS had had a similar attitude 10 years ago, we might not be dealing with so many spams and scams right now?

PH, 'cos she's probably more sympathetic that you lot.

Please ignore the net neutrality sideshow haunting Comcast's BitTorrent bust

@Bickus

A brilliant bit of satire and perfect flamebait. I came with in seconds of falling for it.

iPhone 2.0 unlock tool released, tested

Pfft!

Look, I know it's lovely, and it's almost as small as a Blackberry Pearl, and it comes from Apple, so it MUST be worth extra cash up front... but if I have to go through this ridiculous charade just to install the apps I want, why would I want one? I might as well just get a windows mobile device or a blackberry.

Wierd. iPhone fans are just WIERD. I don't get it. ITS JUST A PHONE.

Leopard pimpin' method madness

@TrixyB

Been to MySpace at all? *That's* what happens when you let everybody design their own bit of interface for your software.

Hackintosh maker gets legal greeting from Apple

OS-X Ready

Looking forward to seeing "OS-X Ready" on beige boxen in PC World sometime in 2010.

What would happen then? If Apple OS-X became a hardware independent OS, it would put Apple RIGHT in Microsoft's gunsights. Not a nice place to be.

Not to mention that then you'd have ubiquitous software platform that was being self installed by end lusers on inadequate hardware. This opens MacOs up to the Microsoft virus target / hardware support nightmare. I can't see Apple being able to cope with THAT anytime soon...

AVG disguises fake traffic as IE6

Solution is obvious

1] Google results page displayed.

2] AVG dials home (AVG server) to ask for details

3] AVG server returns cached version of document if available

4] If not available, AVG fetches live version from webserver (using IE user agent), and returns page to AVG server from caching.

5] AVG checks the live page WHEN THE USER VISITS IT, and sends this latest version to overwrite the AVG server cache.

... Of course this would put a HUGE bandwidth / storage cost onto AVG, so they won't be doing this...

Climate supremo deploys knitwear in war on patio heaters

@daytime running lights naysayers

How many times have you seen somebody driving on a motorway in muggy, low visibility weather with no lights on? I've seen it a lot. Its especially interesting when the hapless motorist is driving in a dark grey metallic car which becomes all but invisible after a disnatnce of about 10 yards.

Daytime running lights are a great idea, because there's so many people like that on our roads. It is not so you can see them in the day: it is so you can see them at dusk / in the rain / in the early morning fog when they have STILL forgotten to put their lights on!

US imposes 72 hour pre-reg for Visa waiver travellers

@Kevin Ede

Oookay. Who linked to this article from the Daily Mail website?

Is there any way we can put up some form of immigration barrier to stop these undesirables entering this website? Some form of broder control, perhaps?

Kevin: I can only assume you've either:

a] recently lost your job to UK resident foreign immigrant.

b] had your identity stolen by a UK resident foreign immigrant.

c] lost some of your rights to a UK resident foreign immigrant.

or

d] you're just reciting something somebody else told you.

As regards paying for somebody's house and upkeep: If you've just lost your job, perhaps you could explain how you're paying for the upkeep of that tax paying UK resident foreign immigrant?

South Africa launches formal objection at OOXML

@hans

Is that Dutch name by any chance?

Oh dear.

MySpace wins record $230m judgement against spammers

@AC - (not really the phishers fault)

Personally, I'd like an internet where we CAN enter our details into a site without constantly looking over my shoulder for spoof sites / XSS / Keyloggers

I also want an internet where I can pick up my email without having to trawl through hundreds of spam emails pushing penis and breast enlargement snakeoil and porn sites.

Finally I want an internet which both by parents and my young daughter can visit safely without specialist security training.

So yes AC: you carry on blaming the user for being scammed / spammed / defrauded. I'll blame the criminal. Personally, I think your apprach will ultimately lead to a internet which completely useless to the average joe in the street, and one which will therefore fade into insignificance.

One of the reasons Facebook at al are so popular (IMHO) is that they are effectively "gated communities" on the internet, where spammers have a much harder time infiltrating your inbox. I can understand why MySpace were so keen to get Spamford: he and his kind have bascially destroyed their website's reputation.

@Anthony

I image Gitmo cracked rock is probably worth about $0.10 per metric tonne. I should think if good old Spamford works hard for abouut 10,000 years, he might be out for Christmas 12009.

Seems like an approriate sentence.

YESSSSS!!!

This is the best news I've heard all year.

I hope they track Wallace down, seize and liquidate all his assets, then send to him work in Gitmo cracking rocks until he's paid off the remaining debt.

Winehouse cans Bond theme project

You can almost hear the dispair

You can almost hear the dispair in Mark's voice here, as he watches Amy Winehouse throw away another opportunity for greatness and takes him down with her.

Lenovo ThinkPad X300 sub-notebook

Ermm.. wrong comparison?

Comparing the x300 with a Macbook Air is wrong. Try comparing it with a standard 13" MacBook:

x300 Dimensions: 12.4" x 9.1" x 0.73" - 0.92"

Macbook Dimensions: 12.78" x 8.92" X 1.08" (SLIGHTLY thicker, but not much)

x300 Weight: 3.32lbs

Macbook Weight: 5.0lbs (Nearly double the weight - fair enough!)

x300 processor: 1.20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Macbook processor: 2.1GHz or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (LOTS faster)

x300 Storage: 64GB SSD

Macbook Storage: 120GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive (LOTS more storage)

Price:

x300: Nearly £2000!

Macbook: £699

I know which one I'd rather buy. In fact, I might buy 2, and still have cash left over for a nice weekend break...

Amy Winehouse pitches for Bond theme

"But hopefully I'll still be alive for at least 12 more Bond themes."

... Unlike Jason Rae, who was playing for Mark and Mary until he died recently:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=542870&in_page_id=1773

RIP

"But hopefully I'll still be alive for at least 12 more Bond themes."

... Unlike Jason Rae, who was playing for Mark and Amy until he died recently:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=542870&in_page_id=1773

RIP

Welsh student exposed to nude webcam operators

Exploiting desparation

From the article, it sounds like these adverts are appearing in the some of the most poverty stricken areas of the country. Coupled with the fact that they are offering such a derisory wage for the job, and I'd have to say this sounds highly exploitative.

UK net registry battles coup d'etat

Scary

I always find dealing with co.uk's a positive breeze compared to the mess that is .com registration. Nominet are doing a BRILLIANT job of keeping the .uk domain space regulated.

The idea that Nominet could be captured and commercialized by what (on the face of it) appears to be a collective of cybersquatters and "opportunists" fills me with dread. We could very easily end up with another Versign on our hands.

US court waves through border laptop searches

@mail AC

Erm... Slightly long winded approach, perhaps: If you want to "take" large amounts of computer data into another country, you might better looking at something like Amazon S3:

Incidentally: Are US Customs going to be able to mine Amazon S3's Servers now too? Their data crosses borders all the time. Surely this is FAR more likely to contain violations of whatever law it is that they think they are enforcing.

I wonder if the judge in this case has EVER used a computer?