Posts by Danny

Apple to roll out Mac OS X 10.5 next week

@giles

'Apple's success is largely about their design, why would they want to make their OS run on a billions of possible PC hardware configurations? it would be a nightmare to test the OS and it would crash'

Success?

How long have Apple been in the business and still can't get more than 10% global market share?

This is why M$ walked all over them to become one of the biggest companies in the world. They accepted that people didn't want to be dictated to about which hardware and peripherals they run and try to maintain a decent level of backwards compatibility. If Apple had won the desktop it would have been disastrous for the hardware industry and stifled innovation losing us many hardware items that we take for granted now. It's so easy to sit there all smug going on about how well OSX runs, but even MS could have achieved that level of stability had they decided to only support a tiny selection of hardware and not bother too much about backwards compatibility. Lets see Apple release an OS that runs nearly everything and see if they can manage to get it to run as stable as windows does (yes it crashes but so does OSX and even rabid MS haters must accept that considering the amount of configuration possibilities, they really haven't done that bad a job with XP - Vista still not quite there but getting better)

3,000 chickens paralyse central Scotland

RE: Birdstrike testing for cars

Don't know about 70mph but this is what happens at 160mph!

http://www.car-accidents.com/2006-Auto-story/10-18-06_porshe_chicken.html

MP warns against Microsoft monopoly in e-gov services

John Pugh should quit

I agree with the points raised in this matter, everybody should be able to access all online services regardless of the OS they use but John Pugh is a self serving moron who jumps onto any current hot topic to keep himself in the news. He is my local MP and has systematically thrown millions in council tax money away, arranging useless changes that the town doesn't need or want while at the same time ignoring things that the town is crying out for as they are not high profile enough to keep him in the papers. One example is he organised our weekly rubbish collections to be once a fortnight. He was instrumental in forcing this change on us, but now it is in place he is making statements to the local press about how it should never have happened and he was against it all the time, despite his words to the contrary being a matter of public record. Another example is the closing of our hospital A&E and childrens unit that are now located over 10 miles away which went ahead with his support. Now he is in the papers saying he is campaigning for the return of these services which would not have been lost without his support. He is good at one thing, grabbing onto a subject to make himself try to look good and proactive but in reality he is a very selfish man looking out for himself to try and get re-elected while doing nothing constructive for the people he is supposed to serve. Over this issue he most likely does not have a clue, he has just heard certain buzz words in the media and from his spin doctors and it is yet another lame attempt to try and make himself look good. how he ever got re-elected is beyond me as everybody I know hates him and no-one admits to voting for him. I know I certainly didn't.

Judge rules Gore's film an inconvenient catalogue of errors

@andy

The great global warming swindle was proven to be almost completely bogus using manipulated and out of date information, edited beyond recognition interviews and directed by a man with his own agenda therefore completely discrediting it.

Apple sued over i-Bricks

Will this lawsuit

address the issue of what happens to all those customers who do not hack their phone when the original contract runs out? According to the law in the UK and I think it is the same in the US, the consumer has to have a choice. After the contract ends will Apple provide an update allowing it to be used on any network or tell the gullible idiot fanboys take out a new contract or you can't use your phone anymore?

US teacher fired for non-literal bible reading

@Lloyd

Be careful!

The almighty flying spaghetti monster is surrounded by heretics

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=43272&in_page_id=2

NBC to Apple: 'You're fired!'

who did the maths?

NBC demanded "double the wholesale price" for its shows, an increase that would have forced Apple to raise its iTunes retail price from $1.99 to $4.99

Now my maths may not be great, but if the wholesale price was doubled and Apple responded in kind at the retail end, that should only come to $3.98. Where does the extra $ come in? Straight to the church of Jobs.

Google, Yahoo! and Amazon sued over email patent

How about a shiny trophy?

We could have an annual event for all the patent holders out there. It would give them a chance to all dress up nicely and boast about which companies they have ripped off by applying for or buying ridiculous patents. The most spurious claim to be submitted to the courts wins that most celebrated of awards - the golden billy goat

London man coughs to 172mph Porsche jaunt

re Speed != Stupidity

I suppose you are one of the tossers who think it is perfectly safe to be doing 60+ around housing estates. 172 is perfectly safe, as long as you are a very good driver and ON A RACE TRACK. It is not safe on any public road where you have no idea who is about or how they are going to react or even what is going to happen to your car. Imagine what could have happened if one of his tires had blown out (See Richard Hammond for further details) or someone cut in front of him, or a kid kicks a ball to far and it ends up in the road suddenly so he had to swerve to avoid it or any one of a hundred other things that could have gone wrong.

Customers can sue AT&T, after all

@"unknowingly agreed"?

It is very easy to tie up a contract with 'legalese' and make them very difficult to understand without a law degree. Most corporate lawyers in America are well trained in this practice as they make fortunes from companies trying to do away with consumer rights altogether.

Designer breaks up trad PC design

How is this more compact?

Without the measurements it is hard to be sure, But it looks as if they come out a lot bulkier than a shuttle once they are plugged together and are less efficient as they all need a seperate power source

Welch on renewables deal, UK government told

@anonymous

For Gods sake, please save us all from the politically correct mob. They won't be happy until all of us never say a word or set foot on the street just in case we offend somebody. Oh I'm sorry, have I just upset somebody with the use of the word God in this comment? Probably - get over it

Chav-hunting toffs cop some flack

Perhaps

It would be more acceptable to hunt down the over sensitive politically correct mob? That way they get put out of there misery of being offended by everything and we get back to a real way of life where people can actually have a laugh and joke.

ATI driver flaw exposes Vista kernel

Do you actually deal with end users?

'Open Source really is more secure, because ANYBODY can look at it to identify faults'

Unfortunately, so can hackers looking for exploits. With the code available to them it makes finding problems so much easier. You can bash MS as much as you want but at least they have an idea about the average user by trying to make things like security updates as easy as possible.

If Linux or some other OS where to suddenly make it big (70%+ of desktops) how many problems do you think this would cause globally?

Think about it, a large proportion of the computer using population want everything to happen automatically. They can't even find a document they created if they save it to the wrong folder or make sure their AV is up to date, believe me, I get loads of work dealing with little non-issues like this. If a vulnerability is found in Linux how many of them do you think will check every now and again to see if they are still secure? How many will have the ability to replace the kernel with the newer patched version? Very very few. most would never even think about it leaving the internet open to flooding by botnets taking advantage of a vulnerabilty across millions of PC's. You think it is bad now, it could be so much worse.

And before anybody says it, no I am not a MS fanboy, I just deal with end users every day and see first hand just how many people haven't a clue and they also have no interest in learning about the systems they are using. They just want to switch the computer on and it works, without them ever having to do anything or learn anything about it.

Council employs automatic PC shutdown

And this is news why?

We have been doing this for years, as well as waking up them up again for 8am the next morning ready for when people come into work.

OSI Prez confronts irate users over 'badgerware' license

don't forget

Snaaaaaake

Chinese fight rat plague with giant saucepan

extra £2

for ketchup with that. Not willing to pay it? have you ever tried rat without ketchup?

Sun's activity not to blame for climate change

Global Warming

This topic has become so skewed because of the media. It is not just about 'Global Warming', it is about climate chaos. We are going to have to deal with weather patterns that we have no experience in dealing with. It is not just CO2 that is the problem, it is all greenhouse gases combined. Some areas of the world will experience cooler weather, others hotter and it is these conditions that cause the weather to be all f***ed up. Just have a look at how many natural disasters have occured in a very short space of time and still say nothing is changing. Britain should not have experienced rain like we recently have causing massive damage, nor should we be seeing small tornados on a regular basis yet we are. California should not have had freezing temperatures when the orange crop was due and yet they had some of the coldest weather on record. This is happening to every country all over the world. How stupid must we be to sit back and say 'we don't need to do anything'? Regardless of whether or not we are a major cause of these changes, anyone looking at the evidence cannot deny we are contributing and we must look at ways to help reduce the impact even if only a little. We need to do it now before we see situations where a loaf of bread or a sack of potatoes costs a whole weeks wages due to acres of farmland and crops being wiped out. Food shortages are nothing new in some areas of the world, but in the west we are too used to everything being there on demand. We don't realise that a disaster in another country in turn affects us at home but this will happen more and more. Forget ipods, mobiles and all the other 'essentials' you can't live without, if the weather keeps throwing things at us everyone will have to realise that the most important things are food and shelter and there will be little of both.

Virgin Media tech support goes premium rate

try this

I find this website useful when faced with a company that wants me to dial an 0870 number.

www.saynoto0870.com

You can usually find a geographic number for the company and if you have a package that allows free uk calls, you don't end up paying. It's about time something was done about these rip-off phone numbers

CSA 2.0: defaulting dads to have travel, ID, life switched off

Back to the old system

Having had many years of abuse from the CSA, despite paying for him and having him to stay with me, I know that any system like this is never going to work. They cannot get anything right. I have been accused of not paying when I have, had demands far in excess of my salary (how they expected me to pay that I don't know) and been spoken to like sh*t everytime I have rung them. Renaming the agency and applying draconian laws is not going to do anyone except the treasury any good. they should go back to the system they had BEFORE the CSA. Under that a couple could come to private agreement that was nobody elses business. If that was not adhered to, a person could be taken to court and told to pay a fixed amount plus the owed back-pay. If they refused or failed to comply, they went to jail. Nice, simple, straightforward and didn't penalise people who didn't deserve it.

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

British Site

British Brand

Keep it British all the way

.co.uk is the only option

G-Wiz electro-car fracas leaves Top Gear blubbing

It shoudn't just be about the environment

Whether or not you think man is causing climate change, pure economics should be dictating the move away from petrol driven transport. Oil is a finite resource and most of us will live to see stock become so low (they are already running out) that it will not be feasable to burn it as fuel. People do not realise just how many products that we rely on need petrochemicals in both the manufacturing process and the products themselves. The G-Wiz is a good concept but badly designed. With some refinements it could actually make it as a good replacment for an around town car.

Apple plugs 25 security holes

So secure

Have you seen how many of the issues allow code to be run with system privileges. maybe all the Mac fan boys can now shut up about how secure OS X is