Posts by Simon Foxwell

Kids more likely to be bullied than pestered online

Sod 'em!

Why cant you spy on what your kids look at on the internet?

Most companies around the world will have an IT policy centered around "This computer belongs to the company and you have no expectation of privacy", "Websites accessed will be monitored", "etc".

You bought them the bloody computer and as long as you make it perfectly clear that their activities will be checked from time to time then that will always be top most in their mind before they visit suspect websites.

Make good on your threat though otherwise your just talking crap, which is what most kids think their parents are talking all the time anyway.

As Paul Murphy says above "Be their parent and not their friend".

New York subpoenas Comcast 'reasonable network management' records

This needs a fair solution for all parties

I think the fair solution for everyone (in this case everyone would be the ISP, the frequent downloader and the low use occasional user) would be a clearly indicated choice of accounts when you sign up.

As most people are rightly saying - Unlimited should mean what it says, if you cant back this up then you should not advertise it. The problem is that once one ISP uses this almost fraudulent statement in their marketing then the rest have to follow or they will lose future customers.

As a frequent and occasionally heavy downloader (I wont pretend its all legal Linux flavour installs!) I would happily pay for this extra ability to download what I want. Our current infrastructure, be it BT backbone or cable) just cant cope and if I choose to download my stuff at peak times then I unfairly hurt the people on the same pipeline.

I suggest the following choice of account that I would sign up for:

£16.99 a month with a 10gb monthly download limit. However this "Limit" would not apply during the hours of 11pm to 8am. I can download anything I want during this time and it does not affect my 10gb limit. If you are downloading torrents or other large files then you should have the ability to be able to schedule what times these download. I schedule all of mine to download between these times anyway because as we dont each have a fiber link in our homes I want to be fair to the others who are also trying to get on the internet.

If I go over this 10gb within the month in peak times then I pay £1 per gigabyte.

If I stick to these rules and dont abuse the service then I certainly would not expect any traffic shaping, management, packet injections or pissing about with my line.

You play fair and so will I.

I'll want the choice to either pay for the connection or sign up to a 12 month contract. That way if I am convinced they are abusing my line then I will leave. I'll also want the choice of buying a router supplied by them with all connection details for my account already entered or I can supply my own.

Is 10gb enough during peak hours? If I am not downloading large files during this time, just You Tube crap, emails, internet browsing and online gaming then this should be enough shouldnt it? Fell free to comment.

Like anyone I dont want my peak browsing to go down to just 136kbps but if an ISP has the balls to be completely upfront and honest as well as offer a full range of different accounts then I'll go for it.

If you work for an ISP then pass this message on to them. If you know of one that does this already then let me know...and dont mention Eclipse!

Comcast have done a bad thing by just deciding they will play god with their users and muck about with their packets. This is NOT the way to do things and I hope they get royally fuc*ed for it...although I doubt they will.

Video games blamed for England Euro flop

I agree...

...with AC on this one. Its got fuck all to do with bloody video games and much more to do with piss poor investment in sports in this country as well as a irresponsibly huge investment in foreign players.

Owners of our "Greatest" footbal teams couldnt give a monkeys about overseas fixtures, they just know that if they win games with whatever the best talent is and get more bums on seats through popularity (ManU) then they make an enormous fortune for the shareholders.

Who do you support and how many of your team are born and bred english?

I dont bother watching England footie matches anymore because its embarrasing!

I'll stop now.

Swearing at work 'good for business'

Sorely needed in IT

I cant think of anything worse than not being able to swear while working with users, computers, bosses and other assorted twats.

If I couldnt swear at the retards asking me stupid fucking questions about why their print job hasnt come out (not switched on, paper jam, out of paper/toner) because their too fucking stoopid to have a look themselves I'd go cocksucking fucking mental!!

Fuck being able to use language, we need some punch bags! The last stupid cunt of the day gets a punch up the bracket. This should be written into my contract.

@One-armed Freddy:

Brilliant!! I wet myself at that one. God knows why.

RIAA hits paydirt: wins first music-sharing jury trial

Just bought Radioheads new album...

...for £5. A band that has the means to live of their own talent rather than let a bunch of executives take the majority.

As its now easier to just download an album direct from the band will this any knock on effects? If other artists follow suit and publish their music online could the RIAA's greed be blamed for hurting CD sales even more because the artists are fed up paying a huge percentage to them? I'm sure many artists dont like to see their fans ripped off by these bullies.

I would like to think that these artists are more interested in getting their gift out there for people to listen to and, as long as they can live comfortably of their sales, arent solely in it for the money.

If there are artists who are in it for the money then they can suck my fat one!

Has anyone considered setting up a donation fund so she can continue her case and appeal? This court case and the precedent it sets could mean many more of us face settlement or court cases even if we are innocent.

Wouldnt that piss off the RIAA if all of her 'damages' were paid by sympathetic supporters rather than by her?

Why not email your favourite artists website and point them to this court case, see if they'll do the same as Radiohead and fight back. They now have the means to do so.

Just a thought really...

First RIAA file-sharing trial begins

Good luck to her

For all the bullying and money grabbing tactics that the RIAA have been doing to people I wish her all the best and hope that justice will actually be done.

If the RIAA were serious about their precious files they would have taken each and every one of those "Illegal" file sharers to court instead of just forcing kick-back money off them.

Taking them to court proves a point, leeching money off them just gives the absolute impression that they are just greedy bullies who are only in it for the money.

I really, REALLY hope the RIAA gets shafted for this...shafted right up the wrong 'un!

Microsoft shouts 'Long Live XP'

@Jan Marten

"Well, I've got a 5 year old box on my desk for development. It got 1GB of memory and a 1.6GHz P4 and a graphics card with whopping 16MB graphics card. If I need to run Weblogic 10 or WebSphere on it, it will crawl.

After upgrading last year from NT to W2k , the option was to upgrade to XP or Vista and OBVIOUSLY I enrolled for Vista. And OBVIOUSLY the box will just grind to a hold. "

Erm...The MINIMUM spec for Vista needs 32Mb graphics, and thats for the Home Basic edition. I dont think your being very fair to your "development" if your using the spec above to test Vista. Vista calls for higher spec hardware just the same as 95, 98, ME (POS), 2K and XP did.

To all the MS haters, try using Vista or, if you did already, then try using it for longer than 1 month. Irrational hatred of a product your slating is just blindly following the herd.

Using it for a day and then running back to XP is just lacking balls and brains to make it better for yourself. I'm assuming the people reading El Reg are fairly accomplished IT Folk who generally like to muck around with hardware/software and customise it for their own use.

Is this not possible with Vista?

Didnt you like the annoying UAC pop up asking permission before you did anything? Did you find out how to switch that off before you reformated and reinstalled XP?

Dont like the flashy Aero interface? Switch it off then.

My point is that XP came with annoying faults that I'm sure many of us tweaked and customised for speed or looks. I hated those bloody balloon tips in XP but I found a way to turn them off. These OS's from MS are primarily designed for a typical end user and I'm afraid a typical end user needs A LOT of help when it comes to PC's. IF MS can make it look pretty, easy to use and warn them when the're about to f**k it up then thats fine with me.

However, us knowledgeable computer people can switch off the crap and use it for its best features. We can get the most from it and leave the end user to coo over the glass like appearance.

Everyone slagged of XP when it came out, even I did but I had never really tried it. Once I did I never went back.

I've now had Vista running for over 5 months and was just itching to find something I hated and I did. But I stopped the bloody UAC because I know what I'm doing and I dont need a prompt or admin permisssion. After that, apart from installing newer drivers I had no problems.

I've since installed 7 other PC's with Vista with different hardware variations but still havent had a problem. If your driver isnt out yet then I wouldnt buy hardware from any manufacturer that hasnt managed to get their act together and release them. As for old hardware? Tough sh*t! I'm not gonna wait for you to upgrade before a new OS is released. Its simple, stay with the OS that works.

This is the reason new OS's get released, because hardware improves, specs go up and an OS needs to be developed to use it to its full advantage. Why dont you install Win98 and see if can take use your 500Gb SATA HDD, 2Gb of memory, PCI-E graphics card, etc, etc.

If your happy with XP then stay with it, if you buy a new PC with Vista on it then give it a fair amount of time and tweak it before you slag it off. If you want to upgrade then make sure your hardware is capable of the upgrade before you spend the money.

iTunes Plus - plus user details that is

Data protection?

I'm no lawyer but wouldnt this be a breach of the data protection act in some way? Is it written in the terms and conditions of the software that Apple will be doing this?

If I were particularly evil I would create a [e-mail] email address and distribute as many copies of this wonderful "Free" music across as many P2P sites as possible.

Why do we put up with this?!

Lords investigate 'unconstitutional' surveillance society

CCTV is not a substitute

CCTV has sneaked in past the citizens and everyone probably thought it was a good idea, lets get the ASBO offenders and "yoofs" caught on camera.

The problem is that I feel its becoming a substitute for putting a policeman on the street, instead we have a "security specialist" sitting behind the camera on the street who can now even calmly ask the kids to stop tipping cars and setting light to each over. They probably will have to ask them to stop shooting the camera now that there's so many guns around.

CCTV is not a substitute for the police, but the police can no longer do their job effectively because they are frightened of getting sued by ignorant greedy people and their over eager solicitors. Because of these greedy people everyone is scared of getting sued, so some stupid laws and guidelines get passed by local councils and government. Its not meant to protect us but to protect themselves against legal action.

Now for the police it means too much paperwork and not enough direct intervention, you just cant arrest people anymore when they break the law because a greedy lawyer will come calling to sue for technicalities, against human rights, didnt follow correct procedure, etc.

I'm sure the police wonder why they bother. It certainly seems to affect the recruitment of new police.

Technology is great but not when it replaces a proven part of society that is sorely needed.

Dell offers XP again amidst Vista complaints

May not be as bad as it seems

I have been using Vista for a couple of weeks now and its fair to say that, although I have not managed to give it a proper test (my wife wont get off my computer!) it seems ok to me.

My only beef with it was that the shutdown button (power off?) doesnt actually shut it down, it puts it into standby. I had to go through a lot of screens to change that.

I do remember when XP first came out, lots of people bashed it for being too simplistic and "Tellytubbie". Everyone was going to wait for Service Pack 1 before they bought it, etc. Now it seems to be the OS that everyone will stick with rather than go for Vista...except for the guy running 2K. 2K is fine, all our PC's at work run 2K 'cause it just bloody works!

I think there's too much Vista bashing going on as usual, just because its Microsoft. Its fair to say I would move over and give Linux a try if they made it easy to use, plenty of drivers but most importantly, games support. If Linux supported the games I play then I would certainly give it a try.

For those sitting on the fence, wait for SP1...although I think Microsoft will likely rush this out as well.

For those who have an open mind and if you can get hold of a "copy" then give Vista a go. If you dont like it then go back to XP.

However, as far as choice goes with Dell or any other supplier, we shouldnt be forced into an OS just cause Microsoft want their sales figures to look good. Give us a choice with the old and new OS's that are still supported, I.e, XP and Vista. We should also have the option of no OS installed. Those people who want Linux are probably advanced enough to install and configure this themselves.