Posts by George Forth

Virgin Media to add 500k homes to cable network

Major roads only?

I live on a cul-de-sac in Slough of only 25 residences which has cable running across the end of the road, but not down our road. Amusingly, Virgin didn't know this until about 9 months ago when our next door neighbour tried to get it. The men came along to plumb her in and we watched in amusement for some time as they serached in vain for an access point. Eventually we chatted with them about it and they said we'd be unlikely to ever get it as a road of only 25 possible customers wouldn't be cost effective to cable, despite the fact that every road around us is cabled up.

Anyway... getting back to the point - what chance has anyone got if Virgin don't even know which roads are cabled and which aren't?

Judges rap police over raid on paedo expert

Vive le judiciaire!

Don't ever knock the judiciary - it's only they who stand between the executive and us, making sure that overstepping the law is reined in!

Wolverine leak claims first victim?

Real or no real?

Hmmm... uncorroborated this, denied the other...

Did Fox deliberately leaked the film as a marketing stunt? And are they now continuining to keep the story in the news by creating a fuss?

Of course, if they did, they could never admit it as it would be condoning "illegal" filesharing, but it would be a delicious scandal...

Terry Pratchett cuts ribbon on Treacle Mine Road

Re: Lancashire

It's Agnes, not Alice, Code Monkey, if we're going to be nice and accurate. :-)

It's all perfectly divine. Next is to rename whole districts. Dolly Sisters, anyone?

Playmobil Bible faces wrath of lawyers

Justification?

"We can not accept such transformations for safety reasons as our products are made from plastic and are flammable."

Exactly why is it Playmobil's business whether or not Bomhard wishes to risk his own health by melting the toys slightly?

And since when has it been a tort to customize products which you have paid good money to own?

Are they just trying to bully Bomhard with no actual legal justification?

Can I think of another question?

Bloggers could squeak out of court reporting restrictions

Ignoratia legis neminem excusat

Or apparently not any more...

Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

EU ain't all bad

See... it does have some use!

Airline pilots told to switch off mobile phones

Don't tell Ryanair!

Because Ryanair has just made it possible for all passengers to use mobile phones above 10,000 feet.

Paris Hilton correctly identifies UK Prime Minister

Gay?

The chap is surely gay because because Paris' boyfriend didn't wants straights? I suppose it's logically correct, but the surefire way to identify him as gay is to look at him and listen to him, judging by the short clip from the trailers running on TV.

Extreme pron vigilantes are after you

Who's breaking the law here?

"They claim that they will primarily categorise and monitor torrents."

Presumably this means they have to download the torrent to ensure it is actually illegal. Which means they are breaking the law themselves. Hmmm...

Absolutely Fabulous ups sticks to LA

Second time lucky?

Anyone remember the first attempt over 10 years ago? Following a short piece in an episode of Roseanne which contained two characters played by Jenn and Joann who were Eddie and Patsy characters but without the money and wit, a whole series was going to be made of AbFab but Barr never got it off the ground. The stories at the time were that thery'd removed most of the drink and drugs references to appease middle America.

It'll be interesting to see how they pull it off this time...

Boy George jailed for 15 months over bizarre false imprisonment

Social networking or just sex

"a gay social-networking site" - is that what Gaydar is called these days? It always was (and to be honest, still continues to look like) a "pick-up-a-shag" site. "Social networking"? Pah!

BT cuts 0870 charges

The actual offensive part

"the Department of Health is currently reviewing whether services such as NHS Direct should be allowed to effectively charge people to call."

What's wrong with charging people to call? You don't get something for nothing in this day and age.

No, the insulting bit is that the companies are paid when we call them. Not only that but the distinction between local and national calls evaporated a good few years ago, but still "national rate" or "local rate" are peddled as helpful pieces of information by marketing departments.

I don't see anything wrong per se with premium rate numbers in their place, but pretending that they are doing us a favour by removing the worry of a geographic STD code while removing our ability to use inclusive call plans is stupid and offensive.

Online crime maps go live

Uniformity

Would it have been too hard for the Home Office to develop one system that all the forces could use instead of each force having to pay to develop its own system. Another lump of tax money spent with piss-poor efficiency!

AVG tags ZoneAlarm as Trojan

Totally lost it, mate

AVG used to be great. And then v8 came out. And it's all gone pear-shaped. I've stopped using it, altogether...

Stick health warnings on gays, says Stock Exchange chaplain

Friends of that persuasion

I think he really ought to have said that he *used* to have dear friends of that persuasion.

Apple royalty skirmish ends in stalemate

Bluff

Like Apple was ever going to close iTunes... A win for common sense or a win for the corporate bully?

US House throttles citizen emails

Better than nothing

At least the US government supplies this option - all we have here are third party systems and the odd MP's website here and there.

BT's third Phorm trial starts tomorrow

Don't moan - do something!

I'm not a BT Broadband customer so I am not party to any of this, so all I can do is harumph and grumble in the background. However, all of those people who are customers should remember that it is them (and them alone) whose personal data is being misused and should all complain to the ICO.

Complaining on here (and other forums) only draws attention to the situation - it won't resolve it. Use the powerful rights you have - don't squander them on hyperbole.

YouTube rant missus hauled into court

Freedom vs responsibility

With rights come responsibilities - you can say what you like, but nobody ever said that right came without consequences. You can say what you like, but not with impunity.

Comedy UK social network berates moaning users

How did they make their money then?

Given that they sponsored the Gay Pride festival in Finsbury Park (or wherever it ended up) for a few years, how they can moan that they have no money is beyond me.

Looks to me like the toys have been thrown and the pram has been driven off the road. I reckon they are now realising that huge event sponsorship rather drains the old coffers, especially when they apparently couldn't they find a buyer.

Such drama!

Google's Gmail verboten in Germany

UK

It's the same in the UK. I'm not quite sure how the German court can stop www.gmail.com referring to the German site when accessed in Germany though.

Do you know how much of your porn is extreme?

Here we go again

I can see another Operation Spanner on the horizon - vast amounts of public money spent prosecuting people and ruining their lives based on what the government considers to be obscene, regardless of the individuals' consent.

AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

Turning it off isn't especially fun

I don't like it as it slows down my creaky old machine when I search on Google (the creakiness is why I use AVG and not something resource-hungry like Norton). But if you turn it off, it records this as an error rather than a choice. Most annoying.

MP launches ten minute rule bill on in-UK roaming

Royal Tunbridge Wells

To give it it's proper title :-)

And it can't be that bad - we (for I am a RTWer by childhood) did host the world premiere of "Home and Away - The Musical".

It was a more innocent time...

Welsh student exposed to nude webcam operators

Luddite Puritan In Inability To Accept The Modern World Shocker

Stupid girl - she's probably only narked because she can't find a job herself that pays that well!

London borough lost children's data three times

Legal duties

I'm not sure what's worse - that the data is treated in such a cavalier fashion by half of the Boroughs contacts, or that almost all of the other half don't even fulfill their legal duties under the FoI Act.

Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot K850i camera phone

K + W

Why are SE phones always great camera or great capacity with a great media player?

Whay can't they don't both?

BBC spreads free Wi-Fi Cloud over iPlayer delay

Speed

Never mind the OS functionality - I still can't get it to work at anything more than a crawl. It took 20 minutes to download the bloomin' software!

Apple sued over i-Bricks

Who's forcing who?

I wasn't aware that people were forced into buying iPhones not knowing that they'd be stuck with Apple's terms and conditions.

It's the users' choice to buy into Apple's stupid business practice. I don't see this getting anywhere...

Microsoft UK cracks another head over grey software

reseller ecosystem?

"to clamp down on illegal importers who are destabilizing the whole reseller ecosystem"

ie to ensure that arbitrary price increases can be protected across borders

Virgin unplugs music download service

Does anyone still think that DRM protects the consumer?

This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that DRM actually harms the consumer.

Sony to unplug Connect digital music service

About time!

I remember when I got my 20Gb NWA-3000 for Christmas 2005 - super hardware, abysmal software. And the way Sony tried to bareface it out for this long is simply insulting. I actually recently sold my Walkman because I just couldn't put up with SonicStage's frankly appalling UI and lack of any sort of user-friendly functionality.

Nintendo yanks Mario Party 8 - offensive language to blame?

Re: down with PC rubbish

Can I ask Luke Wells if he noticed the sound of the point as it whooshed over his head?

Mum given young nympho's phone number

Number porting

Stupid cow - stupid Virgin Media. Did neither the woman herself find out or Virgin Media tell her that she could have kept her BT number and no changed it at all?

Microsoft pushes Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy'

Inflated ideas

Maybe if they stopped inflating the programs with gumph that only 3 people in the world actually use then they wouldn't have to price them so highly and people wouldn't feel that they want to stick with something like Word97 which works perfectly, does exactly what they want, and doesn't slow up all but the most advanced machines.

Women prefer well-built blokes: official

US body fascists?

Is this more true in the US than here, perhaps? This study has, presumably, only covered American women, who I imagine have a different idea of what is attractive than, say, French, or Australian, or Japanese etc.

So all I can see here is that Americans are obsessed with the muscular form. Whether that's a human thing or not is still unproven.

Possession of extreme porn to become criminal offence

Sexual Injury

"violence that is life threatening or likely to result in serious injury to the anus, breasts, or genitals"

Hmmm... anyone remember Operation Spanner? And what about consensual things like fisting? Disagreeable to many, but perfectly ordinary sex to others. They need to define violence and serious injury as far as they relate to consent.

MS update patches patching

Proper testing

If Microsoft only tested their software on normal user-spec computers instead of top-of-the-range whizzy machines that only they can afford, then maybe they'd know that the ordinary user on the street gets these problems instead of waiting through months and months and months of complaints and then pretending they only just found out the problem existed!

Virgin Media piles Cable and Wireless sandbags

Funny how things go in circles...

It was less than 10 years ago that Cable & Wireless sold its consumer customer base to NTL, too... Service never got any better then and the mess that C&W's subsidiary had left it in, it nearly bankrupted NTL. Round two... BING!

UK bank switches off to go green

Priorities?

"The installation of NightWatchman will reduce our electricity bill by tens of thousands of pounds and, vitally, it will reduce our carbon emissions by 147 tonnes"

Ho ho ho. Who's he trying to kid? It'll reduce their carbon emissions, and, VITALLY, reduce their leccy bill. I doubt very much it's about carbon - rather about their huge power bills.