Posts by James

People without broadband in 'I don't want broadband' shock

I just read about ..

.. 20 people who have just emerged after 4 years at a Buddhist retreat on the Isle of Arran. No (or very little) news, no internet, no connection with the outside world. Sounds pretty good to me...

My very real fear is that like the "No fixed abode" status, which is deliberately designed to "outcast" those folk who prefer to travel and live in mobile homes (in fact this is eminently sensible IF and WHEN the next ICE AGE comes upon us!), the lack of broadband and access to the internet will be used to outcast a whole raft of people who, for some extraordinary reason, actually want to live real lives rather than piss away their time (as the author is doing !) on the Internet.

Of course it'll become very suspicious that people do not want to use the internet and have their activity tracked 24/7. Mr. Plod will be able to arrest them for behaving in a suspicious manner likely to cause harm to online surveillance....

Russian porn starlet brands DD jubs

Morgan ?

I assume this is a typical Russian name? Always thought they ended is "ski" or "alya" or something !

'Press pose danger' to health record introduction

Agree with Badg3r

... get the system working as it should, on time, on budget and secure and the publicity will be positive.

ISPs frosty on Jacqui's comms surveillance plan

What a great boost ...

.. for the Post Office !

It'll soon become the most secure way of communicating - Can't see anyone willing to steam open billions of letters a year ......

Her Maj honours NZ wizard

A wizard ?

... you mean a real wizard ! Not a two dimensional window that just leads you through a process like you were terminally thick and is as incapable of casting any form of spell, or returning rings to their rightful places as a slug!

Britain leads world in police state survey

@Eddie Edwards

Because Scotland has different policing powers to England and Wales.

Also because the population of Scotland is approximately 10% of England and Wales the "weighted" average is nearer 6th place NOT 9th !

Not sure that the position really matters - just the apparent fact that we're being watched and info gathered continuously...... by people who may or may not have the potential to become dictators / extremists ......

'Fraid I no longer trust the politicians - they can't even be trusted with their expenses... and they'll be looking for revenge on Joe Public for having been forced to reveal them AND having caused not a few of their number to quit !

Level 3 wilts in London sunshine (again)

@Bod

Totally agree! Was just about to post that very suggestion. Plenty of old mines about... and, what about all those old nuclear bunkers stuck around the country.

Lad from Lagos bids $100 trillion for Madoff empire

Obviously ...

... a Jedi Master !

Of course he'd want to save the world.....

Apple pulls Tank apps after Cartier complaint

Cartier Tank ...

.. appears to be a range of massively overpriced time pieces - affordable only by the likes of Fred Goodwin. There seems to be French (Francoise), American (Americaine) and Louis flavours.

I'd guess the pulled Apps were probably bits of software imitating the watches on the iThingy (and they weren't designed by Cartier - otherwise you'd be looking at a £2000-£12,000 price for the App I guess.

The speed that the Apps vanished suggests that Apple is sh*t scared of taking on the Big Old Boys in the commercial world. Pity - would have been good to watch (geddit!) them being thrashed in an area that has little to do with IT!

iTunes store Kama Sutra gives Apple warm cheeks

Oh my god...

.. as if most of the youth of today would know what "Lingam" was - most probably think it's an exotic fruit found at Tescos....

Vatican declares 'the internet is blessed'

Ah. I had to re-read ...

.. the Fathers comments and the article before I realised he was talking about the Interweb and not the Bible. I'm sure all the things he lists are mentioned and approved of at various places in the Old Testament.

Gut instinct no protection against net scams

@TeeCee

You mean Sir Fred Goodwin is a clairvoyant !

Please kill this cookie monster to save Europe's websites

So that is what the ....

... google-analytics item is that always appears on my NoScript list (and which I never permit) !!

Now I know they are not something that I want!

Great what you pick up from the Register!

Google faces trade mark class action over AdWords

All power to them !

Great stuff - it'll keep the layers amused for a long time as well.

It's going to come down to "internationality" isn't it. Even in the UK we can have several companies with very similar or the same "key" name. So who's going to be the one that can use the name in Google Adwords?

Firepond are now called FPX (?!) and they seem to have some problems of their own:

" A former executive of Firepond Inc., a company formerly headquartered in Waltham, was arrested Tuesday as he attempted to enter the United States at the Lewiston Bridge in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

James E. Reid allegedly faked $4.8 million in deals, forged customer signatures and was paid $156,000 in commissions for one of the deals, according to a federal indictment. "

Google blames cheeseburgers for destroying the planet

CO2 emissions...

... seem to be at their lowest for 500 million years (that's 500,000,000 years).

Perhaps higher CO2 would be better ? Ward off the next ice age.

More power to heat and CO2 generating data centres, I say !

Oldsters: If you think you'll lose your memory, you will

Yes ....

I recently read this in "Teach Yourself Psychology" (Author Nicky Hayes) and published a few years back.

In this she states that tests find that "oldsters" actually have better memory than youngsters unless they believe they don't! In other words we are being conned into believing that our memory gets worse with age (perhaps more overloaded!) - I write as a mid 50s oldster !. But youngsters just don't care about forgetting things!

Since reading that I've stopped worrying about forgetting (still annoying though ! ).

Now, I wonder where I left the book....

€25k for an old Nokia handset?

Why ....

... give the scammers the warning then ?

Surely it'd be much better to let them bankrupt themselves buying useless gear rather than spending it somewhere more productive to them.......

Perhaps you should have raved about how effective these handsets really are in this situation .....

(and there was me thinking I'd get a premium price for my old Nokia.....)

Jackalope gets jaunty with Ubuntu nip and tuck

Not quite...

@Magilla

"that is entirely compatible with Microsoft Office". Nope ! It won't run the macros that you have lovingly crafted in Excel (etc.) over the years. They need to be hand re-coded to work.

So it cannot be claimed to be entirely compatible...

'Soon soldiers will have 3 tiny choppers in their pocket'

Not obvious then ...

.. to anyone who can detect a fly (bluebottle size) in their office space!

Prepare for Apple's self-resizing iPhone interface

Next stage....

.. to detect if the user has sight problems and zoom automatically as needed for different users, varying eye problems !

BSA hijacks Somali pirate hype

Business Software Alliance ...

.. from the name this is an Alliance to help Businesses find the best Software for their work.

Again (climbing onto soapbox) surely they should be recommending Shareware and Open Source offerings rather than the super inflated (both price and disk space) stuff from the likes of Microsoft !!

Profs: Facebook, Twitter users are lazy, thick, amoral

Private Eye's ...

predictive phrase "'Moron Shall Speak Unto Moron" seems totally designed for Twitter. 30 years before the event.

I guess there's real life, and there's Facebook, Twitter etc etc. If you can't face real life you retreat into the digital space with your many "friends" and pretend that you're really important.

Sad, very, very sad....

Russian schoolgirl invents inertioid-driven Venus rover

As a colour purple...

was used in a Sci Fi story when a translation machine tried to translate a "wizards" name.

You only find out at the end of the story that the name was actually: "As a mauve" - or Asimov.

Pretty close to Indigo if you ask me - could Asimov have been the original Indigo child.

BTW what happens when they grow up - do they become bureaucratic grey?

BT still struggling to fix Olympic problems

Perhaps the operators ...

.. need a refresher course...

http://www.hotcourses.com/uk-courses/CAT-and-Genny-Avoiding-Underground-Services-Certificate-C-G-courses/page_pls_user_course_details/16180339/0/w/15145142/page.htm

Man gets life for killing game-obsessed partner

Pretty strong evidence then ...

.. that playing violent computer games can be harmful to your health.

Playboy TV offers 'Jacq off' special package

Appropriate ...

.. as I write this comment the number of comments is shown as 69...

However, I suggest that from henceforth The Register use the mnemonic JAS (for Jacquis' Additional Services) rather that Pr0n or whatever other rearrangement of letters is in current use. Perhaps the hark-back to JAZZ -

Quote:

"JAS, JASS, JAZ JASCZ, or just plain JAZZ

It is said that the expression -'Jazz'- arose during the late nineteenth century in the better brothels of New Orleans, which provided music and dancing as well as sex. "

Sounds pretty appropriate to me !

Street View caught taking the piss - again

Better get ...

the Internet Watch Foundation onto this one.

Brussels: Old-school lightbulbs to be gone by 2012

Saving ?

"The EC estimates that reduced use of electric power for lighting across Europe will save "close to 80" terawatt-hours by the year 2020. That's a trifle less than three per cent of a single year's UK energy consumption."

By which time, of course, the 3% will have been swamped by another million types of different and almost entirely useless electronic devices...

... or we'll have been overrun by the next ice age.....

Gov launches 'Healthy Bees' plan

"Sound science"

"To ensure that sound science underpins bee health policy and its implementation."

In marked contrast to the bad science that underpins virtually every other area of government intervention!

<joke> I thought it was now illegal to underpin insects</joke>

'World's Worst Banker' joins Lads from Lagos

Spoof....

.. it must be - but pretty damn funny anyway !

Made us all laugh here!

Expedition to probe cavern lake 3km beneath Antarctic ice

They'll discover ...

"strange extreme organisms evolved over aeons along a separate track to that followed by the ordinary surface lifeforms of the sunlit world."

Mark Zuckerberg then...

Obama removes YouTube from YouTube-side chats

@ VoPivd

"What a terrible world to live in where pimps are aloud(sic) into your home, onto your monitor, and into your mind"

Ah, but this is the American dream, 24/7 wall to wall advertising. Pimps supreme, prostitute companies rule the world (or not as "Sir" Fred Goodwin has discovered). YouTube, Facebook I class as the gutter prostitute companies - millions of johns!

Texting: Good for kids after all?

@Russ

It's already happened - several years ago I was giving a training course at a company and the director mentioned that he'd had a couple of job applications in txt ! Straight in the bin!

(Gv i jb!)

@Lewis - yes agree. 88 out of 20 million or so is hardly statistically significant. Bet they were all at a good school - the non-texters would have been from a "lower" standard school.

Hitler ordered Luftwaffe to spare Blackpool

Nope ....

... it's not 1st April...

Mobile operators combine to flog customer data

.. communities ???

<rant>

The quote "and provides rich planning information for the media and advertising communities."

Another load of bullshit from the advertising media INDUSTRY. These are NOT, REPEAT, NOT communities. They are money greedy INDUSTRIES just like the Banking industry that has created the huge level of unemployment, business closures and bankruptcies.

A community is a small village or town where people live - it is NOT an organisation or group of organisations expressly set-up to make as much money as possible.

</rant>

How to survive the crisis: Sell kiddies booze

Victory! Health!

"A note from our legal department

I have been instructed to stress that Tesco does not in fact sell alcohol to minors, and is actually wholly dedicated to making Britain and better place for our children and our children's children, etc, etc."

Not just to make a whole load of cash for Mein Fuerher Leahy then?

Prof: Save up fossil fuel reserves to fight the next ice age

Still time ...

.. to make a cup of tea then?

Now we know why nomads are winners.

Perhaps there's time to dash off a quick letter....

Dear Jacqui,

At some time in the future massive sheets of ice are going to form and gouge their way through our cities, towns and villages wreaking destruction on a scale that the human population of the UK has not seen.

I suggest that you focus your mind on this rather major event rather than the minor, much less worrying ones that you seem to be concerned about. After all if the entire population of the UK is smeared into mincemeat under the glaciers it hardly seems worthwhile insisting on ID cards and large databases......

... Ahh! I know see your masterplan! After the ice retreats (some 10s of thousands of years later) the victims of the ice will be identified by their bits of plastic.

Copyright cops launch MS-happy software compliance tool

But if you install ...

.. OpenOffice.org and various other great Open Source software applications you KNOW that you are meeting the compliance requirements without a massive capital outlay.

AC / Firefox - that would be the Open Source browser! They can't check that for compliance because it is open source :)

Top MI6 spy: Terrorism less serious than bird flu

Terrorism less serious than bird flu ....

... which in turn is several orders of magnitude less serious than Investment Bankers and Bank Directors !!

Jacqui Smith cracks down on gangs via computers, closets

I guess that'll be ...

.. an end to all those fat profits for football clubs - Illegal to wear "gang" colours. So the fans will have to turn up for matches in a variety of clothes. May also mean that each member of the team has to wear a different outfit - otherwise they are quite clearly wearing "gang" colours and behaving in an aggressive way towards the other gang. It'll make great TV !

On the PCs watching the Interweb for miscreants - they recently did that is Scotland - found gang members who'd posted themselves on You Tube brandishing knives - employed two 18 year old police trainees to do it.

Here in Scotland a "tube" is "A contemptible or idiotic person." so You Tube means: You contemptible person" or "You idiotic person" - seems to fit the knife brandishers as far as I can see !

Exploding mobile phone kills Chinese man

So, let me get this right.....

X zillion phones with batteries in the world and one goes boom and kills one person (allegedly) and that's news.

X billion cars in the world and several thousand go crash every day and kill thousands and that's not news.

Hmmm. Think there's a "sense of proportion imbalance" here.

Toshiba wows crowds with sexy touch smartphone

"and direct access to " ...

"Facebook and YouTube is supported"

Why is this major disadvantage trumpeted as a plus ? Although I assume it can be switched off permanently.

Surely these must be the ultimate channels for "Moron shall speak unto Moron".

That said - the phone itself looks good.

If it uses a standard mini USB port (for charging / comms) and a 3.5mm headphone socket and costs less than £100.00 (good price in these recessionary times) then I'll take one!

Boffin dubs global warming 'irreversible'

Oh dear ...

.. more climate change models - that is, simulations run on computers using some peoples ideas of what may or may not happen. NOT SCIENTIFIC FACT !!

As we are presently in an INTER-GLACIAL period I think I am quite happy for the planet to get a bit warmer to delay the inevitable !!

I do not understand why Global Warming / Climate Change pseudo-scientists do not look at the massive variations in climate over the past few billion years to see how little our climate is actually changing.

The planet and mankind have survived several years when light was reduced by a blanket of dust and particles from volcanic eruptions. The planet has survived multiple meteor impacts - it will continue to survive. The life that presently inhabits the planet may not - but some form of life will !

And there's more...

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years," said study author Susan Soloman. "What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years."

In geological time 1000 years is almost insignificant ! An ice age, which would cover the UK destroying every village, town and city and displacing a population of 55 million (or thereabouts) would last 80,000 to 100,000 years.

The warm inter-glacials have "been much shorter, lasting about 10,000 years. The last Ice Age or glacial period on Earth ended roughly 14,000 years ago." So, we're due another one !

Also, how do we know that this "irreversible change" would not, actually, be good !

Unlike humans, the planet does not maintain a "status quo" - it changes all the time. Rather than trying to force the planet to obey some "golden age" idyll, humans would be better to adapt with it (as they did in the past). When the ice age returns we'll all be nomads again !

Of course, nomads are people of no-fixed abode so governments CANNOT tax them! Perhaps this is the real fear of our governments !

BTW: I am NOT arguing for minimising human impact on the planet - I AM arguing that the planet is big enough to look after itself and ultimately will do so, no matter what the human race does.

Obama insists on FOI

"Its English but not as we know it, Jacqui..."

"Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public,"

How many politicians and government agencies in the UK will be able to understand these concepts?

I suspect that, although this is in the English language, it'll come across as complete gobbeldy-gook to the "powers that be".

Cowon iAudio O2 personal media player

O2 ?

Do I hear the frantic scrabbling of greedy corporate lawyers (the same breed of "people" that got us into the present recession) at a certain mobile phone company.....

Microsoft releases Vista virtualization

Well, it's useful for us....

We've got legacy code - we've spent ages trying to get it to work in Vista with all the insanity of the User VirtualStore. In the end we abandoned any attempt to use any Windows special folders and used our own structures - much safer and more predictable than Microsofts structures with it's overheads of access control and permissions.

Anyway, it'll allow all the US/Canada customers that jumped to Vista use the older versions of the software without Vista chaos following.......

BSA: Turn in workmates, make fat dollar a few quid

Surely the BSA should pay ...

.. these people to recommend that their companies adopt Open Source software ?

This keeps the companies legal at minimal cost - a serious factor in these Recessionary Times!

Bees on cocaine: The facts

W T F ? ? ?

"They also think that more bee study will have relevance to the problems of human addiction" or in other words "We've run out of money and would like a huge grant to investigate this further and keep us in work for the next few years".

Surely you investigate humans to find out the "problems of human addiction".

Or is this April 1st? Have I just been asleep for the past three and a half months?

Last Xmas for CDs, please, researcher tells music biz

Yep, I want CDs as well.

The comment that CDs are 26 year old technology and should be replaced is like saying the spade is a 10,000 year old technology and should be replaced.

If something works and is understood then keep the damn thing....

Personally I prefer a physical item that I can store and use as backup if my computer storage system goes titsup!

Also - haven't been tempted by Amazon etc offerings of MP3 versions - If they're serious about Hi Fi (That's High Fidelity or as true to the original as possible) then they'll provide a Lossless format like FLAC.

Supplying in MP3 suggests that they think their customers are a bunch of cloth eared dolts....