Posts by imposter

Small biz warns on contractor law

Chris Thomas Alpha

Actually isn't far off really. They take a lot of money and rarely get anything right. They'll pay people £6 an hour and up these days. Though if you're lucky you'll clear 8. Of course there's no sick pay when someone on twice your wage (costing her company half much) sits down and breathes swine flu all over you. (Because you'd only be off a day or three with a mild bout of flu).

I'd say the language is a bit strong really. It's not quite that grim, most of the saving is due to the gaps between working, because the same agencies control 90% of the perm jobs too. And they have nothing.

It's great that your fate is decided by someone based on a test they made you do 3 years ago. Which doesn't cover a lot. And their own opinion of what you "want" in a job.

Cameron condemns Tweeters as tw*ts

Anyone see the irony?

Blair 2.0 slamming web 2.0?

Also twitter is without doubt full of sel absorbed fools who seek attention and tweet inane pointless crap that is only of marginal interest even to people trying to get into their drawers or seeking simular validation. 140 characters will tell a joke or make a point but while brevity is the essence of wit or some such, if you communicate in 140 characters you either omit a lot, or don't have much to say. Despite this, I disagree with Cameron, and not just because he's a Tony, I mean Tory, I mean same thing.

That does not mean every user is like that, or that all twitterers are twats. But politicians like to generalise, it's how most forms of bigotry work.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

I don't think the market will change that much

I don't even beleive those figures, they don't make sense. They clearly exclude self builds, and parts of business. Infact 90%? I'd only beleive that if it was "from a sample taken of apple employees".

If it is true, macs will not dominate. If you're spending over a grand on a PC, you are buying it for a specific purpose. And as such you have to have a certain OS. If it's sound work, macs win, but gaming rigs? You wouldn't save for a super rig and then buy apple, no matter how good, they can't run crysis. And coding, simulations, CAD whatever else you want done, some of it is best done on apple, some just won't work withouit windows. The market won't change because of those niches. Simple as.

I don't get why you'd spend $1000 on hardware for a linux PC. I guess you might want to compile code on it? Largley, though, it's got free applications which are fine if you're on a budget or not super serious, but less amazing than the real thing, and why spend a grand on a new PC and then run knock off software on it that lacks functionality or the like? (which to be honest is amazing for the price, but won't cut it against stuff done by a team of developers, with money. And yes, before you say it, note well that linux OSes themselves with *budgets* aren't unheard of, hell ubunut)And with linux footprint at 2bytes as most fanboys would say, running smoothly on a pocket calculator, surely that much hardware would be overkill?

Watchdog bites Mattesons saucy sausage ad

mmiied

Applying hammerhead to nail there. Well done. "Harm" is a strong term. A small child subjected to degrading porn might be harmed (and honestly, most porn is pretty degrading) but this is different. And rubbish.

However the level of over protection from sexual anything we give children is awful. Studying shakespeare we never learnt the innuendo before A Level (english wasn't my subject I stopped after GCSE) and so as I later learnt, missed a very large chunk of the meaning of the plays out. Much ado about nothing? More like much ado about vagina (nothing being slang at the time... you get the idea). The fact we have rampant STDs and teen pregnancy is pretty much due to the lip service we give sex education because culturally it's bad to talk about. Most 16 year olds don't actually understand what genital warts or, or haven't been made to consider that the more you put it about the more likely something bad will happen. It's shameful. Compared to that sort of genuine harm, this pales into insignificance.

Mysterious organic blobs found in Alaskan waters

Tony S

You can deliver the enema

Apple's panties in bunch over Microsoft ads

the pot and the kettle

As said before Apple are pretty good at lying. Security through obscurity is not security.

As for price, last I checked, for a PC with X hardware you pay least if you make it, about 80-500 more to get it pre made with windows at the same spec and the same difference again for a mac.. Back when a slightly OCed E6700 gave you a desktop processor money couldn't buy I built a system for about £1400, my friend spent the same amount on a mac, got ram that was one step down, a processor one step down, instead of a HD2900 graphics card it had the midrange card which was about 40% of the cost and performance ... Even with those price cuts, I imagine PCs with equivalent spec are faster. The price cut will have done a lot to help but in the end you pay a LOT for OSX. Microsoft should just post edit the videos and be done with it.

Fancy dropping into Pitetsbkrrh?

I for one would like

to welcome our badly spelt overlkrghs

Hurt yourself? Try f**king swearing

The moderatrix has me by the contextuals

I'm prone to disagree, I'm not saying that you don't know some very bright people who swear a lot but largely, people who swear constantly tend to be those lacking adequete means of self expression. Swear words are usually used where you cannot find an adequete word to make your point, usually. I imagine that ties with the part of the brain they're in "oh dear out comes the emergancy vocabulary things can't be great" . However should you be reaching for those words a lot, it does indicate that your self expression needs work (there are alternatives to swearing, like extreme sarcasm, intonation and careful use of vivid descriptives). Or as this article now shows, you're supressing pain. I swear most if I'm a little overwhelmed, over excited or frustrated.

Net sleuth calls eBay on carpet over shill bidding

Auction

Doesn't necessarily mean open bidding, there's a variety of different auction types, such as seal bid and (while I forget the name) one with sealed bids and the second highest bidder wins (this actually serves to protect the bidders from marklet distorting monopsonies and the like). The point I wish to make is that the practice of shilling makes the auction effectively a different sort of auction. It forces the buyer to effectively submit a sealed envelope and hope. the problem is that buyers don't see it like this, they might put a load of high proxies in at the same time and only (quite possibly, depending on their proxies and the item, reasonably) expect one or two to hit that value, and get a nasty shock. If people only bid what they're willing to pay it's fine. However it does remove the elemental of low demand creating a low price ( I know I have few competitors, I'll submit a low bid), a factor which in the long run would equalise price. The shill would remove the "consumer surplus" from the low price and appropriate it all for the producer, something which doesn't happen in a functional free market and so effectively turns a system from something which benefits both parties to something stacking in favour of the seller. Oh and grabs like that usually end up reducing the total benefit in the process too. Which in a dry and theoretical sort of way means benefit to various parties just dissapears while the seller distorts the market for their gain.

However if this was all set out as the conditions it'd bother me less (the customers would adjust their behavior accordingly). The issue, to me, is that buyers don't sign up for a sealed bid with unknown numbers or bidders, but that is what they get and so effectively do not get the service they pay for. Which is fraud on ebay's part for knowingly providing a different service to what they promised.

Whining serial commentard bemoans Reg bullying

mein kempf?

I'm not sure a public response to a public statement, in a way that he'd only find if he went to the public place is harassment.

Clearly he's a figure of riducule not ire and while a more mature (I said more, not outright, though I'm sure we all wind people up for a laugh occasionally) troll would accept their fate, when banned or turned round most trolls whine. He's just trying, pathetically to turn it into the reg being the big bully, when he's clearly just upset it went wrong.

I found the last article on him losing it veryamusing.

Anti-smut Baroness sent to solitary

re: It's rather depressing

When I saw the words "dirty old men" I thought of the houses of parliament. (Admittantly that's slightly sexist, but only slightly, because there aren't *many* women there. )

Russians demand flying cars and telepathy

So what about that robot butler?

You should have improved the poll if you ask me.

Speculation mounts over AVG plans for OS X client

I'm not with Sean and Robert

In theory Windows has UAC on vista, and 7, and XP is ancient. And on top of that, have you ever tried gaming without admin rights? Have fun with that. Installation, writing log files, failing to do so, crashing or not loading.

I'd guess that macs and windows aren't that different in security terms. At the end of the day the weak point is the end user. I've had 2 or 3 viruses breach my browsing habits, one was from another PC on the network which I thought I wasn't on (whoops) which *is* utterly compromised, one was from a legitimate site that got hacked, all of them get cleaned up by my AVG free. I use a few security add ons in firefox but mostly I avoid really dodgy sites and I suspect I'm a hard target to social engineer (though to say I'm impossible would be the same level of hubris the less educated mac owner experiences). Ther biggest weakness of any OS is the user. Not having admin rights is great in theory but in principle it's a lot of hassle to do anything. The biggest hole to close up is the user either way, and as such, mac users security is compromised by their propaganda. The standard (non reg reading sort,) lusers are cocky by and large, but they are getting viruses. And it will become more and more important to secure their system, ideally before it's an epidemic.

Virus software isn't perfect, but it's a damn site better than nothing and for a careful user usually *will* stop everything.

iPhone 3.1 code goes beta

Antidisestablishmentarianist

Surely you mean "twit"?

I often read apple articles just to see the flaming that goes on in the comments.

Firefox 3.5 - it's not a 'web upgrade'

@OkKTY8KK5U

Surely you would care that it's faster?

However largely speed aside, this isn't a big release for me either.

Pirate Bay sells out to Swedish software firm for $7.7m

So they're just like the users then?

It's all about principles, smite the capitalists. Not about getting free stuff. Oh no.

It's huge blow to the music industry's chance of reforming, and hollywood can keep churning pointless remakes, franchise tainting sequels and dross out for that much longer too.

Lastly there's a lot of talk of rewarding copyright owners around at the moment, I hope I'm not the only one who notes the distinction from "rewarding the artists"?

Paris because she too is just after easy money and free stuff.

US senators demand boycott of Iran 'snoop' firms

Seems odd

Because spying on people is standard protocol throughout the western world

HSBC online banking hits another wall

I'd go easy on Indian staff Graham.

Most are just following a script and are being paid too much (by local standards) to risk devating from their rigid script. What I'm saying is, blame the script writers and upper management.

That said I liked the line about soylent green.

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it

@AC questioning monopoly

Monopoly power is defined by the product basically being seen as something with no real alternative by any number of people. In the UK, the competition commission considered monopoly power must exist in a large quantity at 25% market share (this may be due to ignorance of alternatives, false image for them or the product or just the way the brand has been built up as different, whether it is or not). At 95% market share or more the firm is considered a "pure monopoly" that is to say it's so huge that it's competitors are insignificant or close, while for most people there's no alternative.

So yes, google is, for many people, a monopoly and close to a "pure" one too.

Buzz Aldrin gets down with Snoop Dogg

One hell of a punch

He'd been harassing him for ages. I saw the documentary this was part of and it was laughable, Buzz' punch however is not, I would fear for the guy's braincells if they weren't all clear malfunctioning anyway. It's not that there's not an arguement for the moon landings being faked but it's poorly presented and at times smacks of the documentary fudging the facts. Like speaking over parts which "clearly" show things, so clearly you'll talk over them.

Steve Jobs liver transplant confirmed by doc

@Martin Nicholls

Quite high if he's too busy to notice until after he loses a load of weight, takes a while off, has a doctor look and OHSH.

Not an apple fanboi at all here but I do wish anyone who is quick a speedy recovery.

Beijing snuffs Google.com

Population control

Banning porn just increases the urgency of getting laid, ergo goes against their population control agenda. Oh silly the silly fascists. Whatever next? A hugely expensive spy database which is not only in defiance of every elected representative and pushed through by a non democratically elected government but based on technologies that dont' yet exist?

Oh wait.

Microsoft begins Security Essentials downloads

You can't get me

I've got norton security, so sayeth an old internet probverb (or sarcastic 4chan meme).

Norton and Mcaffee are a joke and hopefully most el reg user know that, they slow the system down, remove security software (I know norton has in the past identified AVG as a virus) and steal the consumers money without them knowing. They are basically rogue anti virus and only their large size stops them being classified as such. They consistantly score lower in reviews than every other suite and their cpu hunger knows no bounds. I would NEVER reccomend them to anyone. There are better security solutions out there. I use AVG free, zonealarms for the firewall and occasionally spybot and/or ad aware, though AVG tends to pick up most spyware too these days. I get the odd false positive but so far so good. Assuming the MS product improves it being in the same ballpark means it'll be a much better solution. I like my modular security and I don't like mcbuggy and norton. Considering their awful performance I would be hoping el reg would have picked up their shady natures rather than quoting them as if they're a security source to be trusted. Or at least reminded less regular readers of their recent behavior.

Nine-ball attack splits security researchers

No we're right

No, we know better. We are. Beleive us not them. Our scanning technology is better.

NASA takes stick over feet and inches

It occured to me a while ago

That we british are handier with measurements than most people in the western world. We might be hopeless at foreign languages but there's a large number of europeans who don't even know what a centimetre is. "I'm six foot 2, er... 185 centimeters. Okay 1.85m?" like many europeans with our language, we can do their own measurement systems better than them.

Britain is totally bilingual with measurements, most brits below 60 and above 15 know that a mile is roughly 8/5km. That a yard is 90cm, 2.2 pounds to the kilo, (very roughly) 25 grams to the ounce and so on and can freely translate between the two.

US net nanny ratchets Chinese censorware spat

Communism in practice

"Communism makes greedy f*ckers get rich at everone else's expense" in practice. Whatever system you use, the result is the same some people get rich at the expense of others. THe best systems are where the side effect of this is that the others aren't as poor.

Regulators and law don't protect UK net neutrality

Outrageous

The sites pay at their end and we pay for the data. If I downloaded 100gig that's fine under my "unlimited" connection but if it's youtube, it's not. From the individual customer point of view it's ridiculous, from the "they don't pay" point of view, it's a lie, and if they can't afford people using their package at 100% at peak hours, and close to, the rest of the time they shouldn't provide it. If they are relying on under use, they're effectively relying on customers making the wrong choice due to poor/lack of information, absolutely any economist worth his salt will tell you, poor information is something which should be alleviated for the good of economies on the whole. Anyway in a nutshell, BT, what a shower of sh

Antivirus giants fined over automatic renewals

Nasty Malware

-Hard to remove

-Disables your security

-Pretends to offer protection while offering little or none

-Slows down your computer

Is what normal fake anti malware does.

Norton and macafee showuing themselves to be class leaders in taking money, not only doing the above but taking regular payments without asking. I have considered them to be about as good as no security when the downsides are considered and would have always reccomended AVG free to anyone over it, despite the fact it's not really great. (It's sufficient if you're a sensible and informed user of the internet, I have no idea why my PC isn't yet compromised).

O think the rest of my thoughts on this don't need to be said, this all speaks for itself.