Posts by Nic Brough 1

BOFH: The PFY Chronicles Part The Third

mmm

Large wodges of cash - always to be regarded as a trap in my book...

Google betas Chrome for Mac, Linux

Nippy

I gave the beta a go a while back, and was glad to find it was a lot faster than Firefox 3.5. Shame about the plugins (I still use Firefox for most of my browsing because of the plugins), but we are getting there.

On the other hand, I'm giving Firefox 3.6 beta a go now, and it's caught up with Chrome... (Although this is not formal testing, just one person doing a bit of standard surfin')

BOFH: Made of win

@Fluffykins

>Fluffykins

>What?!?! #

>SHARE the awards (And beer) with THE BOSS?

Absolutely - the Boss is very handy to push into the path of incoming half-cut congratulatory weasels that always crop up at these ceremonies. Leaving you free to chat up their escorts. Also, a good BofH doesn't show up on film, just in case it might be "evidence". It's good to have a boss to hide behind when the cameras come out.

Let the boss have his limelight, and empty his wallet at the bar, there's always the journey home over the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and that limo door looks a bit loose...

Tivo to return to UK in 2010

Title

Yay Tivo.

Shame it's Virgin though, they're absolute shite. Even if I could use them in my current house, I'd rather give up TV and the interwebs than give them money for their "service"

BBC publishes Freeview HD timetable

@The BigYin Posted Monday 16th November 2009 16:47 GMT

>any store showing a side-by-side comparison of (say) the same movie from a DVD vs Blue-ray.

I have. You can tell the difference. It is definitely a huge improvement.

But you can also tell that it's generally not worth the price hike. I'm perfectly happy with 99% of what I watch being at DVD quality on your average £500 36" TV.

Yes, if you're glued to thing all day, or you're obsessive about watching films with masses of special effects at the best quality you can, then fine, it's well worth it. But if you aren't, then keep your money for a while and wait until the price drops to a sensible level.

Judge Dredd 'Black Box' recorder/spy kit for guns unveiled

Ha!

You can almost hear the beancounters dribbling - "You fired 51 shots yesterday, but we only have 3 corpses. The price of a box of 48 shells will be deducted from your salary"

Ringback tones outselling ring tones

Hmm

That explains a couple of people I've hung up on recently. Never heard of them before.

Much as I'd prefer something more interesting than <ring><ring> the problem is that it's standardised and I don't have to think about it, I know it means the phone is ringing on the other end.

If you try to make me think when I shouldn't have to (i.e. "does this mean it's ringing, or have I dialled wrong"), then tough, I'm not wasting my time calling you. Stop making my life more complex, I'm perfectly capable of screwing it up without any help.

Kiwis slap 'vacant' sign on Paris Hilton

Wheee!

I usually try to refrain from doing this, but surely all that needs to be said is "Win"?

Red Hat enjoys fruit of recession

Not sure

Not sure it's just the recession. I suspect that Microsoft turning out a steaming pile of crapware (I hear "Vista" is what they prefer to call it) has had a compounding effect.

I've certainly sat in several meetings where Vista got crossed off the list immediately as a complete waste of time.

BOFH: Baitin' switch

Nice

I was just looking for a new way to get rid of a bean counter. I hadn't thought of encouraging them to investigate the hardware racks by fiddling with connectivity. It'll work though - they always yell when the pron^H^H^H^H online data feed slows down.

<reaches for screwdriver>

ID fraud prevention week fights UK's fastest growing crime

It's not complex

Make the bank responsible for all fraud by default. Make them prove that fraud was committed by the card owner. Then we'll get a proper secure scheme out of them (chip & spin anyone?)

As for the potentially much more scary crime of identity theft, that's a whole different kettle of fish and the law needs a lot of clarification. Ideally, to include government ministers being locked up when their departments are wilfully negligent.

Pluto still a planet, says Ronald McDonald

Umm,

they're wrong, either way you spin it.

If Pluto is not a planet, they should have left it off. If it is, then they've forgotten the others

My opinions on the exact rules of what is or is not a planet don't matter here, but if Pluto is a planet then McDonalds has failed to list the others. I can't find any reasonable rule (other than "because we said so") that would give us just 9 planets.

Ah well, off to BOfH, then a pint I think...

Early tech goes under hammer in London

Double failure

Ahh, Leo II. Possibly the last computer system where the vendor turned up and said "now how can we make this computer work for you", rather than "this is the computer, you will OBEY IT, you clones"

(I admit that this is probably me misreading "A Computer Called LEO", but it was a good read if you're interested in computing history, and it's heavily UK based - most computer history books are IBM centric)

Freeview website titsup ahead of big retune

Rats

I was checking their site to try to find out if there was a way to turn off the &^$ reminders. Every bloody time I turn the idiot box on, or change channel, another reminded.

FFS, I can read, and I'm sure the sudden vanishing of any channels next time I try to watch them would jog my memory. Although it might be a while - the "missing" ones are not ones I frequent often.

Home Office makes nice cartoon ID card ad

Ok

So there's one thing to add to the list of cuts our next government should make. £500k isn't a heck of a lot, but it's a start.

Twitter is mainly pointless babble and other rubbish

Really?

>Most of Twitter is pointless babble, spam and self promotion, a bunch of Texas-based marketing analysts with improbable nicknames has declared.

In other shock news, water is wet, bears sometimes relieve themselves in woods, and I like beer.

ISP redesign unites the web in nausea

oooh yuk

Does anyone know who designed it? I need to update my blacklists...

Jupiter takes a serious knock

Good

My understanding is that Jupiter is responsible for hoovering up loads of objects that would pose a serious threat to whatever ecospheres the other planets in our system have.

Because of Jupiter, it's quite likely that we will last long enough to wipe ourselves out by destroying the Earth's biosphere instead of being twonked by a rock.

Remind me, where did I leave that copy of Fallout? ;-)

Stop ID cards, says Scottish minister

Double failure

And in one sentence:

>The home secretary has made clear that the government remains fully committed to bringing forward measures to protect people's identity that have widespread public support

Failure 1: The ID card scheme will do little to protect people's identity. In fact, as the scheme is proposed currently, it will actually make things significantly worse.

Failure 2: the ID card scheme does not have widespread public support. Some people don't care. Some people are for it, but I've yet to find one who doesn't go over to the "anti" side once they spend 2 minutes reading the results of typing "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" into google. The majority of people are against it.

11 Time Lords plan charity shindig

Hmm,

I personally don't want my memories of Dr Who sullied by seeing how the actors have aged.

I mean, I know Tom Baker has aged superbly, but I saw him regenerate when he was young goddammit, and the current Tom Baker doesn't look like Dr Who, it just doesn't work. Exactly as a number of others have pointed out, this is just another damn good reason to go to the pub instead of sitting in front of the idiot box and desperately wanting to throw things at it.

I can't believe I was posting after about 20 other comments and no one has even hinted at Peter Cushing...

BT deposits Wi-Fi in cashpoints

Easy money!

OoOoOoh, that's nice. Only last week I was reading about ATMs that have been so compromised that they hand over credit card numbers, CVV, PIN, expiry dates and inside leg measurements because they have a certain malware on them. Wireless probably removes the need for physical access to the machine to install the malware.

So what we do when ID Cards 1.0 finally dies?

untitled

I've seen stuff like this before, and I can't fault it - essentially, you own your identity, and retain a decent level of control over it, without compromising organisations abilities to keep track of information about you that is *relevant* to them. It would stop identity theft overnight, and provide a solid *secure* workable framework for law enforcement, entitlement claims, travel and anything else where some numpty seems to want your inside leg measurement before tying your credit record to the wrong person.

It will never happen - the government and corporations want control, not our freedom.

Homer Simpson speaks out on satnavs

Hmm

I found Yoda to be the best voice so far. Not because of the actual voice, but his grammar is actually very helpful because it gives you the information you actually need up front, and your brain filters out the rest of it.

For example, standard voices say things like "at the next junction, turn left", but Yoda says "left you must turn, at the next junction".

Most of the other voices have been tried for a couple of hundred miles, and then deleted as the novelty wears off.