Posts by Tom

Virgin Media pilots 200Mbit service

A nice headline figure.

But most of us Virgin customers are still on a lousy 2mb connection. Whatever happened to the across the board increase to 10mb that was promised- right after they announced price increases from May 1st?

Male chimps strike 'meat for sex' deals

Am I the only one..

who read it as "Male chimps stroke meat for sex"

Acer sued for shipping Vista-book with GB of memory

So what's the problem?

"Shortly after purchasing, they discovered that "their computer would not run properly and that it experienced numerous 'crashes,' 'freezing,' and was operating very slowly."

It seems to have been working normally then, despite the possible lack of RAM.

Etailer flogs signed Jade Goody biog for £1,000

Max Clifford taking the moral high ground?

That is so funny...

Seven Japanese poisoned by blowfish 'nads

Now I understand...

.. the ubiquitous health warnings on eerything edible these days..

"May contain traces of nuts"

Will the chef get the sack?

McKinnon wins extradition delay

Asperger's Syndrome?

Yet another Mickey Mouse "disability" - no doubt his blue badge application is in progress. He was smart enough to do the crime, now he should face up to the consequences.

Where has all the bad storage gone?

Syncback

it's free, it's highly configurable and it works. Coupled with an external drive it's even convenient enough for a lazy git like me.

What the heck is an IT Architect anyway?

It makes me smile every time.

using the term architect in the software design sense is soooo pretentious. It's all about people with low self esteem trying to give themselves a percieved (by them anyway) boost in status, an air of professionalism.

Hitachi UT32MH70 32in LCD TV

Re-enforced?

Now what sort of a word is that?

Meat Loaf gets Q gong

Au contraire..

Fat outta hell is a masterpiece compared that piece of lightweight fluff, Bohemian Raphsody, which was sung by a bunch of tights-wearing frilly shirted nancy boys.

MS wields price cutlass at Chinese pirates

It's a cultural thing.

Copyright is a western concept. Culturally it has no place in China where such a concept is alien.

What do M$ expect, for the world to change to fit in with their business plan?

Phorm: Our business is fine, honest

My theory..

BT would have distanced themselves from this long ago, if they were able. I suspect they are stuck with contractual obligations which they can't get out of.

And that piece of slime K*nt entrails would I suspect, be more than happy to take them to the cleaners for breach of contract if BT decided to drop Phorm. They are perhaps stuck between a rock and a hard place. Not that I have any sympathy for them, bastards.

@David

"I'm curious how TalkTalk intend to pitch such an system if it will indeed be opt-in, what arm twisting will they offer customers in order to allow their web surfing to be sniffled for (TalkTalk's) profit?"

The product is called webwise, and it plays upon the naivety of punters by offering them a questionalbe anti-phishing filter as bait. This is the trade off that they are offering in exchange for their data pimping.

Colonel: Bowman army comms 'astonishingly bad'

Speaking in clear?

Not when i were a lad, and we were using Clansman. Anything sensiitive or potentially useful to an eavesdropper had to be manually encoded, a laborious and complex task using Batco sheets, before transmission. The only time clear was used was during a contact.

I really feel for the squaddies who are saddled with Bowman, they have a hard enough job to do wthout being lumbered with crap kit.

Phorm papers reveal BT's backwards approach to wiretap law

Re. Virgin.Media involvement.

Notice how the Virgin logo has vanished ftom the webwise.com home page? Significant? As a VM customer, I sincerely hope so.

http://www.webwise.com/

Clone dog mistress denies she is 'sex in chains' McKinney

If cloning form DNA had been available back in the 1970's

.. she could have had 5 Kirk Andersons' creathed from the scrapings of his todger.

Congestion charge means less traffic, more congestion

There is another angle of course...

With the western extension the zone is now much larger than it originally was. Which means that Kensington and Chelsea, the most densely populated local authoruty in the country, has contributed many thousands of reisdents with their 90% resident's discount.

There are a lot more vehicles in the zone now, they don't have to enter to contribute to congestion.

PS @steve.. speaking as a moto cyclist who uses ASLs and bus lanes with impunity, get over yourself and stop being so bloody narrow minded.

Sutton Police bribe kids to behave

I live in Sutton

It's got the biggest nick in the world, built at vast expense a few years ago. But you never, ever see a copper on the streets. I think they must all be too comfy in their new palatial residence.

And as for the kids, well it's not exactly da ghetto around here.

Stray left foot washes up on Vancouver beach

Ah yes...

This will be an evolved sub-species of the Sole.

Son of 419 victim contacts El Reg

Am I the only one

who read this as nothing more than a subtle variation on the ol' 419 scam. How much did you send him?

Virgin Media distances itself from Phorm 'adoption' claims

At last..

Virgin have been sitting on the fence for so long they must have splinters in their corporate arses. I wrote to them some time ago asking them to clarify their position. I made it clear that if they adopted phorm that I would be voting with my feet. They never bothered to respond, which impressed me greatly.

Another nail in kunt's coffin..

'We could wake up smarter' - Ballmer hints at Win XP reprieve

Dusty old kit?

My employer is still specifying XP on all new PCs. This is a site with over 2000 desktops and Dell is the monopoly supplier. Corporate policy is strictly no Vista, so I am curious as to what will happen come 30th June.

Judge issues arrest warrant for Darth Vader

Literacy is clearly not a Jedi strng point..

The spelling and grammar on that website leave a lot to be desired. I think the farce is with them.

Congo lynch mobs attack penis-snatching sorcerers

it's true I tell you!

i am a victim of this heinous crime.

At least, that's my excuse for being a little light in the lunchbox.

Windows Vista update 'kills' USB devices

A cunning plan..

Disabling keyboards solves the potential problem of keyloggers at a stroke... pure genius!

Windows defender is living up to it's name.

BBC vs ISPs: Bandwidth row escalates as Tiscali wades in

Why should i pay?

I for one have absolutely zero desire to watch tv, either streamed or transmitted. Why should I pay extra to finance the extra bandwidth?

It seems logical to me that if you want to watch a tv programme, you do so on your tv set. The internet is too valuable a commodity to be wasted on streaming poxy soap operas etc.

Just out of interest, I wonder where this sits with regard to tv licensing. If one were to watch streaming bbc content, would one need a tv license?

Liverpudlians decapitate Ringo Starr

A a a a carm down carm down

Scousers know the meaning of culture?

Dey doo do don't dey?

Microsoft gives XP an extra two years to live (kinda)

Backups and slipstreaming

Acronis True Image works for me too, but why bother faffing about with DVD-Rs? Install a second hard disc (or an external one) and backup to that.

For slipstreaming, try Nlite- it works beautifully. Not only can you integrate patches, service packs, drivers etc, you can also add things like serial number and prefs, and remove such things as IE 7 and Windows Media player. The whole thing is GUI based.

When you are done you can burn the whole lot to a bootable CD. It's a great little utility, and it's free.

Nvidia drivers named as lead Vista crash cause in 2007

A little spin needed here.

Whilst I have so far managed to avoid Vista, I have been using Nvidia cards on XP for years (not a conscious decision, just the way things worked out).

I have never had a problem (at least, that I am aware of) with Nvidia drivers.

Therefore it seems to me that, rather than Nvidia drivers breaking Vista, it is the other way around.

7000 Leap Year Babies attack Steve Ballmer

Let's see now..

"How do you explain to a five-year-old, that they won't receive a birthday card from Geoffrey over at Toys R Us this year, because the Toys R Us computer has no way to recognize their birthday?" asks Society spokeswoman Raenell Dawn.

Well, surely anyone who was born on Feb 29th will not have a birthday until they are four, and then again when they are eight. So why would they expect a card when they are five?

Or alternatively, anyone born on Feb 29th who had had 5 birthdays, would be 20 years old. Now why would a 20 year old expect a card from Geoffrey the giraffe?

Macs seized by porn Trojan

RSPlug ?

Arseplug? What kind of website was this anyway. a gay one?

Can we therefore surmise that MACs tend to attract more gays than Winboxes?

eBay employee 'torpedos' fraud trial

In fairness,

I have been actively using ebay since 1999, and over the course of several hundred transactions have had very few problems. Where the occasional item has not turned up, I have eventually recieved satisfaction fro the seller or Paypal.

The thing that I hate about ebay is the abuse of the feedback system. I know of one seller who recieved a huge number of negative feedbacks, including one from me. His immediate response is to neg the buyer, purely out of spite. The result is the innocent party gettig tarred with the same brush as the shyster.

Google leaps on patent reform bandwagon

They blew you off?

Can I have that phone number?

Broadbandit nabbed in Wi-Fi bust

Just to muddy the waters a little further.

Wasn't there a case in the US a while back where a guy was charged with sitting outside a coffee shop and plugging in to their "free" network. IIRC the coffee shop owner did not want to press charges, but the guy was done anyway.

Reed seeks project engineer at £2k per hour

Shame..

There was me thinking a couple of hours a week would do me. So I clicked through, and the rate has gone down to £20-25 per hour.

Virgin Media boss in shock exit

Another + vote for Virgin

Years ago I suffered appalling problems and dire customer service with Telewest. I swore I would never go back. I got sucked in by the Virgin ad campaign and signed up back in March.

I have had a few teething problems, but the customer service has been good and the 2mb cable internet has been rock solid reliable ( and a lot faster than the flakey "8mb" ADSL service I was getting from Zen and Orange/Wanadoo.

Admittedly, the tv content is pure shite, but taken as a whole TV, broadband, landline & mobile for £40 pm is a pretty good deal.

Motorcycle News in shot M40 biker ad gaffe

Unfortunate yes, but..

.. that picture is of a Harley Sportster. No self-respcting Hells Angel would be seen dead (ahem) on a Sportster, which is widely regarded as a girlie bike.

Chinese firm claims World of Warcraft stole its fonts

That's almost funny..

Considering that China is one of the biggest markets for pirate software..

I seem to recall that the chinese do not see piracy as a problem, because they have (or at least, had) no concept of copyright in their culture.

Earth will feel the heat from 2009: climate boffins

Amazing innit?

They don't even know what the weather is going to do tomorrow, never mind in 2 years time.

Dutch police arrest six in 419 scam

Victim?

He is only a victim of his own stupidity and greed. I can't believe that people still fall for this crap.

AK47: the open-source weapon that took the world by storm

Interesting stuff...

I think more should have been made of the differences between the AK and the British army SA80. I was in the army in the late 80s when my unit converted from the SLR to the SA80. We were not allowed to call it "SA80" because we were getting it 10 years after the supposed intro date. Instead it was officialy referred to as the "Rifle, 5.56." in back-to-front army speak.

It was an expemsive, over-engineered, fragile piece of junk which was almost universally reviled. At the time the inevitable comparisons were made with the "soldier-proof" AK and it's legendary ruggedness.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.67GHz desktop processor

Intel Thermal Analysis Tool

My understanding is that this utility is only intended to be used with mobile CPUs. It cannot be relied upon to be accurate for other Intel products ( in fact, the consensus seems to be that it is way off).

Microsoft re-assures partners on Vista compatibility

LOL @ Anonymous..

"All companies need a steady stream of income in order to survive in a capitalist system. It just astounds me how the intellectual immaturity of some people think this is unique to Microsoft."

Of course they do, it does not take a genius to figure that one out. What they also need is a product that people either want or need. Vista hardly falls into this category.

An OS too far..

The MS business model is, I think, ultimately doomed. This is an OS that nobody needed or wanted. All it brings to the table is a little eye candy (and clearly a lot of compatibility problems)

They should concentrate on fixing one OS before bringing out another( XP is actually pretty good, IMHO).

Of course there is no revenue in fixing existing OS problems, they have to keep bringing out "new" OSs in an attempt to keep milking the cash cow. Sooner or later people will wise up.

Gates loses 'World's richest' crown

Easy

"FFS his worth has gone up by 10 billion this year!

Can anyone explain this?"

Have you seen the price of M$ software lately?

Day-of-silence protest hits Net radio

Who cares?

Net radio is a stupid idea, and a waste of bandwith. If people want to listen to a radio, why don't they just switch a radio on?

Glory fades on Novell's Microsoft deal

Some mistake here surely...

$91m / 49000 = $1857 per license?

Pay-as-you-drive roads coming to the UK

It's just another tax..

As some-one who drives in London every day (on two wheels, so the congestion charge does not directly effect me), I am absolutely certain that the majority of problems are caused by bad traffic management, not by volume of traffic.

An awful lot of delays are caused by badly phased traffic signals, mostly unnecessary red and pedestrian phases. I know of some places where traffic signals exist on straight roads, with no junctions or crossings. Their purpose is purely to act as a deterrent to private vehicles.

Purely by coincidence (ahem), traffic signals in London are operated by TfL, part of Red Ken's evil empire. During the "consultation" on extending the congestion zone it is a well known fact that they used traffic signal phasing to cause congestion, which disappeared (with a little tweaking of the phasing) once the zone was in force.

BMW helps nail 105mph V-sign biker

Gust of wind?

Now, we dont- it's irrelevant. A motorcycle travelling at speed has a huge amount of forward mometum and it would take more than a gust of wind. A hurricane maybe.