Posts by Ventilator

Fiat Panda Cross: 'Interesting-looking' Multipla spawn hits UK

Re: 80 bhp?

I remember that Fifth Gear episode. What the Range Rover could do, crucially, that the Panda couldn't was get out of the quarry that they did the test in!

Pop-up ad man: SORRY we made such a 'hated tool', netizens

Ad Hoc

Pop-ups on porn sites? Well, who'd have thought it!

We got behind the wheel of a Tesla S electric car. We didn't hate it

Re "I was going to buy one of these..."

You appear to have chosen the "Joke Alert" icon by mistake.

Nokia finally gives Ovi brand a mercy bullet

RIP OVI. Gone but not mourned

OVI software has already been a major contributing factor in my decision to never have another Nokia phone, despite swearing by them until recently (I now swear AT them).

OVI insisted on syncing every picture on my laptop with my handset; over 100 gig of photo's (grandchildren, canals, cars...not what you were thinking!), 32 gig of memory on the phone.

Despite trying every setting available in OVI I couldn't persuade it to just sync to one folder, even though the settings appeared to tell it to. It was, with the Nokia/Microsoft alliance, the last straw.

Samsung Galaxy for me now. Superb phone.

Scotland bans smut. What smut? Won't say

Ignorance, eh? Don't come that, laddie!

So, this proposal takes 'ignorance of the law is no defence' and expands it to make 'it ignorance of the law is no defence even if you're ignorant of what it is you're ignorant of within the law that you're ignorant of, you ignoramus'.

I can see 'Scot free' disappearing as a phrase altogether, soon. I'm so glad my ancestors had the sense to leave Scotland and settle in Manchester many generations back.

No doubt the Scots feel the same!

Couple crash into church, curse satnav

Prat Nav

'Nuff said!

Smartphone makers to embrace multi-core chips

Dual core processor..

and a battery the size of heaven knows what to power it for more than a few hours!

Another solution looking for a problem to solve.

Thousands of 'sexsomniacs' suffering in silence, say profs

Typo

Has anyone who read Subban's post had the same thought as me? "Sleep walking" appears to be ALMOST correct.....

Mine's the one with tissues in the pocket....

ID cards poster girl laments her £30

Hell hath no fury

like a dirt-bag gossip columnist parted ever so easily from her £30

Alien, 'cos surely she's from another planet? UK Earthlings knew the ID card scheme was doomed.

Carphone Warehouse splits with self

Re 'experts'

After a 9-week 'training' course? I don't hold out much hope. I expect epic PC World-like failure.

I once confused a PFY in Currys several years ago. It was when 100Hz televisions were just coming out at a premium over their lesser 50Hz brethren. I innocently enquired why I should pay more for twice as many flickers.

Cue much furrowing of brows and accompanied head-scratching before giving up and telling me, "I'll have to ask my manager."

I left before he embarrassed himself further.

'Fat birds get laid sooner, have more one-night stands'

Hand raised in shame

Had to read it twice to confirm article related to the feathered variety.... zero out of ten for observation.

9/11 pager messages released on Wikileaks

Why?

Just what do they hope to achieve by this? Haven't the poor sods who lost loved ones when the Twin Trade Towers collapsed suffered enough, without dragging this up?

Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see the need for this.

Microsoft hit with lawsuit over Xbox memory card ban

Sony? Evil...surely not....

"on the other hand #

By Matt 13 Posted Tuesday 24th November 2009 11:56 GMT

there is the evil sony corporation with their reliable consoles, free online gaming experience, Full Blueray & full HD capability and encouraging users to fit a generic hard drive inside the

machine or use an ordinary usb hard drive for storage.........

*Im not a fanboi, I just dont like being done dry!!!"

Troll, well that is just blatently obvious!!! :)

Oh yeah...use a generic disk, but EVERY time you take it out and reinsert it I'll install a new version of the OS on it and wipe your existing data, because you're obviously using it for illegal purposes..oh and by the way, I'll use a proprietary file system which means you can't back it up or read it with a PC/MAC.

Use an ordinary USB hard drive.......providing it's FAT formatted. If, like me, you're using a Win7 PC (forget the flaming, I have reasons) you'll have to download a utility that supports FAT, because Win 7 doesn't!

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

Silence is Golden....though somewhat tarnished

"The Tories took away our right to silence (1994) #

By yossarianuk Posted Tuesday 24th November 2009 12:44 GMT

We have no had right to silence since 1994. The last conservative government took that away ..."

Familiar with the current Police caution, as required by PACE, are you?

In case you're not, I'll quote it here, from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 2005, Section G paragraph 3.5:

"The caution, which must be given on arrest, should be in the following terms:

“You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not

mention when questioned something which you later rely on in Court. Anything

you do say may be given in evidence.”

Additionally, to allow for imperfect recall , section 3.6 states:

"Minor deviations from the words of any caution given in accordance with this Code do

not constitute a breach of this Code, provided the sense of the relevant caution is

preserved."

So the right to silence is alive and well under PACE, but under RIPA it's a presumption of guilt and punishable by imprisonment.

Under any circumstances a sizeable deviation from the established principle of law that says that a person is presumed innocent until PROVEN guilty.

Orange touts free tweets

More like it...

"@Anonymous Coward #

By Tom Chiverton 1 Posted Tuesday 17th November 2009 15:32 GMT

"twitter number you text begins 07624"

No it doesn't, it's a 5 digit short code... dunno who you've been texting !"

Now that makes more sense, since most (all?) mobile networks charge for texts to short codes.

Not an IoM number

@AC 14:01 07624 is not an Isle of Man number you muppet! It's allocated to Manx Telecom (meaning they have the rights to use it) but the 07 number range is reserved for personal numbers, paging and mobile telephony, so texts to this number will be part of bundles.

The Isle of Man area code, if you're interested, is 01624.

Revolting postmen force early Windows 7 launch

Amazon

@ Neil Williams 1

My pre-ordered copies of Windows 7 Home Premium arrived bright and early this morning courtesy of those nice people at DHL and Amazon.

O2 finds new way to bind iPhone users

Just a small point....

"By Jessica Werkz Posted Tuesday 6th October 2009 12:42 GMT

"Except in the not -so-trivial areas of reception and battery life."

The reception issue has nothing to do with iPhones and everything to do with O2 coverage, so I would get the same O2 coverage problem with any mobile that O2 provide (did I have to spell this out)."

Er....the ability of a phone to receive a signal is very much dependent on two things; the strength of the signal (yes, I know it's obvious, but given previous posts here it bears saying anyway) and the sensitivity of the phone.

I have a Nokia N96 and it gets a better signal in the same building than a colleague's Sony Ericson W995.

It appears from various blogs and forum posts around the net that the iPhone isn't very good at picking up marginal signals - and that impacts on the battery life, too.

Orange data users turning red as data dries up

Going down part 2...

Forgot to mention that my girlfriend lives in the Midlands around the Leicestershire/Warwickshire border....seems from those who've stated a location that this is centred around the Midlands.....is this anything to do with that recent survey that stated people would leave the area if they could? Have Orange taken it too literally?

Going down

My Girlfriend is on Orange BB, was Ok for her at 07:00 this morning, crashed about 08:00, still off at the moment.

Wonderful MS Network diagnostics told her that there was a problem with the (perfectly functioning) wireless connection between her (WinXP) PC and the router!!!

I'd like to echo Jimbo09990's comment about a status page on the Orange website. Why isn't there one? Orange too afraid to admit they may have problems, perhaps?

Well done Orange for keeping your customers fully informed and living up to your 'excellent customer service' standards. In case there are any Orange people (I'm sure they'd stand out in a crowd!) reading this, yes, that was sarcasm.

Office 2010 to come loaded with WGA's bastard child

If only the software was a reasonable price....

then people wouldn't need to pirate/crack it. I'd pay £25-30 for Windows, £30-50 for Office Enterprise Edition, and I suspect a lot of people would too. So, if MS actually want to stop people using illegal copies of their software, CUT THE FUCKING PRICE!!!!!

Simples.

UK population to abandon Midlands

No wonder people want to leave the Midlands...

when the Orange coverage in the village I live in at weekends (I work in Preston during the week) in an almost flat area of the Midlands round the Leicestershire/Warwickshire and not far from Staffordshire borders is appalling. A deep-seated dislike for 02 and Vodafone and the fact that round the rest of the country I don't have any problems keeps me with Orange, but I wish to God they'd do something about coverage in some areas of the remote English countryside.

I'm a Staffordshire lad and I'd love to work in the Midlands, spend more time at home with my other half (we're soppy enough to actually miss each other when we're not together) and enjoy the more relaxed life but as a freelance telecommunications engineer I have to go where the work is....apart from London. I just refuse to live or work there. Done it before, hated every minute and won't go back. One-way pavements during rush-hours morning and evening, people who either ignore you or assault you, perpetual grime, sardine-like 'comfort' on the tube and horrendously overpriced to boot.

Feel free to abandon the Midlands, folks. Perhaps I'll be able to find a job there after you've all gone, and then maybe I can live the life I'd like to.

BMW's X6 turns eco

Aim, fire...bugger, missed!!

And BMW miss the point again. Stupendously ugly car, stupendously stupid concept. A Hybrid X6? FFS!!

The steering will still be off and it'll automatically head for Lane 3 on the motorway, and in order for the 1.6 miles to be achieved the indicators (which frequently don't work on BeeEms anyway) will be totally disabled.

High Court shields database state from blame

I thought sex in a public place was frowned on....

but it's Ok for the Legislature to shaft a guy in court?

If this doesn't highlight the crushing need for an overhaul of our legal system nothing will.

I'm not one, I'm an IT contractor, but I've worked closely with many Civil Servants over the last few years (can't tell you who, where or why, the OSA gets in the way) and many of them are just trying to do the best they can in miserable circumstances, but there are some who make the most almight cock-ups and instead of getting fired (as I would if I made such an error) they get promoted or gently shunted sideways. Accountability? Lip service at best!

Cisco thanks customers after website outage

Lost e-commerce 2

Customers generally buy from a distributor, as Anonymous Coward says, but even if distributors were ordering direct from the Cisco website I doubt they lost business through the outage; they may have got some annoyed calls asking why they couldn't deal with orders but at worst they'll have just delayed things a little...no beig deal there, really.

The biggest worry must be what this has to their reputation!