* Posts by Andy Bright

747 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2006

Google cheers anti-Comcast legislation

Andy Bright
Happy

Yes we need an authorative position on this

Let's go look it up on the WikiWeb of truth, honesty and infallible accuracy. But not an ordinary Wiki, oh no! We require one with no bias.

Ever since the Reg alerted me to the presence of the Wiki equivalent of Fox News, I obtain all my authoritative information from there.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

I now am fully cognizant to the fact that not only do dragons exist, but they were often mistaken as dinosaurs and are still roaming the wild today.

"Dinosaurs were created on day 6 of the creation week, approximately 6,000 years ago."

"Dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants; pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning."

"Descriptions of dragons are widespread and match descriptions of dinosaurs, suggesting that dragons were real creatures and were actually dinosaurs."

"Creatures matching dinosaurs (and by dinosaurs they mean dragons) and similar creatures (dragons?) have been described by various people groups."

I could go on and on, but it is clear that the direction of these authoritative views from seasoned scientists (ok creationists, but that's nearly the same thing - it has 'ist' at the end) is that dragons exist, and we can expect to find one any day alive and well and probably living in Loch Ness.

So I shall now look up what they have to say about net neutrality, Comcast and Google. Obviously if it's on the internet it must be true, so I shall be forced to believe every word I read.

Legal attack dogs chase software pirates from eBay

Andy Bright

eBay..

I prefer El Reg's description, 'Tat Bazaar' .. :D

I wonder if you can make a living picking out warez and sending it in. I believe that might be the only way you could make decent money from eBay these days.

Thing is I always wondered why people get so upset when they receive the wrong item from eBay. Surely one piece of tat is more or less equal to another? You may think you bought a toaster, but if a world-class piece of toast in the shape of the virgin Mary arrives instead, surely that's a winner?

Inventor promises bottle-o-wind car in a year. Again

Andy Bright
Thumb Up

I just don't believe it

Not a single person has stated the obvious source of unlimited fuel for such a vehicle. One's wife or girlfriend. Surely when you factor in the copious amounts of hot air generated by those graced with marriage or long term relationships, the potential for unlimited, clean fuel means the search for alternative energy to power our vehicles is all but over.

Personally I reckon my wife could power one of these things for 1000km (625m) at least - from a single phone call to one of her friends, and I would assume most chaps more aesthetically pleasing halves could match our mpp with ease (miles per phone call).

Suicidal moose descends on Alaska

Andy Bright

Moose stop for traffic lights

Yes really, in some of the smaller cities not only have Moose been captured on CCTV wandering into hospitals and supermarkets or playing in sprinklers - but have been seen stopping for red lights, which in my mind debunks the myth they're oversized lemmings. Apparently they learned through trial and error that the red light means large vehicles coming fast.

As for the Canadian language comments, weird, because Alaska is actually a US state. Point of fact you'd be more accurate doing a GW impression what with all the Texans digging up every patch of ground looking for oil. "Let's split Alaska in two so we can make Texas the 3rd largest state."

The unofficial state bird is the mosquito. Anyone that's been here during the summer will understand.

Cold? We have all four seasons I'll have you know - June, July, August and Winter.

So yeah, come up here to see the majestic mountains, watch glaciers crash into the sea, travel down colourful rivers (minerals and all that), catch king salmon - then get run over by a moose and eaten by a bear.

Telephones? We have the best communications system in the country. No bandwidth throttling or limited downloads in Alaska. My 7Mbit connection has been rock solid for over 3 years. No inconsistent Comcast bullshit, if you pay for 7Mbits, you get 7Mbits and the only variation in speed is upwards.

Academics propose carbon-capture kit for cars

Andy Bright
Dead Vulture

People have missed the boat on this one.. literally..

Look with the seas about to rise about 12 meters in the near future (500 years or so), literally everyone that drives will own environmentally sound sail boats.

So why bother all this green stuff, why stress over whether bio-fuels will actually produce more CO2 than sticking to gasoline (petrol), or whether the sea really is a great place to dump nuclear waste (why not, it's bottomless and all set to give us another 12 meters of protection). The fuss over whether our local chippies will double as dirty bombs when they fry up all those 3-headed fish is just more lentil-fueled hippy talk.

Because we all know that despite the itsy bitsy issue of spent fuel rods, newqueuelar is an awesomely clean energy source, and tons of it available too.

We also know that the development of glow-in-the-dark dogs is proceeding at a depressingly slow pace, and the answer to both our problems are staring us in the face.

A nuclear power station in your own back yard.

*Penguins because they really ought to start the rebellion, and quite soon if the thing about Antartic self-dissolving is anything close to being accurate.

EU menaces migrants with border biometrics, dragnets

Andy Bright

Will we get..

our own Towers of Sauron?

London Congestion Charge becomes CO2 tax

Andy Bright
Dead Vulture

Bah

As long as the previously mentioned gadget that will determine the distance between my car-boat and the ground on which we used to walk is included as standard, drivers won't give a fuck about the environment. After all what would you choose? Less driving or some fancy gadget that can predict the height required for your house stilts?

Besides, surely the penguins will revolt and deep-freeze the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with able assistance from mutinous monkey butlers, and an alliance with the fleets of (low emission) robot deathbots.

I give the human race another 10-15 years before the AI that controls the roving air-fleet of robot war machines decides we are the single largest threat to the world, and subsequently eradicates us all.

All ground-based vehicles, together with their human masters, will be incinerated by robotic petrol pump attendants, and any attempt to flee will be curtailed by legions of satanic vacuum cleaners and portaloos.

And you lot are worried about paying a few extra quid to drive through London, fools the lot of you. The apocalypse awaits, and no amount of pandering to the machines by fifth columnists like Ken Livingstone can avert our eventual doom.

Comcast: Our BitTorrent busting is 'best in class'

Andy Bright

False Advertising

The answer is quite simple, be honest about the service you provide. It is prohibitively expensive to provide maximum bandwidth 100% of the time to 100% of customers, in fact it's probably impossible.

The US is currently, and very slowly, upgrading it's comms, but atm it still largely relies on 1960s and 1970s tech to push internet into people's homes.

While areas of fiber connections exist, and certainly the backbone of the internet has been upgraded, the majority of users are limited to whatever their local cable or telephone companies can afford to install.

So again, the answer is simple - be honest about what you can and can not provide. Comcast are arseholes. They lie about service, are a monopoly and can get away with it. They do not just throttle back torrents, they throttle back ALL internet service. But they're also not alone. Just about every major cable internet provider in the contiguous 48 states does the same thing.

The thing that gets me is in a state like Alaska, with it's remote locations, huge areas, unfriendly weather and a host of other difficulties has providers that offer a far superior service than most of the "easy" states. The reason for this is the local telecommunications companies have invested heavily in their infrastructure and continue to do so every year. It may be convenient to suggest that providing internet to 1/2 million customers is an easier proposition - but it also means a lot less money. So if they can afford to keep their equipment uptodate, purchase sufficient bandwidth and offer services with no throttling and no limitations on the downloads, why can't the rest?

Personally I think the monopolies in the lower 48 states should be broken up, because it's clear to me that smaller, independent providers can provide a far superior service with more consistent connection speeds.

As for unlimited downloads, this is something you pay for here. You can have the same service as everyone else for the same price as everyone else, or you can pay more and get unlimited uploads/downloads.

But having used both services, and having used torrents to download things like Linux, software updates and maybe the odd movie - I've never been subject to any sort of throttling.

Brazilian cleaner spots security hole in Heathrow e-borders

Andy Bright

LET HER STAY

We need people like this.. immediately naturalise her and then offer her a position in the England football team. I'm thinking left back or at last someone with some sound decision making skills to partner John Terry.

See the absolute genius part about this story is not only did she show some front in just running away, but donning cleaning gear and blending in proves her planning and organisational skills are pretty impressive too.

Then to think "fuck it, if they're that shit I might as well go work somewhere that should be one of the most secure buildings in the country", was just icing on the cake.

I think for sheer front she should be given citizenship immediately. And given the complete shower of a generation we have coming through right now, we could use a few more imports like this.

Fuck it, phone up someone important in Brazil and let them know anyone that's willing to do a decent day's work can come to this country, with one provision. They have to prove they can get past security and immigration without documentation.

We can make room by kicking out a dozen hoodied, chav-speaking yoofs for each one we give a passport to.

US spooks see Sadville as potential terrorist paradise

Andy Bright
Black Helicopters

Maybe they're on to something here!!!

I've noticed that World of Warcraft has become increasingly unreliable, and my toon dies far more regularly due to crashes occuring at precisely the worst moment.

I must admit I never thought of blaming it all on Al Quaeda. And if you think about it, it all makes sense.

For some reason, even the most 'normal' people have been sucked irretrievably into some virtual game or another. Usually WoW, but others have their share of victims.

So what better way to strike at the hearts of the American public than to corrupt their online gaming worlds with money laundering and *gasp* spying!

I'm not exactly sure what they're spying on, or which avatars/toons/etc they believe will give them critical government secrets from the real world, but I'm sure the CIA have got it all worked out. And thank god they do, because it also never occurred to me that the toons living inside my monitor were actually looking back at me and watching what I was doing. All it would take is some poor soul to get so caught up in WoW he starts playing it at work, and the inner workings of a nuclear power plant or the offices of the FBI will be laid bare to the spies living inside their computers.

More remote workers squatting next door's broadband

Andy Bright
Flame

Usual Bullshit Excuses.

Stealing WiFi is stealing WiFi, regardless of whether the connection is secured or not. Nothing makes it right, and you're nothing but a leach who's too cheap to buy your own connection.

Most of us make our money selling or fixing the computers owned by people who don't fully understand how to use them. To suggest that they don't deserve to have access to the internet is complete and utter bullshit.

Tell you what, if you use Firefox it's okay for me to install keyloggers on your computer because I know an exploit that will allow me to do so, and you didn't turn off the exploitable feature. That must mean you're okay with my keylogging software, which means you're fine with me using anything of value that software returns. After all as long as you don't know I'm doing it, I'm not breaking any law. And as long as my data transfer doesn't use much of your bandwidth, I'm not doing you any harm.

Hey look, I took your car without permission, but I didn't crash it so I didn't do anything illegal. After all you were stupid enough to not install an alarm system so that makes it ok for me to do so any time I want.

Internet connections are paid for, they have value and stealing them for your own use is as real as stealing any other possession they own. You lot apparently think it's ok because either the owner won't notice you've stolen it or doesn't deserve to own it in the first place because they don't know how to protect themselves from thieves.

Maybe learning how to secure wifi routers is easy, but even if doing so did represent any sort of meaningful protection, it still doesn't make it okay for you to take advantage of the uneducated and thieve their possessions.

Seven per cent of doctors are mad: Official

Andy Bright

re: GPs race to panic stations as usual

Not really, what you are suggesting is there's nothing wrong with over 4000 cards needed to access personal, and possibly damaging information going walkabout.

Yes this is slightly less than 1% of the cards issued, but that's actually an extremely large percentage for things like this.

I accept that just because something has been lost doesn't mean it was necessarily found by someone who knew how to use it or even what it was, but the very fact the possibility exists is troubling and given the numbers would be enough for most reasonable people to decide this isn't a particularly secure system of access.

What I would be interested to know is the time it takes to a/find out a card is missing and b/once found to be missing, how long it takes to unauthorise it's access.

My guess is most people that lose them take too long to report the loss, usually because they have to stump up something like a 10 or 20 quid to have it replaced, or they're too embarrassed to admit they lost it.

Eventually they'll have to do so, because for whatever reason, they'll no longer be able to borrow one from someone else and won't be able to do their jobs.

But in the mean time there's plenty of opportunity for miscreants to peruse medical records for things like aids victims or other vulnerable groups.

So yes it is serious, and no doctors are not overreacting by opting out.

DHS official moots Real ID rules for buying cold medicine

Andy Bright

ID in the US

Actually it has less in common with Nazi Germany, who were mainly about persecuting one particular ethnic group, and more like the old Soviet block.

Snatching people for torture and interrogation, no unauthorised travel (remember, the DHS now requires airlines to submit passenger lists for travel authorisation) and indefinite imprisonment in internment camps without the right to know why you've been imprisoned, or the right to see the evidence against you.

As for refusing ID at security check points, well good luck with that. If you are asked for it, then I can 100% guarantee the person asking has no clue they are breaking the law, and will not hesitate to refuse entry if you refuse or to have you detained if you attempt to argue your way through. Certainly the people around you, being Americans, will be equally ignorant, obnoxious and determined to put in their 2 cents. Which means you will be carted off by popular consent.

On the other hand I have been through security check points which on many occasions were manned by people that do know the law. The only document required is a boarding pass. It is not illegal for you to pass by without one, however the airlines themselves are legally allowed to set rules of their own provided they don't break any laws. Requiring their customers to prove they've bought a ticket in order to reach a departure gate and before they're allowed to board a plane breaks no laws and discriminates against no one.

Unfortunately in this country, there is an astonishing and completely irrational fear permeating society that allows government to undo centuries of struggle for civil rights, overnight.

So I have no doubt the first attempt to get a British-style national ID card passed into law will be successful provided they throw in the required buzzwords, terrorism, ID theft and children. No particular order required.couple of factually incorrect commercials to get an ID card through congress.

Dutch fire up petrol-pumping robot

Andy Bright

Security

Britain (and I'm British) has the worst car crime outside of most warzones and probably worse than many of those.

It is also the only country I know of that has locks on its petrol caps by default. Yes there are cars in the US that do, but generally you have to buy them and generally people don't.

That's because even somewhere like Britain the odds of being robbed of your petrol are remote to say the least. And in most countries outside of Europe, petrol just doesn't cost enough to risk ruining a nice shirt when you attempt to siphon.

So my guess the only people likely to be incinerated by an angry robot are those from our blessed Isle..

iRobot inks deal for laser-radar droidvision sensors

Andy Bright

The 5-nanosecond pulses will be eye-safe..

But not people safe and I think you know why. Radar my arse. Heat sensor more like, and it goes like this. Torch a fleshie, and you have a clear and precise heat sensitive marker.

The frightening thought is that it'll only take 5ns to torch its interweb-controlled human slaves, which no doubt will be ordered into buildings to stand next to obstructions and either side of entrances.

Amateur code breaker honoured for defeating Colossus

Andy Bright

re: Churchill was not short sighted

"they are the country that now leads in most areas technologically"

But significantly way behind the British in the race to create the first monkey butlers and talking dogs.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/hfea_hybrid_embryo_projects/

Skype Trojan wiretap plan leaks onto the net

Andy Bright
Happy

re: They don't need a trojan - just ask Skype for the keys

"maybe the EU can give each EU citizen a Quad Core upgrade"

More to the point, will the spyware vendors be suing each government for using up the resources they need to turn your machine into a spam bot?

Andy Bright
Thumb Down

I call bullshit

Not on the possibility that such software can be produced, but that once again civil rights are being challenged in the name of "serious crime and terrorism".

99% of warrantless wiretaps are used for anything but, because law enforcement agencies will always abuse powers given in the name of terrorism.

The infuriating part is those that have a duty to censure the people that break far more serious laws than those committed by the people they're monitoring, do nothing but tell them they've been very naughty.

The consequences faced by the FBI when found to have illegally used powers given to it by Congress in crimes that were neither serious, nor anything to do with terrorism, were no more than the equivalent of being told to stand in the corner and think about what they did.

Tell me they didn't just say "we're really sorry" and then go away with every intention of repeating their crimes, and I'll call you stupidly naive.

It seems the entire so-called democratic west is going through a human rights abuse festival at the moment. With a succession of countries trying to out-do the previous with more and more outrageous laws and activities.

Monster-capacity PS3 in the pipeline?

Andy Bright

Hardware PS2 compatibility

Can be bought for any computer, console or even a toaster. It costs about 20 quid and its called.. a PS2.

The whining over backwards compatibility is irritating to say the least. If you like your PS2 games that much, save yourself some money and keep your PS2.

Andy Bright

Not sure I understand the excitement

Its just a hard disk and was bound to have its capacity increased as larger models fell in price. And if you own one of the lower capacity models it takes about 10 minutes to replace, format and OS install a larger HD.

This isn't an iPod or anything as limited. Its no more complicated a procedure than upgrading the hard drive in any computer, in fact less so because it re-installs the OS for you without you having to worry about licensing, keys, activation and so on.

California deploys dope-vending machines

Andy Bright
Heart

Wouldn't bother with emigrating

Even it were possible, you'd be better off just heading over to Amsterdam - or even staying put in a country that has a policy of warning pot smokers they're being naughty as opposed to actually fining them.

Trouble is even if you can legally buy bud, you won't find anywhere you can smoke it. They even want to outlaw smoking in your own car.

I'll quote Eddie Izzard.. "You certainly haven't been smoking in a bar in California! Because you can't! Yes … no smoking in bars, and soon no drinking and no talking! Be careful, California, you're supposed to be the crazy state – out there, the wild ones. Soon everybody will be saying, 'Come down to the library, we'll have a wild time!'"

No, I'd avoid visiting somewhere that abuses and fingerprints anyone wanting to pop over for a holiday and stick with Amsterdam's coffee shops. Awesome shakes btw, they go down a treat after some bio-bud.

Miserable? It must be U

Andy Bright

re Yes but

But you understand why people at 70 are as happy as 20 yr olds right? Personally I can't wait till I'm 70 and can get away with being a right bastard to kids.

70 is a magical age at which you can get away with throwing rocks at kids that run on the grass, park your car at traffic lights to read a nice book and turn up at your children's Christmas parties in your underwear. You can pretty much get away with anything short of murder and pass it off as having a senior moment.

Next time some snotty little bastard is rude to you, smile and remember when you're 70, you can take a dump in his car.

Woolworths stores to stop selling HD DVD

Andy Bright

Good one

Do Toshiba even know who they are? Probably confusing them with a chain that actually matters.

Seems to me that HD-DVD has suffered from death-by-press, a fate similar to that endured by your average Premiership football manager.

Personally I didn't care which format won. I have the means to play Blu-ray via my PS3 and could have bought the same for my XBox 360 for about $100.

What I don't appreciate is there seems to be a desire to make that decision for the consumer, by people that appear to want to see the PS3 succeed.

And while I appreciate the distrust and dislike of Microsoft, it seems somewhat contradictory to then laud or promote Sony. They're not exactly the little guy with rock solid customer service.

Oh I'm not suggesting there was some sort of conspiracy, more that for some reason the tech press fell in love with Blu-ray and the PS3 and felt some sort of weird obligation to both.

Dallas man accidentally shoots self in head

Andy Bright
Heart

Yeah I think he survived the initial shot

Its surprising how many people do survive when they attempt suicide that way, which is why it's not a recommended method of self termination. Too many end up with brain damage and ironically an even worse life than the one they were trying to escape.

However even if the guy ended his life immediately my guess would be the general "having a laugh" nature of his demise would be clue enough to suggest he thought the gun was empty.

And I think while this will possibly get an honourable mention from the Darwin Awards, usually you have to do something significantly more stupid than merely fail to keep track of the number of shots you fired if you want to 'win'. Something both creative and yet at the same time spectacularly stupid is required.

I must say I was disappointed with last year's winner, I felt the attempted mole eradication was a far more worthy recipient. Succumbing to addiction in a creative manner is less stupidity, more desperation imo.

Estonia fines man for DDoS attacks

Andy Bright

re: Manual conversion and Or around

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous, and your 'conversions' remind me of the time I tried to use toy money to buy an ice cream as a child.

US Dollars may look more realistic than the pretend money I tried to use back then, but I'm sure you could much more than a mere $1641 for 20 quid. Shit, even the choco coins I sent my nephew and niece for Christmas only cost a fiver between them.

I suppose it all comes down to whether you want something you can play with or sweets. And if I know British kids, they'll take the sweets every time.

Autothrottle problems suspected in Heathrow 777 crash

Andy Bright
Happy

Choke

My Mk1 Ford Escort had the same problem - always cutting out unless I used the choke as I was coming up to traffic lights and such. I imagine they must have based their engines on the same tech, and a class act too if you ask me.

I'll post them the fluffy dice, Chaz and Shaz window sunscreen sticker and a cosy faux fur steering wheel cover immediately. :)

EU president sets green plans in stone

Andy Bright

Only $30,000,000,000 a week?

It'll never be that cheap, come on it's bound to cost more than a couple of quid.

Hogging the Trough: The EFF Strikes Back

Andy Bright

But its not just bittorrent

Comcast throttle bandwidth on users regardless of their activity, and that's why I have little sympathy for them.

I wouldn't care if they only throttled back applications that are known to cause bandwidth problems and are in violation of their terms of service.

But this simply is not the case. They throttle back ALL connections, regardless of activity, if the user appears to want to make full use of their connection during the times they are awake and not at work - internet prime time.

This could be playing a game, downloading music from iTunes, or maybe streaming movies from pay-per-view or on demand websites. All of which are activities they use in their advertisements to sell you their internet package.

The problem is when they sell to more customers than they can sufficiently supply bandwidth to, they end up with the need to throttle all customers during peak hours - and that is not acceptable.

You don't buy 5, 7 or 12Mbit internet connections that are only available at those speeds during unsociable or working hours. You buy them to use during the evening and at weekends. If they can't support those speeds they have no business selling them to as many people as they have.

And that applies to all providers. Advertising internet packages with speeds they can't possibly maintain even for short periods of time is nothing but fraud.

The answer is to be honest with customers and inform them if they want internet speeds during sociable hours that are above 384Kbits, they need to pay real money. Otherwise the provider can't possibly invest in the bandwidth they need to support those speeds.

So you do what my provider does and offer two packages. The first is more affordable, but clearly states they will throttle bandwidth and place limits on the amount of content in gigabytes that you can download each month - or face an agreed increase in your bill.

The other, significantly more expensive option, is to have true unlimited connections at speeds of 3, 5 or 7Mbits. They can't realistically go above this speed because they can't realistically buy sufficient bandwidth to do so. But they will upgrade hardware and infrastructure to support anything up to that limit.

I bought an unlimited 5Mbit connection and no matter how much I download it is never throttled back - unless that activity is in violation of my terms of service or one of a very limited number of activities such as using torrents.

And that's all Comcast and other providers need to do, be honest and offer separate packages at realistic pricing.

HD DVD player sales share slumps

Andy Bright

I think this might be backwards

Your average consumer doesn't read the tech press.

Wouldn't it be more likely that Time Warner made their announcement because they anticipated this decrease in sales?

Maybe distributing chains made fewer orders, and thus got an early warning about January's numbers. Maybe they conducted their own research and saw falling numbers in HD-DVD hardware sales.

It just seems odd to me that millions of people that only recently purchased a player for several hundred dollars would suddenly stop buying movies for it, just because one movie studio said they were no longer making HD-DVDs.

My gut feeling is most consumers aren't even aware that Time Warner made that announcement. I think it significantly more likely that Time Warner did so based on the orders they received for their product prior to January.

The only way it could be the other way round is if 99% of HD-DVD consumers are people that read tech news, and I just don't think thats the case.

The other thing is if I'm right, consumers would generally find out something like this when they go to buy the player itself. Sales staff would advise them of things like Time Warner's announcement, and perhaps suggest avoiding HD-DVD.

I accept this is just conjecture and you are more likely to be correct, but I think that even if consumers were aware of Time Warner's announcement, if they had bought the hardware, say for Christmas, they would still want to buy the movies - and would continue to do so for a few months yet. Thus my theory that Time Warner knew of the impending doom before they announced they would no longer support the format.

You tend not to give up selling something if you're making huge profits from doing so.

Andy Bright

Too short a time period

I just can't see how anything over such a short time frame can be regarded as accurate, but I do think bluray will win this format war eventually given the recent press.

As a PS3 and XBox 360 owner it didn't particularly concern me which format ended up on top, I could have easily bought a $100 addon for my XBox if it had gone the other way.

What I do think was stupidly short-sighted was the movie and tv studios that released exclusively on one format only, and did so well before it was clear which format was even close to winning.

Still nothing will stop them from switching formats, but the chances are shows like BSG have missed their target audience and will do so too late if at all.

Having said all that, these numbers could simply be the result of HD-DVD owners not seeing anything they like recently, and Bluray owners picking up some of the more recent blockbusters. A couple of HD-DVD only blockbusters next month could easily swing the numbers back the other way - and that's why I think anything less than a 3 - 6 month study is anything but accurate.

Seeing as many studios only backed one format, it's all about which movies are released when. Obviously in the last few weeks the better single format movies have been bluray.

What would be a more significant indicator of the impending doom of HD-DVD would be the sales of the actual hardware falling by similar numbers.

I also don't understand how consoles could be left out of the equation if anything as drastic as the end of a format is in question. The PS3 in particular deliberately included a bluray drive because Sony wanted and expected it play a significant role, and marketed the console as much as a movie machine as a games machine. The PS3 was their "cheap" bluray player until very recently.

Andy Bright

yeah right

I'm still coming to terms with some idiot's comment that Walkman and Trinitron were failures. By that logic we might as well call every iPod thats no longer being sold a failure because no one buys them now.

Both those products were huge successes for Sony. Trinitron monitors in particular were used almost to the exclusion of anything else by the design and CAD industry.

Even companies like Dell and Gateway sold Trinitron monitors as standard with their top end workstations. To call that a failure when they were sold mass-market by two of the industries leading manufacturers is, well, ignorant to say the least.

Trinitron monitors and TVs were never intended as a cheapo mass market product. They were a high margin product and their quality still outperforms any LCD or Plasma TV. The only reason such products won't sell today is no one wants to break their back lifting one.

Mobile phone signals prevent sleep, claim boffins

Andy Bright
Boffin

And in further news

A similar cause sleeplessness has been discovered in humans exposed owning a nail gun.

Rather than sleeping next to an actual nail gun, participants had 6" nails hammered into their brains for 3 hours. Researchers were stunned to discover these individuals slept less deeply than those who ran away.

So having a transmitter strapped to your head for 3 hours and bombarded with some random radio frequency is just like having a mobile phone sitting in the next room? Makes you wonder if at any point they thought of something the rest of us are thinking right now.

Andy Bright

PS

more stories like this please, they're funny and help lighten the mood brought about by the stress of sleeplessness caused by owning a mobile phone.

Heathrow PC security probe launched

Andy Bright
Alien

Well there's a surprise..

Someone found a security issue on a computer running Windows. For me the PC never has been more than a glorified ZX81 for the first 20 years of it's existence, so it's not really all that surprising that the people that brought us a clone of that operating system have had a problem or two making one with pictures in it.

Librarians challenge Web 2.0 youf-work myths

Andy Bright

Isn't 'Web 2.0' just another gimmick?

I mean it's sort of real, it sort of exists, but really, there is no actual 'Web 2.0'.

All that's happening is the backbone of the internet is getting slowly upgraded and lots of websites have sprung up that allow people to stick any old crap for anyone to look at.

However there is a gleam of light in all this garbage.

For example gaming websites, like Bosskillers. Yes I know, but here's my explanation. It may be that the information here is largely useless bollox, but it does what it does very well. The information is properly structured, delivered coherently and in a manner that allows your average person to learn what is being presented.

Now fast forward to the near future and ask if this experience isn't of benefit to those creating websites with some actual useful content.

They know how to structure and present the information in a readable form. They know how to create visual aids and make those aids accessible, and they know how to coherently blend this information together.

So to me Web 2.0 is simply more bandwidth, with some people that know how to make the most of it in a coherent manner. We just don't have anything useful yet, partly because real businesses haven't employed these individuals and given them useful content to present, and partly because you still have to pay for information that is of real use in the real world.

Let me put that in another way, you have wikis and you have websites that have experienced and qualified contributers. The problem is the wikis are free and the real information costs money. When the designers of the wikis are put together with the people that actually know what they're talking about, we'll have something worth calling Web 2.0 - provided the hardware has been upgraded to gigabit while we wait.

MoD laptop losses expose government data indifference

Andy Bright
Pirate

Or not..

"With preparations like this, we should all be more than ready to hand over our personal data to the proposed national ID scheme - after all, the data can't be that personal if the government has already given it away."

Or we could just not give them any data whatsoever, and just say we already did and they must have lost it.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 'superzoom' camera

Andy Bright

Olympus

Usually I go for the Olympus equivalents to this, my SP-560 has an 18X wide angle zoom (27-486MM equiv) - and with a $30 adapter supports a couple of telephoto lenses.

Because they've just released a new version it's about the same price as this one too.

Still the Sony seems a decent buy, $300 is pretty good and their image stabilisation is a touch better than Olympus. You can't use a tripod every time you want to grab a quick photo, so it is a decent feature.

Pentagon in $75m electropulse blast-ray programme

Andy Bright
Go

Re-inventing the wheel.

As you mentioned, you can get decent EMPs from chucking a few nukes around - and they have so many of these I don't understand what the problem is with using a few.

And what could be more environmentally friendly than a nice bit of recycling. Grab the obsolete stuff from the last two or three decades and re-brand them as EMP'ers.

Surely that should keep the hippies happy, no need to worry about how to dispose of the material we use to make nuclear weapons when they become out of date, we'll just use them instead.

I'm sure there must be a few 3rd World countries the US can pretend are threats to its existence, so plenty of places to get some practice in.

And if the technological threat posed by some random African or South American nation isn't enough to scare your average American into green lighting another war - just mention you're doing the world a favour by reducing your stock pile of nukes. So it's all green and peaceful and environmentally rosy.

After all if you can convince Americans that an impoverished, 3rd World nation like Iraq posed such a threat to their existence that they should fear going on holiday in their own country (yes really - I met a whole bunch that were scared about vacationing in Hawaii after it initially kicked off in 2003), surely it should be no problemo to convince them another one needs to have the internet sabotaged via bucket loads of nukes.

We can just tell them it'll be good practice for when the Chinese invade in a few years.

Oh and probably best to keep the geography to a minimum as you have been doing - no need for anyone to realise that your average African nation isn't a hop, skip and jump away from invading the US. Again, yes really - most of the people that were scared about going on holiday in their own country, thought Iraq could somehow attack them in the US. They couldn't understand why I was laughing or why I thought they were over-reacting more than just a tad.

Time Warner moots billing based on bandwidth usage

Andy Bright
Stop

Re: ISP Reality

Sorry I well and truly call bullshit on that.

The fact is while it may be necessary to throttle bandwidth, it's not just bandwidth hogs that pay the price. And even if it were it would still be fraud.

They have deliberately mislead their customers. They have told them they would get a certain bandwidth, and then proceeded to impose conditions that most customers would find completely unacceptable. In times past this would be called a pig-in-a-poke con.

The hours during which bandwidth is throttled are the hours 99% of customers are awake, not working and want to use their internet service.

It's not the customer's fault that the ISP doesn't have the necessary infrastructure investment to deliver all the services they have sold. And quite frankly ISPs are the last people that should be surprised at the requirements of modern day internet usage.

They are selling their services using the very examples they claim are abusive. They sell using commercials showing streaming TV, online gaming, fast downloads - and then throttle customers that try to use those services.

So like I said, I call bullshit - because these companies are lying about what they can provide to their customers, and they do so because they know their customers would go elsewhere if they told the truth.

This is as fraudulent as using eBay to sell items you have no intention of delivering, or any other con that normally results in criminal investigation.

We're not even talking about something as small as false advertising. They are actually taking money from people without any intention of delivering what they know those people are expecting. They make no attempt to properly inform their customers until their customers have discovered the fraud for themselves.

Then they actually have the gall to say it's the customer's fault for expecting to receive the product they paid for.

Andy Bright
Stop

Revoke their licenses

If they can't provide the bandwidth they advertise and sell, take away their license to sell such services.

Personally I feel the customers of Comcast in particular have a genuine case for a class action lawsuit.

Their actions are tantamount to fraud. It's not the fault of their customers that these cable providers haven't secured the bandwidth necessary to provide the services they're selling. If you've reached your capacity then you can no longer sell your product.

If I run out of hard disks, I can't sell 100,000 more and then tell 200,000 people they're going to have to share them.

Tell me, what would happen if you paid for a hard disk and then found it was less than half the size of the one you ordered? Now tell me what would happen if millions of customers found their hard disks half the size of the product they ordered.

At the very least every customer would be entitled to a full refund, more likely the company that sold the hard disks would be investigated and its owners would probably face criminal charges.

These cable companies have deliberately deceived their customers. If a 3, 6 or 12 mbit internet connection can not be delivered they have no right to sell it.

I don't get my phone company telling me I can no longer use my telephone during the time most people are awake and not working, or that I can only make 3 phone calls during that period.

My satellite provider doesn't cut my available channels by half during primetime, and my gas supplier doesn't cut off my heating when it gets below a certain temperature.

I don't get home and find half a hamburger missing because McDonalds has lots of customers and needed to give half of what I bought to someone else.

So if they can only provide 384 Kbits or less to each customer they told they would provide 3 Mbits to, then they have deliberately mislead the customer into paying for a service they knew they could not deliver. That's called fraud, and on the scale we're talking, the consequences in any other business would mean serious jail time.

Fertility watchdogs approve first human-animal hybrids

Andy Bright
Go

I have a dream

My original dream was cruelly snatched from me, and the promise of a glow-in-the-dark dog never realised from a promising start..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/12/fluorescent_pig/

So new dreams were required, and this finally give me hope.. for a talking dog!

So cease and desist you nay-saying malcontents, this is my dream coming to fulfillment and the odd pig-boy and fly-like experiment are duly required in the name of science.

Flat-panel TV, check.. Flying Car, nearly there.. Talking Dog, it's going to happen and nothing can stop me.. mwahahahahaha

US boffins create GM 'supercarrot'

Andy Bright
Thumb Up

Ahh fluorescent dogs

Yes indeed, I remember the article well, except it was about pigs. At the time I felt an opportunity was being needlessly wasted and suggested they stopped messing around with glow-in-the-dark pigs and genetically engineered fluorescent dogs. A far more marketable product.

Because let's face it, except perhaps for a flying car, nothing would be cooler than producing your very own glow-in-the-dark dog. IMO this would even trump a 72" (6 foot) flat panel TV.

To fully exploit such a market the green would be good for a start, but the more superficial amongst us would soon be demanding new colours or even species.

Glow-in-the-dark pet humans (often mistakenly called children or babies) would surely follow.

Plague: The new Black Death

Andy Bright
Linux

Nice cuppa tea

will sort that out, no worries.

US chief spook pushes electronic dragnet policy

Andy Bright
Stop

Awesome

And I know how to make sure they never get to see anything you don't want them to. Don't delete any more of your spam..

I believe the US intelligent service employees are about to become unparalleled experts in a varying fields of knowledge vital to law enforcement worldwide. Without doubt they will be the people to call if you need to know anything about penis enlargement, pornography, pain killers, fake Rolex watches and dodgy stock deals.

The only way you should be worried by this, is if you think they're already interested in you. Because if you think they are going to find anyone new to look at by sifting through an entire nation's spam, perhaps you believe in Father Christmas too? I would have doubts on their ability to find anything remotely useful even if they employed every single person in the entire world.

Oh that's right, they think they have a program that'll do it for them.. excuse me while I rofl. Hmm, probably going to be something along the lines of seti at home but with more data. I wonder if there are enough xenophobes and security nuts in the world to actually make a distributed computing project like that find a genuine terrorist within our lifetimes.

None of that makes it okay of course, it's just for me the entire thing is so implausible and the only reason they would want to do it is if they already have their suspects and want to grab their online activity.

Of course what they're really asking for is the legalisation of VOIP wiretaps at will.. now that SHOULD have you worried, because unfortunately by tying it to the internet (and we all know that only pervs, weirdos and terrorists use the internet) they can foist an unconstitutional law onto a technologically ignorant nation, who will wake up in ten years and realise they allowed the NSA to wiretap every single one of them without even the farcical process of getting a warrant.

FBI to get UK biometric database hookup?

Andy Bright
Stop

To me this isn't the problem

We've always known that police forces will share the information they gather, to say otherwise is stupidly naive.

And in most instances that makes more sense than otherwise, helping to catch some of the worst types of criminals, such as paedophiles and murderers that skip countries to escape punishment.

So for me the problems are more along the lines of how and why the police obtain the information in the first place, how easy it is to correct mistakes or remove unjustifiably collected data - and to educate the public (hence juries) that DNA gathering and biometric data is anything but 100%, because of the mistakes made collecting it, the mistakes made entering the data (i.e. joe serial killer's dna is plonked under joe innocent's name).

These would be my arguments against not just allowing access to, but creating such databases in the first place. I don't see how this can be stopped as apparently we have absolutely no say whatsoever in what our governments do, but if there is a way it needs to be done until they can give us satisfactory answers as to how they are going to fix these problems.

Xbox Live account takeovers put users at risk

Andy Bright

hmm

The strangest part about all this is the way social engineering can yield a Live Account.

"Hello, yes, I seem to have forgotten where I live, could you tell me please?".

"Hi, yes, well this is quite embarrassing, but not only did i forget my own address, but somehow I seem to have forgotten my phone number too. Couldn't quickly look that up for me could you?"

So okay, the more likely scenario is this

"I just wanted to make sure my account isn't registered under my old address, could you verify that for me" and "I just wanted to make sure my old phone number isn't associated with my account - which one do you have on record?".

But the point is neither of those pieces of information should ever be given out full stop.

If i was a legitimate caller that forgot I registered my account while I was living at an old address, there's nothing to stop me remembering what that address was and trying again.

If you really are smoking so much pot that you can't remember where you lived 2 or 3 years ago, then perhaps you have bigger problems than not being able to log into an XBox Live account. Perhaps, given your propensity for short term memory loss, you would be someone who benefited from writing your username and password down.

Ooo nooo.. writing your username and password down. Now anyone that breaks into your house or pretends to be your friend could steal it. Again, I submit that if someone broke into your home, or you had "friends" habitually stealing from you, your problems are far greater than the loss of a gaming account.

BTW - although you do save a few quid signing up for 6 months or more using credit cards, given the number of online gaming accounts that are stolen from all gaming worlds, I would think it would be just a matter of self-preservation to use gaming cards instead.

I'm not casting blame or pointing fingers at victims, I'm just suggesting that now we know no one working for these corporations gives a shit about you, you would be better off protecting yourself however you can.

Andy Bright

But that's even easier!??

I realise the account was stolen, and if it's impossible to transfer gear from one character to another (therefore one account to another), why hasn't the problem been resolved simply by handing the account back to it's rightful owner?

And this should make it even easier to ban the offending XBox from their networks. Because if the guy is flaunting his use of a compromised account, this means he's regularly logging into it. Can't the IP and Mac of whoever accessed that account in the last few weeks be looked at, and if it doesn't match the proper owner, banned?

Again I know it's possible to avoid this kind of exclusion using a computer and the right software, I've tested such things on my own network - but surely this is much more difficult to achieve if you're connecting to the internet via a console account - and therefore have no control over how or where your console authenticates.

You can't just pretend you're in Switzerland and mask your IP and MAC address, because you'd need some pretty clever software running natively under the XBox's own OS.

So again, why can't Microsoft simply transfer the account back to the proper owner, then ban the XBox that was used to commit the crime? Possibly even tracking down the physical location of the offending unit too and getting his IP to ban his access to the internet altogether.

Japan to lose 20GB and 60GB PS3

Andy Bright
Thumb Up

Really, someone actually cares?

Why does anyone care at all about backwards compatibility?

Anyone with an attachment to an old game has clearly played it before, and therefore is extremely likely to already own a PS2.

Sure a few people may have broken consoles (mine is still working perfectly after nearly 8 years) and a few might have sold them for less than the price of a game, thinking they would just use the PS3. The upside of either of those is it'll cost you less than the price of game to get yourself another one.

But if your primary purpose in purchasing a new console is to play old video games - have you given any thought to perhaps not wasting hundreds of dollars or pounds on something you don't want? If the games you want to play haven't been ported or had a new version created for the PS3, why not just keep your PS2 until what you want is available?

Really it surprises me that anyone really gives a toss if something is backwards compatible. Can't remember the last time I thought "Oh NOOO! I can't play my old Amiga games anymore!". Shit if you really felt that way you can buy one of those stupid handheld toys that plug into the telly and look like old-fashioned Atari joysticks for a tenner.

Parents to get classroom spynet in 2010

Andy Bright
Stop

Waste of everyone's time

Why bother with all this nonsense when we've already learned the best way to control children is to feed them narcotics?

Discipline and moral standards are barbaric throwbacks to acting normally. Can't have a kid saying he's "bored" in class and acting up, definitely must be something wrong with him if he doesn't conform to the Hollywood "all kids are angels" norm.

But if we can't stuff them full of drugs, and to me that seems the perfect solution, why waste time on interweb spying when we could simply take direct control of our children via brain implants?

Look we all know that there's no such thing as a bad kid. We know that no action whatsoever should result in punishment. So to preserve the mythical world where these rules apply, simply have the adults direct the kids behaviour via joysticks.

Gives parents something to do during the 2 hours a day they aren't devoting to WoW.

My solution to my kids doing things they probably shouldn't is to stick them in front of a few consoles. No one can rob a store or smoke drugs if their time is sensibly filled playing video games. Sometimes one of them might even teach them something moral. Sort of. Well mostly not, but at least we're giving it a crack.

In the mean time I'll save up for some of those designer mind-altering drugs that fix children, and hope they haven't developed too many chonic back injuries while we wait.

Next year we'll find that physical activity is a barbaric form of torture and no kid should be forced to participate in something that might require a bandaid. The US is already there, so Britain won't be too far behind.

And we're already seeing the successes these sorts of approaches bring. Now we have an entire generation of "give them everything they want, regardless of consequences" brats in the corporate world, look at the crackerjack job they're doing of reigning in excesses and fostering corporate responsibility.

Amiga explains AmigaOS 5 AmigaAnywhere

Andy Bright

Heh

Most of what people have said about why the Amiga died is true, and unfortunately it's death did herald the end of fun computing.

If a decent owner with some good funding had come in about 10 years ago it might have clawed a market in the video industry - after all it was still being used in production TV and the movie industry until probably as little as 5 years ago.

But the concept behind the Amiga was not originally a computer, no matter how much Amiga fans like to think it was. The original idea was to build a console style system which such an advanced chipset and design it trounced the Nintendo and Atari equivalents.

The computer part came after Commodore bought the idea, who incorporated all the original games playing ideas and incorporated them into a computer. By sheer accident they chose a British company to produce the OS (and fortunately a very good company as opposed to IBM/Microsoft) and by another sheer accident ended up with the ideal computer for desktop video.

The combination of these accidents was that although Commodore intended the computer to take the place of it's games' centric C64, they actually produced something much, much more. Unfortunately they forgot to market it as such, so it was never taken seriously outside a few hundred thousand devotees.

Yes I have missed out large parts of the story, and yes some of the ideas that came later were promising. But eventually instead of allowing the developers and engineers to build upon their accidental computer, they continually broke it by producing models no one wanted, wasting exorbitant amounts of money.

The CD32 was a little bit more than just an A1200 with a CD drive instead of a hard drive. It also had the ability to make direct use of "chunky pixels", the method of displaying graphics that PCs were using. This produced a lower quality image, but meant 3D images could be moved around much faster - and also could have reasonable (for the time) texture maps applied.

But again it wasn't what the people wanted, by now they wanted a decent computer, not just another console. The playstation was nearing completion, and the CD32 was nowhere near that level of sophistication. AAA was broken and couldn't be made to function as a chipset, and yet more broken, money wasting designs were left unused on the drawing board.

All this could have changed if a passionate owner had bought out Commodore, unfortunately the IP just moved from one trainwreck of a company to another - before ending up with some idiot that wants to produce a glorified gameboy and call it a phone or something. Who cares, they fucked it over and it isn't coming back.

What could come back is a completely new design of computer that makes use of the Amiga name. Not likely, but if it was good enough, it could carve out it's own niche, given the all time dissatisfaction with Microsoft and their horrendous Vista OS.