Posts by Jerome 2

YOUR Cisco VoIP phone is easily TAPPED, warns CompSci prof

What's bugging me?

Frequent and BIZARRE use of UPPERCASE words IN Reg HEADLINES

Music streaming service Rara slips off cloak, jumps into ring with Spotify

Website

Just went to look at their website, well the homepage anyway, which is a far as you can get without signing up. It looked god awful. Call me shallow but I left again fairly quickly.

TalkTalk somehow retains most-complained-about-ISP title AGAIN

It's great that you haven't had any problems, long may it last. The real issue for me is how they behave when there is a problem - can you talk to someone knowledgeable who'll get to the bottom of the problem and get it sorted or do you have to talk to someone who knows know next to nothing apart from what is written on their scripts and is unable to apply what you tell them to get it fixed?

LLU win

I live in the sticks but our exchange was finally LLUd a couple of months back, bringing the irresistible (to me) temptation of faster broadband. Unfortunately the company who'd chosen to put kit in our exchange was none other than TalkTalk and having used them before there was no way I was going back to their abysmal customer service.

However, I mentioned it to my ISP (Xilo, who are excellent) and they said they could provide ADSL using TalkTalk kit by going direct to TalkTalk Wholesale, who are apparently much better than their retail arm. They did that, it's working really well (nearly double the speed) and if there's a problem I can talk to a clued up human at Xilo and not a scripted TalkTalk robot.

Anyway, I thought I'd share in case it's an option for anyone else out there.

Thomas-Rasset faces $220,000 file-sharing bill after losing appeal

Re: @Jerome 2: Thomas-Rasset Is Herself At Fault

I don't for one second deny that she has fallen foul of a law that she was aware of, a moot point anyway as ignorance is no defence. My point is that proportionality is a key part of all fair and just legal systems, including that of the USA where it derives from the 8th Amendment, but that the principle has evidently not been applied in this case, going some way to making a mockery of the US justice system.

Re: Note to the clueless...

Yes, or maybe she should have had her hands cut off or her family executed because really, when it comes to making arbitrary examples of people such that they understand that they are not above laws dictated by multi-million dollar industries, no price is too high and proportionality is irrelevant.

British Gas bets you'll pay £150 for heating remote control

Re: Hmmm..

On the plus side that would allow for the legit use of HTTP status code 418, which has got to be a good thing.

Lamborghini drives Androids towards wealthy pockets

Tech for arseholes

That is all.

Activist hedge fund Taconic ups CA stake

Hippies

I expected a hedge fund managed by dreadlock sporting New Agers, literally living in a hedge and using their financial nous to fight fight against globalisation and corporate irresponsibility. I am sore disappointed.

Got a website? Pay attention, Cookie Law will come

@TAK

Cookies are data, not software

Green Parrot to cure YouTube shakes

Not witchcraft

They have licenced technology from God, who was peeved at his decision to make magnets open source and decided to turn a tidy profit this time.

Police told terror ads too terrifying offensive

You too can help protect our glorious nation

Join the ranks of the inoffizielle Mitarbeiter today.

Navy SEALs to deploy armoured dogs in A'stan

My cat got shot the other day

As far as I'm aware he wasn't parachuting into Afghanistan - I imagine he was taking a quiet dump in the garden of a mental person, or similar feline pass time. Anyway, he's on the mend now and having seen this article I'd really like to get him some feline body armour for his night time special ops missions in the red zone of our village (just up from the post office).

So far I've found this:

http://jeffdeboer.com/Galleries/CatsandMice/tabid/77/moduleid/433/viewkey/photo/photoid/120/Default.aspx

And this:

http://www.fataldimensions.org/pics/grayskull-castle/battlecat.jpg

Not sure about pricing and availability though, and they haven't got that 'desert camo' look that would go so nicely with his fur. Any suggestions gratefully received :)

Wikileaks publishes encrypted 'insurance' file

You're fucking joking right?

You might be happy with your state of willful ignorance but don't wish it on the rest of us.

Firefox 4 beta 2 preaches tabs-on-top love to fanbois

120MB right?

Sill rather a lot, admittedly.

Lindsay Lohan goes down for 90 days

That would imply...

... that she's got a lot of money. Which she probably has. Carry on!

Beeb reinstates teaboy in Pestogate scandal

Woah, steady on there,,,

... let's not bring the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority into this.

Flying-boat tiltrotor catamaran design wins NASA compo

What you really want...

... is a big one of these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvH2f-AewX8 with, erm... inflatable feet. Or something.

The winning design...

... looks laughably sh*te but then they said that about the Toilet Roll Hat.

Oracle charges $90 for Sun's free ODF plug-in

Or...

... you could just save the document in Microsoft format for them, easier than persuading all those folks to install a plugin?

Cocaine-hunting robot chopper in 60kg bust seizure

60kg bust seizure

I think either 'bust' or 'seizure' might be redundant there, as it definitely appears to be charlie and not a massive pair of breasts they've got their hands on. Anyway, what a mind blowing waste of tech.

US kiddies treated to Playboy TV

Dude

Someone need to put you in charge of UK education policy, amongst other things.

Blast you to hell!

You beat me to the See Boobies gag. It's hard to believe that there are two such towering comic geniuses frequenting the same IT news website.

UK shoppers ignorant of online rights

Re-stocking fees

I recently bought a webcam (new, Buy It Now) from Ebay and was seriously disappointed - dreadful build quality (corrosion hidden under a foam pad on the base and shonky marked plastic) and the image was dire. So I sent it back the same day and the seller fully intended to charge a 30% restocking fee. I obviously had a few problems with that:

1) 'Buy it now' sales (as opposed to standard auctions) on EBay are protected by the distance selling regulations.

2) I'm pretty sure the DSRs don't allow for re-stocking fees

3) 30% seems like a hell of a lot

4) Even if restocking fees are valid I can't see why they should be charged as a percentage of the price of the goods.

Anyway, it would be nice to be able to point to an authoritative source that explicitly states that re-stocking fees are a no-no.

Bloggers spring 'baccy happy landlord from slammer

Debtors prison

Nice touch.

Microsoft made a phone, and I hate it already

Are you French or do you live in the Bronx with your 'hos?

If not, I must compliment you on your most excellent name :)

Peppa Pig told to belt up

Mmmmm, bacon

I have a hideously disfigured nose because when my brother and I were young we used to pretend to be Tom and Jerry, and he would frequently smash me in the face with a frying pan. Some might argue that my parents should have just told him not to pound my face with iron mongery but I think it's quite obvious that children should be allowed to mindlessly emulate any behaviour they witness, regardless of whether the role model in question is a cartoon even-toed ungulate.

I blame the animators.

Microsoft loses appeal on Word injunction

i4i

With a name like that I would have expected them to exact revenge by infringing one of Microsoft's patents. It should also be noted that anyone who uses MS Word for XML editing needs a brain transplant.

Scammers scrape RAM for bank card data

Firewall

If I'm right, a simple hardware firewall configured to only allow connections to the servers it needs to connect to would stop the problem. I would have thought something like that would be standard for POS systems. I guess POS could easily stand for something other than Point Of Sale.

Muswell Hillbillies force BT to move broadband boxes

F*ck em

'F*ck em' was my immediate thought and it's nice to see there are a couple of other high brow thinkers of the same mind.

Boffins 'write directly to memory' of living brains

So tell me, what do you remember?

"give the flies the memory of an unpleasant event that never occurred"

How do the scientists differentiate between the fake memory that they have supposedly implanted and its very real unpleasant memory of somone fsking around with its brain?

Bzzzzz, well I remember asking for a cup of tea and they brought me hot Bovril instead, which was unpleasant, and.... no, that's it.

Amazon eyes wander as Royal Mail strike looms

Down with the Royal Mail!

Give me gold old reliable City Link any day of the week. Well, not any day, of course and often not the day they say but they'll leave you a card if you're out, maybe, and they usually won't 'sign' for it in your name and take the goods for themselves. So that's nice.