Posts by Gaz Jay

Ofcom to UK: Really - you're using the same password for everything?

Re: 55 percent?

Reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/936/

YouTube's hilarious cat videos could soon cost you $5 a month

Tomorrows El Reg Headline.... Today

"YouTube has lost it's number one spot for Netizens who wish to watch uploaded video content.....

Views are increasingly turning to other streaming video providers after YouTube decided to switch to a subscription based model.

One former regular YouTube visitor commented 'Why would I pay for something, when I can get the same thing for free elsewhere'".

Up your wormhole: Star Trek Deep Space 9 turns 20

This is when Star Trek peaked. Its all been downhill since then.

I so much would love to see ST return to this formula, and away from the bastard "reboot" crap it's turned in to.

Happy birthday DS9.

Ever had to register to buy online - and been PELTED with SPAM?

It's all about Opens and Clicks

I used to work for a marketing company - we handled mailing lists for some pretty big UK retailers.

One of the things we used to do was sanitize our mailing lists. The reason for this was to keep costs down for the company we were mailing for, to try to keep good relations with it's customers/former customers and also to stop our own email dispatch servers from being black listed.

We used to keep track of which email addresses were being "opened" and "clicked". If we sent an email to a particular customer and it wasn't opened (but was received OK), we would note this in our mailing list. If we sent out a further 2 emails that were not opened by this address, the email address would automatically be removed from further mailings.

I don't know if any other marketing companies were doing this. But it made sense to us. The companies were were mailing for consistently got >95% successful delivery rates and high open and click rates as a result.

It's JUST possible, but Apple MIGHT not make an iWatch in 2013

"Wouldn't it be self winding"

I'm surprised this only has two thumbs up!

Also, you owe me a new keyboard.

Big biz 'struggling' to dump Windows XP

Re: Re-write the programs.

Sometimes you also have to take into account what your customers are using.... sadly, a large portion of our customers are using Windows XP and IE6 & IE7.... why? Because it works for them and they see no reason to upgrade.

BOFH: Shove your project managementry up your mailbox!

Co-incidence?

Very strangely, one of the IT managers at the place I work has actually brought in a cricket bat today.

Curious.

O2, GiffGaff network goes titsup for unlucky punters

Re: My number is not even recognised now!

Lets hope that if you're number no longer exists then your usage record for billing purposes has also disappeared!

When buying an air ticket on your mobe - what makes you give up?

Re: Cost

RyanAir are the worst for this.... so much so that they actively prohibit price comparison sites, screen-scrapers and consolidators from including their flights within the results.

They advertise their flights for as little as 1p (really they do)... but then you realise you HAVE to add airport tax & surcharges and that is before they try to peddle their priority boarding - extra legroom etc...

Because they know that a screenscraper would be able to automate the unselection of these options, they employ capatcha type systems to prove you are a real human.

Oh - and if you don't check-in online... theres a surcharge for that.

Euro 2012: England is semi-final probability

Ask an octopus

Statistics are all well and good - but you can't really predict something as complex as an entire football tournament accurately. I seem to recall these types of reports before the last world cup and they predicted to do rather well. As it turned out, we were poor (well below our standard) and we're torn apart in the 2nd round.

If you ask any half knowledgeable football fan, I recon most of them would tip Spain to win the tournament.... this is without looking at any hard statistics - they just know that Spain are good.

In the end - no one knows who's really going to win the tournament - except maybe Paul (RIP).

O2, Be Broadband axe Pirate Bay access

Agreed....

Non-tech savvy people usually learned of torrents and the Pirate Bay from their more tech savvy friends. By this method they will also learn about alternate URLs, Proxys and Tor to bypass this restriction.

Plus TPB has also said it is fully prepared to play "whack-a-mole" with these ISPs.

Trekkie wants to build USS Enterprise … in twenty years

Re: Honestly...

"That was the only thing that bummed me out about the latest Star Trek film - the 'Enterprise' was NOT built on the surface of the planet!"...

That was the ONLY thing? Not the fact that it pissed over 40 years of other established canon?

New fake anti-virus shakes down frightened file-sharers

Hmm

Wondering if trying to get money out of people who don't want to actually pay for legitimate movies/games in the first place is the best target.

As usual, this type of scam best benefits small indy computer repair shops and IT savvy friends who can get a decent income in removing these types of malware.

100 EARTH-LIKE PLANETS orbit stars WITHIN 30 LIGHT-YEARS!

High Octane Interstellar Fuel?

No, but it is more efficient if you have a high performance rocket engine.

Scammers exploit new Dr Who girl with Twitter smut video

Twitter scams and spam.. not news.

Pretty much every trending topic on twitter becomes hijacked by scammers and spammers at some point..... I'm sure most Reg readers know this already.

Most links promising pornography delivered by the method described above fail to deliver on the promised goods.... I'm sure most Reg readers know this too.

Facebook VERY SLOWLY rolls out Timeline

Use the "Subscribe" button

The answer to the problems with everyone seeing Video's and Picture posts can be solved by using the "Subscribe" button that appears at the top of your friends profiles.

You can choose what you want to see from each particular friend and turn off things that you're not interested in.

For example, I have one friend who posts particularly funny status updates, which I do want to see, but also posts about 20 music video links a day too, which I don't. I can now just turn off the music links without hiding him outright.

iPhone 4S is for failures who work in coffee shops - Samsung

Same here

Couldn't call myself a "fanboi" by any degree.

Exclusively used Nokia's in the late 90's/Early 2000s because I was used to their menu and predictive text system.

Switched to an LG Viewty when they came out as they looked cool - hated the phone in the end due to the insensitivity of the touch pad.

Sampled a number of other smart phones and finally settled on a iPhone 3GS as it seemed to do everything I wanted with the least amount of hassle FOR ME.

Due for an upgrade next month – might just take a free phone off o2’s hands and either give it away as an Xmas present or stick it on eBay. Nothing wrong with my current phone, and I’ve got a iPod dock on my car radio that allows me to use the iPod and Sat Nav on the phone through the car radio.

I don’t understand the “hatred” that both sets of fans have against each other. Get a life!

Feds arrest 16 in Anonymous hack probe

They may be adults in the eyes of the law....

...but they are really just immature children playing games.

I mean just look at the "aliases" that they use!

These people have no loyalty to each other, no real agenda other than wanting to be part of an accepting group. Most of them are probably just teenagers with some chip on their shoulders like most teenagers have.

Sega celebrates two decades of Sonic the Hedgehog

Etched into memory!

The level select for STH2 was 19,65,9,17

The "constructor" code (or debug mode code) was basically the release date for Sonic2 1, 9, 9, 2, 1, 1, 2, 4.

There were ones to get Super Sonic and other things too if I remember correctly.

3D fad fades for Yanks

RTFA

Did you bother to read the following sentence? It clearly explained why POTC should have fared better than the CGI films for 3D showings:

"thanks to fanboy interest - whereas family movies in 3D have less appeal, largely because nippers don't like wearing 3D specs".

W**k-O-Meter

Single?.....

....there's a FAP for that.

UK a 3D TV nation? Not half

Now you mention it

I seem to recall that you automatically received Sky 3D if you were had the full Sky World package. I wonder how many of their figures include this total AND don't have 3Dtvs.

Cold call scareware scammers aim to bring Mac fans into the fold

I feel it is my duty...

I feel it is my duty as a computer literate person, to waste as much of the scammers time as possible if they call me.

Before inventively swearing at them.

Bond 23 back on track for 2012

Title

"There's not been a decent Bond theme tune since Goldeneye either." - The World Is Not Enough wasn't bad IMHO. But you're spot on about the rest of them!

Hmm

"Oh stop whining about CGI, it's here to stay. CGI is cheaper and safer than live stunts. Visual stunts had to be done in the old because there wasn't any other way."

But one of the things that appeals so much about real stunts is that you understand how difficult and dangerous it was to make. CGI seems like a cop-out.

Also, is it me, or is the CGI in later films a lot more noticeable that in older films? Surely it should have gotten better over time, not worse?

That James Bond movie name generator is awesome...

...the next film should be called: Thunderpussy Royale.

Half of phish marks respond to scams within one 'golden hour'

This is an easy fail. Watch me explain.

Because you don't type your bank details into your banks website. You'd type them into a website where you where buying something (Amazon for example).

Since there are lots of websites where you could potentially enter your card legitimately, this solution would not work.

Diary of a Not-spot: One man's heroic struggle for broadband

Title

I had a similar problem.

I was a happy subscriber to Virgin Media at my old house. When I moved I made sure I moved to a street that had Virgin available. However, it turned out that when Virgin installed the cable in the street they didn't bother to cable the gap between houses where my new house was eventually built.

I contacted Virgin, who claimed that they would have to dig the road up and it would be far too expensive for just one customer.

We decided to go for Sky broadband and TV package.

A month later we had neighbours move in to the new house next door and guess what... Virgin were more than happy to dig the road up and install broadband for them. Then the bloody Virgin salesman decided to knock on our door advising us that "Virgin is now available". I told him I'd only take his service if they were willing to pay Sky the cancellation charges. If not, I'd be sticking with them.

The only thing I miss, is Virgins genuine TV on Demand. Looks like it's back to torrents for that then.

Wales loses 'dot-cum' domain to tax haven

@The Big'Yin

So no signs have any writing on them apart from Town names do they?

Translate these signs into English:

"Calol y dref"

"Trefn ffyrdd newydd och blaen"

"Unffordd"

And translate these into Welsh:

"No though road"

"Free Recovery"

"Cyclists Dismount"

By the way, even town names are different between Welsh and English:

Wrecsam => Wrexam,

Caerdydd => Cardiff,

Abermawdd => Barmouth.

This may surprise you....

RE: "We waste enough money on translation of all the road signs, websites, leaflets etc produced by the public sector "

This may surprise you, but there are people in the deepest parts of Wales where Welsh is spoken a lot more often than English. These native Welsh speakers would find it a lot easier reading Welsh than English.

So when we are "translating all of the road signs" - we are actually doing it for the English speakers benefit. Or would you rather have to learn Welsh to understand our signs when you visit.

Hwyl!

Almost a quarter of Europeans can't be bothered with the net

My parents recently ditched their Internet access

I moved out recently and took the PC with me.

They have no further need for the internet connection and they terminated it with the ISP. They are not interested in owning a computer or having an internet hookup.

They are retired, enjoy going on day trips, gardening etc. If it turns out that they absolute MUST access the web for some reason, they can come to mine or the library.

TBH, they are more upset about loosing the old Teletext system, they dislike the digital version!

Car wrecks rise after texting bans imposed

"Gee, what a surprise"

I'm guessing that you ARE actually surprised and was not being sarcastic. Because the results in the article WERE surprising. You would expect that there would be a drop in accidents in the states that banned texting, the the inverse is true.

Star Wars set for 3D rehash

Should be re-written...

George Lucas has discovered another way of getting even more money out of his Star Wars franchise by re-releasing the same films he's re-released several times before in 3D.

BOFH: Die, Robot

Nice one

Lets hope Simon and the PFY get the opportunity to salvage the robot and are able to upgrade it then set it loose into the wild!

Virgin Media set-top box modder gets 5 years

I think you've mis-understood

The boxes were not modified to view the free channels... you can get those already without any kind of subscription. They were modified to view the premium channels (I.E. Sky Sports) for free.

Also, in my experience, modified boxes have not actually been Virgin Medias own boxes. They have been third party DVB-C boxes that anyone can buy that have been modified. I believe this is completely legal because you can do whatever you like to a box you yourself own. What is not legal is plugging this into a cable connection as it will break the T&Cs of the connection.

Exactly what they got arrested and convicted for is not mentioned in this article. I'm guessing that the law new that these guys were responsible for a large number of "modded" boxes on the market, but jailed them under other criminal acts.

British Airways sorry for 'landing on water' nonsense

It must be US Airlines!

I was on an American flight between LAX and Las Vegas. Just after they closed the doors on the plane, the captain came out of the cockpit and told us in person that we should feel safe because the cockpit door is bulletproof.

This was in 2005 - I guess Sept 11th still haunts AA pilots!

One in five workers still clinging to IE6

Java MV and Java Sun

I know just what you mean.

We have to maintain support for Microsoft VM because there is a system (not ours) that our customers use that is more valuable to them than our system that will not work with official Sun Java. We have asked this company to upgrade many times, but since we are small fry compared to them they will not listen.

Of course, Microsoft VM will not work with IE8 so we are seeing more and more agents having to "downgrade" back to IE7 just to get the product working on their machines.

UK Travel Agents...

I regularly remote connect to Travel Agents machines in the UK to provide support for our product. The amount of times I see IE6 is astonishing. Last month, I even encountered IE5 for the first time in years (our product wasn't compatible with it so they had to upgrade.).

Last week I actually had a Travel Agency manager shouting at me down the phone, demanding to speak to my supervisor because I'd put Firefox on one of their agents PCs. She said that they'd "been ripped off by Firefox before" and would only use IE now because it's safer.

BOFH: Lies and the lying liars who lie about them

Back to basics

Just like the good old BOFH stories used to be. Good honest blackmailing of the Lusers.

Good work

Deadline for Germans to hide from Street View

Even better..

Google should have asked people to "Opt In". That would have foxed them even more

Microsoft digs Macs in back-to-school ads

RE: In all fairness

Real computer shops would let the customer decide what they wanted on the PC.

The one I used to work in would ask when a customer wanted a custom build, which was quite common. We even had "off the peg" PCs with *nix installed ready to go in the shop.

Not all computer shops are PC World.

Data for 100m Facebook accounts published to BitTorrent

Title

Reminds me of when I worked for a marketing company. They had a service they used to offer where they would "append" brick and mortar address details to any email address. The idea is they would capture your email address when you signed up for an email newsletter, then would be able to send you things though the post/get your home phone number etc. Un-ethical and probably illegal too I know.

I put in some of my email addresses that I've used over the years to see what got appended. The results where pretty funny. I hope to god that some marketing company somewhere really has tried to send some crap to the fake addresses I made up!

Sadly, the service often did manage to find addresses for email addresses.

I left the company mainly because I couldn't live the the feeling that I was helping distribute the kind of crap I hate to receive myself. The company has since folded.

Satnav leaves family stranded in Outback for three days

Exactly

I use my satnav as an aid to navigation, not the solution.

I always have a look at a road map before setting off to somewhere unfamiliar. Figure out what junctions to take and what roads/town names to look out for.

The sat nav is basically a backup and for finding the correct street right at the end of the journey.

Czechs toast Bud-beating beer win

New name for US Budweiser?

Does this mean that the US Budweiser will have to be called something different in the EU now?

Reboot key Brit 'ready to save internet'

Read again please.

Specifically the part that the Internet would not collapse. It would still operate only that surfers would not be able to validate that the website that they were visiting was genuine.

He might get conned into booking a flight on a spoof website... but he would still be able to book actual flights over the net and VOIP would still work.

Chilean tarantulas menace Bolton

RE: I for one

Makes it even funnier that it came right after the post from the guy who doesn't like them!

I for one...

I for one welcome our eight legged alien arachnid overlords.

iPad alert: Are you a selfish elite or an independent geek?

Like Goths

They try to be different but all end up looking the same.

Oh the irony.

RE: ... so what does that make me?...

... A well balanced individual I'd say.

You sound a bit like me. When I was younger, I would be what you'd call a typical geek. Shunning conformity, not giving a damn about popular music/fashion etc. Then when I entered my early 20s, I started to care about things like that (probably because I was trying to get a girlfriend!).

I now feel that I'm a well rounded bloke, my geekiness from the past has helped me get a good job that I enjoy, the conformity from my early 20s has given me a lovely girlfriend and 2 gorgeous kids.

I still have linux on my pc. I still watch Sci-Fi, and I still build PCs and I am usually the first port of call from friends or family when they need an IT expert (or at least someone who can fix something without having to pay PC world to do it).

Like you, if I was given an iPad, I'd have a play, enjoy messing around with it (trying to find ways to customise it like a geek would), then get bored of it and forget about it.

iPad - Sports uses

Apparently Stuart Pearce used one during the World Cup too. Presumably to show real-time stats about the players or to help in making tactical decisions. Looks like it worked a treat!

You could be on to something here. Are there any actual decent uses for the iPad where a Internet enabled phone/laptop wouldn't surface/offer more functionality?