Posts by auburnman

Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

Auto tills had some redeeming features...

... back in my student days, a mate of mine who worked at Big Supermarket Chain TM discovered that the job destroying tills would accept ANY money off vouchers from the free magazine, regardless of whether they applied to the items in your shopping basket or not. Vouchers on toilet roll, Shampoo and crisps would give a bill reduction on a basket of Vodka, toffee and Super Noodles. If I recall correctly there was a brief period where he could do his weekly shop for £1.

US spy court says internet firms can't report surveillance requests

Re: err ,,,, [auburnman]

"It is only slander/libel if it is untrue (or rather a defence against a charge of slander/libel is that what you said/wrote is true). So if a person is subsequently found guilty there is evidence that what you said was true."

My point is that it is still slander at the time because the accused has the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty and they don't get takesies backsies for the offence after the guilty verdict - when the statement was made the defendant was false as they were legally innocent then. Innocent unless proven guilty could theoretically provide wiggle room for a slick tongued lawyer.

Look at it this way - if you told everyone I was a car thief (when I wasn't) and I later stole your car in retaliation, your statement, although now true, remains false at the time of making.

I am not a lawyer either, but I too like to argue over wordings.

Re: err ,,,,

Innocent UNTIL proven guilty. You say hundreds of key documents have that error, when in reality you just disagree with the wording. Which is fair enough, but look at it this way. If someone commits a murder, and that murder is witnessed live and recorded on CCTV, it is STILL wrong to say that person is guilty before a court verdict EVEN WHEN THE EVENTUAL VERDICT IS GUILTY.

If a paper calls the defendant guilty while the relevant trial is still ongoing, then it is slandering an innocent and interfering with Justice. That doesn't retroactively become okay three days later when the guilty verdict comes down under innocent until proven guitly, but under innocent unless proven guilty? I'm not sure.

In the context of the principles of law, It's not about whether you ARE innocent or guilty - no court will ever 100% truly know that - it is about WHEN the duty of the legal system to treat you as an innocent becomes the right to deal with you as a convicted criminal.

Third of Brits now regularly fondling their slabs, say beancounters

Re: Yep!

Who was selling a tablet at £31? Was it an unknown brand or something like the TouchPad fire sale?

Feds smash internet drug bazaar Silk Road, say they'll KEELHAUL 'Dread Pirate Roberts'

Would they be allowed to sell them straight away? I know they can seize and sell proceeds of crime, but wouldn't they have to hold them until a court convicts Ulbricht before they can be disposed of?

They would probably hang on to the 'cash' anyway, Bitcoins will probably be in demand in the FBI for undercover/sting operations.

From a technical perspective, would it be possible for other users of BitCoin to know which Bitcoins landed in FBI hands from the blockchain? ie if I were an Underworld Kingpin, could I rig a system to decline BC transactions involving coins that were in Ulbricht's wallet?

US.gov - including NASA et al - quits internet. Is the UN running it now?

Re: Goose and gander and rabid hypocrisy laid bare ?

Perhaps Obama calling them "extremists" is laying the groundwork to have them rounded up under terrorism laws.

Half-Life 3: CONFIRMED?

Re: G man

My biggest worry about HL3 is that they have set up too many questions for one game to reasonably answer; your questions above barely scratch the surface. What did Eli know about our 'mutual friend'? Did Breen escape to a 'host body'? Can G-Man be trusted?

Dixons preps home 3D printer for plastic-piping punters

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I can't see any branch of Dixon's keeping their 3D printer up and running often enough to be relied on. The minimum wage till monkeys won't care when it breaks if they ever get properly trained to use it at all. Staples can't keep their 2D printers running half the time.

Thorium and inefficient solar power? That's good enough for me

Re: Thorium reactors

In a nutshell:

-Fear of radiation without understanding it (from the cold war legacy, not helped by fearmongering among the lesser news publications)

-Not in My Back Yard (Because of the Fear)

-Lack of experience with Thorium reactors (When nuclear power came around most countries chose Uranium reactors because they produced Plutonium as a byproduct, which comes in very handy when you are trying to join the nuclear "Do Not Fuck With Us" Club

Political Blindness/Spinelessness (See Germany's decision to stop using reactors.

US House Republicans: 'End net neutrality or no debt ceiling deal' – report

Re: They did add a pony

Ask yourself if the poor on food assistance are eating junk food because they want to or because it is the cheapest option? I can't find the article at the minute but there's a lady who wrote about living on the poverty line, and how she would have loved a little education as to what foods can be both cheap and nutritious.

30 years on: The day a computer glitch nearly caused World War III

The bit that always horrified me when reading about the Cold War was how the Cuban Missile Crisis almost ended civilisation, and yet in the later years the West pushed to get as many missiles in Europe as possible without thinking this could escalate.

Fresh shift of 'nauts arrives at Space Station, planning torch jaunt

If I remember correctly, even if you have an oxygen source that allows you to start a fire in space, the smoke doesn't go anywhere in zero G and just hangs around the flame and quickly smothers it.

HTC staring down the barrel of a US sales ban after Nokia's patent coup

Re: Now we know...

Nokia: Please buy our failing phone division.

MS: We're thinking about it. will you sell the patents?

Nokia: No, but you can licence them for a decade.

MS: That's good, but we're quite interested in establishing royalty payments to end the scourge of free software.

Nokia: Do the royalty payments have to go your way or is it enough that there is a financial cost to non MS software?

MS: Depends. What are you suggesting?

Nokia: If you buy the phone division we'll keep the patents but sue the shit out of everyone for patent infringement.

MS: Excellent.

Grand Theft Auto V: Violent, sweary and amazingly ambitious

Re: I've not even looked at the single player yet.

You didn't have to wait to long to buy it, I longed to buy it for months before it came out.

Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)

That's the one. I'm thinking of picking one up to see if the parents are comfortable with touchscreen devices before we go and get them new phones. Considering it'd probably only ever do Facebook email and internet the lack of GPS/camera is not really an issue.

Nearly spat my tea out when I saw the £60 pricetag, but if the true price is £120 for those of us who haven't been stashing clubcard points I'll probably get a Nook Smoke as my 'cheapo' tablet - Argos are doing them for £80 in 8Gb and £100 in 16Gb.

Tesco might compete on price yet I suppose, they'll probably see how much uptake there is at 60/120 and then do a price slash for Christmas.

No luck at all for BlackBerry as Messenger apps launch stalls

Wow...

...the first time I have ever cared about what Blackberry are doing and they fuck it up. Way to miss a big chance with the iPhone & Android crowds guys.

Re: Go hat in hand

"Blackberry should go hat in hand looking to partner with Facebook."

FB are in bed with Microsoft and therefore Nokia. Blackberry will likely get short shrift there.

Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins

Re: LOHAN contamination.

Other balloons? Rocket launches? For my money the microbes hitched a lift up to that altitude on the same flight as the sampling kit. Their shield may have prevented the sample drawer being contaminated directly by the balloon, but the balloon must have contaminated the atmosphere being sampled. Or the microbes were on the outside of the sampling box and shook loose at sample time. I can't see how this method could possibly produce an uncontaminated sample (Which unfortunately makes it likely their efforts will shortly be 'successfully' replicated.)

Windows Phone overtakes Apple's market share ... in India

Behind the times (but catching up)

Looks like the call centre countries have just reached the "no one got fired for buying Microsoft" Phase of the modern business world.

It's Grand Theft Auto 5 day: Any of you kids remember GTA the First?

Re: Not as good as Carmageddon

BURN THE HERETIC

Apple named in criminal lawsuit over Premier League–streaming app

There is precedent for it - Executives for Google Italy have been found criminally liable before.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/google-executives-face-jail-time-for-italian-video/?_r=0

Paypal not sure if its bargepole is long enough for crowdfunding

The big downside of crowdfunding is the buyers take on all the financial risk that were usually shouldered by financial investors, but without the clout that comes with owning shares in the company. The large distribution of investment should mean that in the event of failure millions of people could lose a hundred quid or so instead of massive financial hits to a couple of investors.

Individuals haven't adjusted to this level of risk though, we have been spoiled by the consumer protections we are afforded in modern society where if you pay for a product or service you are entitled to it or otherwise have some legal recourse.

Perhaps the way forward is for Kickstarter and the like to partner with insurance companies; an optional few quid on each transaction to guarantee your money back in the event the venture goes tits up. They could also examine proposals as part of the insurance process and give a risk rating to projects (e.g. warning flags on projects where a single dude with no experience is promising something like an Ouya within 3 months.)

Dominant web ad giant (Google) possibly 'weeks' away from Euro slapdown

Re: So where is the "abuse of dominance"???

It's also possible that this crackdown is being encouraged behind the scenes as punishment for Google daring to decline to pay more taxes when the MP's puffed up their chests and crowed that they would take Big Business to task.

Everybody Loves Rayman: Legends dethrones Mario

Rayman delay on Wii U

It's a sad indictment of Nintendo's stature nowadays that a big publisher will actually go out of their way NOT to give them a console exclusive.

David Attenborough warns that humans have stopped evolving

Re: Naturalist! = evolutionary biologist

"If accidents are the major cause of death of young people it's hard to see the selection pressure - unless there is a gene for not stepping in front of a bus,"

Accidents are definitely a selection pressure when they are avoidable, but society tries to sidestep that too.

Surely there are genes that dictate your natural level of situational awareness; in days gone by the vast majority of folk who frequently did something dumb like crossing the road without looking or cutting a branch while sitting on it would have removed themselves from the gene pool. Nowadays with our collective knowledge of medicine and physiotherapy, they survive and re-enter society, possibly to pass on genes that Nature alone would have gotten rid of.

Should Nominet ban .uk domains that use paedo and crim-friendly words?

I'm starting to suspect

That media and state have come to an understanding: The media don't publish the atrocious shit they already know about MP's and various quangos that could bring down the entire government, and in return X absolutely batshit mental policies are launched every week specifically tweaked to be as outrageous as possible for the purpose of selling newspapers.

Ofcom's head Ed may yet run the Beeb: UK gov 'mulls axing BBC Trust'

"Given that the BBC Trust has to represent both the poacher and the gamekeeper, it was in an impossible situation to begin with."

Hardly an impossible situation - dealing with conflicting interests must certainly be tricky but you can't say it can't be done. Fair enough the Trust have made an arse of it, but the solution is to come down on them like a ton of bricks and maybe punt some of them out, not junking the entire lot and overloading OfCom even further. Surely setting strategic direction for the beeb would be way out of their comfort zone.

Peugeot 208 GTi: The original hot hatch makes a comeback

Re: postcode search

One the subject of postcodes, does anyone know roughly the area covered by the first part of a postcode in the UK? was trying to find this out the other day but my Google-fu failed me.

Google submits YET ANOTHER offer to fix 'search dominance' in EU

Google should update their frontpage to randomly take X% of visitors to an options page asking: "Would you like to try one of our competitors search products? Yes please, show me the alternatives / No thanks, back to the Google home page"

That way they could reply to the commission that they actively tried to push competitor's products onto people, yet 99.5% of those asked chose to stick with Google (my guess at numbers.)

Smartwatch craze is all just ONE OFF THE WRIST

007 watch!

I had one of those too. Good times, although it did get me a detention when I accidentally set off the 007 them in the middle of English class. The cheap metal on the back did turn my wrist green though. I remember my mum fixing it by painting the back with nail varnish - pink nail varnish. I also seem to recall 'losing' the watch shortly thereafter...

Facebook postpones privacy putsch: report

Isn't this the second time (at least) they've aimed to use people's mugshots in adverts?

If you have to use Facebook, don't have a photo of your face as your profile photo.

Kim Dotcom quits Mega to head new political party, fight extradition

Re: Not a NZ Citizen = not an MP

He can certainly do what is an option for any rich elite, bankroll his own sock-puppet.

Microsoft's $7.1bn Nokia gobble: Why you should expect the unexpected

Re: The dancing dad of IT

I will admit Bing is quite good for video searches, it even plays previews on mouseover. Which can be more of a hindrance than a help if you accidentally leave the mouse in the wrong place and the audio of a, er, Party Political Broadcast starts blaring through the house...

Beat the UK's incoming smut filter: Pre-censor your grumble flicks

Re: Wanking Dangerously

Now THAT is Evil.

Re: More evil

Makes sense: Cameron for c**ts, Clegg for c**ks and Millband for t*ts. And Gordon Brown for Ar**holes.

They should have left the sex scenes in but censored the offending areas with the floating heads of Cameron and Clegg. Then dub over the moaning with old Party Political Broadcasts.

Microsoft buys Nokia's mobile business

Thoughts

-Elop is probably being returned to the fold so he can be speed groomed for Ballmer's chair over the next 12 months

-This is probably the best deal Nokia's shareholders can get based on Nokia's CURRENT situation (Chunk of cash, bailed out of the failing phone side and retaining other parts of the business)

-Google must be absolutely fuming (Software missteps aside, Nokia have always been regarded as the #1 phone hardware manufacturer, and with their shenanigans MS have picked them up for half the price Google paid for Motorola?)

Top Twitter lawyer quits micro-blogging site ahead of IPO

Re: "He said in a blog post"

The Twitter announcement would have been

"I’ll continue to support the company and its great people by staying on as an advisor for the legal, trust & safety, corporate development an"

US gov preps sale of TOP SECRET disease research island

"the "swimming pool" slides open to reveal an underground launch pad."

Are you sure you're not thinking of Tracey Island?

Foursquare gets pushy with fandroids, touchy Windows 8 bods

I thought Google had just changed the App T's & C's so that push notifications/adverts are now a big no-no? Someone's gonna have to pull a u-turn, and it ain't gonna be big G...

'World's worst director' plans Snowden-inspired movie comedy

I think I'd rather contribute to a Kickstarter fund that paid Uwe Boll to retire and never go near a film again.

Apple tops target list for litigious patent trolls

Re: karma?

That's the other reason Apple are more likely to settle than fight; they run a risk of their own legal team setting a precedent that could come back to bite them in the arse in cases against Samsung and the like if they ever decided to swat a few flies in court.

Facebook scammers raking in $200 MEEELLION in illicit profits

I would hesitate to call them spammers or scammers - from the article I can't see what they are doing wrong. FaceBookers are following them of their own free will and marketers are paying them to post adverts. It probably violates Advertising guidelines or somesuch but if you can't tell when someone is selling you something you need to get off the internet.

Punter strikes back at cold callers - by charging THEM to call HIM

Well played that man. As for informing callers about the billed rate, surely it can't be that hard to set up a prerecorded message when connection is made?

Personally we don't even have a telephone plugged in to the landline at mine, and with a little care over who I give my mobile number to I can't remember the last time I had a sales call. Obviously not a solution for everyone, but something more and more people are doing nowadays.

Skype: 3D video calling is the FUTURE

My guess is they are trying to eventually develop facilities that allow 3D teleconferencing, what with Microsoft's usual relentless focus on businesses. More power to them if they can get it done, I just hope they don't manage to break the interface or shaft consumers in the process.

iPad classes for DOGS offered in New York

To be fair, if I could tongue my own genitalia, I probably wouldn't bother with a tablet either.

BILLION DOLLAR BALLMER: Microsoft chief makes $1bn simply by quitting

Stephen Elop

Will need to seriously up the timetable for the destruction of Nokia if he wants to get the big MS chair in the next 12 months.

US court: Dell can't hound debtor with robocalls to her mobile

Re: PAY UP!!!

We don't even know if the woman actually defaulted on her loan, we just know Dell say she owes them money. Could as easily be a paperwork ballsup knowing big organisations.

Xbox One users will have to pay extra for Skype and gamer-gratifying DVR

Without explaining what they are/do, they might as well have announced it comes with Dilithium Crystals and no less than 32 nanospleens.