Posts by Brian Miller

DIY satellite TV installer shoots wife dead

I bet

The drill was most likely not long enough to go all the way through. He probably got it started and all nice and lined up with the drill holes.

But this guy is a fool. Anyone who thinks that a gun is a tool, and not a weapon should take heed.

Bell Canada chokes BitTorrent traffic on someone else's ISP

@ James

You sir are a moron.

Bandwidth is directly proportional to the investment in infrastructure that the provider has made. By your analogy you compare the resource of fossil fuels to bandwidth. All you need to do to get more bandwidth is install more data cables, routers etc.

To get more fossil fuels we have to have the world suffer a mass extinction and have all of that lifes bodies decompose for millions of years at great pressures.

I am not trying to say that bandwidth is completely unlimited, because the resources to create routers, and cable etc are limited. But the scales are completely different.

Add to this that we are able to pump more data down physically similar sized equipment following regular advances in networking tech. and you will find that your arguement becomes more and more foolish and shortsighted.

The real arguement here is that the ISP (bell) should install enough infrastructure to provide the bandwidth that they sell, not choke off the bandwidth of those that have bought it to accomodate more suckers who are willing to pay for the misrepresented packages.

Keyboard PC design recalls Amiga era

I wonder how...

Graphics capable this is. The amiga was renowned for its superior gaming. I bet this thiing has an Intel 915 integrated "vista capable" card inside.

BT admits misleading customers over Phorm experiments

@orsen kaht

ISP suggestion:

Demon internet.

The home user branch of THUS PLC. Very reasonable price, they only offer unlimited, a fair Fair use policy (top 3% B/W hogs over a 10 day rolling period will be capped at peak times)

Their parent company THUS does a lot of the banks (HSBC etc.) service provisioning, and they did sky's too once upon a time.

Privacy policy has got clout. Thoroughly recommend them. Call centres seem to be based in britain also, at least the 1 time I had to call them it was a british person.

House of Reps passes FISA bill sans telecom immunity provision

@Examples please

It is not the act of wiretapping that is unconstitutional, It is the attempt to pass the law which gives retroactive immunity which breaches the constitution.

If it were allowed to do so then presidents could simply change the laws after they break them. For example this could lead to someone of the wrong persuasion to attempt to install a dictatorship simply by making it legal to do so. This would undoubtedly break several other terms in the constitution, but hey, once you ignore the constitution once, whats stopping the government ignoring the rest of it.

The thing I find ridiculous is the laziness that this represents. The president (or at least the governors of states) ALREADY have a right to grant PARDONS to anyone they want, it just has to be done on an individual basis. This implies that instead of going through the correct channels of looking after those that broke the laws to help the government, they would rather cut corners and break constitutional laws.

A very bad precedent for a very bad President.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33

If you filmed a vid

Why not post it so that the quality can actually be seen?

Northrop: battlefield rayguns to demo this year

I forsee

Very shiny shells and missiles becoming popular. The price of Chromium increasing to plate all of these shnazzy new reflective missiles.

It would be hilarious if another company came out with mirror missiles that could actually reflect the beam back at the host vehicle. LOL

Poor technology implementation. They would be better off planting several of those "iron curtain" ultra rapid fire machine gun batteries to these proposed ships/tanks. The only thing that makes this ever so slightly more attractive is not having to lug around loads of ammo. Just fuel (lots of).

Local councils dish out shoddy computer recycling advice

@dispose of a drive

Anon cow...

Your lack of understanding how the data can be recovered is obvious. The platters of the HDD can be removed even though your motor and/or bearings are kaput. All that needs to be done fromt here is remounting the platters in a WORKING drive unit. Hey Presto, your complete data is there on this working drive.

I have heard that it is possible to just look at the spindles without mounting and reconstruct the data from the 0's and 1's that are discernable under microscopes/ magnified cameras etc. Even badly fire damaged disks and the like. Even hammering them wil not remove all that data. Some will be recoverable. Re-writing random 0 and 1's or all 0's or 1's would work, but when you delete on your computer I think it just flags the addresses of the data as usable, doesn't actually write or delete them.

Now perhaps you understand that you are literally handing your data to anyone that is inclined to carry out any of the above methods.

Broadband big boys waiting on data pimping

DEMON INTERNET IS THE BEST

I have been with Demon for a long while now and cannot fault them in any way. They are as truly unlimited as you can get on a home package nowadays, fair use applies to the top small percentage (3 i think) as calculated over a rolling 10 day period, though it seems imperceptible to me, and I would describe myself as quite a heavy internet user.

Their privacy policy categorically states that they will not hand over your info including IP to third parties (apart from contractors for their own internal purposes which is then immediately deleted) unless under a court order.

They are Faultless in my mind, having had no problems in a couple of years. I have never heard any grumbles from other demon users.

Doctors back more tax on booze

Obama for Prime Minister

OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA!

We need change here too. The politicos are just going to offer us the same crappy choice of:

Conservatives: Money for rich people only

New Labour: Money for rich people and politicians and their friends/family

We need an IT literate, Non-corruptable, forward planning, INTELLIGENT party

Surely it is the duty of everyone here to put themselves forward for public duty in order to enact (or revoke) laws to achieve a harmonious synergy wihtin the nation..... In other words, somebody else do it for me, I can't be arsed.

Hacker holds onto ill-gotten gains thanks to US courts

@Colin

Rubbish tosh bother!

You are obviously jealous to the point of contradicting yourself.

You admit it is a loophole. BY DEFINITION if he has used a loophole, he did not commit a crime.

Your just jealous that a ukranian NON-HACKER has enough smarts to get bags of cash fast and YOU don't.

It is the fault of the lawmakers and the business that disclosed their sensitive information.

Armed police swoop on MP3-packing mechanic

What was he actually arrested for ???

It doesn't say why he went to the station in the first place. If he was under arrest he should have been told what for. If he wasn't under arrest then he CHOSE to accompany them to the station, which I doubt.

If he was actually arrested he should slap them with a false arrest charge too.

AMD ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 dual-GPU graphics card

Bus Bandwidth

I find it hard to believe that the reviewer has obviously overlooked the fact that this card is only supported by a single x16 PCIe slot, thus creating a bottleneck when the card is pushed to the limit.

The 2x 2900XT's have at least 1 x 16xPCIe +1x 8x PCIe slot creating 150% of the bus bandwidth to play with for highly intensive graphics.

I may be mistaken, the 2 x 2900XT's may have 2 16x PCIe's further improving bus throughput.

Clarkson's 'steal my ID' stunt backfires

@ Data Protection

I think that the culprit may have been less direct thatn everyone is thinking. I reckon that it was one of these high street charity workers that have been deployed around the world recently.

The bank knows that the Charity is the recipient of the illegal funds, and has said so, thats the bank done its job. The charity that employs the worker has itself been defrauded, and is a victim also, despite it being the benificiary of the crime. Hence the charity would not be obliged to hand over the details of the worker that accepted the application form, as this would breach the DPA rights of the original victim (worker).

The details on the application itself may or may not be in the handwriting of the original culprit, and would only contain clarksons details anyway.

SNAFU

2007 worst ever year for data protection

No sh!t sherlock

It could also be the fact that more data than ever has been recorded and stored than any other year before this. Such is the nature of storage. If you keep keeping stuff you always end up with more stuff than you started with.

As such it is not suprising that more and more of it gets "lost" or access is otherwise gained by the wrong people. I expect 2008 will eclipse 2007 in the amount of data left insecure, though perhaps not yet exploited.

Boeing announces 'Laser Gunship' completion

@laird cummings

You said,

"Say, for instance, a mobile SAM battery set up in a hospital courtyard."

"Now, you can pot the control van, the prime mover, and maybe the missile launcher, all without blowing up anything."

So are you trying to imply that shooting a 100kw laser into a missile launcher CANNOT detonate the explosives contained therein???

Bad example for the use of a poorly thought out, expensive weapon. Also, don't you think that if only the control vans were taken out (not that many SAM's need them, the guidance for the missiles is usually self contained) The SAM's would start being primed to explode when loss of the controls was detected, even if purely for the propaganda of saying that the lasers still cause explosions.

Facebook faces UK data probe

Just break the rules

If you really want your profile to be removed just host some barely legal porn or commercial advertising. Even better advertise commercial porn.

this will ensure that they actually remove you as a user.

RIAA hits paydirt: wins first music-sharing jury trial

Someone set up a support page.

I'll donate a tenner to this fine woman. We should John Smeaton her fine away. I reckon that there are several people out there with enough heart to donate a few bob, and don't forget that the pound is worth more than 2 dollars. that means that only 13500 of us need to donate a tenner and the fine could be cleared. John Smeaton tackled terrorism here in Glasgow and got a lifetime of free drinks at his local by a similar effort from online heroes.

I would also argue that maybe we should set up a secondary fund to pay for her TEAM of lawyers that we should get on the case. The first only being an insurance that this brave woman will not be burdened by fear of the RIAA terrorist thugs.

Now to speak metaphorically and hypothetically. IF someone on this sight was a damn good hacker, and they located the judges computer/the courthouse systems and further still installed numerous M$ software illegally and then reported them to the whistleblower hotline that awards $1million for reporting them, then maybe the judge might see how easy it is to be set up in these kinds of things. ;^ )

Alternatively, the hypothetical hacking team could target RIAA senior memberswith the same strategy.

I would never suggest this to actually occur (smirk) but IF it did I think that justice would sort of be served.

Set up a relief fund.

I suggest that we emulate the john smeaton fund for fighting global terror and set up a website where we can contribute for this womans legal expenses. Teach the IRA, whoops sorry RIAA a lesson.

This kind of judgement will only be the start. Their mafia style antics will NOT prevail if we actually do something about it.

IT literate of the world UNITE!!!

Fraud abroad drives up card losses

@ Anon

What about online shopping. Do you just stop UK citizens from buying from an online EU or US retailer. How would the credit card companies validate the identity of the callers, and if they don't what is to stop a fraudster calling up and stopping the real cardholder from using their card?

Your Idea is full of holes. I am imagining being told my flight was delayed and I would have to stay in a foreign land for extra days, with no money because all my card companies think I should be back home by now....

Think before you speak eh?

Consumers confused by HD

@@John PM...

Actually, in written english an H is immediately preceded by an "an" as opposed to an "a". This is the exception that proves the rule, so to speak. You obviously didn't pay enough attention at your grammar school Yargnad. Also your name/title is not capitalised, as it should be, if you want to go around correcting peoples english I suggest you do not make errors yourself.

Firefox hits 400m download milestone

@ Inaccurate

And how many people have downloaded it once on to there USB key and distributed amongst their less techy friends in the droves....

I know I have downloaded it like 3 times and installed it on at least 10-20 seperate machines. Beauty of open source is that this is legal and convenient.

Kung fu monks battle gobby net ninja

Miyamoto Musashi...

Miyamoto Musashi is the zenith of all fighting men. He was independant of thought, self taught and incredibly intelligent.

read a little about the history of this true warrior before chanting your chuck schmuck.

The shaolin and ninja are so far removed in skills that they cannot really be compared. Shaolin would destroy ninjas in a face to face empty handed brawl. However ninjas simply wouldn't not use weapons. They are masters of manipulation and stealth.

Both have huge commitment to there training and conditioning, but back in the day I would say that the ninja would kill off any they targeted, probably leaving no trace. But if it came to fisticuffs shaolin would likely mop the floor. If either decided to go after Miyamoto Musashi they would die at the end of his bokken

Sacked PlusNet boss blasts BT sale 'stitch up'

Good ISP's

For you who have lost all hope for finding a good ISP... I offer you this.

Demon internet (home ISP branch of THUS)

THUS, great business providers, very intelligent staff, hugely successful.

The most problems for THUS/Demon customers are BT related shananigans. THUS work for banks and I believe sky also used them for their provisions as well. A real professional operation.

I do not work for them, actually I applied and got an interview, but was not successful. I have a 2:1 in mechatronic engineering, which I think is not really what they were looking for. Makes me wonder why I got an interview at all really. Anyway, what I saw while there impressed me and I have switched to them as a provider for my home. Never a problem whatsoever ever. Nor have I ever read an unkind word about them.

Amazon throws cash at MySpace-ified music startup

Re: Backwards economics

Dr. A.Adams

You are naive in your assumptions, do not forget that to assume is to make an ass of u and me. Your classical economics lecture is based on industry where the product is designed created and distributed in a physical and costly way.

This enterprise is not about production of commercial pop rubbish for 14 year old girls that are easy to exploit. This is about passing the power of distribution and the ability to self sustain directly into the artists hands. They don't need expensive studios these days. Electronic music can and is created entirely on computers, albeit with some sampling being done conventionally. Other artists may still require studio time, but this is a venture that they will fund themselves, hoping to profit directly when they become popular.

This business actually follows the expectations of the market and producers. The producers, in this case the artists themselves expect to earn more as their popularity increases. For example madonna won't come and play a 500 seat venue for £10 a ticket nowadays will she??? Whereas a less known band would be thrilled. Consumers also tend to follow trends when it comes to music, especially pop. and as we have seen with the likes of festivals and other events, if the concert is sold out, they expect to pay massive amounts MORE not less to get there enjoyment.

Anyway enough. I hope you get the point. This is a work of genius, and I expect this model will become very successful. You are too old to understand I guess. Change is good. flip the old upside down.

IBM to win $200m supercomputer contract

Simulate global warming

Perhaps they mean STIMULATE global warming. Lets start with calculating the footprint of the machine itself.

Yahoo! faces! investigation! over! China!

RE: Quite right...

That kind of logic, when expanded, would lead you to believe that it is quite OK to have the USA intelligence services torture people in other countries where this is common practice and within the law...

Its like saying, the government only has to do what the electorate wants them to do IN THEIR COUNTRY ONLY... This is far from acceptable. Obviously how one behaves at an international level affects things at a local level.

Or for businesses, its like saying child pornography is illegal in the USA, but we can legally buy children in Myanmar, or somewhere, and make films of them but only distribute them where it is legal to do so, over the internet, and its not our fault it fuels paedophilia in the USA.

It doesn't matter what the damn laws are, its just plain wrong.

Petrol latte for Kiwis in dairy biofuel push

They Should...

Install a gas turbine at the plant and run it off of there ethanol. These turbines can run on virtually anything, Gas, Liquid, even crude oil. A CHP (combined heating and power)turbine can run at 80% efficiency, a lot of which is in the form of heat. This would be used to distill the product. They may even be able to pump power out of their plants back onto the grid.

I just happen to work in the turbine industry and have heard about this sort of thing being done in sugar producing countries. It works very well. Some countries (small ones) produce 38% of their electricity in this fashion.

EU files anti-trust charges against Intel

Knock Knock 2

One intel senior marketeer to another(1 1/2 years ago...)

1st:AMD have been making better processors for like 5 years now

2nd: don't worry about it, we are flogging the slaves down in the R&D labs and they are sure to come up with something.

1st: I suppose your right, after all if they don't they will die from starvation as we are reducing their lunch breaks and forcing them to do more and more overtime

2nd: Anyway we still see more revenue because we sell our chips at twice the price

1st: Yeah, and we have landed huge contracts to supply through, lying, cheating, and strong-arming

2nd: Thats right, Lets go eat some babies.....

Brit spooks: Yanks are frightful cowboys

I'm suprised

Every time one of these clowns make it into a blogosphere as classy as this one.

All of these fight fire with fire bullshit artists are deluded. They claim it is justified because the "enemy" does the same or worse. But what about those that are not the enemy? imagine getting tortured by the USA "intelligence" services when you may never have set foot in their country, or plan to. Taken off a plane in Zambia having travelled through the UK, to be interned for 5 years in gitmo.

My father is an electronic engineer and he has built radio receivers and voltmeters, etc. with me as a child. If I were not white and american then this could be construed as a terrorist act????

The USA claims not to be a terrorist supporting nation but what do you call being just as bad as the terrorists to a few innocent people? Believe me they wouldn't set the man free from gitmo without being damned sure he was innocent.

And BTW, John A. Blackley if...

"If the goal was to create 10 times the number of terrorists you've done splendidly."

"And, in my book, the sooner we can track down viable suspects, wring the necessary information out of them - by whatever means necessary - and use that information to decimate the rest"

Decimating them means eliminating 1 in 10. That leaves us with 9 times more terroists still. DO YOUR MATH. Imbecile!!

A handy guide to growing your own spaceship

Truly Short Sighted

The magic wand is on its way!!

I believe that matter to photon to matter conversions will be the mode of transport when we feel it is necessary to travel between stars. Good work is already being done on this by very clever quantum physicists this very moment.

I would instead focus on interplanetary travel and the ability to harvest resources from within our solar system. Harvesting resources from near earth objects or the asteroid fields between mars and jupiter would create an economic motivation to advance space living.

Burned by a MacBook

FYI Richard Kilpatrick

I am not ill-informed actually.

One of my close friends bought a cute little 12 inch mac a couple of years ago.

He found that there was not any available codecs for playing xvid, divx, ogg, mkv, and many other video codecs. This is now a moot point as things like VLC player have sprung up, but during the time it really pissed him off. He could pay for apples divx crapware, which he did eventually.

I may just be confusing myself with a hardware issue but he also asked me to get him cd-writing because he couldn't do it from the box. In the end I am sure he did get it sorted, I being of little help since my previous mac experience is limited. You seem to be quoting from the most recent lines, I am refering to my experiences which are not as current, but due to those bad exp.'s is why I am not current.

Mostly my point about macs is that they are inaccessible for self repair, even more so than dells.

If you fancy educating me on macs I would appreciate it as I know a LOT about "generic" PC's but little about macs.

P.S. Vista is for Loozers. Even to mention it could bring shame on you and your family. ;^)

Right!!!

Where to start, eh?

Firstly, I work in a business where all the office computers are laptops with docking stations. They provide laptop bags in all shapes for safe transport. We have dell and independant IT service contracts and in-house support in the form of several engineers and IT dudes. Only the server and a couple of legacy pieces are not laptops and this creates an excellent and productive workplace. We never seem to have laptop related productivity issues, one drive failure that took a day to sort with new loaded with backup. SO have at you Anton Ivanov!! It can work very well.

Also laptops can be fixed by anyone who can fix a normal "generic" PC if they have some balls. (dells are quite difficult to open, but APPLE is FAR WORSE)

NEXT, Brian Milner, is that right? so close to having the best name in the world but so far as well. Excellent recipe though.

And FINALLY,

Apple is the worst for user servicability and upgrade. Laptop or not. They try to trap you into their proprietary CRAP, that is expensive, AND stop you from being able to solve the problems that occur in daily IT situations.

You have to buy every little thing from apple, Video codecs, cd writing software, FFS EVERYTHING. THEY SUCK!!

It is only fashion concious airheads that like apple because they dumb everything down for them and look "different".

And after all that...

You still are working on an apple. BTW I have 7 million pounds "locked up" in an african nation, if you were to send me just £2500....

Only joking, but you are a sucker. P.T. Barnum only wishes he had met you.

Enjoy your non-user servicable, non upgradable piece of crap laptop.

Women! they can be soo lame sometimes.

PAC slams exclusive DoH deal

So...

Why isn't anyone facing charges of corruption, fraud, embezzlement etc. Just a don't do it next time.

Blatent backhander.

Nintendo yanks Mario Party 8 - offensive language to blame?

STFU lamers.

I find it difficult to believe that nintendo did not conciously choose the word. It fits the rhymeing scheme. It was made to rhyme. People chose the word.

However I also disagree that it is used in a derogatory way. The idea is that they are gonna get the train in the party mood. Go CRAZY!!!

And so I have to say to everybody. Chill out FFS. It is not bad in the way it is used.

If I were to say "Let the train go crazy!" I am not condoning people starting to murder each other in psychosis induced rage. Nor am I insulting people with mental problems.

So please STFU and just ROFLYFAO FFS

Saudis to execute Sri Lankan teen

IT connection

Isn't it obvious what the IT angle is? If only the Saudi's had an integrated management system based on MRP-II type business software to handle all of these "criminals".

But no, back office shenanigans! And they think they can compete in the world of underhanded execution of possible innocents.

Dinner party guest makes gruesome discovery

Good Job Belgian Police

A thick file was held showing the man to be incredibly violent.

This begs the question why wasn't he in jail? The police are just as guilty of allowing this poor woman and child to die as the offender. Did they think it would stop? I doubt it. They wait until they are dead.

Shameful.

Downing Street dodges 'unlimited' broadband debate

If you want a fair "fair usage policy"

I have been with Demon internet at home for about a year now. They are the home user branch of THUS. A major provider to businesses and banks. Great infrastructure and service levels, knowledgable staff. I know this because they didn't hire me and I am great, so logically they have got greater. Most failures are due to BT's infrastructure (lack of) reliability.

Anyway Demon's fair use moniters your b/w usage over 10 days and if you are in the top 1% or so you get throttled. It is a rolling system so that if you drop out of this parameter you resume great b/w. I have found that I only get throttled rarely and the connection and billing have been very professionally managed. Cheapest I could find for unlimited data. 19.99 a month 8 meg subject to fair use as described.