Posts by Kevin Gurney

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

About 15 years ago I worked in support at a large theme park situated just outside a very very posh small village.

One day nothing could connect outside the park - especially an issue when using a third party ticketing provider and credit card processing.

Finally came online mid afternoon and the reason the telecoms engineers gave was that somebody in his multimillion pound house had decided to dig himself a swimming pool and his hired mini digger had hit something repeatedly......that'd be an armoured cable running under his garden then.

RIP: Creators of the GIF and TRS-80

School friend had a TRS-80 but was quickly replaced with a BBC Model A so he could do "Computer Studies" work at home

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

FriendFace

Seems the obvious choice.........

Paypal struggles free of VMware lock-in, goes with OpenStack

Re: Someone tell the banks

Paypal do withdrawals using FPI - however they "randomly" select 99% of withdrawals for checking therefore you still wait three days for your funds to clear.

However I don't think they're classed as a bank in the UK are they ?

O2, Be Broadband axe Pirate Bay access

Be Broadband

As a Be customer I appreciate that they have to comply with court orders.

Given that Be is regarded as a "techy" ISP, most of their users will either be using another BT search engine or know how to get around the block anyway.

Does anybody even still use TPB anyway ?

Pipex 'silence' condemned punters' emails to spam blackhole

Had this issue sending email to a handful of addresses and it was pretty obvious what the problem was from the bounce message returned.

Tried to tell Pipex but gave up after 45 minutes on hold listening to The Nolans tell me that they were in the mood for dancing.

Problem lasted about 48 hours and then went away.

Audi shows off OLED-illuminated concept R8

Oi. Do you mind.

No Saxo in the "Kevs" garage thank you.

Why O2 shared your mobile number with the world

Except of course that mobile numbers don't appear in any telephone directory in the UK and so are not in the public domain. Therefore my mobile number is confidential until I choose to give it to you.

And I don't.

PayPal dispute ends in 'violin destruction'

"Critically, though, it does not fall under FSA jurisdiction"

Which IMHO is why they moved out of the UK. Many sites sprang up detailing how to make complaints via the FSO and many people (myself included) were able to have Paypal release locked funds which had been held for unspecified purposes by lodging FSO complaints. Paypal I believe had to pay the FSO for the investigation of each complaint.

I'd guess that Lux has a lot less active (and suspended) Paypal users to complain than the UK has.

Because Paypal won't accept it as proof. They will only accept signed for receipts from their recommended delivery companies.

And even then they don't always believe thaht things have been delivered.

Lloyds TSB online banking, ATMs titsup in server crash

To Be Fair......

Their online banking system is rubbish and the only thing thats worse is their mobile banking "apps" which are a shortcut to the online banking website which work about 10% of the time.

Punters even more dissatisfied by Virgin Media's package

I can second that - been with Be for about 5/6 years and have never had any issues.

Solid 18mb connection with no limits and no shaping.

I pay a premium for it over Skys free offering (use BT for phone and Sky for TV) but well worth my £20 odd a month.

Irish woman doesn't go down after scrotum ripping assault

Then he should avoid posts with subjects such as "Irish woman doesn't go down after scrotum ripping assault"

There is no ambiguity about the content of the story.

No point reading it and then complaining that he didn't want to read it.

RIM BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone

"The large screen does have an impact on battery life but a full charge should still see you through two full days, which is more than you will get from many an Android handset"

Fixing Android mobes costs telcos millions

You could also argue that the higher end models - which generally sit in the same price bracket as Apple and Blackberry handsets - don't have these issues because they tend to have faster processors, more memory, etc and therefore don't exhibit any of the problems that users of lower end hardware see.

Truth is that you will never get the same performance from a £50 handset as you do from one costing ten times as much running the same OS and applications.

Swedish court confirms jail for Pirate Bay cofounder

I'd have taken whatever the courts could throw at me rather than live in Widnes !

Footnote

I'm from Widnes before any of the other residents complain about the above post. There is a reason for the gag "My girlfriend asked me to kiss her where it smells......so I took her to Widnes!

BlackBerry stumbles to feet, full of apologies

what about a redundant one somewhere else?

Allegedly there was a fail over system that didn't kick in as they expected it to.....if you believe the explanation of course.

iOS update woes prompt gnashing of teeth for Apple fans

I think it's more that I've heard that gag at least a million times on Facebook and Twitter.....although obviously not on my Blackberry.

BlackBerry BBM, email downed in epic FAIL

Last BBM at around 10:40 this morning. Email coming through but delayed by upto 3 hours.

Phone and SMS working as normal but no web browsing and looks like no updates within the FB app.

Just means that I've got more work done today......and company iPhone totally unaffected.

Four jailed for million-pound abuse images ring

Free Speech ?

Sorry but IMHO "free speech" doesn't apply to people who publish things like this. As far as I am concerned, sickos like these deserve no rights.

Sick

These people should be made to take a long walk on a very short pier.

It disgusts me that my taxes will be used to feed them while they're locked up.

Feds seize $15m from scareware monger's Swiss account

Swiss Bank ?

Obviously a good thing that this low life has been caught BUT since when did Swiss banks do what the US told them too ?

I always thought that people used Swiss accounts because of the ethics of the Swiss banking system and the fact that they would divulge no information to anybody ?

Pirate-bothering ACS:Law lawyer goes bankrupt

...more wrongly

And if you'd read the previous stuff or done a little research you'd know that solicitors can be limited liability - thats why so many solicitors firms end with LLP which stands for Limited Liability Partnership.

More details at the link below :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_Liability_Partnerships_Act_2000

Apple sues teenager for white iPhone conversion kits

Get Real

People have been saying this about Microsoft / Sony / Every other large multinational for years and it simply isn't the case.

Apple will still be making huge sales of iPhones, iPads, iPods, iMacs and everything else starting with "i" regardless of what you buy.

For every idealogical "I won't buy their stuff" there is still a hundred or a thousand people who will.

It might be sad but it's still true.

They didn't want him

They didn't want him - they wanted the Foxconn leak that was selling him the parts so they used a law suit to frighten him (or rather his parents) enough to give them all the details of the supplier.

I would guess that Apple will shortly be filing against that person and won't be dropping it quite so quickly.

Health experts flip over McD's burger-flip toy

At least 2 years......

I bought one of these from Toys-R-Us around that time.

And anybody who says that you'd have to be stupid to part with £60 for one then you're right, but explain that to your child who wants one for their birthday / Xmas present.

Apple to Microsoft: 'App Store name is not generic'

Never mind that.......

They own the rights to "Sabre Wulf" which takes me back to the mid 80s !

Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card

This is Barclays / Microsofts fault how ????

Surely she should be giving her son a little telling off instead.

Easynet blames network collapse on dodgy router update

Note the word "QUARTERLY"

Easyney sells its SureStream ADSL product as an alternative to a leased line, with a 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee (quarterly).

Man could face prison over six second 'extreme porn' clip

How exactly was he caught ??

Did he take the PC to be repaired ?

China warns Google over uncensored search threat

Post anonymously?

"They will censor the web at the behest of whoever, to suit their bottom line"

"They seem to think that they are bigger than national governments and don't need to take into account national laws."

Surely those two statements contradict each other.

Cryptome: PayPal a 'liar, cheat and a thug'

Small Claims Track

You can only sue if they are a UK based business......thats why they moved to Luxembourg.

CardersMarket hacking kingpin jailed for 13 years

UK Banks ?

Would any of those cards have been issued by UK based financial institutes ?

If so, would that provide a parallel with a UK based "hacker" abusing systems located in the US ?

Cheeky French hackers hijack Tata website

It can't have been Richmond.....

......as he's got Scurvy :-)

BT names 63 more exchanges for fibre upgrades

SLOW

"Although theoretically capable of 40Mbit/s downstream, such fibre-to-the-cabinet services are in reality expected to offer between 10 and 20Mbit/s"

SO still slower than my current BE connection then that gives a solid 20Mbit connection on my old copper wire........

Man posed as teen lesbian to snare girl's nude photos

@serviceWithASmile

"but then along comes Kev from PissyWerld and sells him a laptop"

I'd just like to point out that I no longer work for PissyWerld.

Thank you.

Street View in (kind of) Swiss roll-over

I don't care

that its being awkward and pedantic.

Just happy to see somebody who's not scared to stand up to Google and tell them to do one.

London techies get kit off for charity

IT Crowd ?

Sure I won't be the only - or even the first - to point out that he's obviously seen the episode from the last series which see's Roy doing the photography of Moss' friends......who's a naughty scientist then ??

BlackBerry users left bereft of service

Blackberry on O2.........

No problems here with voice or data.

Microsoft warns of 'irreparable harm' on court's Word injunction

Business Impact

Most Office users are commercial concerns rather than home users.

If I need to buy extra Office licenses and I'm not able to then there is a business impact. I'm not going to abandon the 100's of licenses that I already own and I'm not going to uninstall my existing Office installations and start installing Open Office.

Microsoft may be getting whats coming to them but they are correct that there will be a huge worldwide business impact by stopping it's sale.

And lets face it, they've got MS over a barrel as regards selling them a license. If you were in that position, how many billions of dollars would you ask for ????

Feds uncover 'bust out' scam that cost banks $80m

@ Jimmy Floyd

She sent them a cheque to cover the $25k worth of cash withdrawals and as soon as they had it - without waiting for it to clear - they upped her credit limit to $70k which she promptly used to the tune of $69,940.94

Then the cheque bounced.

Sacha Baron Cohen scars Paula Abdul for life

@ Richard Cartledge

I suggest that you check out the number of (failed) lawsuits that came as a result of the filming of Borat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat#Legal_action_by_participants

BOFH: Grand Theft Auto

@mittfh

"BOFH: Defiling the profile" is episode 4

Online casino pays off US investigation

"The EU is still investigating whether the US ban breaks world trade laws"

Like the US would care if the EU decided it was breaking this law !

BBC Trust moots new licence laws to cope with net

BBC

So will the BBC apply the same ruling to the internet as they do to TV ?

If you have an internet connection you HAVE to buy a license as you have the ability to watch BBC programmes even if you choose not to ?

Thats pretty much the TV situation in that if you have a dish or an aerial, you HAVE to have a BBC license because you have the capability to watch BBC regardless of whether you choose to or not.

Am I right in thinking that the BBC are the only private company in the UK which has a law to say that you have to buy from them even if you don't use their product ?

Revolting French workers bite 3M's balles

Bad Idea

Setting a precident is always a bad thing. Now when anybody in France announces redundancies, the managers will eb locked in a room by those at risk until they hand over more cash.

Would imagine that riot police would be called if this happened in the UK and those responsible locked up.

US cops called to McDonalds menu cock-up

IT Angle

If you don't want people questioning the IT angle, get rid of the icon !

UFO wind turbine prang site: Exclusive photos

I can see this becoming

the most commented on article ever to grace the pages of El Reg

I for one welcome our windfarm turbine destroying overlords..........

Shane Ritchie poised to 'reinvent' Minder

Can't leave well enough alone.

Say no more guv'nor

Peaches Geldof - she's back!

I have a real problem.......

With people who are "famous" for being the son / daughter / brother / sister of somebody "famous".

I have a bigger problem for people who are "famous" for being the boyfriend / girlfriend of the above.

Who gives a toss what Peaches thinks - it's not like her family are known for their fashion sense is it ????