* Posts by David Evans

345 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Aug 2007

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Healthy? You're a burden on the state

David Evans
Pirate

@Dan

"But then a healthy person lives longer and contributes more money in taxes"

Not so. The "healthy person" will have paid far less tax as they went through their working life, and stop paying income tax when they retire - I don't know the actual figures but i'd guess the average retiree's tax outgoings from all sources (e.g. VAT etc) is borderline break even or even a loss for the government. The only way your argument would stack up would be if the unhealthy were kicking the bucket a long time before normal retirement age, but they probably aren't.

I've always figured the smokers and drinkers were subsidising all the other sanctimonious b*stards and it looks like I was right. We need a big war to level the playing field and whinnow out some of the fit people. That'll teach 'em.

Line up for full-windscreen satnav

David Evans

Scary

If this was allied to the moronic satnav in my Audi, I'd follow that red line the wrong way up a one-way street and into an oncoming bus in about the first mile. Garbage in, (dangerous) garbage out.

Brazil bans the evil sold in EverQuest and Counter-Strike

David Evans

EA won't be bothered...

...as everyone in Brazil plays pirated games anyway. And I'm sure the guys selling pirate games alongside the dodgy porn and reggaton CDs in downtown Rio will withdraw these dangerous evil games from their rickety sales tables immediately. Or not.

Lightsaber voted top movie weapon

David Evans

@Andy Enderby

Well if we're going outside of movies there are waaaay cooler weapons in literature than in film: Xeelee Starbreaker beams (Stephen Baxter), Starship Troopers Power Armour, Nuclear-powered X-Ray lasers (Footfall), the list goes on. And in Snowcrash, Reason may be cool in a showy kind of way, but Fido is a much more interesting "weapon".

David Evans

tsk

The British Army rifle in Zulu; if only for the best war quote ever: "If it's a miracle, Colour Sergeant, it's a short chamber Boxer Henry point 45 caliber miracle." 'nuff said.

It was the MacBook Air sub-notebook

David Evans
Thumb Down

Who cares about thin?

It's uber-thin, but so what? Its weight that matters, and this is still heavier than a Sony TX or a Samsung Q series. In fact my Samsung Q30 is smaller, lighter, you get the external DVD writer as part of the deal, it has more ports and most importantly, a removable battery (in fact you get a standard 3-hour battery and a double size six hour one).

I'd actually really like a proper Mac sub notebook, would even pay a premium for it, but not this; its a toy.

Beeb's iPlayer reaps streaming traffic dividends

David Evans

re:let's make a platform available across this whole global media interweb thingy

Its all about the rights, or lack of, to distribute outside the UK. Crap I know, you'd think they'd have got their rights act together by now, after all the web's only been around for fifteen years...

Parents to get classroom spynet in 2010

David Evans
Black Helicopters

Death of childhood part 4536

God I'd hate to be a kid these days. I suppose the next step is the personal webcam over every desk. And we wonder why kids are doing drugs aged 8. Wouldn't you?

Reaper airborne war-droids to patrol 2012 Olympics

David Evans
Black Helicopters

What the hell is the point?

We have more cameras in London that anywhere else in the world, and now they want UAVs? What the Hell for? Is a UAV going to spot a terrorist with a backpack? No. Is it going to spot a car or truck bomb? No. Is it going to give Big Brother a new toy to play with? Oh yes.

BT Vision targets Xbox gamers for growth

David Evans

Maybe I'm being thick...

...but what's the benefit to the customer? If I still have to have a separate PVR in order to use Vision, what benefit am I getting from this? If the 360 had a Freeview tuner and the box was effectively replacing the Vision STB/PVR then I could see the benefit. Maybe BT should have done their deal with Sony as the PS3 WILL have a Freeview tuner soon.

The Electric Car Conspiracy ... that never was

David Evans

Lies, damn lies and...

There are a lot of people here making off the cuff comments about the relative "cradle to grave" impact of internal combustion v. electric cars, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of actual facts; for instance, is it easier to make a power station (even a hydrocarbon power station) "green" (filters, carbon sequestration etc.) than it is to make make millions of IC cars more efficient? Or not? Do the economics of electric vehicles change with scale? Does it make more economic sense to invest in public transport and keep personal transport out of cities altogether? I see a lot of opinions and vested interests but very little on the way of objective research by people WITHOUT an axe to grind. Where's the science?

All the other stuff is just marketing; even Americans can be persuaded out of their SUVs and trucks if it makes economic sense, in exactly the same way they were persuaded IN to trucks in the first place if necessary (through regualatory effects; Americans drive trucks because they're cheap, and they're cheap because of legislation that exempts them from a lot of car-related safety and emissions regs. Its not rocket science to work out incentives for electric if the will is there).

Supersonic stealth jumpjet rolls off production line

David Evans

@Andy Goodair

The Typhoon may be the best thing since sliced bread, but that's no guarantee a navalised version would follow suit; The Typhoon has a number of design issues that make conversion for naval use pretty complex; low wing design, high landing speed, landing visibility problems etc. not to mention the the amount of airframe strengthening it would need; about a million years ago I used to work in the design office for BAe, working on the T-45, the navalised Hawk trainer for the US navy. By the time they'd finished redesigning it they could have designed an all-new aircraft; and the Naval plane weighed more empty but only had about 2/3 the takeoff weight of the land-based Hawk. Successful naval adaptions of land-based aircraft are extremely rare; the other way around, certainly, but bear in mind, one of the reasons the French went their own way with the Rafale was because they wanted a plane designed for carriers from the outset.

Space brains resign over efforts to attract ET attention

David Evans
Alien

Anyone heard of Fermi's Paradox?

If space-faring aliens exist then we should see evidence of them all over the place. We don't, which means either; they don't exist, or they're hiding (which means we should be asking why they're hiding so well and take note). The other alternative is that they're everywhere but we're totally crap at identifying them because we're making some huge misplaced assumptions about technology/physics (my favourite theory). Maybe all that missing matter is because they're all hiding behind shielded Dyson spheres or something.

David Evans
Alien

Sign me up

I for one would like to volunteer my services for our Space Battlefleet & Interstellar Colonisation programme. A sound policy for a better Britain. Do I get an attractive jumpsuit? (No red, thank you).

Rubbish UK management crushing creativity

David Evans

Who's responding to the survey?

While my instinct is that this is true, could it be that British workers are just more inclined to moan and not do anything about it? I've worked for Brit, German, French and American bosses and in their own way they're all just as good/bad as each other. There are also loads of external (to management) factors that affect Management style - like whether you work for a listed company or not, whether the CEO is a finance guy or an entrepeneurial type etc. And I have to say, techies are the biggest moaners of the lot; bitch every day about the same company they've worked for for five years; where sales or marketing guys would vote with their feet far earlier.

Europe too cynical for iPhone

David Evans
Jobs Horns

@elder norm

Well, first of all people wouldn't be getting so exorcised about the iPhone if it hadn't been hailed as the most revolutionary thing in telecoms since the smoke signal, or if Apple hadn't applied their usual breathtaking arrogance towards non-US markets.

Fact is, its a nice UI in search of a decent phone. A year from now I'm pretty sure it will be on my shopping list, because Apple will have fixed its shortcomings (in order to compete) and it will be offered on competitive contracts. Will it have 10-25% of the World smart phone market in a year? I wouldn't bet against it; but not if they don't meet Europe (and Asia's) higher expectations.

90mph police chief cops 42-day ban

David Evans
Go

@Red Bren

Yeah, that's right, if you believe in liberty you're happy for people to "murder and rape" blah blah blah. Don't be so childish. In the case of speeding, if there was actually any intelligence attached to speeding rules rather than the usual hysterical "think of the children" ranting, perhaps more people would have respect for the rules. If 2 million speeding tickets A YEAR are being issued, it may not be telling you there are 2 million evil selfish bastards out there, it may be telling you that they're just the ones that got caught. If the majority of people speed, then it may be telling you something about "the will of the people". Of course, when was the last British government that gave a toss about that?

Turkey probes The God Delusion for 'insulting religion'

David Evans

@Danny Thompson

Maybe if you actually read the book you'd understand why your view is EXACTLY the kind of thing that Dawkins is so dismissive of. "Faith" is not a valid argument, and doesn't deserve equal consideration with the scientific method. While you're correct that science can't "prove" God doesn't exist, that's to misunderstand the scientific method. Science shows that the balance of probability is heavily weighted towards no God. Faith shows us...nothing apart from faith itself.

TV heavyweights build on-demand supersite

David Evans

Re: Auth via Licence fee

The current rights model is already broken; devices like Slingbox see to that (in the "legitimate" sphere). Surely if anyone is going to change the broken rights model its a behemoth like the BBC. And you're not telling me that the likes of Apple don't want to do this as well. All comes down to failure of imagination and a lack of understanding of why people use these kinds of services in the first place.

David Evans

@ The Douros

Actually there is a way of authenticating eligability to watch British TV, the TV licence. If the BBC developed an auth system for licence holders (probably for far less then they've wasted on iPlayer) then we can have the content we've already paid for irrespective of location, and it would solve a bunch of rights issues to boot. It would probably help licence fee renewals as well, but getting the back end right isn't as glamorous as "look at us we're doing tv on the internet, aren't we cool?"

David Evans

Platforms?

If it works with iPods, PSPs etc. it might be worth a look, otherwise its just the same old shit under a new label.

Drink rats' milk, suggests battling Heather Mills

David Evans

@sabroni

Ah, the old "7lbs of veg = 1lb of animal" bit . Classic veggie nonsense. Cows eat grass. We don't. Therefore its not exactly straightforward to bypass the cow. Plus, the energy stored in the animal (proteins and fats) is far more valuable to humans than the raw vegetable matter, even if we could eat it, so weight for weight, you need to eat less meat than veg to survive.

Chinese cyber strikes will be 'like WMD'

David Evans

@Piers

"you mean they might not do what the USA wants! Heaven forfend!" Well, if by "USA", you mean "The West", then yes, I mean exactly that. If China's aims aren't compatible with our own, (and in the case of China that's obviously the case in a number of areas) then you look at ways to fix that, economically, politically, or if necessarily, militarily. This isn't a case of we're the good guys and they're the bad guys, (although on balance, we're the bad guys and they're the worse guys), its normal political planning, and as I said, what's alarming is that if China decides to get..."assertive", shall we say, then we don't have much comeback short of toothless UN resolutions or wheeling out the killware, because in the economic sphere we're already beholden to China. That's what comes of quietly ignoring an unpleastant political regime in order to keep the price of iPods down.

David Evans

What's Lewis Page's point?

...That the Americans shouldn't keep an eye on China? Or that all the things about China in the report are irrelevant? As far as I can see its a perfectly legitimate report. The fact that China is the world's sweatshop and now its biggest polluter, AND a nasty one-party state with population and resource problems and a rapidly developing military should be a cause for concern for us all.

The biggest problem we have with China is that we have very little leverage over them that won't damage our own economies.

CompuServe France headed for the knacker's yard

David Evans
Unhappy

Poor old CompuServe

My first internet job was with them. Eee, it was all grey screens as far as the eye could see. Weird thing is, I still think they did "community" far more effectively than anyone else has managed until very recently.

Nokia unleashes N82 smartphone multimedia computer

David Evans
Thumb Down

Woo-hoo.

Super. Now does it have the same appalling battery life as the N95? "Multimedia Computer" is right, unfortunately for all intents and purposes, its a desktop computer.

Plastic police to enforce London bag ban?

David Evans
Pirate

I'm no enviro-weenie, but...

...why a ban, and why just London? Ireland put a levy on plastic bags years ago and it worked a treat. Plastic bag use dropped about 90% overnight and retailers switched to paper/reusable bags (usually passing the cost to the customer for the latter, but taking the hit for the former). The Irish government made a tidy profit as well. I don't think many people would object to this.

BT Vision misses customer targets (by a shedload)

David Evans

Could it be because...

...they couldn't find their arse with their own hands?

I've tried to order it online and get a message telling me I don't have BT Broadband, when I'm ordering from the very BT Broadband line I apparently don't have...

BBC.com begins commercial push

David Evans

About time

Its only taken them 10 years. They were supposed to do this originally (with poor old ICL's cash). If they'd have done it then they'd have earned a shedload of cash and people wouldn't be so taken aback by it now. In fact loads of the commercial stuff they're now finally accepting as necessary for survival were suggested (and developed) by the beeb.com crew back in the day but were killed by the John Birt regime.

Congestion charge dodgers register Bentleys as minicabs

David Evans
Thumb Down

Simple Answer

There's a very simple solution for TFL if they want to put a stop to this; make cabs pay the congestion charge. If its no longer about congestion but about the environment instead (never mind that its really about taxing the middle classes - I digress), then why should cabs be exempt? Cabs will simply pass on the congestion charge across customers and it will also encourage them to get greener cabs. Of course the fact that the Hackney Cab lobby is pretty powerful and Ken wouldn't like them bitching at him as he swans around London on the public purse is completely irrelevant. People getting taxis will pay a bit more, but so what? Everyone else is paying more tax, why shouldn't they?

Brussels arms bod: Don't buy Yankee deathware

David Evans
Pirate

One requirement

European defence procurement will always cost more and lag behind the Americans and Russians for the simple reason that Europe doesn't run a unified military. Instead, any new project usually has to satisfy the various requirements of each military (and local political agenda), often requirements that are mutually irreconcilable - hence rubbish like the Tornado F2. To their credit, only the French have the guts to drop out of these joint ventures if they don't look like satisfying their specific requirements (hence the development of Rafale instead of Eurofighter). The Americans long ago recognised this which is why naval procurement is often separate from the USAF and Army; and that's just three services, in the case of Europe the problem is orders of magnitude worse. So if you want competitive European "deathware" then the solution is, have a common military (but that's a whole other issue).

Oh, and Paul, the Typhoon is nowhere near as good as the F22 in absolute terms; maybe on a "per £ spent" basis, but that's about it.

Gov egghead: Companies should have daily PT

David Evans
Thumb Down

"It's a softer form of paternalism."

How about, and I know this is wild and whacky and a bit out there, but what the Hell, here goes; HOW ABOUT NO PATERNALISM AT ALL, YOU TOSSER? Oh, yes, because then there'd be no need for "Professors of Social Policy", would there?

Technology is root of all evil, says IMF

David Evans

@Jody

"In 1700, all the countries in the world were broadly equal in terms of wealth" Sorry, this is just nonsense; mercantilist countries like England and Holland were already outstripping everyone else by this point, with the exception of Spain, which had a lock on most of the world's Silver and was fabulously rich compared to everyone else (even if the English and Dutch were nicking a lot of it), all without an industrial revolution. More to the point, inequality WITHIN countries was, as the article says, worse than it is now. Developed countries have always had the super-rich, but proportionately, the super-rich of today are not as far beyond the rest of us as the old monied classes in pre-industrial times, and that's almost entirely THANKS to technology.

Safe drinking guidelines 'plucked out of the air'

David Evans
Pirate

How about...

...the government and the medical profession just shut up and leave us alone? The drinking guidelines were clearly nonsense from the start (why would a 6' 4" bloke have the same limits as a a 5' 6" one?), but its amazing how easily this nonsense became "fact". People know when they're drinking too much, and it should be their own business, so long as they're not breaking any laws.

I see the latest wheeze is that schools are going to inform parents if their kids are obese; I think the wheezing and puffing and three school uniforms a year might tip parents the wink, but I guess its only valid if an "official" tells you so, right?

I heard an interesting interview the other day which pointed out that when governments were proven to be incompentent in the industrial sphere and fairly incompetent in the economic sphere, they had to find somewhere else to interfere to justify their existence, and our personal lives were the obvious place. Well guess what? They're incompetent here too.

No-humping 20mph limit for London

David Evans
Thumb Down

blunt trauma

No-one without psychopathic tendencies would disagree that 20mph makes sense some of the time when driving in London, but a blanket urban speeding limit is just idiotic. There are already plenty of places where the current 30mph limit is too low (I regularly drive along a couple of roads in East London that border parkland with no pathways or even buildings for the precious little kiddies to jump out from, but have 30 limits which should be 40 or even 50); bet they won't get reevaluated before this nonsense gets implemented. I could even sign up to a blanket 20 limit if a little intelligence was applied to make it variable.

Oh and I think we need a Maude Flanders icon.

BBC spreads free Wi-Fi Cloud over iPlayer delay

David Evans
Flame

Clueless

The whole iPlayer system is misconceived. It strikes me that at no point has anyone in the BBC sat down and asked WHY people would use this type of service. As has already been said, what people really want is the archive, and to be able to access content when they're away from their TV, which guess what, often means when they're abroad. The BBC will fire back with the standard "rights issues" argument (they can't even put current shows like Torchwood on there because of rights, which beggars belief, frankly), but I'd argue they should consider getting their lawyers and techies to talk to each other. Why the hell they don't develop an auth system around the TV licence (they claim to know where and who we are after all) so they could then tell rights holders they are only "broadcasting" to licence payers, God only knows.

Right now, iPlayer is just a poorly-executed gimmick, that doesn't even fulfil its own low expectations (it was two days putting Top Gear on there last week).

Road pricing 'back-burnered' by Brown gov't

David Evans
Stop

@Neil

You're confusing common sense with Ken Livingstone's political agenda, which is to make driving in London so unpalatable that we'll all become good little drones and use public transport in his green/socialist (interchangable) people's paradise. Except him of course, who'll continue to use the polluting black cab network on the public purse.

Mr WebTV skewers US patent bill

David Evans

Its the judicial process, not the patent process that's broken

First to file clearly allows for a more dynamic patent environment, the problem is the litigation process, not the patent process. The idea that a jury , or even most judges, can make informed decisions in the patent appeals process shows one of the fundamental problems with the US patent system. Maybe patent litigation should involve some kind of peer-review process instead.

Halo 3 UK launch fails to fire

David Evans

Why queue?

Let's face it, you've got to be fairly retarded to queue up at midnight (or at all). I bet if you could see the detailed ELSPA day one figures most Halo 3 sales will be web pre-orders, especially as the likes of GAME have been promoting the fanboy-pleasing special editions online for ages.

Apple rings in changes with iPod Touch

David Evans

cynical...

The iPod that people really want would be a Touch with a hard drive. 16Mb isn't enough to take advantage of that screen, so you have to get a smaller-screened Classic if you want to store and watch video. Of course Apple will get the fanbois to buy the not-that-useful flash touch now, AND buy the hard disk version they'll inevitably bring out in a generation or two...

Sony to unplug Connect digital music service

David Evans

I know it was crap, but...

...isn't this a retrograde step? Especially given Sony's online and "multimedia" ambitions with PS3 and PSP. Or is there going to be a separate music service for those?

Genghis Khan didn't much like gays

David Evans

Not correct anyway

The Romans had a ban on homosexuality (you got burned at the stake) as far back as AD390, so the story isn't even particularly accurate.

Kingston hides Hull roots with KCom rebrand

David Evans

Oi!

Less of the Codhead jibes; everyone knows the North Sea's empty now. Hull is a fine town, but then I've lived in Peterborough and Salford, so I know what a real sh*thole looks like.

Governator vows to appeal ruling striking down video game law

David Evans

Am I missing something here?

Um, doesn't this law just say violent games have to be tagged with an "18" rating? What's wrong with that?

Miserable Brits declare War on Comfort

David Evans

Re: Silly Argument

Except - England is going to be underwater and suffering storms anyway. This is what's wrong with the whole C02 debate; we should be preparing for the consequences of a change world (because if it turns out to be NOT entirely man-made, which will almost certainly be the case, we're screwed), rather than obsessing over trivial crap like patio heaters, because despite our "example" the Chinese and Indians aren't going to give up a car in every garage and a mobile in every hand - as far as their concerned, why should they?

I've been travelling around the world for the last year (7.6 tonnes of C02 - oops) and none of the 25 countries I visited have this hysteria about C02, even Australia and New Zealand (who are at least as "threatened") don't beat the population over the head about it every five seconds like they do here. We sit on our tiny island making ourselves miserable, AND IT WON'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE,apart from generating tax revenue.

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