Posts by Andy Worth

Teen discussed suicide plan online 12 hours before webcam death

Re:@Ed - Guns

Agreed - if the officer had burst in with a gun and then shot the body then that would have been an overreaction but as it stands he probably hadn't been given full details of the incident. Somebody rang in saying that a teen "may" have committed suicide on camera, so the chances are that was the message the copper got.

The whole thing is very sad, but it's not the fault of the internet - as much as certain media sources with one hand in the governments pockets would try to convince you otherwise.

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic mobile phone

Not great....

The phone looks cheap and tacky at best, and the blue version just looks truly awful. 1GB of memory for a phone where the chief selling point is music is really poor, what considering the low-price nature of flash memory these days they could have doubled that without a significant change of cost. A giant like Nokia would perhaps pay a couple of quid extra for a 2GB card instead, whereas it will cost the end-user more than that.

I haven't played with the interface on this phone but then I can't really be unbiased about it as I don't generally get on with Nokia interfaces. If the music player is similar to their earlier phones then it will be uninspired and the part-working "say and play" facility is nothing more than a gimmick.

I had a similar gimmick on a Sony Ericsson phone I had, which you could shake to change tracks. You had to hold down a button to do this though (which kind of defeated the object!) and aside from the button being tiny and hard to press, it was hard to determine whether your shake would move forward or backward a track, or move to a random one.

"Say and play" will be something you use about ten times to show your mates, which subsequently will laugh at you when your phone plays "Barbie Girl" instead of "Basket Case".

With the phones on the market at present, this doesn't provide anything significantly new or different. Aside from a fairly reasonable price I don't see any reason to choose this phone over any other offering on the market.

Mobile shields man from death bullet

Divine intervention....

Of course...it must have been God that told him to put his phone in that pocket, because God does things like that. He also tells me that I have to hide my socks so that I can never find a matching pair.

It's nice to know that a Motorola can be useful for something at least though!

Does it feel good when I twist your circuits?

Bendy?

"an optical image of an electronic device in a complex deformation mode."

What....you mean that picture of a circuit board being bendy?

That sentence alone reminds me of "Mr Logic" from the days I used to read Viz.

Gamers voice NXE woes

Re:Corrupt Download I bet

Then they should implement some sort of verification into the download to make sure that it doesn't bugger consoles.

Tron sequel already in production

Surely....

...it has to be BBC Basic? I even distinctly remember the BBC graphics being an almost dead match for the film.

Anyway, they'll likely ruin another classic film by making a shoddy sequel to it and turning it into a half-cut series. I wouldn't be surprised to see "Tron: The Series" come out onto our screens after this film is released.

It's just a blatent money-making exercise. I am hoping they will change my mind once I see the film but I very much doubt it.

Apple rescinds version change App Store ban

As I said before....

The "censor" must have been having a bad day when the app got banned, or perhaps even clicked the wrong button. Shit happens, it's been put right, so there's nothing to fuss about.

As for the other discussion in the first few comments, I can see arguments for and against "censoring" apps. Yes, it does restrict, or allow Apple to restrict what can be put onto the phone for their own gains if they wish, but then it's their phone so it's up to them. It does add a certain level of quality control to the process too, which is not always a bad thing.

Realistically, assuming you want an iPhone, you will either put up with it or jailbreak your phone, depending what is most important to you.

Feds shutter one-stop stalker shop

Hmm...but

I can see that many people would have used this site, to find out if their partner was cheating or something similar, but it breaks so many laws it is just unbelievable. They were not only false advertising (no keylogger is "100% undetectable"), but also encouraging and even instructing people to commit computer crime.

I mean, a centralised database which holds details of everyones web browsing habits....I can't imagine any worse Phorm of privacy breach. (do you like what I did there? :))

But I absolutely agree with alzain that it needs to be taken very seriously as they are, quite literally, aiding and abetting people with performing computer crime.

Teen hacker confesses three-year crime spree

Re:Uh...

Yes, it's just you..... :)

I do hope that they have also added a stipulation that he is not allowed to use or access a computer for X years after his release as well. He is a snotty little shit, the likes of which I crossed paths with a number of times in my online gaming days, usually after I crept up behind them with my knife while they were camping out somewhere (speaking in a game context of course, not literal!). Although saying that.......

Apple sued over Jesus Phone 'hairline cracks'

Re:Norfolk Enchants Paris Re:@AC

Absolutely agree, it is very cowardly to flame someone directly and hide behind an anonymous tag. If you're going to attack someone directly, at least have the balls to admit who you are, but then you probably don't have the balls to confront anyone directly.

Apple's other masterstroke was their interface - something which Nokia can still get nowhere near. My N95 was technically superior to an iPhone, but I hated it because it was slow and clunky and shaped somewhat like a housebrick. Likewise in the iPod, there are other mp3 players which may be technically superior, but the interface and design keeps them selling well.

For the record, I hate Apple as a company, but one or two of their products have really begun to grow on me (not literally). Yes, I recently got an iPhone after playing with one and loving the interface, and how much better it was than the other touchscreen phones I've tried. Call me a sheep if you like, I certainly don't give a stuff what you think about me because I know my own reasons. But then you probably only voice your hatred of the device because lots of other people do too, so who is the sheep?

Everyone is entitled to their opinions on what they do and don't like, but you just sat making assumptions about somebody elses character while playing hide-and-seek with your own identity.

@Chris Iverson

"e.g. smelly elitist idiots."

So you HAVE met some French people then? :)

Mobile phones will 'cut off' Al Qaeda

Err...

However, this doesn't do anything to combat the terrorists who just buy a ticket, let alone those with proper forged identities.

But hey, at least the last thing that goes through your mind as a terrorist bomb blows you to pieces is that they must have paid for a ticket.....

Broadband speed testers fail the test

Re:@Virgin Engineers

"I had a VM enginner tell me that my V+ box (of which I've averaged 1 per year!) was not simply broken but being interfered with by the signals from the Wireless capabilities of my Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360."

What....you didn't know about the background interference that can be caused by any device that has wireless capability to a non-wireless device, even if the wireless capability itself is not in use at the time? You have to retune the flux capacitor to block out the electro-radiation.

It was their shit equipment that drove me back to Sky TV. We had a couple of boxes, both of which used to crash all of the time and even when they were working they were so slow to change channels I could go make a cup of tea while I waited. Their "on-demand" service never worked on my demand, but occasionally when it felt like it and not too many people were using it, then would stop working half-way through watching a show and take ten minutes to get going again.

They couldn't even claim that the cables coming into the area were crap, as the broadband service was previously NTL (before they took it over) and pretty consistently close to what it was advertised at. I believe it became crap simply because it started being throttled by their shitty network.

Oh, but interestingly, I do agree that a lot of speed testing websites don't have the capacity to deal with higher-end connections. But Speedtest.net has always proved pretty reliable to me.

Batman sues Batman over Batman

And in other news......

.....the town of Moron, Cuba sues the mayor of Batman for being a moron and thus breaking their trademark on the word.

I wasn't aware that you could trademark a town/city name, otherwise Melbourne, AUS is in trouble given that Melbourne, UK has been around for at least 500 years longer.

I think Iam hit the nail on the head. Although telling people that you have a high murder rate and a high rate of female suicides is probably not the best way to draw in tourists. Until I read that I was almost considering going there, just to dress up in a cape and wind up the locals.

Apple bans iPhone app for changing version number

Re:UK Unlimited?

You mean like "unlimited broadband" I assume? Which then they limit because you decide to actually use it?

And banning this app makes no sense.....it's almost like they caught the "censor" on a bad day.

US senator demands clamp down on Obama ticket touting

@Hud Dunlap

While I agree that on a personal level people ought to be able to sell on these tickets if they wish, I also agree that sites like Ticketmaster (as an example) have actually increased the price we have to pay for most event tickets. These large sites operate massive buying operations, leaving less tickets for the people who actually want them, then sell them on at up to double the original value.

This essentially means that any popular event is sold out in ridiculous time, but strangely enough if you want to pay £200 for a ticket then you can get one. A prime example was the Reading festival this year, where within a couple of hours of going on sale the tickets were all gone, but the majority went to "ticket touting" websites who were selling them on for double the price.

Some people like to argue that this is the point of capitalism, which may be true, but in realism it is just basic greed and these sites contribute nothing positive to the process of buying tickets to the average person.

Farmers demand 'special' climate deal for flatulent cattle

Re:Simple Solution

"rubber underpants for cattle with a gas bag on their backs to capture the methane"

Lol funnily enough I was thinking of the exact same thing, but with the unfortunate effect that this essentially turns your cattle into a stock of walking bombs.

Ode to the Phoenix Mars Lander

Indeed

Deactivated you stand

Shut down by our martian overlords

I for one

Welcome them

Anal whitening biz drops one million clams for Vibrators.com

Uhh

"filters that go in your underpants so that when you pass gas it doesn't smell"

So where's the fun in silent but deadly then? I mean, it's like alcohol free lager and renders your farts completely worthless.

Google fixes world's most stupid bug

Funny really....

It's a good job that I don't suffer from the same bug, otherwise I'd kick the bucket anytime I typed DIE int..............*followed by the thud of face hitting keyboard"

YouTube goes spandex with MGM movie deal

Doubtful.....

"Savor it like Malibu savors shooting tennis balls at people for a living"

From the look of him I'd say it's more like "Malibu savours playing with somebody elses balls".

Or is that Malibu Barbie on anabolic steroids? I heard that it has strange effects on women too...

US stocks up on semi-automatic rifles

"Home Defense".....?

"Most of the people there were cussing Obama and saying we need home defense."

What....you need a semi-automatic rifle to defend your home? So who exactly is invading?

@Matt Bryant

I agree with you that the ban on handguns was pretty much just a media stunt in the UK and did nothing positive. However, you seem to assume that everyone who buys a weapon is smart and responsible. If everyone educated their kids and secured their weapons properly in the manner you suggest then I am sure that keeping guns in the home would be a fair bit safer. But lets face it, there are still going to be a lot of people who don't abide by common sense.

It is a rather widely held opinion though that Americans have a certain love for their weapons. So I would expect rather strong opposition to anyone who tries to take them away.

iPhone passcode blocks everything - except phone calls

Re:I seem to remember this...

Yeah, and in fact I think it was even reported on this very website several weeks ago.

To Andy Nugent - yes the passcode lock IS just a phone lock, and the iphone has a separate option for a simlock. But then the simlock on most phones only activates if the phone is switched off, and not just when the keypad locks anyway.

It IS a pretty large hole though to be honest, and I don't really see the purpose of being able to make even emergency calls without unlocking the phone. Where most people these days carry a mobile, the chances of not being able to find a phone which can be unlocked are pretty small.

Oh and just as a comparison here, my particular model of Sony Ericsson has the ability to lock the keys, but as far as I can tell there is no option to put a pincode lock on it. I have the sim locked of course, but then that only asks me when I power the phone on. So if someone nicked it from my pocket, they would be able to make calls in exactly the same way.

AT&T cops to Jesus Phone-as-modem app

It's not the son of God phone

.....It's a very naughty boy!

Yahoo! shares tumble as Ballmer shuts coffin on Microhoo

Pleh....

Yahoo! has been a second-rate search engine for many years anyway. MS should launch their own services instead of trying to buy Yahoo, which would devalue Yahoo yet further, to the point at which they'd probably be trying to give the company away.

The only people I feel sorry for are the shareholders of Yahoo, who can only stand to lose out, as I cannot see any way realistically that their shares will ever be valued at $33 again.

Obama leads McCain on pre-teen virtual battleground

Re:manipulation

"But kids are easy to manipulate. They are immature and only care about their own self interest."

And the vast majority of the general population are somehow different? Sorry, but watching how the media manipulate people on a daily basis (take the Brand/Ross "scandal" as an example, where the whole non-issue was blown up out of proportion to try and obscure some of the more important news) and most people only care about their own self-interest anyway.

I do agree that this is a pointless "poll" but just had to point out the similarities between these kids and the voting public.

And in other news, U.S. children are given voting rights and Barney the dinosaur wins a landslide victory!

PC vendors recall more blazin' Sony batteries

Burn baby burn

Laptop inferno!!

For Ron:

If I were you I'd be bugging Toshiba to determine what models are affected. Certainly HP are sending out the replacements and asking for the "defective" ones to be sent back in the same packaging.

Rigged e-voting machine snacks on Homer Simpson

Hmm..

"computerized voting systems that can cause votes to be lost or miscounted because of malfunctions"

Or if you believe certain people, because one party invests some quite serious money into trying to cheat by rigging the voting system. Of course, this never happens in any other country.........

Anti-white-space lobby enlists God, Dolly Parton

Blocking out god??

Everyone knows that prayers use a much higher bandwidth.....

Anyway, if these microphones are already illegal then their complaint cannot really hold any water.

Parcel mules scam exposed

But then again....

Like any fraud of this type, you have to be rather gullible to fall for becoming a "parcel mule". Because lots of African orphanages buy DVD players and mobile phones for their occupants....

I guess people just WANT to believe that everyone else tries to do the right thing.

High-speed train toilet attempts to eat Frenchman

All I can say....

.....is that is why I have phone insurance....for the precise reason that one day it may prevent me from having to stick my hand into a French toilet.

Silverlight 2.0: killer features, no Flash killer

Bored and tired

I'm already tired of having to click "No Thanks" EVERY time I visit the MS site (which is reasonably often due to my job). I rarely install anything on demand, even less so if it doesn't actually give any immediate benefit.

Google Earth lands on Jesus Phone

Multi-touch

Yes, once you get used to it the pinch/reverse-pinch for zooming really is easy to use, and you don't lose part of the screen to host the additional controls. Actually it's like a lot of functions on the Jebus-phone which seem to make no sense at first and gradually grown on you.

I must admit that I swore I would never get one of these devices, particularly the original one mainly due to the cost. But with the 3G it came into the same kind of price I paid for my N95 and I was won over by the interface.

*hangs head in shame*

Kentucky judge OKs 141-site net casino land grab

Federal issue?

"This crosses state and international lines and as such is a Federal issue"

Even the feds have no jurisdiction if the domain owner is not a U.S. citizen. I am guessing that in order to actually seize the domains they would have to go to a Canadian court.

Certainly it is WAY above the remit of some hick-town judge who doesn't like the naughty internets.

Swiss boffins sniff passwords from (wired) keyboards 65 feet away

Re:Typing Speed!

"Notice how slowly he typed "password". Not that I'm a particularly fast typer, but wonder if it works as reliably when someone is typing at a decent speed."

You haven't seen how slowly some people type....I've watched people type more slowly than this in real life. Although to be fair, unless you only had one PC anywhere in the nearby area, I don't see how this can be anything other than a cheap parlour trick so surely the interference from other devices would prevent them from getting any sort of reliable data.

"Yes!! It shows the password typed as being 'p3hjnsakmmn77slkjs*8wmbaojhkkd45rmmkbd'.....result!"

Pr0n-surfing pastor downs church network

Errr....

"moistening post-it notes with his penis and sticking them up in an office"

Holy cock-juice Batman! Surely the risk of paper-cuts in that area alone makes it too dangerous to consider?

Renault looks to wee-hued windows to cut car power draw

Look at it.....

I don't think that I would be out of order in saying that it is one fuck ugly car. It bemuses me that they have removed the "air hindering" mirrors but left the thing shaped somewhat like a brick. Surely the amount of air resistance a mirror causes would be tiny (if you used properly aerodynamically designed mirrors) as opposed to the very real electrical draw caused by the cameras and screen(s).

Honestly, it's the sort of car that you'd buy when you're pissed and then look at it the following morning wondering how drunk you must have been to fancy it.

Manhunt 2 to hit UK on Halloween

Really??

"UK gamers breathed a sigh of relief when the High Court ruled, in March, that Rockstar must be allowed to distribute the game in the UK."

Did they really? Every indication I've heard was that no-one really cares whether the game got released or not. Saying that, it can't be much worse than the first one.

Stick health warnings on gays, says Stock Exchange chaplain

Tattoo the priests!!

I'm fine with his suggestion as long as in return, priests are tattooed with warnings such as "Clergymen may touch-up your children" or "Prolonged exposure may cause damage to choirboys".

McCain laptop theft sparks conspiracy theories

Re:Answers to the tests for...

"Also had the answer key for Mrs. Palin. Guess she'll just have to sit there drooling now. The new bar will be placed if she can wipe said drool from her mouth before it drips onto the floor."

Ok that made me LOL. I loved watching the vice-presidential debate where she actually managed to get through an entire session without giving an actual answer to any question. I know politicians like to avoid the real issues and babble but she takes it to a new level.

Alternatively, if somebody breaks the "unbreakable security" on the laptop, they would be able to reprogram her so she might even begin to make sense...

Reg reader completely loses the plot

Attempt to correct somebody's spelling

= EPIC FAIL when you spell your rant incorrectly as well!

Blizzard awarded $6m in WoW bot case

MMORPG bots

Going back a few years, I used to spend way too much time playing MMORPG's, but I eventually managed to wean myself off them with the use of a girlfriend (real not virtual). The sad thing is that you DO end up spending ages "grinding" skills just so that your character is strong enough to enjoy the actual fun parts of the game.

The only times I really enjoyed it were when I was roleplaying, and the physical skills of a character meant nothing (as the PVP was all staged and acted out), or when I first started, and grinding skills and money meant going with a bunch of real-life mates on teamspeak and going on a Rancor hunt (it was Star Wars Galaxies - my choice of poison).

A better method of achieving new skill levels would be to have a quest based (and even inject some story into it) system rather than a simple experience based one. This would encourage people to actually play the game and remove the need to "grind" skills.

So, sorry Blizzard, but my opinion is that if so many people require bots just to be able to start enjoying your game, it points to a weakness in the game itself.

US Congress debates cellphone cancer risk

Mobiles...

"Dr. Ronald Herberman was slightly less dramatic, pointing out that the most serious danger presented by cell phones is being hit by a driver talking on one."

Closely followed by being beaten to death by a <friend/colleague/total stranger> for <having a shit ringtone that goes off every few minutes/talking at the top of your voice to ensure everyone knows you're on your mobile>

I love the comparison with tobacco too, because nobody has ever used that excuse to fund their research before, have they? Actually congress should fund my research to prove that wanking makes your knob fall off. After all, nobody knew that tobacco was dangerous until they proved it, so how do you know that wanking isn't at least equally as dangerous?

The day I start rolling my mobile in paper and trying to smoke it is the day I'll start worrying, and not because of the potential cancerous effects of smoking a phone.....

First Merc hybrid first to use laptop battery tech

Batteries.....

I take it that they won't be using Sony laptop battery technology? After all, who wants their car exploding without warning?

Democratic rep fathered alleged Palin hacker

The sad thing.....

....is that the hacker will probably be locked away and they'll throw away the key. They'll probably treat it as a terrorism case as an excuse, even though the hacker was just trying to prove what a gun-toting, crazy-ass yokel Palin actually is.

Artemis Fowl scribe to pen sixth Hitchhiker's novel

Re:Series ?

"The BBC got this wrong as well. It is not The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series, it is The Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy."

Funny trilogy......A trilogy implies 3 parts but there are already 5 parts to the Hitchhikers series.

Microsoft slashes US Xbox 360 to sub-Wii price

Re:Wii vs Xbox

"And we've switched off the Xbox as it wasn't getting used unlike the Wii."

You'll be the only one then. Well, not the only one but the majority of people I know with both consoles only bring out the Wii for parties or the like. For the record I don't own either, I have a PS3 but that is beside my point as I'm not making any comparisons along those lines (it is irrelevant to this story).

The Wii is great fun for about 2 weeks from my experience. The controllers are not accurate enough, which gets frustrating to me, the games are a bit limited, mostly relying on the novelty value obtained by the different control options. Its appeal relies on it being seen as a good value "family" console. If the Xbox is significantly cheaper then it may just cause a few people to think twice when considering which console to buy.

Unfortunately they are STILL pumping out various Mario clones which must be just about the most tired franchise in the world by now.

Mythbusters RFID episode axed after 'pressure' from credit card firms

Myth.....

.....Confirmed!!!

You really can hack all of this shit quite easily, otherwise why all the fuss?

Thailand clamps down on rude websites

Re:The King of Thailand is an ass

Great......now they'll block the Reg too. Nice one doofus..... ;)

eMusic rattles ISPs over legal downloads

Re:*plays the worlds smallest violin*

Yes.....the people who work for said companies would. Otherwise, nobody would give a shit.