Posts by Steve Sutton

UK censor to appeal against Manhunt 2 verdict

Isn't it time to...

...disband the British Board of Film Censors?

Technical problems mar Barclays' PINSentry roll-out

Bloody things

I've had one of these from NatWest a few months ago. Thus far, I haven't been forced to use it. I can assure El Reg, that if and when I am required to use it, and they don't disable it immediately when I request they do so, I shall be informing them that "There is another way" and closing my account!

...er, does anybody know of a bank that has not introduced and has no plans to introduce this crap?

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's

Sad? Why so sad?

Why is everyone saying this is "sad" and "bad news".

I personally think that it's brilliant news that on this very day, Terry Pratchett isn't dead!

PS. Rob, I've never read any of John Peel's literature, but I bet it's nowhere near as good as Terry's work!

Nokia N95 update speeds apps with virtual memory

virtual memory?

*sigh*

Virtual memory != memory swapping

If El Reg can get this wrong, what hope do the rest of us have?

Video games blamed for England Euro flop

Re: bollocks

Ahh, thank you, you've made my day, by giving me a laugh.

It's always nice to scroll down to the bottom of an article to see one comment with a one word title "bollocks" * Despite our fears and our government's attempts, freedom of speech is alive and well.

* of course, I've ruined the "one comment only" part now, but there you go ....

Ring-back tones to carry adverts

@Anonymous Coward

"we will learn to sleep with eyes open; and appear to listen without actually hearing"

Hell, I learnt that years ago; it's actually a skill that I'm losing now, thanks to the 30-second skip button on my PVR (oh, if only real life had one of those).

World's most gullible supermarket chain falls victim to online scam

It has nothing to do with Darwin Awards......

http://www.bash.org/?4753

<xterm> The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

Virgin Mary pebble provokes holy online bidding war

Nah, it's a copper....

....who's had his helmet mashed down over his head, all the way down to his neck

UK gov advisor proposes 'licence to smoke'

Fuck Off!

I'll decide whether or not i want to take risks myself, not have you decide to do it for me.

What next, a licence to cross the road away from a pedestrian crossing?, a licence to eat boiled sweets the same size as my throat, a licence to re-wire my house without turning the mains off first?

Give me a break!

Swearing at work 'good for business'

Has anybody told kerlmann to fuck off yet?

...well i guess someone has too.

Seriously tho, in answer to your points:-

1) If people find the specific words I use to communicate, then that's their problem. Swear words are just a part of the language, and I reserve the right to make use of as much or as little of it as I see fit. I can be all of those things without swearing, and an can swear and be none of those things.

2) If someone complains about my use of language, and I am reprimanded, then I'll be out of here faster than you can say "bollocks to that". Seriously, in the context of personal abuse / bullying / etc.. it's unacceptable, but then again, it's not the swearing that is the problem in that case. If my boss were more concerned that I avoid using one or two particular words, then the clear and efficient use of language to communicate, I'd be somewhat concerned - not to mention overstressed!

3) Again, that's a load of crap. It is simply part of the English language. You may look down at the likes of me for swearing, but I look down upon the likes of you for deliberately stunting your use of the language (particularly when you say that you find it easy to do). The only possible reason to not swear is that it is offensive, and nobody has ever given me a better explanation of why swearing is offensive other than the self-fulfilling "people think it's offensive." Not good enough, I'm afraid. It is only unprofessional to use such language in customer facing roles, where, because of their inexplicable dislike of certain words, customers may leave or avoid the business. Anywhere else, it's often useful for clearly expressing and communicating information.

@Best Swear Word Ever

Oh nice work! Now you've gone and blown it for everyone you Wanunt

The Pirate Bay absconds with domain name of its nemesis

Can we have a vote please...

I doubt that it was in response to my personal appeal to add a "this message may contain sarcasm" checkbox that we got the icons (but thanks anyway). So, the comments above bring me to my next request....

Would you lovely people at El Reg be good enough to implement a system, whereby, when we spot a message that is such an obvious plant they might as well use the name "Mr R. I. Ass. America", we're allowed to ban them from making comments here - or, failing that, a rate this comment button "plant, poor humour, ranting of a madman", etc...

Thanks,

Steve.

T-Mobile data service collapses

W00t! Refund! 6p - Power to the People

Having enountered the failures on Monday morning, I thought I'd check whether or not it had even registered on my account.

To my shock and disgust </sarcasm>, I found that Virgin mobile (who piggyback off T-Mobile) had charged in total a princely sum of 6p for the various failed connections. So I fired off an "email" via the web based contact form asking fer my money back...and they've just called me to let me know that they will be refunding my 6p. I feel great - possiblly almost as good as watching the rugby last Saturday.

Wasn't just yesterday morning...

(No, not the same Steve).

It (data, I was able to send/receive texts) was apparently out on Friday (28th) afternoon and early evening for some time too...or at least I couldn't get a connection.

Pilot sacked for footie star on flightdeck shocker

zero tolerance

...and so it would seem that they have a zero tolerance policy for actions which pose no threat whatsoever.

Shame!

Nuclear accident messier than we thought

Is Adam Wynne suggesting...

... that owing to working on the decommissioning of Sellafield, his genitals or undergarments may subsequently spontaneously combust, whilst he is at an airport (or tube station)?

Halo 3 UK launch fails to fire

Halo what now?

Clearly I have missed something. I have certainly missed all of the hype. Perhaps somehow I have fallen through a wormhole and traveled instantaneously from three months ago to November 5th 1955....er today, I mean today. It was only yesterday, when I even heard that Halo 3 existed, when I was reading about all the hype on BBC News.

Still, never mind, I'm quite sure that I'm not missing much. *whistle*

Aussie politicos in a froth over naval boob jobs

blah blah

blah blah blah, where's the IT angle blah blah blah...oh wait, there it is, with the extra 't'

Firefox hits 400m download milestone

Re: Yeah but... (@Lee)

Unfortunately, I still have to use it at work, because we generally have to target most of our websites at it. But at least I get to use FF for personal browsing.

Also, I still have to use it, because one of the nice features of my credit card co's website is ActiveX only. I've nearly paid off the card though, so will probably ditch them after that's sorted.

Genghis Khan didn't much like gays

Title

Dear El Reg,

Please may we have a "This post is sarcastic" checkbox in the comments form, and a nice icon displayed in posts, as some people still don't get it!

Thanks,

Steve.

Teen sticks Xbox 360 power supply in bowl of water

Re: Darwin ( @ Mad Mike )

"This is the problem with Darwins theories. Some obvious candidates manage to survive."

To be fair, I think nature gave him credit for at least attempting to wrap it in plastic. Although still plain stupid, credit must be given for an attempt to play it safe. He should consider this a last warning, however!

Future looks bright for video ads

Oops...

Yes, I know, I'm hanging my head in shame right now.

So, video is the future eh?

echo "127.0.0.1 video.spam.cnuts.com >> /etc/hosts

.. and other methods which will prevent it from running as soon as it becomes an annoyance.

UK watchdog calls for an end to 'piecemeal' e-voting trials

Lets h4xx0r!

Fuck it, let's just white hat the system, so that we, the el Reg party, wins the election. Our one and only policy will be to just ban the fucking things and call a new election straight after!

Police want DNA collection superpowers

ISTM...

...that actually the police just want *everybody's* DNA on file, and are using this as an excuse.

Anyway, I have a question. What will happen to me, when I refuse to provide a sample. No doubt I'd be held under some anti-terror law, and ultimately locked away. But what happens then? Surely they can't keep me locked up forever? Do the filth^H^H^H^H^Hcnuts have to power to take a DNA sample by force?

California e-voting machines have more holes than Swiss cheese

@Chris Miller - undisclosed accounts

"Not necessarily. It was most likely a default account..."

Yeah, but the password was "joshua"

...now where did I leave my coat?

El Reg issues Satan word alert

Mobisodes?

You're all fools! This is clearly another case of a hapless Reg hack not using apostophes in the right place, along with some incorrect spelling, capitalisation and a missing space!

They have quite obviously signed and exclusive deal with shining musical talent Moby, to use his odes!

Power outage knocks out major websites

Not Found

The requested URL /press_releases/pr_7_24_07_red_envelope.html was not found on this server.

Apache Server at www.365main.com Port 80

San Francisco's proposed Wi-Fi network facing angry mobs

SNAFU

*giggles like a girl^H^H^H^H^H^HHomer Simpson*

Microsoft grows despite Windows Vista

@chris cox

"Yes the interface is nice"

Really? People have been telling me that it looks like MacOS 10 now.

Romanian cops cuff drunk, naked, handless driver

Re: Never mind now they cuffed him...

@madgunde

Please turn your parody detector on. I was lampooning the people who whinge about such things (I thought the "blah blah blah" should have given it away - although after I posted it, I did think that I should have added two more "blahs").

And yes, I realise the irony that in posting a comment about people who whinge in their comments that I am myself whinging, and thus hypocritcal, because I must therefore be whinging about my comment which is whinging about such a .... oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.

Never mind now they cuffed him...

...what has this story got to do with IT?

Oh, and praise be for a story without an iPhone mention.

And blah blah blah....

Top 10 e-commerce developments of the decade

What's love (and other things) got to do with it

Khuram mostly beat me to it, but would somebody explain to me what impact have Google, Open Standards, Wi-Fi, and User-generated content had on eCommerce.

In what way have iTunes, and BlackBerry had sufficient impact on eCommerce to deserve a place in the top 10?

US court says just viewing child porn is not a crime

One Question about the UK Law ... continued

Klaus, you could go one better. If you can h4xx0r some kiddy porn onto google, bbc news, and el reg, you'd get pretty much every net user in the UK!

btw, how do 'they' know that what you are looking at is kiddie porn, without actually looking at it and thus committing an offence themself?

UK mulls blanket ban on unfair commercial practices

Are you watching Orange?

"if it or its overall presentation in any way deceives or is likely to deceive the typical consumer"

... Does this mean now then, that when Orange sell me, for example, a Nokia 6680, that they have to actually give me the Nokia 6680, and not the bastardized version that they actually gave me?

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

Something to lose (but only a little)

IMHO, el reg would lose a little something if it dropped the .co.uk. And that would be a shame.

Verizon pulls sponsorship from dirty dancing singer

This video is no longer available...

...says YouTube

Orange and Vodafone cripple Nokia's flagship

Not the first time Orange has screwed with a phone

I've had problems with Orange changing software on phones before, with what (IMHO at least) is a big pile of crap, about 2 years ago, when the Nokia 6680 first came out. It was nothing to do with VOIP, just a case of putting a crappy menu system / 'home' screen. Finally, after the 12-month contract had expired I managed to persuade my local Nokia Service Centre to replace it with the original firmware as Nokia Themselves intended it.

I have now come to the decision that I will never again buy a handset from a network, but instead pay full price for a SIM free/Generic handset, and take it to a network which doesn't charage ridiculous up front monthly charges to subsidise handsets. (Unfortunately, this won't help with VOIP, as this basically means using Virgin, who currently charge me a rate equivalent to £5 per Megabyte!!!)

Sun dims LAMP, AMPS up Solaris

Done before

Solaris, OPAL, Apache, PHP?

SOAP? Hmm

Whatever happened to the gay gene?

I can see how a gay gene would work....NOT!

I wonder, what precisely Charles Darwin would say about the existence of a gay gene. In particular, I wonder how likely he would think such a gene is to survive beyond its first generation.