Posts by Ian McNee
411 posts • joined Friday 2nd March 2007 00:17 GMT
The Pompous Git replies from The Moral High Ground (tm)...
/set ground(moral) = high
/git:pompous
Graham Dawson: in exactly what sense do you *have* to buy your music from organisations who essentially fund child pornographers (and just to be clear, that means more children being violently sexually abused the more money they get)? Do you have a phobia that prevents you from entering a music shop and opening your wallet to buy a CD? Or of buying said CD for a reasonable price from CD-WOW? Or as others have mentioned downloading from one of the many legitimate non-DRM crippled sources?
Matt: actually if you read the article you will see that AllofMP3 (the old front for Media Services who are behind MP3sparks) was closed down by legal action. And yes you're right that these slimebags and their even slimier-bag ISP AbdAllah should not be fined/closed down/locked up without due process but that doesn't stop an intelligent person like yourself from making an informed decision (Spamhaus, etc.) that in the meantime one ought not to fund these scumbags.
Steve: yep, and in your tee-pee in North Wales listening to your freetard music on an organic hand-woven fairtrade MP3 player made by Andean peasant farmers you will, by toking on that huge spliff, be able to astrally project to the board rooms of Music Megalo Corp Inc to hear their share price crashing and execs throwing themselves from windows on the 50th floor, because you and your freetard buddies spent your giros funding child pornographers rather than multinational capitalists. And then you woke up....ah bless!
/end git
And who said El Reg readers were amoral brainless freetards?
Nice to see so many commentators really getting to grips with the issues raised by this article: WHERE CAN I GET MY MOOZIC DED CHEEP AN IT DOWNLOADS REEL FASSSST WIV HI BITRATZ??
FFS! Never mind that the people that created the music you purport to love so much don't get a brass washer from the likes of MP3sparks.com, what about a slice of their profits going to those peddling child pornography and selling fake pharmaceuticals?
No, the likes of the Recording Industry Ass. of America and their multinational media corp. backers are not the good guys. But giving money to a bunch of low-life Eastern European criminals is neither the moral alternative nor a strategy to force Sony BMG et al to change their ways.
Weaker consumer environments?
As always the exec tries to spin bad results. However John Lewis are reporting an overall improvement of over 7% on this time last year led by sales of personal technology and electronics...erm...DSG's core market?
Couldn't possibly be anything to do with DSG's 'box shifter sans customer service' attitude? It's about time Britain's premier employer of clueless spotty teenagers got a kicking.
Posted in BBC boosts staff morale with jelly
Absolutely Fabulous!
I heard En(ema)damol filmed this event and it's going to be screened as: 'Britain's Next Top Nathan Barley' - I'm so excited I could wipe my arse with Hello!...and I'm so glad that my £120-odd quid license fee is being spent so productively!
One-handed Reg stories...
...I would suggest explains most of the poor typnig, speeling adn garmmer, and this is a classic example of the genre, long may it conintue, longer even than a greasy mouse-jockey with a stash of cut-price spam viagara, a large tub of Flora and a firm grip on the non-mousing side.
As for the comments about Senorita Carolina's sex/gender perhaps these say more about what excites the posters: you protesteth too much? Bless! :)
Absolutely shocking!
This is awful! I mean what next? Some dark-skinned guy with a rucsack mistaken for a terror suspect gunned down by armed police in the street (or on a popular form of public transport)?
What is Oz coming to?!? We should be thankful that that kind of paranoid abomination couldn't happen here in good old blighty!
Time for El Reg Standard Measures Dept. to step in
Clearly Vulture Central is lacking a critical unit of measurement, exposed by this take-down of the much loved and highly esteemed B3ta site. We need an accurate description of the size of an ego.
My opening suggestions are the Prince (Pr) as the standard unit of ego and the pompous (or petulant) Prince (pPr) to signify the more highly-developed and esoteric celebrity-related property: the super-ego.
Posted in Intel celebrates 'Penryn' launch
Rough translation...
William Holt: "All your silicon wafer are belong to us....ha ha ha!!!"
What's all the fuss about?
After all, we know from the those documentaries sent back from the future that the warp drive will be invented, boulders on alien planets are made of a substance surprisingly similar to polystyrene and starship captains wear spandex uniforms over their corsets.
Then again perhaps this BIS bash led to that pointy-eared bloke getting the science bug...it all becomes clear! Clever devils after all!
Set blazers to pun! :p~
Posted in Met Police guilty in de Menezes case
Trust us, we're the health & safety breachers...
So Sir Ian Blair will make sure that the Met will learn the lessons about not pumping a whole clip of hollow point ammo into innocent civilians' heads while using Israeli extra-judicial assassination tactics? Oh I'm very comforted by that.
Will he also be a little more contrite over the allegedly desperate need to extend detention without trial in spite of the fact that neither the Met nor anyone else in the securocracy can provide any evidence based on real cases that it is necessary? We shall see.
Never mind how loud, how hot?
We've had a number of Lacie drives in these Porsche-designed plastic enlosures and not to put too fine a point on it: they fry. And getting a replacement or refund from Lacie for drives that have failed in a matter of weeks is like pulling teeth.
Of course they look nice & tidy (I expect that's why the admin-wallahs chose them) but they just don't cool today's big, fast and hot hard drives effectively.
Re: Andy's (and other's) utter rubbish
Oh dear Andy - it must be awful for you to witness the occasional cyclist shooting a red light (cars, vans and lorries never do of course) and pedestrian jay walking (cars, vans and lorries only ever drive where they are supposed to with due care and attention to other road users of course). Would you like some therapy perhaps?
Or perhaps you could wake up and smell the coffee: pedestrians and cyclists are killed and injured in large numbers by motor vehicles on our roads every year, large numbers of motorists are NOT killed or injured by pedestrians or cyclists on our roads every year. These deats and injuries are STATISTICALLY (i.e. not one off Daily Wail hysteria) caused in the large majority of cases by poor driving by motorists.
On a less flameworthy note the use of technical enforcement of low speeds in urban areas by cameras etc. seems less likely to be effective than altering the structure of our urban streets to blur the boundaries between road and pavement as it is in cities like Amsterdam (and has been experimented with in Kensington I believe): this leads to a much more co-operativeand less aggressive culture between road users who have to negotiate their progress and be much more aware of everyone else around them. And no I haven't been smoking anything :p~
Future shock...
I wonder when academics look back at this analysis from the future they will have eated their words...
/fetch coat(1)
p.s. My dear Chris W: 'punktuacion'? Please! It's 'punkcherashun' as any fule nose.
W@nker posting via proxy from the desert...
Funny...it's a bit too damp in the UK to be considered a desert. Maybe if your pal Dubya and his chums in the oil megalocorps get their way then global warming will turn parts of the UK into desert though.
Not a bad flame by the way, Anon Coward: some of us obviously touched a sore spot there! Is it the time of the month? The day after Patch Tuesday - always a difficult time for the running dogs of Washington and Redmond.
Let me give you a tip for quality flaming though: while hinting at our Moscow/Google gold connections try to address one or two of the facts in the situation even if just inaccurately and abusively :)
Serious Crime Squad...
So...plods from Satfford, Stoke, Newcastle-under-Lyme among others commiting serious crimes to line their pockets. Old habits die hard - perhaps they used to work for the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad before it was disbanded in an attempt to tackle the quantity of serious crimes commited by said plod-squad in the region.
Posted in Catholic dating sites exchange rings
That would be an ecumenical matter...
'Well, those that are single and not under holy orders' - and not gay and not even a bit camp (like perhaps a pope with a fetish for Nazi Youth uniforms...)
Oh and yeah I'm equal-opportunities with my anti-religeous bigotry: being an atheist I'm extremely bigoted about all religeous bigots, fundamentalists, jihadis, crusaders, evangelists, choir boy buggerers, female genital mutilators...
*bandwidth alert: too many religeon-inspired crimes against humaity to post*
Re: @Separation of powers
"If that was the case it would be hard to avoid the conclusion that the US is no longer a democratic nation" - well done for spotting my point
"Surely that idea would upset a whole lot of Americans" - perhaps but between the large minority who are effectively disenfranchised by poverty and racism and the large minority who do well enough economically out of America plundering the rest of the world (and it's own poor) to not care about anything more than their fig-leaf of a democracy there aren't really enough left to do much about it.
SHOCK-HORROR!
So the White House is more interested in the propaganda value of so-called terror intel than it's practical use in the again war on terror? Gee I would never have figured that one out for myself! I mean it's not like the White House ever fabricated terror intel to justify illegal invasions, extra-judicial assassinations, kidnapping and torture on a grand scale. Oh wait a minute - yes they did and they still do!
Separation of powers
Oh dear Mr breakfast, must have been a calorie-lite breakfast today, you don't seem to have engaged your brain-box on this one.
Firstly we're talking about the EXECUTIVE interfering with the JUDICIARY - this is nothing to do with the LEGISLATURE.
Secondly we are witnessing the use of a legal red card whereby the executive says to the judiciary: nothing to see here, move along, we've got this all in hand, no need for judicial oversight of the executive, we're the good guys and we know because we've seen the evidence that we're the good guys so you don't need to see it because we're the good guys!
Where's the separation of powers there??
Re: It's the law
Oh yeah - just vote Dubya out: go yanks!
Hey wait a minute...they DID vote Dubya out but then Dubya got his bro down in Florida to fiddle the result (which he had failed to win even after Jeb had got his cops to prevent black voters from getting to the polls...)
Gotta love that freedom and democracy! God Ble$$ America (TM)!
It's all coming up roses...
So "Venter is betting on artificial organisms delivering a bonanza for medicine, renewable energy, and anti-climate change efforts"? Break out the champagne! It's the end of history! *cue naff muzak* It is the dawning of the age of Aquarius...
So Venter wouldn't dream of making billions for him and his investors by selling this kind of tech to, say, Pentagon contractors? As if! He has a heart of gold! And there is no way that this could all go horribly wrong by manufactured organisms escaping into the wild and causing an ecological catastrophe. We all know how secure commercial and govt. biotech sites are after all *coughpurbrightcough*
And even if they did escape these bugs will have had their DNA coded so well that they couldn't possibly cause any problems. Right? I mean how hard can it be to code the DNA of an original organism so that it behaves in a predictable fashion in every situation? No more difficult than coding an OS like, say, Windoze - another triumph of monopoly capitalism - and we all know that that never goes wrong in the wild but only in the sad deluded imaginations of Linux lunatics...
Posted in The Misfit Geek and AJAX acceptability
Open Source?
So is that GPL Open Source or M$ Open Source? That is: until someone does something clever that M$ didn't forsee was possible with these tools and then sends a 'friendly' e-mail to said someone CCd to M$'s favourite IP lawyers and telling them to shut-up shop or be sued into the nth dimension.
Hmmm...
Re: I think I have spotted a flaw with the "gay bomb"
I think it depends who 'shoots' first...
Posted in You want to learn about Ubuntu?
Dear David Wiernicki
If you choose to live in the small-minded cul de sac in which you select only those responses from Linux users that affirm your own prejudices then you will never escape that cul de sac. Alternatively you could choose to join the real world where real people choose an OS to suit the real tasks that they wish to accomplish with a PC.
I use XP at work for day to day stuff as it is currently required and at home a mix of XP for games, Suse for a firewall/router, XP but soon to be Ubuntu for home office and Ubuntu on my laptop for traveling and photography. Which machine has caused me the least need to engage any IT skills? The laptop with a straight install of Ubuntu 7.04. It works, it's reliable and it's secure. It even auto-rotates photos imported from my camera's memory cards and that's an unmodified bundled application. Even as a Linux proponent I was pleasantly surprised so now I've started installing Ubuntu for people who break a good installation (i.e. well secured and tweaked) of XP within days.
Now I'll put my nasty Linux person hat on to satisfy your prejudices: stop f*cking whining and look at the way things really are instead of how your pathetic comfort zone would like them to be luser.
Posted in You want to learn about Ubuntu?
Re: It's Still Linux
If you had bothered to read any of the Linux forums regarding graphics you would have very quickly found out that support under Linux for ATI graphics hardware was virtually non-existant because ATI would not release Linux drivers. That's not the fault of anyone in the Linux/open source community. It seems that ATI may have recently done an about face on this seeing that their disregard for Linux was more their loss rather than that of the Linux community. We shall see.
But counter to your poorly researched little diatribe: show me the Windows installation media that will have all but the most bleeding edge hardware (desktop or laptop) working from one fresh install. Can't be done without hacking your media for specific hardware with WinPE or BartPE. Ubuntu does that from one CD and also includes a full set of office, net, multimedia and other apps as well.
Not from "The Anarchist's Cookbook" then...
...but perhaps "The Buddhist's Cookbook"? Sorry.
Typical of Security Plod getting in a stew over nothing though. Very sorry.
/fetch: COAT(0)
Posted in Japanese Wii sales rain on PS3 parade
Re: Be careful what you wish for, Ian McNee
You do have a point here but I think there are at least two things that will work against the scenario you paint:
(i) the Wii will not completely wipe-out the other consoles and even the PS3 is likely to survive the twin pressures of Wii and Xbox 360;
(ii) as has been pointed out above: good games are about creativity and playability and PC gaming will not suffer from game development budgets being trimmed a little. Too many games are bloatware sequels or 'me too' games trying to profit on the back of previous hits: duff games with lots of expensive eye-candy that are dull as dishwater to play.
Anyone remember Wing Commander: Privateer? Shockingly bad to look at, sprite-based pseudo-3D but fabulous to play. Then Privateer 2? Beautiful SVGA 3D, FMV cut scenes with real actors: I nearly lost the will to live after playing that for a couple of hours!
I think PC gaming is safe and will do very nicely alongside a console market with Wii as the biggest player.
Posted in Japanese Wii sales rain on PS3 parade
...and one up for PC gaming
The flip-side of this is that Wii winning the console war can only be good for PC gaming and in my book that is a 'Good Thing' (TM).
Both Sony and M$ are notorious for their monopolistic practices (one more so than the other: no prizes for working out which) and their consoles are designed to lock the customer in to a gaming platform in which every aspect is controlled by the particular MegaloCorp Inc. and is 'monetized' (horrible word but useful in this context) to keep as many and as large revenue streams flowing as possible.
With PC gaming however, while there are monopolies operating, their scope is much more limited: for example M$'s attempts to 'leverage' sales of Vista to gamers by making a popular title like Halo 2 DX10 only have had limited success. Diversity of hardware has led to more innovation and lower prices, player content creation flourishes and on-line play is largely free (over and above the cost of a broadband connection).
So what did Nintendo do? Instead of attempting to colonize PC gaming like M$ and Sony, they decided to innovate and create something complementary. As a (mediocre & occasional) PC gamer I would never contemplate getting a PS3 or Xbox 360 but a Wii is much more attractive. I hope they kick both of the other consoles into touch.
Ah-ha!
This clearly demonstrates the *real* motive for Dubya dragging his feet on climate change: the secret brain-eating bugs of doom weapons program! As everyone knows all Mad Mullahs(TM) routinely swim in warm fresh water lakes - it all becomes clear!
Cue black helicopters...now where is my Bacofoil bonnet?
Will somebody please...
...*PLEASE* think of the gorillas!
Posted in So, what's the first rule of Reg Club?
The First Rule of Reg Club...
...is that you will treat Reg writers and Reg Club posters as valid human beings with feelings and whose opinions deserve to be respected as such.
Ah fuck that, you're all bunch of losers! :p~
I'll get my coat...
No surprises: it's the bean counters!
Working in IT in a university I've seen this in action a few times. We moved into a new build a couple of years ago with our office next door to a machine room. Not only had the bean counters refused an extra £50k to flood-wire the multi-million pound building (surprise surprise causing problems within months of the building opening) they also only forked out for two under-specced air-con units for the new machine room. So when one failed...portable air-con blowing hot air into the corridor making it kinda tropical for a couple of weeks while waiting for the repairs.
Of course they wouldn't do that in the new multi-million pound build that opened this summer. Surely. As if. No. Oh yes - another new machine room reliant on two air-con units, each of which cannot cope on it's own. For an extra £7.5k we could have had three units of which two would have been capable of cooling the machine room in the event of failure.
Who knows what the cause was in this case but the bean counters have to be a fair bet.
Ian
Posted in Be kind to your stomach: eat chilies
Ring of fire...
So if we all start living longer due to healthy stomachs and lower rates of prostate cancer how long will it take the human race to evolve asbestos sphincters to survive the...erm...secondary incendiary effects of consuming vast quantities of chillies?
On the other hand if all this proves to be true it could be a good time to invest in donut-shaped cushions...
Re: Ha ha
What an outrageous an racist slur on all New Zealanders! What exactly do you mean that antipodean constables are feeling saheepish? This is precisely the kind of infantile sexual innuendo that brings The Register in to disrepute as pointed out by your recent correspondent D Bevan.
Sincerely,
Apoplectic of Tunbridge Wells
Surprise surprise...
The PR line from Virgin Media when they "launched" the premium rate broadband support line was that it was to improve the response and support given to customers by cutting out inappropriate calls.
Hmm...let's see...that would have been a big fat LIE then! No wonder no-one from VM is available for comment - tricky one to spin while choking on one of your own press releases issued a few months earlier.
One of the unfortunate ironies of this is that quite a few bright-eyed and bushy-tailed VM tech support people (most of whom are half my age or less) have been busy trying to justify VM's premium rate rip-off on the various cable broadband/VM forums and newsgroups saying how few silly calls they now get and how they are now able to spend plenty of time solving customer's problems. Well not any more you won't, not with a P45 in your hand.
Shame on VM.
Ian
Posted in Sony Ericsson loses head
Too slow again...
Someone always beats me to these infantile trouser snake innuendo comments - no fair!
My equally lame version was: Sony Ericsson new head Dick
*sigh*
Posted in Newest Ubuntu dubbed 'Hardy Heron'
Re: Linux as good as Windows - wishful thinking
"...unfinished, buggy, badly documented, and have horrendous, offputting user interfaces..." sorry...I drifted off then and started daydreaming about...what was it...don't tell me, I'm getting there...oh yes! Vista!
No, Ubuntu is not perfect, but if it weren't for the massive installed base, commercial investment and shady/monopolistic practices of M$ then Windoze would be dead in the water with a rival like Ubuntu 7.04. In a corporate environment it is manageable, stable and secure. For the novice domestic user with an average PC and an installation CD I'd be willing to put money on them setting-up a working on-line, secure machine in an hour with Ubuntu. Even with XP SP2 that's Bill Gates wet dream.
Posted in Newest Ubuntu dubbed 'Hardy Heron'
Pedantic Flatulent Flamingo...
"Heron will be the successor to Gusty Gibbon (version 7.10), which is due out in October 2007"
I think you'll find that's Gutsy Gibbon. Perhaps Austin was having illicit daydreams about Fistula whilst typing and experienced a Freudian moment :)
Posted in Storm Worm descends on Blogger.com
Re: @Alan
His machine has clearly been infected with the dangerous new TeenTexter Worm (AKA Innit) that uses polymorphic illiteracy to hide from spelling and grammar checkers...
Call me a pedantic old git but...
...if "12 Tales of Todger Tickling" is to be released on 27th August how could other peeps who bought "V for Vendetta" also have bought it already? Oh I get it...spAmazon! Doh! ;)
Posted in Storm Worm of a thousand faces
Doh!
Same old story - have all the fancy security software you like but if you fail to engage your brain before you click...oops...pWn3d!
Posted in Solar waves make Earth ring like a bell
Re: Thats on meaty sub woofer
Yeah but it's a bugger wedging the Earth into the back of a Vauxhall Nova...
Matter Transportation Obviously - duh!
Yeah, yeah - seen it all before. This is obviously the same data transmission technology that Jeff Goldblum used for his teleportation machine in The Fly back in the 80s. Bet it even has the same blue flashing lights and dry-ice effect.
So if a Scandinavian granny pops out of your wireless router sometime soon you'll know they're having DNS problems in Sweden...
Scaling spectacles?
I think you'll find that the article states that the Coma cluster is 20 million light years across :)
Posted in Expel the IT bodgers, says Microsoft
Taking this to it's logical conclusion...
...I wonder if Jerry Fishenden and the rest of M$ would be in favour of an IT equivalent of NICE: a body that could sanction (or not) the use of particular software. Fistula value for money anyone?
Oh no, silly me, that would be too similar to requiring the likes of M$ to warrant their software as 'fit for purpose', something they've always resisted.
Re: Joost
Yes, you are right about a lot of the new services becoming available over IP/P2P through broadband and that the industry as a whole (and VM in particular) have been slow to scale-up their infrastructure to cope in comparison to some other countries.
However up to now (and I expect also in the short to medium term future) the vast majority of VM customers that get throttled (bandwidth only *sigh*) will be those illegally downloading copyrighted material. Not only is this indefensible (see "Reg readers should be capped..." above for an eloquent explanation) it also means that those of us using the legitimate high-bandwidth services you list will have less access to those services.
Perhaps VM (and other ISPs) will come up with a more sophisticated means of bandwidth allocation that gives some preference to legitimate services. (Pause with baited breath awaiting the hysterical howls of protest that it is our inalienable right to download whatever the f*ck we like at the highest possible bandwidth). In the meantime, as a moderate and increasing user of cable broadband, I am prepared to accept throttling as a much more preferable alternative to a free-for-all.
Get a bit of perspective
Q: Is Virgin Media's cutsomer service average to mediocre?
A: Yes (no big news there)
Q: Is cable broadband generally more reliable and less hassle than ADSL?
A: Yes (personal experience fixing domestic PCs and see other posts)
Q: Is it reasonable for a small minority of VM customers to suck away all of the contended bandwidth by hoovering-up largely illegal video/music content via P2P?
A: No. In fact you can f*ck right off and deal with throttling, you deserve it. If you can't even work out how to set up a P2P client that does your illegal downloads while the rest of us are either tucked up in bed or at work (i.e. NOT between 4.30pm and midnight) why should you have the right to take all the bandwidth away from the majority of us not abusing the service?
Re: Give the malcontent little buggers more homework
...because of course none of us reading El Reg and posting about this story are doing so in work time when we ought to be toiling away like the loyal little geek wage-slaves we truly are...
Re: Whats up with a videoconference?
"Also, whats the carbon footprint of a black helicopter these days?"
Depends if it's a black helicopter. As we all know these are made from recycled cabon nanotubes from crashed flying saucers in Area 51. This of course makes them virtually indestructible so the possibility that this carbon will be released into our biosphere by the actions of a nuclear spudgun-wielding Islamo-Jihadi-Funda-Suicide-Nutcase (see Daily Mail) and thus accelerating climate change is rather small. Friendly fire though, that's another matter altogether, being something of a speciality of our burger-munching pretzel-choking cousins over the pond.
Ian
