Posts by Joe
278 posts • joined Wednesday 14th March 2007 16:11 GMT
Come on you whinging sods
This is a great idea! It's no good having a square touch area over triangular keys, or a triangular touch area over square keys, think about it. With the touch area and the keys both triangular, you can touch the top part of each key and be sure that no other key will accidentally be pressed.
Posted in Twitter Yi not, as Beijing bins Bing
And yet
It's considered morally acceptable to have most of our electronic goods made in that police state.
Posted in BT rejects wholesale price changes
@ Jared Hunt
You're wrong. The line rental is a standing charge for the voice service.
In France, you can have ADSL via the copper pair but choose to have no voice service active - i.e. no dial tone, no phone service. You just pay for the ADSL. It's cheaper than having ADSL plus voice service.
In the UK, you can't have ADSL without also renting the phone service. Whether you make calls or not, you still have to pay £11 or so per month for voice service rental. There's no choice.
So yes, it is technically possible to have ADSL without a phone line.
Incidentally, when I moved house my BT voice line in my old place was cut off, but the O2 broadband connection was still active a week later. So it is possible!
Posted in Taxpayer coughs for AOL Connie's flat
Oh no!
Not Wiggy - he was my headteacher in high school, and a pretty damn good one too. Everyone liked and respected him, even the scallies. His rebuttal sounds reasonable, but I was so hoping he'd be one of the whiter-than-white ones!
Obvious answer?
Firstly, I don't have a TV licence but I do watch programmes on iPlayer. Nice and legal, but is it right? I don't watch a lot - Have I Got News For You, Screenwipe, the occasional history documentary - but is it right that I get that for free? Not really.
A blanket broadband license would be wrong, though. I think the obvious solution is to include a username/password with the TV licence which will enable licence holders to watch iPlayer. And perhaps a pay-per-view option for those of us who don't watch much or who live abroad.
Does that sound sensible or am I missing something?
Posted in Apple power brick sparks lawsuit
As I'm sure someone else has already pointed out...
...the 45 watt MacBook Air adaptor has a much more substantial connector at the laptop end, with a better cord grip. It probably hasn't had the same problems as the MacBook one.
On a personal note, while the MacBook power lead is very thin, I've had no problems with mine over two and a half years. A friend of mine has had theirs replaced twice in the same time frame, but they aren't half rough with it! (And everything else they own, for that matter.) I guess it's how you treat it - my MacBook rarely leaves the desk.
Well...
I enjoyed it. Nothing wrong with the occasional magazine piece! Who says it all has to be the latest news?
Posted in Army officer tossed laptops into the sea
Intelligence officer?
This must be some new meaning of the word 'intelligence' that I'm not familiar with.
Posted in Meet Phorm's PR genius
Sigh
This "British jobs" thing is nonsense. I doubt they'd ever employ many people in the UK.
Plus, Phorm's programmers are in Russia, right? I don't have a problem with that, but making out like Phorm is going to cause a dip in the unemployment figures is nonsense.
Posted in Pudsey Bear refused UK passport
Ian R is right
The UKDPS is a private company trying to look like a government department.
There is no register of names, or a central name-change department.
It's a piece of paper you can print yourself, and it's just as legal as getting one from a lawyer or the UKDPS site. (They won't tell you that, of course - that's how they make their money!)
How do I know this? I did it! And the passport, driving licence, banks, etc - all accepted without a problem.
Firefox nudging IE on market share
Whose figures are these? According to...
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0
...whose stats match those of all the sites I manage, IE has about three times the market share of Firefox.
I wish it weren't true, I really do...
This just made my day!
This is what I was hoping for from the article about the music made by old computer sounds a month or so ago (that used samples, bah!). This is hardcore!
Windows 1995?
I'm sure it was called "Windows Nineteen-Ninety-Five", or something...
Re: So far no one has spoken up for PHP
There's always one annoying git who refers to PHP by it's original name, "Personal Home Page". That was ten years ago, or something! You have to admit, it has grown just a touch since then?
Well done Bill Ray
I love this sort of journalism, this sort of misuse of government funds needs to be exposed. Do you moonlight for Private Eye at all?
Did they get three quotes and pick the cheapest, I wonder?
Posted in Cuba crafts extra-communist Linux distro
More silly names...
How about MARiX, or my favourite, Lenix?
"Over-licensed" - sounds like a sales pitch to me
Like the sign at the exit at Costco which insists they're checking your receipt against your trolley so that "you've received all the items you've paid for". It's not to stop you nicking anything, oh no...
Fennec?
What an awful name. It sounds like something my girlfriend would sprinkle on pasta.
I mis-read the title...
...as "O2 man collared with pigeons down trousers". I thought it was going to explain why international texts often take days to arrive...
Posted in BBC pumps 60 quid a head into Gaelic
Statistics or damn lies?
No channel just says "we have X000 viewers" - the figure is meaningless! How many viewers does each programme get, that's the important figure. Do they get 200,000 constantly? No, of course not - as Bill Ray points out, that's probably just the figure for the football, I'd be surprised if the rest of the output had even 50,000 viewers.
The government massaging the figures? Surely not!
Great article!
Made me laugh.
It's true what the Northerners are saying though - Hull was underwater for months and nobody even noticed!
I loved the beta!
http://xkcd.com/528/
Bwa ha ha!
Great caption for the first photo... so you've been to the Cleckhuddersfax Triangle, then?
The Simpsons has been crap for years
Since the turn of the century the Simpsons has been pretty poor, and getting poorer as far as I can see. Kill the whole programme off!
Posted in Extreme pron vigilantes are after you
Come on, it's obviously satire!
That stuff about "media trials can be just as effective as court ones" and links to Tor, it's obviously satire.
That TFL "watchful eyes" poster made me stare agape at the screen for a minute... is that real? That's terrifying.
Posted in Microsoft to act on IE8 'show stoppers'
At least they're trying!
I'm no MS fanboi, but at least they're giving it a shot. With a bit of luck within a year or two, IE7 and especially 6 will be gone or almost gone, and that will mean that my headache will have gone too.
Channel 9! Buono estente.
I'd have opened it
So what if it says "Do Not Enter - Government Property" etc. Who says? Was it just the name of a folder? How do you know it was genuine and not someone trying to stop his mum seeing his porn stash? He had bought it at second-hand after all. How about I write "Do not read below this line or you will go to prison, signed B Obama" will you follow my instructions? Step away from your PC! Etc. etc.
But!
Are the secret Zionist overlords afraid of Bill Ray?
Dreadful advert...
...wonderful remixes! Absolutely hilarious, and quite interesting to see what Songsmith makes of these famous vocals.
I won't miss him
I never liked Garfield anyway.
I'm sure you're all missing the point
Microsoft sells most copies of Windows to PC manufacturers, not end-users. The ruling has to do with MS insisting that IE be pre-installed along with Windows, instead of the PC manufacturer having the freedom to choose any browser. (For an end-user to buy Windows with IE and WMP included free I don't think is a problem legally.)
Also, I think the reason why it doesn't apply to Apple is because they're in a different market - Apple are a hardware company not a software company. So Apple aren't selling their OS to PC manufacturers and saying "you have to install IE and WMP as well", they're selling to end-users who have the freedom to choose to buy a PC from a different company.
In Communist China...
...iPhone Nano takes out two year contract on YOU!
The see-through screen...
...has an interesting choice of video on it!
Perhaps they could be used as a sex aid, fitted as the lenses of glasses?
Pity the poor average PC user...
Most people with widescreen TVs are happy to watch with the picture squished and black bars at the top and bottom because they haven't set up their set-top box and don't understand the concept anyway... what chance does the man in the street have with figuring this one out?!
Actually...
...the figures do suggest increased Mac OS usage:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9
Where has Webster gone, anyway? Or is he just posting anonymously nowadays?
Posted in Steve Jobs dismisses death rumours
Tones of government
I've got nothing against Steve & Co., but Apple's speech of "unwavering support" etc. sounds to me to be just like the sort of thing pushed out by the politburo of some Stalinist regime to cover up the fact that the general secretary hasn't been seen in public for months...
Not that I'm comparing the two, you understand. I love Apple and pledge my allegiance to the Party and fathercompany.
Come on whingers!
It's not that bad. They had to use someone's technology, after all! Even the BBC Micro was bought in from Acorn, remember?
I've tried the iPlayer downloads and found it rather nice, so far. A few things need fixing here and there, but it is only a beta at the moment, after all.
Same old lines trotted out
How many times do we hear "we treat the privacy of our members as a top priority" immediately after a gaffe like this?
Posted in Latest Firefox beta gets touchy on Mac
And surely...
Swipe up should move to the bottom of the page - you're swiping it up so should see the bottom. And vice versa. C'est nes pas?
What's with all the haterz today?
I enjoyed reading it, Cade.
Posted in Leeds Council loses kids details
So the employee lied too?
“The loss was immediately reported by the employee concerned ... it was understood that no sensitive or confidential data was on this stick, so no further action was taken. ...once recovered, it became apparent the memory stick did have sensitive information on it that should not have been there."
So the council employee lied to cover up their fecklessness and disregard for peoples privacy and the law? Surely that's a fireable offence.
I think you should all apologise to Tim Parker...
...and I want your submissions as REM statements saved on audio cassette from a ZX81.
Posted in EU asks Google for privacy advice
Only one pig?
I think you'll find it was a whole herd of pigs.
Their nephews are all monkeys, too.
Website stuff amiss
Strangely, the website isn't working 100% now...
www.laplandnewforest.co.uk points to a UK-Reg holding page, whereas laplandnewforest.co.uk (without the www) points to the site!
I must say I've chortled merrily at some of the photos - especially the nativity scene - though I dare say it was much less funny to those who visited.
Posted in New terror guidelines on photography
Frustrating!
Taking photos in public has to be a right we have, surely. People were arrested in East Berlin for taking photographs in the wrong part of town, let's not go down that road.
They're not all bad though, the rozzers. While filming in the grounds of a derelict school last year, we were approached by two policemen. We were worried that they would ask us to leave, but instead they just warned us to be careful that the pikies who were regularly stripping the school clean of scrap metal didn't take a shine to our camera!
@ EvilJason
You're not so evil you know. It's good to know that some of us still believe in the rule of law!
Perhaps the rest of you would prefer life in Saudi Arabia?
Sky used to have a similar flaw
Back in the analogue days, we cancelled our subscription, and they told you what day it was due to go off. As long as you had the receiver turned off on that day, it wouldn't receive the signal to cancel the card and hey presto, free Sky! It worked for about six months before finally blocking us out.
The whole system relied on people turning on their receiver to see if they'd been cut off!
Posted in China slams Guns N' Roses album
I'm no Guns N Roses fan...
...in fact I can't stand them, but the Chinese government has really proved the band right as regards the theme of this album, haven't they?
Posted in World hunts CherryPal cloud PC chimera
Just like the good old days
CherryPal seem to have taken a leaf out of Sinclair Research's book... QL, anyone?
Posted in BNP membership list leaks online
@ Jason LoCascio, and others
Firstly, I believe some jobs ban membership of ANY political party - such as the police, for example. Surely they should be officially apolitical, otherwise what's to stop them giving mason-like favours to those with the party card in their wallet?
Secondly, if a policeman or judge were a member of the BNP, wouldn't he be more likely to arrest or convict non-whites? So in my opinion, people's politics does sometimes affect their ability to do their jobs.
