* Posts by Simon Painter

312 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2007

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How to be a failure at Guitar Hero III

Simon Painter
Flame

Grow the hell up....

My twelve year old brother has mastered the difference between real life and computer games so why can't you? Guitar Hero/Rock Band are a bit of fun mixed with a bit of fantasy. Being good at playing the guitar does not mean you should be able to play the game well and vice versa in the same way that I would not expect the Stig to be a natural at racing games and despite my GTA prowess I would last about 4.2 seconds in a real ghetto drive by.

You should have a crack at Lego Star Wars although your inability to use the force in real life and the fact that you are made of flesh rather than small plastic blocks may put you at a distinct disadvantage.

Tesco to start flogging Dell computers

Simon Painter
Linux

@Red Bren

I doubt it. Tesco shoppers won't buy it because they won't know what it is and they won't be able to run Word on it.

Censor to challenge Manhunt 2 release in court

Simon Painter
Flame

Meanwhile...

"The BBFC believes Manhunt 2 shouldn't be released, even to people aged 18 or more, because of the risk it will fall into the hands of young kids. "

Which is another way of the BBFC saying:

"We are totally impotent and useless because everyone ignores us."

The BBFC is there to make recommendations for the suitability of a game. The law is there to ensure that retailers do not sell games to kids without the consent of the parents. An 18 cert game is not to be sold directly to a kid but a parent can easily purchase it and if they believe the game to be suitable they can take the responsibility of allowing their child to play it. The most the BBFC should be allowed to do is put an 18 certificate on a game or movie and leave it up to adults to determine if they think it is suitable for themselves or the under 18's they have responsibility for,

I am 30 years old and am guardian to a 12 year old child. I take game and movie age advice as exactly that: advice. I do not expect a game or movie retailer to sell him a 15 or 18 certificate title however he is allowed to watch and play selected movies and games of that certificate but only after I have watched or played them myself.

Legally he can watch 12 certificate movies or play 12 certificate games without my consent but he only watches or plays titles of that rating that I have vetted because the BBFC is fundamentally flawed and I do not trust their classification priorities to be the same as mine.

When the state stops trying to be the parents and starts encouraging parents to take responsibility for their charges the incidence of granny muggings and other such unpleasantness caused by poor parenting will disappear pretty quickly.

So the content of Manhunt 2 appears to be rather dark and unpleasant... that means that it is unlikely to be a game I would bother with but that does not mean that the BBFC have any rights to tell me what *I* can and can't play. Who the f*ck to they think they are?

Dutch gov blows open standards raspberry at Microsoft

Simon Painter

@ Duncan Hothersall

Dude, get a grip!

Steven Hewitt is completely right... linux on the desktop is just not practical in terms of support costs and user training. Industry tends to lean towards the solution which has the lowest overall costs and the best support package and that is why Windows is still around. In a world where redhat guys are as common and as cheap as mcse's then linux may be a practical alternative but IT directors will still get freaked out by anything they can't hire cheap people to look after.

Linux has its place in web hosting and suchlike or in poor mans alternatives to some of the bigger unix applications but on the desktop it has no place other than as a thin client bootstrap for something like citrix or terminal services.

US woman launches 'Taserware' parties

Simon Painter

Remote activation?

How long before someone hacks that?

Eee PC: better with Windows?

Simon Painter
Heart

Not a linux fan but...

I don't mind linux but dislike the linux fanboi community. I use Windows a lot and hate that the linux crowd want to make me feel guilty or inadequate for liking microsoft products.

That said, I can't understand why anyone would put XP on this device when the preinstalled OS does everything I want it to do. If ever there was a device which makes linux *useful* then this is it and I would be surprised if many people make the switch to XP as it's a whole lot of hassle for no discernable benefit.

Datapocalypse Now

Simon Painter
Flame

When...

When Nationwide lost a laptop they were fined a cool million. Surely the government department which made this blunder should face repercussions. I would feel a lot better about government ministers if their pension was at risk if they f*cked things up on a scale as monumental as this.

I work for a financial organization and if I lost even one CD of unencrypted data it would be either my head and probably my bosses head as well unless I could prove I had followed the security policy in which case it would be the head of the person who signed off the policy.

Tories call for mobile phone ban in schools

Simon Painter
Flame

Oh please...

Now mobile phones are the problem!!!

Really the problem with education lies with the teachers. Why do we still trust the futures of our children to people who can't/won't get a real job? Despite heavy advertising to claim otherwise, teaching is still the domain of those who are happy to settle for a mediocre existence ticking government boxes in return for part time hours and three months of holiday each year.

Reduce holiday entitlement (by forcing teachers to spend a portion of the school holidays doing training to enable them to do their jobs competently), increase working hours (teachers should be contractually obliged to remain at work until 5.30pm either marking homework or taking part in teaching after-school activities) and toughen up entrance criteria (at least 10 years of experience outside of education should be a minimum to give the teacher some real world experience and the ability to command a little respect) to thin out some of the dross and then increase the pay to turn if from being a drop outs job into a desirable profession.

MoD defends £5bn IT system

Simon Painter
Stop

I'm sure it's having some problems but...

What metrics is it being judged by? Everyone in IT has had projects which have not gone 100% to plan. This is normally due to the client moving the goalposts midway though. Everyone in IT has also most likely had a project which was slagged to high heaven by end users despite being on target and on time. End users have their own metrics for judging the performance of a roll out and in most cases the fact that there is a roll out of something new is enough to condemn it in the eyes of those who have to then relearn something.

I would hate to think that a project I was working on would be judged on the subjective opinion of "Maureen from Accounts" who does not like the fact that her green bar at the bottom of the screen is now black and so would judge the roll out to be an unmitigated disaster in her mind.

Channel 4, in true media style, has leapt on the leaked hearsay of a few emails which contain unqualified opinions rather than asking for the real data on performance metrics to be released.

Disability law can protect alcoholic workers

Simon Painter
Flame

A disability or a disease is something you do not choose.

When I wake up in the morning I have a choice to drink or to go to work. I choose to go to work. When someone who does not have the use of their legs wakes up do you think they have the choice to be fully able or not? Do people get the choice to have cancer or not (OK, they can choose to increase their risk by smoking)?

I do hope that society redresses the balance where those who choose self destructive behaviors are deprived sympathy and that care and consideration is diverted towards those who do their best and battle through despite whatever adversity nature or fate throws at them.

OLPC offers one-for-two to generous North Americans

Simon Painter
Thumb Down

I wonder

I wonder how many of the slashdot hive mind who have been claiming they can't wait to get their hands on one of these will actually buy one now! I bet they will opt for the lightly more useful although less alturistic eee!

Ubuntu laptop clan trapped in hard drive hell

Simon Painter
Black Helicopters

haha...

Linux is like a fresh from University computer scientist all full of best practice, open standards and protocol theory. Windows is the hardened admin who has been around the block and knows that in the real world you don't always just leave things to happen the way the hardware vendors intended.

I loved the little excuse about it being a bios problem which everyone else fixes but Ubuntu doesn't so clearly it's still a bios problem rather than being something which Ubuntu could have fixed as well.

That said, it's also incredibly naive to leave the settings which determine the life of the hardware in the hands of the people who make the hardware... a cynic would suggest that they *want* it to fail early.

Newegg serves up Asus Eee PC to US buyers

Simon Painter
Heart

Pre order in the UK...

http://www.clove.co.uk/viewProduct.aspx?product=9136E4FD-2F3C-4289-84A9-4B96ED813B9D

Clove are taking pre-orders for sales in the UK.

This emergency alert has been cancelled by Hotmail

Simon Painter
Thumb Down

@ Shad

Ah, another hotmail snob. What on earth makes you believe that an ISP mail account is somehow more respectable than a free web based email service?

As ISP's like force 9 (my ISP, and officially in my eyes the worst in the business) prove, spam is not limited to hotmail and ISP's like force 9 are no more capable of protecting your email from hack attacks or spam.

I use force 9 strictly as a connection provider, a job they do just about well enough to stop me leaving, however I would never trust them with my email as they have a poor track record on that front and wholly inadequate service (http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/05/17/plusnet-suffers-hack-attack)

I use gmail for my personal email because it's free, reliable and due to the size of the organisation which runs it, pretty stable. Most of the tin pot ISPs out there do not have adequate capacity or redundancy in their system and it's asking for trouble to trust your mail to them when these services (mail, webhosting etc) are not premium services and do not generate revenue for the ISP so will consequently be under invested and poorly planned.

Dell boots disks and fires up streamed PCs

Simon Painter

@Wile E. Veteran

Woo hoo... yes, Unix has been doing this badly for ages and it took Dell to come along and do this well with Windows. Possibly even well enough that the masses will use it... something the Unix world can't claim.

In every technology there are pioneers and then those who bring it to the masses. Apple may have had a recycle bin prior to 1995 and the guys at PARC had it well before they did, but it took M$ to bring it to the masses just as Dell has the potential to bring this technology to the little guy who just wants something that works well out of the box.

Terminator will be back in 2009

Simon Painter
Thumb Up

Arnie

He should appear as a guy caught by skynet and cloned for the first generation of terminators.

SMS-enabled solar parking meters for Eastbourne

Simon Painter
IT Angle

So if they are text enabled...

...why can't they be credited with money by sending a premium text? Why can't they sms the person who is parked there 5 mins before the meter runs out and warn them so they can sms extra credit to the meter?

This is not use of IT to make life easier, this is just another (possibly more expensive) way of doing something which is not innovative or useful to the public at large who pay for these things.

I say sack the council worker who wasted (I would expect) millions of council tax pounds on this crap.

Lawmaker shows nudie pic to high school seniors

Simon Painter
Thumb Up

@Toby

"not to mension Sex education"

Clearly too much time spent watching videos and not enough time learning useful things like how to spell.

Terror police lock down Soho to smoke out 9lbs of chillis

Simon Painter

Anthrax?

A trail of white powder? Surely it's more likely to be a Hansel and Gretel style trail of Columbian Marching Powder to mark the way home from the office for all the east coast rich boys who work in NYC.

Seriously, anthrax is pretty hard to make and pretty hard to import into the US so the sort of quantities of flour which a running club use are never likely to be the sort of quantities used by the late Osama in his quest to scare the US into disposing of the primitive warlike terrorist Bush and embracing a peaceful life as God and Allah both intended.

UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys

Simon Painter

5 Years?

Hmmm... 5 years in jail for not revealing the encryption keys or a longer time in the slammer and a lifetime on that register when they decrypt all those photos? I wonder which the average nonce is going to choose.

Brute force attack yields keys to Google's kingdom

Simon Painter

@Anonymous Vulture

But then nobody cares what John C. Dvorak says anymore.

US Navy to remodel Hitler's San Diego bunker

Simon Painter

OK, so you have the right to free speech.

Doesn't mean people have to listen. So there's some dork on the radio calling the navy nazis. Ignore him. It's been there for decades and the money could be better spend.

Sysadmin admits planting 'logic bomb' in drug firm database

Simon Painter

70-120 grand to fix?

These guys are on some fantastic overtime rates if it is costing that much to clean some code out of some servers. Is this the same school of damage math than thinks that Gary McKinnon did $700,000 worth of damage to the few computers he accidentally installed some VNC clone onto?

The only damage that was done was to the reputation of the firm who treated an employee so shoddily that he felt his best course of action was to do this stuff.

Europe claims UK botched one third of Data Protection Directive

Simon Painter

Stroll on lad.

A lot of the comments assume we want to be part of the EU. They also assume that being part of a community or union means we also have to surrender our sovereignty to another parliament. It's bad enough that we have scottish members voting on laws which only apply in England while English MPs do not vote on exclusively scottish issues but having the other european nations making our laws with no room for localised adaptation is preposterous.

It's about time we opened a pint of whoopass on these silly european laws and got our own house in order.

Religious hatred a crime from October, but exemptions are wide

Simon Painter

Prosecute George Lucas

As 'Jedism' is a recognised (in some places) religion, does this mean that George Lucas can be prosecuted for inciting hatred, fear and the path to the dark side?

Apple unveils larger nanos

Simon Painter

@ Kevin Thomas

Could it be that Apple are not inviting El Reg to things because they are not blind hype merchants who gush about whatever device Jobs trys to pwn us with? I mean, seriously, when will people start seeing through this rubbish... the ipod is just an expensive mediocre mp3 player and the iphone is just an expensive overpriced mp3 player with a few badly implimented phone features.

Get a grip folks.

Kung fu monks battle gobby net ninja

Simon Painter

Pirates...

Nothing a hardy bunch of Pirates couldn't do.

Is VMware too close to Linux?

Simon Painter

<quote>Linux runs the World Wide Web</quote>

No it doesn't. A large proportion of web servers run on Linux but that does not mean it 'runs' the www.

Linux is a great tool but it's just not as perfect as the evangelists seem to think it is.

How to watch TV on your PC

Simon Painter

Been using vista...

I have been using Vista media center on ultimate since rtm and it works like a charm. I can series link a show and then use the vista dvd creator to burn the series to dvd to keep. I now have the complete works of the new series of Dr Who on DVD with swanky menu system and all that malarky.

for personal use only of course

PDF spam tsunami hits email inboxes

Simon Painter

Pump and dump

It's possible to tag along with these scams as long as you do so quickly and it's a big risk. Ideally go for small volumes in penny stocks and set your target growth rate quite low (dump at 20%).

Orange dismantles Bristol Tower of Doom

Simon Painter

@andy gibson

They have radiation warning signs because they radiate, fool. I used to have an alarm clock with a radiation warning symbol on it however that does not mean I have to wear an NBC suit to go to bed.

Remember we live in a society where the mop buckets have to have wet floor signs on them because people are too stupid to realise that a mop and bucket means a wet floor is pretty likely.

Also why my microwave manual tells me not to use it for drying pets.

Poker for potholes initiative makes run at California ballot

Simon Painter

This is a retarded route to go down

Your basic taxes should cover this. By opening a casino to fund the roads you will just ensure that money from your taxes is no longer allocated to this sort of thing. In the UK we have a national lottery (a tax on people who cannot do maths) and that now funds our arts and sports and a large part of investment in school facilities. This means the government can divert money away from these things to fund pointless wars and investment in new ways to tax us and remove our civil liberties.

Rather than pushing for another form of funding the public in California should push for transport to be put higher on the budgetry agenda.

I bumped into that Alan Sugar on memory lane...

Simon Painter

Blah blah blah...

A dinosaur gushing about another dinosaur. I thought this site was about what's going on now rather than being an archive of anecdotes from ancient history. Maybe we can have an informative article about how Alan Turing was a really nice chap by some old hasbeen claiming to be be a good friend of his.

Seriously, can the staff at El Reg not find anyone to write articles other than their dads?

Intelligent Finance upgrade downs web service

Simon Painter

"I don't think this is any way to run a bank, being unavailable for two days. Totally hopeless."

"I don't think this is any way to run a bank, being unavailable for two days. Totally hopeless."

What, pray tell, are the weekends? Don't the majority of banks close for two days EVERY WEEK?

I do understand the whiney pathetic point of view of the customers who were unable to check their balance online for a whole two days however some slack must be cut for a company which a) has a problem with an upgrade - let's face it most of us have and b) has the stones to admit they fucked up. I suspect that your quote comes from yet another blame culture junkie who thinks he has a claim for damages.

Gmail: a short, sharp rant

Simon Painter

@MahatmaCoat

Dude, that's the point... he *was* a respected journalist and now he's just the old man of one of the Reg staffers and a universally ignored blogger. Newswireless is not a news service any more than my own blog is but I would not have the arrogance to assume that just because I publish things on t'interweb means I should have some sort of special service and be able to log feature requests through the PR dept rather than through the feature request channels.

This guy sounds like the sort of bloke who walks into restaurants and when he can't get a good table shouts "do you know who I am?". Clearly not.

Simon Painter

"I'd still be a blog"

'It said: "Your site isn't listed, because we don't list blogs."

NewsWireless isn't a blog. Occasionally, the site prints blog entries, but it's a news site with a couple of dozen regular contributors. I pointed this out, and sent them a list of contributors - and, finally, the paperwork went through. But if I had just accepted the first (and second and third) patronising assurance that "your suggestion will be considered!" I'd still be a blog.'

1) Yes your site is a blog. The second link down states quite clearly that it is a blog. They want to deal with journalists. That's not people who write blogs, it's people who work for news services.

2) You even say "I'd be a blog". That's the point, it's your site. It's not a site run by an organisation that reports news, it's your own vanity site where you have appointed yourself editor in chief.

3) Frankly I am a little surprised that El Reg is getting so desperate for content that a blogger can hijack a page with a badly written and badly thought out rant. Next time I have a silly little bugbear I shall make sure I get it published on El Reg and bore the IT world with it rather than making my girlfriend listen to my puerile witterings.

Simon Painter

Is arrogance a criteria for writing for El Reg?

Who gives a t*ss? Do you really think that with the millions of users that Gmail has they are really going to listen to one bleeding heart story about your own user stupidity? You know how much space you have, you know how to check to see how much you are using and it's a free service that is still in Beta. What they do is collate the issues that users are having and then work on the most serious problems first. Your tiny and unimportant lack of user ability is not likely to make that list and no amount of bleating to the masses via the vanity site that is El Reg is going to change that.

Leave them alone and let them get on with something more important.

Masturbating lag cops 60 days' extra porridge

Simon Painter

The main vein

His one eyed trouser snake was obscured with a blanket so there was no exposure. She was not forced to look at it by him. If it was a requirement of her job that she watch men slap their salami then she clearly has an occupational health and safety issue with her employer. I would suggest that as the gentleman was perfectly within his rights to twiddle with his own joystick under his blanket and the slag screw should be prosecuted for her unlawful voyeurism.

Suit blows £105k in London bar

Simon Painter

How truely terrible?

How much of a tosser must this guy be that he has to spend that sort of cash just to encourage people to have a drink with him. While I think the "buy it from tesco for a fraction of the price" comments are a little whiney and clearly posted by people who do not understand that a drink in a bar has a whole lot of other costs associated with it other than the cost of the liquid, I can't help wondering how terrible a person has to be that they feel that £100k is best used flashing shite booze around the place rather than enjoying a less tacky night out and donating the surplus to a good cause.

Breakfast with bin Laden

Simon Painter

But they won't impeach him

They won't remove him from power any more than the germans would, or could, have removed Hitler from power. The believe what they are told by CNN and everyone outside their own borders must be a terrorist. Beware, El Reg, as you may be branded as part of the Axis of Evil. I would imagine that Middle America probably visits Al Jazeera more than El Reg already though.

'Suspicious looking' man hauled off translatlantic flight

Simon Painter

Well that's OK then.

So some person who happens to have been born brown is hauled off the flight because a) he's brown & b) being brown means he is therefore lying about the fact that he is an employee.

I am rather glad that I am caucasian because I work in IT so if I was brown I would be a terror hacker, I drive a car and if I was brown I would be a car bomber and I quite often tell the truth but nobody would believe me if I was brown.

This is the worst form of racism in the name of security and the people who did this should be prosecuted as a clear message that judging someone purely on the colour of their skin is totally retarded in a multicultural and multiracial society (even one run by a white ruling class - and I mean the US rather than the UK in this case).

The only way the US will stop terror is to stop behaving like dicks. Have a look at the ideology behind these atrocities and you will find that the western world could have averted things like 11/9 and 7/7 (and all the other terror threats both real and imagined) by not being such a bunch of tossers. America is the bully of the world and they are going to face the repercussions until they start acting less like the bent cop of the world and start respecting everyone elses rights to choose not to be an american style democracy, to choose not to be a christian fundamentalist society, to choose not to be bullied on trade issues by the americans, to choose not to accept a MacDonalds and $* on every street corner and to choose not to have to stifle their own economy in favour of the US economy.

Brit troops release badger plague on Basra

Simon Painter

Life/Art parody thing...

http://newsbiscuit.com/article/badgers-to-be-sent-to-iraq-134

Amazon.com sells empty Vista boxes for $200?

Simon Painter

Ooooh... I'm so clever...

I alone in the universe realised that this is not actually an empty box. It is the system requirements for the computer to run it (it's a full version and not an upgrade so will install on a computer with no OS).

Clearly Mr Austin Modine is not as clever as I am because his article was a genuine tome of idiocy and not a little bit of tongue in cheek comedy to brighten up my morning. I felt the need to post on the comments to explain that Austin Modine is wrong and I am right to prove my superiority over him. Arise Simon Painter, cleverest of them all and quick witted savour of the poor and easily confused Mr Austin Modine.

Seriously though, El Reg. Maybe you should cut the comedy because it seems that many of your readers are not clever enough to work out when you are having a laugh.

Reading: UK's epicentre of va-va-voom

Simon Painter

@ Fraser

End of August and the beginning of September is when they do their annual business. They have somehow managed to retain the rights to sell pretty much every school uniform in the county.

Still, if you want to get one of those cardigans that come with a packet of werthers originals then there is nowhere better.

Ebuyer.com runs on a Commodore 64

Simon Painter

out headers...

Our pen testing suggested we do something similar. I am toying with making our IIS servers report as apache 1.0 on an apple ipod (see ipodlinux.org for feasability).

If it has a chip in it then someone will try to boot Linux on it so maybe my headers should read: Apache 1.0 running on a Cod Supper.

Geek Squader gets fruity with customer porn

Simon Painter

@ Officer Ben Weston

So do you have a warrant? I don't care how vile the crime, if you search through someone elses computer without permission you should be prosecuted.

Bretons turn on Britons

Simon Painter

Oldest enemies.

We should start a full on invasion because then the french will simply surrender and start collaborating with us.

Oracle sends bloke cardboard laptop

Simon Painter

Full Disk Encryption?

Have Oracle just bought a full disk encryption product?

El Reg to bite hand that feeds ICT?

Simon Painter

Are we at school?

ICT is one of those newfangled subjects they teach at school along with food technology (which used to be Home Ec and before that Cookery).

ICT is IT or as one of the bearded ones may say, Computing. It's the "belief studies" to our "scripture" or "RE".

Rubbish I say. Are we going to be taken over by a readership that was born in the '90s?

Conservapedia wades into Inverness

Simon Painter

to Angus Wood

Hello? Inaccurate? That's the point of the article.

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