@Dave

Please hurry up and squash them all for me... I'll personally blow a gasket if I get stuck behind one of those in the mountains!

Not all of them!

I was a little cheeky the other week... I saw two motorcycle cops parked up on the Mall, and thought they'd make an interesting picture... So I asked if they minded, and they were perfectly friendly and even asked if I'd like them to pose in any particular way!

However, if confronted by a Nazi, sorry I mean member of the force who is over stepping his authority, just remember that most of them are about as technically savvy as an 8 year old. Be friendly, compliant, and show them your photos so they can Identify which ones that offend them. Delete the pictures.

Then before taking any more, swap your memory card... It's only FAT, so undelete!

@Samson Chan

Totally possible...

Your broadband connection is only piggybacked on your phone line on the local loop, and jumps off it at your local exchange. From there the two signal paths are separate.

As you have broadband, but no analogue phone, either only the phone line goes via the broken tunnel and the IP data goes a different route, or the IP data is on one of the other links in the tunnel which survived...

So give it a day or two and I'm sure they'll manage to damage the IP datapath too :-)

How about...

How about this for a revolutionary idea...

As this analysis is based on the IPs of the infected machines, how about emailing the ISPs who control these IPs and asking them to inform the user who had that IP allocated at the time of their infection, and pass them some useful links to help them remove the infection...

The mechanism almost already exists on some ISPs to allow the RIAA to pump out the automated "You are an evil pirate, prepare to be cut off!" emails.

This does assume the ISPs give a sh*t of course!

Hmmm...

I hope that in the USA they still get the phone number to link to the card number, otherwise you could use a prepaid credit card to get the unlock codes, and then bin the card and share the codes with all your friends.

Plus, CLI is all well and good, but at the moment calls breaking out from VOIP can have some very strange numbers, and of course be faked to contain any number you like.

@AC 2nd April 2009 13:31 GMT

The N97 isn't available yet... It's release date got pulled back a couple of months, about the same time as Orange et al started bitching about the built in Skype calls having the ability to go over wifi.

I'm sure, as we speak, Nokia are bending to the will of the carriers and knobbling the VOIP features so they only work over GPRS/3G and not wifi... Same as they did with the N95...

Hopefully the N97 will be equally simple to "fix" afterwards.

@Code Monkey

My g/f made exactly the same comment the other day. I can't remember what film we were watching, but the anti piracy thing was even more in your face as usual... They truly are only one step away from the IT Crowd version these days!

Anonymous Coward @AC 2nd April 2009 12:17 GMT

"Why is no one in charge clued up on this?"

A very good question... But do you really think we need another 100 civil servants, even techie ones to help them with these things?

Personally I'm quite happy for the Govt to go round making stupid statements like this, and then to sit back and watch as the reality of what they are requesting slowly dawns.

We all suspect they are idiots, so why not let them open their mouths and remove all doubt!

Why?

Why should it matter? They have a data volume cap, so if you blow it in a couple of hours from a tethered laptop, why should they care?

Okay...

1 is a shock

2 is a unexpected

But getting yourself caught in the third incident is just plain stupid! surely any manager with more than a couple of braincells to run together would refuse to meet any workers in an office with only one exit... From the far side of a chain link fence is currently recommended!

More to the point...

WTF are we doing paying for her to have cable TV at all! I don't have it at home, I don't think it comes under a necessary expense, especially with the option of freeview, or don't they have to justify any expenses?

Specs...

I thought they said Windoze 7 would work fine on netbooks? As A/C 19:48 correctly observed, translating those requirements into real world numbers exceeds any netbook on the market.

Remember XP - at least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)

And Vista - 512 MB of system memory

So either M$ are being honest for once, or W7 is an even worse system hog than Vista!

@AC (miles back up there somewhere)...

"Someone from Berlin is a Berliner"... Errrr... JFK tried that one... Doughnut (literally).

Anyway, nice to see that good taste has prevailed :-)

I think most of my favourite Euro beers are safe from trademark jumping, the Polish ones don't have enough vowels to be pronounced, let alone trademarked!

Na zdrowie :-)

The Lib Dems...

They do make a good opposition some times, and I would be tempted to vote for them and let them try running the place for once, if it wasn't for their blind loyalty to Europe and it's financial albatross.

Come on...

Where's the rest of it... The aircon! I don't see any evaporators on that container, and there is no way those suits would be able to wearing anything more than speedos if that sweat box didn't have the wind chill factor of the Antarctic!

Love the loose and missing mounting bolts! I wonder how many head crashes a magnitude 7 would cause, even with the fancy (unbolted) spring mounts?

Bit crazy...

Considering the iPhone is one of the few phones on the market that has a huge lump of metal as the back of the case, you would have thought they would have had a easy way to dispose of heat (and warm your pocket). Most other phones have to use the amazing conductive properties of plastic!

@Andrew Newstead

I saw the same article, and the same thought occurs now... That was a frame designed for a conventional bike (and nobody took it then!), whereas a 'leccy bike has loads of those pesky heavy batteries. The picture shown looks incredibly nose forward weight wise, and I don't think I'd fancy trying to stop the thing in a hurry, especially on those bumpy Manx roads!

Hmmm...

After seeing the BBC link - with picture - (Thanks 4a$$Monkey), I see the Police are charging him with undue care and attention (well they don't have a charge of being a pillock!)

I'm just wondering if you can be charged with anything when you are not driving on the public road. For example, if I pull onto my parents drive, and decide to ram their car a couple of times, IIRC (not that I have tried it!), I'm on private land, so I can pretty much do what I like.

Except...

Most motherboards have a link to prevent bios writes to stop stupid users screwing things up...

So as long as you've got that set, you're safe.

@Paul

""recall the tumbleweed that blew through empty stores when O2 and Carphone first launched the iPhone in the UK"

--well thats not true is it ?! it was covered in the news, queues of people outside most apple, o2 and carphone warehouse stores..."

Really... Odd because I took advantage of their late opening to park (free after 6) in my local town, walk into the O2 shop and buy another microSD card for my Nokia... There were more staff than customers in the store, and I would have been in and gone in 2 minutes if all the till staff weren't trying to resolve a problem with an iPhone registration!

At last!

We now know the official name for the university of the bleedin' obvious!

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration!

OIY!

"exposure to the fantastical Xenu story before the completion of numerous preparatory stages might result in pneumonia or even death...."

Thanks! I've got a cold now! Who should I send the lawyers after? El Reg for leaking this, or the church for stockpiling a biological weapon?

Not a shock...

Come on, who's going to pay for all the trial installation for it to only be available on the shortest tube line on the network... Waterloo and City only has two stations FFS!

So...

What's its range at night when the solar charger won't be working and you also have the lights draining the batteries, oh and the stereo blasting to keep you awake?

@John A Blackley

I think elReg has paraphrased this a bit... They threaten court but give you the option to settle outside. Theoretically saves both parties time and money. It's no different to a speeding ticket. You can argue it in court if you like, but you're just risking more points and a bigger fine, so most people just opt for the 3 points and the fixed fine.

Damn...

Maybe they should stick to fires... Put the fatty in the burning building and watch them sweat of those pounds! Or maybe even run for the first time in years!

@Mike

Pass the info to the ISP and let them contact the user... LMAO! Oh tell me another one, that's too funny!

You're lucky if your ISP manages to keep a broadband connection up and running, let alone chasing anyone on their network who has been pwn3d!

The other year one of my email servers was on the receiving end of 20 thousand virus email a day from one IP, it took me 3 days of constant phone calls to the ISP before they stopped, and I think that was only because I finally found the number of their technical director by randomly changing some digits at the end of their DDI range.

Wisdom of crowds?

If that's true, why do we continue to have Big brother and X-Star-get-me-out-of-here-celebrity-factor on the idiot box?

Surely stupidity of crowds is more accurate. Those likely to push the average IQ upwards keep quiet in case they use a long word, and slowly edge their way towards the exit doors.

@Chris Williams

What are you doing with your poor phone? I have an original (pre-8gig) N95 with it's original battery and it lasts days.

1) Make sure you have the latest firmware (free download and install from Nokia site), the very early firmware was bad with the battery.

2) If you don't need to use something, turn it off. e.g. Wifi, GPS, bluetooth and if you don't need 3G, switch to the old GPRS network, it's less of a power muncher

3) If you have no signal, e.g. on a tube, turn the phone offline. This goes for any mobile. If they can't see a cell they crank up their broadcast power and start screaming the wireless version of "HELLOOOO!"

4) Close down apps you're not using. Hold down the application button (the funny blue swirl) and you'll get the S60 equiv of alt-tab... Navigate up and down the list and you can press C to close them without having to go into each one.

@AC

I don't know, do they? I'd be interested to see the date on those given the huge amount of "previous art" that exists.

Then again, since when did that ever stop anyone getting a patent in the states!

What on earth...

What are the designers of these things thinking? I assume they had system designers?

They really don't show any signs of being able to understand the big picture of what their product is supposed to be doing!

Unless of course the big picture is that they want to be able to sell an election result to the highest bidder... In that case then they aren't even very good at designing a corrupt system.

Honestly, given all the flaws in the old system, I find it amazing that any state allows Diebold, or whatever they have renamed them selves to this month, to do anything more complex than make freebie calculators to put in cereal boxes.

BTW, I was confronted by a Diebold cash machine in Slovakia once... I was too frightened to use it!

@reg website guru...

I think you need to slap your "related" products bit about.

The top three it linked to on dabs were...

# Asustek 8.9" Eee PC 1GB 20GB Linux Black - £224.04

# Asustek EEE PC 900 1GB 16G SSD Linux White - £202.78

# Asustek EEE PC 901 1GB 12G SSD XP Black - £299.98

The first two are discontinued, and the third is out of stock for 3-4 weeks and £247.50 inc vat

@Anonymous Coward 26th 20:42

I wish I could have dodged getting one from Barclays... I tried to log on one day and was greeted by a request for an 8 digit number generated by the stupid thing... Not that they had bothered to send me one before locking me out of my own account! I had to phone them up and shout at them before they sent one out.

I find them a complete pain in the arse. If I go away and forget to take it, I'm completely screwed. I understand they want to appear to be more secure, but when their website asked me to create a password it insisted on 6-8 characters, then rejected any numbers, and also got upset about any symbols. Result you can only use a-z... Even then it gets upset it you have one letter repeated too many times, they could have made that more secure just be allowing longer passwords and *insisting* on some numeric characters!

So it's no shock that they're flawed... Banks are in the business of money, and we've all seen what a complete mess they have managed to make of that recently, so what hope was there that they would be able to do some IT with any degree of success!

and...

...if you go to google and type "coldplay torrent" you get 700,000+ results, with at least the first couple of pages linking to various torrent sites... Oddly enough TPB isn't in the first couple of pages.

@Dan

I think it will eventually come down to

"They're witches, WITCHES I tell you... They turned me into a newt! (I got better)"

Shocking...

I can see chainmail coming back into fashion very shortly...

As if...

... 12 weeks wasn't short enough, he'll be out in 6 due to the standard half time good behaviour rules... Unless of course he's a naughty boy in clink.

@AC 24th February 2009 10:40 GMT

Last time I checked the tariffs, as an Orange UK customer visiting France, you are best off roaming onto any carrier other than Orange FR. I wonder if the France telecom owned network screws Orange FR customers as badly when they visit the UK?

Don't forget...

All the dynamic DNS sites and systems that rely on a short TTL.

I use dyndns to access my server at home. My old aluminium pair is a little unreliable despite being less than 3km from the exchange, so daily disconnects and new IP assignment are a common occurrence. Without dyndns support provided by my router, I wouldn't be able to find where my server had ended up!

Is he available for hire?

We've got plenty of spare civil servants in the UK which could be deleted without anyone noticing!

The UK visitors to the US site...

"more 100,000 UK users visited Yelp's original US incarnation over the past month"

Yes, and every single one of them only ended up on the Yelp page because something they searched for happened to be on that page... They quickly discovered they were on an American site and left as it was irrelevant to them.

Sometimes I really wish we didn't share the same basic language!

Leap year...

As a programmer, as there is nothing special about the 12th month having 31 days, the first thought that crosses my mind is the 31st December 2008 was the 366th days of the year.

Does anyone fancy keeping that firmware version for the next 4 years to prove me right?

As to why a music player would need a clock, well don't forget that DRM has the ability to expire media after a set time, so it looks likely that the DRM "feature" has actually caused the deaths.