@AC11:38

Bollocks.

Sony gets marked down because it's proprietary non-standard crap which should be flushed down the bog the first chance you get. Of all the Sony players I've heard - phones and dedicated media players - the sound quality is at best tolerable and at worst piss poor. Cowon deserve the credit for making such quality, usable, standards-conforming, decent-sounding gear and producing frequent, worthwhile firmware updates. There's a whole community around manufacturers like Cowon, iRiver, Archos etc. Anyone who owns a Sony is pretty much on their own and with good reason - nobody with half a brain is ever likely to buy one, much less come up with cool stuff for it.

PS: The word you are looking for is "disparate".

The Times

"The Times didn't have to point out what piss means - presumably Times readers know piss when they see it."

Brilliant - works on SO many levels!

VM

Last time I had a decent ISP was Pipex before they went hell for leather to fatten themselves up prior to the Tiscali buyout.

Currently with VM's 20MB and it is a pile of wank. I have the bad fortune to live in what their field engineers refer to as a "black" area (i.e. one populated by people who spend their entire time on Skype to their grannies in Poland and never pay their fucking bills) which means no investment in capacity and no FTTC. Plus, as previous posters have said, you get a decent speed (sometimes) until you actually decide to use it. Pish.

@Hugh Pym

"I think this guy has proved himself to be one of the few people worthy to be an MP."

Catch 22. Reminds me of the Billy Connolly quip:

"I think, roughly, the desire to be a politician, should ban you for life from ever being one. "

Brilliant

To paraphrase the Indian office dude from Family Guy: "HA HAAA! IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE!"

No Title

What's the betting the SWA is run by 70's-vintage white, middle class, radical anti-porn feminists?

One good thing will come of it however - they'll sell a fcukload more calendars and whoever does get the pennies in the end will be a damn sight better off, and no doubt grateful for it.

Goes both ways

I've had people bring me their PC to fix after having been ripped off by one or other of the local "pros" at prices which usually run well into three figures for the privilege of not repairing anything, cracking the case (if it's a laptop) and stealing a few screws.

At the same time the queue of gringos who want you to "take a look" at their machine because "it's running a bit slow" and "doesn't work properly" and they think it "might" have a virus, never gets any smaller. The one thing they're always fucking sure about however is that it's just a five minute job and that you'll to do it for the price of a couple of beers (if you're lucky).

@ Catkins

10 headdesk

20 goto 10

Also, lol @ "uninnocent".

Fantastic

I have read or skimmed through every single comment here and (small comfort though it is) there's not one single person speaking out in support of the police's behaviour in this and many, many other instances of harrassment.

I remember when stories like this started appearing occasionally in the news pages of Amateur Photographer a few years ago, and at the time thinking: "wow, that's just insane" but as the months have passed the same thing is happening more and more frequently.

To begin with it seemed like it was always over-zealous and under-informed PCSOs who were at the centre of these incidents, but now just as often it's "proper" police officers.

If things carry on like this, I should stop worrying about IF it will happen to me and instead start planning for WHEN it happens to me.

@AC 12:15: That is a fantastic idea and one which I think may very well happen if the police keep acting like this.

Chrome, Safari, Opera

Chrome: Completely unsecure in normal config (only time I ever got drive-by download nastyware was when using Chrome).

Safari on Windows: As bad as FF/IE, security through (relative) obscurity.

Opera: Same

Firefox may not be very good security wise, but NoScript and a small army of other security/visibility-enhancing plugins go a long way towards fixing that, and also makes Firefox much, much easier to keep an eye on. Using any other browser I'm constantly worried about what's going on behind my back.

Zen and the art of...

...population maintenance?

Ticketmaster are a bunch of Thieves

Booking fee on every ticket plus card surcharge - there is only one word for it: robbery. They want investigating now, never mind if they <strike>merge with</strike> swallow up Live Nation.

They make me so f*cking angry AAAAAAAAAAAARGHGSD;KUJGDGSK;UJSDFGGUO/

No Title

Funny how ever since I sent these people a text to go "ex-directory" I've started receiving spam texts every day.

Of course they tolerate shill bidding

It means more money for them.

They are also really pushing this "offer your customers free postage" thing, which basically means the seller budgeting the postage in to their starting price, which in turn means eBay get more money from your sale because they get their final value percentage on the postage as well.

Chapeau

Lewis old chap you have outdone yourself.

What a complete and utter

Twat

@ "This isn't journalism, it's a rant/blog/spunkbubble" comments

Fair enough, the man is spouting quite boring invective but, er, it's called FailBLOG, not ParagonOfJournalisticWinningness.

Helllllo nurse!

Glad to see they're back on the eye-candy wagon

@ Twunts

For the love of god get down off your bloody high horses. The article is not anti-wind or anti-green, it is anti-bullshit, anti-greenwash, pro-realism.

Juxtaposition

Did you have to? It's half past nine in the morning and I haven't even had my toast yet.

FFS

How many billions for ID and IMP? What is the f*cking point trying to argue with intellect like that in charge?

Subhead

Large Hadron Collider to Midge Ure in one step. Well done that man.

Dan Brown

I've never read any of his books but I hereby roundly condemn his writing as utter drivel based purely on the sheer volume of "non-readers" who have asked my opinion of it.

Top Tip! To really piss off reverent note-taking Dan Brown fan types at the movies: buy a ticket for the movie, making sure to take a book or some other form of personal entertainment for the duration. When the credits roll, stand up and yawn, then proclaim loudly: "well it was alright, but it's no Harry Potter."

In conclusion: spunkbubble.

Paris because mumble mumble, IQ in the shoe size range, something something, spat them out etc. etc.

@ Stevie

Nice one!

Oh dear

"...the poor girl looks like she's gagging for a bit of hot meat action."

That's just shoddy Lester.

Best Head/Sub Ever

Have sudden hankering for spongy biscuit with fondant coconut topping, but of course I'm bound tae! Geddit?! .... Bounty! Ha ha oh I am a one.

Schoolboy sniggering

Touch ring, bwaaaahahaha

I smell a rat

So they overcooked the original IMP uberdatabase proposal, instantly making whatever crock they dreamed up as its replacement easier to swallow. I f*cking hate politicians.

Oh yeah and while I'm on it, I saw some nonsense reality TV program about the "UK Border Agency", in which its agents were battering on some poor pleb's door shouting "open up it's the Home Office". The producers must've cut the "if you've got nothing to hide" rider off the back of it (HHOS). And anyway, since when did the Home Office become an executive agency?

@ AC re:UKIP

Who cares? I don't agree with UKIP's silly populist nonsense, but that doesn't mean the article is worthless. Far from it.

Short, to the point, and very fair comment IMHO.

@ Secretgeek - lmao nice one!

@James

RTFA

May I be the first to say

Ouch. And seriously, what a pussy. What part of becoming a laughing stock did he not contemplate before running to the polis?

Paris, 'cos I'm sure she's been the cause of a few snapped banjo strings in her time.

Hmmm

I think a lot of you are missing the point. Andrew isn't smearing TPB or Lundstrom, he's having a pop at freetards. I don't think it's smear to simply point out that the guy is a Neo Nazi when freetards (especially the noisy opinionated banner-waving element) - a group I'd consider leftist to say the very least - don't seem to want to know who's paying as long as they continue to get their free shit.

It's not a question of who you're giving your money to (as in corporate boycotts) but who you're taking it from, no questions asked.

Meanwhile casual users have been left in a situation where they have a choice between either paying for a crocked copy of their digital media because music/video/games/book publishers have totally failed to deal with the new technology, or turning to the likes of TPB where they can get the same stuff (plus some shitty malware "bonus tracks" if they're unlucky) in the space of a few clicks.

Both sides of the argument suck fat ones. All AO has consistently done is to point that fact out in his own inimitable, acerbic, shit-stirring style. Keep it up I say.

Tsk

"But, if the trial would have taken place in Blighty..."

Try: "If the trial HAD TAKEN place in Blighty..."

Yeah

You could do all that, or you could force lazy gits out of their cars with cattle prods. For huge numbers of people, leaving the house = climbing in to the car, regardless of what they are doing or where they are going. That habitual unthinking mentality needs to be broken.

"above my pay grade"

For some reason I read that as "above my gay pride"

Ballute is rubbish

Paraloon is much catchier

Bent as a nine bob note

That is all

Bureaux

That is all

Snigger

You said large thrust borer

Brown trousers time perhaps...

...for Arec Barrwin!

Awe-inspiring

Richard Dawkins was dead on when he said that the gene was being replaced by the meme as a basic unit of evolution. We have here one big tank full ready to outlive all of us, and not a piece of meat in sight.

@ Daniel Garcia

If you knew anything about the Dalai Lama you would not say that. The man is universally loved by his people and with good reason. When your religion is your way of life, theocracy is just a word smart-arsed westerners use when they think they know better.