* Posts by Joe

25 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2007

Animal rights group protests seal clubbing in World of Warcraft

Joe
Heart

WoW audience not the best for PETA

There's a build on my server which would make them apoplectic with rage

<Seal Cub Clubbing Club>

UK.gov thinks internet should be run like BSkyB

Joe

I see it now

Government claims to be building a "thriving digital economy" and uses said argument to shift public services to the web.

Government builds system whereby web services can negotiate agreements with ISPs to allow access, presumably with a fee or reciprocal arrangement involved, probably along the lines of "implement this government approved blacklist".

Government tells citizens that if they want to access any public services whatsoever they need to use an ISP on their approved list of Phorm-subscribing overpriced "unlimited*" ISPs.

I'm only as paranoid as Jacqui wants me to be

BT cuts 0870 charges

Joe

08 numbers

I'm sure I remember that some time in the distant past when all of the numbers were reorganised that the 09 prefix was added for calls charged at above the national rate and 08 limited to national rate or below, hence the demise of the 0898 prefix.

080 free

084 local rate

087 national rate

I'd operated under that assumption from land lines only to discover that those principles were quietly ditched somewhere...

India's Moon shot takes to the skies

Joe
Flame

excellent perspective on this story

For those who've not yet experienced the joy that is the Daily Mash:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/india-to-build-hospital-on-the-moon--200810221345/

Hits the nail pretty much on the head really...

US Air Force outlines combat raygun safety

Joe

warnings from GLaDOS

The aperture science high energy pellet has been known to cause permanent physical disabilities such as vapourization.

Official: gadgets not responsible for Qantas jet plunge

Joe
Joke

RE: ..but flight computers probably were

"... an A330 carries THREE of these and only one was faulty."

WHERE'S MY MINORITY REPORT?!

Dell thinks young and colorful with business notebook refresh

Joe
Paris Hilton

latitude docks

I've just been looking at the e-series docks and unfortunately it looks like the d-series connectors won't work with the new kit, nor will the e-series work with the old d-series docks. That said, the e-series dock options are a lot cooler with a TFT mount bracket stand that doesn't enclose the laptop like the current d-series monitor stand, and the e/port plus supporting dual DVI or displayport as well as both the standard and plus e/ports supporting more (and better positioned) USB ports and an eSata connector.

The common connectors across the d-series range are great and have lasted for 6 years well, and phasing them out will be a bit of a nightmare but I can see why they're doing it (other than the revenue through enforced obsolesence strategy of course). Presumably we'll get another 6 years of e-series commonality.

Paris, because she's a universal dock.

Western Digital shrinks VelociRaptors for enterprise duty

Joe

Missing a Raptor

Where's the inclusion of the Battlestar Galactica Raptors on your chart? They may be larger than both the WD drives and indeed the Cretaceous namesake but I dare say they're a lot more evolved than a hard disk drive...

UK gov announces Road Pricing 2.0 - Managed Motorway

Joe
Paris Hilton

The heady ideals of socialism

Let me get this straight. The Labour government want to introduce a road network that allows the wealthy to get where they're going on time via the toll lanes, but would leave the poorer drivers unable to pay the toll charges on top of fuel duty etc sitting in a traffic jam. The same poorer drivers who have to drive because they can't afford the exorbitant prices for "public" transport (~£50 from Northampton to Bristol by train, less than £20 by car).

Whatever happened to giving everyone an equal opportunity?

Paris, because you don't need to pay a toll to get in to her high-occupancy lane...

UK to outlaw cartoons of child sexual abuse

Joe
Unhappy

RE: What is wrong with you people? (AC 12:52 GMT)

The CPS, much like the police, are the enforcers of the law. If they believe that they will make a successful prosecution based on the letter of the law and the evidence supplied to them by the police then they will prosecute.

It's not their job to turn around and say "no, seriously this is a complete farce". Remember these are lawyers we're dealing with...

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

Joe
Black Helicopters

obvious answer

Bring Boeing's 747-mounted lazer in to land at Sydney and fire it back at anyone who shines a lazer at the pilot. Brings a whole new meaning to shedding some light on the situation...

Vista SP1 kills and maims security apps, utilities

Joe
Gates Halo

Remember XP SP2?

I remember XP SP2 having a much bigger list of incompatible software. Having looked at the Free Allegiance wiki note it looks like their problems are caused by a 3rd party module in their code which bombs out in the presence of .NET framework v3.5 (which presumably is integrated in to Vista SP1). Given the number of windows applications there are I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the first major service pack for a new OS has caused so few problems.

God I sound like a right fanboi...

Yahoo! formally! rejects! Microsoft! offer!

Joe
Flame

Get! A! Sense! Of! Humour!

To everyone who's complaining about the abuse of exclamation marks on Yahoo! Related! Stories!; get over it please. This site has been reporting Yahoo! News! for as long as I've been reading it (2001 I started) and if you're not used to some sillyness mixed in with the coverage you can go and read some stuffy highbrow nonsense...

Head banker leaves job over Muslim gaffe

Joe
Joke

shi'ite -> shia

Reminds me of a somewhat more witty remark I heard from a listener's contribution to Terry Wogan's show.

It's saddening to hear that Sunni and Shia are in such heavy conflict these days. Perhaps we could arrange for them to get together to re-record "I've got you, babe"?

Clarkson's 'steal my ID' stunt backfires

Joe
Alert

Banks should be contacting the customers

Why can't the banks and the credit card companies send SMS and/or email notification of every significant action that takes place on your account as it happens?

BEEP An electronic direct debit mandate has been placed on your account xxxxxx91 from the originator Nigerian Prince Ogoaeruyter. Please call the bank now if this is incorrect.

BEEP Your MasterCard xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx3079 has been used to purchase a Bugati Veyron. Call us to dispute this transaction.

Since signature checking seems to be increasingly lax these days a bit of dilligence from the banks wouldn't go amiss...

EDS beagles blast 'absurd' BSkyB

Joe
Thumb Up

EDS lose either way now

Regardless which way the verdict goes we can look forward to several smear articles in all of the Murdoch controlled press, most likely lifted straight from the pages of the various Private Eye exposés of EDS's incompetence on various public sector contracts. With Murdoch now in control of at least 1 major news source in most countries we can look forward to some significant reputation damage for EDS.

Entirely well deserved for a company that has been fleecing the UK taxpayer for at least the last 10 years.

Microsoft dispels rumors of stealth Windows updates

Joe

less of the senseless MS bashing please

If the Automatic Updates service is switched off, or configured never to check for updates then it won't. The issue here is the paranoid crowd flying off the handle because the Automatic Updates service silently updates itself (and nothing else) without user interaction. Am I the only one who thinks that people are grossly overreacting? Let's be honest, if the auto-update service prompted you that it needed to be updated before you could check for other updates it'd just serve as another barrier to people keeping their computers updated, and consequently we'd have even more vulnerable computers ready to start accepting commands from botnet controllers.

I'm hardly a big fan of their business practices but they're damned if they do and damned if they don't here. Either the generic home user turns off "all those annoying update options" because they don't understand what it's doing, or the DON'T TOUCH MY COMPUTER!!!!11111 crowd go mental.

Firm finds danger in dangling pointers

Joe

IIS 5.1

Given that IIS 5.1 only exists on Windows XP (Windows 2000 uses IIS 5.0 and Windows Server 2003 IIS 6.0) you can see why perhaps this is perhaps much less of an issue than the article makes out, and indeed why Microsoft took their time issuing a fix. Probably because they're fixing problems that could have real implications, such as those with core components of the OS that are installed by default.

IIS 5.1 is never going to be used for anything more than a little hobbyist hosting and IT department utilities; I have an FTP server that I turn on when I need to reinstall the Dell utility partition on to a replacement disk for instance.

It's roughly the equivalent of saying "there's a security issue with running Exchange 2003 on XP Professional". No-one would be doing it in a production environment, and anyone who did deserves everything they get frankly.

And yes I know you can't install Exchange 2003 on XP Pro before you get all pedantic, but I'm just trying to illustrate a point.

Videogaming not addictive... for now, doctors say

Joe

lies

This is just an excuse to get a research grant to fund their WoW addiction for the next 5 years!

Japanese firm exhibits droid construction worker

Joe

RotM surely?!

Especially in line with today's other RotM story about creating a Machine to Machine Intelligence system, I can see it now. Armies of mechanical brickies all programmed to make the sound of sucking air through their teeth and announcing that "that whole wall's gotta come down, hear that? that's rot that is. yeah it's all gonna have to come out"

Physics GCSE: 'insultingly easy, non scientific, and vague'

Joe

Competition between exam boards

I have a theory on why the exams are getting easier (and they are, let's not beat around the bush here).

There are 3 major exam boards. Those exam boards charge a fee based on the numbers of students who sit their exams. They are private companies so it is in their interests to turn a profit, and more students = more profit.

Schools are under immense pressure from league tables. It is in the best interests of the school to have pupils who score highly in exams. The qualification gained is identical regardless of which board sets the papers.

Now, assume that board 1's Physics exam is noticeably easier than boards 2 & 3.

Q1. As a headteacher or a department head, with which board do you choose to enter your pupils?

Q2. As a Director of exam board 2, you notice that significantly more schools enter pupils for Physics through exam board 1. What do you do?

And here endeth the erosion of standards...

Orange simplifies data by capping at 30MB

Joe

Wrong tree with ASA

It's more likely to be a job for Trading Standards than the ASA since the product/service being offered does not match the description

High level Night Elf druid saves PC gaming

Joe

Why PC gaming has suffered

There's a more obvious reason why there's not been much innovation of late in the PC gaming market which you accidentally stumbled upon in your article.

All the designers are addicted to WoW.

Still, some of them have managed to shake the shackles off and come up with some other good stuff, Supreme Commander and Tiberium Wars should bring people back in to the RTS fold for instance.

Program Names govern admin rights in Vista

Joe

not quite

Slightly misleading towards the end. What actually happenes under UAC is that a flagged program will prompt you when run to either allow the program to run with administrator rights or not to run at all. An unflagged program will run with user-level rights unless you right-click it and say run as administrator at which point you get the familiar UAC prompt.

With UAC enabled NOTHING that you run can run as administrator without your consent. If it runs silently when you double-click it, it's running with user level rights.

Hi hon, I'm on d plane

Joe

Carbon conspiracy

Perhaps it's the government's way of reducing the number of flights we all take? They daren't anger the air travel lobby and this looks like a positive for them, whereas the real people will spend one flight in cattle class surrounded by people jabbering on their phones and vow never to fly again...