* Posts by samuel duckfield

11 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2007

BT blamed for Davina McCall spamcalls

samuel duckfield
FAIL

ICO is useless anyway

We've been receiving ghost calls for months - the ones that simply leave beeeep--beeeep--beeeep--beeeep messages on your answer phone, not fax tones, just an automated system waiting to complete the call. We've complained to the ICO about it and were told as the company didn't actually place the call, make a sales pitch, or even leave their name, they are exempt - as previous correspondents have noted, we've also been on the TPS register for over 5 years...

We've traced the caller to a BT call centre acting on behalf of a legal aid company, but still no joy from BT or the ICO - 'its outside the regs you see'

More holes in those regs than in a piece of swiss cheese :(

Seagate dishes up 1TB drive, looks ahead to 2TB

samuel duckfield

No prizes for guessing...

...how many typical owners of these multi-terabyte drives will be taking regular backups...!

Miserable? It must be U

samuel duckfield
Unhappy

43 in a few months...

So thanks for telling me its going to get even worse... And I'm referred to as Victor Meldrew as it is

Boeing announces 'Laser Gunship' completion

samuel duckfield
Flame

Brings a whole new meaning to...

friendly fire...

smokin !...

Racist Reg hacks slammed for 'vitriolic hatred'

samuel duckfield

You're only jealous!

I'm Welsh and proud of it!

I also have what I presume is a typical sense of humour and I found the article hilarious, containing no offence whatsoever. Ignore all this political correctness crap and continue with the boredom alleviating oratory!

btw Don't knock a bit of sheep shagging til you've tried it.

Vauxhall recalls self-combusting Corsas

samuel duckfield

smokin!

Is this why most Corsa's seem to be fitted with chimney pot sized exhausts these days?

I presume the 5000 watt stereo systems are commonly fitted are used to try and extinguish the flames in the same way that Red Adair uses explosives to fight oil derrick blowouts.

BSkyB buys Amstrad

samuel duckfield

I was relieved...

... when the Skyman fitted a GRUNDIG receiver - how sad is that?!

Apparently, the acquisition will 'add to the bottom line in the first 12 months' - just shows that Sky is only interested in quantity when it comes to hardware. Good ol 'stack em high' mentality...

UK mulls drink-drive limit cut

samuel duckfield

deterrence is the answer

Instead of moving the goalposts, why not have greater enforcement (ie more Traffic Cops, less tax collection cameras), and much more stringent penalties - especially for serial offenders (loss of licence for life, car crushed, huge fines, automatic imprisonment).

Pay-as-you-drive roads coming to the UK

samuel duckfield

What alternatives...?

OK, so our kind hearted government wants to reduce pollution, congestion, stress, etc by taxing us off the roads. Fine. So what are the options?

Until last week, I commuted 20 miles to and from work by bus. There is only the one service that runs this route - and First Group operate it. Its usually run by drivers with personality disorders (aggressive, ignorant, generally unfriendly), the buses are dirty (yes FirstGroup - they ARE!), the drivers do nothing about anti-social behaviour - drunks abusing passengers, kids playing loud music on their mobile phones, etc - and this 20 mile journey takes between 1.5 - 2.0 hours! I can drive it in about 40 minutes. What makes it worse, is that the buses manage to run late, and sometimes don't appear at all. As I said, there is no competition.

To take the train, I'd need to take a bus into town - there is little parking available around the railway station, and what there is is discouragingly expensive.

My only option is to take the car to the outskirts of Sheffield and use the park and ride tram - a fantastic transport system - clean, punctual, plenty of staff to enforce good behaviour, and reasonable fares.

I've used the buses for 3 years, but the service is now so very poor, culminating in a recent assault and lack of action (or even the courtesy of a reply) from FirstGroup, that I have now returned to the car.

If pay as you go road pricing is to be introduced (as seems inevitable now) then realistic alternatives MUST be in place FIRST - which requires huge government investment in public transport and a complete rethink on the bus system - deregulation has been a disaster!

'Data storm' blamed for nuclear plant shutdown

samuel duckfield

scrapheap challenge - build a nuke station!

"Such failures are common among PLC and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, because the manufacturers do not test the devices' handling of bad data, said Dale Peterson, CEO of industrial system security firm DigitalBond.

What is happening in this marketplace is that vendors will build their own (network) stacks to make it cheaper"

Since when did the commisioning authorities allow DIY comms in mission critical systems?!

Registrars victims of latest UK.gov IT fiasco

samuel duckfield

Deja vous

UK Gov + IT = expensive disaster (again)