Posts by Matthew 3 432 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2009
In the UK, car registration numbers aren't owned either: they're assigned by the DVLA. But it hasn't stopped a thriving industry for the sale and transfer of them. In fact the DVLA themselves make quite a bit out of selling certain combinations too.
Perhaps ICANN could introduce a 'use it or lose it' policy for those class A addresses. Who really has 16.7 million publicly accessible devices?
"Made me very glad to be with a decent provider and reinforced my intention never to switch."
It's not always possible to stay with a decent provider. My small, local, ISP which was run by techies for techies got swallowed up, first by Pipex and then by Talktalk.
Getting a migration code from them was a battle but the process of switching is then pretty painless. Having just come out the other side, I'd recommend voting with your feet if you're unhappy: it's not as bad as you think to move!
Anonymous John has already alluded to this but, for the benefit of those not from the UK, way back in 1957 the BBC documentary Panorama ran an elaborate spoof for 1st April.
(http://tinyurl.com/3f5gq)
Does this perhaps mean that all televised research of the last half-century has also affected children's abilities? Or perhaps that, once they've been shown this valuable lesson, they won't be caught out again?
I'd say that the conclusions drawn here should only apply if these children are still believing everything they read the third time they've been asked to research something online.
I bet the folks coming up with these ideas are all city-based with access to 100MB connections. I'm guessing that there are plenty of Aussies too for whom distance from the exchange is all-important. They should be working out the impact of this kind of decision on those with the slowest links.
Although, as pointed out already, adblocking means that the more dramatic the ad, the more likely it is to be hidden anyway. Simple text-based ads often get through when others would be suppressed.
I've just switched broadband providers and was expecting days of disruption and set-up problems. But, no, they gave me a full rundown of what to expect from (from a UK callcentre), an email with a URL to a page detailing the progress of the move, and even a link to the Royal Mail tracker to see when the router would arrive.
The router arrived when they said it would and, 40 minutes afterwards, I had confirmation that my service was live. The kit needed no config - not even needing to login to the thing, yet alone setting usernames/passwords/modes etc - so to say I was gobsmacked would be an understatement. Quite simply it's been the most impressive bit of customer service I've had in a long time, and it's from bloody BT of all companies!
If my old friendly, local, ISP-run-by-techies-for-techies hadn't sold down the river and been swallowed up by TalkTalk I'd never have switched. I have always felt like broadband is a bit like banking: you never dare switch until the dire service crosses that threshold from annoying into truly appalling.
Several people I know have racked up hundreds of FB 'friends' just so that their Mafia / Farm etc gets some sort of bonus: they don't actually know these people and don't interact with them outside these games.
Unless FB offers a way to filter out 'real friends' from 'random people who accepted my friend request', how will one be able to know them by name for this picture identification idea?
When installing the BES, you're asked to specify the hostname for RIM's servers. But there is no practical reason why you can't use, say, the UK servers instead of the one geographically closest.
With VPNs surely you'd be able to securely and invisibly bypass RIM's local servers if you doubted their security?
Anyway, I'm sure that Obama's BlackBerry doesn't use the same North American RIM servers that Joe Public has to use...
https://www.blackberry.com/SRPAddressLookup/index.do
The issue is surely just whether we treat drivers as adults or not. Prior to cameras we had the concept of 'discretion' where the Police threw the book at the real idiots and warned those who were fundamentally safe but erred slightly.
A trial where all road markings, pavements, railings and street furniture was removed from an urban area found that drivers suddenly had to be more responsive and couldn't rely on road markings: so accident rates FELL when drivers were treated like responsible adults.
I would bet that even if all speed limits were abolished, the vast majority of drivers would still travel at much the same speed as they do today. There will always be nutters but they could still be caught by 'driving dangerously' laws, even in a world with no limits.
Swindon has also proved that removing cameras doesn't actually make everyone suddenly go crazy - even the Top Gear boys urged everyone to show restraint in the area lest the cameras go back on. The more you treat people as children, and the less they have to think for themselves, the more likely it is that you'll hear people saying things like 'I did 50 because I'm allowed to' and then crashing in thick fog.
...do a quich search for the TufTuf club. They're a Dutch group who used to blow them up. I gather that they would even spray them pink beforehand to give the police a chance to catch them!
JC* himself evangelised their works in one of his sermons to the masses.
*no, not /that/ JC: it was Jeremy Clarkson.
As far as I can see, nobody has mentioned Sky's watch-via-the-net service which is logged against a subscriber's account and allows you to install the player on up to four computers.
This seems like an ideal solution for the Beeb too. If you don't need four permitted computers, you could share it with someone ineligible but it can't get shared with hundreds of other people until you remove some of the already-authorised computers.
And why don't they offer an option for overseas viewers to pay per programme, perhaps via Paypal? My sister in the USA would love to be able to watch them and would happily pay a few quid here and there for the better stuff. I reckon it would bring in miles more revenue than it would cost.
It would also negate the need for the IP blocking and would stop me having to bugger about with VPNs back to a British IP address when I'm abroad on a business trip.
I'm pretty sure I read that it did, as part of the mechanisms for disposing of all that Mach2 friction heat.
NOTE TO THE YOUNG: Concorde was the world's fastest passenger aeroplane built back when we were still able to be the best in the world at something. It was stopped when some soulless penpushers realised that travelling slower was more profitable. (bitter, me?)
Jlocke puts down Microsoft because the *first* account you create on Win7, during installation, has admin rights. But every subsequent account is minimum privilege by default and recommends a strong password. This doesn't seem all that different to me to the process used for installing Linux or MacOS.
Sure, it is easy to bash Microsoft but these days it is getting increasingly lazy to do so. Most of the anti-MS sentiment seems to be based on decade-old products. Is there no allowance for rehabilitation or improvement?
And incidentally I'd say to Random_Walk that both cocaine and morphine still seem to be very successful. Even being made illegal hasn't managed to destroy the market for cocaine and the medical profession don't seem to have stopped using morphine.
Many thanks for the honest article. I think that we all learn a lot more from when things go wrong and the typical temptation to gloss over failures makes any lessons less useful. By describing your 'warts and all' situation the article is far more useful and relevant than a bland best-practice guide.
I'd have liked to have seen this one included in the review. It is listed as the world's smallest colour laser printer and as someone with limited desk space I wanted a printer which took up no more room than the inkjet I'm chucking out. Is it any good?
I would also agree that for me the biggest cost of inkjet printing was dried-up cartridges. I sometimes don't print anything for a month so it was costing me a fortune: unless I remember to do a weekly printout to keep it going, I need to replace four loads of ink almost every time I print.
I strongly suspect that this was thought up by the same numpty who dumped those Davina messages in our answerphone mailboxes.
Their reasoning then was that it didn't matter if you were registered with the TPS to not get sales calls - as it was 'dropped into the voicemail box' so wasn't a phone call...
It strikes me that they're desperately trying to wriggle around every regulation and rule that they have.
...I too thought that this outcome was another whitewash. It is clear that the view we're all being asked to believe is being presented as gospel. Hmmm, weren't the gospels also the result of scrupulous peer review and repeatable test outcomes?
just to be clear, I don't have a problem with being asked not to waste natural resources, to recycle, to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and the like. But I do take issue with the bad science and manipulated data being used to justify taxation changes and government policy. Stick with the same ideas as an extension of 'Keep Britain Tidy' and I have no concerns!
Doubting the figures (especially when they're from people with a vested interest in the numbers being presented) seems to me to be eminently sensible. Isn't the whole idea of science supposed to be about being sceptical and demanding unequivocal proof? When did blind acceptance become the correct position to take?
I may be being incredibly naive here but surely, in the UK at least, if an organisation is withholding your property/money/assets improperly you have the right to sue.
And the Small Claims Court would have allowed him to reclaim up to £5000 for a £50 cost I believe. Surely that is a better bet than just hoping they'd see reason?
I didn't have to give fingerprints when I applied for my last passport (and yes it's one of the newer electronic ones). The closest that gets to biometrics is the digitally encoded photograph.
So how is this the same as an ID card?
Anyway the real point here is when will they let us go back to the proper blue hardback passports and bin these Euro pamphlet ones?
The thing that I don't get it that to own an iphone the contract's demands mean that only over-18s are legally allowed to own one.
Of course Apple can impose whatever ridiculous rules they want but surely someone within their organisation must have noticed that only Americans seem to be horrified by the naked human body.
Many of these apps may be puerile but I respect the right of the individual to waste money on them, should they wish to. What's next, banning apps which feature alcohol?
Even if *you* believe that their work is without merit, they still did the work, got it approved by the rules in force at the time, and then have been booted out because the rules have secretly changed...
I can't be the only one who thinks that they'd get a lot more respect if they spelt out what the rules are. Those who infringe clearly stated rules, or those working against the spirit of them deserve what they get - but it isn't fair to cut off a developer's income on a whim.
The comparison chart at RIM shows support for 'both corporate liable and individual-liable BlackBerry smartphones...' and 'data plan requirement only'.
Does this mean that this free version will support all of those personal BIS-enabled folks without them having to switch to a BES-enabled data plan? If so, we'll be one of the first adopters: no more CAL costs and no more 'sorry you've got to pay another £30 a month for the right data plan...'
Back in the nineties I worked for several training firms, both as a full-timer and on an ad-hoc basis. There is a lot of ill-feeling mentioned here and not all of it is unjustified: I've seen for myself the unprepared trainer being asked to cover a course they don't know, the too-many people crammed into a room and the 'intensive' courses which don't allow a spare minute to ask questions or catch your breath.
But I've seen the other type of training firms too: the ones who employ the best calibre of staff and don't/can't just compete on price. They're the ones that get the work teaching Microsoft's own staff, and they're the ones who wrote some of those books. Not all trainers live exclusively in the classroom - and the ones with the real-world experience stand out a mile. They also cost a little more to employ, as the best ones are still in demand: when training work dries up they go off and do a few months getting their hands dirty in the real world.
Don't assume that all training firms are bad just because a few cut corners. But if you're booking with a firm who are £500 cheaper perhaps you should wonder why...
I can't see the point in DAB until the time signal is broadcast at the right time. Andrew Johnson is right about the problem of different radios being out-of-sync: with two radios on, the time signal degenerates into a cacophony of random beeps.
Are we really saying that 'ooh, within about five seconds is accurate enough'?
I thought that new technology was supposed to bring in greater precision and improved service.
Oh wait, it's like Concorde's retirement: one giant leap backwards into a world offering less.
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