Posts by Stuart Harrison
44 posts • joined Monday 4th June 2007 10:58 GMT
It already exists
http://freethepostcode.org/ - All Ernest Marples did was query this, and if a postcode wasn't listed, it used the Yahoo or Google APIs to get at the data. Not rocket science, but the Royal Mail took exception to it. It was an exceptional bit of trolling that was pretty effective in opening up the debate, albeit at the expense of a few useful sites.
Hmmmm...
It seems to be a word for word copy of the response the Free PAF petition got earlier last year, as well as the letter I got from Lord Young, the minister for Postal Affairs and Employment Relations. Methinks some lackey at Number 10 has seen 'postcodes', reached for the file marked 'standard postcode rebuttal' and copied and pasted it without looking at the issues properly.
I don't think it'll be the full PAF
The dataset that's being talked about here is the Codepoint database, which ties postcodes into geographic locations (about 15 or so addresses). The PAF ties postcodes to addresses, which is exclusively owned by the Royal Mail. To be honest, I can't see Royal Mail hanging on to the PAF for much longer anyway, so it's only a matter of time before that's opened too.
Posted in Council to crack down on Cracknuts Lane
Waste money?
How is introducing one line to a policy a 'waste of council tax payer's money'? It takes two minutes to do. Surely the bigger waste of council tax payer's money is replacing signs that repeatedly get defaced?
Posted in Microsoft's IE8 app dev survival guide
@ Anon
Unfortunately this is the case at my place of employment, we were talking about rolling out Firefox across the organisation as the main web browser, but were stopped at the last hurdle when it was discovered that a few business critical web apps were designed to work with IE6 only. Grrr.
Posted in Windows Live Web 2.0 facelift is go
They just can't get it right can they?
Microsoft are like a 50-year-old man, trying desperately to be 'down with the kids', but failing miserably.
Pac Man pie chart?
OSX gobbling up market share perhaps?
/Coat
Posted in Beeb to cut the f**king swearing
Anybody who tried to count swearwords on the BBC...
Needs to get a f*cking life...
Listen to reason? This government?
Nah, they'd much rather listen to the hysterical rantings of the right-wing press.
Posted in Coppers nab more mobe-yapping drivers
I suppose...
The Daily Fail and their like will see this as more evidence of a 'war on the motorist' and 'revenue raising' on the part of the police. Sigh.
What a surprise
Will our cryptofacist overlords stop at nothing to stomp all over our civil liberties? I'm guessing the next move is to start dismantling the upper house so they can push through any bill they damn well like. Sigh.
"Promoters of gay culture"
How on earth can you 'promote' gay culture? You're either gay or you're not. It's not a lifestyle choice and the sooner people like Rev Mullen realise that, the better.
Paris because, oh, figure it out for yourselves...
Posted in Quantum theme debuts on Radio 1
@ Joseph
"I only want a teeny tiny bit of solace,
Before I shoot you"
To me, that :is: the Quantum of Solace theme.
No2ID
I'm really disappointed that an otherwise fantastic organisation is getting themselves involved in this tabloid overreaction of a non-story. So, Google are taking pictures of people's faces in the street and publishing them on the internet, so what? Passers by are filmed and photographed on a daily basis and their visages are beamed all over the world - are all newspapers, TV stations etc therefore evil privacy invaders too? I think not. And don't get me started on the Daily Mail's 'Burglar's Charter' angle - talk about scraping the barrel...
Posted in Commodore launches little laptop
WANT
OK, judging by the photos, it's no Macbook Air, but for God's sake IT'S GOT A COMMODORE LOGO ON IT! Will definitely up my street cred with the retro computing commuter crowd. The beige plasticy look of it is a nice retro nod too...
Posted in Google releases open source browser
@ breakfast
The rendering engine is WebKit, so no extra layers of complexity here! Javascript might be an issue, but I doubt it as the Google devs are trying to make Javascript less of a pain, not more...
Posted in Hackintosh maker bites back at Apple
Interesting stuff
I can kind of see Apple's point and I can kind of see Psystar's point. On one hand, I can understand that Apple want to protect their brand by controlling what hardware is used with their software (and making more money from hardware sales to boot), but on the other hand I think they're missing a trick - Microsoft are starting to look a bit like a lumbering giant in the OS stakes - the Vista launch was a disaster that they're only just starting to get over, and people are keen for a change - the Linux distros aren't quite there to take up the mantle, so Apple could quite easily jump in and give MS a run for their money. Whichever way the ruling goes, Apple are going to win, no doubt...
@ Herby
I think that comment relates more to MySpace, not Facebook...
Posted in Cops cuff anti-drug ninja vigilantes
Shinobi...
Now there was a game! I'm going all misty-eyed as I type...
Posted in Russell Crowe to play Bill Hicks?
Hmmmmmmm...
If this project does come about, and Russell Crowe does a good job, who's to argue? If, as a result, more people become aware of the great man then it's a win win!
Although he could completely f*ck it up of course...
Knives, guns, drug dealing...
OFCOM using pathetic scare tactics to get the public on their side again I see. Yes, there are pirates out there that are involved in slightly underhand activities, but for every dodgy pirate station there are dozens more that act responsibly and provide a service to listeners who aren't catered for by the rampant commercialism of the major stations.
The FM band needs to be liberalised so you don't need a six figure bank balance to get a licence, especially with the advent of digital and online radio...
Posted in Hacker murders Facebook word game
Why...
... Didn't Hasbro enter into a revenue sharing / licensing agreement with the Scrabulous creators rather than setting the lawyers on them? That way everyone would've been happy surely?
@ Anonymous Coward
Another example of how stupid the Great British Public are - people are still signing the Red Arrows petition despite the response that it's all a load of bull:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RedArrows2012/
Paris, because she represents the level of intelligence that most of the petition signers posses
Re: Black Cars?
Even Google can't afford Black Helicopters
@ Anonymous Coward
Labour? Socialist? Don't make me laugh.
@ Jolyon
Ah, but if you display key information as images, you're making your site inaccessible to blind people who use screenreaders, therefore effectively breaking the law under the Disability Discrimination Act!
Posted in Asus announces 10in, HDD-equipped Eee PC
Is this a first?
An article about the Eee PC and no picture of the Eee PC's beach friend? El Reg, I'm disappointed!
1xtra...
... Used to be good until Lorna Clarke got her claws into it, turning it from an exciting, vibrant station that catered for all sorts of underground 'urban' music forms into a carbon copy of Kiss. No wonder people are listening to the pirates. 1xtra's has its finger so off the pulse of urban music it doesn't even have a dedicated dubstep show.
Unbelievable
It's one thing not to sanitise user data, but to put the ENTIRE SQL QUERY IN A URL?!?!? That's just next level stupidity right there. I'm sure you have to try to get it that wrong.
Paris, because only she'd be this dumb to get it this wrong.
Sounds good to me
As keen as I am on open source technology, I'm now tempted to buy an Eeeeeeee, as a DJ I use timecoded vinyl to play digital stuff live, and am in the market for a cheap low spec PC for when I play out. There's currently no Linux-based software that meets my needs, so this might be just what I'm looking for!
Posted in Image uploader bug blights MySpace
Serves them right...
... for using proprietary Microsoft technology in the first place. And who uses MySpace these days anyway?
Eye Toy
"everything the Wii is doing today, the PS2 was doing 4 years ago with the Eye Toy..."
Yes, but without any of the innovation, gameplay quality or style of Nintendo. Other than that, exactly the same.
Re: Selfishness
The point is that it wasn't just people who didn't change their passwords who got hit, people with the good sense to do what Fasthosts told them in the first place suffered too.
Posted in Sidcup massive threatens Reg hack
Re: hoax
"No-one (from anywhere, let alone Sidcup) could be so stupid as to come out with that stream of gibberish and be able to use email and a PC. Surely?"
You've obviously never read YouTube comments
Posted in Facebook and ABC News get political
@ Mr P Hilton
It's exactly the same in this country, if not worse. Anything that attempts to get people (especially young people) interested in politics is a welcome move.
I swear they have jammers in Tesco
No matter which Tesco I go to, in any part of the country I can never get a phone signal. It's very annoying, especially when I need to check something with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Grrrr.
Erm...
Are you sure this isn't part of a much bigger forms system? Granted, it'd be a bit of a waste of time to spend ages developing a system to report a barking dog, but this could've been created by a system that creates forms on the fly so people could report fly tipping, roads problems etc, which would be very useful. Hell, I've used a similar system to report problems like the above a few times...
Football Manager 2007???!
Ah well, whatever floats your boat I guess. Personally, I find Football Management simulations to be one of the dullest genres of games ever conceived. There must be some boring people in the world, that's for sure...
If the flash player works with Opera on the Wii...
I will literally wet myself with excitement. I've never been a fan of watching the telly on my computer. I'm hoping Opera was omitted from the article by accident...
Exciting news
I echo Mo's sentiments, as a web designer / developer, the sooner IE6 and its buggy CSS rendering is dead, the sooner my life can be made a hell of a lot easier!
Posted in First RIAA file-sharing trial begins
Good luck to her
And I hope the bullyboy RIAA rack up thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees.
Posted in Microsoft shouts 'Long Live XP'
Vista = The new Windows ME?
It certainly seems that way. Thank God I've got a Mac.
Posted in Patientline looks for debt help
Excuse me...
A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
But seriously, it's a crying shame.
Oh lordy.
The Panorama programme spent so much time harping on about the 'independence' of contributors, but neglected to mention that one of the prime contributors, one Alasdair Phillips, stands to make a lot of money from selling various gadgets and gizmos designed to 'protect' people from the menace of WiFi (See Ben Goldacre's blog entry at http://www.badscience.net/?p=418 )
