* Posts by Ace Rimmer

48 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jul 2013

OK, so we paid a bill late, but did BT have to do this?

Ace Rimmer
Devil

BT HELL

We had a BT sales call one Sunday afternoon (my gf was with Orange at the time). I had explained to my gf that Orange were a BT reseller in our area and therefore couldn't offer her the same deals BT could so we were in the market for a new ISP. When BT rang they offered my gf a great deal - switch to us today and you'll get unlimited broadband for an introductory price of £7.99 a mont, rising to I think £15 a month after 3 months. She passed the phone to me so I could confirm that it was unlimited, what likely speeds would be etc and once confirmed she signed up.

Cut to 10 months later and I'm at home and there's a call from BT. Now, I have to say my gf is one of those people who hates looking at her bank statements. If the debit card still works then there can't be a problem. Except that she noticed she seemed to be running out of money near the end of the month, but assumed that as we'd recently started living together she was just spending more. Then the phone call comes and it's BT asking if I can speak on behalf of the account holder. I said I could (which really shouldn't have been enough to start giving me details of the account over the phone but that's another complaint) and asked if we were aware that we'd been paying £150+ per MONTH for the broadband connection.I assured her we had no sodding idea! It turns out that they had signed us up to a 10Gb per month limit and had charged her per fekking megabyte over that. I can do 10 gigs in a day on a good day! It took 2 months to get it resolved and BT flatly refused to refund any of the money. That's areswipe issue number 1.

Issue number 2 was the broadband kept dropping out. I did some testing on the router, and also hooked up my own, nice and expensive router to the broadband and it didn't drop out once. I phoned customer support and got put through to an Indian fellow (could have just been an Indian guy in a British call center I guess). I explained that the router was faulty and we needed a replacement. He insisted there was nothing wrong with the router and it must be a fault on the line so I agreed to allow BT to do 3 days of extended tests on the line (I got assurances this cost would NOT be passed onto us before I agreed!), and thus 3 days of meaningless tests took place. After 3 days he rang back, told me they had finished their tests and found a fault and everything was now fixed. I told him that there was never a fault on the line as I could connect with my own router quite happily without losing connection even once, and anyway, how did a fault on the line cause the wireless signal to drop out every 10 mins or so. He then asked me to log into the router so he could "fix" the wireless. I did so, and then he asked me to "switch the channel from automatic to a selected channel because this would boost the power". I told him that the router was NEXT to the laptop and any increase in power would make no appreciable difference, that it was symptomatic of the router failing, as was the repeated dropouts on the line itself which I couldn't replicate when using a good and tested router, and that I was a network engineer who could tell he was just reading from a script and didn't have the first CLUE as to what might be wrong, as was evidenced by his insistence on doing 3 days of tests and then trying to claim the broadband dropping out was causing the wireless signal to drop off. He hung up and I couldn't get a conversation started with them again (and no, I didn't swear once in the whole conversation before you ask).

My colleague at work is STILL waiting for his broadband to be connected after weeks of excuses and outright lies. We have now been with Sky for 2 years and not had a single issue. I'm pretty sure their customer services won't be much better (from listening to some horror stories some of my friends have related to me), but I will NEVER use BT again. They don't just try and shuffle out of things, they blatently lie, they try to treat you like a complete moron, and the moment it finally dawns on them that you actually DO know what the hell you're talking about and they have to admit it they hang up and you can't get another engineer to talk to you again. BT are truly the spawn of satan and regardless of how bad the others are, you need to have your head tested if you sign up with them.

'Who knew in 1984 that Steve Jobs would be Big Brother?'

Ace Rimmer

Fingerprint scanner

I don't know a lot about how the thing is wired up, but rather than all the various and highly technical ways discussed above, wouldn't it be easier to compromise the system with a bit of relatively benign malware that merely pretended to lock the phone, so you scan your print in to unlock it but instead the malware copies the fingerprint?

I genuinely don't know if that's possible, I don't know if the phone has access to the actual scanner or if the whole thing really is a discrete system so the rest of the system can't see the scanner part, I'm sure others will tell me :)

Intel shows off wine-powered processor and biometric boffinry

Ace Rimmer

It'll never catch on

"Intel have developed a low-powered processor and accelerometer that was powered by a glass of wine." I said to the missus.

"What a waste of wine" she said.

Windows 8.1 to freeze out small business apps

Ace Rimmer
Headmaster

"has neither Software Assurance or an InTune subscription"

It's either - or or neither - nor but it's NEVER neither - or tsk!

Tor traffic torrent: It ain't the Syrians, it's the BOTS

Ace Rimmer
Black Helicopters

I'm not saying it's a new iteration of PRISM but....

1st September Reg article regarding tracing nodes by utilising a huge amount of "controlled nodes":

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/01/tor_correlation_follows_the_breadcrumbs_back_to_the_users/

Given that article is based on the publication of the PDF on Cryptome, which was published in August, around the time that the massive increase in nodes appeared it's altogether possible some entity is trying to flush the identities of the other nodes on the network.

"The compromise isn't something available to the trivial attacker. The models that Johnson developed assume that an adversary has access either to Internet exchange ports, or controls a number of Autonomous Systems (for example an ISP). However, it's probably reasonable to assume that the instruments of the state could deploy sufficient resources to replicate Johnson's work."

Assuming that a large quantity of bots (roughly the same number of bots as existing nodes on the network according to the reports) could provide the same level of information, it sounds very much like what's actually happening.

WIN a RockBLOCK Iridium satellite comms module

Ace Rimmer

KARDASHIAN

KARDASHIAN

Kills Airplane Really Desperately And Saves Havoc In Arial Nastiness

Lenovo chief Yang wangs hefty bonus wodge to workers

Ace Rimmer

No matter what the gesture there's always someone who will find fault with it.

"I'm a bit too jaded to believe that Yang's donation of US$3m is a purely selfless act, since he was quite willing to give the media a detailed account of his decision."

Well we'll just have the workers give the money back then as it wasn't totally selfless. What a whining fuckwit. Why shouldn't he tell everyone about it? Throwing a few million dollars of your own personal wedge - regardless of whether you can afford it or not because you're already independently wealthy - is a big thing to do. He COULD have made it a company bonus and taken it out of company profits, he CHOSE to take it out of his own pocket instead because the gesture is more meaningful and will be received as such by those who get it.

Private UK torrent site closes, citing 'hostile climate'

Ace Rimmer
Unhappy

Re: Members are inconvenienced

Given that it's September 2nd and I'm just hearing about this I'm somewhat gutted. Got some great TV shows off that site, some which had plainly been recorded on shaky VHS recorders and are impossible to buy (I've tried!). It is a real shame and it will be sorely missed.

Dopey dope-growing dope smoked out by own dope dope-growing vid

Ace Rimmer

Great another person thrown in jail and given a criminal record for growing a plant. To paraphrase Bill Hicks - isn't it kind of unnatural to make nature illegal?

Boffins lay bare exotic Lara Croft meteorite element ununpentium

Ace Rimmer

Re: Your element interests me

"I would like to subscribe to your periodical"

Appears monthly.

Google's Project Glass headman answers most pressing question: 'Why?'

Ace Rimmer
Stop

Re: Honey someone's calling you

"Would you want to wear glasses although you have a perfectly good eyesight, just to be able to make a phone call or browse internet?"

Glasses - Devices to aid eyesight

Glass - Technology that allows you to interact hands free, in a way you would with any other mobile computing device, that happens to live on your head NEAR your glasses.

Google Glass ISN'T a pair of glasses, so asking why someone would want to wear Glass when they don't need glasses is asinine and woefully misunderstanding the technology.

"Give me ONE great use case for a healthy human to wear electronic glasses around"

1. Navigation hands free.

2. Making phone calls hands free

3. Taking instant pictures hands free if something interesting happens during your normal working day and you don't have to bugger about getting your mobile out, unlocking it, invoking the camera and taking a pic, by which time whatever it is has gone.

4. Being able to recieve and read texts hands free.

5. There are lots and lots more little things that all combine to make it useful to have them actually closer than "at your fingertips" (quite literally having them at your command). This idea that because they are on your face it suddenly means that, unlike any other mobile technology curently available, they have to be doing something spectacularly useful 100% of the time is again a ridiculous expectation of a device when no other device in the market does that. All this is a pouting, deliberate attempt to not want to find a product useful/enjoyably/desirable. And it's ridiculous.

Ace Rimmer
Happy

Re: The computer that 'lives on your head' will change mankind

"Personally, I can't wait for Samsung to bring out Galaxy Glass with NFC so you can pay for things by head-butting the sales terminal"

Made me laugh out loud while on the phone to a customer (yes I probably shouldn't have been reading Reg articles while talking to customers). Kudos for that!

Ace Rimmer
Thumb Up

Re: The computer that 'lives on your head' will change mankind

If you're giving it away I will happily take it off your hands (or, more accurately, your head) :-)

Did Google's Waze gobble run rivals off the road? UK watchdog starts probe

Ace Rimmer
Thumb Up

"The only Waze is ethics"

Best. Tagline. Ever.

Yahoo! starts $1.99 'watch list' to recycle old usernames

Ace Rimmer

I Had an email from Yahoo the other day saying they had removed 14 contacts from my contacts list because they were no longer valid. I was aware some of them were no longer valid, but I kept them there partly for nostalgia and partly to recognise people should they turn up with the same name from a different email account. I never asked Yahoo to remove these contacts and, annoyingly, it listed a few names and ended with "And 5 others". Who were the 5 others? There was no way to contact Yahoo to argue this, or even find out which contacts they had removed. Plainly that was in order to free up names for this nonsense! Given that I've had my Yahoo account for about 15 years now, I'm annoyed that they would just start hacking names out of my contact list with zero warning or even the complate list of the ones they have removed!!

'Abel, put that camera down right now! Abel, you're fired. Out!'

Ace Rimmer

I like my women like I like my flash storage - dense and cheap.

Fear the JOBZILLA! 150ft STATUE of Steve planned 'lest fanbois forget'

Ace Rimmer

"Steve Jobs put the emphasis on innovation and creating what has never been created stealing other's ideas, repackaging them and flogging them at a massively inflated price to gullible fools"

There, I fixed it for you.

Fanbois taught to use Apple's new killer app: Microsoft Windows

Ace Rimmer

You could run Parallels.....

....Or you could just buy the equipment at a third of the price and run Windows natively. An obscure idea to those with more money than sense (ie people who purchase Macs).

Amazon DISAPPEARS from internet

Ace Rimmer

Re: In the meantime

"the possibility of meeting interesting people"

You plainly don't shop in my town.

'But we like 1 Direction!' Rock gods The Who fend off teen Twitter hate mob

Ace Rimmer

"X Factor losers"

Best description for One Direction and their fanbase I've ever heard.

Leaked photos of iPhone 5C parts portend ugly Google legal battle

Ace Rimmer
Stop

Re: Rik - You have surpassed yourself...

"But let us now remove the tongue that has thus far been so firmly lodged in our cheek,"

Right there at the end of the article for anyone who'd read it and not already worked that out for themselves.

Nuff said to the haterz really.

Three's UK mobile network goes down on unlucky northerners

Ace Rimmer
Unhappy

It was my birthday yesterday as well, but I'm in the South of England so I'll just have to suck up the fact that I got no birthday texts or calls as the fact nobody loves me. Damn you 3, you nearly gave me an excuse!

Rejoice, Australia: A dream tech workforce is coming ... in 2030!

Ace Rimmer
Headmaster

Oops

"will bear fruit in 2023!"

2033 surely? When dissing the education system it's usually best to get basic math right, unless you're trying to imply your own education is a good example of how flawed the system is in which case well played El Reg, well played!

New blinged-up 'iPhone 5S' touted by Jobs FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

Ace Rimmer

They should call what Apple do "Spinnovating"

"But with shareholders concerned that the fruity firm has stopped innovating cloning, re branding, prettying up and re marketing as a "new" device and then waging patent wars over shit that wasn't theirs to begin with"

There, fixed it for you.

NSA to world+dog: We're only watching 1.6% of internet, honest

Ace Rimmer

Forget the NSA

The REAL controversy here is finding out El Reg operates on Lotus!

Apple returns to courtroom once again to contest ebook shafting

Ace Rimmer
Stop

A little bit of reality please

The DoJ haven't created a monopolistic company in this market - Amazon have. It's this simple:

Amazon cut prices to boost sales and increase brand loyalty (so if that's a crime practically every business that is in business should be in court) - Amazon loses money.

Apple increased prices and put clauses in it's publishers contracts to make sure they couldn't be bought cheaper anywhere else. The consumer loses money.

The DoJs job in this instance was to decide if consumers were being ripped off by Apple's practices. They plainly were, and now Apple are being rightly shafted for the attempt. The publishers weren't "Bullied into settling with the DoJ", they settled because it would have cost them far more to have gone to court and lost, as Apple have so wonderfully validated.

You're obviously an Apple fan Mr Orwloski, but I think you've bitten of more than you can chew attempting to justify this one.

Android approaches 80% smartphone share as Apple's iPhone grows old

Ace Rimmer

Careful, Rush Limbaugh will be accusing you of anti-Republican bias for this article!

Yahoo! announces! plan! to! change! logo! 30! times! this! month!

Ace Rimmer
Paris Hilton

New logo

Is it too late to submit a logo?

I suggest for complete relevance to their new corporate image it should be:

YaWho?

Paris, another entity that's a household name but doesn't really do anything.

Limbaugh: If you hate Apple then you're a lefty blog-o-twat hipster

Ace Rimmer
Facepalm

He's right about one thing.

Republicans to them, he says, “must seem like aliens from Mars, racists, sexists [and] bigot homophobes.”

They seem that way to everyone, because that's what they are. The Republican mantra is "Greed is good but god is better", and once that ethos is in place they know they can do whatever selfish, anti-humanity indulgence that they want knowing if they get caught either their rich, influential friends will bail them out or, if all else fails, their mad god will forgive them.

Sergey Brin's 'test-tube burger' cooked, eaten, declared meat-like

Ace Rimmer
Stop

"humans already use 70 per cent of worldwide agricultural capacity to provide feed for livestock"

Ok this ISN'T rocket science. Eat the food you grow, cut out the animal bit in the middle.

The only reason for continued eating of meat is "Because I can". There's no biological need for us to eat meat, long term consumption of meat is incredibly bad for you in general, much much worse for the animals, and the energy we expend growing and cultivating livestock and the resources we pour into it (like turning over 70 per cent of our agriculture, which could be feeding US far more healthily) are insane. It's no longer even a moral issue, it's simple, common-fucking sense.

BONG goes HYPER as default.gov POWERS the FUTURE

Ace Rimmer

iBong, therefore I am.

'Steve Jobs killed music biz', but Bon Jovi don't mind Google Glass

Ace Rimmer
Stop

"Yes but these are people filming us without our permission"

So is the state, everywhere you go, your mobile sends tracking information about you everywhere you go, every shop you walk in, police cars, citizens with dash cams, people filming themselves and catching you in the frame, etc etc etc, you are being filmed and tracked everywhere you go but you're "*really* *not* *happy*" about someone with a pair of glasses doing the filming instead?

Where's the fekking "reality check" icon?

China Labor Watch gumshoes uncover TOP SECRET PLASTIC IPHONE

Ace Rimmer
Windows

iCrap

A cheap, plastic imitation of the real thing.

Or Tim Cook as he's better known.

Robot cop called in after MAD BONGER blown up in LIQUID MARIJUANA EXPLOSION

Ace Rimmer
FAIL

Re: Not so much stoners but thieves

"The problem is it often only takes one inhale of cannibis to turn an otherwise normal person into a violent rage."

Always interesting to see those who's ignorance is largest feel the need to publicly display that ignorance and not even realise what a total cock they are making of themselves.

Comrade! If you dare f$%^ing swear on the internet, WE'LL SHOOT

Ace Rimmer

Thought police alert....

“A ban on its use is not an infringement of human rights. This is a direction towards a civilized lifestyle.”

Not really grasping this whole "Human rights" concept is she, not to mention WHO'S version of "civilized lifestyle" are we talking, because her's has no more right to be enforced in law than yours or mine...

Do you really want tech companies to pay more tax?

Ace Rimmer
Stop

Stop!

Pension investments are a long term strategy. Any initial hit from paying the CORRECT amount of tax will only hit share price and dividend in the first year or so before the company balances out based on the new reality and the profits begin to creep back up along with the share price and dividend. The idea that a short bit of pain to bring companies that can most certainly afford it back into line with what everyone else pays is somehow going to affect pension funds over the long term is nothing more than scaremongering hogwash.

IT Crowd thesp eyes giant hot-air-filled FLYING SCROTUM

Ace Rimmer

Re: Careful there...

We believe you just made a rational and well thought out comment. We find this highly offensive and intolerant of our religion.

Dell buy-out latest: Big Mike makes shareholders an offer they can't refuse

Ace Rimmer

I Ca(h)n't believe it...

"The Special Committee has now been asked to GUT this provision to effectively render it meaningless"

What's meaningless is the decision being weighted in favour of those who don't vote. While there may be good reason for a few of them not being able to vote, the majority who don't vote don't care enough to, and therefore they are happy to go along with whatever decision the people who DO vote, vote for. Discounting the people who don't vote as irrelevant is the ONLY fair way to assess what those who actually have an opinion on the matter want. To paraphrase Richad Prior, Icahn is a dick, and not even a hard on.

Middle America pulls up sagging pants menace, belts repeat offenders

Ace Rimmer
Stop

Oh no, people are OFFENDED!

As someone who was a teenager in the '80s, the notion of people walking around "looking stupid" is almost ingrained with me as a way of life. If they're wearing their trousers stupidly so what? Are they wearing pants? If yes, then they're not exposing themselves, grow up and get over your mock sensibilities. If no then arrest them for indecent exposure as you would anyone else. Rocket science it ain't. Deliberately choosing to take offence at something that is no more than a moronic fashion (in the eyes of us oldies) is simply retarded. Footloose anyone?

I will leave the great Steve Hughes to explain it to those who can't grasp it:

http://www.snotr.com/video/8285/Steve_Hughes_-_Offended

ZUCK out all my BUGS: Facebook gobbles Brit glitch-hunter

Ace Rimmer
Thumb Up

Re: (Finnish words)

I was going to make that exact same suggestion myself. Beaten to it!

I envisage ending up with a sentence running something like:

"You (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words) (Finnish words)"

Formal adoption by El Reg and maybe even an icon to go with it please.

Free cloud server self-destructs in 35 minutes

Ace Rimmer
Pirate

Primecoin

Fire up an instance, mine a couple of coins, fire up an instance, mine a couple of coins....

Russian mobile operators say 'nyet!' to Apple, 'da!' to Samsung

Ace Rimmer

"No that banging you hear is not the sound of your engineers building the next, new, world-dominating shiny shiny Mr Cook, it's the sound of an ever increasing number of nails being banged into a coffin marked "Apple"...."

Forget iWatches and the iPhone 94, they should be pouring every last dollar they have into re-animating Steve Jobs.

Ad man: Mozilla 'radicals' and 'extremists' want to wreck internet economy

Ace Rimmer
Facepalm

It makes money and provides jobs, therefore it MUST be good!

"[Third-party cookies] have been part of the way Internet advertising has been delivered, measured, analyzed, optimized, and compensated for more than 15 years," he railed. "Were they to be embargoed tomorrow, billions of dollars in Internet advertising and hundreds of thousands of jobs dependent on it would disappear."

In the same way heroin has provided countless employment opportunities and been a part of the human ecosystem for many years. Were it to become embargoed tomorrow billions of dollars in drug manufacture and distribution and hundreds of thousands of dependent dealers would disappear.

Just because it makes money that alone doesn't make ethical, right or desirable. Three words that will never appear next to Mr Rothenberg's name unless it's under the heading "What is Mr Rothenberg not?"

Is it a BIRD? Is it a plane? Right first time – and she's in SPANDEX

Ace Rimmer
Headmaster

Re: "anything that doesn’t remote detonate, so a grenade launcher’s fine too"

Technically they explode on impact (which could just as easily be between your feet if you're being clumsy) rather than being detonated remotely.

Microsoft: 'Google's secret government meetings let it avoid import ban' - Report

Ace Rimmer
FAIL

There are 2 possible outcomes:

1) All these companies eventually grow up and start patent sharing, cross-licensing and respecting each other's work and contributions to a given technology.

2) Ultimately everything will be banned and nobody will have anything.

My money's on 2.

Apple files patent for 'Waze-plus'

Ace Rimmer
Devil

Patent(ly absurd)

Apple are slowly working towards this patent:

"A patent for a non-specific device to perform a range of non-specific applications utilising or not as required a range of non-specific hardware, software and/or protocols, taking input from non-specific sources and output to a variety of non-specific outputs"

US State Department coughs up $630k for Facebook Likes

Ace Rimmer

"Just two per cent of the total number of friends for each of the IIP's four major Facebook sites bothered to engage with the material they produced"

And most of that 2 per cent was probably journalists and activists.

EE turns up speed knob EVEN FASTER on 4G spectrum

Ace Rimmer
Thumb Down

OfCom should have given the "4G" to 3 so that the high speed would make sense with their unlimited data plans. As others have pointed out, all this means is the data allowance will get used in a very short time as people default to higher-def video etc to take advantage of the speed and then get stung to bits by the charges for going over. It's a similar business plan to the ones used by drug dealers, but drug dealers are less sneaky and more reputable.