* Posts by g e

3255 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2007

Pirate Bay reports pirating anti-piracy group to police

g e

Re: But surely

Yeah, for sure, but as a political party it'd be massively remiss to NOT be its own entity, I'd think!

g e

But surely

They would sue as The Pirate Bay

The Labour Party in the UK wouldn't sue as 'Mr Edward Miliband et al', or is this the non-political-party-TPB ?

Pretty sure they would have thought it through _that_ far, at least.

g e
Happy

Re: Genius

(3)(a) Which TPB then exploits to have their own sentences re-evaluated and everyone gets released on the same technicality

g e
Holmes

Re: Petty or dense?

Depends on whether or not you think 'do as we say not as we do' is a satisfactory mode of conduct for copyright organisations and holier-than-thou institutions/individuals in general.

Personally I'm happy to sit and watch TPB force feed them their own damned dog food. Too many of these 'privileged' organisations think they only have to write the law, not follow it. Fighting hypocrisy with hypocrisy would seem apt, also.

Clarkson: 'I WILL find and KILL the spammers who hacked me'

g e
Meh

So, will he get the same

As that poor sod who tweeted his dissatisfaction about Robin Hood(?) airport ?

Or, by some miracle will the lazy, fickle, farting & feckless establishment decide it wasn't a credible threat.

Cameron to ink cyber deal with India, protect Brit outsourced data

g e
Facepalm

Re: Right we get the point but

I kinda hoped the 'initiative' word implied value-competitive in a political double-speak kinda way ;o)

DOH!

g e
Holmes

Right we get the point but

Wouldn't he be doing better to try and foster some kind of 'bring your data home' initiative to keep it onshore instead?

Higgs data shows alternate reality will SWALLOW UNIVERSE

g e
Joke

@Andy 'step over' Prough

Have you actually played Half-Life???

iPad? Pah. Behold the EYEPAD, patented by Sony for the 'PS4'

g e
Paris Hilton

Riding on

Yeah cos apple didn't have to buy/rent 'iOS' and 'iPhone' from Cisco or Fujitsu, did they.

Paris, cos there's only one thing fanbois ride on.

Rivals to Brussels: Google labelling its own stuff won't help us

g e
WTF?

Re: Gimme a part of that cake! Egalitarianism demands it!

WTF? Not Microsoft and MSIE then...

* Pinches arm *

g e

Re: Awww Poor Old Micwosawft

A lot of the EU stuff is 'being seen to be doing something' I don't think half the politicans/etc take any of it very seriously when competitor A stamps their little feet about Company B.

Speaks volumes though, about their opinion of their own brand vs Google's, that they think pointing out something's a Google thingummajig will create more customers for Google and less for them.

Absolutely.

g e
Holmes

Awww Poor Old Micwosawft

I suppose it's easier to pay for opinion than actually build a bloody good competing search engine (and all its commensurate advantages) after all...

Whodathunkit

Register reader Ray revs radio-controlled Raspberry Pi race rover

g e
Go

Raspberry Pi Cookbook surely?

As an homage to R A Penfold (IIRC)

Apple CEO Cook: 'Bizarre' shareholder lawsuit a 'silly sideshow'

g e
Holmes

See higher up the page

Apple's good fortunes exist by dint of the thousands of man hours of real inventing done by the companies they buy their components from.

Unless you actually believe they invent and manufacture touchscreens, flash, ram, and comms gear. Gadget mashups and, until recently, stunning marketing are all that apple is. Good at it they are but that's it. looks a lot like they've run out of 'wow' now, too, hence the shareholders justifiably thinking they might just deserve a return on all that investment.

g e
Megaphone

Re: ha

And in pretty much every 'innovation' they lagged the rest of the phone market from what I remember, 3g was copying the competition as was camera and then video shooting, then once they'd roughly caught up with those features they started hiring shit engineers (or told the engineers to make shit) like external antenna's you could hold the wrong way (hey, apple's words not mine) and utter cobblers like the maps.

Their 'iconic' design still looks the same, too.. ie like a phone from six years ago and the tablets are more of the same but kinda like taking it back to the Motorola brickphone era but without being able to make a phone call. (For the record I don't like any tablets, none of them do what I need a portable 10" computing device to do, my phone can do 90% of it bar being-that-big and make and receive calls to boot).

Anyone who thinks apple have seriously innovated much since the first iphone need to stop drinking the koolaid and think how the feck apple could make _any_ of that stuff without display tech from Samsung, memory tech from Huawei (maybe Samsung flash), comms tech from Broadcom and manufacturing chops from Foxconn. like Google they're utterly dependant upon other people's tech to mashup into their stuff. Very unlike guys like Samsung, LG, Broadcom and Moto who do actually invent/progress new technologies. Before you say 'UI and UX' copying that into a mobile platform is a leap but only in the sense that all other computing devices have had icons and 'stuff' albeit not in a miniscule screen.

Flame away, cultists, you know you can't stop yourselves..

Still-living, unincarcerated Ted Nugent invited to Barack Obama gig

g e
Facepalm

"a patriot like Ted Nugent"

Is 'Patriot' a synonym for 'gun-nut' over there? The Rest of The World is curious

Is social networking good for anything more than cat pics?

g e
Stop

Re: Top 1% here, amazingly

Yeah I get a fair bit of that malarkey from 'Groups' and their members, now you mention it

g e
Holmes

Top 1% here, amazingly

Though god knows how. I took it to mean Linked in doesn't have much useful traffic if that's truly the case.

(Or they're all recruiters dibbling over my work/contract history, which is possible).

Nil meaningful engagement from the site, though, beyond 'when are you free? have a 3 month contract somewhere you don't want to go' or 'Can you help me, do you know someone who does xxxx, but don't want to give you anything'

Rogue Squadron: Unit of X-wings Kickstarts in response to Death Star

g e
Happy

Re: Supraluminal?

Suspected the fleet jump thing though couldn't remember small fighters in the group. An excellent excuse to re-watch :oD lol

g e
Alien

Re: Supraluminal?

Cool.

Which begs the question do you ever see them entering/exiting hyperdrive as I don't remember it in the films, hence the question :o)

Did we see it or is it one of those 'on paper in the SW universe' capabilities?

g e
WTF?

Supraluminal?

Do Xwings have hyperdrive????

US company aims patent-gun at Australia’s e-health system

g e
FAIL

method for providing a consumer with the ability to access and collect health records...

Sue the Royal Mail in the UK, too, if you ever get your records posted to you cos you moved health Authority in a house purchase.

Overly broad. Invalidate it.

Men's rights activists: Symantec branded us a 'hate group'

g e
WTF?

Paul ELAM ? Really?

Male spelled backwards

Dead Steve Jobs 'made Tim Cook sue Samsung' from beyond the grave

g e

Re: Couldn't Samsung...

They'd also have supply contracts with breach penalties for either side and cost/price review milestones/clauses built in which is why Sammy recently put a rocket under their prices, most likely, in anticipation of A. Apple going elsewhere and B. Apple winning some judgement.

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

g e
Facepalm

Born Again'ers

Used to work with a BAC. Radio 1 in the UK also had a daytime show in which there was a 'thing' they did called 'Praise the Lard' which was probably something to do with fatties or diets or god knows what.

Anyway one day BAC guy hears (mis-hears) 'Praise the Lard' coming out of the radio and spontaneously cries out 'HALLELUJAH!'

Thank you BAC guy, for providing a moment which, for the rest of my life, will roundly confirm Atheism as the path for me.

g e
Joke

Re: 668

999 the ermergency service of the beast

(turn your monitor upside down, it works!)

g e
Stop

Yup

Keeping it in the family, too

Psst, wanna block nuisance calls? BT'll do it... for a price

g e
Holmes

Alternatively

Just register your phone no's with the Telephone Preference Service (and your postal address with the Mail Preference Service, too, while you're at it)

They've reduced junk via either method by over 99% for free.

www.tpsonline.org.uk/

www.mpsonline.org.uk/

And how I deal with cold callers like this...

"Hello I am calling because your phone number has been selected to receive a free mobile phone..."

Don't you just love these people?

Well I do. In fact in a perverse way I almost welcome their calls. The reason is fairly simple but first a little background on telesales and how it works.

Company X wants to sell its latest nanowidget and so it hires some dodgy telemarketing firm to ring hapless people who are foolish enough to have telephones in the hope that they will buy some nanowidgets. The way (as I understand it) the money is made is the person making the call will be on commission so it's in their interest to either get a sale or turn a dead-end call around ASAP so they can get onto the next one which might turn out to be a sale. Usually a computer makes the call rather than the person then when the call is answered the computer routes the call to the next available operator which is why you sometimes get those silent calls when an operator isn't available or the computer misfired. When an item is sold the telemarketing company get s a cut out of which it pays the operator who made the sale, ther phone bill and pockets the rest as profit with the remainder being passed to company X as a sale.

So it's all about a shotgun approach - call as many numbers as you can. Terminate dead-end calls as quickly as possible and plough through as many as you can because the percentages say you'll get a hit in every hundred calls or whatever. If they can't get those calls out of the way fast enough they're directly losing money (they still have to pay an operator something and pay the phone bill for the call and they will have given expected figures to company X for sales which they're under pressure to meet).

Now, this is why I actually like getting telemarketing calls...

Whenever someone calls to try and get me to buy something I say "Oh, hello, how are you" and they say some greeting stuff and begin their opening script. "Hold on a second," I say, "you really need to talk to my (brother/sister/wife/mother/grandfather/cat/milkman) about this as they always deal with this. Just hold on a moment, I'll get them for you".

You're now at the most important point of the call - the point where you put the phone down (DO NOT hang up, just lay the handset down on the table with them waiting. From this point on you are losing the operator commission, losing the telemarketing company potential revenue and running up their phone bill.

"How do I know when to hang up?" you may ask, and a very fair question it is, too. You know when to hang when phone makes this noise:

WEEEOOOOEEEEOOOOOEEEEOOOOEEEEOOOO

If everyone treated telemarketing calls like this then pretty soon no-one would ever have to worry about receiving one as there'd be no telemarketing companies left.

BSkyB to flick switch on network-level smut-'n'-violence filters

g e
Meh

Block smut & violence

That's half their on-demand content downloads gone, then ;o)

So long as it's off by default (or simple to opt-out/disable) that's OK.

What a Liberty: Virgin Media in buyout talks with telecoms giant

g e
Joke

Liberty Global ?

Never heard of them. Sounds like the kind of co whose 'Defence Arm' has a tagline of 'Freedom From Above'

US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' ... it might spark TRADE WAR

g e
Coat

Re: The USA is sabre rattling again

I think the EU already refuses to deal with terrorist states, doesn't it?

g e
Go

Re: SO what?

IIRC they have a massive trade deficit which means they rely on rest-of-world for their shit more than themselves.

Go for it.

g e
Holmes

Re: Hmm.

I think the SPQA (Senatus Populusque Americanus) wants it more for transaction tracking than Google wants it for mining, which hints at the fact they already do it either via requests or sneakiness. Can't see a trade war being threatened just cos of Google.

Trade war could be worked. We could buy Russian Wheat, Polish horseburger (it seems we already do), Chinese/Japanese/Korean tech and they'd still want Jags, Mercs, Porsches, Audi, Ferraris, Range Rovers and Lambos and they'll pay a government-inflated price for them so they can still drive around in a flash EuroCar. It'd eventually serve to further isolate them from the rest of the world ultimately as alternate trade sources would likely be kept if they stopped cocking around at some point later. Wouldn't be to much of a stretch to imagine EU cosying up with China, Japan, SKorea, India and everyone just raising prices. Not that I wouldn't put the USA going to (actual) war with the-rest-of-the-world over a trade sulk, though, cos they weren't getting their way. There isn't anyone called Nero in the Whitehouse staff, is there?

Oh, and the whole of EU could tax MS, Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, etc into receivership. Yeah it all sounds simplistic but if you really want a detailed economic breakdown then do it yerself ;o)

Netflix tempts binge viewers with House of Cards pilot freebie

g e
Go

Watched 5 episodes over the weekend

And it's really very watchable, too. Kevin Spacey's asides to the camera really make it.

If you have a Playstation or a Samsung (likely other brands, too) smart TV then you don't need Silverlight, you'll already have access to netflix. if you have an XBOX you can of course pay again for the privilege of accessing your netflix account with XBOX Gold membership. Hmm my S3 has netflix too, so Android users as well - dunno if appleists have it, I'd imagine so.

So really, only if you're kind of stuck in the land of watching stuff on a computer monitor only.

Samsung: Never mind Steve Jobs, let's snap off a piece of stylus biz

g e
Holmes

History in the making

Steve Jobs says styli are wrong

Samsung brings out gadgets with a stylus

Apple panics when popularity of styli is realised

Apple brings out device(s) with stylus, hails it as a revolution

Apple sues Samsung for copying their stylus idea

g e
Facepalm

Re: Or

and a mouse!

why just carry two things when you can carry three

Under cap-and-trade, flying is greener than taking the bus

g e
WTF?

Probably unfair but...

Did anyone start reading then get to 'University of East Anglia' and immediately think 'Ah, right. never mind'

Having read it, does anyone else think this sounds a lot like Mega Corp tax-avoidance ? I find the phrase 'increase their own emissions' especially disingenuous in a statement on how something's supposed to make somethng 'greener'.

Comes across as total hogwash, all in all.

Facebook's Google, Bing events snub: It's a BUG, NOT a FEATURE

g e
Meh

Meh

It'd be Darwinian for FB to seal itself of from the internet competitors and suffocate to death.

One remains ever hopeful.

Oh, Sony, you big tease: Mystery PlayStation reveal date set

g e
Stop

Yet likewise

I can't imagine any right-minded person buying games online-only with the keys to whether or not they're allow to have continued access to said purchased game in someone else's hands. (Add Ultraviolet to that sentiment, also)

People do still pop round to see friends to play multiplayer on games that only one of them has got, too, right?

Microsoft: Old Internet Explorer is terrible and 'we want to help'

g e
FAIL

"...older versions of IE continue to be a real challenge for developers "

They could have just provided the raw un-spin version of that sentence:

"We're sorry so for ever making that hideous deformed shit, can we pay you for all your time we wasted while we cocked about like numpties with well-known standards?"

Facebook finds new way to wring hundreds from users

g e
Childcatcher

Re: Less social than worms

I've come to believe that the current generation (my kids, for example) are probably growing up with social media defining their scope of interaction with other humans which has the unfortunate effect of then bringing itself across to the IRL side of things, causing them, as a matter of course, to form what I call 'disposable relationships', instead of what we'd call proper ones, lacking meaningful discourse, engagement and ultimately loyalty.

Then again, they are also teenagers, i suppose...

We have also a family member who sends all their seasonal cardage via Moonpig. Cheers for that. I'd much rather an email/SMS instead if you're going to do that.

Please be arsed to pick up a biro and write in the damned thing and post it.

'Gaia' Lovelock: Wind turbines 'may become like Easter Island statues'

g e
Facepalm

Re: Spin This

And leccy will be ten quid per kWh because of them.

g e
Joke

Re: I am very dissapointed.....

Umm.. trying hard here... 'Trumped Up' statistics?

BBC: What YOU spent on our lawyers in Secret Climate 28 debacle

g e
Holmes

Re: Point of fact

Howver, amending your output to broadly align with government policy/agenda/rhetoric is exactly what a government agency does.

g e
Holmes

Downvoted, eh?

All those TLDR ACC types who don't see the irony in well-remnerated folk flying to a hot country to be chauffered to their luxury hotel in an air-con'd V8 SUV/Limo to crack open the bottle of complimentary chilled montrachet awaiting them in their suite.

To discuss Global Warming Climate Change (presumably the Anthro-variety as the natural kind is bleeding obvious to all but the most special-needs)

Not that you shouldn't crap on your own doorstep, you'd think that was obvious, too. Pollution reduction is a worthy thing in its own right and patently of benefit to all, politicising it with ACC guff is just disingenuous, verging on fraudulent.

Mind you, anyone know how much 'consultants' get paid to advise on ACC in Whitehall? Might be worth a career change.

Downvote away, always good to get a measure of how many entrenched beliefs you've challenged of a day.

You thought watching cat videos was harmless fun? Think AGAIN

g e
Holmes

trap-neuter-return

Perhaps this could be applied to NRA members too?

WTO ruling emboldens pirates of the Caribbean

g e
Holmes

Re: Let's hope they price the "goods" appropriately.

A copy of one Britney Spears tune 'shared' is roughly equal to that.

Let's hope they use Antigua's metrics instead of the MAFIAA's when calculating, which if they're clever will be very small :o)

g e
Pirate

Re: The real pirates ...

Technically they might be privateers ;o)

Do you think they fly a Team America flag?

g e

Re: Why nuke

Cut the cable, you mean.

Shame I'm not on a percentage for saving money...