* Posts by Paul M.

141 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2007

The Long Fail: Web 2.0's faith meets the facts

Paul M.
Thumb Up

Adam Pritchard doesn't get it

Oh, look: someone is upset that their Priest / Guru looks stupid.

"Already you demonstrate your resistance to Chris Anderson's thoughts and ideas which immediately makes me interpret you as a very biased writer. "

No, Adam. Chris Anderson doesn't look stupid because of biased writing. Chris Anderson looks stupid because his "thoughts and ideas" are useless for digital businesses.

Can you tell the difference between the two?

"The Long Tail has incredible value in our understanding of the new digital age"

You sound like another brain-washed cult victim.

Paul M.
Happy

Gerd Leonard quote

Never heard of him before, but that's a GREAT quote. It's like a bus full of clowns all stepped off to be sick at once.

Bet you he's Freetard hero. Who pays these people?

What is a Linux distro worth?

Paul M.
Thumb Down

Eat my gratitude!

"... such estimates are a simple way of saying a simple thing: Thank you"

... for simple people.

Exploitation is much easier when it's a) completely voluntary b) carried out in the name of a religion and c) administered with a smile.

Dawkins' atheist ad campaign hits fundraising target

Paul M.
Stop

Is Dawkins a Freetard?

The guy is a millionaire and he can only stump £5,500 to support his favourite obsession?

What a tightwad. He's either Scottish or a Freetard.

Apple royalty skirmish ends in stalemate

Paul M.

@ Sean - get your facts right

"Why artists continue to grant online publishing rights to their labels I have no idea"

They don't.

Artists sign publishing deals with - hey, you may have heard of them - publishers. Often before they have signed a label deal.

If an artist signs a deal with a big publisher that is also owner by a label, it's because they think they're going to get the best return possible. What's wrong with that?

Paul M.

@Danny

"The story is about the Record Labels wanting to soak up even more $s for doing the same fuck all that they do in the case of digital music."

Not this story.

The Copyright Tribunal case was being argued by the publishers, for the separate copyright of public performance. Do you know the difference, or do you just get your "facts" from Boing Boing?

Apple saw its chance to lower costs by f*cking over songwriters. And you sided with the people who want to f*ck over songwriters.

You're a real hero. Give yourself a medal.

Roll up for the freetard smackdown

Paul M.
Thumb Up

New Media freetard consultant?

I wonder how much this New Media tw*t gets paid for preaching The Freetard Gospel? Probably a lot more than the artists he's writing about.

@scathe:

"If only we had DRM free options at a reasonable cost"

Do you live in a cave? We've had DRM-free music for a year now. You're just finding excuses not to pay.

It's Time that Google forgot

Paul M.
Thumb Up

Why not date search?

SJ thanks for the link. I knew AV could do date searches but had forgotten it was still around.

For fanboys and fangirls try this: http://tinyurl.com/47epcr

It returns every web page with "Russia" and "Sarah Palin" before August 28. No, it's not perfect (it's Altavista FFS) - but much better than a regular search which is swamped with eight billion articles on "I can see Russia from my window."

Even a poor date-delimited search is better than nothing. Why won't Google do this?

Turkish court bans Dawkins' website

Paul M.

Dawkins explained

@ Stefan:

"If Dawkins is so smart, why does he aggravate the very people he's trying to convert?"

Because he hates people. He hates people who disagree with his particular view of the world.

There would be no "Intelligent Design movement" without Dawkins: he created it as the sustenance he needs to keep going as a small minded, anti-human bigot.

As for Dawkins the biologist: er... he's never actually been any kind of scientist. Dawkins has never done any research. (The boring stuff in labs with mice and petri dishes).

He has done forty years of serious media time mouthing off about how people are less enlightened than Richard Dawkins. But, er... that's about it.

Professorships are cheap these days. Anyone can buy one.

Google to DoJ: The clock is ticking

Paul M.
Black Helicopters

Google *is* the Government

Solomon, haven't you heard of the "inherent democracy of the web" ?

http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html

What could possibly be more representative than the Hive Mind?

Reg readers rage at comment icon outrage

Paul M.
Dead Vulture

The return of the sh*te icons

Do you have to blind yourself with caustic soda to design stuff for The Reg? The new icons are much smarter. Fortunately most of them have been retained.

Second that call for An Evil Google. It's not 1982 anymore.

Obama: McCain can't email, remembers Rubik's Cubes

Paul M.
Thumb Up

A President must find his own Chuck Norris jokes, dammit

@Neil Cooper

"Its so scary that McCain can be so complacent to remain ignorant of even fundamental global advances like personal computing "

Yeah, that's real scary! That's the same arrogant presumption that sinks Obama's smug little video.

AC "He's got people" said it. Maybe he's not ignorant of personal computing at all, he just evaluates his time wisely. Maybe McCain has decided that his time is better spent by getting an intern to print out and read all those Chuck Norris jokes to him?

That allows him to multitask. And it sounds like you need to get a life.

(Not a McCain fan - just plain common sense)

VMware co-founder quits for academia

Paul M.
Heart

Ashley on Ashlee action

Huh - an "Ashley" comes to the aid of "Ashlee".

Maybe it was dark when you met, "Ashley", but "he" is definitely a ladyboy.

Why the US faces broadband price hikes

Paul M.
Unhappy

@ Andy Worth

"RE: Because of the Freetards who leech off people like me (who pay for music)" -Sorry, but if you don't want them to leech off you, stop sharing your music collection online. "

Sorry you don't get it. If ten units of a product are manufactured, and nine are not paid for, then the person who buys the tenth is subsidizing the other nine. If you run a shop, and half the stock walks out of the door without being paid for, the shopkeeper must charge the honest, paying customers more than they would otherwise pay.

So when freetards leech, the cost of music goes up for everyone.

I'm sure you're a good lad who never downloads anything illegal, but your economics isn't so hot.

Paul M.
Stop

Freetards strike again

Because of the Freetards who leech off people like me (who pay for music) the price of music goes up for everybody.

Because of the Freetards who hog bandwidth, the price of broadband goes up for everybody.

Surprise, surprise - it's the same people.

Thanks Colin Millar - I'll start using Neutratard. But what's the superspecies called?

Joost ditches P2P client for the web

Paul M.
Flame

@ Freetard Rick

Eh?

You call people who spend millions making TV shows FU**TARDS because they don't give them away on the internet to companies with zero revenue like Joost?

Gee, why wouldn't they want to do that? For the same reason you don't stick an eight foot sword through your lungs, maybe?

Seems like they get it just fine. Only the saddo FR*ETARDs don't.

Driving some value into Google's Street View

Paul M.
Thumb Down

Freetard Maps kill people

@etienne:

"shipwrecks ... Toucan crossings"

Not much use to me if I'm lying under six of quicksand that some Freetard forgot to draw on the map. Or is that my fault for relying on (cough) collective intelligence for finding my way home in the dark?

Paul M.
Thumb Down

From the people who brought you Wikipedia...

It's fecking useless. Why do Freetards always forget that it costs real money to produce good quality stuff? And why do they insist their own garbage is just as good?

The maps outside city centres don't have any detail except A and B roads. But (@Flatspot) it's enough to make us worse off, since the Ordnance Survey balance sheet benefits from tourists buying urban maps and asking "Wo ist Ronnie Scotts?"

The rest of us who need a reliable (not like Wikipedia) map to follow the footpath from Jimbo-on-Sea to Little Tarding will still have to pay for the real OS maps, but these will cost more now.

Another Freetard con-trick.

The Guardian's excellent Web 2.0 blog-up

Paul M.

@Alan Paul

"tedious, smug, self-satisfied circle jerk"

That's two (or more) Guardian readers in a lift. Or at a dinner party.

You never been to Hampstead or Islington, then?

Nokia E71 smartphone

Paul M.
Stop

Nokia too late

Everyone who wants mobile email has a Blackberry, or will get one. They're damn ugly but they do the job. Nokia's business phones still bog down with more than a few messages in the Inbox. Adding Blackberry or Good or Nokia's own abomination (forget the name) to do push email costs extra.

@Tom:

"The camera is decent, especially compared to HTC or BB."

You need a new script: people don't buy Blackberrys for their cameras.

Blears pitches prize draws and online polls at young votes

Paul M.

@teacake

Luther seems pretty coherent to me:

"In a population of 56 million, 200,000 signatures can be still be considered a statistically biased sample. Sorry, f**k off."

@teacake: "Just trying to help, daahlink"

So which part of the day disturbs you the most, teacake?

Luther: "Focus groups are excellent for identifying unhappiness factors - if you can make sure you eliminate people with the capability to hi-jack discussions and influence others (that's the professional politician's job)."

The part of the day where you have to make your mind up?

Shrinking Sun under the gun

Paul M.

But it's the Age of the Freetard!

Which means My LIttle Pony now has to give the company away for nothing, right?

OK - so slash the R&D, give away Java and Solaris, make loads of mediocre midrange boxes... is there anything he hasn't done yet?

And you'll read it on his blog first.

Are the ice caps melting?

Paul M.
Alert

@Mark

"And the execs of the oil companies need profits to get paid. They'll spend YOUR money on getting some quack to fight for their cause."

As you have already admitted that you work at the Hadley Center (and can therefore post dozens of comments a day), why not tell us more about quacks?

Wife-slaying Linux guru may have 'developmental disability'

Paul M.
Happy

@Bandor

"In my observation, aspies are inclined to be meek and avoid violence. I would actually think that a world full of aspies would actually be a safe, fun place to be."

Depends on your idea of fun. Most people do not need a 1,800 page manual to make out with that cute girl. If you know what I mean.

SELL: commodities

BUY: rocking chairs, swings, open source software companies

Paul M.
Thumb Down

What's a development disability between friends?

@Bob:

"If you have ever dealt with a person that has aspergers, you know it can be a challenge to keep them focused and not go off on a tangent."

Aspies are very focussed: you're confusing autism with ADD.

But hey, she had it coming, right?

Paul M.
Joke

Asperger's?

@AC:

You mean there are Freetards out there who DON'T have Asperger's?

I don't believe you. Show us the evidence: starting with living, breathing girlfriends.

Court slaps UK BitTorrenters with landmark damages award

Paul M.

Dumb maths

@gothiclaw:

"Are we honestly expected to believe that the average bittorrent user could have uploaded a total of 37.5 gigabytes of this game, particularly with upload speeds in the UK being less than the download speeds?"

No, not an "average bittorrent user" but these particular Freetards.

This torrent is about 600MB. Leave your torrent tracker running for a couple of months and a 62:1 ration is not difficult to achieve.

Now I know where the "tard" in Freetard comes from.

Commercial iPlayer faces anti-trust shakedown

Paul M.

Well said...

"Oh please, Michael, dry your eyes. ITV, the BBC and Channel 4 are contributing virtually nothing to the UK's creative economy"

That Martian!

Paul M.

Whiny Sheeple

"I'm sick and tired of hearing the private sector bitch and whine at every single turn about things being anti-competitive."

How about one mobile operator (BT) to rule over us?

Seems like you can't get enough of these good old fashioned, unregulated private sector cartels like Kangaroo. Are you by any chance American?

Follow your own logic for a couple of seconds. If investors stop getting a return on investment, then the investment will eventually stop. That means the only investment in the future will come via additional £££ on your license fee / tax bill. And with all the strings that Nu Labour or Nu Tory can attach.

We've harvested your green computing views

Paul M.
Dead Vulture

Two fingers to Tebbutt

Has anyone read this report? Is this really The Register I'm reading? Spare me the sanctimonious, guilt-ridden, New Age preaching:

"... What’s needed is a return to a more sustainable way of life"

Maybe we can decided for ourselves "what's needed".

"... Some would say that we’re beyond the point of no return."

Some like ... who? Greenpeace?

"...It’s already too late, we’re hooked on a consumer lifestyle and globalisation has ensured its future spread to the massive populations of developing countries...."

How awful: people living longer, having healthier children and more say over their lives. David Tebbutt just wants people to stay poor, if they're not poor already.

"... If these people are childless or don’t care about their grandchildren, then who’s to say they’re wrong? They will continue to plunder and to hell with the consequences."

I see: anyone who disagrees with Tebbutt must be selfish. Perhaps we disagree because the benefits outweight the costs, and we're making a rational decision? Tebbutt cannot comprehend that.

"... But they’re probably a tiny minority. The rest of us can see the sense of doing what we can to slow, possibly halt, maybe even reverse our negative impact on our world."

No, it's just a tiny minority of old hippies like David Tebbutt who want to impose their views on the rest of us.

The report shows very clearly that the respondents aren't interested Tebbutt's Green Propaganda.

Just give us the research without the Greenie preaching, El Reg.

AP may have to take on entire blogosphere

Paul M.

Let's fight for our right to Cut and Paste!

A truly stupid legal stunt - but why can't bloggers do better themselves? Even parasites keep their hosts alive.

@Steve

"AP may have to take on entire blogosphere"

But since the entire blogosphere contributes exactly $0.00 to AP's bottom line, do you think AP cares? Their customers are the clueless dead tree newspapers, aka MSM. So fighting for the right to be as clueless as the MSM does not seem very uh, aspirational.

Google preps net neut dowser

Paul M.

Jim, AB: Making excuses for lousy code

"Seriously though, you are picking on BitTorrent unfairly, as AC and Jim point out. You can't modify human nature by tweaking QoS settings or packet-shaping, and banning bazookas just means people will find other ways to blow stuff up, y'dig?"

Hard-wired evolutionary adapations is irrelevant, and lets the culprits off the hook. Put your fictional idea of human nature is. You can, quite easily, modify human *behaviour* by providing economic incentives and legal or financial disincentives.

Y'dig so far?

Provide the incentives and engineers will devise less disruptive protocols, and people will use them, because they work better.

see >> Why BitTorrent causes so much latency and how to fix it <<

http://www.formortals.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/57/Default.aspx

Bittorrent destroys shared network connections today, and needs shaping. Tomorrow's P2P will be better if you demand it.

Glastonbury Festival forecast: very windy, hopes Orange

Paul M.
Thumb Down

Press release impresses hack

But if the wind doesn't blow, there's no power.

Something tells me James Sherwood doesn't read The Register. Or the parts of it that contradict his green-tinted fantasies about power generation.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/04/microgeneration_report/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/07/microwind_chocolate_teapot/

Could you do the sums for us next time?

France gets closer to 'three strikes' downloader web ban

Paul M.
Stop

ISP costs

@ian:

"It's just going to put them into a spiral of costs that's going too make them unprofitable or lose them thousands of customers who simply can't afford the increased prices."

Unfortunately the Jolly Pirates here don't apply the same logic to themselves. When they leech music, the cost of legal purchases for everyone else goes up. Then the Freetards complain that music is too expensive, and CD prices should be lower. Choose your spiral.

Do Freetards have a big part of their brains missing?

Paul M.

@ Dam

> How are they to differentiate *legal* and *illegal* copyrighted contents ?

Gee, let me guess. On a well known open tracker right now I see:

The.Chronicles.of.Narnia.Prince.Caspian.2008.Eng.TS.DivX-LTT

805.83 MiB

3469 seeders

2899 leechers

Harry.Potter.Years.1-5.Box.Set[2007]DvDrip-aXXo

4.11 GiB

216 seeders

993 leechers

Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends [mp3-vbr-20

112.61 MiB

2813 seeders

83 leechers

That was difficult.

Are you this dumb everyday, or just on Fridays?

Firefox record breaker sets the date

Paul M.

Not much to cheer about in Freetard land

@Red

Google and IBM own and control free software. Linux isn't going to take over the world anymore. And Micro$oft is going to be around forever.

So the fanboys have sod all else to celebrate.

The question is - with millions in the bank, why isn't the Mozilla Foundation paying for these parties?

Freetards seem to earn the "tard" part of the description by working for rich guys for nothing. Which is pretty damn retarded behaviour.

Apple under the gun to master the iPhone's 'second album'

Paul M.
Dead Vulture

What next - Goatberg?

Please keep El Reg free of fanboy drivel like this.

"It’s going to take much more than 3G data speeds to keep the hearts and minds of the people who drove in to hear the keynote"

Er, maybe Apple isn't interested in the people who drive to Steve Jobs keynotes - but the larger potential market?

The guy is a long-time creep -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/09/celebrity_apple_cronies_silent/

No wonder he thinks Apple has just invented the browser!

The music biz's digital flops - a short history

Paul M.
Jobs Horns

Jobs DRM

"Steve Jobs letter publicly committing to DRM free content"

Steve can talk the talk, but he can't walk the walk.

If Amazon can sell DRM-free music from the major labels, why can't Apple Couldn't be anything to do with Apple's proprietary iPod lock-in, could it?

Paul M.
Stop

Maoism, alphaxion-style

@alphaxion:

"Time to stop promoting musicians as some form of higher human and bring them back down to earth ... why should they be special and retain rights to their creations for the rest of their lives?"

What a surprise, another tight-fisted nerd.

Your argument is fine, but we'll get a lot less really great stuff made when the people who could be making it must work in a call centre, or paint lines in the road. Copyright just provides an economic incentive so that if the art is popular enough, they don't have to.

"look for other ways instead of bitching"

I agree - and the same equally applies to you, my freetard friend. Instead of whining about why artists should be paid (the cheek of it, eh?) you could look for new ways of paying them.

Why have Radiohead broken copyright activists' hearts?

Paul M.

@Kirk

That's the third time you've repeated yourself. It doesn't make your argument any better.

"parrelles"

I can haz free music?

Paul M.

I can haz freemusic?

@Kirk - That's the third time you've repeated yourself. It doesn't make your argument any better, your spelling and logic get worse each time.

"that perticular market"

"parrelles"

"anthropoligical valuation"

"was not a commidity"

"no intrensic value"

Please use a spell-checker.

"the real point is <and give me a second to remember it>"

Take your time, kiddo. Take your time.

FCC chief claims power over network management

Paul M.
Alert

@ Phil

"the CEOs of SBC/ATT and Verizon made all sorts of public bluster about prioritizing internet traffic some time back and the FCC did little in response."

Blustering is illegal?

I learn something new every day.

Music biz proposes 'iPod tax' in return for format-shift freedom

Paul M.
Alert

BBC tax is enough

Dumb idea. But still fairer than the tax we all have to pay on TV sets in the UK. Which you have to pay whether you watch any BBC garbage or not.

At least with an iPod, you're going to be using it for music, and most of that is "format shifted".

So will the Freetards be complaining about the BBC, too?

Pirate Bay to sue music industry

Paul M.

@ Spearbox

"How many of you legitimate music buyers here have too turned into avid fans of the Pirate Bay?"

Quite a few. And even though the cat is in the microwave and the lights are fused, they don't want Mummy and Daddy coming back to spoil their party.

Billy Bragg: Why should songwriters starve so others get rich?

Paul M.

Freetards Feel OK

"Read the Lessig's book on copyright law and you'll get a whole new perspective on this."

Lessig is the Freetard Hero, and makes everyone feel OK about downloading.

Somehow I suspect Mr.Lessig never had to worry about having a job he hates, as Billy says.

@Mark Talbot

"Just release his material under one of the CC Non commercial licences and a full blown one to anybody else. Make you money from other people making money and allow viral sharing to create you a market."

Two incompatible licenses? No can do. A CC license is irrevocable, so you must make one choice for all time.

Seems like Freetards have totally lost the ability to think.

Mr. and Mrs. Boring sue Google over Street View pics

Paul M.
Stop

So they deserved it?

What's with the smirk, Cade? Yes, they're called Boring. I'm falling off my chair laughing.

But the subtext of the article is that they deserved it. Why? Because they live in Pittsburgh? Because they're rich? Because they've got a funny name?

Once we make privacy conditional on an eligability contest (rules to be decided by Mr Metz), we have no privacy at all.

Wireless wonks celebrate 35th anniversary of first cell call

Paul M.
Coat

No USA, no mobiles

Let us salute America's contribution to mobile telephony. Without the global leadership and pace-setting standards openly and generously given to the world, (such as IDEN and AMPS) we'd all be using landlines all the time.

Today, I eagerly await your WiMAX.

Thank you, America.

Comcast acquires BitTorrent for $53bn

Paul M.
Dead Vulture

Joke backfires

But isn't this what the tinfoil hat brigade at Public Knowledge write every day?

Can someone tell Cade, but April 1 stories should be hard to spot. Not screaming "Look at me I'm trying so hard to be funny".

New(ish) Labour plans Whitehall 2.0

Paul M.
Stop

The Gravy Train picks up pace

From the report:

"To share social media best practice in the public, private and third sectors, the government supported a ‘BarCamp’ BarcampUKGovweb initiated by the Ministry of Justice. The BarCamp discussed how to equip web experts across government to work with social media. Over 100 people attended the event, hosted at Google UK."

What a nice racket Web 2.0 is turning out to be for Tom Steinberg and his webtard friends.

Fixing the UK's DAB disaster

Paul M.
Thumb Up

DAB == 8-track

What a lot of DAB fanboys. Maybe they only ever listen to low bitrate talk radio?

DAB is now obsolete, and conning the public into buying 8-track cartridges when the rest of the world has moved on really is a scandal.

Good article, long overdue.