* Posts by Shakje

653 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Nov 2007

Page:

Only Ubuntu left standing, as Flash vuln fells Vista in Pwn2Own hacking contest

Shakje

@AC

Actually he was making another point which I neglected, you have the option of being ripped off by a PC manufacturer, but if you want to buy a Mac you have to accept that you WILL be ripped off. I'm not going to compare the other features, but even Mac fanboys have to accept that when they buy a system they are paying far over the odds for the hardware, I just wonder if they know exactly how much....

Shakje
Gates Halo

@Christian Harju

No, you're wrong on many fronts.

I quite recently bought a new PC, which I'm going to compare with Mac offerings.

My spec:

Quad core 2.4GHz (ie 9.6 total)

2GB stock memory

500GB stock HD

GeForce 8600GT

8x DVD RW

-----------------

£400

I run Vista on this, and Ubuntu on my other PC which we use for work stuff, so I'll include this in the price, although I'd argue that I could run it with a *nix distro to make it more closely comparable in capability to OS X.

£200

Peripherals are gathered over the years, so I'm not going to include them. Anyone who's interested, my mouse is worth about £40, keyboard about £30 and monitor probably about £80, if that (CTX CRT oO), actually, what the hell. I'll throw in my headset as well.

£200

--------

£800 total

Now let's compare. iMac first.

2.8GHz Intel

Core 2 Extreme

2GB memory

500GB hard drive1

8x double-layer SuperDrive

ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory

Ready to ship: 3 days

Free Shipping

£1,429.00

(£1,216.16 ex VAT)

Worse processor, worse graphics card, I would expect worse keyboard and mouse, no headset, better monitor but I really couldn't care less about that. Let's assume that the motherboard is as good, and, taking a real leap of the imagination, that the graphics card, keyboard, mouse, headset and CPU are balanced out by the monitor, that's a disparity of £630.

Now I don't want to be harsh on Apple so I'll look at the Mac Pro as well. I tried to configure it as closely as possible to mine, ie no software extras, almost the same CPU, same GFX (although not quite, the difference in GFX card, ie the standard single Radeon, should balance the difference in CPU, ie the 2.8GHz quad, almost perfectly), same HD.

Now let's take the monitor and headset off of my specs price, bringing it to £670. 16X over 8X DVD drive is pretty negligible price-wise. Cost of this system?

£1,489.00

That's a difference of over £800. Just to put that in perspective, the difference is 122% more than I paid for my system, including Vista. Just for jokes, let's say I used Ubuntu on it instead. I'd be paying £1,019 more for an equivalent Apple system. That's 216% more. Just to point out, I was expecting there to be a difference, but seeing this really does shock me.

Al Gore's green job bonanza - can we afford it?

Shakje

Seriously

do you have to write notes to yourself reminding you how to get out of bed in the morning bws? You clearly know nothing about academia or about project funding.

Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes

Shakje

Re: And what about the Data protection Acts?

I believe this is what they're trying to side-step. The BPI spoof torrent tracker connections, and when someone connects to them they record the IP and send it off to the relevant ISP. That ISP then looks at it and sends a mail off to their customer who uses that IP, or used it at the logged time. No data is exchanged between the two other than that. After 3 letters the user is disconnected.

UK.gov password protects Aryan Governance Summit site

Shakje

Re: what password?

Yes, no password, I think they might have been changing the logo....

Pretty boring, HOWEVER, the video is awesome. Watching big Gordo trying to remember to smile, then forgetting as the video goes on, and if you pause the video between sound bites you can see him struggling to read the teleprompter, and his head going up and down reminds me a bit of the Churchill dog.

Disclaimer: This only refers to this video, I don't actually think of my PM as a nodding dog, and I fully believe he can read perfectly well, he just doesn't do very well controlling facial expressions or using body language.

Trend, Sophos and McAfee flunk Vista SP1 anti-virus tests

Shakje

Re: But wasn't Vista supposed to be more secure?

It is, but if a user really wants to install something malicious how can the OS prevent them? If you double click on a file called "hot-pics-of-paris-I_AM_A_TROJAN_AND_WILL_RAPE_YOUR_SYSTEM.exe" that they've received from "Robert" from Hotmail and then click through the UAC, why should the OS not do what the program tells it to? The big difference between XP and Vista as I see it is, run the installer on a net connected XP box and you'll end up compromised within minutes. Run the Vista installer while connected to the net and you can go about your business quite happily without worry unless you do something stupid. As to the performance difference. If you get a PC that has a halfway decent spec (and that doesn't mean "shop at Dell for their latest special offer") Vista OUTPERFORMS XP. @Ash, Flash exploit, learn more about computers before posting random tripe. If I write a program that opens up a port and lets people connect to that port and execute code on the system via a few simple telnet commands, and I actually use a few ugly hacks because the OS doesn't want me to do it, but my program has a legitimate function, is it the fault of the OS when a user installs my software and then gets attacked by random twats? If the exploit is in 3rd party software then it isn't an MS mistake. You can try to prevent it as much as possible, but if someone is determined that they know best (as is typical with legacy solutions) they'll find a way to do it, even if it means making it easier to compromise the system. Scenario is the same, complexity is increased.

Personally, right now, I don't think it's necessary for someone who is experienced to use an AV product, but it's highly advisable. Everyone makes mistakes and if you can increase your chances of keeping your system clean, you might as well do it, especially when the free solutions are pretty good. I use AVG at home, but I want to try out Nod32. I do a scan every few days and I scan anything I download from a less than reliable source. It's like the gun analogy, I'd rather have one and not need it than need it and not have one (I'm not advocating guns, that's another debate).

Pregnant man to hit Oprah with ultrasound

Shakje

There you have it...

"does a woman without the ability to bare children = a man"

Women = paedos. All of them.

Seriously though, we need to lay off. I don't like them taking it onto Oprah or getting as much publicity as they have, but only because it calls into question their ability to be good parents imho. All the best to them, if they ARE good parents, I'm sure everything will be fine.

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

Shakje

@steogede

So how many times have accidents been proven to have resulted from speed camera flashes? Stop whining and do the speed limit.

Sprint and Samsung unveil Jesus Phone lookalike

Shakje
Gates Halo

Pictures

You really need some Ballmer icons, maybe an animated dancing Ballmer?

Dutch MP releases anti-Islam movie

Shakje

Re: various..

Phix8

Richard Dawkins is a twat, most other atheists I know agree with me.

AC who wrote:

"Now, I suspect that only a very small number of muslims are extreme, but until the (supposedly existing) reasonable and rational muslims do something to get their house in order and deal with the problem, then they're all going to get tarred by the same brush."

Idiot. That means we should be tarred as racists - BNP + KKK, warmongers - Tony Blair and George Bush, torturers - see previous, gangsters - various gangs, hard drug dealers, rapists. Can you honestly say you have done anything to get rid of any of the mentioned above idiots in our society? If not we have to be tarred with the same brush...

MPAA copyright punch up knocks out TorrentSpy

Shakje

Re: Explain

Have you ever lent a CD to a friend or a video to a friend? That's distribution, have you ever taped a program on TV then given that tape to a friend? Or asked a friend to do the same? You ever taped an album (I know cassettes are a long time back) or taped a radio station? Or made a mixtape of your favourite songs? Ever given someone a tape that you recorded with someone else's songs on it? That's copying and distribution without asking permission. If you've taped music and lent it to someone, EVER, you're doing exactly the same thing that music sharers are doing. Did it destroy the music industry? If you've taped a tv show, or, even worse, a film and lent it to someone you've done what a filesharer does. Even better, if you do it on someone else's video recorder or tape recorder or CD burner it's all their liability. Now do you have some idea of why people have a problem accepting it's illegal and worth all the trouble it has been afforded?

Royalties are the admission price, Microsoft tells freetards

Shakje

Freetard debate

I was under the impression that a freetard was someone who was unwilling to pay for anything software wise, and would be willing to use something inferior purely instead of paying something for a better quality product. El Reg is bandying it about a bit too loosely though, and a quite offensively considering that retard has far more connotations in the UK (Register being a UK publication and all that) than the US, almost all of them negative in the extreme to mentally disabled people. I'm not offended for other people in general, and I tend to stand of the view that placing emphasis on negative words is what makes them powerful and hurtful, but some words are exceptions to that, and I think the UK use of retard is one of those.

Byron review calls for computer game ratings

Shakje

Not sure about this

I've always said that I don't believe that video games will have long term effects on children, and have had many quite heavy arguments with my mother over the matter (and I mean since I turned 18, not before, although obviously that happened as well, as my parents were quite strict about 18 rated things, although games didn't fit into that because I was part of the Wolf3D/Doom/Quake generation), although I don't think that exposing kids to things at a young age are a good idea in general. I don't think they've got the same coping mechanisms, and on young children (I'm thinking < 12) it's quite obviously going to have some sort of effect on their developing brain.

Personally I think that we really need a legally enforced, single rating system that is well publicised. Parents don't know enough about games, what is in them, or why ratings are there. We need some sort of education where parents are actually shown what they are buying for the children, and let them know that it is just as illegal to give them that game as to buy them alcohol. I don't know that the problem is parents buying games in the first place, I think it's just a matter of parents don't seem interested in what their kids are doing. If they sat down and watched them playing for a while they might realise that there's something wrong giving them an 18 rated game.

Bladerunner and biometrics: Heathrow T5 unveiled

Shakje

Re: AC going to NY

If your wife believes that maybe you should stop going out of the house in case a meteor hits you on the head?

Chances of being in a terrorist attack are so stupidly small, making life decisions based on it is being slightly naive to say the least, using it as a way of justifying a third party (not even the bloody government.) taking your fingerprints is farcical. Never mind the fact that terrorist activity is now lower in our part of the world than 20 years ago (when a lot of white Irish chaps were parking vans in London).

I don't mean to insult you or your wife, or to sound patronising, but she is being naive, and it is exactly this naivety that led us into an illegal war, that is losing us our freedoms by the day, has resulted in the deaths of our own soldiers along with countless innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, that has resulted in ridiculous CCTV coverage, that has resulted in armed police in our capital, that has resulted in the death of at least one innocent on UK soil, that has resulted in illegal wiretaps becoming legal, that has resulted in a mentality of guilty until YOU can prove yourself innocent, that has resulted in a resurgence of anti-brown skin racism, and that has resulted in us being complicit in the torture of innocent men by our allies. If you care about terrorist attacks look at Palestine or Israel or Afghanistan or Iraq, places where there is competent terrorism and help do something about it.

There is no great threat of you being involved in a terrorist attack. There never was a risk of a dirty bomb. Iran is not stupid enough to nuke us. The sky is not falling on our heads. The paranoid are not the ones complaining about loss of rights, but those who justify that loss of rights with a near non-existant issue.

'Freetard ? more like advert programmed PAYTARDS!'

Shakje

Re: @Leo Maxwell (by AC)

"the setup costs of carpentry will be incurred by anyone attempting to copy the product (even though the design phase will now be a matter of measuring rather than planning), whereas someone copying a CD does not involve any further studio work."

The cost of producing it is still there but much reduced, ie, power supply for your PC, cost of a disc if you're burning it and selling it, cost of net if you're not.

Someone could take a fine redwood chair design, make it out of balsa and paint it red. It's the same relative cost difference if not a far greater difference, so the chair analogy works.

The reason that your own argument about the painting falls over is because the only reason for a person to pay royalties for a copy of a picture is if they are using it for commercial gain. While some galleries stop people from taking pictures, you don't see anyone throwing a hissy fit over someone photographing paintings do you?

Say if I walk into someone's house and take a photo of a painting above the piano, is the painter going to sue me for stealing copyright? No, unless the painter is the RIAA.

Shakje

The chair analogy is massively flawed.

It makes perfect sense, if you put your time and resources into making a chair you deserve recompense and payment for it. Downloading music is like this, if someone buys one of your chairs, and has figured out a way to make a copy of the chair, exactly the same, but without costing them anything, instead of just copying the chair and selling it, they give it away free to all their friends. Their friends wouldn't have bought the chair even if they'd seen it, but since their mate is giving it away free they might as well take it and put it in their living room. Why would you be pissed off that someone is giving away free copies of your chair to their mates? You're not losing money from it, in fact, more people are finding out that they actually like your furniture. Now, if someone is selling copies of your chair that they can make for cheaper you have every right to be annoyed, they're passing off your stuff as their own, and doing it with inferior goods. And because they're selling it they're targetting people who would only buy it if they liked it, so they're grabbing potential customers from you. This is obviously wrong, and is akin to stealing someone's ideas.

Now, let's extend it a bit with some hypothetical situation where you distribute the chair through Ikea, where you receive next to nothing per chair sold. You make the real money through people paying to sit on the chair at live events. Now, do you really care about people giving free copies of the chair to their friends? Especially if it gets people interested enough to pay to try the better live experience?

Time for genuine 'write-once, run-anywhere' Java

Shakje

@Chris

Purely language-wise, if we just take the CLR functions, .NET is vastly superior to Java and better organised, if we compare Java and C# I'd prefer C# any day. On portability Java is going to be more powerful for a while yet, and I'm sure it'll still be around in some capacity in 10 years in some capacity, a bit like C++, which Java was meant to have killed off 10 years ago.

Top security firm: Phorm is adware

Shakje

I'm sure there was some case recently

that showed that email disclaimers actually have no power in court.

Why I downgraded from Vista to XP

Shakje
Stop

@Giles Jones

Which is Windows A? Assuming it's XP Pro...

Windows B

* Flashy new features nobody wants

zzz searching is ridiculously easy now, hardly use start menu at all, memory management works a treat, is much more stable than XP in my experience, and much more secure.

* Ludicrously expensive

Yup, still cheaper to buy a high-spec PC independently and Vista than a similar spec Mac.

* Free media shackles, you can't use HD unless you buy a new HDCP compliant monitor.

Yup, this will end up down the drain though, it's the main stumbling point for most techies I think, plus I can watch HD quite happily off my HDD.

* New performance features throttle your network speed if you play mp3s

? I play online while listening to music all the time, haven't noticed this and haven't heard of it before. Interested if it's true.

* 3D Interface to make managing the god awful Windows GUI a little easier, at the expense of buying a powerful 3D card and causing even more climate change.

As someone who games I have a powerful 3D card anyway. With the cost of 3D cards, it's dirt cheap to get a card that will handle Vista, you should really have a decent card anyway. That's of course if you can't be arsed stripping the eye candy out anyway which makes sense.

* New activation process, activate or we cripple your machine dramatically, even if you have a valid key that has been already used by a pirate. Unless of course you use Windows B SP1, which isn't released yet as that doesn't work either.

XP had activation which disabled Windows after 30 days, gives an incentive to activate quicker which is no bad thing. You would have the exact same problem if a pirate stole your XP key.

* Support for almost none of your hardware that hasn't been purchased in the last week.

Maybe true when Vista first came out, almost utter bollocks now for mainstream hardware.

* Annoying popups that appear all the time to reassure you that Microsoft understands the need for security.

No, because people constantly complained about insecure Windows that let users do a stupid amount of things without even warning them it might be dangerous. Whether or not you think this is actually a valid criticism it can be turned off in less than half a minute. Hardly a problem is it?

* Completely rearranged interface which is now more logical, even though you've become used to the illogical Windows ways of old. Don't worry, if you find it hard to use you can pay us to retrain all your staff, family etc.

So you're criticising it for having a better interface? Surely you'd have exactly the same problem migrating to a different OS completely? Try sticking a user in front of 3.1 if they've only used XP, then stick them in front of Vista, which will they find easier to use? Going from 3.1 to 95 was difficult, Vista's a baby step.

Shakje

Sort of agree

if the point that you're making is that the minimum specs are bollocks. But that's just part of computing, if anyone is to blame it's manufacturers trying to flog off crap hardware with the wrong OS. If you're getting a new PC, and by that I don't mean the £150 jobby from PC World that costs you £800 with THREE YEAR WARRANTY! I mean if you buy a decent spec PC, like I did, for £400. Runs Vista absolutely perfectly, games run fine (except for Nvidia releasing wank drivers). I've got no reason to uninstall Vista, I'm also waiting for the flood of security issues that were publicised in XP when it came out. Vista is actually a good OS, and yes I'm an MS fan (but because they've delivered what I need as a programmer more than anything), but I run Ubuntu on my old PC just as another environment for coding in and that's ok for that PC. I'm a gamer, I've clanned in various games, I play high spec games now, and Vista copes fine, if not better than people running XP. Like I've said, it's a cutoff where performance equalises, but if you don't have that spec you should be using XP, which just seems obvious to me, same as when if you didn't have a high enough spec you didn't run WIndows 95, people back then were smart enough not to trust the min spec, for some reason it's a huge surprise now, that it still hasn't changed. Minumum spec MEANS minimum spec, not recommended.

Also for the person mentioning how shit linux is with WPA, I bought a USB card for my PC (specifically after looking for ones compatible with linux), plugged it in and it worked. Now if only I could find my monitor's manual so I can get rid of the annoying signal out of range message on the Ubuntu loading screen.

Once you reach a certain spec XP and Vista performance equalises (if not favours Vista slightly because of the memory management and general little tweaks), but up until that point it's a bit dodgy. As for the guy mentioning he had slow file transfers on a top quality system, if he'd looked into the problem at all he'd know that file transfers being slow is a well-known problem with Vista, as is unzipping, and some people are saying SP1 has fixed it for them, and some are saying it hasn't, but it doesn't have anything to do with his spec or the extra eye-candy, which his PC would be able to handle adequately.

I'd be quite happy to have a reasoned debate between people who have tried Vista for an extended period of time and had bad experiences with it (ie more than a week) and those who have had good experiences, but idiots who jump on the bandwagon, especially when their naivety shows through in diagnosis of their 'problems' is what really pisses me off. If it takes you more than 5 minutes to search on Google, go into the Control Panel and turn off UAC you don't deserve to even complain about "security warnings" because, quite frankly, you're the sort of user who needs them.

Sorry for the huge rant, but I get extremely pissed off by people who think they know everything about PCs because they work in the same office as someone in 'IT' and then spout crap, or blame the wrong people.

Mac security site littered with malware

Shakje

Re: My own reasons for prefering Mac

You shouldn't touch Vista with a barge pole, your two grand Mac won't run it then you'll complain about Vista being too slow.

Shakje

Re: Andy

You're right of course, but on the other hand you have Mac users who are being told by the company that makes their hardware not to worry about virii, so why should they worry about common sense? They've never had to worry about downloading files from a site, especially a security site before, so why now?

Is the name GreetBritany?

'Boil a frog' ID card rollout to continue until 2012

Shakje

Even if she was making sense

Having the data offline doesn't prevent discs containing said data being left on a train or in a laptop.

Google mistakes search for teleportation

Shakje

Re: So ther (sic.)

There's no indication that they mean searching using the site's searching tools at all. Within that site just means using Google to search for results within that site. Am I the only person who that seems obvious to?

US Air Force: Looking for a few good cyber warriors

Shakje

Re: Money

It's Gordon Brown!

Schools warned of chilling 'Strawberry Meth' menace

Shakje

@Charles

Oh, you mean Nesquik.

Tool makes mincemeat of Windows passwords

Shakje

Re: Boot CD Crew

The point is, once you're in with a login without a password, what do you look at? If you go into a locked PC you've got everything open that's being worked on, etc.

@Kenny Millar

This is completely unworkable. Even if you did abstract the base addresses of important OS stuff, you would still have to store the addresses of the base address lookup table (or however you did it) somewhere. For systems programming, and low level work it would make coding a nightmare.

Nine Inch Nails cracks net distribution (maybe)

Shakje

Re: Graham Bartlett

But I'd counter by saying that the reason Lily Allen and Kate Nash sell more is because of their huge backing by the record industry, which leads to them being played every 20 minutes on the radio. If you have the same song pounded into you for hours on end you will learn to like such classics as Cliff Richard's Millenium Prayer, and Lionel Richie's Hello (and yes, he has created some pretty good stuff, this is not it.). If we reverted to a society where people listened to what they liked, instead of what they listened to BECOMING what they liked because of repeated exposure, it doesn't matter how things float, the ones that sound good do well at gigs, and slowly get a following, even if they have bad recording quality and then can afford proper recording equipment, the ones that have pap songs, no-one cares about, no matter how good the song sounds, and everybody wins.

Shakje

Also...

They've already sold out of the 2500 $300 ultimate editions...

Shakje

As I say every time someone says the "you need record companies to get known"

Arctics disprove this overwhelmingly.

Will look at this, possibly impulse buy. People don't hear tracks because of the record industry, they hear them because of word of mouth, through friends, through radio. On that note, check out my mate's band bandsideproject on myspace :)

Also, I hate being pedantic on the tubes, but confusing suite with suit makes me giggle.

Public don't want internet filters, MS tells MPs

Shakje
Unhappy

@Tom

Not lizard men in this case, definately crab people.

@Paul Smith

?

7000 Leap Year Babies attack Steve Ballmer

Shakje

Seriously...

I think Ballmer is as mad as everyone else, however, the Lotus bug is pretty well documented and to say "well he says so, so it must be true". Waste of space, the original article was interesting enough, but he's obviously thrown in that MS complaint to get publicity, and you've fallen straight into it.

Apple unearths Time Capsule

Shakje

@Ted Treen

You unfortunately believed Jobs when he said buying a Mac makes you normal :(

Sorry, couldn't resist.

AI prof: The robot terrorists are coming! Aiee!

Shakje

@Adam Foxton

Isn't the T1 already in place guarding US borders? Can't remember its name, but considering it can carry machine guns and missiles, and recognises humans and tracks them autonomously...

HMRC pays criminal for 'tax dodger' discs

Shakje

Re: Funding Criminal Activities

Last time I checked it was our money paying for the Iraq war...

It's just another highly hypocritical national stance. If someone stole details from one of our banks and sold it to a foreign power what do you think our government would say? But apparently it's ok if they're a) smaller than us, b) it gets us some money. Nice.

Nude Marilyn Monroe flambés dog, serves atop fire extinguisher

Shakje

Re: Uneducated responses

Of course, you weren't just trying to look clever by mentioning Latin or it could just be from grabbing the first entry in Google under "haggis plural". The origin is unknown but is thought to be French. Plural is haggises, clearly.

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

Shakje

@Oliver Jones

What about gaming? Plenty of other applications also require inbound ports to be open.

Shakje

Re: Eponymous Cowherd

Clearly you're an idiot who hasn't thought through what he's saying. When people get in from work and want to browse or game, do you honestly think the first thing they do is to turn on all their torrents and use up their bandwidth? Anyone who has ever downloaded files using P2P knows full well that most downloading is done either overnight, or when you're out (ie 9-5 or 7 onwards in the evenings for students I guess), but the loss of speed you're seeing is nothing to do with P2P unless your idea of peak time is not 5-9pm. This is purely down to your ISP providing a connection to you that cannot meet the requirements it suggests it can.

I've got the cheapest of the lines, seeing as I don't do much downloading at all any more (I'm not going to rehash the fact that I download legally 99% of the time these days), and imagine what 2Mb is like when it's throttled by VM. I reformatted recently and it took hours upon hours, because they cut back my net after the first few updates. Nice.

Ofcom cracks down on London pirates

Shakje

Pirate radio stations...

pay for the heroin which dealers use to hook kids. For God's sakes, think of the children.

Home Office opens sex offender files in pilot scheme

Shakje

Re: Paediatrician vs paedophile thing

Is an urban legend.

Häagen-Dazs battles honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder

Shakje

OH MY GOD

Tell me where the IT angle is BEFORE I STICK PENCILS IN MY EYES.

Eavesdrop plod: Nobody's listening to me (any more)

Shakje

So...

"and Kearney himself says the visits were considered to be social rather than lawyer-client in nature"

Must be ok then, if the person doing the bugging considers the conversation social. Does no-one else see the huge problem with the above?

Map paints gloomy picture of world's oceans

Shakje

Re: High Impact?

To quantify it partially, in the Metro this morning one of the scientists was quoted (whoever it was escapes me) saying that marine life around the North of Scotland would be wiped out with one more major oil spill.

Tiscali and BPI go to war over 'three strikes' payments

Shakje

Every small step by the music industry is a giant leap for P2P

Every time they try to close something down, the filesharers adapt and, as a result, get rid of the ton of fake files, broken files, and dodgy files put onto the network by the music industry, as well as getting better software that is more difficult to track. Eventually they'll crack anonymous protocols, but by then it might be too late, and each step they take takes a few more months off their lifetime.

Also, @bobbles31 it should be pretty elementary to take the reported percentage of internet users downloading illegally (5% by Virgin Media? Not sure about BPI) and compare it to the percentage of the population watching TV every night (take ratings, and divide by population size * 100%). I think you'll find there are far more TV watchers than illegal downloaders.

Sony sells 1m PS3s in UK

Shakje

Let's just get it out the way...

PS3 has no games.

Wii is not a next-gen console.

Xbox is Micro$haft.

There we go, now we can have a proper discussion, I like MS and I have a Wii, and I'm quite happy with it.

Students win appeal against cyberjihad convictions

Shakje

It's all very well using dictionary definitions of terrorism

but the fact is that a hard and fast definition will not cover it. With a definition of not striking civilian targets, the Iranian embassy siege is not terrorism, but bombing a capital city in the middle of a war definitely is. If you stick by the definition then you need to stick to it with all examples.

It is widely known that wealthy US citizens funded the IRA up until 9/11, and the US has (as admitted by various people) funded terrorism in South America (which has resulted in the deaths of civilian targets), and, of course, Afghanistan.

I definitely don't condone terrorism of any sort, and while I have real sympathy for Palestine, Hamas aren't really doing them any favours. On the other hand, the Israelis have also targeted non-military targets on more than one occasion to make a point.

As for the French Resistance, if there was a group in the UK blowing up bridges (let's also, for the sake of argument, say that they are Islamic extremists) do you honestly think the government would say, well they're just blowing up bridges, they're not terrorists? Or do you think they would bring the full weight of the terrorism act on them? And how do you think that the media would portray them?

Words are purely subjective. Their definition comes after common usage determines what they mean. At the moment, terrorism is very much a fear word, that means anything someone else, who has strongly differing views to us, does to us is terrorism.

El Reg collectible pops up on eBay

Shakje

Omg Colin!

You'r just trying to knock everything down, you're like the domino man, can't resist knocking the place down.

Seriously, dude. DUDE. WHAT'S FREAKING WRONG WITH YOU?

You clearly are some sad bloke in a sad little office somewhere, maybe in a Domino's. I just don't get you. Prcik.

Brazilian cleaner spots security hole in Heathrow e-borders

Shakje

If the police are pointing guns nervously...

then they shouldn't have the responsibility of guns. They are trained to follow orders to the letter, and not to be nervous. In fact, that they pushed him to the floor, stood on him, and executed him suggests that there was nothing nervous about their actions at all.

Calls to ban hoodie-busting sonic weapon

Shakje

Re: Stuart Luscombe

I'm 26 so I should have the same experience as you in terms of violence. When I was a teenager, I was a pretty good teenager, part of this is that I went to a private school (I'm not saying this is a positive benefit necessarily, just that at my school violence was better dealt with). Someone in my year was hit on the head by a bottle flying through a bus window, a party we had was broken up by police after someone threw a roof tile on the next door neighbour's car, I managed to avoid fights, but there were plenty of fights in the town centre (Glasgow), there have always been plenty of stabbings in Glasgow. My mother told me when I was younger of the razor gangs in Glasgow, she spent her early years in the middle of a war (growing up in Clydebank near Singers) for God's sake.

You can complain that society is more violent than it was 100 years ago, but it's not really, and you can peel on about criminals having too many rights. There's places where the criminal doesn't have as many rights, and where the police are feared by kids. Places like China, or Hitler's Germany, or Mussolini's Italy, or Stalin's USSR or the DDR.

Automated crack for Windows Live captcha goes wild

Shakje

@theotherone

If that became common practice as a captcha, I'd do it by finding the question mark in the statement, then taking all the words back to the first punctuation mark it finds (in this case the comma, so "then who won the world cup in 1996" being the string I've got), then stick that string into a few search engines and look at what the most recurring words are that aren't included in the string you're passing in. This would work better if you specified the actual sport.

Page: