* Posts by John Macintyre

257 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2007

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Alec Baldwin kicked off plane for playing with his phone

John Macintyre

"Their plane, their rules, and your refund once you get ejected from the vehicle ;)"

Would that be grounds for a refund? It wasn't the airlines fault, he was an a-hole. Surely that means he wouldn't get a full refund as he chose to f*ck up his flight, and he still got on another plane....

John Macintyre
Coat

Typical

Even if he was doing something wrong, he won't admit it, he'll just want to save face by blaming the company. What's the bets at some point he said 'do you know who I am?' at the flight attendants. I vote for zero tolerance on abuse, regardless of the mug who's causing it.

And no I'm not in support of American Airlines, I just accept that flight companies don't get the difference between a phone that's off and a phone that's not visible to them, and that flight attendants have enough shit to deal with.

Mine's the one with 'oooeee look at me I'm famous' written on the back

Thieves plunder apartment for Facebook booty

John Macintyre
Alert

2 cents

While I admire the fact that these bastards I mean crims are no more, I don't fully agree with the argument that shooting criminals fixes the problem.

The fact that the paramilitary are ready to shoot these guys is most likely the reason they are armed in the first place, so you've already increased gun power simply for a nice outcome. It won't mentioned crossfire, and it did mention holding up people, so innocents get more scared. The result is of scared innocents is to push the govt/police to arm more, which is then equalled by the crims arming more.

Whether that be straight retaliation, or dodgy/incompetent cops, it is usually inevitable. We already see it here, cops now have tasers, and we see the occasional story of a criminal using them too (see recent headline about woman tasered then burried alive)

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

John Macintyre
Thumb Down

excess baggage?

About time your bags and your self in total were used to decide how much you pay. if you're a small light person, you can be permitted larger baggage. If you're a larger person with a small bag, same. Huge persons who take up the allowance of body and baggage alone should pay for the excess 'weight'....

and the compensation offer is pathetic, but probably standard for them, they probably expect most people to accept it first hand and go off quietly. Of course the airline will say although he stood, he was on the plane and took up both weight and fuel.... anything to get out of paying for inconvenience

San Diego woman strips to bikini to look for her chihuahua

John Macintyre
Thumb Up

ah americans...

that is all....

US quakes before MENACING TURKEYS, snow globes

John Macintyre
WTF?

Really?

Are they (the presumed target audience of such communications) so stupid that they need to be advised of these things at a homeland security level? Isn't this more something for the cooking channel than defcon? I can appreiciate that people would travel with some of these items, and that the cooking side is important, but I fail to see how it's a DoHS issue to raise anything other than the bits that affect security such as the latter comments.

And americans tell us constantly we're a nation of blithering dumbo's who need to live in a nanny state and accept American superiority, go figure.

RIP mice and keyboards: Kinect for PCs incoming

John Macintyre

er,,,

apart from the typical sensationalist arcticle heading, do you honestly believe something like the kinect, which requires you to keep your arms in the air and moving constantly, would replace the basics of a keyboard and mouse? try typing a final year dissertation on a kinect, then watch people crawl back to their keyboards and mice....

Voice and mind control would be the ways forward (siri seems pretty impressive as a step towards the former), but anything requiring excess energy (arms floating in air, lack of tactile response) would not immediately remove the need for things like physical keyboards and mice.

that said, I'm getting old in tech years, so tomorrow's yoof will probably never know what a keyboard and mouse are at this rate... now there's a strange thought

Man faces prison after enormous red chopper panics woman

John Macintyre
WTF?

no title

I'm guessing the Ohio police are cash strapped? Under each picture is a link for 'buy this photo'... er....

Toshiba in Rugby World Cup personal data compo cockup

John Macintyre
Thumb Down

Tosh indeed

that is all

Sweden rolls out invisible infrared tank

John Macintyre
Mushroom

Give it 6-12 months...

and that'll be the next BAE systems project - anti pixel-tank guns....

IBM builds biggest-ever disk for secret customer

John Macintyre
Joke

last a million years

probably comes with a limited one year warranty though...

Sun compo entrants' privates exposed in public

John Macintyre

fair enough but...

maybe it's just me, but posting an online bullying forum seems to be detremental in the wrong way, surely they could stick to the online posts about 'how great page 3 girl x's xxx are, phwoar' and the like rather than things that could make people who are already suffering suffer even more?

probably just me though. As for the general point of the sun being hacked, meh, release the hounds...

as to how, I guess it's more down to how easy they make it. Lots of companies don't consider data security until the last minute, and even then they don't always spend the time and money fixing it. Just look at Sony

World Cup meltdown fails to materialise

John Macintyre

surely also depends on implementation

I work for a large corp, and to avoid heavy network traffic over both it's ISP and it's own network, it sent everyone a link to it's own hosted stream. That way the majority of people watching were feeding through the on, controlled route rather than lots of random connections over the web.

Another company I know of setup screens in it's own cafe, so most of the staff went to watch it there rather than on a little window over the web - as they put it, better to lose staff within their own building for 90 mins than the network grind to a halt or they all bugger off the pub for the rest of the afternoon

I think networks/companies are just getting smarter about how they handle this stuff...

Google waves goodbye to Docs offline function

John Macintyre
Stop

offline google?

Time to switch to that other offline document system, called a hard drive/usb key.... I've yet to try the latest version of open office, might throw it on my ubuntu system later

Watchdog takes hard line on 'adult film xtras' ad

John Macintyre
WTF?

sounds suspicious...

so he paid UP FRONT a large amount of dosh, and THEN complained? surely any straight-thinking person would tell them where to stick their money request and then complain? Actually, I'm not entirely sure a straight-thinking person would respond to the ad in the first place...

Watchdog mauls Disney woman's breasts

John Macintyre
WTF?

"but the animation attracted one complaint."

er.. what? They banned an add viewed by thousands of people because one loser who can't get any complained? WTF? If he/she is so offended, unplug the computer and go live in a swamp

NZ gal's Bulgarian airbags halt traffic

John Macintyre
Go

I agree...

Though if she is a model there's always the 'out-of-court settlement' option... well, if she's fit....

Orange touts free tweets

John Macintyre

unlimited texts?

Surely half their pay-monthly packages are all unlimited anyway, so other than mms this must all be free right?

iPhone developer stamps out calculator profanity

John Macintyre
Thumb Up

Thwarting

Loving the pic, bring on monday morning!

O2 Showdown hands out gongs

John Macintyre
Jobs Horns

@pctechxp

personally I think HTC were onto something with their magic in design and use of Android 2, but it was lackinga f ew features which hopefully they'll clean up in the near future. From using I'd definitely go for that (preferrably with multi-touch) over the iPhone any day

Theatre draws veil over naked Anna Friel

John Macintyre
Pint

surely...

the front of house staff are in a better position to be posting this stuff? guess it's more than their jobs are worth....

Japan gets to grips with train-grope websites

John Macintyre
Coat

12.53 service to Bitchslap.

Sounds like fine, but I think I missed it, when's the next service along? or is cancelled due to lack of staff or the wrong kind of weather?

Bit sad that the whole thing's so popular, but I guess their culture is a lot different to ours. Still, bloody weirdo's.

Getting my coat or I'll miss the rescheduled service....

Samsung intros Europe's first Nvidia Ion netbook

John Macintyre
Badgers

darn :(

Just ordered an NC10. Admittedly it's the size i wanted, the weight i wanted, tried/tested and well reviewed, and has a sim slot which is the primary reason i bought it. Trust something new to come out the day after i place an order, technology eh :s

Badgers. Well, because.

'Norfolk Broads Idiot' nailed on YouTube

John Macintyre

fines

and an extra £1000 for being a complete twat? They need to introduce that, they might just get it approved.....

First Samsung Android phone out next week

John Macintyre
Grenade

@nichomach

agreed, how the hell do they manage to get so many exclusive deals? Does nobody else have any money anymore? I thought they weren't even the biggest of the 4 anyway? crazy :(

Data protection fee to cost bigger orgs £500 a year

John Macintyre

probably read it wrong

but surely that's no different to the old highway robbery? you want to use this public road? Pay me some dough! You want to have a company with data? Pay me money to approve!

Cyber security minister ridiculed over s'kiddie hire plan

John Macintyre
Thumb Down

Nothing new to see here, move along...

So the govt puts a complete twat I mean someone who has no bloody idea about the area he's ministering in charge of it. Well that sums up Labour doesn't it - we know better than you because we get paid more.

Annoyingly I've seen the same amongs other govt areas like MoD, where managers of IT have never worked in it, but they've gone on the MoD management program so of course they can manage a project they've no expertise in... It'll all lead to a bit bowl of FAIL, but not before draconian standards are applied :(

Girls Aloud net obscenity case falls at first hurdle

John Macintyre
Big Brother

it's called utopia....

@Paul Hates Handles

Did you not see how the state was run in V for Vendetta? or several other shite movies of similar ideals? (or indeed 1982...). anything the police disagree with is therefore wrong, i think dictatorships started that way...

Man hooks home into Twitter

John Macintyre

then receives a “bathroom heater turned on”

followed by:

"The home is now empty"

"Unknown has just walked in"

"tv is leaving house with unknown"

"house is now empty. Ikea catalogue left by door"

.....

Kate Moss kills Kills cuts

John Macintyre

laptop but not hd..

Surely the hd is still salvageable? I've done worse to some of mine and I still managed to recover something off it in usable format, just send the laptop to a local pc recovery centre! as for the crackberry, well you dated mossy....

iPod saves lightning-strike teen

John Macintyre
Flame

appreciation for life

"Mind you, the only thing Sophie was worried about was that her new iPod was frazzled."

Glad to know she's happy she's not dead. Reminds of this girl who was running through a station for her train talking to someone on the phone. Slipped over, phone fell apart, old guy goes to help her up, first thing she does it grab the phone and say 'hello, you still there?'. Guy who helped her says 'well I guess she's not concussed then' and walks off. Priorities, humans!

flame.. well lightning... it's near enough!

Gov considers website to teach tech skills

John Macintyre

concept flawed but implemented already?

so a website for someone who doesn't understand IT... well, it's not surprising from the current govt. However, the govt's own LearnDirect network has courses like this, can't they just make one of those free? Rather than waste buckets of taxpayers money creating a new site by new contractors with new content made without considering of current ones.....

From a govt insistent on centralising all data you'd think they'd have considered this, though it wouldn't help the police state so it's not worth investigating i guess

Tories don black cap for ID cards

John Macintyre
Unhappy

hmm.. really?

Someone in the tory party with a brain? They contractors will still do it anyway, and will probably add extra lock-ins - short term bulk pay twinned with long term project termination pay-offs = profit

Barclays IT systems have a strop

John Macintyre

bbc

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8103271.stm - apparently they had a faulty disk array... guess it might be unsurprising but one disk array for the entire network? talk about a failover failure....

Malta pair charged over illicit Playmobil trade

John Macintyre

proof?

Let the playmobil re-enactments begin!...

Nurse Lovelace gives hardened lag 55-hour stiffy

John Macintyre
Joke

darwin

at least there's no chance of further pollution of the gene pool from that direction...

Dell tweets $3m in revenues

John Macintyre

@Charles

twittards? No, I think you mean twits.. or just tw*ts

Oz cops in Taser fatality

John Macintyre
Stop

before tasers?

Now they all have these magical devices it's as if before tasers they were just cavemen, did not have other process they should have tried first, like the good old baton of old?

Moneymaker clinches licence to print passports

John Macintyre
Thumb Down

hmm.. long term strategy me-thinks?

"but it is likely that the central database and passports will survive"

"has won a ten year contract"

The reason being it'll cost more to try to cancel it than it would to accept it and continue to use it. 1-0 to the state as usual

Missing: 1TB of Clinton White House data

John Macintyre

between October and March

they took how long to notice? Couldn't have been that important then. You'd hope even if they area was unsecured (well, who cares about national security eh?) that the drive itself has sufficient encryption to make it harder to access.... but i bet it doesn't

Apple brands UK tabloid 'obscene'

John Macintyre
Jobs Horns

Safari?

So will they ban safari as it can view major pron? or is that too hypocritical?

Chinese officials obliged to smoke 4.6m snouts

John Macintyre

Clarification needed

The wonderful Beeb stated "Those who did not smoke enough .... faced being fined or even fired. "

Are they forcing people to smoke or forcing people to simply switch their brand of cig? Slight difference if they force non-smokers to smoke just to raise taxes...

McAfee: Save the planet - use a spam filter

John Macintyre
Thumb Down

google translator?

"Stopping spam at its source, as well investing in state-of-the-art spam filtering technology, will save time and money, and will pay dividends to the planet by reducing carbon emissions as well."

BS Translation: "Buy our products and you'll do the world a favour".

Great marketing. If they suggested products that weren't just theirs maybe people would take them seriously? Come on, it seems everyone's sales pitch at the moment is buy more stuff from us and you'll do the world a favour. No, I'll just give you loads of cash and you'll laugh all the way to the golf range.

I agree reducing spam would be a good thing, god knows the amount of postmaster bounces I send out from one of my mailservers from spam addresses, but I'm not in a position to spend a fortune on high end products, and I'm not a globo-corp, so I need smaller/cheaper solutions. Yes I'm investigating a few at the moment.

IPCC U-turn on Tomlinson CCTV

John Macintyre

@wowbagger

er.. actually if I'm not mistaken that was all covered by the news camera's, not the police ones. The police used the news camera captures to work out whodunnit.... In fact if you look there's about 2-3 protesters surrounded by camera's, seems the media were more interested in something like that happening then helping stop it....

not that the media would ever do that obviously...

Goldman Sachs threatens blogger over demonic domain name

John Macintyre

not wanting to be an arse...

but ignoring what his intentions are, surely his use of that domain IS copyright infringement? The same would happen if you created www.apple999.com (or apple911 for the us lot), forget if it helps lots of people, it's infringement fo apple if it's related to apple in anyway (and not a help site for pink lady or granny smiths abusers, make of that as you will....)

Brazilian ejected as lingerie arouses border staff suspicions

John Macintyre
Coat

so what,

she just had to throw in a jacket, top, trousers and chavvy wellies in the case and she'd have been let in? She's obviously not worth the money...

Mine's the burberry one, well at least i have one!

Oops: Microsoft wonk hits Live Messenger red button

John Macintyre

"somebody made a mistake "

er.. this isn't really a 'oh my god microsoft's so shit it f*$@£d up again, the b@$£%&ds', it's some muppet who pressed the wrong button. This is just a fundamental problem with IT systems and users/support who should know better but don't get paid enough to.

However, bring on the M$ hate....

Photocops: Home Office concedes concern

John Macintyre
Thumb Down

give em an inch..

and they'll turn the Met into a huge cartel intent on bullying the public into submission. Maybe Gordon sent a secret memo to them to ensure he stays elected by scaring the entire populace into his way of thinking?

Anyway, nice to see they've admitted the entire thing is a load of bollocks shoved in to get some scare tactics out the door, but how many years before they actually do something about it? Unlikely they'll bother is my thinking. Crooks

BBC fined £150k over Manuelgate

John Macintyre

so?

they'll just up the licence fee to cover it anyway so what's the big deal?

How gov scapegoats systems for man-made errors

John Macintyre

missing another point

who wants to be blamed for making such a big cock up as the deceased girl? much better to blame the system, keep your head down and get on with it.

Of course the other side is equally something that you've somewhat missed. Although the system might be designed to handle this case, how easy is it for the user to do such? If they can open the student record and tick a box clearly marked (or change a drop down status) then this is fine. However we're talking capita here - if it takes 5 screens, 20 questions and 2 levels of managerial approval just to mark the student as deceased, then you're asking for human error.

Sometimes the parts of a system least pushed/focussed on are simplicity for user interaction, as I've seen time and time again in the business. Sadly new features are always prioritised over small quick changes that would in the long term make user lives easier and happier.

Add to that the fact that most users wouldn't come back to you and say 'couldn't you do it like this? wouldn't it be easier?' they wouldn't be any the wiser, and would assume the way it does it is the only way it can be done. It's not just a case of badly written systems/procedures.

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