* Posts by Dick Emery

841 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Feb 2008

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Whitehats tackle The Great Botnet Dilemma

Dick Emery
Paris Hilton

Ethics?

Just bloody fix it and stop being wusses.

Ethics? I know an Ethics girl.

'Extreme porn' law could criminalise millions

Dick Emery
Joke

At last...

...we can purge our country of those pesky furries/fursuiters. For far too long they have had their own way dressing up in Disney'eque costumary and cavorting (Sometimes most publicly) and displaying their clearly homoerotic tendencies.

Cast them out. Kill it with fire!

/sarcasm off

'We could wake up smarter' - Ballmer hints at Win XP reprieve

Dick Emery

If it ain't broke...

...don't install it. Seriously I have just installed SP3 and noticed little improvement. I was expecting a speed boost but that did not happen. If this means XP is more secure and stable and does everything I need why bother with Vista?

It's like trying to upgrade the tyres on your car. You can get those fancy tyres and notice little difference to the standard set.

The only advantage is in the 64bit arena because they totally screwed up on XP 64.

Microsoft kicks out third Windows XP service pack

Dick Emery
Thumb Up

Haven't you guys heard of...

...XP Pro student edition? :)

No sense of humour? Avoid Bootnotes

Dick Emery
Dead Vulture

Saddened

I was both saddened and dismayed that the news snippet I emailed el reg about the Japanese porno being made in MacDonalds burger (and now apparently sausages) restaurant was not added to bootnote.

There is FAR too much IT on this webshite. I henceforth withdraw my patronage and you shall now lose...err....erm...actually what do you lose? A drinking partner?

Oh sod it. Just post eee girl again she cheers me up no end.

eBay forces Aussies to use Paypal

Dick Emery
Coat

Can anyone say monopoly?

I don't have too much issue with Ebay and Paypal itself (Apart from refunds not being paid back into my bank account and sitting there earning interest for Paypal if you don't move it yourself nor the fact that if you move house and forget your password you are stuffed). I've always had good service from both. But then again I only purchase small items. I do however take issue with the fact that both companies come under the same banner. Ideally they should be entirely disconnected from one another. Plus it's altogether fine to say go elsewhere if you are not happy. But where else offers the shear breadth of diverse products offered than on Ebay? Also having to sign up to an entirely new payment site all over again does not feel me with glee (It was difficult enough the first time and better the devil you know and all).

My coat because Ebay and Paypal have had plenty of money from it.

Spam filtering services throttle Gmail to fight spammers

Dick Emery
Stop

They really need to

filter outgoing messages as possible spam too. Bounce it back to the sender. Or use the filter to make a note of who is sending lots of suspicious outgoing mail and delete the account if it crosses a certain threshold. Spam filtering should work boths ways. Incoming AND outgoing.

Ofcom tempts bidders for 2.6GHz auction

Dick Emery
Flame

2o years too long...

2o years is FAR too long. What's to stop someone sitting on that spectrum letting it stagnate in 4mb land for those 20 years? If some new and exciting technology comes along that could make use of that spectrum but cannot use it because some large corp is sitting on it what happens? It goes down the plughole.

Why are there so many idiots in control of things that could benefit society?

Virgin Media in talks to trial three strikes regime against P2P

Dick Emery
Stop

The only people this will affect...

...are families (Or idiots who 'share' craploads - with the emphasis on crap - of BPI music files).

I doubt anyone with half a brain will be affected much. Lets think about this.

For starters it's a 3 strike rule. In that if you are caught 3 times you get disconnected. Whoopee effin' doo! The chances of being caught the first time are remote. Remoter still if you use your head. Especially if you start using the methods outlined below either prior to being caught or after the first warning. Also the chances of being caught a second time are pretty remote anyhow let alone a third time.

First off if you don't use P2P at all and just 'download' (Never upload or share content) from usenet (SSL even better), IRC, FTP etc you are about as likely to be caught as getting a free trip to Mars.

If you must use P2P however then there are some things you can do to minimize being caught.

1. Use an IPfilter.dat file. Most decent clients like uTorrent and eMule allow the use of a filter file. Granted this won't stop them from seeing your IP but it will block them from downloading from you. It's not really a solution as others seem to believe but it may help a little.

2. Make sure any encryption and obfuscation options in your P2P client are enabled. Again this won't prevent them from seeing your IP.

3. Use a leech client. I know a lot of people will hate me for saying this as P2P is all about sharing. But lets face it. If you are not uploading you minimize being accused of sharing stuff.

4. Try not to use public trackers on torrents if you can help it. Especially for popular music and movies.

5. ALWAYS stop seeding a file once it is complete and ALWAYS move your files out of your share folder to someplace where it is not shared.

Yes there are other methods including seed boxes and darknets etc but most people won't really need them and they have their downsides.

Using the methods above you too can stay low on the radar and avoid being hassled by the media mafia.

Currently with an ISP that does not appear to give a rats arse about all of this and I have been able to max my 8Mbit connection for months on end with no comebacks. Not saying who though just in case ;)

Gone

Dick Emery
Paris Hilton

What?

No Britney Spears MP3's? Darn! You April fooled me again!

Paris because...well just because.

Creative threatens developer over home-brewed Vista drivers

Dick Emery
Stop

ASIO for the musos...

...if you need low latency ASIO support and don't want to buy a fancy soundcard then check out www.asio4all.com as they have a third party ASIO enabling driver that works on many sound chipsets. I have used it successfully in Cubase with onboard Realtek chipset and the latency was just as good as on my M-Audio soundcard.

Dick Emery
Thumb Down

DRM the 'REAL' culprit

Yup! It's DRM that is causing all this to happen. You don't have to look any further than Nvidia drivers to see this. Nvidia's 8 series cards are 'crippled' deliberately (Nvidia afmitted it) in that they will not allow Video Mirroring on the TV output (So no trying to record a high quality analog stream of HD video on the raw video component out. Yes I know you can display to the desktop but it looks like shit in comparison).

Creative are just another company caught between the DRM and a hard place (The MPAA/RIAA and various cartels).

I say screw the lot of them. Support the little guys who make better stuff anyhow. Oh and don't use VistAIDS.

Mobile phone stress stalks quivering nation

Dick Emery
Alert

World of stress

Everything these days is geared towards stress. And the scare mongering is not helping what with terrorism, global warming, the economy and general health worries/scares.

We only have ourselves to blame.

I hate mobile phones. I have a pay as you go one but only a few people know the number and I rarely get calls. I still jump though when I do :P

Nvidia drivers named as lead Vista crash cause in 2007

Dick Emery
Stop

Aha! An opportunity!

Since elreg decided to ignore my email about Nvidia's 8 series lacking video mirror which is in all previous versions of their cards/drivers I will post it here instead.

Yes. The 8 series Nvidia cards are unable to perform video mirroring. That is. The ability to output FULL-SCREEN video from a window (Minimized or otherwise) to a TV output using either Composite, S-Video or Component.

This is an essential ability for those that using video editing tools like Adobe Premiere or DJ's who wish to display FULL-SCREEN video on a projector/TV and still be able to work with the video windowed on the desktop.

Nvidia have stated that 'this is by DESIGN'. So they are freely admitting that it is disabled on the 8 series drivers.

Now why could this be?

Let us look now. Could it be because of Vista? If so then why does it not work on XP? Could it be because the 8 series cards are not capable of it or they made a f*ck up during manufacturing of their chipset? Perhaps. Or more likely could it be that they do not wish for people to be able to output HD material over the 'UNPROTECTED' analog Component output? Hmm. My bet is on the last one.

Elreg. Why are you not reporting on this item? Why has Nvidia been able to hide this information from the public which has been known about for some months now?

Answers on the back of a postcard.

Adobe opens Photoshop for freetards

Dick Emery
Thumb Down

Give up your rights on your photos

The T&C's state that you give Adobe free license to do whatever they like with your photos.

Four 1TB hard drives on test

Dick Emery
Happy

Bigger is better?

I got a Samsung 750GB drive for £79 and could not be happier. It is used for storage so speed is not that important. It runs very cool and quiet too. Like anything though it's good to make backups of important data. As drives get larger and larger this is going to be a bit of a quandary for those storing large files that are difficult to backup (HD video etc). Tape drives are still expensive and a difficult and slow medium. I personally am looking forward to Blu-Ray rewritable to become A LOT cheaper. Or SSD to become A LOT larger and cheaper (Supposedly more resilient?).

World's slimmest 256GB SSD unveiled

Dick Emery
Unhappy

Price

As always it comes down to price. Without the price I won't get too excited about it and especially so if it is ridiculously priced.

Chinese drivers get rear-view satnav

Dick Emery
Thumb Down

Sunny days?

I can't see this being useful in softops with their roof down. Unless you can see it clearly in harsh light it's useless (and dangerous).

Seagate CEO flips patent finger at SSD makers

Dick Emery
Thumb Down

Sue now

Or have it thrown out of court later?

Toshiba goes multi-cell with new flash drives

Dick Emery
Stop

Encrypt it

"Wear-levelling means that secure delete by shredding a file may not really shred all of the file all the time. I love the convenience of USB flash drives, but am very worried about the security implications of the technology."

I suggest then using GOOD encryption software with a STRONG password/phrase.

Fujitsu fetes 'first' 320GB, 7200rpm laptop drive

Dick Emery
Stop

Hot stuff

My only concern would be the heat it generates if not the power consumption. Really I believe a LOT more effort needs to go into making SDD's large, fast, reliable and above all cheaper.

Sony pledges Blu-ray Profile 2.0 PS3 update this month

Dick Emery
Coat

Where have you been?

"Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder about getting fake versions of my DVDs so I don't have to sit through stupid frickin copyright notices!"

Just rip them and burn them to blank DVD's. It's not exactly difficult to do and for many single layer movies oyu can do it both cheaply and losslessly. Hey presto movie only with nothing else to clutter it up! Coat because when you buy it you 'should' be allowed to make a backup copies legally.

Caribbean firm circumvents BD+ copy protection

Dick Emery
IT Angle

If you can make it...

...you can break it.

And so begins the cat and mouse game. However by being unable to crack newer titles by a couple of months or more the studios do have a release window to take advantage of sales to those who cannot wait that long.

Toshiba lost $1bn ditching HD DVD, paper claims

Dick Emery
Stop

LOL DOLLA

Not sure if I got my maths right and conversions right (Using xe.com) but 100,000,000,000.00 is 100 billion Yen right? If so then it's 1,009,540,154.46 USD at current rates?

But then again I failed math :P

Anyhow. SOny and it's BluRay partners have already put pu prices claiming they were making a loss on development costs because of having to compete with HD DVD and BluRay has now gone up in price since the battle ended. Now their real battle is against consumer apathy, DVD (It's good enough with upscaling types) and downloads.

Security firms split over Phorm classification

Dick Emery
IT Angle

Kas = <3

Kaspersky came top for both AV and Spyware 'prevention' (Note I say prevention rather than just cleanup tools like Ad-Aware) in a recent shootout by a famous 'Computer' magazine so I suggest you 'Shopper' round. :)

Digital TV sales soar as Brits flock to Freeview

Dick Emery
Coat

Why don't they...

Offer TV's without the tuner? I'd rather have an HD display and no TV licence to buy and just watch pre-recorded material.

Also my parents Freeview signal is the pits down near Broadstairs. They seriously need to get their loft aerial converted to something outside where it stands a better chance of actually getting a good signal amd not having breakup every time a motorcycle without a suppressor passes by (When are they going to ban those people?)

US, Canada seize fake Cisco goods

Dick Emery
IT Angle

In use?

I wonder how many of these are actually running on peoples networks.

Ofcom stands up to Information Commissioner

Dick Emery
Alien

Shhh!

Probably some government conspiracy whereby some masts are being used by spies.

Europe hits one million FTTH broadband connections

Dick Emery
Stop

It's already possible

"Surely a nationwide rollout of FTTH would help enable an Orwellian police state? And with a webcam and microphone in every room, ISPs would have to reverse their current policies:"

There was a virus doing the rounds once that enabled peoples webcams. Anyhow that is what the flip down privacy guard is for. What? Yours does not have one? Meh. Buy something that is not a £5 peice of crap next time.

Tiscali confirms sell-off is on the table

Dick Emery
IT Angle

Bulldog

Don't forget us Bulldog folk. Thus far we have avoided any of Tiscali/pipex network and been left with our nice fast uncongested, unfiltered, non-traffic shaped and uncapped connections due to it using NTL's backbone capacity and unbundled loop.

Microsoft cuts Vista price

Dick Emery
Gates Horns

Vista will be on your PC(s) eventually

I guarantee it.

Once 3D video cards are powerful enough to run a killer DX10 game at full resolution with all the options on fast enough. There is not that 'must have' DX10 game out yet. You kids will be the one's who make sure you eventually have it installed in order to run that game.

MS made a shrewd move there.

So bitch and whine about it all you want. You WILL have to install it (Or have a PC with it preinstalled) at some stage in the future.

Vote now for your fave sci-fi movie quote

Dick Emery

How could you miss...

The most quoted movie quote 'I'll be back' from Terminator?

Apple sued over iPhone caller ID

Dick Emery
Thumb Down

Working demo before patent!

Until you can demonstrate a working model patents should be disallowed. People come up with the same ideas everyday. But if one of those person makes a working demonstration and then patents it then every other person who had the same idea should ose by default.

They even have companies that sit there just patenting any silly idea they can come up with on the off chance it might actually become real just so they can claim on it!

Filesharers petition Downing Street on 'three strikes'

Dick Emery
Stop

Make our own honeypot

Who's for setting up our own honeypot tracker? Plonk a few hundred files on it with names like 'Madonna - Sexist Stereotype, Beyonce - Sell My Body For Cash, Spice Girls - Another Money Making Scam' etc Well maybe not those names but names of existing recordings. But make the files be something entirely. Music from the public domain. Make a nice website linking to those files.

Have hundreds of filesharers with their torrent clients open until some RIAA/BPI etc bites. Then sue them en masse.

I don't see why people cannot sue the record industry reps anyhow. Why do you have to sue your ISP even if they are the people that cut you off? You can sue an individual who uses an ISP to defame you so what's to prevent doing the same to the recording industry?

US gov now says Eye-o-Sauron™ border masts are crap

Dick Emery
Paris Hilton

If this is to prevent illegal immigrants

Don't they realise that the entire US economy would collapse from lack of workers to do the shitty jobs?

Paris because she knows a thing or two about slave labour.

Quake rocks Britain

Dick Emery

I live on the south circular in London.

I get that every few seconds. Nothing to see here move along.

Odeon kicks Rambo in the 'nads

Dick Emery
Thumb Down

Too expensive. Too shoddy.

The local UCI multi-screen cinema in Greenwich has been going downhill since Odeon took over. It's also gone up in price recently. £8 something. An effin ripoff!

I was hoping that with the advent of digital projection and 3D there would be more IMAX like experiences on standard sized screens appearing. It's something they are doing a lot more in the US. Yet even our 'big' cinemas in the city don't offer it (Apart from Leicester square for the occasional digital and the one at Portaloo for IMAX & 3D).

3D like that you cannot replicate at home. They should play on that advantage and start upgrading some of the cinemas. Sadly I don't think there is enough investment money available for it over here (At least from the cinemas themselves). Studios shoudl invest in cinemas to help update them instead of just blowing all their budget on Mr Stallone's paycheck. And they wonder why people download and watch at home on their shiny new home cinema systems. Especially people with families where it costs a small fortune and inconvenience to take their kids to the piccies.

Turning daisies into dollars - the realities of Green Computing

Dick Emery
Paris Hilton

Ahem!

Yes I know about the Epia boards etc. What I am trying to say but didn't really make it clear was that companies like Intel and AMD who are the big name players in the consumer sector are not really pushing for low energy solutions on the desktop. Sure they have lower powered laptops but even those are power hungry when all you need to do is have a dumb file server and anything that is file server is expensive business systems or an NAS which is overpriced IMHO in comparison to a standard external HD. Just look at Windows server. How much? For what hardware and software? Get real. Companies should be looking into ways to do certain things based on their power requirements. We all know a desktop PC needs lots of 'oomph!' to run the latest games. But they don't seem to promote anything for the lower end. Unless you are a geek and know what you are doing (Putting some flavour of *nix on a low spec PC for the backroom for instance) most people don't even think about these things.

Paris because she would just buy a Mac anyhow (Jobs where are your power saving systems?).

Dick Emery
IT Angle

It's all about the upgrades

I'd like to see low power CPU's and motherboards being sold that don't require any fans to cool etc. They could make CPU's with small dye footprints using the latest nanometer processes. That 45nm stuff cut into very small peices but still powerful enough to run a small server at some old P3/4 speeds would be fine and require little or no cooling and a lot lower power rating. Big power components generates heat and requires cooling thus more fans which also need power and more noise. OK if you are an enthusiast but not needed for some backend system you use to access storage or to serve up the odd webpage.

Microsoft releases latest XP SP3 build

Dick Emery
Gates Horns

XP gets the job done

As we all know from a recent report all Mac users are 'snobs'. Take your piOS crapola elsewhere. XP supports nearly all the hardware out there on the PC front. It's stable for the most part and most games and software made today and tomorrow will run on it perfectly fine. Sure the 32bit version will not make full use of 4GB of memory. But for the moment it's enough. Until I come across some software that won't run on XP efficiently (Excluding DX10 forced upgrade nonsense) XP is staying on my PC's. Why upgrade to something you have the learn a bunch of new stuff and it's foibles? If I wanted to do that I would 'upgrade' to some flavor of Ubuntu.

Billy boy because better the devil you know.

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

Dick Emery
Pirate

Ban or throttle it if you must

It won't stop it. It might provide more bandwidth to those that can get around it in fact :) IRC, Usenet and darknets anyone? ;)

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