* Posts by Jemma

1045 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2008

HSBC pinpoints branches with sub-atomic accuracy

Jemma

well, they need to be exact for new customers....

In the hope they'll replace all the customers who've told HSBC to ram it up their collective behinds over their Internet Banking - aka the utter utter cock up.

On the upside, when the 'world bank' goes bankrupt - we know exactly where to go to point and laugh.

Microsoft's master stroke: Pay store staff per WinPhone sold

Jemma
FAIL

*sigh*

If Windows Phone was actually any good then it would sell itself. To be frank its not. Even Microsoft management employees admit that Windows Phone was a rush job (apparently evinced by the lack of support for legacy, a mistake they seem to want to make again with Windows 8).

If Windows Mobile was released now, instead of back in the day, it would be a raging success compared to Windows Phone. Win Mo was before its time, it was powerful, effective, and more importantly infinately editable, modifiable and hackable. The success of Android is substantially due to those same factors. Windows Phone is none of those things, and more importantly its fighting against Apples stranglehold on the locked in/locked down paradigm. Whether it comes good in the end, which is by no means assured, second to market is usually second place.

What Microsoft are trying to do has been done before, many times, by many notable companies - and most of the time its been a dismal failure. People will look at it, decide to take a chance on it on the basis of the distilled BS poured from straight faced salesdroids, spend the rest of the time loathing it (and or mourning lost features) and thats a customer lost entirely, probably for life, on the basis of a 24 month contract and short term sales massaging.

It already appears to be coming clear that Windows Phone is not so much an also ran as an also limped. Putting their faith in Windows Phone is putting companies like Nokia at risk doubly - not only do they lose customers from their previous offerings (lack of features between old and new OS) they may fail to retain enough of the 'new' customers to survive.

Apple iPhone owners are the most loyal smartphone buyers

Jemma

To quote Futurama 603...

Its cos they're...

"Dumb Bastards"

Im sure Apple are so proud they've managed to snag the idiots. Personally I wish we had human cloning already, 10 years of inventing gory imaginative ways of executing clone steve jobs's would just about calm my ire regarding how he brought the smartphone into the dance of the idiots. Not to mention what his 'legacy' has done to personal privacy & security of same.

Facebook phone rises from the dead, again

Jemma

A slight rewrite of "the prom" speech

But whenever there was a problem or something creepy happened, you seemed to have been involved. Most of the people here have been humiliated by you, or lost jobs because you at one time or another.

We're proud to say that the Facebook generation has the lowest social quotient of any in history. And we know at least part of that is because of you. So we offer our thanks, and give you, uh, this. It's from all of us, and it has written here: "Facebook. just Die Already!"

Shame really that Anya was only fictional - the number of people who could really use a vengeance demon when the name Zuckerberg is mention probably beggars belief.. I wonder how many times she could kill him in creative ways before she got tired. It'd be messy, so put a tarp over that sofa..

/off to think happy Tara thoughts...

HELL ON EARTH: The Great Dying

Jemma

This is all related to the Deccan Traps in India.

Point the first: One megavolcano kicking off can bring down civilisations - one such was the santorini eruption which wiped out the Minoan state and directly led to the end of Hyksos rule in egypt, not to mention migrations, war, and a top to toes reboot of Greek civilisation. It could be said to be the one event that ended the Greek Heroic Age.

Point the second: The Deccan Traps are volcanic and metamorphic associate deposits of if my memory serves acidic/intermediate volcanics. Think Mount St Helens + Vesuvius + the yellowstone caldera all mixed up and then multiplied a couple of thousand times.

The result of a few thousand years of that is going to result in an atmosphere thats full of fine ash, so there goes the temperature and the green plants, so its bye bye food chain. Then theres the rain thats something along the lines of battery acid. Not to mention the nice friendly pyroclastic clouds and the noxious gas seepage that'll put paid to anything local.

Pretty much anything and everything that could erupt, explode, smoke or barf out hundreds of cubic kilometers of nice baking hot volcanic rock at about 800-1200c all got in on the act all at once.

Point the third: Life is very resiliant, theres a saying that life turns up everywhere it can, the places where it cant just take a little longer. Human society could probably manage to take maybe 2 megavolcano events simultaneously without buckling, by that I dont mean extinction, but fundamental problems with our social frameworks and paradigms.

10 simultaneous or closely sequel megavolcano level events, probably not.

The Deccan Traps and their associated deposits are thousands of years of megavolcanic events numbering 100s to 1000s. Add to that we are apex omnivores... And we are pretty much screwed.

The issue with the Permian event is that its quick and its massive. Life manages usually to deal with one or the other, but not both. Massive and slow = evolution. Quick and localised = repopulation. Both quick & massive together is a terminal combination, because there is nowhere retaining a healthy population.

The problem for us, is while we have worldwide networks and transport, we are still dependant on a food chain, we've no other populations except on this planet, and no way of tapping resources from other planets or bodies. It actually might be an idea that all missions to the space station be mixed male & female - things start to go bad in a short term way, we have a seeding population, albeit a small one.

One poster mentioned that a single volcano has no quantifiable effect. They do, but its usually hidden in the data or something like a small ice age. Its like a person taking codiene for example... 30-90mg stops pain, but you only have to increase that by 100fold to end up with a corpse and some worrying questions. Likewise, 1-3 volcanos kick off, you might get a cold snap, 100 kick off and you're reduced to dwarf bread with a nice long island battery acid.

Eurozone crisis: We're all dooomed! Here's why

Jemma

Yes, but only because we all buy into the idea. We are taught from practically age 0 that money does this and money does that - we need to pay for this and pay for that.

You know its odd, thinking about bank account interest. I put my money into a big pile of money and it makes 5% a year... what does it do? does my £5 note find another £5 note and make babies faster than a chav on a housing estate?

The concept makes absolutely no sense. The concept that if I take it out of the money box in my bed room and put in in someone elses box in another room and it miraculously seems to gain the ability to use the photocopier and create more of itself.

It has no basis in fact - other than the fact we agree that it happens - its a construct relying on a worldwide government induced hallucination and it needs to stop, because the more integrated the hallucination becomes the more of a total disaster it will be when the whole thing fails.

Given your argument the human race shouldnt exist - because if money was that important to the concept of the human race, we shouldnt even have evolved.

Jemma

You still dont get my point do you?

Its actually fairly simple. You mention an MRI machine, which at the moment is an expensive bit of kit, which hospitals buy, with money, because they have a need for it. But you are assuming that if we were to remove money from the equation the whole thing would grind to a halt and the MRI would have never existed or be needed.

WRONG

Money does not drive development on its own, there are so many other reasons - a wish to be better, a dream to fulfil, the drive to make sure that cancer will never take another persons loved one (and I know that pain personally), even just the drive to be the best person you can be. If it did we would never have managed to get beyond the stage of yelling at the other monkeys in the next door tree. There is a need for MRI scanner systems ditto other complex systems, but the monetary cost for them is entirely arbitary.

I dont get paid for mucking around with my old WinMo phones to make them the best that they can be with the hardware available. I dont get paid for hypermiling and ecomodding my Safrane either, I do it because I enjoy it. If I had the ability to build MRI systems I would, because I never EVER want to watch another 22 year old woman, who was my partner, die of a pervasive and slow cancer that took 7 years of agony to finally kill her, or see anyone else go through that pain.

The amount of people in jobs they hate merely because of MONEY must be amazing, I have personal experience of that, my grandfather had a massive heart attack at the age of 52, simply because of stress from a job he hated. I wonder how much money we would save on health care if people werent worrying about money and their kids college funds and the like.

As to arbitrary value, I've another example. A 2.2vi 136bhp hatchback with class leading ride and features - at half the price new of the directly competitive BMW. Its now 15 years old and *still* has features that brand new cars dont have. Oddly though, you can get hold of one for £525. Why, because people have put an arbitrary value on it even though it does a better job as something twice the price. Then you get the ridiculous price of £215 for a 15cm wheel on a piece of metal, welcome to price gouging for spare parts, which wouldnt happen without the powerful but horribly broken paradigm of 'currency'.

The assumption that everyone has been trained to make is a simple hallucination. "If money were to disappear then the world would end". No, it wouldnt, unless you are a banker, hedge fund manager or the like.

We progressed before there was money, we will progress after there is money...

The problem we are having now is the same problem we had with religion at times like the enlightenment. The paradigm is tired and just not compatible with the continued advancement of the human race - true, there will probably be a world wide crunch heard when the paradigm is shifted without the use of the clutch (aka lots of wars and the like). It will be a painful shift most likely, but my personal opinion is its coming to the point where we are in serious danger of a complete and utter implosion going forward.

It could be argued that 2008 was that implosion, but I dont think so. I think things could get immeasurably worse. 2008 was led by American debt - the problems the banks had worldwide was fundamentally that they had bought US debt (in some cases without even knowing it) - therefore the effects were worldwide - but importantly the fundamental failure WAS NOT.

Now imagine what would happen in say 50 years time when we have say 3 different countries (US, Russia, China) in the same situation as the US banking industry; at once. Up until this point bankers and the financial system has always had somewhere to run for liquidity. Whats going to happen when *all* possible sources are dry? You think Libya & the like are bad, or Greek protests? That sort of implosion, assuming the governmental response is the same as this time - try worldwide mass civil war...

We are going to be sitting on our hands with no way back and no way forward - and given the state of things with just US based issues right now how much worse do you think will can get?

Jemma

heres an idea...

Scrap the whole tottering edifice and save ourselves the hassle.

the world monetary system is nothing more than world wide hallucination, and as lethal in its way as cancer. It pervades everything and is the root of many of the social problems we've seen in the hundreds of years we've all happily joined in the madnesses.

Lets say I trade my skills for money to buy a car. Great, but its all arbitrary, it makes no sense. I could spend £500 on something which is much more functional than something I spent £50,000 on? I buy a house - it triples in value - some twerp screws up 3000 miles away and its down to half its original value within a week.

On the other hand... do away with currency altogether and youve lost nothing...

Right now people work to get money to eat and purchase other items. Drug addicts do what they do to keep body and soul together and get high. Companies produce items but have to add money to pay for the food and purchasing of their employees plus their materials. transportation adds more costs and so on.

since monetary value is nothing more than a construct based on a collective insanity... why bother with it and all the problems it brings?

but we need money to buy food...cars... crapple products. Yes, but only if we all agree that a lot of pieces of paper equals a Jaguar XK8.

Money only has value if that is universally agreed. Therefore if money and currency is.abandoned alot of the bad effects of it cease to exist.

How is that an advantage? its simple really - there'll be no arguments about value, no 10 year disasters because some banker decides all of a sudden that hes bored and thinks its a good laugh to trash the world.

I wonder how many people the banks have effectively murdered post 2008... the good thing about corporate manslaughter is its not messy... even better its based on a mass hallucination.

The point that people seem to miss in all this is money is no longer neccesary. fundamentally what happens today with money has no reason to stop without it. US buys oil so that the people who sell it buy from others, great, but since we're all going round in circles anyway nothing will fundamentally change without the use of money. It has no reason to.

In fact for alot of the world things will get much better. No more african debt, less african war, less war less disease better standard of living. No nees to 'profit', less overuse of land and other resources, the list goes on.

Take Mexico, 45,000 killed in 5 years over drugs and the profits thereof. No intrinsic value or price, no profit; no profit, no incentive - no incentive, no beheaded women and children. Its the same with everything else, we've managed to get into a position where a theoretical construct with no intrinsic value rules all. It makes no sense...

After all, whats good will a bag of coins do you on a desert island? On the other hand, a big bag of potatoes might be more boring, but its a damn sight more useful.

We are such a connected world that the old arguments about currency driving trade make little sense either. Trade drives trade. You want something in Germany so you give the people who have it something they need and so on.

No money... no need to assign entirely arbitrary values to things. No value, no way of creating debt, no debt means no need to come up with arbitrary ways of valuing value and no need for money to service that value.

life still goes on... exactly the same as before... just we're a little more lucid and alot less miserable. If you think about it it'd even help the environment too, in so many little ways. Less stress due to money worries, less smokers, less COx.. happy kangaroos.

The only downside for it is that to work we've all got to do it at the same time and *thats* the real embuggerance¥

¥ Technically defined as "an obstruction in the way of progress"

Lost cities found beneath sands of Sahara by satellites

Jemma
Meh

Why are people surprised?

It constantly amazes me that people seem to be of the opinion that having a bloody great empire just up the road (in this case the Acheamenids (sp?) shouldnt have an effect on the people next door. We know that there were British local tribes in the period before the Roman Conquest that were building their settlements on a grid style roadway system - and that many of the well off British tribes and their leaders not only traded with the Romans but visited their various cities (some making it as far as Rome itself, not a minor feat when the highlight of road transport was a horse).

Its not so much the current Islamics bashing the Pre-Islamic civilisations - 'Christian' archeo's are just as guilty for making monumental mistakes or deliberately fudging the evidence (even when it concurs with the bible texts, which at least in the Old Testament which current evidence seems to indicate are alot more 'true' than was formerly thought)

As to the previous commentator who said 'not enough written evidence' - there is alot, its just a matter of how you look at it. From one point of view you can take Troy as a myth and all the stories that come from that as stories and nothing else. True, the bit about the slapper called Helen is probably not entirely true (its more likely that the collapse of the Hittite empire at the end of Bronze age IIB/C or so, of which Troy was a satellite city state gave the Greeks the excuse to put the boot in), but there is evidence for Mopsus's story - among others - including Danaus doing a runner in the days after Troy (Wilusa) fell. It wasnt straight after - maybe a generation or so according to the latest research (Troy VII period) but there is good evidence it happened. Then theres the bit where biblical Jericho had walls with earthquake protection built in (the part with the bloke playing Jazz was probably a later addition) - it just takes watching the local animals to know when a big quake is coming... and the rest is Josh: Fall of Jericho... with a lass called Rahab playing the part of the separatist Sangheili...

As to our great friends the Romans, theres also fairly good evidence that they rose from the core of the fleeing Trojans, including Troy style tombs dated to the early Roman period. Even Homer admits that the Trojans at the time of the Iliad were talented fighters, talk about comeback! Not to mention the proto Hoplite form of warfare that would have been prevalent at the time of Troy, bears a interesting resemblance to the Testudo & other common Roman tactics

The mistake I think people make is that we assume that because one group had a particular skill or technology, that they were alone in possessing it. The Romans & Greeks & Egyptians had writing, all well and good, but we have no way of telling, bar going back and asking the Romans, if various groups they overran and absorbed had it too, simply because the Romans steamrollered over them. Winners write the histories.

PS: as to it 'not being their history' there is good genetic evidence, especially in the far and middle east, of long occupations by the persons currently ensconced there. For example, the Iranians, Afghanistanis and kazakhs all have Persian descent, point of fact the -stan suffix comes from the old Persian word for 'country' - they share many characteristics, including physical appearance and languages, and are well known to be the military equivalant of 'bottle coveys' - in other words they wont stop fighting even when they should, and you better not turn your back on whats left afterwards. Hence them giving the British Empire a good kicking twice (and it would have been a 3rd time if we hadnt cheated, this time is number 4 by the way), the Russians twice, The Macedonians only managed it because they fought a couple of battles and then legged it. The mobile mixture of different people in different lands is partly due to Colonialism, partly due to the various violent diasporas and partly due to economic factors...

Oh, and by the way, im part Saxon, English (which itself is a corruption of East Angles), Irish, Scandinavian, and French (sigh, my family has alot of connections with the Hugenot french diaspora). Thats at least 1500 years of 'British' history - and I am still here... in the land of my forfathir.

Open 'Facebook killer' survives on cash donations

Jemma
Facepalm

I dont know about that...

I know at least any Jewish person with any knowledge of their history will, ditto anyone of Armenian or Irish, Welsh, Scottish stock and the list goes on and on (including any Russians whose ancestors weren't part of Stalins direct family). Practically any racial group who've had another/other racial group(s) put the boot into them since somewhere around 72CE will have an unenviable knowledge of it. Just because you had to look it up in a dictionary doesn't mean everyone else has a reading age of 12 and the charisma of a tabletop.

Personally I think its a good use of the word, since the idea is to do the very same with your own personal entity, but in a controlled way that gives better (any) personal security to the individual concerned. The name Facebook is about as Aspergers as it gets as its the most basic simplistic description of what it does and is/was meant to be. (Disclaimer: I have a mild form of Aspergers/ASD myself - so I can say things like that, in the same way as I can make Essex girl jokes - being a girl and from Essex)

Natwest net and phone banking goes titsup

Jemma
FAIL

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence

Three times is enemy action.

You know I have to wonder about the decisions made by the UK banks in regard to security. My bank, HSBC, has just changed its security system to use a small PIN generator device from China. Now its not too hard to put in a few little extra bits in order to enable some sort of 'nullify and reset' signal, or even, given that Chinese companies (and government) have the algorithms to hand, a brute force type of attack. Given also that from my conversations and letters to him, the security head of HSBC, is either a Oscar worthy actor or as dumb as a stump, whats the odds that they've checked the devices properly?

From my point of view; given the chance to bet £10 on a bank paying out money to have the things taken apart and checked from top to tail, or Commander Sir Samuel Vimes Vs a Quasi-Demonic entity of extreme power; I have to say I would be voting for the guy in the chain mail...

Now, how long do you think it would take for our nice tea drinking, cricket loving civilization to turn into a cutscene from Halo:Reach if all the banks that used a similar system that was obtained from China (and whats the betting thats alot of them) were all hit at once. People cant get money for food, bills or petrol/Diesel - They cant get paid, and so on. I know there are other systems in place - but the thing there is that the banks have automated so much, that what was the entirety of a bank 20 years ago is a shadow of its former self (the physical staff etc) and it will *not* be able to cope for an extended period alone. Thats not even to mention the additional havoc that could be caused by pulling a stunt like that in the middle of Great Depression II...

I know it sounds paranoid, but the thing about being paranoid is its like being a pessimist. You are never ever disappointed.

if the Chinese could pull something like that off for an extended period then you wouldnt even need a nasty war like was going on in Libya. You just wait a little while and then saunter down and pick up the pieces after the countries you want are practically in the middle of their own little civil wars.

Even the most elementary tactics tells one that you don't build an army with only one type of unit, you just don't do it. Similarly, you don't put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to bank security - and I wonder how many people, when they look at the their security pin device see 'Made in China' on the back. There have already been cyberattacks traced to China mentioned in the media, given that we probably only hear about 1/10th of the total that happen, Im not happy about the odds that the 'system failures' we hear about are as innocent as they seem...

Time to find me an old sock to put under the mattress methinks.

Steve Jobs: the Exclusive Biography

Jemma
Gimp

Is it me, or does the picture of Stevie-boy on the first page remind you far to closely of Mr Zorg out of Fifth Element too?

Im sure a person who buys a new car every 6 months just to get out of paying the fee for a licence plate and happily parks in disabled parking pays is a wonderful person... but of course he is, alfter all he is the one who took all the credit for the iPhone...

Nokia: The first year of the Elopcalypse

Jemma

yup, it is. Because I am pissed off.

And as for your guff about not being able to code for Symbian and then having a road to damascus experience (strictly speaking, losing your exhaust in a pothole & then running over a landmine) because your lamentable coding ability was up to churning out derivative 'me too' crap for Windows 7.5- on your own admission no less!

Symbian customers bought Symbian phones for their abilities, and their stable OS and apps.

In order to make such programming for them has to be tighter and work within given standards. If that takes effort to learn then thats something you should be proud of, and it would make you a better programmer.

Its like making samurai swords - any tosser with a pile of tempered steel blanks and an angle grinder can make something usuable against your everyday murderous (except it really wasnt, honest!) copper...

It takes 7 YEARS to attain the level of apprentice if you want to do the job properly.

People like you depress me - it used to be that people had pride in what they did, even if they were building the Austin Maxi. Panel beaters that, at the age of 80 and crippled with arthritis, could knock out a dent on a ferrari, perfectly, with a bit of four'b'two and a lump hammer. Nowadays it seems like mediocrity is the new pride, like the new meaning of progress in phones is 'battery hungry crap'.

I've built motorcycles with my own two hands - true I cant weld, and I havent fabbed a panel in my life, but those two bikes were built to the best of my talents and my aesthetic sense & im proud of how they came out. One of the foremost builders of autocycles complimented me on how good they looked - this from someone who builds projects from scratch. Along with the two books I have in print, theyre something im proud of.

And the best you could come up with was 'sure its a crappy platform, and doesnt do the half of what the old ones did, but hey, I can program for it, so its fantastic. Go me!'.

It strikes me that the entirety of the programming/OS side of the old Nokia werent sacked - I'd bet good money they told Nokia where 'it' could be shoved and resigned or walked out. Hence the hurried 'pass the buck to that epitome of epic fail, Accenture'.

Its said that when Alexander the Great got to the Sea he cried because there was nothing left for him to conquer. Ten minutes in your company & he'd either have killed you on the spot, or been in a padded cell on Lithium for the rest of his life.

Mediocrity is not something to be proud of.

Jemma

usb otg & android

You're right, but its crashy, insecure, gets cruddy signal and eats batteries like nobodies business. Then you have the part where you drop em and bend over to google every time you use the gps. And yes, I have had two android 'sets and they were both irredeemably crap, so I am talking from a position of some experience.

Then theres the little matter of E7 talking to hard drives, mice, hubs, memory sticks, multiple memory cards, via sticks, even other phones memory. As far as I know the SGS series get orgasmic about being able to talk to memory sticks, and thats all.

My requirements so we are clear:

MY data where I put it and there alone

MY right to use MY purchase in private without google or whoever scarfing my data; I might not be able to stop them doing it over the net, but they can go blow a skunk before they do it when im driving.

MY right to a decent battery life

MY right to a stable, powerful system, without rogue apps or walled gardens

MY right to my choice of what type of handset format I want, just because Daily Fail readers have fallen to the 'fondleslab' revolution doesnt mean I have to; oh wait...

In fact the only thing Symbian falls down on for me is easy flashing & custom ROMs.

And to be blunt I would still be using my QTEK 8500 if it had WiFi.

The point everyone seems to be missing is the more you buy faux apple fondleslabs, the sooner the time will come when thats all thats on offer... And guess who'll be the Great Whingers then... Yup, you, come on down.

I still use a palm watch pda, Abacus 5005, because theres nothing else like it. Know why? Because palm works on sensible small battery draw processors like Symbian does. Watch phones with WiFi and Opera mini, MTK OS, good battery life and a whole touchscreen/T9 combi phone with bluetooth A2DP - so thanks but you can keep your £600 Winphone/android/iOS.

It appears the choice for smartphone OS is basically a choice between a stazi like state, total anarchy, or a coalition of the gormless. (iOS, Android, WinPhone). On the other hand theres still RIM.

Jemma
FAIL

And lo, the spawn of Gates did come unto the Children of EPOC...

...and the Customers were sorely shafted and bereft.

What drugs are you on Andrew?

Symbian doesnt have a facebook client.. Who the f*#+ cares? I deleted my Assbook account months ago. I never even had a Twatter account, nor do I want one.

I dont WANT my personal data, music, pictures & interests on MS servers where they can be scraped up and sold to the highest bidder. Not to mention there goes all my data when some MS-cretin accidently formats the server & then finds the backups are blank...

I dont want a fscking fondleslab - I want a physical keyboard so I dont have to rewrite everything 3 times because of fondleslab keyboard barfs.

I dont give a bonobos left bollock about retina displays and processors specs that read like something that would be more at home in an Incom XJ-7.

I want a phone that keeps signal, that has a decent battery life, that has world beating functionality. I want USB OTG, I want stability and security, I want good quality software that wont take the whole phone down just by being *on* the damn thing, let alone running.

I dont mind that there are people who swear by android or iOS. Why should I? But I do mind that my choice in phones is being taken away because of a whole continent of people who are confused by the common or lesser spotted five speed manual gearbox cant understand it & therefore assume its an al-queda plot.

Symbian is still the top smartphone OS by numbers online IN THE WORLD. Its the only OS I know of where a 6 year old phone *still* beats the common or garden new smartphone on high end features (why'd you think a new N93 is still £175 on ebay?). Its also one of the few phone OS's where people keep phones until they literally fall apart, and then go buy a new body when its too tatty. They do that because there is *still* no replacement function for function for what Symbian can do.

What makes me laugh is that this 'all new' Windows phone is based on Windows CE thats over 12 years old. Not to mention that its crippled, feature barren and its highlight 'tiles' was coded up for Windows Mobile 6.5 by a guy working on his own in about 3 months, which tells you how much work MS did on it.

Im not saying Symbian is perfect right now, some mistakes have been made, upgraded processors should have been used sooner (if only to mollify the 'top trumps brigade'). I want a grown up, secure, stable, feature rich phone that can hold a signal & has a battery life measurable in days, not minutes. Right now, I have that in my E7. Anna is good, Belle is known already to be worlds better.

So Mr Elop, will you come and tell a loyal & happy Nokia Symbian customer why she should buy another Nokia phone? And why you wasted years of development on Symbian & Meego/Maemo to throw it all over for a smartphone OS that, bar Nokia, is deader and of less use than a Dodo (you can at least eat a Dodo) and has all the popular appeal of a paedophile police officer?

I hope you are pleased Mr Elop, you have managed to create a commercial disaster rivalling the Fiat Strada, Nissan Almera, Renault Avantime & Austin Allegro combined. You make the management of BL look talented. To quote the great Flashman

But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement - in short for the true talent for catastrophe, Elop stands alone. Others abide our question, one such being the 'Immortal Apotheker', but Elop outshines them all as the greatest idiot CEO of our own or any other day...".

It takes a special talent to destroy ones *entire* customer base in one single decision, which I suspect is what you have managed to do. I tip my bonnet to you...

Renault Wind Gordini roadster

Jemma

Actually...

Its a pretty little thing when you see it in meatspace, the pictures dont do it justice.

Personally though I will stick to my Safrane 2.2Vi. Quick, reliable, £500 and gets 35mpg @ 70mph. Whats not to like.

The Gordini's have a long history of being widowmakers - all the way through from the original Renault 8 version with the engine in the boot (yes, you did end up facing the other way more than you wanted to) and the utterly insane R5 Gordini with the mid mounted turbo motor.

Personally again, I like my comfort so the Safrane Biturbo AWD would be my pick - or maybe pull the motor from that and put it in a 25 - *that* would be enough to satisfy any raving nutcase, since the 25 just barely scrapes a tonne & that would make for almost 130bhp/tonne with the stock motor... tuned the PRV biturbo is good for maybe 350-400 range.

Its good for what it is - but not for me..

Ministers kill off failed £12.7bn NHS IT revamp

Jemma
FAIL

LMAO

I worked on this with BT, within a week of being hired with some other poor sods we'd taken a look at the system that was supposed to be happening and we didnt know whether to laugh or cry.

We got the anti virus part of it, specifically to set up, test and configure that so it would automatically push updates, over the *entire* system whenever required - with the intent of it not throwing a total eppy on general principle. Simple enough, and we got a fair level of accuracy (aka, updates doing what they should when they should).

Slight problem though - I might be wrong but NT4 domains and 'Active Directory' is never going to work and thats what they were envisaging when I was working on the system (at £35 an hour). Theres more chance of Obama giving Gaddafi a hug than those two working in concert - but hey, thems paying.

The thing that gets me is that they know to a few hundred pounds how much these total and utter frell ups cost, but we (the taxpayer) who paid for the sodding palaver in the first place never seem to get that money back, whereas if it was a private company this sort of thing would send them into bankruptcy...

Me... bitter? nah

Nissan Micra DIG-S

Jemma
Facepalm

The poor thing, what did they do to it?!

Im not entirely a fan of the Micra, having driven one of the bug-eye variety with the manual (yes I really do have a clutch, even if you cant tell its there) variety - but at least it was something different, something with a little bit of appeal to it over and above the euroshoebox norm.

This is just arrgh-some - it looks like a the result of a Fiat Punto doing something illegal to a Fiesta.

I've no real complaints with a three-banger, bearing in mind that I am of an engineering bent and know these can be made to be both smooth and quick (witness the 890cc Suzuki turbo that with a little massaging can manage 200hp) but ack on the blandness of it.

Nissan, please come up with something a little more special on the bodywork front. The last micra was something special and something different - this is worthy of the old TR7 styling comment "Oh my God, they did it on both sides..."

Yes, there's a Tech Bubble. But that's OK

Jemma

Can we please have a missed point icon...?

A$$book has been directly implicated in several murders, one paedophile case and Goddess how many stalking, shooting and GBH cases. But its still worth money and still operating, and you have to ask yourself why. If I started a little tiny company, doing the same thing, but not selling data to corporations and most likely government, I'd last about 10 seconds before being charged as an accessory if some unpleasant little nerk dumped a USN Major in the boot of an '89 SEL - and happened to have a profile on my version of a$$book (yes, I know, too much watching of NCIS).

When will people understand - *its primary function is NOT, repeat NOT, to allow you to keep in contact with the relatives that moved to Australia because they loathe you*. Its function, sole and solitary, is to take your data and your thoughts and make as much money off them as humanly possible.

That is the soul and centre of any commercial social media site, bar maybe Diaspora, and that is not quite in the same kettle of Goldman #.

Given that this is the case - its worth countless millions to the banks, businesses and the like of this world, because its a licence to print money for them. They must be laughing all the way to their desks - we are GIVING away exactly what they need for free, so I think personally the valuation is about right. From their point of view.

The less said about bankers the better - theres nothing good to be said, but then the only people worse than the bankers are their regulators and the people who control them - aka MP's and the like in the UK - most of whom it appears couldnt even balance their own chequebook, let alone do joined up thinking (a good example is Alastair "dont call me" Darling - the one man walking disaster area that symied the Lehmans Barclays deal and put the world into a 20 year nosedive single handed).

My problem with the article is simple - it, like all other financial articles, derives from a fundamentally flawed structure and concept. It assumes, that value is value, that a given value is what something is worth. There is a good rule of thumb learned from a Lovejoy book of all things. "An item has one value and one value alone, and thats the amount you manage to get for it when you get rid".

For example, lets say a$$book values itself at $35 a share. That price is a transitory value, its nothing more than a mass hallucination, as is everything on the money markets and in commerce in its entirety. I want to buy a car and the sticker is £25,000. I have a beat up 15 year old car thats worth £500 of anyones money - but they'll give me £1500 in exchange, plus probably knock off another £800 to get a sale. So what is the value, it is impossible to say, the same salesman will sell the same car for something entirely different tomorrow. Then you've got the issue that one mans Tatra 77a (google it) is another mans Ferrari, and the values are skewed again.

Lehmans is trading $50 a share in June - by September its $3.49. NOTHING HAS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED. The properties on which the mortgages are based have not suddenly ceased to exist, there has been no material change.. yet 20,000 people are looking for a job and the entire banking sector has done a passable impression of the Death Star. All because of another mass hallucination of changing values (ironically in this case it wasnt a mass hallucination of value per se, it was that no one persons hallucination agreed with anyone elses, over and above everyone being too confused to have the relevant hallucination).

Even discussing this is somewhat of a transititory hallucination, specially a$$book. Zuckerberg, amongst his greater or lesser talents is well known to be a person who has Aspergers or one of the autism spectrum disorders (they are not one and the same, and are varied even within those descriptions). A person with that condition is much less likely to do all that work, and have all that success and then just up and sell it, its a situation that would be anathema, which is why valuing Facebook is most likely an exercise in futility, since there is a fair likelyhood that it would be prised from his cold dead hands before it would be sold. I would venture to suggest that if there is ever an IPO from A$$book it wont be Zuckerberg's idea and there is a good chance that there would have to have been a LOT of convincing before he ok'd it. Letting go control is *not* an Aspergergic persons strong suit.

Truth be told there is always a potential 'bubble' - 100% of the time. A bubble is nothing more or less than someone spending a given amount on an item, at which point the base hallucination (the price) is 'set' - then more people want whatever it is, and the hallucinated value increases. The 'burst' happens when enough people, or people with the right amount of clout, express doubts about that value, or when a limiting factor is removed.

Doubters > Hallucinators = burst bubble.

Restricted supply - restriction (or possible removal of same) = burst bubble

A prime example is David Einhorn & Lehmans. Think David and Goliath - but visualised by Tarantino. Nothing *physical* changed from the start of that situation to the end. The only thing that happened was the mass hallucination imploded, a reaction, ironically, of the 'hallucination' of *one* person and the rest is a worldwide apocalypse.

The person who invented the concept of value & the concept of currency should be located in the mists of time, dragged back to the present day, and tried for crimes against humanity... because those two mass hallucinations have cost alot of people dear over the years.

# ravenous vampire squid

Microsoft exec departs after tweet about Nokia phone

Jemma
FAIL

Or you could just...

Dust off your HTC Diamond running 6.5.3 and get the Host 1.5 file from xda-developers which is basically the entirety of 'tiles' and will run on any touchscreen windows device. Oh and it took the guy who wrote it about 3 months. Yes, its slick and quick... On 528mhz, and did I mention, free?

The fact that this MS guy has given it an 8 probably means a 3 in everyone else's book, a fact which Ballmer knows full well.

Oh, and when I can connect to a tv two different ways on a winphone, and use a mouse with it, and an external hard drive @ the same time, not to mention have a 2+ day battery life and constant signal... Then and only then can you prise my E7 from my cold dead hands, in the cold dead nursing home (because I will probably be in one by the time it can do all that and be stable too).

Windows 8 secure boot would 'exclude' Linux

Jemma
FAIL

And people still think St Jobs is harmless?

The Great Jobs and his closed system goodness started all this and I hope the ifundies are proud of themselves for perpetuating it until it reached this epitome of ridiculousness.

If this isnt stopped then Microsoft have everyone by the curlies.

1. Assuming the ARM incompatibility re current windows apps is true - whole new app & systems will have to be upgraded, at once. Costs of which will kill small companies stone dead. Not to mention the lost business all such fundamental upgrades always bring.

2. Even if there *is* a way of bypassing it companies wont use it because of fear of being sued for using jailbroke software stacks. Think im a pessimist? Just look at the legal battles over curly corners happening right now.

3. Every single update will most likely break the jailbreaks that worked before. Another reason non MS will be killed in the commercial appspace. Companies just cant stop for 36 hours every time MS brings out an update.

This is the point the various monopoly commissions need to step in and kill this stone dead - if they dont its going to make the credit crunch look like a fender bender. Companies will fall left right and centre, destroyed by the very IT they rely on.

There is something even worse to contemplate. Lets assume, for example, Nokia drops WinPhone and keeps with Symbian and MeeGo. How hard would it be to introduce a bios level incompatibility? Ditto Android & even iOS. Syncing therefore impossible - or maybe modify Exchange to not talk to anything Linux based... And call it a bug, that we just cannot seem to fix...

If that happens there are two possibilities. Firstly, we all bend over and take it up the tuchus. Secondly - Microsoft single handedly make the desktop/laptop extinct. Whichever happens people and companies will suffer during the intermediate period and ultimately we all will as a result.

This is an extremely dangerous possibility and an entirely plausible one. And people wonder why I hate iFundies and the Steve they rode in on...

NHS loses CD of 1.6 MILLION patients' records

Jemma

Morphine is indeed collateral-tastic (apparently recent studies indicate it helps the spread of cancers ironically by increasing the proliferation of blood vessels). However a doctor being handed a list of a patients allergies, with morphine at the very top, after the nurse on the case has looked at the list and *added* additional probable problem drugs. Then the doctor over rules the nurse and injects said patient with Morphine....

She was dead within 20 minutes. From being able to walk into the hospital unaided to being dead - thats pretty effective incompetence even by NHS standards. And thats not to mention the situations I have found myself in. We need to take bloods from your wrist, I swear there would have been less swelling and damage if the person had taken the blood with a shovel. As it was I collapsed in the middle of the ward and ended up on oxygen. Not good.

Jemma

sigh

"Ooh" said the NHS executive to himself "I've got a great idea, why dont I set up a taxi fund for patients, set a direct debit up into it, tell no one else about it and then keel over with a fatal heart attack.. That'll give the auditors something to do in 3 years time... I'll call it the where's the missing million game..." *evil grin*

Or how about employing 4 people at £100 a day to sit in the cafe, because not one of the current IT "gods" had the remotest idea how to unlock the machines user policies so they could be updated with new anti virus. You guessed it, the guy who did the policies had since left.

Thats just two examples of ONE NHS trust that I worked for - let alone the "heres a list of the drugs she cant have" debacle that cost my grandmother her life. But then, you'd give a person morphine for a chest infection right?..

Three examples of just one of the many trusts in the UK.

I find the "but its old data" comment a total load of crap. People dont change birthdates, they often live in one place for most of a life time. How is that old data?

Then there's the potential for blackmail and company abuses. You were on antidepressants, you're unstable, bye bye promotion. The fact that you were on them because you were the sole survivor of a car crash that wiped out your family.. Irrelevant (the fact that people have been put on a/ds for this very reason beggars belief).

There is a way of solving this. Use a simple device with a dual function. Design a wristwatch with a damn big memory store and a usb connector. Distribute accordingly. In my entire life I have lost a watch the grand total of once. Its been done before, the Onhandpc (640kb ram, 3mhz processor, DOS, PIM and a working spreadsheet of all things) or the WristPDA that ran Palm OS 4.1. I have both and I still have them, yet I've managed to lose 2 meter long snakes while being in the same room & have spent countless hours chanting the mantra "where are my f*#king keys" and missing buses by 30 seconds as a result.

This is not a difficult problem to solve, so why are we mourning the loss of our data and doing bugger all to suggest ways of securing it?

Apple pulls smartphone slavery app

Jemma
Trollface

ROFLMAO

This is sooooo good it just has to be fattening...

"....So, do children do *all* the work?..."

"Not the whipping.."

*lash* *lash* *LASH*. - Futurama

Parliament has no time for 100,000+ signature e-petitions

Jemma
FAIL

I would say...

I told you so months ago, but that would be utterly utterly pointless... something like expecting joined up thought from the average UK citizen.

If anyone really believed at this point that the Government of the UK (any government of the UK) had any interest in the people it purported to represent that should be long dead and gone now. The fact that anyone could have entertained it past somewhere around 1950 amazes me.

We have no power whatsoever now, and whats priceless is its the fault of the induhvidual majority that this is the case, because they are the ones that are wingeing, rioting and writing to the Daily Fail to whine that they haven't seen a bobby on the beat since BL stopped building Allegros.

We let policing slip through our fingers and the result of that was London 2011, and the number of commentards who were willing to string up members of the public reacting to the Police's sheer stupidity and incompetence was painful to see. Don t want to pay decent wages and hire decent officers who aren't bigoted brainless thugs or farm the 'service' out to the cheapest bunch of chimps on the market... you'll get precisely what you deserve and thats what you got. The problem with that is that people like me, who are vulnerable, got it too. Ta muchly for that.

We didnt manage to elect a government, so they made one for us, out respectively the most dangerous and the most spineless of the available options (Cons & Lib Dem) who, like all coalitions have made a cock up of monumental proportions out of a molehill on so many different fronts that General Elphinstone (of Flashman & Afghanistan fame (the first time)) could take lessons from them.

The only news I have seen in the last few days that is more delicious in its irony is the development by Microsoft of a whole raft of applications for Symbian (you know the phone OS that is deader than Palm OS 4) - perhaps belatedly realising that their phone OS is well on the way to becoming the marsupial sabre tooth of the mobile world.

You know, I'm almost tempted to vote for the BNP - on the basis that while they are a bigoted, thuggish, racist, everything-phobic bunch of the nastiest human beings bar the founding members of the Westboro' Baptist Church, at least they are honest about it. Our current government are pretty much the same, they just lie through their teeth while destroying peoples lives.

I hope you are all looking forward to more single mother bashing, minority clobbering, disabled battering, rich person snuggling government - because thats what you are going to get, and you deserve it. And to think, you *really* thought that a government involving the Conservatives would give a monkeys toss about public petitions - its almost sweet.

How to stay out of big trouble from little devices

Jemma
Facepalm

thank you...

For making my point for me...

I loathe religion, all religion, with malice aforethought. I find it practically impossible to believe in people, nevermind some massive invisible beard in the sky. However, I do believe in facts (and yes, I am fully aware of the dichotomy of that statement) and in point of fact, Symbian, BB, WebOS (as was) have functioning and capable built in security.

idiotOnSlab relies solely on the ducks-ass paradigm & Android has more holes in its security 'model' than Job's liver. I have used all of these OS bar iOS and my conclusions are as follows.

BB - adequate, competent, a little behind the times and reminiscent of old Nokia S40 in some respects. Bullet proof security & reliability. Good keyboards. Crappy data plans and configurations. Works well on reasonable hardware.

Android - infinitely configurable, but consequently infinitely flakey. I've no idea what connectivity stacks theyre using but they are irredeemable in their awfulness. Moderate reliability, zero security. Battery life in hours with some handsets. High speed bleeding edge processors for good performance. Generally weak function sets.

WebOS - looks good, as up to date and simple as iOS. Good battery life. Good reliability. Doesnt need the output of a Victory-class ionisation reactor to be useful. Fair security, good connectivity, fair functionality.

Symbian 3rd. 3-4 day battery life. Class leading functionality. Infinitely configurable but with excellent security. Runs on lower mhz processor & chipset configurations. Good memory handling. There is a reason why the N93i is still making £175 on ebay. Unbeatable connectivity and durability.

Symbian 5th/^3 - see above. I will concede happily that in comparison to iOS that the UX on these devices is not 'up to par' (aka simplified to the point a 2 year old can order a new car on dads credit card). Functionally, and this is the point of a smartphone, still way ahead of the rest, bar maybe the Galaxy SII. *Still* two day battery life. Still runs perfectly happily on cheaper, energy sipping hardware. Still can do more using that hardware, than 1.2ghz chips can running Android etc, simply because its fundamental principles were and still remain efficiency and functionality.

I dont consider ^3 to be perfect. I dont consider my E7 to be perfect. In some respects its gone backwards in relation to even my old 2006 E70. But it gets and keeps a signal, it lasts for a full days usage without fail. Its never crashed on me, never dropped a call, never died from lack of battery, never spontaneously switched itself off and doesnt force me to bend over and take it up the ass from either Google or Apple.

My ideas, writings, pictures are MY OWN. I do not wish google to know where my brother lives or what his daughters are called. I may loathe him, but those are his decisions to make, not mine, and certainly not up to some pompous little American prick who has delusions of grandeur/aspergers/thinks hes God (Brin/Zuckerberg/Jobs). And before ppl wail, I have a mild form of Aspergers, thankfully it didnt inspire me to barf peoples details all over the place and result in my being guilty of enabling several murderers.

I am however drifting from my point. Fair enough Symbian isnt easy to develop for, but is it just me or have there been people perfectly happy to churn out freeware for it for years.. Oh look, im right. They've not bitched and whined about it. I suspect that the old reason is behind this. Greed. I can get more money developing for *insert flavour of month here* and the programming tools are so simple because they've been designed for tweenie script kiddies, so I can be lazy & rake it in too. Who knew *bounce*. Everyone else is doing it.. Why not me too?

You probably are even a nice little chap who puts money into RSPCA or PETA or one of the myriad Godbotherers for Africa charities, but ignore the problems in your local community. Ironic isnt it since its British and assorted Godbotherers that got most of Africa into its current state.

Frankly I dont give a Bonobos left bollock about all the fanboi stuff. My opinions are from my own experience. It may not be typical - I may not be typical, in the fact that I like to learn as much as I can about whatever catches my fancy. But I do get very sick and tired of inane statements and biased crap being taken as gospel, another irony since most of both come from the US currently. If you work as a journo, you have a fundamental requirement to be truthful, if you arent, then whatever you report on is effectively worthless words on a page.

Yes, its probably not world endingly important that the smartphone wars be truthful, in the same way that the history of the holocaust should be, but then that wasnt accurate either and given the effect smartphones are having on modern society, mostly to its detriment it appears...

I take it you know why Churchill & Roosevelt closed the borders to Jews in '41? No? I quote from a signed cabinet minute by Churchill "we dont want them all over here!". Funny how *that* aint in the school books... The result, the horrifying extension of policy that Himmler & Heydrich dreamed up, is, in all its mindbending detail.

To summerize. I dont give a damn what OS you use or program for. I dont really care if you are Apple fanboi/fangrrl no.1. Ive said my piece, from my experiences. What does annoy and worry is poor research, bias, and downright garbage that seems to be all there is to guide consumers. It worries me because I can see this greed driven laziness and easy optioning in many walks of life, some of which are a damn sight more important than which smartphone you choose to snuggle.

Jemma
WTF?

Oh, what a surprise..

Its smack symbian time again at el fail.

"symbian was hit hardest...". Note if you will the capitalisation of Android and idiotOnSlab, a concept that el fail cannot manage with Symbian. Note also that this statement is backed up with precisely sweet F A. My GCSE english teacher would have crucified me for that sort of shoddy work.

Android is about as secure as a nomads yurt. There are borderline apps everywhere you look and plenty of outright hostile ones as well. Oooh look my tetris-clone *really* needs GPS services, so be a good pleb and hit allow. I promise it wont track you, or snarf your payment details or install a keylogger...

I'd love to see who pays your wages, because its all getting a bit shill-tastic for my taste.

I will repeat slowly and in simple words so you understand. Symbian has a built in thing that stops naughty people doing things to your phone that are bad. It stops nasty app writing people using their nasty apps to trick you into letting the nasty apps do bad things. It also has another thing that makes sure that if an app only is allowed to use certain parts of your phone that is all it can use - your smartphone tells it off if it doesnt play by the rules. That means that all the things you put on your Symbian phone are very much safer than the things silly people put on Android or Apple phones. The End.

Simple enough for you? I havent channelled my inner 7 year old for years, but I needed to get to the level of journalism on here.

Yes there have been trojans and nasties developed for symbian, all of which rely on the user being an idiot. NONE of them have *ever* managed to crack inherant security - nor are they out in the wild...

Android on the other hand, cant even manage to run a clean install for 3 hours without crashing, let alone deal with app security. Apples method is even simpler - feed given app to one of the many Mahatma Jobs clones they have floating around and if he likes it, its in (security, um how does that work?).

Seriously, I despair of finding anything intelligent on this site now, between army arse-up scapegoats, smartphone fanboi fellatio, and american todger trepanning theres less actual articles of interest by the week. Its almost like an online NoTW, hold the boobs (in el regs case, bulgarian airbags should be heard, not seen).

Nervous Samsung seeks Android Plan F. Or G, H ....

Jemma
Facepalm

Can I retrain please?

Nope, it just got upgraded. Includes the S series phones as well now apparently. I wish I could go back in time and train to be a patents lawyer, must be great to actually be able to charge someone "To: twiddling of thumbs in court for 4 hours & energy expended thereby: $150.19"

HP's WebOS mess: When smartphone assets go toxic

Jemma
WTF?

That has got to be the biggest lump...

Of steaming dinosaur turd I have ever read on here bar nothing.

Oh joy, another symbian is dead story, along with an Apple and WebOS kicking into the bargain.

The scary thing is I actually think you are serious, that winphone 7 is a viable contender. It is nowhere near. Hell, 3 months programming by a guy in his spare time and all the vaunted tiles garbage has been ported to WinMo 6.1/6.5 - yup microsoft really worked at that!

Android is not dead sadly, nor will it be while there is a market for low to medium price, dismal to low spec, crashy insecure battery munching crap. So thats secure.

Apple have got the overpriced underfeatured and locked down tighter than a ducks ass market sorted admirably.

MeeGo I strongly suspect is alot further from dead than you think. I wouldnt be in the least surprised if elopco are working on winphone 7.xx & MeeGo firmwares for the non Symbian units.

Symbian is oddly healthy for a dead OS. i wouldnt be surprised in the least if it was part of a second option approach, if WinPhone 7.xx falls flat on its ass on a landmine, which by most accounts is more than likely. It *still* has fundamental strengths in many areas and is unmatched in others. Dont know if you realise, but a lot can happen between now and 2012, let alone 2016 which is the final 'retire' date. Not to mention the promised 10 new Symbian handsets...

Microsofts offering is no more or less than tainted. Its Microsoft. Its limited, and its still reeling under the undeserved stigma of 6 onwards (6.1 and onwards were and still are viable smartphone OS). I'd venture to say between WinPhone and Symbian, Symbian is the better liked, since it seems that the chances of WinPhone being accepted rank somewhere about as good as a Russian Commissar gaining an Obergruppenfuhrer commission in the Waffen SS.

HP might as well have stocked up on kool-aid as do what they've done re WebOS. I havent seen one critical review of the phones, not one. It makes no sense whatsoever unless HP are terminally and unrecoverably ill, and we've seen little evidence of that, to the extent of it being that serious. I cant see any reasoning behind it, its as bad as the bernd pinchetsreider speech... "heres the new Rover 75, buy it now, while Rover lasts" which basically terminally damaged Rover & almost took BMW with it.

You points make no sense. Just none. What OS has the greatest installed base, its not android or iphone.. What OS's have good security models, guess what, not android or iphone. What OS's give you freedom of use of the system you *own* without let, hindrance or data mining, not android or iphone...

There is a backlash starting re data security, battery life, user freedom, stability and

quality. Android is an epic fail on 4 of 5 as is iPhone. WinPhone is an unknown quantity, but this is patchfailtastic MS after all. The OS's that can provide all the above are Symbian, MeeGo, BB and WebOS - so I dont think theyre anywhere near as dead as the Jobsian accolytes or an-drones want you to think.

I actually think Elopco have been cunning - if winphone does implode and prove to be as popular as a skunkskin thong - then theyve got a fall back strategy. More that can be said for their competitors...

Poor IT could leave Brit troops hanging in Afghanistan

Jemma

Isandlwana, not quite

While it is true that a bad quartermaster is something that needs to be seen to be believed, and they have probably cost alot of lives as you said.. Isandlwana was nothing to do with inept supply.

It was more to do with overconfidence, arrogance, bigotry and really really stupid choice in guns.

The Zulu under Cetshwayo knew the lay of the land and used tactics as good as any modern European army. Tactics that Lord Chelmsford should have known about since the one they used, a obstructed pincer attack (in this case starting off behind, and then looping around a bloody big hill), the horns of the buffalo, was practically their signature move.

Then theres the Martini Henry rifle, which overheated and either jammed, fouled or cooked off rounds after a certain number of shots (the few line survivors testified to this). The British were also overextended, over confident - not to mention the fact they initially only identified 1/3rd of the Zulu force and tailored their defensive positions to moderate this advance - no subsequent changes of any importance were made even after the other two arms of the Zulu's hove into view.

Then you have the strange at best choice of Chelmsford & Company to use what appears to have been a formation straight out of Sharpes Regiment (one long line of troopers, superfired by a second), when common sense says given the way the Zulu moved and fought, that they should have been in Square (which in subsequent battles they were). This makes little sense if the majority of the troops were armed with Martini Henry Rifles, since these were breech loading guns, not muzzle loading smoothbore guns. In that case, the superfiring (the one line protecting the others reloading) wasnt necessary, and the thin depth of line meant that a break could be made easily and the line rolled up. Which indeed was what happened and led to what was an effectively as much a massacre as that at Kabul and Gandamack in 1842.

The only reason Chelmsford managed to get out of it all with his reputation somewhat unscathed was he was able to talk directly to the Queen, who appears to have been supportive, and the subsequent events of Rorkes Drift.

Given that the MH rifle was standard issue it seems odd that the problems with it at Isandlwana were not repeated at Rorkes Drift. However the two battles are somewhat different. At Isandlwana the troopers were firing more or less constantly, since they had less need to conserve ammunition as did the Rorkes Drift contingent. Since the rate of fire at Rorkes Drift was lesser, there was a lesser chance of the MH Rifles weaknesses coming to the fore.

HP murders webOS tablets, phones

Jemma

umm, why not?

If all your gonna do is check the weather, the news and the like why on earth not buy it?

A product doesnt suddenly dissolve in shame because development has been stopped for heavens sake, its still just as capable. That is of course assuming it will be built now and available. Point of fact, its probably a better buy, cheap prices.

Ive got the E7 myself, the best phone ive had bar none. Accepts peripherals, accepts many of the 3rd/5th ed apps. Two to three day battery life. Fantastic screen. And more functionality than Android & idiotOnSlab combined. But its not easy or as pretty and it requires the use of a functional brain (at least for a little while) so people dont wanna.

By all means buy an iTwerp or a An-drone. Its entirely your decision. But dont whine and wail like a Beirut fishwife when WebOS, Symbian and MeeGo go down faster that a Clinton intern. Theres a name for that, hypocrisy.

I swear that if people actually researched their fondlebrick and fondleslab decisions properly and tested the devices they got before buying them, we'd all be packing smartphones with touch screens, physical keyboards, decent removable batteries, OTG and HDMI out, not to mention GPS and all the rest. Nope, we listen to the ads, buy the fondlebrick and spend the 18 month contract bitching how we now hate touchscreen keyboards.

But I've digressed. If you have decided the WebOS tablet is the right product for you, that hasnt changed has it? HP shooting themselves in the head hasnt caused it to morph into the tablet equivalent of Dubya in drag? Nope I thought not, so wheres the issue?

Jemma
WTF?

I thought the platform was supposed to be burning...

*before* you jump off it into the fire...

I mean seriously, how many idiots can you get in one industry?

Google & Android depending on whom you listen to have either just kicked Apple in the nads so hard Steve Jobs balls are dangling from his ears like designer earrings... Or theyve committed ritual suicide.

Apple are on the verge of realising that the collection of 12 year olds that bought the first iPhone are now older and want to be able to *use* that phone their own way, with their own decisions. Not to mention privacy of data.

HP spend massive amounts on WebOS, and brought out credible and well accepted products. And then waited until their competitors are doing a maclaren and fighting amongst themselves. And then killed their only offering stone dead. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Not to mention the chaps at Nokia... Ooh, we arent as pretty as the others, lets run round in circles flapping our hands, and hire someone from the doyenne of mobile devices. Microsoft - whose current offering has about as much chance of success as Elphinstone has of getting gazetted with the VC. Then, in a display of comedic ineptitude unrivalled in the annals of smartphone design, lets release arguably our best smartphones with an immediately prospective UI update that solves the popularity/UX issues and to put the tin hat on it, we'll kill that OS and its universally acclaimed successor to boot. And then, bitch about poor sales.

Honestly, where on the planet do they find these people? Other companies spend their time trying to avoid bankrupcy. This lot seem to run leap and vault towards it as if its the ambrosia of the Gods and world domination combined.

You know, if someone tells me tomorrow that HP have sold WebOS to Nokia I wouldnt be in the least surprised. It beggars belief that anyone so apparently gormless can make it to the level of executive without being found out.

Facebook flashplodder to appeal against 4-yr cooler stint

Jemma
Pint

If you actually read the post...

You would find out that is not what I said. Repeatedly. More than once.

Yes, I do think cops are generally so far beyond fsckwit that they'd need a 2 year course to drag themselves to that level. But then, their inaction and stupidity cost me three visits to hospital and having to deal with a friend being killed.

I do not agree with rioting, but I agree far less with Police wading in on a peaceful protest for the simple reason they got caught out shooting someone who they claimed would/did shoot first. The fact the IPCC said he didnt, means even *they* couldnt get the police off.

If you commit a crime, you get punished, fairly. That is the correct way.

Going after a girl because she was at an animal rights protest 2 years ago, and trying to jail her even though she can prove she was 200 miles away.. Not so correct.

Jailing a guy for using the riot as an excuse for putting a bullet in someone, fair go. Trying to do the same to a bunch of lads with water pistols ffs? Not so correct again.

A piglet taking bribes, ignoring pertinent information, including his own voicemail being hacked, is allowed to leg it into the sunset. You take bribes as a normal citizen, boy do you get a different treatment. Unless you are a big company, then you get off.

The Police exist for two reasons. Protection of the public and solving crime. They have shown themselves criminally inept at both these tasks so many times now that it beggars belief. Worried mother asks for police protection from an ex who has access to guns, REFUSED, mother and youngest daughter subsequently tortured then shot. But Im sure you can convince her older sister that the Police are great.

Same situation again, protection refused, mother and two kids knifed repeatedly, 2 of the 3 so badly that they barely survive and spend time on ICU being put back together.

Shall I go on?

My personal experience with the police over 23 years has been one of constant and epic fail that makes homers oddessy look like a book for the under 5's. I know I am not alone in this, and it has damaged my health and put my life in jeopardy more than once. So you will excuse me if is my lifelong wish that I could learn Miss Achings trick with the fire, hand, and poker - and have Assistant Chief Constable Mason tied down in a suitable position.

Ive not said a single thing different since this debacle started and isnt it strange that where at the start I was sociopathic nutter of the week, people are now starting to mark me up? Im tired of repeating myself, but hey, I DONT agree with rioting and looting, nor assault, assault on a child in my presence would result in a corpse in short order (parts later found hanging from trees and down rabbit holes), burning homes and businesses, again with the no, running down other people, nope there too But neither do I approve of police brutality, inaction, ineptness and borderline criminal stupidity as led to London 2011.

And yes, to answer the other question, im seriously considering withdrawing my share of monies paid to the local police. I dont mind paying for a service, but since I haved never HAD a service from them, why should money I dont really have to spare go to pay their pensions?

Jemma
FAIL

Shooting a body thats already (brain)dead

Doesnt that cover the crime of killing a senior police officer?

The protesters were attacked by police, that much is fact.

The rioters were from areas that have had multiple problems with bad/abusive police officers, that much is fact.

The various police officers over the last few years who have done unspeakable things and got away with it (child porn while being support officers to the Soham families is just one) with either a dont do it again, or a kindly "look at the poor guy, seeing that 16 year old girl splashed all over his windscreen at 90mph has given him nightmares" as they let him walk free after committing nothing more less than murder, and THEN his collegues slag the dead teen off at the inquest in front of the family no less...? All that has been widely reported and you can be sure hasnt helped the cops reputation anywhere.

If you have to wonder why the riots happened you need to look no further than the media and the police as the instigators of it. Their actions directly led to the bad feeling which led to the riots. But they get away scot free yet again...?!? What is up with that?

Yes, taking to the streets and burning peoples homes and businesses, assaults, deaths and the like... all bad things for which the CORRECT people should be punished CORRECTLY. Using it as a police excuse to harass and score points off people the police/govt dont like, thank you but no.

Has anyone actually realised that some of their council tax and income taxes go to the police - how would it be if everyone refused to pay that part of it, ive been on the edge of doing that myself more than once in the last 2 years. If you cant hit them with intelligent argument, or get them to keep to what they say they are going to do to improve things, hit them in their wallet.

Scotland Yard Four cleared - on phone-hacking

Jemma
WTF?

"but I didnt do it...."

" I only said I did it so they'd take my nuts out of the Cobra tank..."

The Police are nothing more than a joke now. Its so bad its embarrassing. I live in the town where that kid was arrested for planning a water fight ffs - even 1000 water pistols do not make a regiment of M16/M203s.. whats the charge? Going equipped to give someone a cold? Thanks Mason, you've changed Colchester from the oldest recorded town in England to, in the eyes of the world, the dumbest, in one fell swoop. Congrats on that, im sure you will get the keys to the town for this days work. My great great (great?) uncle was the Mayor of the town in the late 1800s early 1900s, poor old Uncle Wilson must be spinning in his grave fast enough to light half of Highwoods...

The police are corrupt from top to bottom and thats giving them the best of it - the worst is probably not pronounceable in polite company. Even Gene "spastic in a magnet factory" Hunt would be preferable to this shower.

Ooh look, I completely mullered my job, took bribes and basically acted like a criminal in public office - so I'll resign and get off scot free. Thats what it amounts to.

The police are not respected and havent been for a long time, feared yes, but those are two different things. I might also venture to suggest, that the fear is also beginning to wear away, helped in no small part by idiotic arrests such as the Colchester lad who was apparently going to start the next armageddon with a bunch of mates armed with water pistols...

And why is nothing being done? because the majority of people who have nothing to do with the police still think they are mixture between frigging Camberwick Green and Mrs Marple and that the sun shines out of their righteous behinds. The reality is somewhat different, and the faster the general populace realise that the only safety the police have any interest is their own, the better things will be.

2nd-hand Popemobile, also used by Neil Armstrong, for sale

Jemma

engine mods

If I might venture to suggest a reason...

If Lincoln are anything like the Chryslers of the same era in the same price bracket they all used what was effectively a sports tuned V8 - such as the 440 6-pack (under a different name) - to get the huge lard barge to move at respectable speeds.

Given that these engines ran compressions of 10:1 in some instances using nothing more than a bunch of downdraft carbs, the less said about early EFi engines the better... high octane premium fuel was and still is a must for these cars, I've personally heard the racket the poor things make on standard octane, and its not a sound for the faint hearted. They really dont run well on it.

If that is the case, and I would be surprised if it were otherwise, the poor great lummox would indeed have problems dragging its weight up to high altitudes because of the power loss that would be caused by incorrect mixture and metering, not to mention less O2 for the engine to dine on.

Its alot like what happened when Clarkson and Co went up that desert - both the humans and the 4x4s were wheezing and complaining at high altitude. All of those 4x4s used carb engines of varying tune - the V8 in the Range Rover would possibly have lost 40% of its power through just not being able to get enough oxygen to burn. Thats 150hp to about 85hp in a 2 ton vehicle. The same thing in the Lincoln could be something like 400hp down to 220 - 230hp and even a standard continental is touching on more like 4 ton than 2 ton, let alone one thats been lengthened and probably armoured as well...

Range Rover Evoque Si4

Jemma
FAIL

Put it into sport mode and the dash goes red...

Is that by design, or did all of the idiot lamps go on in praise of Lucas, Prince of Darkness?

Ditto on the off road, ive taken a Humber Sceptre across more challenging terrain that that, after 2 solid days rain, and I didnt get set once. The same cannot be said of bmw drivers, whose concept of off road driving is:-

1. Get in, start up.

2. Select reverse

3. Floor it

4. Wonder why everyone is laughing and why your 5 series is up to its back axle in mud.

To be fair, I did sort of cheat, Im a farmers daughter, so I learned all the tricks long ago.

Not really a fan of this car, its pretty but thats what you want if you're a lil rich girl at a finishing school - its no use whatsoever when its the middle of february and you are elbow deep up a sheeps jacksie at 3am.

PETA to launch .xxx smut site 'to help animals'

Jemma
FAIL

this would be the same Mrs Pankhurst...

Who spent a fair amount of time copping off with, or writing dirty letters on the subject of copping of with, two of her own daughters.

Yup a real advert for the sanity of Feminism in general.

Its always a very good idea *not* to pick advocates when you know next to nothing about them.

As to BSE/CJD be happy you never dealt with it first hand. Be even happier that most farmers that it bankrupted and destroyed havent realised even now who to blame. The consumer, the one who wouldnt pay fair price for healthy meat, and got what they deserved. Not to mention one John Selwyn Gummer... The one who had his little girl eat beef along with her best friend - yeah that one, who died of CJD.

I know im doing something akin to flogging a dead equine, but a little respect might be in order. I'd almost wish for you to have to care for someone you loved through that, but not even I am that cruel.

Jemma
Black Helicopters

kittens go boom...

Nah, thats not God killing them, thats the US Army looking for landmines on the cheap. Oh wait, USA and God are one and the same.

PETA have been moderately cracked for years, but recently it seems the animal snuggling fanaticism has finally reached a terminal stage. These are the sort of people who would carpet bomb a zoo to release a single fennec fox..(which would then go batshit nuts and savage everything in reach up to and including the Landcruiser, fennecs temperament being similar to what youd get if a jack russell and a tasmanian devil had babies).

Ive a thought, why dont we lock PETA and the Westboro Baptists in a room made up to be a real life 'worms' level... Entertainment with a practical result. No one loses, even the animal feedmarket would benefit, although I wouldnt say animals fed on the result would be wise to eat.

Jemma
Facepalm

umm

That wasnt a euphemism, trust me on this

Jemma
Facepalm

Oh gods..

They will beat themselves [off] like Chipperfield Monkeys...

Or as I said more than once to a rather animal loving ex "Arent you supposed to be *walking* the dog?". Still I suppose the elderly labrador got some exercise.

I dont even want to imagine the human basket cases they'll manage to recruit for this. The combination of bulgarian airbags, centipede level self esteem and animal rights fanatics makes even my mind weeble and curl up into a protective ball.

To quote "We taught a Lion to eat Tofu..."

Samsung's lovely illegal tablet: Why no one wants to know

Jemma
FAIL

The network computer act II

Blah blah Steve Jobs Blah Blah app store blah blah Google blah data mining blah blah pretentious twat on train playing iPad golf to show off blah more money than sense/several thousand born every minute.

Or

£600 to look like an overpaid middle management retard on the train.

£165 to look like a cheapskate overpaid middle management retard on the train.

Being disowned in public by your wife/girlfriend/kids/stepkids... Priceless...

For everything else theres interacting with the rest of the human race and not looking like a social cripple with the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Has Google wasted $12bn on a dud patent poker-chip?

Jemma
Childcatcher

IIRC

It wasnt just the one off payment to Nokia, wasnt there talk of some per unit google-thumping involved?

Id actually be more concerned if Android was a credible competitor. Ive had three Android handsets and they were up and down like an Essex Girls undies (I am from Essex so I am entirely entitled to say that) not to mention zero signal and dodgy apps. Oddly enough when I booted the Diamond into WinMo - a miracle, a good steady signal.

Not to mention the smartphone sales tables that suddenly lose 20% because that would mean showing people buy symbian.

90% of people buy on looks alone. A neighbour of mine just realised shes got a powerful Symbian smartphone in her pocket, the 6700s... I got it because it was pretty and I liked the colour. Alot of people are like that, they've no idea what theyve got in their hands.

As to all this patent palaver... I dont think so...

Why buy a phone manufacturer thats effectively second string? They have the clout to buy HTC or even divest Samsung of their phone division. So why Motorola?

Simples...

Google as of now cannot make their own phones in house, with Moto they will be able to. Which means Moogle completely thrash the rest of the android ecosystem. Want a phone where updates to the hour are guaranteed..? Moogle Want to be (as much as you can be) sure that it wont crash? Moogle Get the Firmware updates first every time? Yup you guessed it...

Samsung and HTC execs must be looking for someone to kill right now... And I wouldnt blame them in the least. This must have them fuming. All the work thats been put into Sense and TouchWTF and this is how Google repay them? Happy about this not are we...

All this patent stuff is window dressing by Google in the hopes that their 'partners' wont twig whats happening and come after Googles happy sacs with large steel toecaps.

Galaxy Tab still legal in the Netherlands

Jemma
Trollface

Apple flush with money....?

Yes, sort of. But I dont think that is the full story by a long shot.

Apple basically bet their existance on iPhone and iPad latterly. In order to fund said they have shaved the majority of their other lines into wintel boxes with out the Win part. Should I wish to, and Hell will freeze over first, I can make of a Dell a Mac computer with relatively little a: money and b: time. Certainly cheaper than I can buy the same box from Apple. The only thing thats keeping their full size business afloat is prettiness & litigation & ridiculous prices.

In the tablet and phone arena, they still lag behind in everything bar UX. When the apple bubble bursts (which it will, all bubbles do) where is their differentiation? They arent very secure, the walled garden is Jobs' answer to that. Theyre about as innovative as banana & custard. So thats advantage RIM/Symbian and Nokia & Samsung respectively.

They wont apparently make a QWERTY phone, which shuts them out of that market, in fact it shuts them out of two.. The E71 and BB market and the slide QWERTY market - E7 and others.

There is a limit to what can be achieved when your entire framework is fundamentally and artificially limited as Apples is.

Given that this is the case, and that Apple probably know this already, it is imperative for them to go all out to get everything they can before their products.. iPhone and iPad are yesterdays news, because theyve literally got NOTHING ELSE to work with.

Yes Apple are successful but is it true success or are they doing nothing more than financial trickery? After all, up to 2008 it was possible for a bank, perfectly legally to post their biggest profit the day they went bankrupt. Apple could end up in the position of being the worlds biggest one hit wonder since history began - and the tablet and touchscreen phone industry an evolutionary dead end.

Pedalling overpriced desktops and laptops with no more product differentiation than a different OS just isnt glamorous, or more importantly a high margin business.

IBM PC daddy: 'The PC era is over'

Jemma
Facepalm

*sigh*

-or-

Hail to the New Boss, same as the Old Boss.

The era of the PC as a box with another box with a glass bit and a keyboard and a mouse is indeed beginning to drift away. But its not drifting towards touchscreens and iDicks. Its moving towards nothing more or less than a smaller version of the exact same functionality.

I have a Nokia E7, which runs a quick processor, a powerful OS (which still has more functions and more security than iOS (iDiot On Slab) and Android put together, but I digress). Its got a Touchscreen and a physical keyboard. I have tried both the touch keyboard and the physical one, no prizes on which I can type much faster and its not the Apple Special.

But the kicker with this phone and a very few others - you can attach USB mice, keyboards, CD-Roms, Hard drives, Memory sticks and the like, it'll even talk to a hub with multiple devices. The ENTIRE device is about one twelfth the size of my Netbook, and it can do exactly the same thing, and fit in my pocket. Not to mention carry amazing amounts of information, and last almost 2 days on battery with judicious use.

Now its true that I dont do development work, I dont have a fetish for splattering people in high definition, im not particularly interested in PCB design - because I am not a developer, nor a gamer, nor have any reason to know the ins and outs of 5 layer PCB mothering. But I do write books and I do write essays and I do write reviews, and for that, fondleslabs and iPhones just dont cut it. The less said about the 'cloud' the better. I have this weird thing, my ideas and my work is MINE. I cant guarantee its safety on 'the cloud' therefore it will not be going on there. End of.

There is no way at this point in time that a touch keyboard will be comparable to a physical keyboard, it just cant.

If you spent your life opening up PC's like I did for a long time, you will notice all that wasted space (not to mention the dead mice/rats/species new to science, or the impossible to refit case covers). All that is being done now is to take the space out of the equation. Where once you needed an ISA/EISA etc card, now you can do it with PCMCIA (or whatever they're calling it this week) or SD or something else suitably small.

So what is the point with the huge lardy case - there isnt one - except in the few specific places where the job (high throughput high storage situations for example) and even then you can, with suitable money and a little work, find a machine that is both small and strong enough to handle it.

The original PC three box approach (system, screen, keyboard) is rapidly becoming as relevant today as a 1920s Morris. Yes it does the job, but inflexibly, with poor use of space. hence you get the all-in-one machines. Same processor, same power, a quarter of the space.

The point here I think has been missed in spectacular fashion.

The PC as regards what it actually is is in no danger of dying off, Core i7s and motherboards and all the rest of the palaver will not suddenly disappear like an embarrassed Tyrannosaur who didnt get the thing about the asteroid because he doesnt use Twitter... That power and that system and that paradigm is alive and well and will be for a long time.

The thing we are going to lose, and not before time, is the mindset that a business PC has to be something huge cumbersome and mostly just hot air (sorta like a Conservative party political broadcast). To ride the dinosaur analogy until it falls apart - we are leaving the age of the dinosaurs, and entering the age of the little early mammals, same function, same niches, just 100 times smaller, lighter and more efficient (and yes I know the comparison on the last one is a little tenuous).

And my poor aching back will be forever thankful...

Essex cops slaps cuffs on social media riot crusaders

Jemma

spoken like a true f$€kwit

Did I say I believed in Deity, no I did not. Having spent the majority of my life having the godbotherers book shoved down my throat by honest god-fearing proto paedos, I had well enough of Gods by the age of 13. I work with spirits of place, having learned that you trust the average deity as you do the average politician, you tend to need to take alot of care, but I digress (which means drift from what I am talking about).

Magical workings against others are generally not the wisest of acts either... Look up the law of return (and no, I dont mean Dixons, or macroeconomics). For those pitfalls on the road to progress that are human a large knife often makes the point admirably (from a distance your average bigot cannot see theyre blunt).

I seriously doubt many drug dealers tend to go robed, nor do they tend to carry 12inch damascene knives as religious tools, state sanctioned mark you.

But still I had to deal with two nice friendly piglets searching my car from sills to sluice rails, stem to stern, and verbal abuse into the bargain. On the basis that I was on my own and an easy target. Since they wanted me to leave the area, I made it clear that until they searched, neither I or by extension they were going anywhere... And that I would be wanting an apology for being, and I quote 'one of those pagan freaks' and apparently 'a dangerous criminal' to boot. Oddly enough MTW was entirely free of anything more exciting than oil, petrol, water and sundry electrolytes. I got my apology.

Ironic since hanging from my waist at my left hip, was said 12 inch blade.

Thats not to mention Police bs at a later re dedication of a local temple site. "we cant give you permission since its been in the paper and we cant guarantee safety because we cant spare resources". Lmfao - so what about the high speed pursuit car that went round and round the site for 4 solid hours? The poor elephants just down the road must have gotten dizzy the number of times that car did its circuit. But hey, the police are great and Englands green and pleasant land is green cos of the grass, not because off all the evaded tax monies from the spoilt little rich kids et al are floating serenely out to the coast in the direction of the channel islands.

Treat people fairly and people will treat you the same. Treat your employees fairly, you'll get the same back. Treat your customers like something you scaped from your boot, lie to them, ignore their calls for help, then dodge the finger of blame when the corpses pile up, and you get the sort of feeling people have for the Police in general - and thence doeth the brown smelly stuff splat unto the round spinny thing - and you get the reason for the riots. THAT and that alone what was started the 'riots' - what followed was a mixture of amazing police inaction and the me too mentality. None of which I support, but all of which I prophesied to one of the Police down the local station 6 months ago. People will only take so much from their supposed protectors.

The inaction itself makes me wonder - BBM being secure and all and amazingly quickly blamed for what in reality was another bunch of trigger happy gene hunt wannabes. Was it allowed to get worse so the PHBs could blame RIM, get all the daily fail readers to swallow it, and use their howls of gormless indignation as an excuse to get their greasy little fingers on BBM Decripts?

Jemma

quick question LC?

Are you a minority in any sense of the word?

Because if you arent you have no concept of how bad police officers can be. If you are white, christian, straight, well off there is one police force. If you arent its like a whole 'nother world and take it from me its not an improvement.

Report a burglery, tell the officer you think they've left stuff to collect later, tell them youre a teen kid on their own, ask for the police to assist since if those people do come back you are at imminent risk... What happens, the cops turn up 3 HOURS later, having left a vulnerable child at risk for hours, after the glazing company arrived to repair the damage...

And thats when I was still a good little 'normal' well off clone-sprog. You know, before I started with the horse slicing and other fun crap the police and media like to drop at us Pagans feet.

Its gotten a damn sight worse since then.

Jemma

The charge of the AC brigade

I dont care if the lass is running the lockup on Tatooine..

From the first time I called the police for assistance at age 13 to the last time a year ago theyve been the spit and image of epic fail. I have been abused for being Pagan, I have been abused for other reasons. And yeah, driving a 4 speed renault 5... Sure, im casing £2 million houses... Nope im lost mate.

I have been assaulted three times, twice in hospital, all times hate crimes. I report it to the police, it takes them 4 MONTHS to get back to me, and when they do their own paperwork proves them to have lied. I warn the local police that if they dont get a handle on hate crime its gonna get worse...

Sure enough my friend is pulled dead from the river, after their target had left, they went after her. Their target: me. Only dumb luck that I am still here now.

And that is not even the half of it. So yeah, when the P word is mentioned I get a Rosenberg worthy case of "black eyed and veiny". I have every right to thanks very much. And so has the 6 year old girl from braintree whose mum and sister were blown away after they'd asked for and been denied police protection.

I said it before and I will say it again. i DO NOT agree with rioting because everyone else is doing it. Neither do I approve of attacks on kids, personally I'd be happy to provide the people guilty of THAT a tuppenny upright via my grandads old 9mm rifle. But the more people have experiences with the Police that have been epic fail from can to can't then the more tension there will be and the less control the panda piglets will have.

I have no complaint with a cop that actually does their job, but since 1988 I havent run into a single one yet, so you'll forgive me if I have a case of cynicism that would trouble a B-52s lift capacity

Oh, and whos betting the reichspolizei have even bothered to *check* that the comments on the facebook profiles were actually written by the owners concerned.. Tell you for one, i wouldnt bet money on that one. That'd go to the judges (pun intended). And do you think the police will leave these kids alone in the future if they get pulled up on it for not investigating correctly? Will they hell as like - there is nothing more dangerous in the british isles than a cop whose been proven to be an inept talentless bigoted prick who wants to get his own back.

So yes, I dont like the police, are you beginning to get my point WHY? Understanding much why I consider every one of them gormless & bigoted until proven other wise?.

Jemma
FAIL

Tell you what Karen Manners...

Why don't you do your fscking job PROPERLY and protect people when they need protecting - and stop ignoring minorities. Its that good old 'protect and serve, so long as you aint asian/black/muslim,/LGBT/live on a council estate'. Do your job instead of mouthing off to the Press about people you've never met, not to mention your organization probably helped push them to the point of attacking the police.

You and the Police in general are to use Bomber Harris's old phrase 'reaping the whirlwind' because the more and more you harass and abuse people just because you can, then prove to be utter epic failures without historical precedent when they need you, the more respect you will lose.

And the sole solitary thing between you and being a smear on the pavement is the respect of the general public, once they lose respect in you entirely, and its approaching that point right now, they wont see you as cops, they will see you as a bunch of berks all wearing the same uniform to make them easier to kill. A Police officer is just as maimable or killable as me or anyone else, the sole thing that stays peoples hand (and the only reason you lot go after cop killers like deranged Jack Russells', when you ignore transphobic killings) is that blue uniform and the "respect" it engenders. I actually stood in my local police station and asked an officer who he would vote for in elections - the answer came back BNP - and I am supposed to trust people like that to protect me?! Are you going to change your rank to SS-Gruppenfuhrer? after all it would seem apt to me, and somewhat more honest into the bargain.

Stop the racism, stop the homophobia, stop the religious intolerance and actually do your job and the people might actually begin to respect you. Keep on acting like you are, and failing people you KNEW were in danger, to the point that a mother and 3 year old daughter were killed, and you are going to lose all authority. At which point you will be toast.

Oh, and on the Chief Superintendent thing - sorry, but no. When you and the people you are responsible for can do your sodding job properly, thats when I will refer to you by that title. And not before. SS-Gruppenfuhrer doesnt have slight the same ring does it?

NOTE: I do not agree with rioting and attacking people who are entirely innocent. Neither do I agree with rioters attacking and robbing young children. But I have to say I have zero respect for anything in a Police uniform as it stands, and the fact that there is no evidence that police were fired upon - not to mention managed to make a peaceful protest into a London Wide disaster resembling the epilogue to Shawn of the Dead - bears out all my beliefs that the entire police force is one massive inept organism that has taken bigotry and stupidity and laxity to the bleeding edge of the state of the art.

London rioters should 'loose all benefits'

Jemma
FAIL

oh yeah, just brilliant

This barely edges out the stupid cow I heard yesterday in a london hospital.

"anyone goes out their door or is on the street after 7pm, the police shoot on sight..."

Just going out to check the cars locked/still there/not a burning wreck...."

cue the sound of 9mm H&K automatics and a huge lawsuit.

One of the biggest reasons behind all this is the conservatives buggering about with the benefits system while the rich, well off, and the bankers get richer. To quote blackadder "Sir Talbot Buxomly MP, who supports hanging people for being poor".

So yeah, im sure cutting benefits (which will harm many more than just the rioters, and given the polices ability when it comes to correct identification, thats another story) will really quell the growing anger, misery and hatred of the police, government, everyone else.

"A masterly stroke if I may say so, prime minister... Your reputation is assured" gushed Sir Humphrey... Sotto voce "admittedly as the biggest british idiot since Elphinstone, but then its not my job on the line"

"Pardon Humphrey?"

"I said I'll just get the Minister for prisons on the line... Im sure Premier Inns have some spare capacity, after all there arent that many murderers we'd need to move..."

"Good man..."