* Posts by Matt Newton

51 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jan 2009

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BOFH: Resistance is futile - we're missing BEER O'CLOCK

Matt Newton

Re: Music on hold.

Ha, when I used to work at a credit card company I was in the late payments department. One of our pieces was "GOLD" by Spandau Ballet and another was Money Money Money by ABBA.

I'm sure someone was trolling the customers, they couldn't have picked those two by accident.

Sexbomb pop minstrel Taylor Swift PORN FIB used to lure fanbois

Matt Newton

I got this the other day browsing a torrent site. Hadn't clicked anything, suddenly my monitors all got covered in this warning - pic of a friendly police man with his arms folded and all this text about laws I'd violated including terrorism, violent or sadistic websites and child porn... but if, IF, I was to pay $99 to Nottinghamshire Police and super super promised not to do it again, it'd be viewed as a "caution" and it'd be ok.

What first alerted me to the fact it might be suspicious was that they were asking in dollars. That and the obvious :D

But yeah - I've seen it and that was on Chrome / Win 7.

Reboot fixed it. Scratched that torrent site off my bookmarks.

Barnes & Noble sheds Nook tablet albatross, will focus on ebooks

Matt Newton

I have a nook

It's one of the black and white ones - I dunno which model but it's really good.

Dark blue side of the Force used to quell Star Wars nerd clash

Matt Newton

nerds

'007' job ad for an assassin appears on official UK.gov website

Matt Newton

Way with words? :)

Dribble should be drivel =)

CD: The indestructible music format that REFUSES TO DIE

Matt Newton

Re: Fidelity issues?

I have it in 128 and it sounds fine. Guess anecdotes don't mean much.

Atmospheric CO2 set to soar - OECD

Matt Newton

well that's what they get for being black

sorry but it's africas fault their poor thats what u get for it so no they cant have the co2 power plants bexcause it hurts the plant.

David Cameron gets custom prime-ministering iPad app

Matt Newton

non store apps?

Not sure how, but my company does it - we have our own "apple store" and company issued iphones and ipads can download apps specifically made for our company from it v0v

Cybercrooks turn Eve Online into botnet battlefield

Matt Newton

Title

I'm ralara

Single complaint sparks police raid and total ban on rental movie

Matt Newton

well, i watched most of this film...

yeah... err... hmm. I can see why a complaint was made.

I found Centipede to be funny. This... erm... yeah. I'd give it a miss if I were you.

Called 999 recently? They've got your number

Matt Newton

how it could be used in the future?

Well, for one, if I report there's someone who's left their car door open on the non emergency line, and the next day the car was stolen, I'd fully expect them to connect the dots and say "oh hey, yeah, we got a report about that last night".

Or if I reported someone breaking in to a house who fit a certain profile and then they catch someone 2 weeks later breaking into another house who was wearing the same clothes / eye patch / tatoos etc, again I'd expect them to say "oh hay, so and so reported this guy last week, let's look at the evidence and see if we can charge them for that crime as well".

wtf?

Matt Newton
FAIL

Erm...

Erm... so like... yeah? When I've called the emergency services (maybe 3-4 times in the last 5 years) they've always asked for my details (police, this is) and they say it's so they can keep it on file in case they need to follow up on anything etc.

I don't understand this "news" story. I'm usually one of the first to be ITS NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR RIGHT NOW but this article seems to be trying to create some kind of controversy where none would exist.

Of course they keep the details. I'd fully expect them to. I'd be surprised if they didn't and would be confused as to why not.

jesus christ.

Facebook on the blink for second time in two days

Matt Newton

I don't have a facebook account

\o/

Nutter repairmen scale 1,768ft TV mast

Matt Newton

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Saw it when it was first released last week.

After the video had finished, I realised my palms were sweating.

Not a job I'd do even if paid a million pounds.

ZoneAlarm slammed for scarewarey marketing

Matt Newton

yeah i got this the other day

I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't actually infected. Most of us here work in the IT industry; if it can fool us (even for a second), then it will fool at lot of the users out there.

Spandau Ballet get the Tourette's karaoke treatment

Matt Newton
Coffee/keyboard

TITLE?

FUCK!

Playboy centrefold freaks out at 10,000 feet

Matt Newton
Black Helicopters

it's not possible @ Ken Snelling 11:30

It's not possible at altitude. Cabin doors are designed so you need to pull them inwards first, then slide sideways / out. It's not like a car door.

At high altitudes, the pressure outside the aircraft is much, much lower than inside the craft (where it's approximately "normal" pressure). Trying to pull the door in against that pressure is like trying to pull up a toilet plunger that's been firmly stuck to a surface.

Except orders of magnitudes harder - a single human (or even a small group) wouldn't be able to open the door - the handle would snap off first.

That said, I of course would not want to "test" this maths, even if it is theoretically impossible.

Helicoptor because... no planes.

Children's rights group threatens ICO with judicial review

Matt Newton

title

ARCH, IC, YJB, ICO, YOTs, YJMIS, RAISE...

wow. my head exploded.

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

Matt Newton

Sweet Jesus

http://pastpapers.org/GCSE/ict/1_2Jun07.pdf

Look at that.

5a is a good one. I bet the signed document answer is actually "fax" as the "correct" answer, although e-mail would be better due embedded digitial signatures.

Interesting choice of wording, I asked one of the dumbfucks at work, just out of fun, "if you wanted a face to face conversation with someone would you A) fax them, B) use video conferencing or C) e-mail them?".

They replied, quite unexpectedly I might add, "Neither. If I wanted a face to face conversation with them, I'd walk up to them and talk to them".

Made me lol.

What shit exam / qualification.

Laid-off public sector techies better get flexible to survive

Matt Newton

Last pay rise?

LOL.

I've not had one in 3 years. Private Sector by the way, and the way it's going, we wont be getting one this year either.

Fuck off with your "oh im only getting 0.5%". That's still more than a lot of people.

I've worked in the public sector as well, in the past; housing department. Complete waste of time, they could have removed the staff and replaced them with the deaf receptionist (yes, the receptionist was deaf, because of some quota or something no doubt... yes, the woman who answered the phone was DEAF) and no one would notice.

Home Office launches urgent review of illegal police stop'n'search

Matt Newton

In all honesty probably not

but that's what the review is looking at -where it's gone wrong, how and why. Jesus, give them a chance, they've only been in power a month, they've got a LOT of clearing up to do after Labour.

No government will ever be be perfect but thank your lucky stars this one is actually investigating issues like this and destroying the NIR and ID cards. It's certainly a step in the right direction. How about instead of complaining, write to Theresa May and express your gratitude for what she's doing - encourage them!

Drinking coffee offers no real benefit, say eggheads

Matt Newton
Coffee/keyboard

What a pointless piece of research

I am addicted to caffine. I am well aware that I have a high tollerance to it and that I don't "out perform" others. No shit. Caffine is an addictive substance.

I'm on cup number 4 already today. It's 11am and I'm tired :D

No refunds for ID card pioneers

Matt Newton
Thumb Up

Serves them right

The people that signed up to this and lost money deserved to lose it; they don't care about losing their freedoms, why care about £50 or whatever it was.

El Oh El.

Murdoch newswire sues over 'hot news'

Matt Newton

CTRL+C & CTRL+V

Deary me, surely they've learned...

..what they should have been doing was clone, MODIFY A LITTLE BIT and then publish...

Ridley Scott talks up 'nasty' Alien prequel

Matt Newton
Alien

Alien 3 was great :D

The initial release wasn't fantastic but I think it was truer to the original Alien than Aliens was. Alien3 was a horror film, back where Alien was, rather than the action we got in Aliens and Alien Resurrection.

The DVD directors cut release of Alien 3 has some of the scenes changed and the plot does make a lot more sense. If you can get over the whole Newt / Hicks deaths at the beginning, it's a good film; well directed and well acted. I see Alien 3 as the last of the true alien films, before they went a bit strange.

Seriously, if you've not watched it since 1992, go download / rent the directors cut, it's a good film.

Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News

Matt Newton
Joke

another HHGTTG

'Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I indended',

said Ford. 'I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years.'

'But how did you get there in the first place then?'

'Easy, I got a lift with a teaser.'

'A teaser?'

'Yeah.'

'Er, what is...'

'A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around

looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.'

'Buzz them?' Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult

for him.

'Yeah,' said Ford, 'they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few

people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's ever

going to believe and them strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae

on their head and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really.

Bond 23 suspended 'indefinitely'

Matt Newton

almost...

Do you expect me to talk?

No, Mister Bond. I expect you to die.

India boasts more mobes than bogs

Matt Newton

I think it's a case...

of the fact that it's barely coming out of a 3rd world country and they seem more concerned about having a mobile phone than a sewerage system.

Police send Reg hack CRB check database

Matt Newton
Stop

@fred flintstone

"It's an honest mistake, and you can't prevent everything with technology or no work gets done."

But you CAN prevent stuff like THIS happening without affecting how people work.

Simply having a password over the excel file, whilst not great, would be better than nothing.

The file itself should be encrypted - at the very least flagged up when some low level person exports over 10 thousand entries from the database.

None of this will prevent work being done or slow down what they're doing - but it CAN be prevented VERY EASILY.

US gov cries foul on MPAA piracy claims

Matt Newton
WTF?

Agreed entirely

After Battlestar Galactica finsihed its run, I really wanted to get the soundtrack to season 4. So I looked around for months after it finished airing to find it would come out on a specific date - January last year IIRC.

When the date came, I searched on Amazon and found it - I could pre-order it - it was $16.99. $16.99, i thought? That can't be right - I live in the UK. Oops, I'm on .com instead of .co.uk. Silly me!

So I went to amazon .co.uk and searched for it. Sure enough, it was there - albeit with a release date 1 month later and the price was £27.99.

Nearly 3 times the price (once currency conversion was taken in to consideration plus the conversion fee of course), and released a month late?

So I went to .com again and tried to order it from the US. But I wasn't allowed to because "this content is not available in your region" and gave me a helpful link back to the UK websites.

So I downloaded it for free v0v

I was quite willing and prepared to buy the damn music with real money - money that'd go to the studios - that's why I was on amazon to begin with.

But then I thought fuck you, when I thought about it.

If they hadn't tried to fuck me over with the pricing and the wait, they'd have got some money, but now they don't, and I have the music.

They do this to themselves.

Ticket site sorry for pisspoor password wrong

Matt Newton

no you're not

i was reading it to my boss and cracking up laughing.

London council loses thousands of kids' details

Matt Newton

who steals CDs?

It was probably in the laptop CD drive at the time.

FBI cyber cop says 'very existence' of US under threat

Matt Newton

title

i don't think existential means what he thinks it means.

Court bars charges against teen who posed semi-nude

Matt Newton
Stop

Rights?

"failed to read their rights"

What rights?

There's the Miranda WARNING, but it's not a "right".

Is this the world's dirtiest PC?

Matt Newton

Is this the world's dirtiest PC?

No, mine at home is just as bad, if not worse.

Historian slams 'absolutely crazy' UK time zone

Matt Newton
FAIL

Britain is not a country

Great Britain is the big island, Ireland is the smaller one to the left.

The United Kingdom is the big island plus the northern part of the smaller island.

There is no country called "Britain"

UK fatties demand 'hate crime' status for lardo-baiting

Matt Newton
Thumb Down

Punched? Beer thrown?

Hounded out of premises?

Sounds like it's her attitude or something else rather than her being a fatass.

Robert Crumb begets Book of Genesis

Matt Newton

@ AC 11:23

"It seems to me that if your caption clearly indicates that the bloke is so drunk he doesn't know that he's having sex, it might make more sense to draw the woman on top."

That wouldn't be the acceptable Missionary Position, then, would it?

One in three kids believe Google measures truthiness

Matt Newton
Alert

grammar...

It should be "i.e." rather than "e.g.".

You may very well have meant to use "e.g." but you're using it incorrectly :)

Nation's parents prepare to be vetted

Matt Newton
Thumb Up

Good on the government

These parents over the nation (mostly daily mail readers, of course) have been screaming for more security and THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Well, now you got it. And you don't like it. And (being childless and not a babysitter) I sit and laugh at them.

Oh, I'm not on about the average parent who doesn't want kiddy fiddlers having jobs in schools - that's perfectly sensible - but the people actually campaigning for all of this, the databases, the vetting, CRB checks etc - well, ... you got what you asked for. Let me guess - you want that with /other/ people but not when it inconveniences you, eh?

US deputies taze traffic dodging rogue emu

Matt Newton
Linux

boop beep this is a title

Don't taze me, bro

Blogger silences Google ads with death and destruction

Matt Newton
Big Brother

So... Google wont read it

But I bet the CIA / MI5 will lol

HP excessive packaging world record put to the test

Matt Newton

Hmm I wish I'd taken pics of mine now...

We ordered a plastic Mylar strip for one of our scanners at work - this thing is about ... 20cm long, 2cm wide and about as thick as a piece of cardboard.

It came in it's plastic wrapper, itself inside some heavy-duty fibre-board to stop it bending, THAT was inside a box which itself was inside a box filled with shredded paper and packaging materials.

So really, for something that weighs about 2 grams, and could be fitted in an envelope (maybe with some cardboard inside to help prevent bending), we ended up with a 2 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot box stuffed with crap.

Oh, it was from HP :)

Oz cops in Taser fatality

Matt Newton
Stop

"non-lethal" ?

No... they're not billed as non-leathal, they're billed as "less leathal".

Ef Why Eye.

Asda clamps down on killer teaspoons

Matt Newton
Thumb Down

sigh

oh for fuck's sake...

US lawmakers to de-silence electric cars

Matt Newton

Isn't it obvious why they're doing ths?

They've been lobbied by the motor industry who sees electric cars as competition to their oil based ones. If the government takes away one of the benefits of electric cars (much quieter), it may not make as many people switch.

Hugh Jackman speaks of Wolverine leak heartbreak

Matt Newton

Don't worry Hugh!

I wont be downloading it. Mind you I wont be watching it at the cinema, so no loss there, eh?

UKBA to exchange fingerprints with US

Matt Newton

@ ermmm

That'd be 9.2%.

Illinois restores Pluto's planetary status

Matt Newton
Stop

@Martin Budden

Neptune and Pluto do not "cross orbits" :)

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