* Posts by Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

473 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Page:

EU privacy A-Team tells Google: Get a grip and obey OUR laws

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

I take it you don't bank in Cyprus.

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

The EU is nothing but a bunch of unelectable power hungry kleptomaniacs who like to bribe us with our own money. Good for nothing but submitting dodgy accounts, re-running referendums when they don't get the desired result, deposing elected leaders of sovereign states, and hounding honest market traders to an early grave.

The best thing Google could do at this point is to refer them to the reply given in the case of Arkell vs. Pressdram.

Former Azzurri project manager who stole £1.3m ordered to pay back £146k

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Crime doesn't pay...

There's a big hayfield in Buxton, and at the north end of that hayfield there's a rock wall, right out of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base of that wall is a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield...

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: In France

"Proceeds of crime act" - in the UK too.

eBay faces multiple probes into mega-breach

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Wouldn't it be ironic if the crooksters sold the hooky data on eBay.

So you reckon Nokia-wielding Microsoft can't beat off Apple?

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: certificate management

Ah! Just for completeness,Postfix needed "LOGIN" as the auth mechanism. One more problem fixed.

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: certificate management

...Got a feeling that's why my Lumia refuses to talk SMTP with my mail server.

The inability to remove a profile picture, or the pointlessness of the Search button pales in comparison...

Hacktivists hijack BNP Twitter account, crayon over leader Griffin's too

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Poor guy.

Some good points, but the "trade" argument seems weak on two fronts. Firstly, who is to say that leaving the EU would affect our trade with the EU? Other countries (Norway, for example) manage quite well. Secondly, and more importantly, this argument would suggest that in the event of a tradeoff between international commerce and representative democracy, it is democracy which must be sacrificed. The only elected body in the EU is the European Parliament, but their job is to provide a fig leaf of democracy, while rubber stamping the plans of the unelected Commission.

If you look back through the history of the EU, democracy, and therefore freedom, is sadly lacking. Case in point is the "second" Lisbon treaty referendum - held as the people did not vote the "right" way the first time. Or you could look at the spectacle of the men from the European Central Bank parachuted into the highest offices of State in Ireland or Italy following their bailouts.

The stated agenda of the EU is an "ever closer union". Great for roaming phone charges, not so good for democracy.

Ads bandog berates Virgin Media in BSkyB broadband bumf bust-up

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: ASA

I caught 5 minutes of police interceptors the other week. They found a cannabis farm and a bypassed electric meter at someone's house, the CPS obviously didn't catch the episode as there was "insufficient evidence to prosecute". (Probably too busy with celebrities who'd touched someone's bum in the 70s).

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Handbags at 20 Paces

Another week passes, another ASA story...

Just moved house, took my cable service with me. Gave VM 2 days notice - they switched me off on the right day, connected the new place the next morning. Small hitch was that the cables from the street had been cut, so the engineer ran a cable from next door as a temporary fix, and ordered a re-pull the next week. Left me his card (and his pliers) with a note to say that if I phoned the switchboard I'd be put through to his mobile.

Aside from the text messages confirming appointments (had to stop answering them as the wife was getting suspicious) an all round excellent service.

Windows Phone 8.1: Like WinPho 8, but BETTER

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

For me, WP8 was the price I had to pay for getting my hands on the Lumia 1020's excellent camera.

EE...K: Why can't I uninstall carrier's sticky 'Free Games' app?

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Because there is nothing on my Lumia...

hehe, touched a raw nerve there did I?

Get back to me when the file explorer app can actually explore the file system, or the eBay app can actually relist an item, define a new postage type, or let you scroll to the end of your description in edit mode. How about when the tide tables app actually has details of more than just a handful of surfing beaches, or there's a decent web browser, or a free putty type client that actually supports use of the CTRL key, or when the app in question doesn't pop up with a little message saying "We try reely hard to make nice app. Love you longtime, plz rate us in the Windows stor".

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Queue Managment

"The technology appeals to the retail sector on the basis that it helps manage queues..."

Can't have reached my local ASDA, where the approach to managing queues is a loud woman in a green tabard waving a large foam pointing finger on a stick, while shouting at the customers to "move down please" whenever there's a free checkout.

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Because there is nothing on my Lumia...

Mm. It's a shame they're all rubbish though, isn't it?

Blighty goes retro with 12-sided pound coin

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face
Coat

Re: No need for a pound coin...

A sterling idea, sir.

Netflix needling you? BBC pimps up iPlayer ahead of BBC3 move

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Yay for iPlayer!

Mm. Hopefully get_iplayer will still work

Reports pump fuel into iCar gossip: Apple in 'talks' with Tesla

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Will they have apple trained mechanics?

Hi Marvin,

Good day to you and thank you for bringing your iCar in to the iGarage. This is <insert made up name here> from the iCar Support team and I'll be happy to assist you today.

I understand that your car just spontaneously combusted. I realize why you're bringing this to our concern and I know how eager you are to have this issue resolved. Don't worry, I'll do my best to fix this for you.

I am pleased to inform you that your issue has now been resolved, and we have reclassified your fire as a "feature" - you vehicle has a super warm heater! A software update will be applied. Please note you may not be able to drive 2 years while we update its software remotely. It is very important that you wait the full 2 years before attempting to drive your iCar again. Please let me know if you are still unable to drive your iCar after 2 years and I'll do my best to assist you with this issue again.

Please let me know if this resolves your concern. If you have other questions about this issue, please don't hesitate to tell me and I would be more than happy to address them for you.

Thank you very much for being part of the iCar family and I hope you have a great day.

Sincerely [sic]

<made up name>

Facebook adds 50+ gender options: Stalking your 'Friends' just got more LGBT-friendly

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: “his”, “her” or “their” the three options.

Surely "their" only works if you're a conjoined twin?

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face
Headmaster

ReferenceError: invalid assignment left-hand side

I see a problem on the left-hand side of the equals sign. The definition of the entity to which all of these politically correct attributes are being assigned should be "sex" rather than "gender". The former relates to the characteristics of the whole person, the latter pertains to the physical characteristics of objects. (At least this used to be the case, but since we all started giggling and writing "three times a night" when official forms asked us our sex, the two words have started to be used more interchangeably).

Rand Paul launches class-action lawsuit to end NSA phone spying

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Irony, we've heard of it....

If you believe the adage that "a well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny", then it's a logical and consistent position to adopt.

Nokia to launch low-cost Android phone this month – report

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Straw Poll

I've had mine six days, so I'll hold off from voting, but I will say this:

- Toggling WiFi, Bluetooth or Data, on Android it takes 1 swipe + 1 press. On WP8 it takes about 4 clicks including trawling through a long menu.

- There doesn't seem to be a way to switch your lock screen off while plugged in. So you're driving down the road listening to music and you want to skip a track. It goes something like this - Press power button while phone is in cradle, look up at road, glance down just in time to see preview screen vanish, press power button again, swipe to unlock, find and press "skip" button, crash car into a ditch.

- Create a local contact? Oh no, you have to create a Microsoft account first.

- Choose not to sync all your contacts to the cloud? Sorry, not an option.

- App store is pretty limited. A lot of the apps. are very amateurish.

- Can't browse the filesystem properly.

- A personal opinion, but the OS seems very noddy and not very well featured. At the same time some social media/gaming menu options are built in, so if that's not your thing, you tend to spend time swiping past menus you're never going to use.

There are workarounds for most of these things, and I might yet learn to like it, but a good OS should be flexible enough to enable you to do what you want to do. With WP8 I sometimes feel that relationship is reversed.

As I say, it's early days yet...

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Bring it on...

I always thought that Nokia chose WP8 because they didn't like their customers very much.

How bad WAS the parking situation in Middelfart* in 2013?

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face
Big Brother

Re: the year is two thousand and 1984

Now then "Citizen" careful what you say here...

The internet is 'a gift from God' says Pope Francis

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Pope in believing in God shocker

Mysterious, I would say. It's our job to work out the mystery.

Put it this way, where do you get the idea that a plane crashing and people dying is an intrinsically "bad" thing?

When ZOMBIES go shopping: 40m Target customer breach? That's NOTHING!

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

... and that's why I stick to the folding stuff.

Plusnet is working on a network-level filter to block pirate sites

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

My router went up in smoke (yes, really) the other day. Dashed out and bought a new one, installed Tomato and guess what, I notice that it supports Tor AND OpenVPN.

Just sayin'

NSA: It's TRUE, we grab 200 MILLION of your text messages A DAY globally

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Even if it were effective...

"I hate Cameron, but I'd have to be stupid to think that he is deliberately grinding the Magna Carta into to the dust because he hates it"

- No, that was Blair

Even 'Your computer has a virus' cold-call gits are migrating off XP

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

How about - "Oh yes, I'm glad you called, it has been running slow lately, just hang on a second and I'll boot it up."

.. put phone on the worktop, go do something else for half an hour.

Army spaffed millions up the wall on flawed Capita online recruiting system - report

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Previous wars and government overspend...

If William the Conqueror had started saving £20 notes at the rate of one every second since 1066, he'd not even be half way to paying off the national debt today.

Use strong passwords and install antivirus, mmkay? UK.gov pushes awareness campaign

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Another waste of [our] money.

Ex-Oracle manager claims he was fired for asking to give Indian staff equal pay

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Oooh boy

Discussions about salary are not quite as taboo in the States as in the UK.

Thought sales were in the toilet before? Behold the agony: 2013 was a PC market BLOODBATH

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

I wonder how the market for components is going. Last year I built a media PC, this year plan to build a DAW workstation. Having looked into it, there's no point in paying a premium for low grade components. Cheaper and more fun to build your own.

Linksys's über-hackable WRT wireless router REBORN with 802.11ac

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: DD-WRT 0-day in the wild?

Mine was doing the same (with Tomato) a while ago also leaving it horribly exposed. It turned out to be crashing following cable outages. I learned to back up the config - but it's not happened for a while. I also found that leaving the thing switched off for a couple of hours helped when flashing it's memory.

Dell confirms Chromebook for Blighty

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

... a 16GB SSD for those of your files that your really don’t want in the cloud...

That would be ALL OF THEM.

Two new laptops and one new mobile phone in my house for Christmas. Avoiding sending half of my data around the world to a company I don't trust to be rifled through by all and sundry was something of a Yuletide sport.

OMG, like, TOTES AMAZEBALLS: Facebook made me fall into SHARK INFESTED SEAS

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Was the phone waterproof?

Go on, buy Bitcoin. But DON'T say we didn't WARN YOU

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Tulips !

Ah yes, who can forget.

I tried Bitcoin, but got bored waiting for the entire history of all transactions everywhere to be downloaded to my virtual wallet. Seemed pretty unwieldy to me. I've probably lost a fortune as I gave up and did something else...

Two Brits face criminal trial for sending 'menacing' tweets

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

If only there were some kind of button on Twitter where you could block annoying trolls from tweeting you.

No anon pr0n for you: BT's network-level 'smut' filters will catch proxy servers too

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but I really don't accept that there is any evidence for the idea that this is some massive government conspiracy to control what you see on the internet. Web filtering is already the default on mobile phones. I found out about 18 months into my 2 year contract while trying to check on the finer points of Texas Hold 'Em during a rainy day on a camping trip. I really wasn't outraged enough to pen a letter to my MP.

There's really no point sitting here discussing ways to circumvent this awful "censorship". It's a service that you can switch on or off. Personally, I'd probably switch it off as I already use OpenDNS. It's not a replacement for good parenting, but one tool in the toolkit.

Maybe it's time to give the paranoia a rest, huh?

Analogue radio will CONTINUE in Blighty as Minister of Fun dodges D-Day death sentence

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Yes, make Radio 1 DAB

Turns out my new car does have DAB... And it sounds awful.

We just got rid of our only house dab radio and used the speakers as fridge magnets - much more useful. The future of radio is FM, internet, but not crappy obsolete dab codecs.

Striking Amazonians warn: Don't rely on us for Christmas pressies

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Fair play to them.

I probably wouldn't strike - I'd leave and do something else - but I can't say I blame the workers for wanting a better deal. Amazon, you reap what you sow.

You gotta fight for your copyright ... Beastie Boys sue toymaker over TV ad

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Where would we be without parody...

Do you know, I heard a story that those Toastie Boys stayed up 'til quarter past twelve!

- Morris Minor and the Majors - No Sleep 'till Bedtime.

Boffins devise world's HARDEST tongue-twister

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Dr Seuss said it best...

When tweetle beetles fight,

it's called a tweetle beetle battle.

And when they battle in a puddle,

it's a tweetle beetle puddle battle...

(it goes on..)

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Dr Seuss said it best...

Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew. While these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew. Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze. Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze. That's what made these three free fleas sneeze.

ASA slaps down BT over 'misleading' broadband claims

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Misrepresented advertised broadband speeds?

I refuse to believe it. Must be one of those April Fools stories.

</snark>

Chester Cathedral smites net in Wi-Fi SMUT OUTRAGE

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face
Headmaster

Re: Another technical fix for a social issue

There were three gifts, not necessarily about three wise men.

Asus Transformer Book T100: Xbox One? PS4? Nah, get a cute convertible for Christmas

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

MicroUSB Charging

Anyone know what is the minimum voltage you could get away with on the micro USB charger? I'm wondering if you could run it from the 12v socket in the car.

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Interesting...

Since my youngest decided to throw a glass of juice over my ageing laptop I've been looking for something cheap, small, HDDiskless, with a long battery life. The only thing putting me off this at the moment would be the fact that I'd be paying extra for Office (which I already have a license for) and the pointless tablet "feature".

Tempting, though.

Swollen Reg reader recounts FALSE WIDOW spider HORROR

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

A foot-loving pedant writes...

Can we see a picture of the other foot, for comparison purposes?

Samsung hauls in chiefs for 'CRISIS awareness' confab – report

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: So many Anonymous Cowards

True. The wife recently was due an upgrade. We picked the S3 over the S4 because the older model was 95% of the phone for 50% of the price. My prediction is that exactly the same thing will happen to the next generation of consoles.

WTF is the Internet of Things and how insurers will use it against you

Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face

Re: Making 1+1=3 ?

That's a great idea, and one which I think I will steal very soon.

Page: