* Posts by Equitas

249 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2009

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Lloyds TSB, Halifax tech stumbles into the cold, goes titsup for hours

Equitas
Paris Hilton

This is the same organisation ......

* that sends closure notices on accounts and can't even get the names and numbers to match

* that demands that if a transfer of £8000 is to be made the same day between two accounts of the same organisation held in the same branch, it should be done by means of nine cheques, none of which are to exceed £999.99

* that has written to charities telling them it no longer wishes their business

* that simply insists every time that the customer is wrong

Paris, because even she isn't as stupid and perverse as Lloyds/TSB/Halifax/B of S

TSA to pull backscatter perv scanners from US airports

Equitas

Enough of those scanners ......

and you may have no functional balls to ache :-(

UK.gov: You didn't trust us with your ID, so we gave it to private biz

Equitas
FAIL

"think of the children" indeed!

It's a subject on which she's not really qualified to speak, not having had any children and therefore not experienced the rôle of parent. Her inexperience may or may not have been a matter of choice on her part, but her inexperience is undeniable.

Stephen Hawking pushes for posthumous pardon for Alan Turing

Equitas
Thumb Down

Oh, come on! ......

Let's deal with facts.

Turing lost his security clearance effectively because he himself was complaining to the police about criminal activity against him on the part of one of his lovers.

Both he and the lover were also guilty of what was then a criminal offence in the form of homosexual activity.

Whether or not one agrees that the law at the time was appropriate is not quite the issue -- Turing was at the time a security risk because of his engaging in such activity.

Turing was given the choice of imprisonment or what was regarded as a soft option -- temporary chemical castration -- temporary feminisation to reduce his libido. He chose the latter, but he had an affair afterwards in spite of the feminisation.

It was after the end of the temporary feminisation treatment that he committed suicide.

Changing views of the appropriateness of homosexual activity doesn't alter the fact that Turing was associating with known criminals (unless breaking and entering is also a pardonable activity). Being a known associate of criminals who are engaged in breaking and entering would still be a reason for withdrawing security clearance.

Nor does changing views of the appropriateness of homosexual activity alter the fact that it was Turing himself who demanded that police implement the then law of the land with regard to breaking and entering.

Of course he was a brilliant man who did extremely valuable work during the war. Of course he had the potential to do a great deal more. That does not stop him being a known associate of persons engaged in burglary, and an individual at risk from his own known associates in an activity which was, as it happens, then illegal. Nor does it stop him being a man who acted in a way which was somewhat ill-advised -- indeed very foolish from his own point of view in pressing the police to take action.

Australian Police say don't use Apple's iOS 6 Maps

Equitas
FAIL

Since nobody seems to have mentioned it ....

Is this the Darwin effect?

Is any i-Phone user safe to let loose with any sort of mapping?

Is it not time to ban the import of i-Phones into Oz?

Don't touch Sony, Panasonic's junk, says credit agency

Equitas

Like many others, bad experience with Sony after-sales service has led me to avoid their stuff like the plague. Ironically, the twin-deck Panasonic twin-deck ghetto-blaster bought twenty years ago to replace a Sony on which they couldn't make the two tape decks come anywhere remotely close to synchronising, is still working as flawlessly as it did on day one.

Boss wrong to demote man over anti-gay-marriage Facebook post

Equitas

And the individual discriminated against .......

has not got his job back or had his salary reinstated, so his employers have been in effect legally permitted to maintain their discrimination against him.

Equitas
Paris Hilton

I can think of .....

more likely to create bitter hostility to gays than the sort of political correctness that outlaws any expression of a viewpoint which might potentially be construed as not favourable to gay opinion.

Paris, because whatever her failings, she isn't gay.

Teen project sparks WORLD-WIDE PEE-POWERED HYPEGASM!

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Re: Sorry, one big problem

Hmm ... pee is difficult to store as well, once you reach a full bladder at around 650mL. After that, most bladders leak. Difficult for most females to transfer urine to other containers, as well, even with a great deal of practice.

Paris -- owner of much-displayed transfer system

Microsoft Surface Touch keyboards self-destruct – and more

Equitas

Ironic, isn't it? The one thing that hitherto Microsoft has done well -- hardware -- should be the big let-down now. Typing this on an old and battered Microsoft keyboard and beside it is a Microsoft mouse. No, neither of them is perfect -- the glides have long-since gone from the mouse and label is simply worn off the underside, while the keyboard has not only lost the lettering off some keys, but the plastic of the key-tops is deeply scored and eroded from use. Now, if their software were remotely-comparable in terms of quality and fitness for purpose, I'd be delighted. It seems, however, that their hardware is descending to the quality of their software, rather than vice versa.

BBC in secret trial to see if you care about thing you plainly don't

Equitas
FAIL

Stark, raving mad!

AM on medium and long wavebands can at least be received here.

Just a few miles from the FM transmitter, but reception is very weak and without an external amplified aerial, totally unusable.

Internet radio? Yes, use it all the time, but not all BBC stations are available on my Soundbridge internet radio other than by using its presets to pick them up via FM with an amplified aerial several times the size of the Soundbridge itself.

DAB? Do they really expect me to put money into a vastly-expensive DAB radio when the rest of the world has gone for largely-incompatible DAB+ ?

If they cut out AM and FM transmissions, the answer, as far as I'm concerned, is that there'll be no replacement of radios and we'll find other means of getting news and entertainment from elsewhere. Goodbye, BBC! And I'm sure I'll be far from the only one.

Texas woman sues cops over burst Bulgarian airbag

Equitas

So there was a warrant out for her

She got pulled over for a construction and use violation

and she's complaining?

How much is her lawyer expecting to make out of this?

If she'd left alone whatever natural breasts she had, she wouldn't have suffered any implant explosion.

And she's still going to get further work done to give her a new artificial breast.

Clearly this woman is a bit of a slow learner. And now that the whole world knows her breasts aren't real, she'll be a laughing-stock for the rest of her life.

Better a flat chest that's real than Bulgarian airbags any day!

Skype floods UK stores with top-up cards

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Re: Security of credit

I could say exactly the same thing as Andy Johnson -- I'll use Skype, OK, but their security is lamentable and they disown all responsibility. I've been hacked twice and all credit used up by fraudsters. Unless or until Skype can demonstrate convincingly that their security has improved and their attitude to fraud has improved, I won't be touching any Skype credit arrangements.

Paris, because even she isn't quite that stupid.

Faulty network switched closed Melbourne tunnels

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Incompetence of the most crass variety.

At the very worst, they should have had provision to take vehicles through in convoy, led and tailed by emergency vehicles.

Just how regularly was the operation of their backup systems tested?

Just how old was the equipment which failed?

Paris, because even she's not quite that dumb

Democratic congresswomen 'less feminine in appearance' than Republicans

Equitas

Feminine American women ....

would seem to be something of an oxymoron

New monkey species with massive blue arse found in Africa

Equitas
Coat

They'll clearly be users of ......

the new i-phone with backside illumination, then!

iPhone 5: skinny li'l fella with better display, camera, software

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Re: Gggsnerk

American English has its limitations. However, it's a classic example of American stupidity. At least Rolls Royce, when considering the name "Silver Mist" stopped in time, when they realised that "mist" in German means "dung".

If a blunder such as Apple have made can get through to final release of advertising material, it shows very serious incompetence and insularity.

Paris, because even she isn't quite that dumb.

Equitas

Re: I scrolled through 3 pages of comments

No you weren't the only person to snigger -- there are at least two other comments on the subject. But then it's an important feature, which suggests a recognition that the phone must be crap! :-)

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Would you believe it? ....

Truly a first -- "backside illumination" -- obviously designed for the anally retentive! :-)

Paris, because even she isn't THAT dumb!

Apple urged to defy China's one child policy

Equitas
Big Brother

It seems that ...

most of those commenting are much more anti-child than the Chinese government policy.

However, it'll do no harm to have it made clear that Apple are anti-children. Every time you bring out your iphone or whatever you're making a statement that you don't approve of children.

Nokia apologizes for faking Lumia 920 ad

Equitas
Paris Hilton

A bit of a marketing gaffe, but ....

anyone who's fit to be be let loose on the streets should be aware that marketing bods are almost always guilty of overstating their case and making things look better than they really are. Personally I thought that the video was a demonstration of what image stabilisation can do, rather than what the application of image stabilisation in that particular camera actually does.

Advertising material, like instruction manuals, is usually prepared by people who have no knowledge of the item in question and it usually bears only a tangential relationship to the reality. That, after all, is why we're interested in independent reviews which will give us a more genuine assessment of what the thing is really like.

In the end of the day, if the camera on the phone in question is actually better than average, that should come out in independent reviews and all the complaints about the advert may actually serve to draw attention to what may be a good camera. If it's not a good camera, then Nokia will have brought the trouble on themselves and have no-one else to blame.

Paris, because even she isn't quite stupid enough to believe everything she sees in adverts!

Nokia tears wraps off new Windows Phone Lumias on steroids

Equitas
Thumb Down

Re: Too little, too late.

"to beat the emcumbants"??

I suppose you meant "incumbents" -- I trust you have a phone with a half-decent spell-checker!

Tax proposal could change Aus hardware lifecycles

Equitas
FAIL

Fail! This article applies only to Oz and there should have been an indication of that fact in the title.

Apple blacklisted by Chinese consumer watchdog

Equitas

Re: Surprised?

No idea what happens nowadays, but in the old days when I ran big Volvo estates the Volvo dealer, though they charged an arm and a leg, always returned the parts changed in any service.

Equitas

Re: Short termism?

"Think about it, are they really going to send a £100 / hour lawyer to fight a £100 claim."

The lawyers you deal with must be very cut rate. A couple of years ago I was paying £300 per hour.

New body to supervise as your NHS file includes more and more stuff

Equitas
Unhappy

And who else has access to it?

Not only is there no provision for the patient to check the accuracy of the said record, but you can assume that various other bodies have access, if not directly to the content of it at this moment, most certainly to the content of it indirectly, via GP access. For starters, at the present moment information on patients is shared with Social Services, the Police and the Local Authority's Education Service. Once it gets out that far, you can expect absolutely no confidentiality.

Furthermore there's a most disturbing feature with all those bodies that an opinion voiced by a "professional" from one of those bodies achieves the status of a fact when it is passed on to another body,

Sony 2011 losses are TWICE as bad as expected

Equitas

Re: they forgot what's important

"in both cases I excluded Sony products for no other reason than the way they treat their own customers and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that way."

I agree completely -- that reflects my own line of thinking on the basis of experience with a flawed piece of Sony equipment which after been returned twice to Sony still didn't work properly. Comet, believe it or not, swapped it for a Panasonic equivalent which has performed absolutely faultlessly for nearly twenty years. I haven't bought anything branded Sony in that time and have no intention of so doing, either.

Drobo inks chumship with Acronis in virty cloud combo package

Equitas
Thumb Up

I've got one of these, with the separate unit for networking.

It's not exactly fast. And while I have a backup of my own machine's RAID array on the Drobo, I certainly wouldn't rely on it for backup -- I have a separate off-site hard disk for backup.

What it does very well is lets a number of users in the household access material of common interest.

All in all, satisfactory, though in my view rather more expensive than there's any need for it to be.

Finders of lost mobes can't resist staring at privates

Equitas
Happy

Re: Not quite sure what is proved here.

AC has a touching faith in the competence and the industriousness of the police who, the chances are, will simply treat the mobile as they would an umbrella handed in.

Anyone who really has a concern to get the phone back to its owner will take another tack.

Never lost a mobile myself, but had a good experience with a memory stick which dropped out of my briefcase in an Edinburgh taxi. When I arrived back in the UK I got a text message telling me it had been passed to someone who had examined it for identification, found the owner file and posted it to my home. No ID of the good Samaritans so could only contact the taxi company to thank them and ask them to make my appreciation known to their drivers. I would willingly have refunded postage and given a tangible token of my appreciation. Meanwhile, I know that City Taxis are worth patronising in Edinburgh.

Satnav mishap misery cure promised at confab

Equitas

I blame Mrs Thatcher ....

for attempting to either privatise or turn into a profit-making body the Ordnance Survey whose maps are now expensive and inaccurate rubbish.

Equitas

The standard of UK mapping

has declined greatly -- the quality of OS mapping is now very poor indeed. Small wonder that the various mapping systems used by satnavs is poor!

Equitas
Paris Hilton

A little to quick on the draw, I think ....

Anonymous Coward wrote "A single track road could never be classified as an A road. If you don't know the difference between an A road and a country lane then you urgently need to go and buy a copy of the Highway Code or take some top-up driving lessons or both."

I think it's Anonymous Coward who urgently needs to go and buy a copy of the Highway Code and take some top-up driving lessons. Many hundreds of miles of A roads -- so classified because they are primary routes -- are single track with, by definition, no better alternative.

Paris, because even she isn't that thick

Nokia: There will be NO smartphone division selloff to Microsoft

Equitas

Ironic, isn't it ......

The only things Microsoft seem to do well are mice and, to a lesser extent, keyboards. Now if they could just do operating systems and software as well as they do mice and keyboards the computer world would be a much more pleasant place :-)

Apple fined $1.2m for flouting Italian warranty law

Equitas

Has anyone noticed ...

how the public perception of Italy has greatly improved? :-)

Equitas

Should they not ....

have prohibited the import or sale of all Apple products into Italy until such time as the requirements had been fulfilled?

Equitas
Mushroom

If you lived in an area where .....

various NATO air forces practice you would know that the dangerous time is when the USAF boys are around. They dropped a bomb on a war-time airfield building on the perimeter of the main NATO low-level bombing practice range a couple of miles away from here. Mercifully it was a practice bomb loaded mainly with concrete rather than high-explosive. A couple of farm-workers were working in the the other half of the same building. Public statement from the home base of the said USAF plane made much of the fact that it was "an uninhabited area." It's also a well-known fact that when any of their USAF boys get into trouble in terms of criminal charges they're removed from the country post-haste so that they aren't held to account. They don't do themselves any favours in terms of public relations. But then they reckon they're dealing with untermenschen anyway, I suppose.

New Turing petition calls for criminal pardon

Equitas
FAIL

Think it through, please ....

There's a bit more to this than meets the eye.

Yes, of course Turing was brilliant and made a dramatic contribution to the war effort and to computer science.

However, like many other brilliant people, he was a seriously flawed character.

His homosexuality came to light as the result of a break-in to his house conducted by an associate of a homosexual lover who then proceeded to threaten Turing. Turing complained to the police that he was being threatened or blackmailed in relation to the robbery which they were investigating and it's in the course of that police investigation that the nature of his relationship with the lover emerged.

Clearly an individual with such high-level security clearance being blackmailed was a national security risk on a major scale and the fact that he expressed no regret about the situation which he had allowed to take place exacerbated the situation and gave every reason to believe that if he were allowed to continue with security clearance for GCHQ and similar work there could be a repetition of the problem. The outcome of the legal case in relation to the lover of criminal intent was a conditional discharge. In Turing's case, his choice was probation on condition of supervised oestrogen treatment to reduce his libido.

Now, whatever Turing may or may not have been, he wasn't intellectually thick. And it certainly can't have been beyond him to ascertain the probable feminising results of such treatment, both to his body -- development of breasts -- and to his mind.

It's a sad case -- but what to me it illustrates is that a brilliant individual whose mathematical skills made a major contribution to the world in his particular area of expertise behaved in a grossly-ill-advised way with a criminal who was prepared to blackmail him and thereby placed himself in a situation in which there was no practical option to the government of the day but to withdraw his security clearance. The fact that his grossly-bad judgement with regard to the individual with whom he had such an extremely-close relationship was tied in to his homosexuality was what led to the charges against him being on that basis, but consorting with dubious persons of any criminal nature would have led to his security clearance being withdrawn in any case.

Like it or not, no matter how much he'd contributed in the past,Turing was a security risk. Even if his relationship with Murray had not been related to his homosexuality, and if neither of them had been homosexuals, the fact of the matter was that his "friend" had knowingly provided the lead for a criminal associate to burgle Turing and that was the underlying issue.

Turing was brilliant intellectually, but fatally flawed in his judgement with regard to human relationships. How ironic that one who contributed so much to the security of the nation should have behaved in a way that placed that very security at risk and that he should have shown no remorse at so doing!

eBuyer £1 sale fail: Customers vent fury... on Facebook

Equitas
Paris Hilton

A favourite trick

Anonymous Coward wrote

"Bah.. bunch of shysters.

Just tried to buy a sd card from them, all of £5...

Delivery Methods

We use UPS, Royal Mail, City Link and Parcel Force to deliver packages to our customers.

Ok, fine, select delivery (with Royal Mail) Shipping Charge: Total: £1.51

Click next... oops...

Your chosen shipping option is not available for this address. We have selected a suitable alternative & displayed your new order total

New delivery charge ---> Delivery Price: £8.00 !!

Wow !

Never knew Royal Mail does not deliver to Belfast.. looks down at my Royal Mail id card, must tell my boss that tomorrow when I am sorting the mail..."

And the main reason I don't generally buy from them.

In point of fact they and a number of other companies are currently under investigation for fraudulent misrepresentation of carriage charges to the North of Scotland which they enterprisingly exclude from the UK Mainland.

Paris, because even she's not that thick!

NSW govt to open silicon centric digs in The Valley

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Are there indications

of a weak understanding of geography in this article?

It's supposed to be going out to a worldwide audience, most of whom have little idea of where or what NSW may be and probably care even less.

Antipodean government structures are unfamiliar territory to most of the world. Politeness, or even enlightened self-interest, would suggest that it would be appropriate to give some indication that NSW is supposed in this instance to stand for New South Wales, one of the states of Australia, rather than for Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke -- the division of General Cable specialising in undersea cables and rather older as a company than New South Wales is as a state.

Paris, because even she isn't dumb enough to be confused, or get others confused, over her name

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Since when

have gooseberries ceased to be a member of the ribes family?

Paris, because even she ain't that dumb!

Gas bill climbed £13,000 after correct online reading given

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Try Scottish Water.....

who manage to charge for the same water twice .... once on the rateable value and once on the meter which provides the only supply to the building. And who manage to charge for notional water "supplied" to a building with no water supply. And to charge for surface water drainage for buildings where the roof water discharges into soakaways.

Even Paris isn't that daft.

Apple vs Samsung: on and on and on

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Who's stupid?

Whoever else is stupid, clearly those who buy Apple products for reasons no better than trendiness should have a claim to the title.

Paris, because even she wouldn't necessarily have a claim on the title for that reason.

.Scot campaign seeks UK Gov backing

Equitas
Paris Hilton

What exactly does Oli Wright mean .....

by a "firey" death? Didn't he learn to spell in primary school?

Paris, because even she isn't that thick.

Galaxy Tab remains illegal in Germany

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Are you sure .......

that "she" is necessarily totally appropriate. I've seen quite a few middle-aged women from that part of the world who seem to go around wearing moustaches which would equal those of their male counterparts.

Paris, because she doesn't appear in public with a moustache.

More job losses on the way as Tata picks up Telstra back office

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Obviously an Aussie post .....

but why do Aussies assume that the names of those companies are familiar to those outside Australasia?

Paris, because even she ain't that dumb.

Telstra's branding plans leaked to El Reg

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Yes, but .......

what is there in the article to tell the wider world that Telstra is Australia's equivalent of British Telecom?

Telstra may well be run by people totally removed from reality, but this article isn't much better, considering it's being circulated to a world-wide audience -- an exercise in non-communication, IMHO.

Paris, because even she has more sense.

Sea eagles menace Scottish children

Equitas
Paris Hilton

Birds can be vicious .....

Even seagulls can identify individual humans and take a delight in attacking those individuals.

Vicious flying rats, best dealt with using a shotgun.

Incidentally a kid at one school found a use for the pathetic politically-correct windmill .... saw it slicing a seagull in two. Can't any more say that the windmill is useless!

Paris -- because she's a better sort of bird!

New UK 'leccy meters remotely run via Voda 2G

Equitas

It happened here more than a year ago .....

And not a bad thing, as it (in theory) removes the need for being physically present at the unspecified time a meter reader may arrive.

With typical British Gas efficiency, of course, they continued to send meter readers for some time afterwards :-).

Should solve the problem for the holiday cottage, if it ever reaches there. Meter there hasn't been read by a meter reader for about thirty years!

Equitas

It doesn't make any difference ....

if you switch from British Gas -- British Gas employ another company to read the meter data and the new supplier gets their readings from the meter data company. How do I know? -- I've been through this with one of the new meters.

Equitas

No Vodafone coverage??

No problem -- the Vodafone SIM is the first they try. If that doesn't work in situ they have other SIMs they can use. And if there's no coverage, you've got to provide a landline or lose your electricity connection.

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