Posts by Andy Worth 594 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Aug 2007
At least if it needs a small warship to carry it, there's little chance of it knocking at someone's door and terminating them.
@b166er
Sounds good in principle, but then you have to factor in things like kids running into the road, cyclists, cars without this technology installed, inaccurate sat nav (such as not knowing about one-way streets for example). I still think we are many years away from a car which would be legally allowed to drive itself on the roads.
Other than removing the feature, how can they fix the impact that it has on web statistics? To fix it, surely they'd have to leave a visible trace so that the sites can filter their logs, in which case it'll be about a week before a new bit of malicious code is released that hides itself from the scanner.
@Chuck
Ever heard the saying that "love is blind"? Because your evident man-love for AVG seems to have blinded you to reality. I guarantee you that as fast as they change linkscanner, people will develop new ways to hide malicious code from it. So all that it will leave you with is a false sense of security, and a blissfully unaware smile on your face as malware ravages your PC.
Simple fact is that it eats up both your bandwidth and the bandwidth of the websites featured in the search engine links. If it continues, how long will it be before sites just arbitrarily block it, or someone (website owner) takes grisoft to court over the cost of extra bandwidth?
As stated in the "Exploit vs Virus" post a few before this one, this looks like a load of marketing tripe, or just a really poorly thought out "advancement".
"The court said that Oson seemed to think that he was the smartest guy around but, as often happens, he ran into someone smarter (the FBI)."
Surely this proves that the guy must have been a fuckwit, if the court terms the FBI as being "smarter"?
Seriously.....attempt to be the BOFH?........FAIL! Simon would have got away with it, and got his job back with a pay rise, as well as organising a nasty accident for the person who bad-mouthed him in the first place!
Honestly, this guy deserves what he got though. It's obvious that he willfully destroyed the data without any care for the people who owned it (the patients), out of a petty need for revenge on his former employer.
"virgin are really pushing there luck with there service first they bust peoples internet speed now there joining forces with the bpi to stop downloading haha this gets worse by the minute i wouldnt waste my time with virgin i feel sorry for there customers if i were you id leave virgin quick and fast join another cable isp oh wait i think virgin is the only cable provider damn thats bad luck least sky dont report me for what i download have fun virgin youll end up out of buisness you will loose customers"
Punctuation.
It's great, isn't it?
That said, I do agree that Virgin are crap. Their TV offering hasn't improved either. I was unlucky enough to lodge in a house which switched from Sky to Virgin and saw first-hand how dreadful it is in comparison. The cable also switched from NTL to Virgin and rapidly went downhill.
I wouldn't touch any of their products with a bargepole.
As far as I'm concerned, they can throttle the fuck out of connections, as long as they stop advertising "unlimited" broadband. The same goes for any ISP who make the offer of unlimited bandwidth, it's false advertising plain and simple. Making these offers and then hiding bandwidth throttling clauses in your T&C's should not be classed as legal.
"4 people complained"
"2 viewers complained"
"a viewer complained"
Is it me, or is it a very small minority of (probably the same) whining bastards who bother to complain, while the rest of us just quite simply couldn't give a fuck?
Really, if you want to find a truly offensive program, complain about Eastenders. It offends me because it's fucking shit.
Peter Gabriel........I fart in your general direction!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
A real recommendation engine wouldn't ask you to choose three genres to begin with, especially not using that list (there are many missing as others have stated). They should ask people to input some of their favourite tracks and then determine the genres people prefer from that list. The more of your favourite tracks you enter, the more accurate it would become.
As for taste matching.....great, so it offers people another way to become sheep to other peoples tastes?
Sorry but that's an enormous amount of assumption on your part, considering the story alleges that they left the shop and were then called back by said manager before the police were called.
It's got nothing to do with Apple at the end of the day, just an overzealous store manager.
.....this amounts to a something along the same lines of a hack or network flood, which is as far as I am aware, illegal. It is not for MediaDefender to be judge and jury over what is and is not a legitimate site, so any action they take against any site should be considered a criminal activity.
Control a game with a sock?
Err......get a sock and put a Wiimote in it?
Control a game with a lemon wedge, etc...etc....
Err......tape a Wiimote to it?
Well it seems good enough for Nintendo, who release all sorts of "new" controls devices for the Wii which basically consist of a piece of plastic with a Wiimote stuck in it somewhere.
"Now I bought Wii fit 10 days ago... And I've used it every day... It's surprisingly good and fun. I actually hurt a bit at the moment just from playing it."
Well that just goes to show how much you should be getting some real exercise rather than buggering about with a console tbh. It's just another novelty, rather like the Wii itself, which everyone plays with like mad just after they get it, before getting bored and leaving it gathering dust. You even admit yourself that your own console rarely gets used, at least until you got the Wii Fit.
Such behaviour is typical of almost everyone I know who owns a Wii. Of course the initial novelty value meant that it got played to death, but since then the usage has fallen to almost nothing. the Wii Fit revives the novelty value a little but I don't reckon most of these will be in use for more than a month before the boredom factor kicks in again. Kudos to Nintendo as they have evidently created a product which is ideal for the "non-gaming majority", but I don't think you can compare the product with the more hardcore "gamers" consoles like the 360 and PS3, at least not on a capability basis.
Your argument at the end of your post is irrelevant. It's almost as irrelevant as saying "If I have to spend more on petrol I can spend less on my PS3/xbox/Wii, ergo cars are a direct competitor". I know very few people who would have a specific budget for console gaming, or for "going to the movies/theatre/circus". Whatever people have left after paying for food, rent/mortgage, fuel, bills (i.e. the things that they have no choice but to spend on) leaves them with their "spare" budget.
After this point, whether they choose to spend it on going out, DVD's, games, sex toys or whatever is ALL in direct competition with one another. Console makers try to persuade people to stay in and play their games in the same manner that cinemas would try and persuade you to go out and watch a film, or pubs to go there and get pissed. So with the Wii Fit, they try to persuade people that it is more fun and just as good exercise as going to a real gym or having a kick about with your mates. So does that mean that the Wii Fit should be compared directly with sales of sports equipment?
No, of course it doesn't. It's not even like I disagree with the sentiment that Wii sales should be compared with other consoles, as they should imho, but that argument was just so fundamentally flawed that it showed the same sort of understanding of real life financial budgets that I have become used to seeing from politicians (i.e. very little).
Essentially, if this judgment stands, it more or less negates any of the "non-transferrence" statements in EULA's of various software. So essentially saying that it it unlawful to prevent the transfer of software between people.
Their argument about the fact that they merely "licence" the software is also off the mark, as in which case he is just selling on the licence. To be honest, the general situation with software being licenced rather than sold I believe to be nothing more than a get out by the software publishing company. I believe they can get away with more than if they sold it, as they basically take no responsibility for the end product.
The owner seems to have very little. He's paid £10k for a system to save him £2500 a year, assuming that nothing goes wrong with the system in 4 years (unlikely) meaning that he would have to pay out for maintenance. It also assumes a complete lack of human or mechanical error resulting in the tyres of an innocent motorist being ruined (and the resultant costs - as sure as hell if it was me then I'd sue the shit out of the garage). Furthermore it assumes no loss of sales, either through people moving elsewhere or perhaps a mechanical failure meaning people cannot leave the garage.
It just seems like a really expensive way to partially fix a problem.
"We had games like this at our students union about 5 years ago, they lasted about 2 weeks before they were all broken."
That's because they were surrounded by students, which is enough to give anything the will to die. Besides, with the urine-alcohol content found in most students, it'd be like dousing the thing in meths.
"It would not be so good if I voted for the people I like and the BNP or National Front may get in. I would like one that would show me the best way to keep the ones I dislike the most out..."
Well that's simple, look at the opinion polls and vote for the most popular other party, regardless of their policies. This would more or less guarantee them getting the majority of the vote if most undecided people did it.
Although this sounds stupid when put like that, there's not much else you can do, other than trusting the popular vote to avoid the parties you don't like.
I can see what you're saying, that you don't want your vote going to a non-leading party to mean that someone like the BNP could get in - but the only sensible thing you can do is to vote for the party you WANT to get in and hope that the majority agree with you.
Couldn't agree more.
By far the most effective way to reduce phishing attacks (or at least successful ones) would be to have some proper guidance for people on a wide scale. I know the guidance exists, but it's not forced into people's faces.
To effectively teach a child the correct way to cross a road, you don't say "oh there's a book (or webpage) about crossing roads, read it if you feel like it", you force the information on them. The same should apply to "internet safety" pages, and perhaps even people should have to take a standard internet safety "test" before they are let loose on the web? :)
I can just imagine it.....Dave Prowse in his blue tights (yes I know they were green in the road safety campaign) promoting the "Blue Cross Code". Someone sitting on a PC, about to click on a phishing email link and he jumps in and says "Don't be an R-tard!.....leave the email alone". Instead of Stop, Look, Listen it'll be Stop, Read Carefully, Delete.
As in "this is a load of". Just another thing to blame instead of poor parenting and a slowly collapsing society.
Here's a research project for you, and I'd like a grant of a couple of million to properly err.....look into the facts. It centres around bullshit research projects being a waste of everyones time. I'd like to prove that this sort of research has the same actual value as Lindsay Lohans liver.
It's more likely to be parents who are more interested in yacking on their mobiles rather than actually being parents to their children.
"I doubt you'll find many in the UK with the problem as it's allegedly just early 60GB models with backwards compatibility that are having problems."
Well I have a 60GB model with the backwards compatibility - I had something that looked like a freeze right near the beginning of the game - about the third time I got into a car - but then after 20 seconds or so it carried on and has never been a problem since.
Of course, it hasn't stopped me from getting frustrated when I fail a mission too many times and turning it off myself :)
That's the problem, that many people have touched upon here - the price of these software applications is just vastly overinflated, especially for the home user. Developers seem to be under the false pretence that they will make more money by selling their software more expensively where in fact the opposite would likely be true.
Why would I want to pay big bucks for more or less any application where its use would be purely personal? Simple answer is that I wouldn't. If I want to design an animated e-card for a friend/relative/partner, my personal choice would be Flash, but it wouldn't be worth me paying £300 (or whatever the current licence cost is) for a legit copy of the software. If a home licence was say £40 instead, for a fully functional version of the same software (but with the understanding that it is purely for non-commercial use) then I am more likely to buy it.
Most legitimate companies would still pay for the commercial licences (at least the ones who already do) as they cannot afford to be caught out on software licencing.
People at home naturally want to use the same software they get comfortable using at work, but cannot afford to pay the ridiculous prices charged for some of it. By changing their psychology over pricing and selling themselves more cheaply, I think the software companies would find that they turn a much greater profit in the home market.
So the sign on the window says
"no mobiles phones, radios, or headphones"
And you sit there with your iPod and a set of headphones, which regardless of having a lower noise pollution level than normal headphones still contravene the sign above your head, then point out said sign to someone opposite you when they have the cheek to use their mobile?
Sorry, but you sound like a twat to me. If you want to listen to your iPod, go sit in a non-quiet carriage and stop holding others to rules that you don't even follow yourself.
"But, How far did you get from them before you realised they actually got your order wrong?"
More importantly, how far did you get from them before you realised that the meat in your so-called beef burger tasted of recycled socks? Honestly, as someone else said, there is NO good reason to go to McDonalds unless heavily armed. Remember the recent adverts for the Monopoly promotion? "You can even win tasty McDonalds food!"...........I wonder why I can't just buy tasty McDonalds food instead and they only give away the tasty stuff as a prize.
@Steve Mann
Fair cop, Newport Pagnell services have always been rather dreadful on the food/restaurant front, but at least they're only in one place. It's hard to find a city in Europe that doesn't have at least one McDonalds restaurant, and impossible to find one that sells food that tastes of anything good. It's like the choice between having one disfiguring mole or ten thousand slightly smaller, but still disfiguring ones.
Of course my last point of wonder is if AOL, The Sun and McDonalds are so (or so it seems) universally hated, how are they still in business? There must be an awful lot of people who claim to hate McDonalds but still regularly buy food there, likewise people who buy The Sun.
Don't you just love useless, expensive technology? It only works about 90% of the time, and if it isn't convinced then they have to insert a driving licence. So they can just "borrow" a driving licence and insert it anyway.
In fact, why don't they just make people insert their driving licence, check the DOB printed on it and compare photo on the licence against the face in front of the camera? Facial comparison software is much much more accurate when providing two pictures, even taking into account aging. Instead they overcomplicate things by trying to make the machine guess peoples ages.
"As far as I am aware, it is illegal to give bad references"
This is actually a common misconception. It is not illegal to give a bad reference if the content of that reference is 100% accurate, however you would have to have well documented proof of everything you say. If you (as an employer) make a false accusation of someone in a reference and they dispute it, you leave yourself open to legal action.
The difficulties in proving things usually leads companies to simply refuse to give a reference instead, as if you refuse to say anything then people take it to mean the same as a bad reference.
Sorry AC, but acts of extreme violence have been commonplace in society as far back as history can record, however they simply get a lot more media coverage so these days you hear about more of them. The stabbing in the GTA queue was a matter completely unrelated to the game, so blaming the game for it is simply incorrect.
I agree that mental health is the issue rather than the content itself. The problem is when people cannot clearly distinguish between fantasy and reality, but then exactly the same applies to games, films, images and everything else. As I've said before though, until they introduce compulsory mental screening to determine who can buy certain games, films, books etc, there is no answer.
Many people will have seen "V for Vendetta", where it has become illegal to own many things (such as a copy of the Koran for example) or certain paintings which promote "the wrong image". Likewise I am sure that many will have seen Equilibrium, where it has become illegal to own any sort of art or music. This is just the first step on the road towards this, with the whole bill using such woolly and undefined terms to describe what it covers, that it could be used to persecute people for owning more or less anything that another person could class as offensive.
Pardon me, but I don't think it's any of the governments concern what I choose to look at (or not) in my own home and my own time. Sure, if I was plastering 50ft high pornographic images on the side of the Houses of Parliament (hmm now that's an idea....) then they might have a right to object.
It's not that I particularly want to have pictures of what most people would class as "Extreme Porn", but as people have noted, what is normal to one person might be considered extreme by another. The lack of definition in the law simply provides another way to lock people up who do anything that "offends the government".
Then again, we should hardly be surprised considering the influence that the Fabian Socialists have upon the Labour party and their policies. It seems that we grow ever closer to the type of society that Orwell feared that we would one day turn into. Just wait, they've already used anti-terror legislation to suit their needs and it won't be long before this gets misused as well.
If they just port the original Doom to the Wii and allow for the control system changes then the graphics will match most of the other Wii games without any other improvements. :p
Not that I'm particularly looking forward to this game, as Doom 3 was (in my opinion) rubbish. Everyone raved about it at the time, but I found it shallow and uninspiring. Sure it made me jump a few times, but the story was rubbish and it didn't do anything "new". They need to look at making it much more interesting and preferably non-linear, but from past experience, they'll just concentrate on making graphics that will detract from the dull nature of the plot and gameplay.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this as there are plenty of "Doom Fanboys" around, but it seems to me like it'll be nothing spectacular. However, if past experience is anything to go by, it'll be due for release in late 2009 initially, and eventually be released in around 2012.
"It's about time Face Book was banned. Everyone knows it’s a hub for organised social unrest. What with that and GTA4, its only our police state that’s holding things together."
I agree with everything in that statement aside from the words in it. Actually, banning Facebook isn't such a bad idea, but if they try and touch my GTA4 I'll steal their police cars and run over a large congregation of Hasidic Jews (that actually happened in game - one moment I was hitting a kerb and the next moment my airborne car was scattering a group of characters looking like Hasidic Jews).
*I should mention that I have no intention of ACTUALLY running down a group of Hasidic Jews in real life, I'd rather aim for a group of French people*
I still believe that there may be somebody in Google/Youtube that is connected with the Scientologists. The next move could be to start removing links on Google to sites that talk negatively about the "religion". To me it seems like the "church" is a sort of virus, infecting and spreading with malicious intent.
And I won't go anonymous out of principle, because I am still entitled to believe whatever I want.
I do love the way any discussion about consoles leads to a guarantee that people will wave their cock in the comments and challenge everyone else to prove theirs is bigger. Of course, we could just play the game and enjoy it instead.
Honestly, why print something without properly checking the facts first? I sometimes think that the Reg just want to start another "cock-war" for the sake of it.
The likelihood is that the PS3 version is anti-aliased and the 360 version either is not, or less so. Either way, without being totally anal about it, I don't think there is enough difference to be worth me worrying my fucking day away about it. It's a fantastic game, regardless of console - my only regret being that 360 and PS3 owners can't play on the same online servers.
Serves them right for ringing a premium rate number, given all the scandal lately over dodgy premium rate competition lines. That said, I would love to see this sort of competition get pulled, given that I have always been strongly against premium rate phone-ins.
It's the same with the X-Factor and the like - they make plenty of money from the show, mostly from the extortionate call rates, and the idiots who will vote twenty-plus times for their favourites.
"if video games affected children we would all be running around in the dark,eating little white pills listening to repetitve electronic music"
Well I can't say for sure whether the quote was ever made by someone from Nintendo, but I saw it last night on a few year old repeat of a Jack Dee standup. Except it wasn't Jack, but some guy called Marcus Brigstocke - and he was funny as fuck.
As for this event, well to be honest, the two people involved are probably a fine example of the sort of person who SHOULDN'T be allowed to watch violent tv, play violent games and the like. Unfortunately until they make psychological screening a pre-requisite for said activities, there's not much can be done. Why ruin it for the 99.9% of people who buy a game like GTA4, play it and carry on with their normal lives without the need to stab anyone?
Oh and on another note, I am halfway between being impressed and disturbed at the obvious amount of effort that has gone into making picking up a hooker more interesting. Gone are the GTA3 days of the car shaking from side to side a bit, but you can still probably run her over afterwards and get your money back :)
.....You're just outraged about this being advertised because you're fuck ugly and know that you wouldn't get the job, aren't you?
WTF does a few naked, 18+ chicks on a webcam have to do with "child-safety" on the internet? She may be studying a masters degree, but evidently "studious" doesn't necessarily mean "smart".
I can see the advertising campaign now.....man standing using a phone with a normal battery, being harrassed by a heavily bearded Bin-Laden lookalike.....cut to the man with the patented "terrorstop" battery and the same terrorist being held back by an invisible field like a mime artist.
Also, scientific tests have proven that the field radiated from the anti-terror battery will stop a terrorist bullet before it reaches your head. Money back if you are not satisfied.....
One of the arguments you hear quite often from Freetards is that they don't like to pay for games/films/music and then find they've wasted their money on something duff. Given that every review I've seen for GTA 4 pretty much touts it as a masterpiece, I doubt that argument will stick here.
As with Dave (first comment on this article) I am more than happy to pay for this game, because it looks like being the best way of wasting time I'm likely to have for quite a long while. I honestly hope this IS a virus, and bricks the consoles of those downloading it as it'd serve them right.
"Or is it like everything else SONY has sold in the past decade a mere flash in the pan doomed to fail miserably of the me follow you , much too little too late variety"
Umm, you mean like the Playstation, or PS2, just for two examples? And with the PS3 and Blu-Ray growing in popularity, perhaps a couple more.
Actually about half of the things that Sony bring to market are successful, and about half are not. Although, rather like the iphone haters, this statement appears to come from someone who just wants to hate something regardless of any other facts.
@Graham Lockley
Agreed - I don't understand why they haven't done that either. Perhaps they will at a later date, with some firmware upgrade to the PS3.
I've been trying to decipher that comment as I unfortunately only speak English and not "smash face on keyboard and hope for the best". However, I think that I have got the gist of the statement and am actually in agreement.
I too am torn regarding this announcement. I remember Blake's 7 from my younger days (I was 4 - 7 years old while it was on) and even I can remember how comically bad it was in places. That's actually partly why it was so watchable, because it was, like most sci-fi series of it's era, a bit rubbish but at the same time very watchable.
Part of me wants this remake to be really good, as the story behind Blake's 7 was actually pretty good (even if the acting was a bit crap). I'm afraid that I fully expect Sky to ruin it and make it another clone-style series of theirs, with no true individuality from the other clone series they show.
Perhaps someone within the upper-hierarchy of Youtube actually belongs to the cult, which would explain why they are so willing to remove users who post videos with non-copyrighted material about it. Every time I hear about Scientology it reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where they get brainwashed into a cult. I don't know why, but it probably explains why I can't take it seriously.
I love the way people will defend it so completely, as if it is something they have believed all of their life, rather than something made up by a con-man in order to extort money from people. Still, fair play to "the creator", he managed to find yet another gap in the market for the extortion of stupid people.
All sounds a bit unfair to me.....male fish, minding his own business, female comes up to him and rubs against him a few times and then buggers off. He's left wondering what the hell just happened (and frustrated) until x weeks later when the demand for child support payments comes through the door!
Hang on....I know marriages like that.....
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