Posts by John Curry

Morons...

So let's just check - had this Manhole cover been left unattended, and let's say someone with a physical or mental disability had fallen down the hole, would you have the same reaction?

It's possible for anyone to be distracted - the fact that she was texting doesn't really make any difference at all. The problem here is that someone left a dirty great hole in the road, unmarked, which resulted in injury, and which could have resulted in something much worse for someone more vulnerable.

She's well within her rights to sue, in should do.

@ AC 13/06/09 20:37

O2's terms are no different to 3's. Whatsoever. There are restrictions on tethering built into the terms and conditions, and they're enforcing them.

On 3, I have a £20 a month plan, with unlimited texts and 1gb of internet usage. I can't use it for tethering though (I've done it twice, and now they've blocked it - some kind of packet inspection presumably).

If I want to turn that 1gb into tether friendly bandwidth, I have to pay an extra tenner a month. That'll get me 1gb of tethering data, on top of my 1gb of phone-only data.

Silly, but there you go. £15 for 3gb of iPhone tethering is a pretty good deal I think.

Maybe less of the religion bashing...

I'm a Christian (Methodist), and I've never had to pay for anything. I tithe, but it's voluntary, and stumbled across it myself - it was never even mentioned to me, let alone forced upon me.

Plus, my minister actively encourages debate, never pushes an opinion onto anyone, and is thoroughly supportive. Good chap too. Enjoys a nice real ale (we're not ribbon holders, before anyone mentions it).

It's probably best not to just make sweeping generalisations - more often than not they're entirely wrong. Entirely up to you if you believe what I believe, or if you choose not to. That is indeed your choice, and fair play to you for it. But don't lump us in with the bloody Scientologists. They're clearly only in it for the money.

@ James Dunmore

Er, not sure which shop you were in on iPhone 3g launch day, but both of my local O2/CPW stores had queues well out of the door a good 2 hours prior to opening time.

Except...

...that it's not necessarily stupidity or laziness that means people stick with XP.

I bought a second hand Advent 4211 (which I absolutely love), and had never really investigated Linux. I initially tried Mandriva. Didn't work. Wouldn't boot. Decided to try Ubuntu, and really liked the look and feel of it. Didn't work with wireless card though. I'm not massively technical but decided to take the plunge and install a new wireless card. Got it up an running, and absolutely loved it. For about 5 minutes.

The bootup time is longer than XP, which was a bit of a bummer considering that I'd read everywhere that Linux is faster, speedier than "slow and cumbersome" XP. I found the network manager somehow just disconnected itself every 4-5 mins, so my mobile broadband connection died frequently, a problem I don't get with XP.

The OS itself also wasn't amazingly stable, nor were the apps. Firefox regularly would t recognize my Internet connection, and the supplied media player was terrible. Skipped songs, slow to load, frequent crashes. I also can't easily connect my iPhone to it, or use any of my music production or web design software that I've paid several hundred pounds for.

So, I stuck and extra gig of RAM in, and went back to XP (which was no easy task in itself as removing Ubuntu borked my boot MBR thing for several days, and Ubuntu had overwritten my harddrive recovery partition without my say so. )

I'd absolutely love to move to Linux, but simply don't see the point at present. I'd really, ideally like to have a dual boot system with XP as my main OS, but with a pared down EEE style Linux that can boot in 20 secs or so and have me browsing with my mobile broadband or wireless connection.

Until then, it'll be XP all the way, even though I'll happily check out new iterations of Ubuntu etc etc.

Fuck me...

...shocking display of small minded sexism here. We live in a male oriented world you fuckwits, and the fact that on average women are paid less is just the tip o the iceberg.

Morons.

Wow.....

.....it takes the type of intelligence normally found only in the Daily Mail to genuinely try and equate the effects of horse riding with the effects of ecstacy.

Anonymous Coward "Cumulative Effects" has it more than right here. The rest of you actually seem to be more than a little stupid. Ban paracetamol? No thanks, it has actual medical value and the ability to treat real ailments. Ban cars? Er, no, completely different argument.

The balance is between risk and benefit, and cost to society. Yes there's risk involved in driving a car, but the benefits far outweigh them, both for the individual and society (green arguments aside). Horse riding has a risk, but it is kept entirely to the individual involved (and the horse).

Drug taking not only effects the individual, but also those around that individual. It can, and does, lead to anti-social behaviour. It can lead to crippling addictions, which can in turn lead the user into crime and poverty. It's a bit selfish to suggest that there's nothing wrong with that just because you want to get your jollies off.

Of course, the same can be said of alcohol, and gambling, and I reckon there's a large degree of hypocrisy there, but the sanest way to put a point across on that isn't to say "badgers carry TB therefore ban badgers" or some other such tosh.

Aye...

...child abuse is very funny, and something that should be made light of.

Idiots.

Regarding The Pedantry

The SM57 is used in studios both amateur and professional all over the world, and it's widely known it's the easiest way to get a great sounding recording of pretty much any guitar cab on the planet.

Granted, it's often used in conjection with a 'classic' condensor, but anyone who denies it's use in the studio is probably a cretin.

Interesting...

...that people are complaining about "outdated" business models, and using them as a justification for theft.

The bottom line is that this company made a product, and you can't just steal it because you claim it's not worth paying for. By that justification, I should be able to walk into my nearest Curry's, pick a new TV off the shelf, and wander away muttering some rubbish about "outdated business models".

Yes there's improvements to be made in the area of copyright law, but you can't simply steal until they're made. You could instead just choose to not buy those things which you claim are worthless and undesirable anyway.

Morons.

@EvilGav

"Speed cameras in any of tehir forms don't work, for the fact that people are paying attention to their speed more than the road and because too many drivers today are driving at the speed-limit and not at an appropriate speed for the road (there are many instances where driving considerably below the speed-limit is preferable e.g. a small lane in a country village, limit 30, stupid to drive at that speed)."

Appropriate speed? Hmmm, let me think - do you mean something like a limit set out by an expert body which gives you an indicator as to the absolute limit which you should do on a particular road? That sounds awfully like a speed limit to me.

Your country lane example proves a point - that is the absolute maximum you can risk doing on that road. But you should drive at less than that in order to be safe, especially in less than ideal conditions. The point of that limit is to show you that in absolute ideal driving conditions, with a car in it's prime, and an experienced driver, you can do 30 miles an hour. Anything other than that means you should be going slower.

Imagine a world where you can just do 70 in the right hand line, and not have some absolute idiot tailgating you and flashing because they want to go faster.

Morons...

Bow to me (or something equally as ludicrously smug)

Due to a quirk in the system (my credit check from a failed order earlier in the week had been saved), I was apparently officially the first person in the country with a fully activated iPhone.

Chuffed? Oui oui...

RE : BIG WOW! (MIKE LOVELL)

I really, really hope you're either:

a - not a real person

b - joking

c - full of ill directed male bravado

On the off chance that none of the above apply, let me take this opportunity to call you a buffoon.

Thank you.