* Posts by Voice of reason

25 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2007

Will Darling's data giveaway kill off ID cards?

Voice of reason
Happy

@Mr Larrington

I refer you to my earlier posting, you don't really have any freedom to lose. You're just part of the machine. Get over it.

Voice of reason
Happy

When will people realise...

... that their purpose in life can be summed up as follows:

1) Work to contribute to the country's GDP.

2) Work to pay Taxes.

3) Consume goods and services in order to contribute to the GDP, pay taxes and provide work for other people to enable them to do 1, 2 & 3.

4) Procreate in order to provide the country with more people to do 1, 2, 3 & 4.

You're a Waged Slave with little more freedom than a Broadmoor inmate.

You're locked in a futile cycle of wasting the best part of your life working to earn money to spend on mortgages, cars, gadgets and other rubbish that, thanks to advertising and our wonderful capitalist society, you'll never be satisfied with.

Having an ID card or not won't change any of the above.

The sooner you accept this and get back in line, the happier you will be.

Skype faces 020 7870 cut-off

Voice of reason
Alert

In my experience...

... tin cans and string provide much better call quality than Skype half the time.

As for having to pulp business cards & mail-shots, anyone relying on skype for essential business communications must be nuts - surely they're just trying to blag some extra compo from skype?

T-Mobile unlocks iPhone, charges €999

Voice of reason
Happy

Excellent!

Now all we have to do is wait for Apple to catch up with the features.

I'm looking forward to buying an unlocked second-generation iPhone when it has 3.5G data, better camera & GPS.

Police Complaints joins inquest into Darling data giveaway

Voice of reason
Stop

Can we stop...

...wasting more of my tax money on this please? How much is

the police investigation going to cost?

Yes I have kids, so chances are my details are on those disks, but

guess what? I'm not really that bothered. If, in the unlikely event

that it happens, my bank account gets emptied, I'll get the money

back anyway - just in case, here's a tip, don't leave ALL your money

in your current account.

So someone maybe has my address, woopie-do for them! It's all on

192.com anyhow thanks to the electronic electoral register.

Yes they should have encrypted the data, or not sent it by post or

whatever - but I bet more money gets wasted on investigating this and

chuffing about than gets stolen from people's bank accounts.

The media love to scare-monger and the opposition parties like to

score political points. It's a load of old balls, nobody's ID or

money will be stolen as a result of this.

PS. I did originally post my bank account number and sort code previously, but the El Reg moderators bounced the posting. And there's me thinking that what with all the effing, jeffing and personal attacks on here there was no moderation. Cheers Sarah ;o)

Voice of reason
Stop

Can we stop...

...wasting more of my tax money on this please? How much is

the police investigation going to cost?

Yes I have kids, so chances are my details are on those disks, but

guess what? I'm not really that bothered. If, in the unlikely event

that it happens, my bank account gets emptied, I'll get the money

back anyway - just in case, here's a tip, don't leave ALL your money

in your current account.

So someone maybe has my address, woopie-do for them! It's all on

192.com anyhow thanks to the electronic electoral register.

Yes they should have encrypted the data, or not sent it by post or

whatever - but I bet more money gets wasted on investigating this and

chuffing about than gets stolen from people's bank accounts.

The media love to scare-monger and the opposition parties like to

score political points. It's a load of old balls, nobody's ID or

money will be stolen as a result of this.

PS. I did originally post my bank account number and sort code previously, but the El Reg moderators bounced the posting. And there's me thinking that what with all the effing, jeffing and personal attacks on here there was no moderation. Cheers Sarah ;o)

Truphone phones a friend

Voice of reason
Happy

My TruPhone experience...

I installed TruPhone on my unbranded N95, it doesn't work on some network branded models.

It was very easy to install and set up.

The integration with the phone is seamless.

The call quality was as good as over GSM - unlike, say, using Fring and Skype - which is rubbish.

The only problem I had was stopping the N95 automagically hooking up to TruPhone whenever it was near a previously registered Wireless network. This lead to the N95 battery getting drained very quickly when I was in the office or at home. It was this problem that caused me to uninstall it. Shame really, because otherwise it was great.

Free calls to UK land-lines and cheap calls everywhere else, not surprised they're struggling to make money out of it though...

Oz Santas suffer no 'ho ho ho' blow

Voice of reason
Unhappy

What?

You mean there are FAKE santas in the shop grottoes!!!

I always thought there was only one Santa and he had to do some kind of magic to be all over the place at the same time.

Please tell me it's not so...

Honda hits reverse on £50k fuel cell cars for '08

Voice of reason
Go

Sustainable hydrogen production

How about using nuclear power plants to generate electricity to electrolyse water to produce hydrogen? It's pretty obvious that Nuclear Power 2.0 (tm) is the way forward ...

Great War diary reveals original Captain Blackadder

Voice of reason

Paying for stuff...

Actually, the thing that annoyed me about this isn't the fact that it's not free, it's the fact that Jamie Stewart is making out that his motivation for publishing his grandfather's work is to SHARE it with a wider audience. If this in fact was his true motivation, he wouldn't be charging £9.95 a pop for the download, he'd have just transcribed it to HTML and bunged it on the web.

I'm more than happy to pay for stuff, it just bugs me when people make out that they're doing something for a charitable cause, or for the public good, when clearly they aren't. Why lie about it?

Voice of reason
Unhappy

Disgraceful...

How much does it cost to publish an eBook?

From their website: "With no printers to pay or publishers taking a commission we are able to make the diary available for just £9.95" And they're contributing a whopping 50p to the Poppy Appeal - where's the other £9.49 going if it's not going to printers or publishers?

This smacks primarily of an attempt to make some money out of Capt Alexander Stewart's diaries, he must be spinning in his grave. I'm not against people selling their memoirs, but please don't insult us be pretending that you're doing a public service by doing so. "I would like to share this amazing piece of personal history" Maybe it's just me, but when I share things with people, I tend not to do it to make a profit. At least half the money should go to the Poppy Appeal, if not all of it.

Modern day Scots hero, John Smeaton, had the decency to give away half the money donated for him to Erskine, a military veterans charity in Scotland and share the rest with some of the others involved in the "attack" on Glasgow airport.

Shame on you Jamie Stewart, you're giving Scotsmen a bad name with being so tight fisted!

Fedora 8 spins into action

Voice of reason
Stop

Vista...

... I would try installing Vista as Steve has suggested, only it costs at least £50 for the home edition. Hardly worth risking the £50 just to see how easily it installs, or not.

Voice of reason
Happy

Linux is in danger...

... of becoming a viable alternative desktop OS.

I've been using Linux for just about 10 years now and the current releases - I'm using Ubuntu 7.10 not FC8, but the same is probably true - are the first I've used where everything just works, even on the latest Laptop hardware. Bluetooth, WiFi, native screen resolution, sound, modem, the lot. In fact, there is more out-of-the-box support for my Dell laptop with Ubuntu 7.10 than there is with the Windows XP SP2 CD that shipped with it!

Leopard data loss glitch uncovered

Voice of reason

That's nothing...

...Windoze XP managed to lose a bunch of my files when I wasn't even copying, moving, cutting, pasting them or anything. Crashed, restarted, gone.

Computers Suck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_kGL3M5Cg

Dreaded Blue Screen of Death mars some Leopard installs

Voice of reason
Go

army...

never be first, never be last & never volunteer for anything.

Mate of mine has loaned me an old mac mini - pre-intel - which he upgraded on friday. It's fast, smooth & impressive. By comparison, my dell desktop, which is a similar age, isn't even vista compatible.

I've always regarded apple fanboiz as style conscious fools with more money than sense, my opinion is changing, i might even buy one!

LEDs replace hands in bonkers Japanese watches

Voice of reason
Alert

Just don't...

... turn up at a US airport with one.

You'll be lucky not to get shot.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/21/mit_student_arrested_for_tech_tshirt

Plan for 20mph urban speed-cam zones touted

Voice of reason
Go

Average Speed

My daily commute is 12 miles. It often takes 45 minutes or more. Average speed = 16 Mph. So if they just measure average speed I'll be ok, even though that includes doing 90 Mph on the motorway for a couple of miles.

YouTube gatecrashers trash 16th birthday bash

Voice of reason
IT Angle

Rule #1...

... of party hosting is never host a party at your own home.

I've been to enough house parties in my time that got out of control wihout the assistance of the interweb or mobile phones to know never to arrange one in my own home. That's what hotel function rooms are for...

US men wrangle over three-year-old amputated leg

Voice of reason

Surely...

... Mr Whisnant was in posession of 3 human feet when he called 911 with "I got a human foot.".

Unless either:

A) He's got both his own feet missing.

B) He's not human.

Just an observation....

Cambridgeshire letter bomber found guilty

Voice of reason

Just a typical...

...attention seeking mummy's boy looooooser!

Put him on the dna database, violent offenders register and stick a cctv camera outside his house - that'll teach him.

MIT student walks into airport wearing circuit board and wires

Voice of reason

What's to stop...

...anyone taping a ceramic knife (easy to obtain from any professional kitchenware shop) to their leg and strolling through the metal detectors at airport "security" unhindered? Yup, got it in one, nothing. Airport security is just for show, that's why it is so annoying.

A couple of years ago I had the misfortune to get stuck at Venice airport in Italy for about 20 hours. What was interesting was watching the departures of different flights. Whenever a flight with a US airline was due to depart, heavily armed police would appear everywhere to reassuringly menace the American passengers. Flights with other airlines, even to the USA, just had the usual passport & boarding pass checks. I can just imagine the impression the American passengers got - "Gee, it's great to see the Italians taking the terrorist threat so seriously" In actual fact, it was just for show.

Voice of reason

Simon & his race card...

Hey, here's an idea for you Simon - though you've probably thought of it already. Why don't we just round up all the coloured people in the UK and exterminate them. Problem solved huh?

"under constant threat from radical Muslim terrorists" & "vastly disproportional amount of muggings are carried out by young black males" Don't believe everything you read in the Daily Mail.

Voice of reason

Maybe if...

...her skin was a shade or two lighter the response might not have been so heavy.

787 unsafe, claims former Boeing engineer

Voice of reason

Safer Planes...

...have rear facing seats. I remember ages ago some research about how to make plane crashes more survivable. The conclusion was to have the seats facing backwards so that when you hit the deck you don't get cut in half by your seat belt and your brain stays attached to your spinal chord. I think it was about the time of the crash at east-midlands airport in the UK.

I'm not sure, but I think they did say that UK Airforce passenger planes have rear facing seats already because of this. Any Airforce people able to confirm this?

Plus, did you hear the report about the light aircraft crashing into a cemetery this morning? A police spokesman said they have recovered 150 bodies, but fear that there may be many more...

Always makes me laugh that one :o)

Maddy: TV torture for the ADD generation

Voice of reason

You're being ironic right?

i wondered how on earth el reg was going to weave a mccan story in, not exactly boot notes material, so well done on the high brow media morals angle. Nice one, knew you'd cave in eventually, this story is too big for you to resist joining in for ever.

As for me, i'm not ashamed to admit being totally hooked on the story much better than the crap churned out by fictional programme writers there days.

My money is on alien abduction, looks just as likely as any other theory. Maybe they should be testing that "meteor" crash site for traces of her DNA, possibly they were bringing her back and crashed their ship...