* Posts by TeeCee

9433 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

O2 Broadband puts brakes on BitTorrent

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

Has it come to this?

".....or YouTube....."

A world where skateboarding dogs, idiotic fuckwits miming badly to crap music and umpty-something allegedly humourous re-subtitlings of Hitler's rant are deemed somehow more important than the remainder of humanity's contribution to the visual arts.

Could someone hold it still while I hop off please? Thanks.

Man banished from PayPal for showing how to hack PayPal

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

@David W.

I really hate to say this, but actually their 2009 suite is rather good. Fast, accurate, unobtrusive and bloat free.

Yup, I had a WTF? moment when I tried it too. It was so good that I bought* a copy, so that's two WTF? moments for the price of one.

*Ok. A tenner for a three PC, two year license off fleabay and no questions asked, but it's the thought that counts.

Egyptians uptight about 'Artificial Virginity Hymen'

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Joke

Meanwhile, in heaven......

Due to the large number of exploding martyrs recently and the resulting shortage of virgins, the "72 virgins in paradise" incentive has unfortunately had to be downgraded to "72 slappers and a jumbo box of instant virgin kits".

Philips BDP3000 Blu-ray disc player

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Alert

@Sooty

Nice theory, but the plethora of "Full HD" labelled 1080p kit down the shops says you're wrong here.

However, you piqued my interest so I had a trawl - OMFG!

It appears that the original plan was to have "HD ready" refer to 720p or 1080i kit (dunno where I got 800 from in my orginal post - silly me), while "Full HD" referred to 1080p capable panels.

So I was right, but things have moved on as the marketing types have stuck their oars in and depending on which manufacturer you look at, we now have:

"HD ready" and "Full HD" as originally stated.

"HD ready" and either "HD ready 1080p" or "Full HD" (kudos to Sony for running two logo stickers that mean exactly the same thing).

"HDTV" (HD tuner).

"HDTV 1080p" (HD tuner wot does 1080p and a screen to match.

"Full HD ready" (now we are in lala land - and special thanks to Toshiba for that little gem).

etc. ad infinitum.

No wonder there's so much "what does it all mean" and "what should I buy" traffic out there. They've taken a relatively simple labelling scheme and turned it into a minefield of confusing bullshit.

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

HD ready?

"....plug the player into their HD-Ready TV."

"Full HD" surely? I thought that "HD ready" was wot woz stuck on yer 800p / 1080i jobs?

You have to suspect that the lads behind this branding had a hand in M$s Vista debacle.....

Orange picks Milton Keynes for flagship store

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Thumb Down

My idea.

'....."what symbolises Milton Keynes" photograph pool....'

I'm thinking that a fisheye lens picture of a battery chicken warehouse with a huge pile of steaming manure in the middle of the central floor would be about right.

Facebookers condemned to Hell Lite

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Badgers

Re: Am I the only one...

When I read that, my immediate reaction was that there's probably a perfectly simple way to revert to the full-fat version and that the real problem is that some* faceberk lusers are too mind-numbingly thick to work it out....

*Your mileage may vary.

New antimatter atomsmashers 'may destroy themselves'

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Coat

Really?

So what he's saying then is that the Compact Linear Collider is like the Large Hadron Collider with bells on it?

Chinese media finger Swedish lesbian enclave

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Happy

Question for the Tourist board.

'..... risk being “beaten half to death” by Nordic gender police.......'

Is that a chargeable extra or does it come as part of the package?

Palm Pre re-re-introduces iTunes synchronization

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Jobs Horns

It's the wrong fight anyway.

There *is* a way of upsetting the Applecart (hah!), but this isn't it.

Someone (and I'm thinking Sony here) needs to produce a media player with an iPod connector on it. Apple would sue, but with iPod docks now built in to just about everything, including cars FFS, I have a sneaking suspicion that they'd be on shaky ground.

Having a patented dock connector, OK. Leveraging your market position so that said dock connector becomes the de facto standard for third-party applications and then using this to freeze your competitors out of vast swathes of the market, not so good.

10,000 Hotmail passwords mysteriously leaked to web

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Coat

Re: Excuse my ignorance.

It's something a bit like a webmail service, only less reliable.

US military jets to run on weeds, scum & corpse-grease

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Dead Vulture

Shurely shome mishtake?

"About a tonne of coal has to be burned to produce a tonne of synthifuel with this method."

A tonne of jet fuel from every tonne of coal? That sounds rather efficient to me. Has someone got their figures wrong here?

Police charge anarchist over G20 protest network

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Coffee/keyboard

There goes another one....

".....a social worker and self-described anarchist......"

There should have been an irony alert on that. Waste of damned good coffee there.

MoD 'How to stop leaks' guide leaks

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Coat

Leaks on the internet?

There's a guide for that.

Google (finally) adds protection for common Web 2.0 attack

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Coffee/keyboard

@Graham Dawson

Coffee, keyboard, you know the drill....

Vodafone Access Gateway 3G

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Thumb Down

Re: Obvious extention

Hmm, been at the telco kool-aid have we? Just 'cos they colour a bit of the map with the hue that means 100% coverage, doesn't mean you can actually get a signal in all of it.

I used to live in an area which was one of the smog-covered bits you're referring to. I ended up dumping the company mobile (Orange) as standing on a ladder at the end of the garden to use the thing wasn't filling me with joy.

Orange's response every time we raised this (several times, I was doing on-call support and the helpdesk drones objected to resorting to landlines) was to peddle the mantra that they had full coverage in the Greater London area. A platitude that was demonstrably a vile damned pile of complete porkies.

MyConservatives website collapses at launch

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Grenade

@Martin Juggs.

Actually, what was worse here was NuLab's stitchup to put 'em back.

The vote to put in place the GLA with no "No" campaign, presented as a fait accompli and with all the parties having already selected their mayoral candidates barely squeaked over 50%.

I still reckon to this day that if one London paper had bothered to campaign against it we'd have ended up ticking along quite nicely without the army of overpaid scrotes in crash-helmet-upon-thames.

Yes I did vote "No" to this one, although I was bloody surprised to find that they'd included a box for it on the ballot. It must have been an oversight.

Designer draws up digital camera-cum-punchcard printer

TeeCee Gold badge

I see a flaw.

I wonder how many times you can thump the living shit out of it to produce a piccy before the electronics inside decide to take their marbles and go sulk in a corner?

Your phone is winding me up

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FAIL

Re: Great for emergancy situations.

Except that a quick trawl of the news reports at the time reveals that "all communications to the area were cut", so your wind-up phone would have been useless too. Fully-charged and useless, I'll grant, but still useless.

The problem with the product for me is that it's proving difficult to imagine a situation where power is not available at all but mobile telephony reception is.....

NASA enlists schoolkids in Moonbase piss-recycler push

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Joke

Re: Recycle?

There are naturally occurring deposits of piss on the moon? Who knew?

Jacques Chirac ditches devil dog

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Re Suspicious...

Nah, I reckon he's in the best of health, being fed the finest possible doggy treats and has a selection of bitches of the highest pedigree on call.

When the opposition surrenders you get to dictate terms you know.....

Nvidia fires off Fermi, pledges radical new GPUs

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Coat

Can't........resist.......

"......Special Function Units (SFUs) which handle complex maths...."

I take it that they do this, er, very quietly then?

Apple tablet will 'redefine print,' says rumor mill

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Flame

Re: Wow.

You obviously don't get a continuous drip of invites to sodding "Mac parties" from starry-eyed Apple lusers then.

You start out being all open minded and accommodating, but after a while you realise that it's like having the Jehova's bloody Witnesses around and you end up wishing the whole sodding lot of 'em would just fuck off and die horribly somewhere.

US govt cash to fund Tesla minivan?

TeeCee Gold badge
Stop

Have we the wrong end of the stick here?

ISTR that the yank term "minivan" refers to what we call an MPV. i.e. something more like a Ford Galaxy than a Transit.

Montblanc punts £14k Mahatma Gandhi pen

TeeCee Gold badge
Joke

Next up!

The Bob Geldof Live Aid commemorative diamond-encrusted swear box.

"Next time you feel the need to refer to an african government as 'a bonch of fockin boms', you can do so in the knowledge that a superbly crafted* receptacle exists on your desk to receive whatever small pecuniary penance you feel is necessary. This exquisite object is endorsed** by Bob Geldof himself".

*Each individual and numbered item is hand made by well-disciplined Vietnamese child slaves.

**"Youse fockin fockers. I never gave youse fockers fockin permission to fockin make that fockin crap.".

Microsoft offers stickers to boost Windows 7 64-bit take-up

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Gates Halo

@Joe User

Actually the best solution is the one they've actually gone for. You buy version X, you get both the 32 and 64 bit versions of X and it's your call which one you install.

I'm probably going to get a copy of 7. I'm in two minds as to whether to stay 32-bit or go for 64. I was delighted to find that whichever way I jump I will have the option of changing my mind later. As a result I probably will go for 64 as I have the kit to support it and, if it does prove problematic in any areas, I can revert to 32. If I'd had to specify at purchase time which one I'd almost certainly have gone 32 for safety's sake.

Gov demand for Governator to terminate PunterNet

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WTF?

@Destroy All Monsters

Yup, puzzled me too. Trying to work out WTF she was saying I accidently started with "commode" as the root rather than "commodity" and ended up in a very strange world where Harriet Harperson is a scat fetishist.

Study: US web users reject behavioural advertising

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Black Helicopters

Lobby time!

"63% believe advertisers should be required by law to immediately delete information about their internet activity,"

63%? That's enough to make politicians sit up, take interest and stick it in a manifesto. I suppose that Google are now sending another few hundred thousand dollars to their lobbyists in Washington to ensure that this one gets thoroughly stomped on before anyone gets any bright ideas.

Wi-Fi body to highlight 802.11n aerial counts

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Coat

Playground one-upmanship - geek stylie:

"My dad's router's got more aerials than your dad's router."

VAT Directive to change to end carousel fraud

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FAIL

"....only.......five goods:"

Wow, that's just sooo clever! Is there anyone out there who *doesn't* think that this is the start of an enormously expensive game of whack-a-mole as the crooks just swap to trading things wot aren't included?

UK, France mull Photoshop fakery laws

TeeCee Gold badge

France. Ulterior motive?

Of course, if retouching is banned the modelling pic types'll just have to get old skool and take more care with makeup. Probably buying more of it, better stuff, pumping money into the business to get better results, etc.

Remind me again which European country has more cosmetics companies than you can shake a stick at?

I can't quite see why the Lib Dems are so keen on French Pork though.....

Kraft cans Vegemite iSnack2.0

TeeCee Gold badge
Stop

I don't understand.

There's already a perfectly good word for marmite (or vegemite) blended with cream cheese.

It's called "vomit". Only bloody place I've ever seen the two mixed and quite rightly too.

Clown blasts off for ISS

TeeCee Gold badge

Clowns in space.

Makes perfect sense to me. NASA will be watching this research with interest as building an entirely new, larger spacecraft is far more expensive than just working out how to have a perfectly ordinary Soyuz turn up with 28 passengers and a 20 foot ladder in it.

Mozilla sides with Microsoft against Google IE

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Gates Horns

Re: At first look.

"....Wave appears to be THE killer web 2.0 app....."

Yeah, right. Based on a draft of HTML5 and I'll bet a sack of cash that if Google don't like where the standard ends up going, they'll stick with "their version" rather than reegineer the thing (like it'll matter, we'll all be using Chrome or Chrome plugins anyway, right?).

This looks more like IE6 2.0 rather than Web 2.0 from where I'm sitting.

Evil Bill, 'cos he invented this strategy.

Nation's moral guardians snap over 'shag bands'

TeeCee Gold badge
Joke

Just a thought.

Thinking back, was there anyone else here who saw the title of this article and clicked on it expecting to find that it was something to do with the Rolling Stones (or more likely some modern bunch of wannabees)?

<straight face>

Not that I would ever dare to suggest that a great British institution such as they have ever been involved in excessive fornication, underage sex or anything else that might cause an outburst of fulminant rage in the tabloid press.

</straight face>

TeeCee Gold badge
Happy

"....but that it had told her to take a running jump."

No sense of humour some people.

I'd have sent her a black bracelet in two halves and told her to take a flying f***.

MoD pays quadruple in money + blood for Afghan helicopters

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Re: Grrrrrr

I take it those steaks that you refer to are Pork ones?

If so, spot on.

Facebook kills 'Kill Obama' poll

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Pint

Re: RE:Republican Paramilitary Wing

Hey! Shome of my besshht friendsh are green-legged Cananadian woshathingies.....you know.....shtripesh......

PC tune-up software: does it really work?

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: Memory upgrade

Seconded.

From personal experience: 256MB-->512Mb moves you from arthritic, hod-carrying snail to three-legged dog in performance. 512Mb-->1Gb a stonking improvement all round. 1Gb-->2Gb little, if any, improvement to boot times, but a massive improvement to task switching, exiting Office apps / games et. al. and so on. 2Gb-->4Gb, very little change over 2Gb (and here remember only the 64-bit lads get to see it all anyway).

Eurocrat demands MP3 player volume limit mandate

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Megaphone

Re: HUH?

PROUD BLUETITS ON HORSEBACK CLEVERLY REFLECTED YOU? WTF IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?

Dell confirms oh-so-skinny Latitude Z laptop

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Silky touch keyboard and touch sensitive strip?

Are Dell deliberately targetting technophile supervillains with a cat hair allergy as a market here?

Inmate hacker locks down jail computers

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: Erm?

More to the point, on discovering this problem do you think they:

A) Closed the entire gaol while they replaced all the locks.

B) Retrieved the copied key from the miscreant and wrote a report on the issue.

C) Retrieved the copied key from the miscreant, removed any bars of soap with suspiciously key-shaped imprints from cells and wrote a report on the issue, drawing attention to how clever they were to think of the bit about the soap.

NASA retargets Moon-attack probe

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Coat

"Bernie, the bolt"

Up a bit..........left a bit.........left a bit more...........down a bit.........FIRE!

Is NASA channeling Bob Monkhouse?

Newton designer returns to Apple

TeeCee Gold badge
Joke

Risky, taking that job.

It's just possible that St. Steve was reminded of the Newton fiasco recently and decided that firing him once just wasn't enough......

Vodafone joins the iPhone throng

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Jobs Horns

This is worrying.

The fact that the networks (all of 'em) are prepared to cut their own throats like this to push the Cupertino toy of the week means they *must* be expecting the sodding thing to become the de facto standard, so they've got to be in the game or lose.

One day, maybe we'll all look back and wonder what happened to competition in mobile telephony when Apple / iTunes / iPhone / iVoda23OraMobile is the only game in town and that year's 15% price hike comes through.....

iPhone voted UK's 'coolest brand'

TeeCee Gold badge
FAIL

Re: Hmm (AC 14:45)

WRONG!

Wealthy gentlemen with seriously good taste buy Astons, rich twats buy Audi R8s or something equally vulgar.

Opera lobby dubs IE ballot screen 'threatening and confusing'

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: Much ado over the wrong problem

I totally agree!

Oh and @ the utter muppets offering various versions of "just unbundle it", they were going to do just that with the "E" versions of 7, but the EU said this wasn't what they wanted. You can't blame MS for this one. If you have a problem with 7 actually shipping with IE included, blame the EU.

Nation's parents prepare to be vetted

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Troll

@Stef 3

Gosh! I find it astonishing the number of people who "voted for change" in 1997 and failed to allow the small matter of what happened in the runup to 1979 cloud their judgement. You know, the last time before 1997 that the incompetants had their hands on the reins, catastrophically fucked up the economy and restorted to an orgy of legislative lunacy in an attempt to divert attention from the sodding great elephant in the room.

Took 'em a bit longer to prise the wheels off this time, as the glue had had a bit longer to set than usual, but they managed it eventually.

Funnily enough, Leopards still seem to be spotted too......

Attack of the Killer Tits

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WTF?

Re: In addition...

Yes, but a Shagbat is the same thing as a Walrus when it comes to things that fly. Just to add to the confusion....

DVLA pledges investigation over Castrol spy posters

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Grenade

'...such use was "inappropriate"...'

Oh yeah? Sounds a bloody sight more "appropriate" than the service being punted on the telly at the moment where you text in a registration number and get back all the details on the car and a ballpark value based on what it is.

I wonder where the information to tie a registration number to a specific make, model, year and specification of car required to do this is coming from?