Posts by Eponymous Cowherd

Re:What

***"If you bought a ferrari for £250,000, and the dealer said "well actually yuou have to share it with 50 other people, and it can't actually do 200mph because we've put the wrong tires on it and don't want to spend the money on new ones"...how many people would be happy?"***

If you are paying the standard £20-£30 pcm for 'unlimited' broadband then the analogy is more like this.

You buy a Ferrari with a list price of £250,000 for £5000 and think you have a cracking deal. The fact you have to share it with 50 other people and and, most of the time, are restricted to 30mph zones that are rigorously enforced with speed cameras and other 'traffic calming' measures, are hidden *way* down in the small print.

You aren't happy, but realise you are a complete tit for being suckered by this scam and now realise you can't *actually* buy a brand new 200mph supercar for £5 grand.

Ads that SHOULD be banned

@Stu Reeves

Even more annoying than the Iceland ads is that feckin' Gaviscon ad with the stupid bint flying a helicopter while a couple of 'firemen' hose down her gullet with a load of viscous gunk.

Paris. She just seems appropriate, somehow.....

Tattoos?

I wonder how many people with Chinese tattoos actually know what they say?

I saw a bunch of Chinese students sniggering at the tattoo on the back on some bloke's neck. I asked what it said....

"This way up" was the reply.....

The Internet: The last bastion of Democracy?

Quite heartening to see that public pressure can make those that seek to turn the Internet into a kind of cyber-nanny state see (some) sense.

Now if only Brown, Wacqui and the other pillocks who run this corporeal Nanny State (Otherwise known as the UK) would also see the light.

Cobblers

***"It (Wikipedia) has its own blacklist, a list of people from certain IP addresses who are forbidden from changing Wikipedia's pages. Wikimedia does this because it does not like what they write. So its criticism of the IWF is hypocritical."***

Erm, no. Not hypocritical at all. This blacklist is about *preventing* censorship. Anyone can edit a Wikipedia article. Some people edit articles to actively *censor* content they dislike (as in the case of the Phorm Entry being edited by Phorm). If someone repeatedly *censors* an article then it is very reasonable that they should be blocked.

Yeah, Right.....

***"Jacqui Smith denies any knowledge of police search"***

In other news, the RAF shot down a pig after it strayed into controlled airspace.

YES!

This was, apparently, a unanimous verdict by the 17 Euro-beaks, so, hopefully, the chances of El Wacqui and her cohorts overturning this will be slim.

We all know, however, that El Wacqui will never submit to this ruling. The Gov't will just lodge appeal after appeal, wasting taxpayers money in the process, to ensure that the database stays.

On another point, If storing DNA profiles on an Über-Database is deemed "a disproportionate interference with the applicants' right to respect for private life", then that must surely call into question the legality of storing biometric data on the proposed NIR? There is little difference in function between being able to ID someone by their DNA (in the DNA database) and ID them by fingerprint (in the NIR).

Keep banging in the nails. Eventually the lid on the NuLabour coffin will be sealed and we can bury the whole sorry, snooping, bunch of them.

Payback Time?

This car solves one big problem with leccy cars, poor range. A normal fully electric car would suit me for 95% of all journeys, but that won't help when a long journey is needed (going on holiday, business trip). So I'd still need a 'conventional' vehicle as well as the leccy-tech thing. The Volt solves this problem as it is a kind of inverse hybrid (mostly leccy with a petrol backup instead of the Pious' mostly petrol with a leccy boost). Performance is adequate, too.

The only thing is the cost. You can see this thing being bloody expensive to buy, and if the LiIon batteries are anything like those in most laptops, then they will need replacing in 3 or 4 years at most, again at quite some expense.

So now our dear Eco-Friendly Gov't has the chance to pay us all back. They have been fleecing motorists for years with "green" taxes. So what chance they will subsidise the cost so that the Volt (and similar) will cost the same as the equivalent petrol car (an Astra, maybe) and provide a free, or at least subsidised, battery exchange service?

We all know they won't, because we all know that Nu Labour's 'green' taxes are a money-raising scam.

Paris, cos she also believes that being shafted is good for you.

Extensive experience?

***"Ertugrul said: "I welcome Lord Lamont, Kip, Stefan and Stephen to the Board. They bring extensive experience on government, business, regulatory matters and financial markets."***

Ertugrul's never heard of Black Wednesday, then?

Re:Don't worry...

***"after all what would happen if you had a journalist that was also a terrorist paedophile"***

Didn't you know? El Wacqui believes every man, woman *and* child in the UK is a potential Paedophilic terrorist (hence ID cards, the NIR, DNA Database, and the tracking of our phone calls, emails and web activity).

Given that she believes we are *all* borderline kiddy-fiddling crazed bombers, then all journalists are, by default, also likely to be minor-molesting terrorist scum.

Re:Sack Jonathan Ross

***"The BBC does have some really good and funny comedians out there such as Chris Moyles"***

ROFLMFAO, Moyles, a "good and funny comedian". Nice to see that irony isn't dead!

He's tops even Ross in the overpaid waste-of-space league table, by quite a margin, IMHO.

Re:Future of Data Communication in the UK

***"And lets suppose we adopt HTTP/email encryption? Then the IMP looks like an even more stupid idea. A £12bn database full of asdfas!"31lkjhas[p[p isn't going to be much use to the police."***

Quite. I imagine the spooks are pretty upset with this wholesale spying on private comms (both by Phorm/BT and the Gov't). At the moment someone habitually downloading jpegs, pdfs or mpegs over https is worth a look, could be terroist bomb-making info or the sort of piccies Mr Glitter might be interested in. If we all become so worried about being spied on that we all (web sites and web users ) start using encryption by default, then they won't be able to see the wood for the trees.

Big Dummies guide to the Economy

I'm sure that's where Cpt Darling gets his ideas from.

So you get a pathetic saving of around £22 on a £1K purchase? Has Cpt Darling not noticed that in order to *spend* money, you have to *have* money (and expect to keep it in the future). The increases in fuel duty alone will offset any desire to spend that the pathetic VAT decrease might have instilled.

Darling is trying to encourage us to spend more while taking away the money with which we might do just that.

The only way that makes sense is if you assume he are iintends us to start using credit again (i.e spend money we don't have). And that was how we found ourselves in this pile of shit in the first place.

Lost in space

"Lost" was (IMHO) crap. A load of make-it-up-as-you-go bollocks designed to string viewers along with a load of "mysteries" that even the writers didn't know the answers to. Cloverfield was a 10 minute short stretched well beyond credibility.

Given those two examples of JJ Abrams talent, I don't hold out any great hope of this Trek film satisfying either Trekkers *or* anyone who appreciates a good story. About the only people who will go for this are the suckers who were taken in by Lost.

As to Simon Pegg's Scottish Accent; well, James Doohan couldn't do a decent Scottish accent, either, so as long as Pegg's duff accent matches Doohan's then at least *one* thing will be 'authentic' to the original.

Clueless w*nkers!

So the ID card is shown to be useless at proving your ID. A fake card with a hash of my biometrics on it could happily 'prove' I'm Elvis, Mickey Mouse *or* Jacqui Smith.

Obviously this means that the UK ID card will not be able to live up to *any* of the claims that El Wacqui and her predecessors claimed (stopping terrorism, ID theft and illegal immigrants).

So why bother with them at all? Could it be that the ID card is just a hook to get people onto the Big Brother NIR database? It certainly looks like it from here. The aim appears to be to create a "Minority Report" - like justice system, where biometric info from any crime scene can be fed into the NIR to produce a list of suspects for PC Plod to arrest.

I reckon its all a big joke that got out of hand. Someone thought it would be *really* funny to replace the cover of a copy of Orwell's '1984' with one that read "Government for Dummies", and leave it on the coffee table at No 10.

Re: Ah yes

***"Also it makes me shudder when the government uses the word "citizens". Way too 1984."***

More like Revolutionary France.

Just waiting for wacqui to start installing the Guillotines.

You must be joking

£2500 for an "idiots lantern" !!! Recommended ?!? Are you nuts???

Big Bad BT.

What fast broadband you have....

All the better to spy on you, my dear....

Re:I want an ID card because..

***"(I'd obviously rather burn Jacqui Smith as a witch but I think that may be against the law nowadays.)"***

Probably still legal (well, we can hope). You'd need proof though. Supposedly you need to compare her weight to that of a duck.

(got that info from a very informative historical documentary that also had useful information on the differences between European and African swallows).

Good grief!

They create a child protection database, then decide that 'at risk' kids should be, effectively, removed from it.

Just strengthens my opinion that politicians should be kept away from IT like kids are kept away from chainsaws.

Clueless doesn't even come *close* to describing them.

Paris, 'cos she's probably smarter than any Gov't minister.

@Alf

Had a similar encounter with BT Broadband 'support'. I had already determined my HomeHub was dead. All I wanted was a replacement. The muppet went through his 'crib-sheet' insisting that he test my phone line, etc, etc. Carried asking the prescribed questions even though most didn't apply to Linux or my fault situation, where anyone with half a brain would have stopped as soon as I said I wasn't running Windows.

With regard to the suitability of Linux on the desktop:

I run Debian (sid), all of the family have accounts and have no trouble using it. Kids love to show off Compiz to their mates, my 6 year-old loves Gcompris, 11 year old uses Open Office and Gimp and plays BZFlag, Amagedtron, etc. Wife is quite at home with IceWeasel and Kmail.

The *big* problem is maintaining it. That is what I do. *I* don't find this a problem, but I can fully appreciate that an average Windows bred user would be like a fish out of water.

And that is the real issue with Linux. *Using* it is simple. Maintaining it is still a task that requires a fair degree of skill and knowledge.

Re: recycling

@ David Kelly

Couldn't agree more. It seems the Gov't (both and local) are so determined to screw us for the 'privilege' of recycling our waste that they are actually encouraging fly tipping.

Not WEEE related, but went to our local waste facility with a car-load of old plasterboard. Expected them to merely point out which skip to tip in into. Instead they screwed me £15 for the privilege.

Guess what. Next time it's all going into plastic sacks and into the "General waste" skip (and thence into landfill). What they can't see me dump, they can't charge me for.

Democracy?

At least the US has the leader the people actually voted for.

Unlike the UK.

({Yes, I know we don't *officially* vote for the PM in general elections, but that is *effectively* what happens. Anyone seriously believe NuLabour would be in power if Prescott was party leader at any of the last 3 elections?}).

Its well known......

that the DVLA will sell your details to anyone who asks. Dodgy wheel-clampers, debt collectors, all borderline criminals.

Anyone here under any illusions as to what will happen to your (much more sensitive) data on the NIR and the lowlifes they will sell it to?

Clueless plods again?

Yet again plod shows that he doesn't have the mental equipment to deal with tech crime.

So we are supposed to believe that this 'hacker' was smart enough to crack into his neighbour's router and "remove the encryption", but didn't have the smarts to hide his computer's ID or clear the router's DHCP table.

As to why would you bother to remove an already cracked encryption?

Well, if you were really devious I suppose you could then claim that the router was 'open' anyway, and you connected accidentally. If you left the 'encryption' in place then you'd have no excuses.

Icon has nothing to do with Linux. Its the top of a comedy policeman's helmet.

Re:More annoying things on a train than phones ringing.

Absolutely!

Phone calls last a few minutes. The constant "tsk tsk tsk tik bip bip eek eek" from over-loud mp3 players is constant and induces homicidal tendencies.

I'd add 'fat bastards' to that list too. I'm entitled to the whole of my seat, not merely the 2/3rds that's left after some obese pie-muncher sits next to me.

@ Philip

***"This guy makes Americans look worse than we already appear. I swear, how this man got elected senator of anything is beyond me."***

Tell you what, we'll swap him for Mandelson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson

We take Ted Stevens off your hands and make him a Lord, you stick Mandelson in the slammer for 35 years.

Sound fair?

What a load of b........

So a Government that rakes in over £25 BILLION in fuel duty spends £100m on 'green motoring'.

And they wonder why people think that global warming is merely an excuse to raise taxes?

Market opportunity

Tin foil underpants.

Re:Bah

Next you'll be telling me all you have to do is get an old jet fighter and lop its wings off.

Oh, wait...

http://www.landspeed.com/

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that lot hear about Bloodhound.

did he use a calculator?

710-77345

Mine's the one with the inverted Casio FX-19 in the pocket.

Moving from BT and keeping your eMail

@ ted frater:

I moved from BT over 3 months ago. Not only for broadband, but telephony as well.

I can *still* send and receive mail via BT's mail servers using my old login and address.

Don't know if Virgin would be quite so incompetent, though.

So what's wrong with Vista, then?

I mean, Dell "Recommend" Widows Vista, don't they? They say so in all of their TV ads.

Sounds like a lot of hot air

Rather damp hot air, at that.

Paris, 'cos she like to be hot and damp.

Re: No Free Lunch

No, there is no such thing as a free lunch. But the advertisers haven't merely shot themselves in the foot, they have machine-gunned the bloody thing right off.

And they *keep* firing even though both of their feet are blown away, along with most of their legs, in the vein hope that their aggressive advertising techniques *might* start working.

They won't.

Ever.

"t'web" is a prime example. If advertisers had stuck to *reasonable* ads, nobody would mind. But they didn't.. They naively assumed that they could shove garish in-your-face ads at web users, stupidly thinking that the larger, more garish and obnoxious they made the ad, the more likely it is to get noticed.

They got noticed all right. People *hate* them. But the big difference between the web and other advertising mediums (tv, radio) is that people *can* do something about them. The ad-blocker was born.

Now a large number of web users block all ads by default. So the stupidity of the advertising twerps has resulted in people blocking *all* ads, not just the really annoying ones.

You would think they would learn from this and 'tone down' the ads, but oh no, they come up with schemes to defeat ad-blockers and even deny access to people who use them. Or come up with privacy violating schemes like Phorm.

Personally I give each site *one* chance. The first pop-up, animated or flash-based ad I see and the whole site get all ads blocked.

At that rate of loss.

6 months and Phorm will be bust.

@OFI

IANAL, but if BT introduce Phorm then that is a *major* change to your Ts&Cs and therefore invalidates your contract. BT may argue against this but a lot of people still locked in are going down the "sue me if you dare" route and moving to ISPs that treat their customers with less contempt.

The question remains as to *why* you signed up with BT only a month ago given the bad publicity over Phorm and their reputation for poor service.

Paris, 'cos she agrees to stuff without checking the consequences, too.

The plural of "windows computer"...?

Botnet.

No, they don't get it.

LINQ to SQL is cack. Been using NHibernate for some time and, while it has its issues, it is a glorious triumph compared to the pile of manure that is LINQ to SQL.

Then there is ASP.NET. Been using it for *years*. Each iteration seems to get more convoluted and hide more nuts and bolts from the programmer. Ajax integration is a typical Microsoft "just do this and it'll work" bodge up. Bolting WebForms to pukka middle tier business objects and logic is painfull. Bolting it to NHibernate is excruciating. Despite LINQ to SQL MS still have this sql fixation that requires everything to boil down to selcts, updates and inserts.

Then someone introduced me to MonoRail and ActiveRecord. Like swapping a clapped out jalopy for a Ferrari! OK, only been using it for a couple of weeks, and the gloss may fade, but, at the moment, I'm wondering why I spent so much time pissing into the wind with WebForms.

Money for old rope

Given that Gordon Brown is likely to lose the next General Election and the opposition has promised to scrap the NIR, the chance of any of these companies actually having to get the NIR *working* is minimal.

Black Helicopter. Because they want to watch everything you do.

Get some clue, Mr Panagrossi

Linux only fit for workstations and servers, eh?

We won't mention the routers, set-top boxes, PDAs, NASs, sat-navs, netbooks, portable media players, most of the top 50 supercomputers, the LHC.

Obviously its going to be no bloody good for a poxy phone!

That is not just FUD, that is pure, unadulterated, bullshit.

WTF!

Lets face it. Phorm is a pathetic '2 bit' spyware operation. They are less than nothing. Why is an organisation like BT bothering to deal with these losers and why is the UK Gov't bothering to defend them. Why not come right out and say Phorm is illegal (which it blatantly is) and be done with it?

The Black Helicopter icon is the obvious answer to the above questions.

Bullsh*t

***"Neil Thompson, Senior Regional Director for Microsoft UK, said the cut was possible thanks to global sales of over 20m Xbox 360 consoles so far. “We are now able to pass on the rewards of that success to the consumer with a new retail pricing,” boasted Thompson."***

So not a desperate attempt to deal with flagging sales and being trounced by Sony and Nintendo, then?

Paris, 'cos she'd believe it.