Posts by Tony Paulazzo

SecureRom

>Frankly if I was into games (and Spore looks fun) I'd be downloading a cracked copy right after I bought it just to prevent this DRM crap clogging up my PC<

If you install the purchased game, you install SecureRom, and if you install the pirate version you support terrorists and will need to be locked up for 42 days.

Your call.

Not strictly relevant...

But I wrote to three of my MEPS about signing off on some amendments about online tracking and Phorm. Here's my first response:

>Thank you for your email of 23rd September concerning amendments 133 and 138. These were discussed extensively by our research team in Brussels.

In this instance, I agreed with your argument that amendments 133 and 138

could have potential benefits in limiting government's interference in

citizens' daily lives (although I would rather our Westminster Parliament

pass such legislation). However, we were not allowed to vote on just

amendments 133 and 138. These amendments were amalgamated into a much

larger package of amendments which we had to vote on en bloc. The other

amendments in this package would have been deeply damaging to the UK and we

could not, in all conscience, support them.

This is one of the fundamental problems with European Union legislation:

there is so much of it that we could not possibly vote on everything, one

amendment at a time. On some occasions we have placed 500 separate votes in

under an hour. Accordingly, there is no proper debate on any of these

issues and therefore huge power rests with the research staff in the biggest

Parliamentary groups, who prepare voting lists on behalf of their MEPs.

The absence of genuine debate is one of my main criticisms of this outdated

European Union project. It tries to do far too much, and stifles democracy

as a result.

Yours sincerely

Godfrey Bloom<

A title is required

>I believe we should do everything in our powers to protect children against inappropriate internet content<

I agree, don't let them on the 'net, solves all the problems in one, no grooming for peado's, terrorists or suicides.

Fire Jaquie Smith too, I think she's in the pay of the Illuminati, and stop bailing out banks. Let the chips fall where they may. Ferret out the perpetrators of the sub prime fiasco and fine 'em, take away their country mansions and stick that money back into the economy. Treat the citizens of the country like adults, not sheep and get on with running the country. Ensure one law for all and that it's maintained across all tiers of society.

Erase third world debt and cut defence spending (approx £32.6Bn last year).

Approx 60 million people live in UK, divide that by 32 billions pounds a year comes out to over £500 a year per person if I've got the sums right (32 billion divided by 60 million = 533.333333) - I'll take the cash please, no one's gonna invade us, we've got nuclear bombs.

Er, sorry, slightly off topic. Censorship bad!

Where is all this money coming from?

Banks are crumbling, the house market's in free fall, oil is sucking up all my free spending, Nulabour (and I'm no economist here), are mismanaging the economy - yet, they still appear to have billions to spend on this project.

I really think the Illuminati have taken over the reigns...

Pure fantasy.

I miss

the days when there was no advertising on the internet and only the occasional virus (tho' I never caught one and I had no online protection), and whilst there were still flame wars, they were of a higher calibre than 'I eat your mother out - lol'.

I have to wonder why, once a thing grows beyond a certain size, it turns to shit... I mean Facebook, c'mon, if you want to socialise, get out there and - you know, physically interface with people. It's a lot nicer touching skin than stroking an LCD monitor.

I wouldn't mind, but the fight appears to be more to do with advertising revenues than offering a decent search engine that doesn't offer you the best price for a thing...

I love my Adblock.

Hand up

I'm an Apple hater. I hate itunes, iphone, quicktime (what media player puts itself into automatic startup so it's always running?), macs, and probably safari (never used it so just guessing).

Postcount +1

Comment on the article, well, just Apple doing what it does so well - arrogance before the fall hopefully. It's a phone, if it's not doing phone things well then it's a fail, or an overpriced ipod / internet surfer; with a nice interface.

Yea, I hate Apple, but they do give good interface.

Oh noes

I've got a John Williams Waterhouse print hanging in my front room of 'Hylas and the Nymphs' that I bought from Manchester art gallery, young guy on land looking at young naked girls (proof of age not on file but they all have small breasts) in water. The story is they entice him into water where they turn into monsters and consume him (Jason and the Argonauts).

Knowing the story, and how young the girls look, have I broken any laws?

I'm gay so the girls don't do it for me, but Hylas is cute, and knowing his grisly outcome could be constituted as extreme porn.

Anonymous - just in case...

So

In america identities are still stolen, here in the UK they're simply given away - or 'lost'

the fact the the olympic took place in china is a discrace to the human race

hear hear...

Corporations being evil are just acting true to their nature.

Alien overlord because I love them and would like to be considered for promotion.

All hail discordia

If you've read the Illuminatus you no longer have to fear the black hats, so long as you know where the fnords are. And if things get too hot you can always jump into the universe next door...

Spies, lies & controls

>ensuring that we can keep our users' trust is an essential constant for building the best possible products.<

Well since privacy looks to be the next big thing to hit the wayside, perhaps the corporations like BT, CW, Sky and Virgin Media should keep the above sentence as a company mantra.

I notice, from supermarket.com - another data gathering site, natch, that BT's stock is going down whilst Sky (not attached, as far as I know, to any phorm like spying) is rocketing upwards -

>According to its quarterly figures, Sky has added more than 200,000 new customers in the period from April-June compared to 103,000 for BT, 62,000 for O2 and 41,000 for Carphone Warehouse ... BT by contrast saw its share price slump when its 103,000 new subscribers were announced<

PC v Console

>My original point was simply that it's disingenuous and somewhat smug to claim that there's no point buying a console over a PC.<

Unless you prefer PCs to consoles. Been a PC user since the 8086, and the only console I've enjoyed is the Wii (at a nephews house), and I looked like an idiot trying to play Mass Effect on the 360 (friends house) - it's brilliant to play on the PC tho'.

PC (3 9inch silent fans and low noise PSU) plugged into monitor and HD TV offering two screens, 5.1 sound thru' a Soundblaster Audigy, wireless keyboard 'n mouse and wireless joystick for driving / flying games - setup on coffee table or desk.

The hardest part of this setup? moving the keyboard 'n mouse from desk to coffee table - surfing/working/some games thru monitor, console type gaming/films thru' TV.

Don't need to downgrade, just tweak for speed...

>why cant people simple express why they really think is bad about vista instead of making things up. thats just stupid childish fanboism..<

Like XP before it also didn't do, a series of questions at installation on what the PC is to be used for and only the appropriate services run, with maybe a dual boot option for playing games running on minimum memory use - you know games, those applications that you don't really get on Macs or linux.

OK, XP was more bloated than Win98, but there was more of a jump from DOS to windows than Vista is to XP. MS should have spent more time making it leaner and faster, utilising memory much more economically and while the transparent ui is nice was it written in Java or assembler? File copying should not have been released in the broken state it was and UAC should have been implemented better, more intelligently. Oh, and fix the damn search indexer.

Services I disabled (from memory): Error reporting, UAC, secondary logon, remote access, smart card reader, firewall & Defender (use Bitdefenders), readyboost, remote registry (is this one even for real?), new hard drive install checker, the widgets side bar, search indexer (I know where my files are thanks), backup&restore - those were just the obvious ones. On my games desktop, not connected to the 'net it's even leaner.

Comment: I've got Vista on my laptop and desktop gaming rig, and don't mind it personally - need to learn the ins & outs for my customer base anyway. When people ask me which is better I always tell them XP is faster and better for games, mostly, Vista is prettier, fine for office apps and more idiot proof. Mind you, for what most of my customers use their PC for (email, surfing and office), they could get away with a much older system running Win98SE.

>I ended up selling my Vista Ultimate-loaded Dell and bought a MacBook Pro instead. I've just got totally fed-up with crashes, lock-ups and speed issues. Best decision I ever made...<

Dell must be selling some substandard boxes then, my home made desktop and HP preinstalled laptop never (well, Mass Effect has argued with Vista DEP utility a couple of times), suffer from those problems. XP crashed a lot more on me than Vista does.

>The wife's vista box is forever interupting all the obviously unimportant user stuff to phone home and dowload the latest fix, patch, bodge, DRM kludge etc from Redmond.<

You can specify what time of day MS applies these things, and it's default setup is 3am in the morning - just once a day.

Ban...

public smok... phoning! I don't want a passive health risk. Won't you think of the children!

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

It's called a witch hunt. First it was women with libertarian ideas, then jews, blacks, gays, books, comics, films, pornography, drinking, drugs... Every twenty years or so the American leaders need to be seen to be doing something about something, probably doesn't matter what. But this last one is a doozy, no one's going to march on Washington asking for freedom of expression to bugger little children.

In point of fact, just what percentage of the population is into this? When the British government did a sweep (a few years ago) of people using their credit cards to access peodophilia websites, the list of top tier society men (supposedly doing 'research' into child pornography) was pretty astounding.

Now, either lusting after children is a natural progression of male domination (which I refuse to believe), or something is broken in these men (not sure how many women are into it - Myra Hindley I guess), which would indicate they need 1) psychological counselling or, 2) chemical castration.

Witch hunts need to be left in the 20th century. They achieved nothing but suffering for innocent people. Makes me wonder why Cuomo is so vociferous in his hatred - touching a nerve or something...

So long Gris

But really, they should've finished it after season 7, 8 is almost played for laughs, and as for making the <spoiler free zone> the big bad at season finale was just embarrassing. Mind you, Sarah Cidal was my favourite character.

Count me as another one who can't abide CSI: Miami, and Horatio is a pratt.

Missing Bill Gates

Without BG's bloodthirsty drive I forsee Microsoft going the way of IBM. Now is the time for upstart hungry companies to start their attack vectors. I always tell customers about OpenOffice, to replace the resource sucking MS Office 2007.

Basically, MS was Bill, he wasn't running a company, he was fulfilling a mission. The new guy could care less as long as obscene amounts of money goes into his bank monthly.

Vistas' sales are simply new machines waiting to be sold and with Gates gone, how long before PC makers find other 'deals'. Now is the time for a modern DR DOS to offer a windows alternative (and no, I don't mean Apple or Linux but an OS that will run windows apps perfectly, will run leaner and will be cheaper).

C'mon developers, there must be someone out there... somewhere...

PS. I HATE - Ipods, Iphones, Itunes, Quicktime etc etc etc.

Bank Security

Over 10 years ago the Royal bank of Scotland issued me with a debit and credit card with my photo and signature laser etched onto it. To do online banking you could only use the one PC and if you formatted you had to restart the procedure from the beginning as it was tied into that machine and copy of windows....

With all the scam bank emails doing the rounds you'd think they'd be doing more to protect their customers - after all, the customer is saying to them, ' I trust you with my money.'

With the obscene profits they're making (apart from, obviously, Northern Rock), they really should be held legally accountable for letting money leave your account when it's not you taking it out, surely it's up to them to verify who's asking for the money.

The pirate - because obviously piracy has moved from anarchic individuals in ships to blood sucking corporations in high finance.

Bet this don't get printed

Fuck off France!!! Fan the Flames of Freedom. The end result of 'no lawlessness' is what invaded your country in the 40s until the British killed nazism (nazi-ism?).

crt lcd oled

>i suppose this will be a short lived fad though, as OLED will be here in a few years. i think the power consumption of OLED is much less than LCD and plasma (plasma uses plenty more than lcd to my knowledge too)<

I bought my 28in CRT about 8 years ago, just replaced it with a 32in LCD (the CRT went to my brother as it still works perfectly - his 10+ years 20in CRT went to our mother as her CRT TV - about 30 years old was kinda on the blink, very purple). I'm not expecting to change to OLED for at least 5 to 10 years - probably by which time 3D holographic displays will be all the rage, I'll get one of them.

The planet is in no danger, just the <stupid> people living on her. All this eco stuff is just trying to avert the coming human cull, unfortunately it's probably unavoidable. I hope I just live long enough to be able to download myself into a solar powered computer - so get a move on AI overlords...

@ AC

>From my own (possible incorrect) detective work, the common Nvidia based HP DV9xxx and DV6xxx are series that are significantly affected. In the US they extended the free warranty another year, but only for certain models, and this doesn't seem to be the case in the UK.<

Actually the UK is covered. I got an email (two months or so ago) about my Presario V6000 saying the warranty had been extended free for another year - so glad I registered it. But, touch wood, I've experienced no issues so far (about 11 months old), except for the 'i' key not always being immediately responsive.

>wifi dies, then GPU goes - 1 long beer and 2 short beeps<

Good to know what to look out for tho' as HP isn't that clear as to why the warranty was extended - or I'm thick.

Two computer forensic experts...

Wow, does this make me a computer forensic expert? (I could have checked his internet cache and said the same thing). What is worrying is that this is the first time I've heard of any such spyware/virus perpetrating such a heinous crime.

Still, if this is true, and the guys life was destroyed by a virus, then the world just got a little scarier. If not true a lot of paedo cases are suddenly going to have to 'prove' the guilt of the person involved - what's the betting police suddenly stop finding a lot of computer porn because it'll actually involve working to prove the stuff was downloaded purposely for viewing.

Well, here's to setting Firefox to daily clean my internet cache - just in case.

Evil BG because maybe IE should clear the cache (which should be held virtually) after each session by default, so that anything sneaking in by a backdoor would be eliminated.

42 days lockup just in case...

for the guy that found it; he might have peeked at the info, everyone at the BBC, the policeman it was handed to and the dufus who left it on the train - any one of whom could have unknowingly been in indirect contact with one of the many secret terrorist's who infest the Great British Public at every layer.

>I'd imagine the bit about the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces says "We've trained them well but left sufficient room to overpower them should we need to" and the bit about Al Quaeda says "I can't believe people still believe in the capable, multi-cell, organised axis of evil that we made up"<

Made me laugh out loud as I'd thought something similar.

Kill the iTards... (only joking)

That's right AC, blame M$. So what you're saying is that Steve Jobs put this in on purpose, so that more people would migrate from Windows to Macs? Sorry, not going to happen.

I love Bill Gates, being an IT guy he's given me a nice standard of living - not sure I'd get the same from Macs.

Blatantly anti i...anything.

Apple installed spyware on my PC

I hate macs, I hate ipods, I don't even have quicktime installed on my PCs, so when I do a process check on one of my systems do I find something called Bonjour running (tho nothing with that name is running in my services) - a quick Google tells me its an Apple service 'mDNS' something or other (phone home) that installs with itunes and - get this, Adobe CS3 tho' it's given a different name under CS3 (a series of numbers & letters).

Wikipedia:

Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user's interaction with the computer, without the user's informed consent.

BP posted a 3 month profit warning of three BILLION!!!!

>I'm typically purchasing 60~80 litres a day when travelling, so congratulations BP, you've lost out to the tune of $1000's over the last few months on both my business and personal fuel purchases due to the action of one servo which chooses to assume all it's customers are criminals.<

Pah - pocket change....

There are some thieves about - and it's not the folks who can't afford to put petrol in their car...

It's all good...

Glad there are so many right headed thinkers reading these boards, shame the other 99% of the UK population (including politicians, economists, the media etc etc etc), don't seem to see it.

Gordon Brown, if you want to stay in office, drop 10p tax on every litre of fuel - immediately. Stop passing ridiculous laws and and make banks take responsibility for their actions. And above all, remember, you're supposed to work for us, not the big profiteering companies.

Coat - time to get off this rock.

Welcome to the future

remember the good old days, when Microsoft steamrollered all competition in its path with barely a worry about anti-competitive law suits? Now, normal (ie, non techs), are installing Firefox, Google have sewn up the search market, they can barely give away their flagship operating system and the latest Office... well, least said, soonest mended.

Methinks the crocodile has lost its teeth, maybe they should re-look at their business plan, and possibly do some online surveys - with cash rewards obviously, to actually find out what THE CUSTOMER wants...

Or is that too simple?

Logic... Belief...

>What if alien lifeforms are both rational and logical?

The mere concept of a god would be alien to them.<

The concept of God as an intelligent designer?

Well, just maybe they've looked further than one AU from their birth planet, maybe they've unified the disparity between sub atomic particles and gravity bound outer worlds. Maybe, they know how the structure of the mind and the breath of life actually work - unlike us... maybe they've discovered the link between divine and mundane, and, just maybe, they are logical and rational enough to discover existence isn't simply limited to the three or four dimensions we're barely capable of seeing (length, breadth, height & time?) in the physical universe.

Even Einstein, supposedly our greatest scientific mind, didn't like the evidence of quantum mechanics or where they led. Steven Hawkings still hasn't discovered the unifying thing explaining everything (unless I missed a podcast), yet the 'disbelief' of God appears to be as strong as the 'belief' in God.

I know one thing, the banning of all religions would probably end most of the wars on this planet, but that has nothing to do with the existence - or not, of God, but more to do with the ability to share, something a five year old finally learns to do. Which puts our planetary psychological age at about two.

I'm agnostic...