Posts by Tony Paulazzo 1099 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2008
>they just can't hold back their hatred at any chance to diss Apple, even when there is no legitimate reason.<
You've just given one, they're Apple. /joke
But in all seriousness, why are itunes and quicktime one download? neither depends on the other so why not offer them as two - seperate - downloads, by default?
Saint Bill.
I started using Quicktime Alternative the second they started bundling iTunes download with their Quicktime player...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_Alternative
and that only for the rare website that only has a qt vid.
Why do they insist on trying to shift their bloated (Windows user so I know bloated) crap on Windows, stick with Macs. The amount of customers with iTunes on their systems which I have to temp. disable just to get the machine to run at a decent enough speed to work on - generally slate of ipods & itunes to the bill payer and suggest mp3 players.
Seriously, I've encountered virii & spyware that doesn't cripple the system as much.
Wow, these are the sort of comments about the motor vehicle over coach & horse, the cinema over theatre, language over grunts. The human race does actually get more intelligent over time (recent behaviours excepted admittedly).
Flying cars won't be the product of present tech, it'll have to be anti-grav (and don't any flat earthers say it's impossible) and fusion powered, so no, until scientists' and researchers get off their butts with internal combustion (a good idea 100 years ago - or whenever), and using up non renewable sources of energy it won't happen.
Oh, and conspiratorial nutjobs reckon the major oil companies are sitting on the really good idea's until they've squeezed every penny they can out of natural resources. 3 billion profits (profits=money made-money spent)yet petrol's gone up by about 10p a litre in the same 3 months.
What, you don't think these sharks have a plan for when the oil runs out?
and the Freesat web pages haven't changed at all, no prices, no set dates for rollout or transmission. Living in a part of the country that won't receive Freeview until 2011, has no cable access and I refuse to buy Sky, I'm still stuck with four channels (can't even get Ch5 - no great loss I know).
Yet for some reason my license fee is exactly the same as those getting ALL the BBC channels.
World getting BBC for free? well morally I can't say a thing as I watch a crapload of American TV for free... legally... probably...
Global village my arse: Petrol per litre in UK yesterday - £1.09.99, in Venezeula - £0.15.
Not from Gordon Brown alas, but some guy, G Edwards, who assures me that GB receives thousands of letters a week so is unable to reply to all of them, but he has been asked to forward my letter onto the Dept for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform who will reply to me direct. Anyone heard of them?
From their website:
>The five principles of good regulation
A key part of the BRE’s work has been to determine five key principles of regulation, which are now a cornerstone of the better regulation strategy and implementation. These state that any regulation should be:
* transparent
* accountable
* proportionate
* consistent
* targeted – only at cases where action is needed
Well, to my mind, Phorm are not transparent and since their software will be installed on the ISP's servers, not really accountable, since it could be doing anything in the background without the ISPs knowledge.
Here's hoping the battering continues, we just need BT to start backing away now.
>What really confuses me though is why so many of the pricks are Scots.<
Because, 'They cannot steal our land...' It's their revenge, (does explain why Gordon Brown is screwing us over so badly tho'). When he retires he goes back to Scotland and they all laugh at the 'if it isn't mandatory it's illegal' English. They, of course, secede from the UK and live in a land of flowing milk and honey... until the oil runs out and the melting ice caps floods them out of history.
Most backfired invention, democracy.
Well, they might want to start filming that bit pretty soon, ole Chris Lee's definitely not getting any younger and looks about 105 now...
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000489/
and they can't use the same actor for Gandalf and someone different for Saruman it would suffer from a disconnect - Aragorn and Liv would also have to reprise their roles, since she's an Elf (Elv?) and he's a long lived superhuman (Dunedai? - as revealed in the extended version of 'the two towers').
Who's gonna play Bilbo? The guy who played Frodo in LOTR? that would be cool. Elijah - damn my short term memory - he said in some interview it was the first time he'd played a fifty year old (i.e. Frodo), so it totally works. Just need a few shirtless scenes for, well you know, a little gentle homoeroticism, since it's just gonna be him and 12 dirty bearded dwarfs (no slight to modern dwarfs intended), old Gandalf, a load of CGI creatures and New Zealand.
but I've never been caught out, did a little digging of my own when I 'apparently' won an Irish lottery - never having been to Ireland, but even with my non existent resources, I found a name - connected to various email scams, an address based here in the UK, but unfortunately couldn't find anyone interested in pursuing the matter further.
Another scam, some stock market thing, I came across led to a telecommunications company in Spain, but again, nothing I could do with the information.
A Nigerian prince did email me, but I just deleted it.
Perhaps I should send the info to NASA, they seem to give an fsck, unlike the British government.
Seriously thinking of plumping down for a PS3 (not for any one console is better than another - I used to hate all consoles equally, but PS3 for the Bluray player), but man, this game looks kickarse and waiting a year or two for the PC release... it hurts, but of course mass effect is on the 360 and not the PS3 so... meh, maybe I'll wait.
It was an original, thoughtful and exciting BBC scifi show. What happened to that? We're not short of superlative writers out there, Iain M Banks and the Culture novels would be great for serialising into a TV show, Alastair Reynolds with the Chasm City (major plot element ripped off by Mass Effect) bunch of interconnected storylines, or (and what I would most love to see, The Nights Dawn (Peter F Hamilton) trilogy filmed).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night%27s_Dawn_Trilogy
All of these writers (off the top of my head), offer original, thoughtful and exciting NEW storylines. It's not as though any physical elements of the old shows can be reused, so the cost of rehashing them can't be any more cost effective than utilising a completely new IP..
Dr Who, when it was created in 1961 (ish), was something way ahead of its time and blew the public away, the new Dr Who, apart from making the good doctor partially bi sexual, offers absolutely nothing new (apart from the infuriating family soap opera extensions of his new companions - ok, let's go see your dead dad - oh noes, you've fscked the timeline by saving him: oh no Martha's mum n dad r divorced: o luv the telepathic paper/time independent mobile phone: dashing gay captain Jack who's gonna live forever in Cardiff) - well ok, that last one is pretty funny.
So back to my point, new Sci Fi good, rehashed Sci Fi not so much - but, I guess, better than nothing.
Alien icon for the obvious reason.
>For HTTP traffic, we assume that if a website wishes to be found by the public through being profiled by major search engines (Google), then the site is in the
public domain and therefore as long as we have consent from the requester of the page, we are permitted to profile the site.<
This is simply not true, I asked Google to profile my website as they are the most popular search engine, and if people want to find my company they can. But my website does not offer advertising, so why would I want an adware company profiling my website as well as my surfing?
I may have got this wrong, but I thought Phorm would only be interested in websites / advertisers who were in the OIX platform, I mean, they wouldn't redirect users to my site as there would be no money in it for them, so why profile it?
>Foster's early day motion on the subject has now garnered 36 MPs' signatures, from all the major parties.<
My local Labour MP has signed that! I got a second letter from her yesterday, detailing it. God, maybe democracy does work. When I first wrote to her I didn't even expect a reply, never mind a followup letter.
So everyone, print off a letter and send it snail mail to your local MP, sometimes one man CAN make a difference.
Still waiting for a reply from Gordon Brown though. Still, he's probably got his hands full, what with the collapsing (alarmist) / slowing (dreamist) economy - rising petrol and global food shortages, house prices crashing and the sullen British population looking for a scapegoat.
Way to go El reg, keep the pressure up, it's even, finally, starting to appear on the BBC website.
Dancing round each other like rain kissed lovers
gravity singing whale whilst capturing others
the Multiverse is eternal and full of stars,
held within another's celestial grasp.
The big bang theory and dark matter story
of expanding gases, sub atomic blast in history
our 'verse is ever steeped in mystery
and the deep abiding sense of long ago history...
I'm such a good IT engineer tho' :-)
Made me properly LOL, thanks for making my morning :-).
@ Nick Palmer: Hear hear, you said really succinctly what I'm thinking.
@ guy who said...
>At least Demon Internet in the UK have no plans for using Phorm - at least for the time being..<
Do Demon offer access to NNTP? I seem to recall the name from my earliest days on the 'net, when they argued with the government about controlling access to various dot alt groups. They refused to self censor though Telewest, aka Blueyonder, now Virgin Media folded immediately - rather like their three strikes and out policy over p2p they've agreed to implement.
Funnily enough I was reading thru' bits of BT's T&C (they should make them illegal, its like trying to read the most boring book in the multiverse), but they seem to have no problems with customers on p2p, just that their speed might/would be throttled during peak hours, which, with p2p doesn't really matter that much. Shame they're getting in bed with Phorm.
If it's okay in America it'll be standard ISP practice worldwide within six months.
Question: Are newsgroups still free of tracking? I see it now, a new, better internet with no ads, video, Flash or crap. Leave the world wide web for the masses and return to the text based world of dot alt.
Well, it was fun while it lasted.
I just bought a Seagate/Maxtor HDD after looking at seemingly hundreds of (on-line) arguments about which are the most reliable. I eventually went with Seagate because the warranty was a cool five years, and of the HDD's I've had they seemed to last ok - I've had a Western Digital die on me just after a year which p*ssed me off no end; if these MTBF's are to be believed then surely their warranties should reflect that.
So, in this high tech website which drives are the most reliable? And I'd take reliabilty over the nanosecond faster drives any day.
I like the fact he got rumbled by an agency doing a routine sweep, rather than the thousands of honest buyers he duped*, wonder if they rounded all of them up for buying illegal software - ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law - unless you're BT & Phorm of course.
* Wonder if they thought the legal version was just too ridiculously expensive, especially considering you don't OWN the software, just pay for the right to use it.
I don't condone piracy but I do condone fleecing the customer off as often and as expensively as they fall for it. /irony.
Photoshop CS3 £993.23
MS Office 2007 £383.52
Vista Ultimate £362.53 (tho OEM versions everywhere for about a ton (£100))
>If you go over your overdraft limit and the bank charges you... well thats unfair isn't it?<
I got a cheque and presented it to my bank, a week later I get a two paragraph letter telling me it bounced (at a cost to me of £6) and they're representing it. I go into the bank to ask them not to represent it (after all, if it bounced once...), they said (this was the same day I got the letter mind), sorry, it went back two days ago, and it's down to the other bank how many times it can get represented. I asked them why they didn't charge the bank then and not me and they laughed - in an understanding way. A few days later another letter arrived with the bounced cheque, and another £6 charge.
That's two letters costing £12 - wish I could charge that much and get away with it.
>So Linux runs on anything, Apple provides a complete package, and Microsoft does neither. Why would/does anyone use it?<
To run games (less true these days with the proliferation of consoles), and heritage: Clueless customer (my personal bread & butter, so I love these guys) goes into PC World (the clue is in the name), get a PC which hearkens back to IBM PC with history - IBM PC & Microsoft DOS, which runs any number of cheap 'n cheerful software all the way up to Adobe stuff, or be tied into a closed operating system (Apple Mac). Linux is just beardy - no offense, until it can run windows software seamlessly it will always be an also ran.
Personally I hate Apple, I hate Macs, Itunes, Iphone, Ipod, Itouch, quicktime (I use quicktime alternative), and I tolerate Adobe Reader. Like it or not, the Apple still has this image of a computer for the elite who don't like computers.
The screen size problem is temporary and to do with cost, I think within the next few years that issue will disappear as it becomes mainstream, or fed up to a pair of glasses to give 3d vision filling TV*, though of course as the tech gets better the actual content will be even more vapid and mind numbing....
'Thank God Sky lets me know by that little icon which channel I'm watching, otherwise I might forget - and fall of my chair, or drown in my bowl of soup, or lose the use of my legs...'
Douglas Adams (RIP) had the right idea, pretend to build 3 spaceship, but only build 1, herd all the middlemanagement, advertisers, BPI etc leeches (we'd better keep the phone sanitisers tho'), in fact, anyone who doesn't in some small way make another persons life better in some measurable way - and shoot them off into space.
Sorry, rant over.
*With a little radar window warning you of approaching lamp posts, muggers etc.
** In point of fact (and this method gets rid of piracy in one fell swoop), del advertising, and get the governments to pay for it all. After all, they are 'The servant of the people.', well this master doesn't want, or need, any more nuclear bombs or made up wars to keep the army in training / justified to take 1/3 of my wages (+ taxed on everything else).
And, just in case you're still reading, is there anywhere an excel spreadsheet that does show how my government is spending all this money it does take? (and the BBC). Flames because I'm starting to get sick of the doublethink being perpetrated on the great British public.
>The funny thing is there is a way to watch the BBC content without clogging up the data networks. It's called the television. I can't understand why no-one has thought of this before.<
No TV tax (licence)
no BBC 'adverts'
watch it when you want
Tho' to be totally honest, I've checked it out, and apart from a couple of shows on (Ch) 4 on Demand, and a live 'Tigers' nature show on BBc and News24 there's not that much ACTUAL content on there that interests me personally.
>If only the ISP's could think of a way to build anti phishing measures into their service...perhaps they could finance this with some targeted advertising of some sort.<
I wonder if, once opted into this scheme, you become a victim of a phishing site, BT or whoever, will be accountable for all losses sustained by you. Now that would be funny.
>Smoking kills period<
Boy, the women will sure be happy.
>People have a right to be protected from passive smoke just as much as we do from any other danger or health risk.<
Like freedoms repossessed in case of terrorist activities, spied on in case you try to get your brat in a better school, ad targeted so you don't see ads that don't relate to your lifestyle, 20MPH roads so the nasty cars don't hit you...
Course, global warming, genetic modification, false wars about oil, lies about the Chinese invasion of Tibet and rubbish mountains are ok because big business/government are doing it.
PH because maybe she has a clue.
but why am I paying £1000+ a year on council tax when they feel they can just use it on whatever they want? Accountability needs to be put back on the agenda. So now they know where the kid lives, if the parents want their kid to go to a school fifty miles away, why can't they?
Democracy:
>A common feature of democracy as currently understood and practiced is competitive elections. Competitive elections are usually seen to require freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and some degree of rule of law. Civilian control of the military is often seen as necessary to prevent military dictatorship and interference with political affairs. In some countries, democracy is based on the philosophical principle of equal rights.< Thanks to Wikipedia.
needs to be back on the agenda. Equal rights, the right to choose where your child goes to school, the right to not be snooped, spied or targeted ad upon, the right to watch how YOUR government does their job.
I've written to, amongst others, the PM, my European MP, my local MP about Phorm and had two responses, my local MP sent me a BT/Phorm info sheet and thanked me for writing him, and my MEP agreed to disliking Phorm, but that the situation was a UK gov decision type thing. Gordon hasn't responded to my letter yet.
...err, but back to my point, council tax is too much, and when I read how they're using/wasting it, I start to see red. Ten years ago they promised an ace education/health system, far as I can see it's the same old same old.
Give the anarchist a cigarette. 'Chumbawumba'
These are the pr0n you've been looking for. Yay for the future! 2D is dead, long live 3D.
The government may be watching everything we do, genetically modified food, ice sheets melting, waste mountains and if it isn't mandatory it'll be illegal, but we won't care because we'll be able to see Mrs Dingles breasts heaving over the edge of our sets on Emmerdale.
Smiley, but I'm really crying inside.
they say,
>In the subsequent trial the ICO said: "We have spoken to BT about this trial and they have made clear that unless customers positively opt in to the trial their web browsing will not be monitored in order to deliver adverts." <
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7331493.stm
Which IS good news, because if it can be proved, after opting out, that any profiling is going on (not sure how easy that would be to find out - maybe an AC mole from within), then they could be hauled into court by private individuals.
As for the other end of the equation, ads being shown on websites, wouldn't they only be shown on those websites that took payment for advertising anyway, ergo, none would be shown if someone visited my website as there is no advertising on my site, or like, Google sponsored ads wouldn't be replaced by OIX ads, only OIX sponsored web sites would show targeted ads. Or am I being totally stupid?
Paris, just in case I am.
>Use to have Vista came preinstalled prior to SP1 and found it was painful to use.
Went to XP64bit and it works fine, have not had any issues, only the occasional reboot after a Windows update.<
Same here, but found I missed the UI so went back to Vista, at least on my work laptop. Even used to Office 2007 now, but agree the interface isn't as good (or easy to use) as Office 2003. My gaming desktop has gone back to XP, just for the speed. DX10 won't be important for at least another few graphic card generations, ie DX 10.5 or something.
No problems with SP1 update, not many noticeable improvements either, mainly file copying.
<"Not everyone can see the difference between normal DVD and Blu-Ray,..."
Why do people keep spouting this nonsense?>
Well, my HDTV is only 720p 1080i, and I won't be upgrading for a long time (my last telly (28in widescreen) lasted me some 6 years (gave it to my brother as it's still good but I have to keep my geek alive).
Yeah, HD is better, 'Serenity' looks glorious, 'The Thing' reminds me of watching it in the cinema all those years ago, but in all honesty, 'Lord of the Rings' and 'King Kong' DVD look fan-bloody-tastic on my new TV. The difference between the two isn't THAT staggering.
Now if it had been HD3D (high definition in 3 dimensions and 7.1 Dolby surround sound), that would probably have rocked the marketplace...
I heart HDTV.
taken some of your comments on board, but in the meantime I've snailmailed the letter to Gordon Brown, my mp, mep, dailies, local and national, got it put up in the local community meeting point and library, but now I'm thinking...
If the people at the top aren't prepared to do something about this then we need to generate a grass roots national signing. The points would need to be concise and easy to understand and managed from a central location (hint hint El Reg), then post the lot to No 10 Downing St.
I think the number 1 point is that optin or out, all that priceless user info goes through Phorm software.
Phorm and the profiteering of BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse.
Or, how your online browsing habits are up for sale.
I've just been left wondering why no decent investigation or coverage off the Phorm and BT/Virgin Media/Carphone warehouse association has not been carried out in any depth by any news media or unbiased governmental body, has investigative journalism truly died in the country? Are the laws of British citizens no longer applicable to big businesses?
Phorm, an ex adware/spyware company (placing files unbeknownst onto a user’s computer without their knowledge) is run by a man called Kent Ertrugul who used to run a company, 121 media. This company would watch your browsing habits so that targeted ads could be delivered whilst you were surfing. Most antispyware programs would delete these cookies as spyware. As 121 Media they ran a series of secret trials with BT without their customer’s knowledge or consent in 2006 and 2007.
Having changed their name they now intend that ad targeting be run by your internet service provider so antispyware will no longer have anything to delete. As Phorm they are being allowed to run their own proprietary software on two of the UKs largest broadband servers, BT & Virgin Media, who do not have access to their code, yet who can state with unequivocal assurance that it is safe, and that identifiable customer information cannot be seen.
How one top man, Stratis Scleparis, from BT has moved across to Phorm after the secret and illegal profiling trials of ‘06, ‘07, and how over 9000 people have signed a government petition trying to stop it has caused little to no reaction in the countries news media.
This is invasion of privacy on a massive scale yet the BBC seems hardly aware of it except for one little item where they appear to agree that the secret BT profiling trials of some 8000 customers last year may have been illegal - well, I've not seen anyone arrested yet, not even an investigation – what gives?
The opt in/opt out measures (requiring a cookie?) are a joke as all your info still goes through the profiler, which, apparently never gets to Phorm, but seeing as how the code on the ISPs server belongs to Phorm, I’m unsure how exactly the ISP’s know, with such confidence, what information is (or will be when the code is updated) passed through.
Labour MP Patricia Hewitt is on the BT Board which might explain somewhat why more fuss is not being made about this issue, and of course, Stratis Scleparis, the BT Retail CTO moved over to become Phorm CTO might explain why BT are desperately pushing this through.
Thanks for reading - Tony F Paulazzo.
If you're still reading, any thoughts of what I've missed, what else needs to be said, etc, Cheers.
how many guys would be willing to give birth if their partner was unable - I wouldn't, I'd rather let the human race die out first, I'm THAT selfish (ask my other half), ergo, she's a lesbian who likes extreme makeover.
dysmorphia :-) what a bitchin' word, I love that.
But in all seriousness, good luck to the couple, and their baby. It doesn't matter what makes you happy, just so long as you are - where it doesn't hurt another, unless they like it. Peace out.
God! is Oprah still going? The smiley 'cause it feels good...
Long live Dab... Actually I only ever listen to the radio in the car, so I could give a fcuk - but Ofcomm:
>Ofcom is the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries< (their home page).
So how comes where I live (somewhere in West Yorkshire - yay me), cable doesn't exist for me - probably for ever, (and freeview won't be here until 2011 - a seperate whinge), so if I want broadband I have to get a BT line; doesn't matter who I want to go with, I have to have a BT landline first, even with Sky. Where's the competition in that?
When British Telecoms was a government owned body it was bad, but now, as a cash sucking corporation, willing to sell my details to anyone with a shady past (whilst Virgin are doing the same to anyone who dares not be a BT customer), things are starting to really go 1984.
What happened to the British Isle and its respect for the individual? Welcome to the 21st century... Burn baby, burn.
>I guarantee that every single one of my sons 14 yr old school friends will have this game within 24hrs of release, they've been going on about it for weeks.<
well do a mail shot to all their parents, get a meeting going, and, if that doesn't work, inform the police on them - those 14 year olds almost got Manhunt banned for us adult...
Although, point in fact, I don't know any adults who are actually going to buy it - plenty of male teenagers tho' are drooling in anticipation, so it would appear Rockstar know their audience.
/joke
Surely unknown should come under MS as well which would give them 34% of the crashes. When I got my laptop with Vista preinstalled (+ Nvidia 6150), I had error reporting on which turned out to be a colossal waste of time as each and every problem came back as unknown - except for a few or so graphic driver crashes which never resurfaced after I switched off transparency (never turned it back on as I tend to only work in maxed windows anyway), and stopped using the sleep function (tho with that I think it was more down to readyboost and sleep not working well together - leastways the laptop seemed to successfully wake when readyboost was disabled.
Plus, you could put the fastest graphics card in the world in a system, but if the other components aren't up to the task, poor PSU, low RAM, crap CPU; then load AVI backgrounds, transparent windows, 3D task switchin - and finally mix in DRM, beta drivers, brand new OS... and, well I'm no scientist, but I'm fairly sure the result is BANG!
And finally, aren't the numbers suspect anyway? Intel, AMD, ATI, Nvidia, Others and unknown, didn't they crash Vista, or cause Vista to crash? and shouldn't Vista stop the crash from occurring? being as it's the operating system.
Tony F Paulazzo.
Someone build me a rocket so I can get the Phuck off this planet, everyone is clearly insane. The ice sheets are melting faster than anyone expected, the sheep are bleating about privacy invasion by their governments, China are murdering anyone they want, Vista SP1 rollout is hardly a blip on the news and BT want to target advertising at me (by selling my confidential information) as the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
I thought the world was supposed to get better when Russia dissolved into squabbling neighbour states, but turns out America really was no better than them, how many wars are they running at the moment? Afghanistan, Iraq - and maybe Iran?
The alien 'cos I really need a lift somewhere else...
Tony F Paulazzo.
Well I backed up everything, onto usb stick, onto cd and online, then gingerly double clicked that SP1 update file - half expecting the laptop to start smoking. It said it might take an hour or so to finish, and reboot a few times, so I went off and did some other IT tinkering I had to do, made a coffee and came back to a fully updated laptop.
Nvidia 6150 graphics card - no probs, tho' I always let the update do it's job so it'd have the latest graphic n sound drivers, ac97 sound etc etc all still working fine.
Haven't really noticed a difference, but I run Vista pretty pared down anyway. Copying files is def. improved tho'.
TFP
Yay, looking forward to copying files in under 3 hours, well done Bill. Linux is for weirdy beardies - tho I'd go that route if I had to because Apple is... well it's just shite - itunes makes Media player look good for gosh' sake. I hate when a customer has itunes on their PC, insinuating itself into the software like a worm...
Proprietary hardware, how 1950's.
You all know it, Vista looks better than anything else out there... and as a computer engineer has kept me in much work.
Bill Gates because I love him so very very much.
Tony F Paulazzo.
for about six months, small local business with a preset spending budget, the first two or three were ok, paid for clicks, but by the sixth month Google were taking all my preset budget, and I was seeing nothing from it, so I stopped, but I still get interminable adsense 'How to make it work for you' emails from various 'professionals' in my inbox on a weekly basis.
I still use Google - it's my homepage, but I tightened up the word search in my web pages, so I appear near the top of Google search listings which, to my mind works just as well. I know, when I'm searching for things I rarely prefer the paid ads to the right of the page anyway.
Adclick might be okay for larger business', but for the sole trader selling services - not so much.
Tony F Paulazzo.
Except it's not - it's a way to give us ulcers - 'Look what you could have won...' Wish I'd gone into politics now. Darling puts 2p extra on a litre of petrol, which my local petrol station implemented on the very same day, Phorm wants to spy on us with the blessing of the three largest ISPs...
I don't see the politicos staying green when they drive from wherever to London (is the congestion charge part of their expenses?), they smoke inside whilst telling the rest of us to catch pneumonia doing it outside with no patio heating. I finally understand why insane people bash their heads on brick walls, they're just missing out the middle man.
No accountability.
& as to the guy who knows all these unemployed people with 42in HD TVs, I know quite a few myself, and not one of them even has a flatscreen tv, most have about a 28in CRT and that's because they're given away on Freecycle.
Tony F Paulazzo.
and drive my car. This quote incensed me...
<quote>
So when you pay £1.10 per litre at the pump, what you're paying for really costs 33p/l while the bulk of price goes to fund illegal wars, ID cards and Ministers pensions.</quote>
and this website makes me despair...
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/price.html/%22http://www.intelligentmanagementuk.com/index.html
(a global petrol price comparison site, over 5.5 dollars for us brits - highest in the world! going down to 14 cents for Venezuela - America is between 2 dollars to 3.5)...
http://www.gasbuddy.com/
so someone's getting fcuked, and I'm not talking about the environment.
The pirate 'cos our government makes torrenting look positively harmless.
[quote]For instance, he said, while some people use peer-to-peer networks to download copyrighted material many commercial services, such as Napster and the BBC's iPlayer, use file-sharing technology to distribute music and TV legally.[/quote]
I love it when the waters start getting muddied. I can't wait till the first license payer gets kicked off the 'net for downloading last weeks Eastenders for being a torrent pirate.
Actually, this whole debacle reminds me of when the police tried to get the ISPs to stop pron newsgroups in the early nineties - that went nowhere too.
T F Paulazzo.
Wow, I'd be happy to hear my bank was doing something about fraudulent claims coming thru their system, and I'd rather that little bit of extra hassle of contacting the bank to setup an account. The real problem about this particular cashless cow is there's no physical product, you pay for the service, download what's required and play. the only bits of info required are a card number, a name and address which could probably be found in local restaurant bins. As long as you play in public wifi spots you're pretty much untouchable...
I love the fact the government are so keen to crack down on piracy, peer to peer (which the BBC online service BBCi utilizes) and free internet, yet seem utterly impotent in the face of identity theft, email scams or, you know, keeping records of their own people safe.
Paris Hilton, just, because...
Well I have no googled pages to back me up here, but didn't consumers choose the victors between Betamax and VHS? I'm sure all the film studios simply released in both formats until a clear winner (the inferior VHS format) emerged.
Seems to me the guys with the biggest backhanders won this time, with studio exclusives and such like (they probably preferred the region coding in Blueray too - maybe HDDVD should have gone that route) - or maybe the film studio execs should have accepted that cinema going is a dying social disease, and the human race moves closer to a matrix like reality of not leaving the house unless strictly necessary.
If thousands upon thousands suddenly started buying HDDVD machines because their prices dropped like stones, would the film studios and 'quality' newspapers still call it dead?
Personally, I'm rewatching all my SD DVDs thru' an SD player on a HIDEF TV and loving the qualitive<sp?> difference, and whichever HD players breaks the sub £100 barrier, I (and I'm guessing) millions of other (normal folk) will make the jump to rewatch our SD films upscaled.
Apart from an extremely select few most loved movies, I will not be rebuying my DVD collection in HD format. I hate Microsoft & Sony (the corporation, not the folks who work in them) in equal measure - I realise MS don't own the HDDVD format, but they do back them, but if I had a choice I would always go with a consortium of backers of a format.
Apologies for the long post.
Tony F Paulazzo
But round here, Calderdale, West Yorkshire, some of the pubs have electric heaters with big buttons. You push 'em, they turn on, then turn off some 10 minutes later. But if you're really serious about saving the planet (as opposed to hating on the smokers), don't fly (Massive carbon footprint), don't drive, do turn off TVs, DVDs & PCs (as opposed to standby), and ensure your fridge/freezer is filled to capacity and running at its most efficient.
Recycle - paper tin and glass.
Only vote for politicians who are really interested in changing things on a global scale, and if you absolutely must buy petrol don't buy it from conglomerates who post a 27 Billion pound profit for the last year whilst charging us over a pound sterling for a f***ing litre of the stuff...
IMHO.
Or, you know, argue about weather evil baby killing smokers should be cold - (SPELLING MISTAKE INTENTIONAL).
Tony F Paulazzo.
I've been running Vista64 and Firefox for ages and I've watched loads of 4 ondemand (it opens in its own window so I don't know if it's an IE window or not) without a problem, and I finally watched 1 BBC prog yesterday on it's streaming website, (a docu about gravity), and it appeared to work fine.
What I dislike about these services is the proprietary software you have to install to watch the stupid things - Oh yea, and the license fee as it's basically extorted money (pay this or go to jail advertising).
Tony F Paulazzo
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