Posts by VinceH

Re: Surely this is endangering children?

"FUCK MUMSNET"

I think someone already did.

(Well, not the same someone for all of them, obviously.)

Re: It's not only his own wealth

'"What can you possibly spend it on anyway?"

This -> Project Utopia'

But only if your name is Stromberg, surely!

(And I apologise for calling you Shirley)

"What I find funny in all this is that political types are being grossly guilty of assuming if it can be found on Google it is real and anybody gives a shit, and that if it can't be found on Google it is gone forever. Christ, what a bunch of jackasses."

FIFY!

Re: Another possibility

"I feel concerned that I *haven't* had the 'penis enlargement' spam for sometime now. It just doesn't feel right."

It doesn't feel right, you say? Does it feel too small, perhaps? If so what you need is to respond to one of those emails for peni... oh, wait.

Re: writing for you

"http://www.schneierfacts.com/"

Brilliant!

But it leaves me wondering... who wins out of Bruce Schneier or Chuck Norris?

(I'm not telling. Find out for yourselves!)

Re: Sphero

"I got a sphero for the wife so she can use it with the cats,"

That (and dogs) was what I first thought of when I saw it.

"i'm pretty intrigued by some of the games though"

The zombie one mentioned in the article isn't the one I'd have highlighted. It's the game where you take on the role of a Rover, trying to prevent Number 6 from running away.

Except that one doesn't appear to exist. Missed a trick, there. (Or didn't miss it, but balked at the licensing fees needed, which would probably be understandable.)

Re: @Ben Tasker

"You show me a jam sandwich combined with a nice cup of java that survives long enough to display nightmares of the security kind."

Someone could drug that cup of java. That's your security risk, right there.

"The only secure bank account is an empty one, with no overdraft facility."

Only if you can be absolutely certain the bank will not honour a payment and put the account into a (more expensive) unauthorised overdraft.

Re: The first hurdle....

"...despite having worked on the internet since the 90s...

Well, hurry up and finish it please!"

I thought it was finished - at least, the web, anyway. I've already read the whole thing twice.

Although I did notice that when I read it the second time, some things had changed.

Re: Facebook - solution

Although I hate to defend FaecesBook, this problem is not limited to - and did not start - there. The same people that 'share' this crap on FaecesBook, if they didn't have that site, would share it by emailing it out to every single one of the people in their email contacts.

And some people do both - sharing it via FaecesBook if that's where they received/saw it, and by email if that's where they received/saw it. And no doubt by other means, as well.

Re: "Comfortable with that?" Er, well now that you mention it, no.

"Oh, that's fixable. Apple can just do like Google likes to do, and link the bluetooth service to some other service."

Well, I have Android 4.1.2 on my phone, and Bluetooth is definitely switched off. If it's linked to another service, then that must be a service I don't use.

"Like, say, that you can not have wifi enabled without also having bluetooth enabled. Or do like Microsoft likes to do, and simply remove the setting to turn off bluetooth. The possibilities to make sure that you see those offers are endless."

No, those are possibilities to discourage me from buying a new phone. :p

(Or, if I buy one and then discover I can't disable Bluetooth, to return it for a full refund because it is unsatisfactory.)

"And that said, history is written by the winners - we only percieve the Empire as the evil ones because the Rebels won at the end. this whole "Dark Lord of the Sith" stuff could be entirely propagander by Ackbar's PR department (much like Microsofts anti-Google marketing tactic at the moment)"

Well I was going to point out that a series of documentaries was made about the whole affair, which included actual footage of many key events, such as the Death Star destroying Alderaan.

Then I remembered that some of that footage was 'corrected' in later editions of the documentaries, so maybe you're right.

Re: A little late

"I doubt that the financial institutions will "facilitate" transfer of the chip coding to a multi vendor card arrangement."

Indeed.

What I suspected was that users of the card will submit their existing card details to Amazon. Before using the card, they'd log into their account, and specify which real card to use to make the next payment, and then toddle off to use their card. As far as any given vendor is concerned, will simply be a card issued by Amazon - which is who they'll receive payment from (?) - and behind the scenes, Amazon would debit the pre-selected card in order to fund that payment.

However, the article (and patent application based on a skim reading) does actually describe a programmable card. Perhaps a similar concept, but with the card storing the choice of account: Vendor is still simply seeing a card from Amazon, and receiving payment from them, but the details of where the payment comes from to get to Amazon is stored on the card itself, rather than on their server.

I'm not sure how Amazon will get any benefit (read: money) out of this. The (real) card issuers aren't going to want to give Amazon a cut. The end users won't want to pay extra on top of whatever they're buying (well, I wouldn't, anyway). And the vendors won't want to give up any of their sales value on top of what they already have to pay to accept cards, just because Joe Bloggs wants to pay by Amazon.

Re: All a bit daft...

"Poster above points out that the drone still isn't going to know when you're in."

As I pointed out in a comment on the earlier article, IF this delivery scheme were to actually happen, the chances are the drone delivery option would be exactly that: an option, on items suitable for delivery that way.

When a customer is ordering something, if delivery by drone is possible for that item, they will be able to opt for it - and would only do so if they aren't going out in the next however-many minutes; the estimated delivery time for delivery by drone, plus a little extra just to be sure. The drone would know the customer is in precisely because the customer opted for delivery by drone - which they wouldn't have done if they weren't going to be in.

Re: Instead of putting the onus onto us

"Why don'y THEY do THEIR job and get this sorted out so that Amazon (and all the others) CAN'T avoid paying the tax they should be due."

But Dave Cameron and Claire Perry have been doing their job to get this sorted out. Once the filter is up and running, all it'll need is a bit of feature creep, and instead of "MPs back call to boycott low-taxed tat from Amazon" the headline could be "MPs back call to enforced boycott on low-taxed tat from Amazon".

Re: OK I get the laser bit ...

I saw no mention of sharks in the article.

And that's just wrong.

I want to know how they propose to have lasers on the moon without sharks.

Re: EULAs suck

You know that. I know that. Typical readers of El Reg know that.

But many people don't. Many people don't even know what one is, even AFTER it's been installed on their computer as part of the process of installing something else because they didn't see/understand the pre-ticked box, and the toolbar has, as a result, appeared at their browser.

All they know is "all the extra buttons just appeared" at some point - often more than one lot at different times - making the browser window smaller, and now they've noticed the computer's a bit slow accessing the web.

Re: I've still got my Dragon32

The oldest computer I definitely still have is my Acorn A3000.

I may still have my first laptop, the make of which I can't remember - it ran DOS, booted from floppy, and had a very small (3 or 4 x 80?) display.

But all the 8-bit classics - a Beeb, an Electron, a Memotech, a ZX81, etc. - all long since binned. (Before people started paying silly money for them on eBay.)

Re: sounds like our legendary white tailed spider

The ones that didn't appear in the documentary "Black Sheep" ?