Rogers customers in Canada are being given the same lame excuse for a lack of updates even to v 1.6. Fortunately this is the standard level of service we expect from cel companies, so no-one is too surprised.
When I switched from PC to Mac there was nothing that I missed more than Google's Picasa. iPhoto paled in terns of ease of use and versatility, and was literally the first thing that I installed when I switched back to PC this year.
This year Google finally made Picasa available for Mac too. Well worth getting.
"Some restaurants where using some simple tools to erase from the databases of their POS programs some huge percentage of tickets not printed as invoices..."
Lord knows we've all done some less than brilliant things while in the heat of passion and or other intoxicants, but I'm still amazed at the number of people who take nudie pictures of themselves or others, then fail to consider that they may wind up in someone else's hands.
On a phone no less, an item that is routinely loaned to friends and co-workers, and that is a favorite "toy" to small children. I'm even cautious about what I leave on my desktop hard drive at home, and can't imagine leaving this kind of thing on my cel phone or laptop!
I was dismayed recently when playing Clue with some kids (the DVD version no less) that it no longer involves a murder! Instead you figure out who has stolen an item from the house.
Sigh... somehow it just wasn't the same when you weren't identifying a murder weapon and the place where Col. Mustard met his demise.
Kind of like those non-competitive collborative games that old hippies want their kids to play...
Seriously, I have yet to see anyone with BT plugs except fat over-geeky old guys trying to look cool and hip, and young "God, I am SO important I can't be out of touch for ONE second of my life!" fresh out of MBA school guys with shiny new suits and too-cool sunglasses. The kind of guiy who was buying $27 martinis a year ago and who is now onto whatever is the latest trendy drink.
NO-ONE is so damned busy that they can't just take the phone out of their pocket and press the little green button to talk.
What I want to know is why Apple keeps DEMANDING that I download and install a 48 meg iTunes update whose sole feature is to make it iPhone compatible. I don't own an iPhone, I am certain never to buy one, yet I am forced to add this to my system.
Which, like every iTunes update, and nearly every of the weekly Apple updates, requires a reboot.
Honestly, MS at least gives you the option of refusing an update that you don't want.
(Mine's the one with the cheapo LG phone in the pocket that (horror!) is used as a phone and nothing else, on a Virgin pay-as-you go plan no less.)
I'm not saying that there's anything Apple specific here, but the comments on this story seem to be overly rife with spelling, grammar, and language usage errors.
And for the Internet that's saying something....
Maybe typing on a touch screen has its limitations?
Paris - there has to be a touch screen joke in there somewhere....
All things considered I actually trust Amazon to not screw me over. PayPal on the other hand is one long nightmare of incompetence and incomprhensible errors.
I don't think that anyone uses PayPal because they like it, but because it's the only game in town.
"To those who claim that duplication is the line at which the law comes into play... I thought it was actually *technically* illegal to play a radio in a work / public place, no?"
Well, no. If you are using music in a retail establishment like a store, restaurant, or bar, you are required to pay a royalty and be licenced by the appropriate music licencing agencies. (ASCAP etc in the U.S.; SOCAN in Canada)
If you use someone's music without permission, and without paying the appropriate royalties, then yes, I guess you could call it "illegal", but then again it's also illegal to operate a business without a Business licence, to build your restaurant without a building permit, and to hire staff without paying minimum wage.
(Paris, who sheds a tear for musicians who go unpaid and unloved)
Wow, I always love the endless "we should do THIS" scenarios....
Problem is that none of them really will work in the Real World (RW).
In the RW people like webmail. In the RW people like to change e-mail addresses, or create new ones for specific needs. In the RW some people like "real" e-mail, downloaded to a local PC, and others like Google or Yahoo or Hotmail and keeping everything on the host server.
In the RW a lot of people and businesses send a lot of bulk e-mail, very legitimate opted-in e-mail. In the RW a lot of people get important messages from entirely new people, people who haven't been whitelisted, and who are unlikely to bother going through the whole "If you want to e-mail me you need to click the link below and prove that you exist" process. After all, clicking links in e-mail is something that we teach people to NOT do.
And in the RW the spammers always stay one step ahead of the ISPs and mail providers anyhow.
No, what's needed is a real ground-up redesign of how e-mail works. we need something that encompasses the ease of current POP/IMAP/Webmail services, but which somehow includes ways to authenticate and/or block mail without user intervention, and which does so with near perfect reliability. And which maintains some backwards compatibility for at least a few years.
Adding more hoops or captchas or whitlelists to the existing mail sysytems just isn't going to solve the problem.
Paris because she hardly ever shows up in my spam any more....
Near as I can tell the only thing that's ever updated on my Mac is the irritating iTunes music player. That thing seems to download another update every other week.
@ Iain Black "It's about reducing the amount going into landfill, the non biodegradability of them and reducing the pollution of manufacturing the things in the first place!"
Ahem, *everything*, including lead acid car batteries, is both biodegradable and recyclable. It may not be easy, or cheap, or even sensible, but sooner or later even that broken down car with no wheels in your neighbour's yard will eventually return to the earth from whence it came.
Buy less, use less, and use it til it's well and truly worn out.
Paris 'cause she's pretty worn out and seems to recycle herself, although not as well as Madonna.
Wow. I'm amazed at the number of posts that suggest that caller ID has been around "forever" or on "every phone I've ever had." When I grew up there was ONE phone in the house, it was black, it had real bells in it and a rotary dial. And it was owned by the phone company.
It was a big deal when we were finally allowed to BUY a phone and plug it into a wall jack. And an even bigger deal when we got our first $400 answering machine.
So yes children, Caller ID isn't that old. I'm not even sure if it predates cel phones - it's a close call.
Why does anyone even pretend this is about bandwidth? If that was the case you would get a contract saying "You get xxx gigabytes of data each month, after which you pay more."
No, this is about ISPs acting on behalf of media corporations to limit or stop filesharing. To think otherwise is incredibly naïve.
I finally succumbed to Skype - well, I did try it several years ago, when it sucked, but haven't checked in again until this month - and have been pleasantly surprised at the overall quality and ease of use.
Strangely I haven't talked to anyone Skype to Skype. All of my calls have been outgoing to landlines. That is where I began to seriously question Skype's business model.
I'm paying $3 a month for nearly unlimited long distance to anywhere in Canada and the US (3000 minutes a month). Try as I might I can't see how they're making much money on that deal but I figure I'll take it as long as it's there.
I'm still irked that the Skype In service, which would give me an incoming phone number, is only available in the US and not Canada.
In the wake of Skype I've looked at a variety of VOIP offerings, and have found that they all seem to offer one of a) prices that are as expensive as land lines b) reports of very sketchy service c) are provided by a web site that seems to have been concocted in twenty minutes for a company that no-one has ever heard of.
Skype's site is confusing and it is very hard to tell exactly what they offer and what things cost. Then again they ARE owned by E-bay, so maybe that answers some questions.
VOIP and Skype's competition is still land lines and cel phones, both of which offer advantages that Skype can't. For Skype to be viable they need to offer something uniquely valuable rather than just going for cheap.
1) "So then Fly to Canada and then walk south instead." Actually until recent changes in immigration law the opposite was true and refugees would fly to the US, which has more direct flights from nasty nations, and then cross into Canada as political refugees.
2) "oddly enough, the US economy runs on labor arbitrage, so cheap labor is a very necessary component." Nothing odd. This is not about any real expectation that low priced illegal workers will be stopped at the border, it's just a great way to a) create an illusion that something is being done and b) reward tech companies that supported the election campaigns of southern politicians.
3)"The US allows more immigrants in *legally* than anyone else worldwide." That's a rather vague and meaningless claim. First of all, at least according to an admittedly confusing Wikipedia article, Canada tops the world in PER CAPITA immigration. Second, since millions of people are able to move and work throughout the EU at will (kind of what we all were promised with NAFTA?) it's hard to really draw a parallel to North America. And if the UK is so easy to get in to, why do both Germany and France, generally considered fairly xenophobic, have higher numbers of immigrants, at least in 2005?
4) "Let's all go back to Olduvai Gorge or wherever and start again shall we?"
Well said. Given a choice between Clinton, Obama, and McCain (who is actually slightly older than the Olduvai Gorge) it does seem to be a good option.
"The more I think about it, a lot of this stuff seems like there's fairly decent folk being manipulated by a few control freaks and religious nutters, intent purely and simply on twisting the religious beliefs of others to further their own power trips and self-glorifiation."
Yes, an awful lot of what passes for "news" about the Taliban, and Muslim cultures in general, DOES seem to be generated by American fundamentalist Christians.
For the person who is ready with a new, secure, backwards compatible, and spam proof e-mail replacement when the existing system finally collapses in a year or so. Someone needs to rethink this from the ground up as the current e-mail technologies just aren't adequate, and there are far too many circumstances where whitelisting isn't practical.
I mean really, it's one thing to poke fun at Koreans and drunks, and even drunken Koreans, but the Chihuahua is a kind, loving, intelligent, albeit intensly annoying pet, and its demise is no laughing matter!
"if I remember correctly... Software (and a bunch of other stuff like media) can only be returned if unopened."
I despise the signs at every store claiming that "due to copyright law" they will not accept returns. This is complete and utter nonsense and there is nothing in copyright law preventing them from accepting returns on software that doesn't work.
If retailers were forced to accepts returns and provide refunds for every software item that doesn't work as advertised, doesn't work on a specifc computer, is too slow to use, has lousy technical support, or breaks something else, we would likely see overall quality jump pretty damned fast.
As it stands now the end user is asked to drop $200, $300 or more for non-returnable disc with no promise whatsoever that it will actually do what's expected. Is it any surprise that tech savvy people choose to shop at Pirate Bay before laying out cold hard cash?
Somewhere back about 1987 even the lesbian community learned how to laugh at themselves - thank you Meg Christian. It is my sincere hope that within our lifetime vegans will do the same.
Gotta say that after being a long time FF user I was fed up with crashes and memory leaks that plagued the Mac version of FF. It seemed that the browser just got worse and worse with every upgrade.
I finally installed Opera and wow, there's no going back.
"...requires an NI number for tax purposes? So how'd she get paid? Are cleaning staff in parliament getting paid cash-in-hand as a tax dodge?"
Oh dear. Once upon a time the people who maintained government buildings were employed by the government. They received good wages, benefits, and a nice pension after forty years.
Then came the Thatcher/Reagan era when all things government were Bad, and all things Private Sector were Good. That begat Outsourcing, and Downsizing, and Rightsizing, all of which were synonyms for "Fire our well paid employees and subcontract their jobs to the lowest bidder".
Strangely enough the lowest bidder often also pays the lowest wages, offers no benefits, and no pension. And of course doing proper employee and security screening costs money that really would be better returned to shareholders.
In practice no-one in any building anywhere has more access, and more unsupervised access, than the cleaning staff. It amazes me that so few companies ever seem to consider this gaping hole in their security practices.
Another expensive Bayliss product that is best suited to well heeled, Prius driving, fashion victims. You can be sure that world plus dog will still be buying batteries for their Chinese knock off MP3 players. I would dearly love to see the Bayliss sales reports and find out how many units move to the developing world, and how many stay in the more fashionable parts of London or California.
Yes, we were the first to outsource our census to the Americans! How proud we were to let them count our households and sexual preferences, a task so obviously beyond the capacity of any Canadian firm!! And yes, we absolutely positively believe that there is no way that a major defence contractor like Lockheed Martin would ever let the US government even PEEK at all of our personal data.
I mean really, if we trust the Americans to ship our own citizens to Syria for torture, why on earth wouldn't we trust them with census data?
Back in the bad old days when radio hosts all smoked (tobacco?) in the studio it was a least favorite job to dissasemble and clean all of the faders on the mixing console. Smoke and electronics is second only to liquid in mucking things up badly.
Well, that and a taco chip that falls into a Penny and Giles fader...
To AC: "If it gets set in law, that to provide a service thay may provide information or links to information to facilitate in the acts of a potentialy ilegal activities then the web may as well shut down...."
Hey - you fergot Terrerists in there! Don't ferget that downloading Britney Spears aids the terrerists!
"Mac users never had security warnings because nobody could be bothered to try to make viruses and exploit security flaws for the Macs. And no, it's not because of the superior coding and protection. It's because we figured you suffered enough already just owning the Mac."
Tee hee - gotta love that!
"The main reason I switched away from Windows is that, even after it's booted up, I then had to wade through a seemingly endless parade of warnings, dialogs, signature file downloads all shrieking messages like: "OMG! Your (software) hasn't been updated for nearly two whole seconds!! You're gonna DIE!!!"
By the time they were dealt with, it was time for me to go shave again."
Well, I just finished rebooting the Mac because of yet another in the endless and frequent series of updates to iTunes. Why on earth does a music player need to be updated every other week, and why in hell should it require a reboot of the whole system?
Mac updates are no more or less irritating than Windows updates, and by my clock more frequent.
"Why the f*ck can't they just squish it all into one blasted app which just downloads all its stuff in the background and gets the hell on with it without trying to make me shit myself in gut-wrenching terror?"
Most of them do of course offer the option of unattended updates. It's your choice.
ps - Paris is here just cause I never had a post before that seemed suitable...
No Ethernet. No Firewire. A piddly 80 gig hard drive? I'm all for smaller and lighter, but those seem like some pretty significant limitations. I wonder what else is missing.
Seriously, when the top of the Register story is pictures of the ends of a new USB cable I'd say that the Consumer Electronics Show ain't what it used to be....
"With only 20 per cent of UK households being DAB-enabled (Digital Audio Broadcasting)"
American broadcasters would cream their jeans if they could attain half that level of adoption for IBOC aka "HD Radio," the hobbled North American answer to DAB. I'd suggest that this a pretty reasonable level that will grow steadily as people replace radios and stereo gear.
Can we please use a fairly stable currency as the reference point for stories like this? Anyone who works for American clients can tell you that the US dollar has been dropping like a stone for quite some time. The Canadian dollar for instance is hitting 30+ year highs against the US peso - $1.05 US to a loonie yesterday. A year ago that US$ would have bought 1.1 to 1.2 Canadian dollars. A large part of the increased US$ price tag surely reflects the weakness of that currency.
from the Scotsman "SPECIAL Branch officer Gary Murray's instructions were clear: if Mohammed Atif Siddique tries to board the flight to Pakistan, stop him. ... Siddique and his uncle, Mohammed Rafik, were booked on a Pakistan International Airways flight from Glasgow Airport, supposedly to visit relatives in Punjab for three months. ... However, intelligence reports suggested that Siddique's purpose for travel was far more sinister, that he would head for Canada to join a terrorist mission. "
Let me get this right, the mark of a terrorist is that instead of going to friggin' PAKISTAN he is really going to CANADA!
Samsung UN55B8000 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
LG Electronics 42LH30 42" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Samsung UN55B8500 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Sony BRAVIA KDL-40EX400 40" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Samsung UN40B6000 40" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
63 posts • joined Tuesday 20th February 2007 14:56 GMT
Page:
Barry Rueger
iPhone people → #
Posted Thursday 28th January 2010 05:49 GMT
In Apple's iPad - fat iPhone without the phone
Why buy a flashy shiny toy, then wrap it in a protective plastic sleeve to keep it from getting bunged up? Is that utility?
Or worse the guy I saw yesterday operating his iPhone which was sealed in a ZipLock sandwich bag!
Given the number of blinged out Hello Kitty iPhone sleeves that I see, I can't imagine what kind of junk will get wrapped around the iPad.
Barry Rueger
Canada too. → #
Posted Thursday 31st December 2009 09:41 GMT
In Samsung's Galaxy stuck in history
Rogers customers in Canada are being given the same lame excuse for a lack of updates even to v 1.6. Fortunately this is the standard level of service we expect from cel companies, so no-one is too surprised.
http://www.androidincanada.ca/rogersfido/confirmed-no-android-1-6-for-rogers-htc-dreammagic/
(Paris, coz she's surely an Android. And could use an update.
Barry Rueger
Walk? → #
Posted Thursday 27th August 2009 17:45 GMT
In Blazing laptop of death claims one
"Walking wears your knee and ankle joints too ... do you plan on stopping walking?"
Maybe IG is an American, in which case he probably already drives his SUV 150ft* to the gas station to buy his six pack of Bud.
* feet cause the Yanks of course don't "get" that crazy metric stuff.
Barry Rueger
Picasa → #
Posted Thursday 5th February 2009 03:06 GMT
In Apple iPhoto gets in your face
When I switched from PC to Mac there was nothing that I missed more than Google's Picasa. iPhoto paled in terns of ease of use and versatility, and was literally the first thing that I installed when I switched back to PC this year.
This year Google finally made Picasa available for Mac too. Well worth getting.
http://picasa.google.com/
Barry Rueger
@AC → #
Posted Saturday 13th December 2008 00:25 GMT
In Brazilian hackers blamed for aiding Amazon deforestation
"Some restaurants where using some simple tools to erase from the databases of their POS programs some huge percentage of tickets not printed as invoices..."
And some get nailed for it:
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/Cooking+books/1061260/story.html
Hey - am I the only person who read the headline on this story and got confused trying to guess how Amazon.com was reakted to deforestration?
Barry Rueger
Apple + WalMart → #
Posted Tuesday 9th December 2008 06:50 GMT
In Wal-Mart iPhone a done deal?
HAW HAW! Whatever will the oh so cool iPhone tribe do when every Bubba and Donna-Sue has an iPhone?
Barry Rueger
Think before Clicking → #
Posted Tuesday 25th November 2008 10:51 GMT
In US couple sue over McNudes
Lord knows we've all done some less than brilliant things while in the heat of passion and or other intoxicants, but I'm still amazed at the number of people who take nudie pictures of themselves or others, then fail to consider that they may wind up in someone else's hands.
On a phone no less, an item that is routinely loaned to friends and co-workers, and that is a favorite "toy" to small children. I'm even cautious about what I leave on my desktop hard drive at home, and can't imagine leaving this kind of thing on my cel phone or laptop!
Barry Rueger
@ Pete W → #
Posted Saturday 16th August 2008 07:57 GMT
In Midwife's lost diary sparks mums and baby alert
"... multiple cases of mothers being murdered by INFORMED CRIMINALS who take their fully gestated child via back alley C-sections."
Gack... sputter.... ah... surely Pete you can quote a source on that? I mean, other than snopes.com?
Barry Rueger
Not the Clue That I knew → #
Posted Thursday 14th August 2008 19:22 GMT
In Hasbro kills Colonel Mustard in the corporate office with the marketing ploy
I was dismayed recently when playing Clue with some kids (the DVD version no less) that it no longer involves a murder! Instead you figure out who has stolen an item from the house.
Sigh... somehow it just wasn't the same when you weren't identifying a murder weapon and the place where Col. Mustard met his demise.
Kind of like those non-competitive collborative games that old hippies want their kids to play...
Barry Rueger
Eco-fashionistas → #
Posted Monday 11th August 2008 17:41 GMT
In Ten of the Best... Bluetooth Headsets
Seriously, I have yet to see anyone with BT plugs except fat over-geeky old guys trying to look cool and hip, and young "God, I am SO important I can't be out of touch for ONE second of my life!" fresh out of MBA school guys with shiny new suits and too-cool sunglasses. The kind of guiy who was buying $27 martinis a year ago and who is now onto whatever is the latest trendy drink.
NO-ONE is so damned busy that they can't just take the phone out of their pocket and press the little green button to talk.
Barry Rueger
48 Megs of iPhone update? → #
Posted Thursday 7th August 2008 19:01 GMT
In Apple's secret iPhone app blacklist
What I want to know is why Apple keeps DEMANDING that I download and install a 48 meg iTunes update whose sole feature is to make it iPhone compatible. I don't own an iPhone, I am certain never to buy one, yet I am forced to add this to my system.
Which, like every iTunes update, and nearly every of the weekly Apple updates, requires a reboot.
Honestly, MS at least gives you the option of refusing an update that you don't want.
(Mine's the one with the cheapo LG phone in the pocket that (horror!) is used as a phone and nothing else, on a Virgin pay-as-you go plan no less.)
Barry Rueger
Uh-Lidderate Bunch huh? → #
Posted Friday 1st August 2008 21:01 GMT
In MobileMe offers another free bite of the Apple
I'm not saying that there's anything Apple specific here, but the comments on this story seem to be overly rife with spelling, grammar, and language usage errors.
And for the Internet that's saying something....
Maybe typing on a touch screen has its limitations?
Paris - there has to be a touch screen joke in there somewhere....
Barry Rueger
@ Chris Hamilton → #
Posted Thursday 31st July 2008 17:20 GMT
In Amazon launches self-cloning experiment
"...I have been regularly using PP ... and have not had a single problem."
You are very, very lucky because there is no Hell like trying to get PayPal to fix something. http://www.threesquirrels.com/?cat=11
Barry Rueger
It Has to Succeed → #
Posted Wednesday 30th July 2008 22:25 GMT
In Amazon launches self-cloning experiment
All things considered I actually trust Amazon to not screw me over. PayPal on the other hand is one long nightmare of incompetence and incomprhensible errors.
I don't think that anyone uses PayPal because they like it, but because it's the only game in town.
Barry Rueger
Vegan? Pffft.... → #
Posted Tuesday 15th July 2008 07:51 GMT
In Ubuntu trumpets aromatic pistou of borage
Ah... several years ago I was part of a week long camp for sound artists. We offered a fully vegan menu. The food was delicious, truly outstanding.
Three days in though people began recording and editing the sounds of the end result - a very gaseous and entertaining bit of audio recording it was.
Barry Rueger
Bootnotes? → #
Posted Wednesday 18th June 2008 10:27 GMT
In Stray left foot washes up on Vancouver beach
Oh, how clever.......
Barry Rueger
@ AC → #
Posted Wednesday 7th May 2008 20:43 GMT
In Rogue MP3 Trojan streaks across P2P networks
"To those who claim that duplication is the line at which the law comes into play... I thought it was actually *technically* illegal to play a radio in a work / public place, no?"
Well, no. If you are using music in a retail establishment like a store, restaurant, or bar, you are required to pay a royalty and be licenced by the appropriate music licencing agencies. (ASCAP etc in the U.S.; SOCAN in Canada)
If you use someone's music without permission, and without paying the appropriate royalties, then yes, I guess you could call it "illegal", but then again it's also illegal to operate a business without a Business licence, to build your restaurant without a building permit, and to hire staff without paying minimum wage.
(Paris, who sheds a tear for musicians who go unpaid and unloved)
Barry Rueger
Second verse, same as the first → #
Posted Wednesday 7th May 2008 19:55 GMT
In Windows XP SP3 leaps into the tubes
DAMN YOU EL REG! Make it stop! Make the music in my head stop!!!!
.... I got married to the widow next door .....
Barry Rueger
@ Anon Coward → #
Posted Friday 2nd May 2008 18:44 GMT
In Customers give Dell the finger over keyboard screw-up
--- Makes you want to buy an Apple...
You mean like my G4 Powerbook, where the key labeled "Delete" actually backspaces?
Barry Rueger
Real world → #
Posted Tuesday 15th April 2008 21:27 GMT
In (New) dirt-cheap bots attack Hotmail Captchas
Wow, I always love the endless "we should do THIS" scenarios....
Problem is that none of them really will work in the Real World (RW).
In the RW people like webmail. In the RW people like to change e-mail addresses, or create new ones for specific needs. In the RW some people like "real" e-mail, downloaded to a local PC, and others like Google or Yahoo or Hotmail and keeping everything on the host server.
In the RW a lot of people and businesses send a lot of bulk e-mail, very legitimate opted-in e-mail. In the RW a lot of people get important messages from entirely new people, people who haven't been whitelisted, and who are unlikely to bother going through the whole "If you want to e-mail me you need to click the link below and prove that you exist" process. After all, clicking links in e-mail is something that we teach people to NOT do.
And in the RW the spammers always stay one step ahead of the ISPs and mail providers anyhow.
No, what's needed is a real ground-up redesign of how e-mail works. we need something that encompasses the ease of current POP/IMAP/Webmail services, but which somehow includes ways to authenticate and/or block mail without user intervention, and which does so with near perfect reliability. And which maintains some backwards compatibility for at least a few years.
Adding more hoops or captchas or whitlelists to the existing mail sysytems just isn't going to solve the problem.
Paris because she hardly ever shows up in my spam any more....
Barry Rueger
iTunes Shurely? → #
Posted Wednesday 19th March 2008 14:18 GMT
In Apple unleashes monster patch batch on Mac faithful
Near as I can tell the only thing that's ever updated on my Mac is the irritating iTunes music player. That thing seems to download another update every other week.
Barry Rueger
EVERYTHING is Biodegradable! → #
Posted Monday 10th March 2008 20:51 GMT
In Plastic bag campaign falls apart at the seams
@ Iain Black "It's about reducing the amount going into landfill, the non biodegradability of them and reducing the pollution of manufacturing the things in the first place!"
Ahem, *everything*, including lead acid car batteries, is both biodegradable and recyclable. It may not be easy, or cheap, or even sensible, but sooner or later even that broken down car with no wheels in your neighbour's yard will eventually return to the earth from whence it came.
Buy less, use less, and use it til it's well and truly worn out.
Paris 'cause she's pretty worn out and seems to recycle herself, although not as well as Madonna.
Barry Rueger
Am I old or what? → #
Posted Monday 3rd March 2008 21:38 GMT
In Apple sued over iPhone caller ID
Wow. I'm amazed at the number of posts that suggest that caller ID has been around "forever" or on "every phone I've ever had." When I grew up there was ONE phone in the house, it was black, it had real bells in it and a rotary dial. And it was owned by the phone company.
It was a big deal when we were finally allowed to BUY a phone and plug it into a wall jack. And an even bigger deal when we got our first $400 answering machine.
So yes children, Caller ID isn't that old. I'm not even sure if it predates cel phones - it's a close call.
Barry Rueger
Bandwidth? Not likely → #
Posted Wednesday 27th February 2008 15:06 GMT
In New York subpoenas Comcast 'reasonable network management' records
Why does anyone even pretend this is about bandwidth? If that was the case you would get a contract saying "You get xxx gigabytes of data each month, after which you pay more."
No, this is about ISPs acting on behalf of media corporations to limit or stop filesharing. To think otherwise is incredibly naïve.
Barry Rueger
Pluses and Minuses → #
Posted Tuesday 26th February 2008 15:46 GMT
In eBay parachutes ecommerce veteran into Skype hotseat
I finally succumbed to Skype - well, I did try it several years ago, when it sucked, but haven't checked in again until this month - and have been pleasantly surprised at the overall quality and ease of use.
Strangely I haven't talked to anyone Skype to Skype. All of my calls have been outgoing to landlines. That is where I began to seriously question Skype's business model.
I'm paying $3 a month for nearly unlimited long distance to anywhere in Canada and the US (3000 minutes a month). Try as I might I can't see how they're making much money on that deal but I figure I'll take it as long as it's there.
I'm still irked that the Skype In service, which would give me an incoming phone number, is only available in the US and not Canada.
In the wake of Skype I've looked at a variety of VOIP offerings, and have found that they all seem to offer one of a) prices that are as expensive as land lines b) reports of very sketchy service c) are provided by a web site that seems to have been concocted in twenty minutes for a company that no-one has ever heard of.
Skype's site is confusing and it is very hard to tell exactly what they offer and what things cost. Then again they ARE owned by E-bay, so maybe that answers some questions.
VOIP and Skype's competition is still land lines and cel phones, both of which offer advantages that Skype can't. For Skype to be viable they need to offer something uniquely valuable rather than just going for cheap.
Barry Rueger
Well..... → #
Posted Monday 25th February 2008 23:44 GMT
In Eye-o-Sauron™ man-tracker masts now fully online, says DHS
1) "So then Fly to Canada and then walk south instead." Actually until recent changes in immigration law the opposite was true and refugees would fly to the US, which has more direct flights from nasty nations, and then cross into Canada as political refugees.
2) "oddly enough, the US economy runs on labor arbitrage, so cheap labor is a very necessary component." Nothing odd. This is not about any real expectation that low priced illegal workers will be stopped at the border, it's just a great way to a) create an illusion that something is being done and b) reward tech companies that supported the election campaigns of southern politicians.
3)"The US allows more immigrants in *legally* than anyone else worldwide." That's a rather vague and meaningless claim. First of all, at least according to an admittedly confusing Wikipedia article, Canada tops the world in PER CAPITA immigration. Second, since millions of people are able to move and work throughout the EU at will (kind of what we all were promised with NAFTA?) it's hard to really draw a parallel to North America. And if the UK is so easy to get in to, why do both Germany and France, generally considered fairly xenophobic, have higher numbers of immigrants, at least in 2005?
4) "Let's all go back to Olduvai Gorge or wherever and start again shall we?"
Well said. Given a choice between Clinton, Obama, and McCain (who is actually slightly older than the Olduvai Gorge) it does seem to be a good option.
Barry Rueger
Agreed. → #
Posted Monday 25th February 2008 23:44 GMT
In Taliban demand night-time cell tower shutdown
"The more I think about it, a lot of this stuff seems like there's fairly decent folk being manipulated by a few control freaks and religious nutters, intent purely and simply on twisting the religious beliefs of others to further their own power trips and self-glorifiation."
Yes, an awful lot of what passes for "news" about the Taliban, and Muslim cultures in general, DOES seem to be generated by American fundamentalist Christians.
Barry Rueger
There's Money to be made... → #
Posted Monday 25th February 2008 20:32 GMT
In Spammers crack Gmail Captcha
For the person who is ready with a new, secure, backwards compatible, and spam proof e-mail replacement when the existing system finally collapses in a year or so. Someone needs to rethink this from the ground up as the current e-mail technologies just aren't adequate, and there are far too many circumstances where whitelisting isn't practical.
Barry Rueger
At Last! → #
Posted Friday 22nd February 2008 08:48 GMT
In Québec cops bust massive botnet ring
A Canadian technology story that isn't about that damned robotic arm on the Shuttle! Millions of Canadians say "Thank you!"
Barry Rueger
Simple Explanation → #
Posted Thursday 21st February 2008 15:47 GMT
In Facebook loses a few bitches
They haven't left Facebook. They all were turned into vampires and zombies and are off seeking human flesh instead of updating their profiles.
Barry Rueger
Stereotypes are never funny! → #
Posted Wednesday 20th February 2008 15:48 GMT
In Drunken Korean attempts to cook landlady's Chihuahua
I mean really, it's one thing to poke fun at Koreans and drunks, and even drunken Koreans, but the Chihuahua is a kind, loving, intelligent, albeit intensly annoying pet, and its demise is no laughing matter!
Shame!
Barry Rueger
Copyright BS → #
Posted Tuesday 19th February 2008 22:06 GMT
In Consumer group slams 'unfair' software licenses
"if I remember correctly... Software (and a bunch of other stuff like media) can only be returned if unopened."
I despise the signs at every store claiming that "due to copyright law" they will not accept returns. This is complete and utter nonsense and there is nothing in copyright law preventing them from accepting returns on software that doesn't work.
If retailers were forced to accepts returns and provide refunds for every software item that doesn't work as advertised, doesn't work on a specifc computer, is too slow to use, has lousy technical support, or breaks something else, we would likely see overall quality jump pretty damned fast.
As it stands now the end user is asked to drop $200, $300 or more for non-returnable disc with no promise whatsoever that it will actually do what's expected. Is it any surprise that tech savvy people choose to shop at Pirate Bay before laying out cold hard cash?
Barry Rueger
Wow - That's some bridge! → #
Posted Monday 18th February 2008 23:16 GMT
In Forth Bridge painters to down brushes in 2012
I wasn't too impressed by the discussion til I saw a picture of this beast.
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/800/15025685.JPG
Yikes.....
Barry Rueger
@ Steve → #
Posted Monday 18th February 2008 22:59 GMT
In Moroccan IT engineer arrested over fake Facebook account
"...the prince has no friends"
Hah! But I poked him over and over and over! Take that you Prince! You too shall suffer!
Barry Rueger
Macho Men!!! → #
Posted Monday 18th February 2008 15:48 GMT
In Prince and Village People dive into Pirate Bay
Oh God, you MUST visit the Official Village People site:
http://www.officialvillagepeople.com/
Turn up your speakers, because in finest Geocities fashion it even has music!
Then check out the discography. The VP released three albums that anyone bought, and three more that no-one noticed.
Village People - LP/USA/Casablanca 1977
Macho Man - LP/USA/Casablanca 1978
Cruisin' - LP/USA/Casablanca 1978
Renaissance - LP/USA/Casablanca 1981 (did anyone buy this?)
Fox On The Box - LP/USA/RCA-Victor 1982 (likewise)
Sex Over The Phone - LP/France/Black Scorpio-CBS 1985 (Eh?)
They then recycled these into THIRTEEN "Greatest Hits" packages! (well, one was a movie soundtrack).
Live Album: Live and Sleazy - 2LP/USA/Casablanca 1979
Movie Soundtrack: Can't Stop The Music - LP/USA/Casablanca 1980
In The Street - LP/USA/Casablanca 1983
Greatest Hits - LP/USA/Rhino 1988
Greatest Hits '89 Remixes - CD/BCM Records 1989
The Best Of Village People - CD/USA/Polygram 1994
L'Album d'or 93/94- CD/France/AMC 1994
The Best Of - CD/Australia/1994
We Want You - CD/Germany/1997
We Want You - CD/France/Scorpio Music1998
The Very Best Of - CD/USA/Polygram 1998
We Want You The Ultimate Collection - 2CD/
Greatest Hits w/ 2 Millenium Remixes - CD/UK/
20th Century Masters, The Millenium Collection.
At least Right Said Fred understood that he was a one hit wonder.
Barry Rueger
In the Good Old Days → #
Posted Friday 15th February 2008 20:58 GMT
In Enraged vegan spitroasts Reg hack
Somewhere back about 1987 even the lesbian community learned how to laugh at themselves - thank you Meg Christian. It is my sincere hope that within our lifetime vegans will do the same.
Barry Rueger
Opera for the Mac → #
Posted Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:32 GMT
In Firefox 3 beta is live
Gotta say that after being a long time FF user I was fed up with crashes and memory leaks that plagued the Mac version of FF. It seemed that the browser just got worse and worse with every upgrade.
I finally installed Opera and wow, there's no going back.
Barry Rueger
How quaint → #
Posted Tuesday 12th February 2008 02:30 GMT
In Brazilian cleaner spots security hole in Heathrow e-borders
"...requires an NI number for tax purposes? So how'd she get paid? Are cleaning staff in parliament getting paid cash-in-hand as a tax dodge?"
Oh dear. Once upon a time the people who maintained government buildings were employed by the government. They received good wages, benefits, and a nice pension after forty years.
Then came the Thatcher/Reagan era when all things government were Bad, and all things Private Sector were Good. That begat Outsourcing, and Downsizing, and Rightsizing, all of which were synonyms for "Fire our well paid employees and subcontract their jobs to the lowest bidder".
Strangely enough the lowest bidder often also pays the lowest wages, offers no benefits, and no pension. And of course doing proper employee and security screening costs money that really would be better returned to shareholders.
In practice no-one in any building anywhere has more access, and more unsupervised access, than the cleaning staff. It amazes me that so few companies ever seem to consider this gaping hole in their security practices.
Barry Rueger
Eco-fashionistas → #
Posted Friday 8th February 2008 19:47 GMT
In Baylis Eco EP-MX71 hand-cranked media player
Another expensive Bayliss product that is best suited to well heeled, Prius driving, fashion victims. You can be sure that world plus dog will still be buying batteries for their Chinese knock off MP3 players. I would dearly love to see the Bayliss sales reports and find out how many units move to the developing world, and how many stay in the more fashionable parts of London or California.
Barry Rueger
Blame Canada! → #
Posted Thursday 7th February 2008 21:09 GMT
In US spooks won't get UK census access
Yes, we were the first to outsource our census to the Americans! How proud we were to let them count our households and sexual preferences, a task so obviously beyond the capacity of any Canadian firm!! And yes, we absolutely positively believe that there is no way that a major defence contractor like Lockheed Martin would ever let the US government even PEEK at all of our personal data.
I mean really, if we trust the Americans to ship our own citizens to Syria for torture, why on earth wouldn't we trust them with census data?
Barry Rueger
Hardly news → #
Posted Monday 4th February 2008 20:17 GMT
In Cigarette ash proves a drag for Nintendo's Wii
Back in the bad old days when radio hosts all smoked (tobacco?) in the studio it was a least favorite job to dissasemble and clean all of the faders on the mixing console. Smoke and electronics is second only to liquid in mucking things up badly.
Well, that and a taco chip that falls into a Penny and Giles fader...
Barry Rueger
Terrerists!!! → #
Posted Monday 4th February 2008 20:16 GMT
In BitTorrent admin's police bail extended (again)
To AC: "If it gets set in law, that to provide a service thay may provide information or links to information to facilitate in the acts of a potentialy ilegal activities then the web may as well shut down...."
Hey - you fergot Terrerists in there! Don't ferget that downloading Britney Spears aids the terrerists!
Barry Rueger
Hmm, well, actually... → #
Posted Wednesday 16th January 2008 06:01 GMT
In Mac lambs line up for slaughter
This being written on a G4 Powerbook.
"Mac users never had security warnings because nobody could be bothered to try to make viruses and exploit security flaws for the Macs. And no, it's not because of the superior coding and protection. It's because we figured you suffered enough already just owning the Mac."
Tee hee - gotta love that!
"The main reason I switched away from Windows is that, even after it's booted up, I then had to wade through a seemingly endless parade of warnings, dialogs, signature file downloads all shrieking messages like: "OMG! Your (software) hasn't been updated for nearly two whole seconds!! You're gonna DIE!!!"
By the time they were dealt with, it was time for me to go shave again."
Well, I just finished rebooting the Mac because of yet another in the endless and frequent series of updates to iTunes. Why on earth does a music player need to be updated every other week, and why in hell should it require a reboot of the whole system?
Mac updates are no more or less irritating than Windows updates, and by my clock more frequent.
"Why the f*ck can't they just squish it all into one blasted app which just downloads all its stuff in the background and gets the hell on with it without trying to make me shit myself in gut-wrenching terror?"
Most of them do of course offer the option of unattended updates. It's your choice.
ps - Paris is here just cause I never had a post before that seemed suitable...
Barry Rueger
Kind of deficient for laptop → #
Posted Wednesday 16th January 2008 06:01 GMT
In Mojo-free Jobs delivers Macworld goods
No Ethernet. No Firewire. A piddly 80 gig hard drive? I'm all for smaller and lighter, but those seem like some pretty significant limitations. I wonder what else is missing.
Barry Rueger
Has CES Jumped The Shark? → #
Posted Wednesday 9th January 2008 19:25 GMT
In Revealed: USB 3.0 jacks and sockets
Seriously, when the top of the Register story is pictures of the ends of a new USB cable I'd say that the Consumer Electronics Show ain't what it used to be....
Barry Rueger
20%? Who's complaining? → #
Posted Friday 23rd November 2007 20:59 GMT
In New taskforce to discuss why more people aren't turning to digital
"With only 20 per cent of UK households being DAB-enabled (Digital Audio Broadcasting)"
American broadcasters would cream their jeans if they could attain half that level of adoption for IBOC aka "HD Radio," the hobbled North American answer to DAB. I'd suggest that this a pretty reasonable level that will grow steadily as people replace radios and stereo gear.
Barry Rueger
FF memory use → #
Posted Monday 19th November 2007 16:28 GMT
In Mozilla hits back at Firefox 3 quality slur
Yup, on my G4 Powerbook FF rapidly escalates to 125 plus megs, then eventually slows to a crawl. Really, Photoshop uses less resources.
Then again my newsreader Vienna has the same issue, as does my e-mail client Gyazmail.
Those three bring the system to its knees on a daily basis. It's as if these three programs are only intended for light use, not for heavy users.
Barry Rueger
Shame.... → #
Posted Friday 16th November 2007 19:10 GMT
In Dell prices up all-on-one XPS desktop
"But all their machines not have decent 3D graphics, not integrated graphics like this does."
... the Mac doesn't have grammar checker.
Also, there have been PC All-in-one machines for ages.
http://www.vartechsystems.com/products/panelpc/LargeScreenAllinOneComputers.asp
Barry Rueger
Choice of currency → #
Posted Tuesday 30th October 2007 14:03 GMT
In OLPC wants $200 for its $100 laptop, please
Can we please use a fairly stable currency as the reference point for stories like this? Anyone who works for American clients can tell you that the US dollar has been dropping like a stone for quite some time. The Canadian dollar for instance is hitting 30+ year highs against the US peso - $1.05 US to a loonie yesterday. A year ago that US$ would have bought 1.1 to 1.2 Canadian dollars. A large part of the increased US$ price tag surely reflects the weakness of that currency.
Barry Rueger
Hoo hoo! ha Ha! → #
Posted Tuesday 23rd October 2007 20:34 GMT
In Jailed terror student 'hid' files in the wrong Windows folder
from the Scotsman "SPECIAL Branch officer Gary Murray's instructions were clear: if Mohammed Atif Siddique tries to board the flight to Pakistan, stop him. ... Siddique and his uncle, Mohammed Rafik, were booked on a Pakistan International Airways flight from Glasgow Airport, supposedly to visit relatives in Punjab for three months. ... However, intelligence reports suggested that Siddique's purpose for travel was far more sinister, that he would head for Canada to join a terrorist mission. "
Let me get this right, the mark of a terrorist is that instead of going to friggin' PAKISTAN he is really going to CANADA!
Page: