* Posts by Aaron

70 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2007

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UK2 brings support back to Blighty, culls execs

Aaron
Thumb Up

There is a god

Thank god another company has seen the light, bring the uk jobs back, increase the service level's and customer satisfaction and save just as much money by sacking the mornon's who originally pushed for the outsourcing in the first place (as they sure aren't helping your company image at all).

Fox terminates The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Aaron

ratings fail?

This was one of the shows that everyone in work talked about, I loved it. I often wonder with shows like this how the big studio's are measuring the ratings and if its really an accurate way to determine if a show is really being watching that much.

While Im not saying it was the best show ever, far better show's have been axed for just the same reason's. Over the last few years every show I've liked has got axed, every show I cant stand wont watch and wont buy/pay anything for seams to go on and on. Im not saying my personal taste's reflect the world's but when everyone I talk to miss's the show's I liked I wonder if target audiences are not being counted correctly.

Microsoft: Don't rush to download Windows 7 RC

Aaron

I like it

for all the neh sayer's out there id thought I would add that I hated vista it was one of the worst OS I've ever come across (yes that includes OS/2 Warp), however windows 7 I really like, sure it wont run on hardware that came off the ark but then microsoft never claimed it would. I run it on my laptop and my main pc and its smooth not resource hungry my game run well and im actually a little shocked and pleasantly surprised.

As for the expiry, well of course there's an expiry it wouldn't make much sense to give away a near complete OS with no restrictions when they intend to sell the final product. I don't mind reinstalling before a years out hell I will probably do that several times because I like to fiddle play with new OS's and hardware.

Pirate Bay judge and pro-copyright lobbyist accused of bias

Aaron

lol

Regardless of the supposed right or wrong doing's of the pirate bay guys, having any judge that has proven connections to groups with obvious vested interest in a guilty verdict is clearly unacceptable and as such should result in a mistrial.

The very fact that another judge was pulled from the trial for similar connections for just this reason's is even more worrying because look at who they replaced him with? And worse still the current judge claim's it cant be a conflict of interest's when even a 5 year old can see there could be very very strong conflict's here.

Recession takes chunk out of game sales

Aaron

@ asdf

how much of that has to do with the fact that 360's can be hacked and ps3's cant? I personally dont care about the format war I own all the consolses going but I wonder what percentage of 360's sell just because they can be flashed.

As for the game sales I think its got a lot more to do with the fact in the last few months the games released have been crap. Very few titles have been worth my hard earned money.

BT chief: People don't need fibre to the home

Aaron

Lol @ virgin comments

I do find it so funny how so many people think virgin have put fiber into homes when thats just not the case, before anyone gets on their high horse I have both an ADSL connection and Virgin 50mbit installed, it comes in over copper coax cable, it runs copper to the cabinate. Most cabinates have copper to the headend still so at very very best virgin have the lead on BT doing the Fiber to the cab. Luckily im in one of the FTTC trial area's so I will be getting that, not for the added download but for the fact the imply there will be a decent upload.

Ether way I pay for it because I want it, I dont NEED it but well I dont need a lot of things I pay for.

Pirate Bay loses trial: defendants face prison time, hefty fines

Aaron

meh

nothing really changes torrent sites come and go, (good job I dont use torrents really) but people still download what they want because they want to try it, sometimes I download something like it and buy the original, most of the time I decide it was a waste of bandwidth and delete it. Ether way from me piracy increases legal revenue from me because I just wouldnt buy it at all if I couldnt see if I liked it or not.

Oh well anyways back to my downloading still got another 50+ gig to grab today :)

Salesforce.com to empower corporate Twitter snooping

Aaron

just one more reason to not use twitter

Basically they are saying they are going to fill it with targeted spam and advertising junk, oh joy just what we need. "im gonna go grab a brew brb, next thing you know 15 messages pop up about brands of coffee and where to get them".

Bootleggers jump on 'complete' Windows 7

Aaron

hmm

wonder if this is just a beta build or really is the final iso, as for bootleg copies well vista with a certain bios loader works perfect and I use it on my installs even though the pc's come with a liscence to the same software its easier than having to call to activate each time I install (and I install a lot because its testing laptop so I often break stuff or swap os's)

World of Warcraft: 'The crack cocaine of the computer world'

Aaron

Addictive personalities

I personally dont think its the games that are the issue but the personality of the person that plays them. I played WoW both US and EU versions maxed out characters then quit withing a couple of months. Why? probably the same reason I dont smoke, take drugs, or drink more than socially. I don't have an addictive personality.

Someone that will get addicted to something will be far more likely to get addicted to something else. Computer games are entertaining, theres is a lot to be involved in and I can see how people can get attached. If someone already is susceptable to being addicted to something then its a bad combination.

As for kid's id let my kids play games but there would be a limit they play on the hours I allow them to. Outside those hours they wont have access to the internet/computer/account's for such games. Its not hard set boundries and when the push them take away the thing they like. Kids cant play these games without the things in the home that parents provide so in your own home any parent can stop it if they want.

I spoke to some guy the other day complaining that his kid keeps looking up porn on the internet, turns out the internet was the only used by their kid so I just said why do you leave it on all the time, call the isp change the password and dont set it on the router. Bang no more problem and if the internet is needed for something he could set it up and control how long its used for. Kids are clever and will get around things but theres a limit to what they can do.

BT reprograms biz customers as hotspots

Aaron
Pirate

hmm interesting

I don't use BT (thank god), but this is interesting to me, mainly because id like to actually test how separate the networks are from each other. Id be very interested to see how susceptible this makes anyone using the hotspot to man in the middle attacks from the person who owns the router.

Imagine all the interesting stuff you could harvest from unsuspecting people choosing to connect to your connection thinking is secure, especially seeing as this is EXACTLY the kind of thing you will need to do to look to implement some of the recent SSL hacks.

Hmmmm I think im going to be having a play over the weekend.

Teen sacked for 'boring' job Facebook comment

Aaron

Investing in people

LOL http://www.ivell.com/investor.html apparently they invest in people, then sack them for finding work to be lest enjoyable as their own social time.

Aaron

Possible case of unfair dismissal?

I really thing she should public fight this, at the end of the most people don't like their job, they do it because they need a wage. To dismiss someone because they said their job was boring without even mentioning the company name smacks of a company just looking for an excuse to sack someone.

How many people in the UK have thought their job was boring at one point or another? Also comments someone makes on facebook on their profile is something on their own time. So long as they arn't slandering or particularly naming companies its all just personal opinion which she's damned right entitled to.

As far as im concerned im paid to do my job, so long as I do my job to the best of my ability that's all my employer can ever ask. They have no right to anything more. Least of all the right to try and control my thoughts and view that I choose to express among friends.

Sky network downed in London

Aaron
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Groan

The amount of times I've heard "But I need it my business depends on it" when they are paying for a bog standard cheap as chips residential DSL package. My answer is always so ok internet connectivity is important so what's your backup solution? Oh you don't have one? I guess you will have to look at getting on now.

These people claim they are loosing thousand's due to a fault but they wont pay out even a basic expense for some kind of resilience. If you must go with DSL pay for enhanced care (the closest thing you will ever get to an SLA), ideally have a dual WAN router that can fail over to another medium (cable or DSL that's provided via the opposite to the other connections). A lot of routers will now support fail over to a 3G dongle.

Push come to shove people can still use dial up, It would be slow as hell but you would be able to work (emails etc).

Best option though by far is a leased line with DSL backup anyone that actually does need the internet for their business and cares about a decent connection should have that kind of setup.

OpenDNS rolls out Conficker tracking, blocking

Aaron
Thumb Up

@AC

Yes because OpenDNS is nothing like Phorm. Anyone with a basic understand of ether technology could see that.

Phorm is something most people dont get a choice in ISP's just force it upon them. OpenDNS is something you use by choice, and these features have to then be activated if you want them. OpenDNS also does not sell your browser habits onto 3rd parties so they can specificly target advertising at you. Last of all a DNS query looks up an IP address for a host name, it does not the url information across, however phrom captures all this additional data that cant even be put into a DNS request.

Ether way big plus for OpenDNS :) nice to see an already great and free service being improved when all those around them are just looking for ways to get you to part with more of your hard earned money.

Tiscali TV's Italian cousin gets whacked

Aaron

@ Chris

it works for gaming? just out of interest what kind of games do you play online? The reason I ask if that I've had to get several friends out of their tiscali contracts (gotta love knowing how to complain), due to the fact they block their online gaming on peak times (the times they wanted to play).

If this has changed id love to know :) The game in question was EVE Online, funnily their tech support suggested it was being blocked because all the games graphics were transmitted over the connection for each frame rather laughable really given that it runs even on a dial up modem.

Game Group growth slows

Aaron

Play

well play.com probably have something to do with this as more and more people I know buy from them because they are cheaper, free delivery and normally have what I want in stock (where as game often don't).

I work so often I cant get out to retail stores often so when im ordering online I go with the cheapest price.

Employees sue for unpaid Windows Vista overtime

Aaron
Paris Hilton

very common

This is very common, PC's in offices are very often low spec, loaded with vista by standard and then have all the office software and other useless stuff piled on top. Add to that the anti-virus and the standard poor maintenance (ie no regular defrag etc) you get a slow machine.

I had a similar thing with my work (though its not a clocking system). Work wanted to know why I leave the PC powered on when I leave work. I explained that it takes upto 20 - 30 mins every day to start up from a cold start. Get logged in, get all the applications I need for my job loaded and logged in ready to work. Now doing this every day means id be having to get to work at least 30 mins earlier (I already get to work early anyway to give me time to get settled and have a brew).

Adding this up we are talking 10 hours unpaid overtime a month just because statup times. Now some people will say the office should buy better pc's, other people say is vista and its massive bloat. Personally I think is a middle ground, though vista in the office environment is a bad idea as it doesn't give me anything extra to do my job (I still could use all the same applications on XP).

Ether way im happy because my box has been upgraded and its back on XP and I find it faster doing my day to do work. Thank god for working for a reasonable company :)

Paris well because I wanna :)

BitTorrent Inc. amputates half of self

Aaron
Coat

@ AC

And before the days of p2p do you think there was no piracy then? People have been swapping files and copyrighted content since the days before the internet existed in any form we see now.

God I remember dialing into a local BBS with my acoustic coupler, certain HTTP download sites, FTP sites, newsgroup (still the best way to get your files), DCC sessions in irc. Hell plain old emailing people.

Bittorrent is just a file transfer method, it can be used for any means legal or non legal. This company was investing in legal means of using this file transfer method, something that should be applauded.

Give people the means to share information with each other and guess what they will do? they will use it. Some people will use it for legal reason's some not but all in all its not the technology that's the problem its how its being used.

Wi-Fi phobes hijack disability legislation

Aaron
Coat

sucks to be them

Good lets find people like this strap them on front of a microwave transmitter and crank up the power. If EM waves are harmful for them then the law's of natural selection would mean people with this weakness should die off and not live long enough to pass on their weak sauce gene's to another generation.

The fact they are surrounded with EM waves from the moment of conception never seams to register. If anything these people are suffering from a Phycological problem if anything. These people should be carted off and given the suitable pills/counciling/electroshock what ever until they mend their crazy ways.

Orange IPTV: Missing, presumed dead

Aaron

IPTV

IPTV wont really be any good until the majority of the UK can stream high quality shows at anytime at a click of a button. Given that the vast majority of people don't gain anything with ADSL2+ (in fact most people I've seen have to swap to a ADSL 1 profile to get better speeds). This is not going to be anything special until something is done about the UK's creaking old copper last mile.

BBC's TV detector vans to remain a state secret

Aaron

They never called around

I used to never watch my tv, it wasn't connect to an aerial it only had a games console on it. The TV licence people wrote to me saying I needed a licence so I called them explained my setup and they said that shouldn't need a licence but they would send someone around to check, 3 years later no one had turned up yet.

They do this and wonder why people who do dodge paying when they don't even bother to check. I since bought sky and the playtv so now have a licence, who knows maybe I will get someone calling around to check tomorrow.

BT's 21st Century network, er... isn't

Aaron
Thumb Up

Great progress

its about time they started supporting IPv4 its certainly a move forward.

UK.gov told not to subsidise superfast broadband

Aaron
Thumb Down

Only half the battle

The thing is this is only half the battle, because say every single home in the uk is connected with fiber great. That cost x billion's to do, but now ether your connection will be slower than before, or your price for broadband will shoot up.

The reason being is the backhaul and centrals as mentioned in the article. If the current centrals/atm backhaul is left in place, ISP's wont have enough bandwidth to offer even 8mbit because there will no longer be people who get less due to loop loss limitations. Instead everyone will have faster pipes and will demand more of the same size pie. Some exchanges are already stuffed just on VP capacity. I talk to people getting 800kbps throughput on their 8128KBPS sync line (7150 BRAS) and nothing can be done because the line is performing according to BT specs.

So ok BT upgrade the backhaul (probably as part of 21CN), great now the bottleneck is in your ISP's cetral's, if the providers has to get more to keep up then cost's go up to the customer or more and more aggressive traffic shaping has to be applied to mean that the network doesnt choak.

You then have the issue of the ISP's core network, most ISP's core network link's are not as fast as people might think because not many people are maxing out their links 24/7, but and increase on bandwidth is going to mean investment in faster core network's.

Then last of all there's the peering, more peeringing will be needed to carry more traffic which while not the greatest expense is still yet more ISP level cost increase which at the end of the day will end up being passed back to the customer.

Im expecting a customer install cost of fiber at around £1k and average monthly price for high bandwidth line over this (not traffic shapped because thats just lame) to be in the £100's. Its a price id be willing to pay but I doubt most of the UK would.

Police quiz BT on secret Phorm trials

Aaron

Thank god

I've been waiting for this, im not a BT customer and wasnt effected but the lack of legal response was really worring me, it would have set a dangours precident that would allow ISP's to intercept their customer's electronic comunications for what ever they want.

I really hope that who ever made the decision to deploy the phorm trial gets locked up, because they broke the law. If I take legal advice and they tell me killing someone is ok, it doesn't mean its ok it means you have bad legal advice and your still committing a crime if you do the act. Same with this BT broke the law and should damned well be strung up for it.

Downing Street rejects 'Clarkson for PM' petition

Aaron

shame

Jezza would make a far better PM than the current retard we have in power at the moment. I used to laugh at the yanks having bush in power but I have to eat my own words because we let such a complete clueless moron into power ourselves.

Its people like him that make me not want to vote, sure some people say you should vote to keep them out but what other good choice is there?

Teens admit to Grand Theft Auto-inspired petrol bombfest

Aaron
Pirate

@ MrM

I think you missed the subtle ironic dig at the way certain industries are trying to criminalize file sharing. I don't think file sharing is bad, and my entire prior post was full of sarcastic remarks at the sheer lunacy of the idea of GTA4 being the reason these kids decided petrol bombing cars was fun.

Aaron
Thumb Down

It wasnt me it was GTA

this is just showing a worrying trend for scum bag's to do something bad get caught and blame GTA because the media love to go on an anti-gta warpath.

Never mind the fact the game doesnt teach you to make petrol bomb's, never mind the fact actual contruction of petrol bomb's is depicted in many TV shows, movies, book's or who know's even just plain creativity.

No its all GTA aparently. So if GTA never exisited these kids wouldnt know anything about petrol bomb's or even if they did they certainly wouldn't know how to make the. Right what ever.

Never mind the fact that these kid’s were in a gang, you know those lovely group of guy’s who help old grannies, wash your car and don’t kill each other in the streets oh wait that the boy scouts.

Lock the Scum bags up with the pedo's, file shares, and murder's and throw away the key.

BT slams bandwidth brakes on all subscribers

Aaron
Coat

@ Anonymous Coward "Re: Zen Internet"

Perhaps you should check Zen's product pages, you seam to be under the impression that the Home product range is all they offer. They also offer a totally 100% unlimited Office Max product the drawback that puts most people off is that its got a more suitable price tag attached.

The thing is providing a quality connection over the BT Wholesale network is expensive, most ISP's out there (not counting LLU operator's) sell the connection to cheaply, meaning that they dont have enough bandwidth to go around. They count on most people not using their connection to a fraction of its potential. Now other protocol's such as p2p (legal or illegal) means more people are using more bandwidth so there's less of an already grossly short supply of bandwidth. If everyone on a BTWholesale based ISP decided to use a lot of port 80 traffic it would cripple them just as p2p would.

Even zen's price's arn't the true cost of the bandwidth, they to take advantage of the fact that not everyone will max out their connection's all of the time. But they do however act a lot more realistic and don't pile on way to many user's on the network. Plus they don't pretend that its the protocol that's the issue, instead its pure bandwidth, so they give a clear limit (on the limited connections) of whats fine for your package, and if you want to use more bandwidth you can simply buy more.

Its rare to find an isp that's realistic, give's you the option to use what you want (so long as your willing to pay for what you use). Doesn't lie and shape your traffic or sell your browsing habits.

While im no fan boy, you will be VERY VERY VERY hard pressed to find a BTWholesale based who offer's everything they can, Andrew's and Arnold do but then if you are baulking at Zen's reasonable prices check their's out :)

Mines the one with the leased lines running into it :)

Sony profits down, but PS3 sales up

Aaron

Fanboys

At the end of the day sony are winning the HD format war, bluray wins hd-dvd dies, thats what a lot of the ps3 is about. It helps that the ps3 is also the far superior console spec wise but damn is it hard to develop for compaired with the 360. For those that cant afford a ps3 fine go get a 360 and have fun, for those that can well we just get both.

For the record my ps3 runs almost silent where as my 360 sounds like a hairdryer. Im thinking of selling it to get another quieter unit, but long story short fanboys arnt the true market for ether sony or microsoft, is the people who will buy their console regardless of what they already own for their exclusive games because those are the people with the money to spend.

Vendor touts PC's Mac OS X compatibility

Aaron

Old new

Hell a lot of modern pc hardware is osx compatable if you know how to get it installed and can find the correct kexts. I have osx 10.5.4 running on my HP laptop niceley (I damned well wasnt going to keep the preinstalled vista that it came with), everything working as it should and didnt take that much effort (partly because hardware wise its almost identical to a macbook anyway).

For those that go on saying OSX is just linux with a candy GUI, go play with a vista laptop then an osx laptop of the same size, the GUI is so much nice and inteligently designed. Just the use of screen space for example (vista you have half your screen taken up with stuff you dont care about). Plus OSX is build on a BSD core anyway so its not actually linux no unless you want to say linux is really unix/minux etc.

I work with a lot of techies and they all have mac's because of the "it just works factor". The spend all day fixing broken computers they dont want to have to fix or have hastle or worry about compatability with their own.

Personally though I dont run OSX on main pc because im a gamer, I spend silly money on that box (more than a good mac pro would cost), and while osx does run great on it doesn't play the games I want to play so sadly is XP x64 for me on that box.

At the end of the day joe public (and most of the retail market) dont care about the technical side/brand loyalty side etc, they just want something that does the job they want from it without any headache.

US PS3 sales surge

Aaron

Fanboy's

Gotta laugh at the "My console's better than yours" guys. Personally I think the ps3 is the better console however currently the 360 has the better media player and cataloge.

But who care's im an adult I work hard, so I own them both (after all its not like a 360's expensive and a ps3 is a good and cheap blu-ray player).

Sony have been lacking on good titles but they are sorting that out and thats making a lot of people go out and buy one. I know a lot of people that have said I will get one when the price comes down or the game I want comes out etc. Its nice to see sony actually getting some good retail movement of their hardware now their software is starting to get its act together.

Ubisoft pirates game fix from pirates

Aaron

Sad thing

The sad thing about this is that the poor guy that uploaded this to help the thousands of customers that Ubisoft knew had a major problem but couldnt care less about will probably be out of a job.

So many support companies out there get so tied up in red tape, politic's and general bullcrap that they loose site of actually doing their job. That is to help your customer's solve their issues. To often now days I hear people call support up and end up having to go else where to get the help they should have gotten.

Plus if a company did decent testing and produced a good product in the first place they wouldnt need to patch/have DRM/or support so many people in the first place.

Flirty texting could land Scots in jail for 10 years

Aaron
Paris Hilton

Oh this is gonna have some "interesting" cases

Obviously this law's wording has an incredibly broad coverage, most of which would be overlooked and ignored because it simply just isnt enforceable, I cant wait for the first cases of a jilted ex getting spiteful and claiming messages sent and quite welcomed at the time were instead harassment.

Plus if you really were going to harass someone you may as well just rape them because you will probably do less time? Now thats the bit that is crazy, sure things like this should have a penalty but it should not be more than the far more serious and damaging crimes carry.

What about sending message's from a spoofed number? You spoof the number of someone you don't like, do it from a disposable pay as you go phone, send out a load of abuse and just watch the person you don't like get arrested. Im sure theres loads of other ways this law can and will be abused.

Paris because I bet she has sent her fair share of naught message ;)

Ofcom swoops on caller ID-faking firm with... request for information

Aaron
Thumb Down

Oh I feel so safe now ofcom are on the job.

Yup the watchdog responsible for protecting my consumer rights, preventing monopolies from abusing their power and from people using telecoms for scam's where possible.

This kind of technology is YEARS old and ofcom are only just becoming aware of it, why do I get the distinct impression that I shouldn't hold my breath on them actually doing anything useful on this.

US bars ID refuseniks from planes - but not ID losers

Aaron
Coat

A semi-sane change

Out of all the changes that I've seen/read about in the name of "Airport Security", this is one of the most sane. I say semi sane in the subject for 2 reasons, firstly its nuts to let people on who say they lost their ID (it should be no id = no fly, like the rest of the world) and secondly why the sodding hell wasn't this already in place?

Seriously come on, making passengers put their liquids in plastic bags and finger printing people who arnt even coming into your country makes FAR FAR more sense than doing something basic like checking for photo ID of your passengers?

Mines the one with the hot dog lining.

Virgin Media and BPI join forces to attack illegal filesharing

Aaron
Paris Hilton

Its quite simple

The copyright holders can connect to a torrent (have it set to not download anything or at least not share upload anything). Then list each and every IP that is sharing a complete file or completed torrent. Your encryption and your peer guardian does not offer any real protection from this, as they can see in unencrypted form what you are sharing now much and if they wanted connect via an unlisted IP address and download from your encrypted data.

If you download a torrent but down upload anything you will probably be safe, as they have to prove you don't own a legit copy and are just downloading for fair use. But Fair use does not allow you to upload data to other users so its those that upload data to other people on the torrents that they are going after.

Sure there are many other ways of getting music off the internet other than torrents (god know's I wouldn't bother with torrents myself), so this action wont stop downloading. Instead it will scare a lot of people who don't know any better and thats exactly what VM and the BPI want in this case.

Paris because I think I should have fair use of her ;)

UK cops arrest six alleged BitTorrent music uploaders

Aaron

I wonder

I Wonder if I downloaded of OiNK.cd and I then bought the CD's when they came out would it be illegal. Sure I would have downloaded something but only because it was available and I intended to buy the CD anyway.

The problem I see is people what their music ASAP by what ever means possible, if its out in one country and not another then people will download it, people want top quality of audio. If the music biz did global releases (at the same time) and allowed customers to have this quality of music how many of those lost sales would they get back.

HP biased against BIOS password security

Aaron
Paris Hilton

Stupid users

They probably did this because they get so many stupid users locking their systems then forgetting their passwords. I see it all the type, people come to me with their laptops they bought but forgot the password.

They call their support lines and get told to send it to x place or pay y money to get it fixed. Normally these prices are really high for something simple. The data on the hard drive is almost never the issue, people don't care about their pictures that they have someplace else any way as much as they care about having a dead laptop because they forgot their password.

Such information should be public, but the reset procedures should not be easy (ensuring its not just a lame back door password that thieves can use).

Paris, because id love to try her back door.

International copyright talks seek BitTorrent-killer laws

Aaron
Paris Hilton

Yawn

another failure waiting to happen, it wont stop copying, it wont stop file sharing and it will make new criminals over night (plus make a mockery of national legal systems as its bypassing their legal process).

If bittorrent magically (as thats what it would take) vanished over night it wouldn't stop sharing for a second. Even if ALL p2p protocols and applications vanished over night, people would still share their files with private FTP's, websites and other such methods that exists before the dawn of p2p. Hell kill the internet all together and people will still share their files (they will just burn them to CD/DVD and send them to each other). File sharing isn't going away and the sooner the RIAA realizes this the better.

As for the try before you buy thing I agree with this. I pirate all the games that I play, the ones I like I go and buy the originals for (mainly for the online play) the ones I don't like I delete. This saves me having to have to get refunds off crappy games (plus saves the stores having used stock). TV I download when it comes out, my household has a full sky package I could get the programs when they they are on tv, but if they are on sooner else where im not waiting im watching them as soon as I can get them. Movies well good ones I goto the cinema for ones I really like I buy.

All of this I don't share and upload anything to other user's (people might call me a leech, but then I don't use torrents anyway). But Im selective I try my media and if I like it I pay for it, and in respect for TV I want it as soon as its out not in 6 months time after Ive heard all about it from someone over ventrilo etc. This is how I choose to use and obtain media and its how I will carry on law's/trade agreements be damned.

Paris because id like to try her before I buy ;)

Jacqui Smith un-downgrades cannabis

Aaron
Alien

Gordon = Fail again

Gordon shows once again he shouldn't be in a position of power. I smoke weed on fairly on a regular basis. I work hard for a living and I pay a lot of tax. I don't smoke tobacco or drink alcohol (besides the odd social pint once or twice a month after work). I don't run around committing any real crimes but I do like to have a smoke play some computer games eat junk food and chill out in the privacy of my own home. A lot of the people I work with also do the same thing, purely in their own home on their own time and are some of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet.

Now me and people like me who work hard keep themselves to themselves, pay taxes and generally just do our own thing are would be considered bigger major criminal's because of a classification change. But what are we doing wrong and who are we harming? if the medical evidence is to be believed no one at all. From my own personal experience of may years of smoking and holding a steady good well paid job, no one at all.

I would love to see what studies have been done on the rates of cannabis related illness in countries where its legalized and see if theres any impact. Im betting there is none.

Sure some people who smoke pot will also take stronger and more dangerous stuff. But even if pot never existed they would still do this why? because they want to and the fact its illegal doesn't bother them. The very fact pot is illegal means though that most deals of it can point you in the direction of harder stuff if you want it. Though most pot dealers I know have basically only dealt cover their own cost's of growing so they smoke for free, hardly a wholesale terrorist funding crime ring. Just some guy's with some plants and a couple of bongs.

Cops demand more time in marathon OiNK investigation

Aaron

Lol

Seriously hundreds of thousands of pounds? Lol I used to run one of the very first torrent sites back in the day I ended up having to shut it down because I couldn't afford to keep the server going when I was getting 3 million hits a day. I don't think I got more than £30 in donations. Because it was a private server maybe it did get some more but not much thats for sure.

Its kind of the same thing when they say someone file sharing has caused x amount of damages. Seriously if they weren't sharing it then id just find it some place else, even if I had to just borrow a cd off a friend then copy it. Good stuff I will buy but most isn't good so I don't pay for it.

Thank fully I wasn't an OiNK member though because to be honest torrent's really do suck now day's.

Grand Theft Auto 4 queue man stabbed in head

Aaron
Stop

Gotta hate these idiots

Before the day's of computer's and video games people were beating each other up stabbing each other and stealing someone's possessions that they wanted for themselves.

Nothing has changed at all now that you can do it on a computer game, the same violent ass wipes are still out there but they also what to play the cool game just like you.

Human behavior has not changed for a very long time and the item that people get stabbed/beat up/mugged over has no bearing on this.

As for those people saying their kids want this game, well if you buy this game for your children than your a bad parent full stop. These games have an 18 rating meaning they are for adults only. Sure I might understand you being a little lax with a 16 or 17 year old. But I've seen 8 year olds with this game. What needs to be stopped is these piss poor parents that are exposing/buying their children adult only material.

Ballmer bitch slaps Vista

Aaron
Paris Hilton

Moron's going on about hardware

I find it so funny the moronic people bleating on about people don't upgrade to vista because of their hardware. While this may be the case for some people its not for most.

Im a serious gamer, my pc is running a quad core core 2 duo, running at 3.8 gig per core 4 gig of ram, xfi sound card and a pair of 8800 GTX's in sli. This is the pc I put vista on, and found it ran rubbish, games were slower, nothing looked better because of dx10, crash's happened all the time. The User interface is SO poorly designed (so much wasted space to show something simple). So what did me and my gamer friends do with our legit versions of vista, binned them and went back to XP x64.

Im the kind of person that will spend serious money to have their system's run well, and for gaming Vista = Fail. Hell I recently bought a laptop nice spec to that came with vista pre-installed. I tried it again I played around I then decided hell no and now am running osx on it :) Much nicer much cleaner and much more usable.

MS need to forget about getting a new os out every 5 years, they need to say hey lets make an OS that works properly first time out the box. Sure its never going to be perfect but, take the time to design it from the ground up to be fast, bloat free, secure, involve the major hardware OEM's at early stages so we can have great driver support from day 1. Make it x64 only (I mean come on they don't make 32bit only chips now and haven't for a long time).

Why paris? well because she gets more love and use than vista :P

Harvard bitch seeks to strip Zuckerberg's Facebook trademark

Aaron
Paris Hilton

lolz

One guy has a same idea and failed to make it work so therefore the guy that made it work stole from him. What rubbish, if he had the same idea before him and set up a company using it etc why wasn't his site the big daddy of social networking now instead of something that isn't known by anyone.

As for the claiming that he's out by billion's thats trash as well, facebook.com makes 0 money of me, anyone using the site from networks I control, or any of my friends because we all block their ads so they arnt even displayed. Facebook while it may make some money certainly hasnt made its creator a billionaire.

Paris, because we all know she's the kind of person to throw a temper tantrum to get some money ;)

Microsoft soothes Vista pain with Bossploitation flick

Aaron

LOL

The sad thing is some people will take this seriously, I thinking those "features" mentioned in the song are something good or that you couldnt have with XP. I hope Microsoft get themselves sorted soon and put vista on the same pile as copies of microsoft Bob and ME.

O2 PR calls Reg readers 'techie nerds'

Aaron

Lol short sighted

I gotta love the PR showing they have no clue about the industry they work for. Yes the reg is full of techie nerd's this is true, im proud to be one of them. The thing is im also proud of the fact that as a techie nerd im one of the early adopters of new technology's, im also one of the people that help those who are less technically savy when they what recommendations and advice. So who on earth does a major telco like this think will be the first people to adpot their new services and network offerings the techie/business users that who.

Now I have the misfortune of being on an O2 contract, I took the contract out with the P990i surprisingly to use it for its 3G mobile email and web facilities. I've always found the 3G performance very very lack luster and this confirms my suspicions. Now my contract is worth a lot of money over the 18 month period, and im going to be canceling it in the next 2 months and will not be renewing with O2. Mainly because I buy the latest and greatest PDA/Gadget phone to use it properly not to be restricted down without my knowledge.

Creative threatens developer over home-brewed Vista drivers

Aaron
Paris Hilton

Sign

Once again another major company shows it doesnt give a damn about the quality of its product or customer experience. Instead they want to milk you for everything they can and provide rubbish in return, how the mighty have fallen.

Paris because well she was feeling a little unloved ;)

Ofcom climbs on Byron bandwagon

Aaron

Funny

I remember what it was like being a kid, I used the internet, I chatted to people I looked at porn I played games (very much like I do to this day). Now not all of my friend's were so lucky they had no internet at all, this did not stop them for a second for seeing porn, swearing, being exposed to the nasties of this world. So while this stuff is on the internet even if it was possible to block it all your children will still be exposed to such stuff.

Most kids can get around almost any projection/blocking system out there, most of the time without their parents knowledge. Hell only the other day my 12 year old cousin was asking if I would let him have SSH access to one of my co-lo box's so he could SSH tunnel all his traffic to get around some hardware filters after booting from a live CD.

Parents need to take responsibility for keeping an eye on what the kids online, they need to talk to their kids and educate them about some of the dangers, dont pretend things like porn arnt out there because they are young and interested in that kind of thing so they will look for it if left to their own devices. Never be afraid to say no and take away their access. When they know the clear rules and know you will be checking up on them yourself instead of putting blind faith in some software or centrally managed system their online habits will be a lot better.

Nothing is worse than installing some badly written program thinking its protecting everything then let the kids loose without a second thought stupidly thinking that you don't need to monitor anything.

Big cheeses rolled into Vista-Incapable lawsuit

Aaron
Thumb Down

hope MS loose

I hope microsoft get burned over this, not because I hate vista (I do by the way most bloated slow waste of time operating system I have ever used and that includes OS2/Warp), but because microsoft should not be "helping" their friends in the hardware trade by saying hardware is capable of something when its not just to boost up sales.

Hardware manufactures need to take responsibility for their kit. Make slow rubbish hardware then it doesnt sell and doesnt get described as capable of running something that its not. Make good hardware and it sells and gets described as capable. Intel graphics suck majorly, they need to really pull their thumb out if they want to compete with AMD/ATI and Nvidia and S3 in the integrated market.

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