Re: Confused

Lots of ovens (maybe only electric ones) have time switches, the expectation being you put your tea in the oven and time it to come on at the appropriate moment for it to be perfectly cooked at the time you get home.

Unless you put something inappropriate in the oven it's perfectly safe.

Re: As an old fart...

The "normal" channel IDs are, on freeview at least, 301 and 302. They do show in the EPG: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pressred/2009/03/epgfor301and302.shtml

Re: Text prices

With rates getting lower you could be better off using a foreign PAYG mobile than a domestic one!

Maybe there is a plan and they are "working towards it each release".

Back in the real world, some of us want an OS we can use day in, day out without too many problems. Ubuntu pre-Unity was great. Since Unity it's been much less great. Maybe they do have a grand plan and it'll be wonderful eventually but why should we endure so much pain in the meantime? Using an OS shouldn't feel like you're driving through miles of 40mph contraflows on a motorway while they do maintenance work.

Re: Menu in top bar

Not just the top of the screen... often a completely different monitor!

Ovens for as long as I've been alive

(since the mid 1980s) have featured timer clocks. Set the temperature, the cooking time, and the time you want it done, and your lovely dinner will be awaiting when you get back.

That is, assuming you don't forget to put the food in the oven, as my mother doesn't like you reminding her she did once (or twice, or...).

Not died for the lack of a "chilling" part to this arrangement yet (unless it's a baking hot day or the oven isn't cold when you start, your food is unlikely to go off in the several hours before it gets cooked...)

Why?

"i.e." (id est) does not mean "for example", it means "that is"...

Try moving to Egypt.

Re: Simple solution

Remembering regularly-used numbers is easy.

Remembering numbers for cards you might not use very often is less so. Many people might have several day-to-day cards plus others that they only use on holiday or on infrequent business trips or something...

That's all very well

until you have a card you don't use very often and forget which system you used to derive the PIN...

Halifax/Lloyds

uses telephone authenication. Basically they call you on one of your pre-selected phone numbers (home, mobile or work) and enter a PIN displayed on screen.

Initially I thought this seemed like a poorer, cheaper solution than the card reader/pin sentry type devices, but having a second channel is probably a good idea really. Unless the fraudster can somehow nick my mobile or break into my home or office or somehow divert my calls at the same time as getting my online banking username/password, they're going to be pretty screwed.

Does not compute

1. "These stupid protests just like the occupy protests are a waste of time."

2. "Governments will continue to crack down on priacy so the pirates might as well face reality."

3. "SOPA may have been a poorly written attempt to stop piracy..."

You have acknoweleged the problem that the protests are aiming to highlight (3). We are talking about it so (1) is clearly false; without the protests we would not be talking about it.

(2) is your opinion but it's largely irrelevant to the issue here. The protests are not about piracy per se, they're about US.gov using sledgehammer legislation to crack piracy nuts and destroying everything else while they're hammering.

"If you ignore the "service me!" warning for too long"

Don't, then.

Actually, if done right

this could probably be a pretty convincing phishing scam.

For a start, the student loans scheme seems to operate under various guises, and various domain names, not all of which are .gov.uk domains either (Student Loans Company, Student Finance Direct, Student Finance England etc). So it wouldn't be that hard to register a convincing sounding .co.uk domain and knock up a pretty convincing website.

It doesn't say how the money was extracted from bank accounts, but getting sort codes and account numbers would probably not arouse too much suspicion, since that is how student loans are paid. Getting usernames and passwords for online banking would probably be harder, but if done in a convincing enough manner I suspect a fair proportion could be persuaded to hand these over. Perhaps debit card details would be easier to obtain ("Enter your sort code and account number here. Thank you. As a final check, to enable us to validate your identity, please fill in your Visa Debit or Maestro card number, expiry date, and card security code.).

Even if only a small percentage fall for it, the scammer would be quids in - and it is surely more convincing than those "XYZ Bank asks you to confirm your details at www.xyzbank.bankonlinetoday.example.com" type phishing emails.

Who are you trying to recruit?

Routing traffic with iptables is sysadmin stuff. Important but it's not exactly innovative software development.

I thiink the point is that we should be training kids to be good computer scientists, or perhaps software engineers, rather than IT technicians.

At least our games industries are innovative... but they're not the only innovative tech industry we should be trying to develop.

To use your example, we shouldn't be teaching kids how to use a firewall configuration tool, rather we should be teaching them the basics of how a network works and how someone might try to attack it and what a firewall does. Then they may be interested enough to study such things further and eventually one day design a better firewall, or a new way of defending against various attacks (or if you fancy working in a certain area of the industry, a new way of attacking systems...), or whatever.

"Pay cache [sic] and all those costs disappear."

And are replaced with the cost of paying someone to cash up, bank deposit charges, charges for withdrawing coins for change, insurance/security costs for keeping large quantities of cash on the premises, secure cash collection services or the risk you will get robbed on the way to the bank, etc...

What sort of techie never writes an email... or a report... or a proposal? If you can't write clearly about yourself why would anyone expect you to be able to write clearly about business matters?

I took great care over the layout of my CV when I last got a job, and sent a PDF to the recruitment firm, who insisted on having an Word version so they could cut and paste it into their own template to send on to the employer. At least the employer had the sense to see that the resulting layout issues were the fault of the recruitment people and the content was thankfully still the same.

Um...hello

"I have so far found no site which is supported by adverts which I can't live without."

Byebye El Reg, then?!

The creepiest adverts I've come across lately are those by Criteo - you look at products X and Y on some shopping site, then later on that day you are reading the Guardian website or whatever and a load of products similar to X and Y are shown in a flash banner for the shopping site you were on earlier.

Definitely one to be wary of if you actually are browsing for Christmas presents etc on a shared PC...

Pretty good.

If you pay attention to where you are going. It would be even higher if it wasn't for all the drivers, taxis and buses.

There are thousands of cyclists in London and statistically few of them get injured - those that do are often doing silly things like undertaking lorries at traffic lights.

Maybe, if you don't already own a car.

"public transport comes in well below the cost of running a car."

Although if you already own a car (to use for journeys other than commuting), but choose to commute via public transport, the economics are considerably different to if you didn't own a car at all - thing such as insurance, road tax etc are largely fixed costs so the more you drive the cheaper it becomes per mile.

It also depends on where you live - in London or a few other cities if you're near the tube/tram etc then public transport is (relatively) cheap and convenient and driving is slow and expensive. If you're anywhere else in the country public transport is generally less convenient and more expensive than it is in London and driving is mostly relatively quicker and cheaper than in London.

Personally - I live and work in West Yorkshire. My commute is 9 miles, I generally drive three times a week and cycle twice a week. Driving is generally quicker than cycling, but only just, and it does depend on when you leave - avoiding the worst of the school run makes things quicker in the car but not much different when cycling. I could get the train but due to the changes involved it takes longer than cycling and is more expensive than driving and is only worth doing where beer after work is involved...

not one person can PayWave on...unless they have a card

Many Visa credit/debit cards support PayWave... just not the NFC variant.

Aye, well

if it focuses the collective attention on getting a few quid extra from the likes of you and me buying CDs then we might be less likely to notice the millions that continue to be lost in much bigger tax avoidance schemes by rich folk.