Posts by Brezin Bardout

User scores

@Mr Cheddarfingers

Metacritic seems to disagree with you there.

Review sites give it an average of 54, user scores give it 5.9.

Not that I'm saying review scores should be taken seriously at Metacritic. I don't think reviews should give scores anyway, it just leads to ridiculous 'how is this game only 1% better than that game' type arguments. A good review will tell you whether you would like the game or not without some number attached to it.

It's not their kids

they can't be bothered being proper parents to. I'm pretty sure their kids will be suitably restricted to Christian friendly, fun free activities. It's the kids of everyone else they're bothered about. They don't think you're bothering to look after your kids properly and so they want the government to do it for you.

Seems a lot of people are missing this, what with all the 'ffs parents should take responsibility and stop relying on the government' type comments. It's not about some lazy parents wanting the government to take responsibility for their kids (although some would be more than happy for them to), it's the Mother's Union wanting the government to take responsibility for everyone else's kids, because they don't trust them to parent them responsibly.

I see you put as much thought into your comment as you do in making up a user name.

Well, to be fair he might have a proper site and he could just be using Facebook to complement that and reach out to more potential customers. If he's running a tech business then I'd certainly hope that's the case anyway.

But yeah, these businesses who think Facebook is an acceptable platform for their web presence, they can go fuck themselves. Yeah, I might want to know more about your product or sevice. But no, I don't want to be liking your fucking Facebook page and getting my wall spammed with whatever.

I have to agree

Nothing worse than being forced to read something I'm not interested in. If this carries on, I might have to somehow only read the items that might interest me. Now, if only there was some way to know what an item is about before I start reading it. Maybe some sort of headline or something.

Maybe

they think the companies will actually try to reduce these costs by trying to reduce the amount of numbers they ask for. Which I imagine they probably would. I also imagine they will put their prices up anyway, because they can just blame it on Ofcom charging for new numbers.

RE: I'm not paranoid

I'm sure you're not, but I'd love to know what energy company you're with and what they've done in the past to make suspicions like that reasonable.

I know what is amazing though

It's amazing how your opinions are also facts. Absolutely amazing. In my opinion anyway

Because

Security by obscurity is bad.

Far better to fix flaws than just hope the bad guys are too stupid to find them.

Sometimes the bad guys aren't stupid.

If you were a competent adult,

you would realise that the inciter and the rioter may share responsibility for a riot taking place, but they don't share any responsibility for each other's actions during a riot.

The 33% discount

Is already reflected in the sentence as the judge takes that off before giving it out. So presumably, the judge thought they would have deserved over 5 years if they hadn't pleaded guilty.

So, come to think of it, that guy tweeting about blowing up the airport - he got off pretty lightly.

Yeah, it must be your fault

It's not like Facebook would ever make certain settings related to privacy difficult to find and not very clear or anything like that.

Excellent idea

So, instead of just giving people benefits, we could get them to do work and give them money for it instead.

We could call the work we give them 'jobs', and so we can differentiate them from people who aren't getting benefits for nothing, we could even call them 'employed'.

So, that's nice and easy to do. All we need are enough jobs for everyone in the country and away we go.

Agreed

And talking of averages, I also find it very interesting that nowhere in the pdf they've released does it even mention what kind of average they're actually using. Is it the mean, is it the median, is it the mode? I know most people will just assume it's the mean, but looking at the pdf, they're obviously attempting to present it as scientific research, and yet they leave out something as basic (and vital) as that.

That's just one thing that seemed to stick out, but there's actually quite a few. They go into absolutely no detail whatsoever about their methodology other than the absolute basics of how many people took their test and how they got them to take it. A previous study plays a large part in their findings but they give absolutely no reference to it whatsoever. They use phrases such as 'been bugging the web developers'. They cannot, it seems, even count to two - they have a grand total of two different graphs which they've managed to both call Figure 1. And yeah, that might seem like nit picking, but seriously, it says a lot about their attention to detail.

To me, looking at their website explains everything. They do offer free IQ tests, but it seems for a full report they require payment. Call me cynical, but what better way to drum up a bit of publicity for their website and their 'free' online IQ tests (not to mention their 'range of psychometric tests designed specifically for the use of HR professionals. Their scientific validity, clarity and insight have already won them the loyalty of more than 3,500 businesses throughout the world, including many Fortune 500 companies.') than call the users of the browser with the largest market share stupid?

And no, I don't use IE.

Here's some help with moving on

Step 1: Stop reading news items about it.

re: And his crime was what, exactly?

Writing and distributing malware. It's illegal.

And funnily enough, saying something along the lines of 'they deserved it anyway', doesn't generally work out too well as a defence.

Talking of trust.

I hope you're better at verifying the integrity of your children's friends than you are of information on the internet.

Out of three sources, one is a link to some random internet forum and the other to an article in an article directory, written by some guy trying to sell Facebook blocking software.

I suggest you spend a little less time searching for stuff to scare yourself with and a little more on how to find reliable sources of information.

They should know that it will be mis quoted

Well, that depends on who's doing the reporting. Pretty much to be expected from the likes of the Daily Mail. But, if you're happy with that, that's fine. I prefer my news to be a little more factual.

Indeed

It seems the Sun even struggled to pad it out to the six whole sentences of the article. I mean seriously, a national 'newspaper' using quotes from random Tweets and YouTube comments to substantiate some 'news'.

Oh well, I suppose if you're reading the Sun for anything that resembles news then you really are doing it wrong.

re: Please tell me you are being sarcastic...

'I'd personally much rather have a kid on the net unfiltered than have then roaming the streets with the local chavs.'

If that's the only two choices your children would have, I suggest you leave parenting to others.

Why indeed?

'Why is news of the pre-pubertals who sign up to this pathetic Facebook thing of any interest to anyone with a mental age above that of five???'

I don't know, you tell us. You were obviously interested enough to read it.

Well, the propoganda seems to be working...

If RichyS is anything to go by, anyway.

And I can guarantee you, the people most likely to be affected by all these changes are going to be the genuine claimants. The easy targets. The ones least likely to be affected are the ones who actually do want nothing to do with work ever, who've been on benefits all their life, know how the system works and exactly how to get around it.

I couldn't agree more.

Why they keep giving money to all these researchers trying to do science and stuff I'll never know.

They could save a fortune and find out everything they need to know just by asking on this forum.

Unfortunately...

I doubt anyone's data is going to be worth very much on its own. A few pence or a few pounds maybe? I seriously doubt the loss of privacy would make it anywhere near to being worth it.

Of course, when you're a big company like Google, who'll be selling it in the millions, then its valuable indeed. Especially with the likes of Facebook doing such a good job of convincing so many people their information has so little value it doesn't matter what they do with it or who has access to it.

Parental responsibility

'Parents of these children should be the ones to take responsibility for their child's actions'

Of course they should, nobody is saying otherwise. The problem isn't with responsible parents though, its with the irresponsible ones. That's why they're suggesting sites like these also need to take some responsibility. Or do you think we shouldn't bother at all with children with idiot parents and just let them get on with doing whatever they want? Because, yeah, I'm sure that'll work out well in the long run.

All the commission are suggesting is that these networks should enforce their own rules a bit better.

That is strange.

It's almost as if it's two completely different cases in two completely different countries.

RE: Eh?

Yeah, we really need something like that to happen over here. That'll show the pro-nuke lobby.

Ah, now I see.

I misunderstood the bit that was making it clear about how they can remove or disable any changes made to enable unlicenced versions of Windows to run.

I didn't realise it also meant, if they catch you using anything open source, they can start deleting anything they feel like off your computer.

Half a minute per hour?

I didn't realise drivers had it so bad. How do you cope?

Disagreed

'Agreed. I am myopic - and yet everybody would scoff if I demanded that the Government make road-signs bigger (and make pedestrians wear fluoro jackets) so that I can drive my car. Instead, I wear glasses.'

As does he. So he can play games, he uses a customisable mouse.

The problem is EA's lack of basic accessibility regarding key mapping. Something that, disregarding lazy console ports, is (or at least was) pretty standard within PC gaming.

It's not even just an accessibility issue for those with disabilities. It's a usability issue for anyone who expects to be able to remap controls in this kind of way, of which I'm pretty certain he won't be the only one.

'What is the definition of fit for purpose?'

'appropriate, and of a necessary standard, for its intended use'

First result in Google. Seems good enough to me.

Oh, and where do I propose it ends? When there's a real deterrent against companies releasing unfinished, poorly tested games.

Another substitution

For every El Reg article please search and replace "anonymous coward" with "dumb-ass"

This is a much more clear description without further explanation necessary.

Quite right.

That word needs to be unpersisted immediately.

Imaginary equipment

Speaking of which, I wonder how much TV licensing have spent on their TV detectors.

I've always wondered...

I do, I sit here and wonder for hours why people don't use/like gift cards.

In fact, you wouldn't believe how many hours I've lost sitting here wondering why anonyomous people I don't know, and will never meet, don't like using them.

For as long as I can barely rememeber, its the one thing that's always been beyond my grasp. My life's greatest perplexity. So much so, that I could see no end in sight, and truly, I believed this mystery was to haunt me for the rest of my natural life. My fate, to die in ignorance.

And all I ever wanted to know was why? Why do these anonymous internet people shun gift cards so?

'That's like being the tallest dwarf or the smartest moron.'

Or the most insightful commentard?

re: Bomb scares, 80's terrorism

I think everyone, apart from you, the police and magistrates maybe, can accept that it wasn't actually a threat but a joke. Not everything should be taken literally, and if someone cannot differentiate between something like this, that obviously shouldn't be taken seriously, and something more sinister then they really have no place working for the police or the courts.