Daily Mail blogrant worries Reg readers

Letters Let's start with the bloggers. Such an easy target - there are so many that any mud slung is bound to stick to some of them. Still, as Ashley Norris points out, Daily Mail columnists really should be careful about any kind of projectiles they launch, lest they turn out to be boomerangs:

Thanks to this article I wandered over to the Daily Mail web site and naturally was further lured to an article titled "Volvo estate named 'best passion wagon'". This could probably be a reason for the spate of septuagenarian orgy stories frequently seen in El Reg.

However, what really caught my attention was the top 10 list. The Audi TT comes in at number 6.

Now there may be many and varied ways to define sex but I would think that none of them could possibly include an Audi TT. The owners were probably trying to justify the enormous amount they spent on a flattened VW Beetle in the hope of pulling something other than a muscle trying to get into the thing.

Chris

It's also fun to read the comments to the DailyMail's blogrant. Ok, the obvious reaction is "hey, you're ranting, you're repetitive and it looks suspiciously like a blog --- you must be right!"

However, being reactionaries, the readership has a lifelong training in superior reactions so comes up with the delicious troll (link)

"Thank God for one brave and fearless voice speaking out against the tide of mediocre thinking and blatant pornography. that is the so-called "world-wide-web". My grandaughter was convinced to try this "googling" of which you speak by a schoolfriend and now she is pregnant. What I want to know is, what is this Government going to do about this nonsense, especially now foppish young Cameron has revealed it to be one of his unseemly passions? In my day, such an admission would have been a resignation matter. I'm disgusted."

Marvin the Martian

Our thanks also go to the other readers who pointed us to this gem.

Firefox is broken. Oh wait, I was only kidding. Nice.

One of the odd things about all of the flaw reports I read is Window Snyder. Depending on what article I was reading Window (a wonderful name) was either he or she. The Washington Post split the difference, calling M? Snyder both he and she.

Dan

Broadband in Northern Ireland is apparently not living up to the hype:

I am orginally from Northern Ireland and my father who lives in County Fermanagh would strongly disagree with the comment "100% Broadband coverage".

Seems that BT like to play on words, 100% of its exchanges are broadband enabled but thats not the case for its customers. If you live too far from an enabled exchange you wont be able to get broadband. Talking to a BT engineer about the issue he told me that BT can install 'repeater nodes', but they are unwilling to do so.

100% suggests that all NI customers can receive broadband, I know for a fact that at least 20 of my neighbours homes and business can not get it. Maybe its 99.9% and someone rounded up !!

All the best, Clive

Vodafone does everyone a huge favour and upgrades its BlackBerry email service to glory:

This 'upgrade' is completely ridiculous.

What happens if you go on holiday for a couple of weeks and turn off your Blackberry. You used to be able to go to the web site and select all the emails that you did not want and delete them, now you turn on your Blackberry and have to delete them on the Blackberry, a painful process.

Another example of the 'upgrade' is what to do when you are abroad with roaming charges. You sed to be able to delete emails from the web service so that you were not charged for them, now you can't, so more money for Vodafone in Roaming Charges.

I spoke to Vodafone about this and suprisingly they don't think it is a problem. While there are clear benefits to the new system, why do they not give you a choice as to which option to use.

They did say that RIM forced the upgrade on them, they did not decide to do this themselves.

Anon

Seems that eBay is not the best place to go shopping for the Tardis of your dreams. Much better versions are available elsewhere. We were stunned. Stunned, we tell you.

Re. the TARDIS on eBay

Well, yes but you can get a licenced product for less than that from thisplanetearth.co.uk http://www.thisplanetearth.co.uk/page25.html

And it doesn't need tarting up

Garry

A Tory on the Fringe demonstrates exactly why he is there by suggesting people might want to swap all their personal data for a zero rate council tax:

"Such use of the data gathered through the E+ cards, previously known as Edge smartcards, would be voluntary for residents – but for those who did not wish to take part, "it will be £1,400 for a band D", Bettison said."

So the data which has been "obtained fairly" (in this case by the threat of legal punishment for not supplying it) will be used "only for the stated purpose" (ie administering the affairs of the local authority plus whatever they damn well feel like doing with it).

Citizens will be free to withhold permission, but free in this case means "will cost them a four figure sum" !

Yep, that fits entirely with the intention of the Data Protection regulations !

Simon

Nokia does its best to bring power to the toothers. Blue ones, naturally.

I count 9 radios when you include gps and rfid. which no doubt by the time this thing actualy comes to market will be ubiquitous on all phones. and how about dab, iridium and and some sort of cb transmitter just so this this can truly bristle with arials? :)

Tristan

And then it says we'll have to wait years for our fuel-cell powered mobile phones because of supply chain issues. Pah.

With regads to "dilute methanol" as a possible fuel cell battery power source - won't the under 18s be a bit pissed off that mummy has to go and recharge their battery for them? Just a thought.

Simon

Dilute methanol? And you expect it to be refilled like a lighter? No chance. Just think of it. Shops would only be allowed to sell it to people over 18 so a huge chunk of the mobile market would not be able to recharge their phones. Far more logical would be some sort of canister that clips into what was the battery bay. This would either be totally disposable or would employ some for of exchange system, like with gas bottles, where by you would take the canister back to the shop and they would exchange it for one that had been refilled for a nominal cost. However for that to work the manufactures would need to come up with an agreed standard design for the shape of these things.

Tristan

Perhaps, Tristan and Simon, these are the supply-chain issues to which they refer?

They didn't consider running the fuel cell on Vodka then...

Hamish

And finally, this might tickle the general Register reader funny bone. It tickled ours, so we thought we'd share:

In what has surely been a little-noticed development, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has apparently let slip the strongest evidence yet that Apple executives are making use of time travel technology, at least for internal projects.

The Washington Post broke the story today (emphasis mine:)

"Jobs was aware "in a few instances" that **unnamed company executives had gone back in time** to cherry-pick dates when stock prices were low to increase the likelihood that employees would turn greater profits. But Jobs did not "receive or otherwise benefit from these grants," the Cupertino, Calif., company said in a statement after the markets closed." (from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100401376.html)

Jobs goes on to say that he is "unaware of the accounting implications" of this kind of cavalier approach to history, not to mention thermodynamics. The fact that Apple didn't realize it could go back in time to repair the scandal either indicates a disturbing level of cluelessness, or that we're living in one of the "possible worlds" less favorable to Jobs's company. Time will tell ...

Joe

Which makes it the end of the week. Enjoy the weekend, but don't forget to come back on Monday. ®