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Comments · 77

  1. they've made them before and sold poorly. cards specifically for mining have a much poorer resale value than a standard card.

  2. Re:Tour de Cheat? on Tour de France To Use Thermal Cameras To Spot Cheats (npr.org) · · Score: 2

    I feel Cycling is a skill sport but that's besides the point. I want to address the "skill sports" not needing drugs line which I think is a lie told so often it is accepted as the truth. For Soccer and Tennis - there is nothing to gain from catching doping. Absolutely nothing. If you catch drugs cheats in the Premier League you don't gain anything at all, you damage a multi-billion pound brand. This "skill sports" line is what everyone from the top to the bottom tells the public to deflect away.

    For soccer - There is evidence of Italian and British clubs using drug transfusions. There are videos of Cannavaro on Youtube while at Juve taking blood. Chelsea went public with reinfusing blood in the early 00's. There are testimonies of German internationals from the 70's being injected with everything and anything. If you can take EPO and be fresher in the 89th minute than the other team with no chance of being caught (remember, the blood testing is rare) then why wouldn't you?

    For tennis if you can take steroids or EPO and know you have little chance of getting caught you can train 2-3 times a day instead of the once - bringing massive strength and phenomenal endurance to the court for the sake of a good show. If you are glowing and a tester arrives you can hide in your panic room, even though it is the time and day you told the tester you would be at your house and then tell the world you thought you were being robbed (Williams) and people believe it because they don't want to believe the alternative.

    Rugby has the highest number of athletes serving drug suspensions in the UK. Players are having to take mid career breaks to recover from spending 80 minutes a week getting beaten up. At local amateur level banned substances are normal here, it's a level playing field almost.

    Cycling isn't clean, it's cleaner but there are still suspicious performances. It is a handy whipping boy though. During the whole Olympic scandal last year the first question of the first interview I heard on the BBC spoon-fed the party line to the interviewee from British Athletics along the lines of "do you think you will become as bad as cycling?". How can you answer yes to that? Why would you spit in the soup and admit you have a problem when you can just bring cycling into it?

    I feel very strongly about this as a sports fan in general who prefers Cycling. The hypocrisy is infuriating.

  3. Re:please explain to a non american on New Jersey Auto Dealers Don't Want to Face Tesla · · Score: 1

    It is like rules on work hours that mean you can't buy anything at a grocery store on Sunday in France.

    Sorry but that's not true. Even in rural France you can make grocery purchases at many shops on a Sunday.

  4. Steinbeck - East of Eden on Ask Slashdot: What Do You Like To Read? · · Score: 1

    Just read this after putting it off for years, an incredible book. Another poster said Steinbeck was a great storyteller - In my opinion this is about as good as it gets.

  5. Re:The Virgin case is interesting on Tens of Thousands Flee From BT and Virgin · · Score: 1

    The TV is freeview with on demand services over the internet. BT do not resell Virgins network, however BT Infinity broadband is delivered over fibre optic to the nearest distribution point with the link from there being copper.

  6. Re:Cool but self-marginalizing. on UK's Royal Mail Launches First Intelligent Stamps · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am not a postman but come off it, they're not "randomly" going on strike they are fighting for their working practices (whether you agree/sympathise or not is another matter altogether). Also how is it the Royal Mail's fault for what happens when packages go outside of the United Kingdom? They can give best endeavours tracking but are totally at the mercy of La Poste or whoever it's gone to.

  7. Re:Eh? But we do on Violent Video Games Only Affect Some People · · Score: 1

    do you understand the geography of the area he did it in, the way he moved around the area and the speed at which he did it? The police were very close to him but the nature of how shootings were reported (as people were found, not as they happened) meant they were chasing shadows. In that area there are normally tens of ways to get to the same place via various C road (i.e. single car width normally) and an experienced taxi driver would have a distinct advantage.

    I was in one of the neighbouring villages at the time, the frightening thing was that you didn't know which town he'd pop up in next.

    Both his weapons were legal, he was never deemed a risk and no-one suspected he would do it. You can legislate all you like but you'll never legislate against the completely unexpected or unimaginable in my opinion.

  8. Re:Ha ha told you so-ers -- post here on Lost Ends · · Score: 1

    well aren't you a lovely soul. tell us all what you enjoy so we can rip the shit out of that.

  9. Re:What about for those who haven't seen it? on Lost Ends · · Score: 1

    watch it yourself and make your own opinion - that's what I'd do. Too many people hating for the sake of it to be honest

  10. Re:Flash Sideways on Lost Ends · · Score: 1

    Juliet was saying it worked about unplugging the vending machine. then she said about going dutch, it was a bleed between timelines if you will.

  11. very sad. on Father of the Frisbee Dies At 90 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't want to discus this.

  12. Re:Eh? on Is Google Planning To Fibre Britain? · · Score: 1

    what everyone conveniently forgets about BT is that they have a government-levied "maximum" installation charge for phone lines. From that they have to provide you a line whether it's up a mountain or whatever when costs could go into thousands of pounds to give you that line, then you want cheap ADSL on top of it. The likes of Sky etc use the infrastructure for broadband and pay little in exchange so BT still foots the majority of operating costs for PSTN and ADSL services. The exception of course is when new equipment is needed at the exchange and people complain to the Daily Mail because they don't want to pay for a new DSLAM or 5 miles of copper or whatever.

    So from these costs they have to make decisions about who gets lovely "super fast" (or whatever it's called) broadband and who gets the bare minimum. Having worked in the industry it's hard to find people that "take little interest" it's sadly about the bigger picture.

    Personally having grown up in a rural area I still have fresh and painful memories of dialup, but that's another story...

  13. Re:Job absentism on Blizzard Adds Timestamps To WoW Armory · · Score: 1

    it's different but not as different as you'd like. if someone in my office had a serious contagious illness (or even a bad cold/H1N1) I'd much prefer it if they were at home rather than making me ill. I wouldn't even care if they were playing WoW whilst wrapped up in a duvet or something.

  14. Seems like they were determined to hate it... on Modern Warfare 2 Surpasses $1 Billion Mark; Dedicated Servers What? · · Score: 1

    From reading the article it just seems like the author(s) were determined to find fault in it, no matter how good the game is. I got MW2 in December, it's a good game and I don't care if they think the reviewers were "shoved around". I played it myself and enjoyed it, there's my "review", I don't need a website with an agenda to tell me how to spend my money and what to play online.

  15. Re:Marketing budget dev budget on Modern Warfare 2 Surpasses $1 Billion Mark; Dedicated Servers What? · · Score: 1

    The ratio of development:marketing is not how you measure how "good" something is.

  16. Beware the Electro Gonorrhea on Futuristic Sex Robots Now Just "Sex Robots" · · Score: 1

    aka the noisy killer...

  17. bit short of ideas... on Classic Game Console Design Mistakes · · Score: 1

    Problem 1: Poor Controllers, Problem 3: Ergonomically Hellish Controllers, Problem 4: Unreliable controllers. That and the fact power through RF is mentioned twice - this could have been a lot more concise without losing a lot of the facts.

  18. Re:The Germans... on Linux Notebooks Selling Well On Amazon Germany · · Score: 2, Funny

    you started it!

  19. Why does emulating something have to be the key? on Palm Announces Killer New Phone · · Score: 1

    I've recently taken delivery of a BlackBerry Bold when I was originally in the market for an iPhone. It turns out it did all the things *I* wanted and none of the things that the iPhone did that I didn't want. I didn't want a touch screen that I'd grease up and scratch, I don't need to tilt it to drink a pretend beer or shake imaginary dice, I wanted a phone that did SMS, email and instant messaging perfectly.

    Success in this market won't come through emulation, it's through giving your users what you want. The Palm just looks like a HTC or somesuch copy of an iPhone to me.

  20. hmmmm on Hacked Business Owner Stuck With $52k Phone Bill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I work for a Telco. We flag to clients when they accrue silly spends to foreign numbers. This happens around the $100 mark generally. Why did this go unnoticed for so long? Incidentally this is completely the responsbility of the end client. Anyone could ring Bulgaria for hours on end and then blame "teh criminalz!!!11". Secure your equipment better.

  21. Re:*yawn* on Get Ready For ... Nanosoccer! · · Score: 1

    Perhaps we're already seeing Quantum theory in "soccer"... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_1/7614022.stm

  22. Re:It's still retarded security on Changing Customers Password Without Consent · · Score: 1

    You're assuming everyone who dials the bank has a set level of IT ability. You do realise most phone security passwords are your mothers maiden name? you can't change that as and when sadly. The way a lot of companies get around it here is to ask for the 1st and 4th letters of your phrase (for example) which is typed in and checked - not sure if the agent sees the full phrase or not.

  23. Choose your security phrase carefully... on Changing Customers Password Without Consent · · Score: 1

    When I worked for a helpdesk for a large ISP in the UK we had a chap with the security phrase:
    "Who am I talking to?"
    with the answer " scum".

    Yes, it's that level of mutual respect that will make helpdesk staff want to talk to you...

  24. Re:Police thugs on "War On Terror" Board Game Confiscated In UK · · Score: 1

    actually the common tube etiquette is to jog towards the platform and if you miss it, act very coy and exude the impression you didn't want to get the train anyway...

  25. Re:Police thugs on "War On Terror" Board Game Confiscated In UK · · Score: 1

    Point taken, but how would the unit have looked if it WAS the chap they were looking for and their inaction led to a tube train being blown up. At the end of the day he could have stopped for the armed police, but he ran from them and made a concerted effort to get on a train just days after many innocent people had died. Bad intelligence and a REALLY bad move from this guy was unfortunately a very dangerous move.

    If I were told to stop on the NYC subway by a group of armed police and I sprinted full pelt away from them can you clarify what I should expect to happen? I should imagine I would be in hospital or a morgue shortly thereafter.