Info and forum posts by 'Hominid'

RE: Ebay sucks sometimes

Some sellers only have themselves to blame.

I just bought an obscure item off of ebay for for about 1/7 of it`s retail price, I paid the same night. I checked the next evening and the payment was refunded with a note saying that sorry but they should have put a reserve on the item and they was not prepared to sell it to me for the winning bid price. Ok I `won` the auction at a bargain price, but a sale on ebay is a contract with the seller - they should have cancelled the auction and re-listed it with a reserve.

Now we are at the "If you leave me bad feedback I`ll do the same" stage - it sucks.

They should also change the 80 characters in the feedback field as allot of the time it`s not enough space to accurately describe the situation.

RE: HDMI cable advice required

Unlike scart cables/RCA cables and the like, HDMI cables are digital cables so you either get a connection through the cable or not. There is no improvement over the quality of the connection with "Higher quality" leads.

Buy a cheapo lead and it`ll be as good as the more expensive leads, it`s just the retailers ripping people off that don`t know the difference and still think it`s the same as before with the old analog technology.

This item was edited on Saturday, 15th December 2007, 13:37

RE: Should Atheists stop celebrating Christmas?

I`m 100% Atheist!

I don`t celebrate `Christmas` at all, I don`t send cards or presents. I do feel awkward when virtually everyone I know does although I would say they do it mostly because of their children. To me this would be a better reason NOT to celebrate `Christmas` because in doing it for your children you are brainwashing the next generation to continue the cycle, but that`s just me!

Linking religion to getting presents once a year is a very strange concept, corrupt the young while they`ve got no defences to resist them. I`d rather buy presents when either they deserve it, not because they expect them, or when I`m feeling so inclined to do so and not through pier pressure.

RE: Anti-Semitism....Alive and Well in the 21st Century......

I`m not an anti-semite, I hate all religions equally.

I`ll qualify me statement with the following: If you firstly classify yourself as a Jew/Muslim/Christian/Hindu etc then you are classifying your whole persona with a work(s) of fiction. Granted that person/people that wrote the specific holy book(s), and the people that initially started that religion, were very intelligent people. This however doesn`t mean what they say and more valid than other people. There is no evidence, whatever the religion, to back up their claims - You always have to take it on faith!

Over time most, if not all, religions have mutated to be used as another form of control. The few over the many. They manipulate culture to their own ends and persecute people that don`t conform, and the atheist is stuck.

RE: POLL: If u had savings in Northern Rock would u take them out?

People have the right to take their money where they like. After the last few days worth of bad news people have been given a wake up call. Up until last night they had a very legitimate reason to moved their money if over the £35k threshold, and it you read into the statement by the government they only guarantee 100% during the current financial upheaval - so no guarantee long term.

What is clear is that the economy is on a tipping point into recession. if the government are jumping in to save this bank, which is afterall a publicly traded business, then they must be scared of the ramifications of this spreading throughout the whole sector. I don`t agree that our tax money should be used to prop-up a bank and it should have been left to fight in the real world hence taking responsability for there own actions. I know some people would have lost out but it would have sent a strong signal to other institutions that were in a similar situation to act in more risk averse way.

RE: Kate McCann to be named a suspect.

Now they are both suspects: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6983604.stm

RE: Kate McCann to be named a suspect.

I don`t like quoting sky but here it is: http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1283158,00.html

They say she MAY be charge with the accidental death of her daughter. Still way to early to say either way but things seem to be moving fast, I wonder what`s going to happen with the father when he`s questioned?

RE: Kate McCann to be named a suspect.

Quote:
1 - Well I DO CARE WHO HAS DONE IT

Why? I am interested to know who did it but I don`t care who did it! If it was a close family friend that was murdered or some I know then I would care. Yes it is a shame as I said earlier but what`s done is done.

Quote:
2 - Until she is found, her image SHOULD be on the public`s mind ( want to see it happen again ? )

What about the hundreds/thousands of other missing presumed dead around Europe/world then? If this was in this country then I would sort of agree with you, but this happened in another country about 1000 miles away. People soon harden to the story, yes that too is sad but it`s basic human behaviour.

Quote:
3 - Tough as it sounds, by the parents going to the press, this HAS kept her image in the paper`s

Why is that tough sounding? I agree about keeping it in the papers, but in the country where it happened. There have been raids in this country because the Portuguese Police used Psychics for evidence FFS - what sort of bullcrap is that! DNA taken from glasses in , iirc, Belgium when the result can back it wasn`t even female. So the extensive coverage has counted for next to nothing AFAICS.

RE: Kate McCann to be named a suspect.

I think some people made up their minds months ago!

It didn`t help when they started their tour and kept ramming the story down everyones throat months after the fact. Yes it`s sad, yes it`s tragic, but they`ve used the media for so long now they will see the other side of them. Some/most of the media outlets could be made to look foolish

I don`t really care who done it, I was fairly sure that she was dead after less than a week after she was reported missing, but I would like to know the real evidence and then I can make up my own mind - time to move on really.

RE: Kate McCann to be named a suspect.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1283158,00.html

No reason to have the blood of the girl in a car hired five weeks after she disapeared, getting interesting. It also shows that they are now actively looking into the McCanns as suspects and not as just witnesses.

This item was edited on Friday, 7th September 2007, 12:18

RE: Things that make you cringe.....

In no particular order: George Bush, The Queen(and all related hangers on), Adverts, I could go on but the list would get rather large ;)

RE: HI-DEF setup and playback queries...

To give you an Idea, my dads machine with a Athlon 2400 with ATI9500 G/Card plays HD files jerky. My Opteron Dual core with X800 plays them fine.

I either play them in VLC or WMP11 with an x264 codec installed, WMP11 seems to give slightly less CPU usage on my system. I`m not 100% if it was 1080p but it was atleast 1080i so give it a go if you`ve got a fairly up-to-date machine.

RE: Meteor shower

Just been out for a few minutes, I`ve seen 2 or 3 but nothing major.. I`ll try again later as I read that it was supposed to peak around 3am tonight.

RE: Major Terror Attack In London Foiled

While I see your point, although it`s hard to see if you are being serious, given historical fact, if there is such a thing, then it wouldn`t be beyond some people.

The problem with demonising a people is that some of these people will fight back, and rightly so, against the oppression. You are seeing it every day in Iraq, although it`s hard to tell who are the insurgeants or exactly what`s going on. A related issue is that the US won`t pull out of Iraq until all the oil is gone, anybody that thinks they will needs to look at the bigger picture of peak oil etc to get a handle on what`s truely going on.

Is there another debate about national ID cards around the corner that I`ve missed?

;)

This item was edited on Friday, 29th June 2007, 15:23

RE: Major Terror Attack In London Foiled

I remember when the IRA were running around blowing things up in the UK and no-one hardly took any notice. Yes it was a shame and lots of people died but we got on with our lives and, if not directly affected, it wasn`t a big issue.

Fast forward 15-20 years, now every time we hear a sniff of some `terror plot` or `car bomb` it panic stations and it`s whipped up by the media! It seriously ****** me off!

All this media attention gives the people responsable, whoever they are, the forum which they crave! If I had anything to do with it I would keep any `threats` allways secret until proven, how many time do you here of people being arrested for some terror plot and such like and never hear anything else?

An un-used `car bomb` gets more coverage then 90 killed with a Bagdad truck bomb FFS, I don`t call that fair and balanced reporting of the issues. Yet you hear on the front page any time there are US or UK armed forces casulties, and rightly so, just even up the scales.

Keep the populous scared and they give you all the power you need.

RE: Michael Barrymore, 2 other men, arrested on suspicion of Stuart Lubbock`s murder

Well, unlike you, I know someone that has been to one of barrymores `parties` many moons ago and lets just say he`s a sadistic SOB.

You presume he`s innocent just because he`s been released, although only on bail, I take the other view that if he was wholely innocent then he would have been released and not on bail. Also he might not be formally charged with anything, and might have his bail removed at a later date, that won`t prove that he`s innocent - just that they, the police, don`t have enough to charge him with anything - they obviously think something`s funny. Unless the police come out and say that Barrymore has 100% nothing to do with this then I`ll treat the whole situation as dodgy. Hopefully the Lubbock(sp?) family finally will get some resolution.

RE: Michael Barrymore, 2 other men, arrested on suspicion of Stuart Lubbock`s murder

He`s been released on police bail, so not as cut and dry as you believe. When he has to attend the police station again he`ll find out one way or the other if the bail will be quashed or charges brought, either way it`s too early to presumes someones inocent.

His actions to date about the matter have been nothing but shamefull and he has a lot to be shamefull about.

RE: The Worst Pain Ever...

I must agree with you to say that NHS direct are the most useless bunch of twats and are probably responsable for more trouble that they solve.

I would tell you the story but in the end it was a potentially life threatening situation and a wholely inadiquate response, a big thumbs down and I will not use them again - I`ll go to A+E instead.

Hope you pass them soon, else you`ll need them pulverised.

RE: POLL: Are the McCanns getting to much attention?

Quote:
would you really give up after 30days if your child had gone missing?

I wouldn`t give up at all! I would, for the sake of my other children, concede that she is most likely dead and hope to reconcile that into my conscience. What they have got going for them is that their other children are not of school age so are not missing out in that reguard.

The main point is that she went missing in Portugal so concentrate your publicity over there, there isn`t much that we can do over here unless they have specific intelligence that she was smuggled back to the UK.

Publicity stunts like getting a picture blessed by an Ex SS man does nothing but polorise people. If there truely was a god he wouldn`t have let this happen in the first place, like lots of other, more sick, atrocities that we have no influence over!

I`ll stop there as I don`t want to hyjack this and turn it into a theological debate.

RE: POLL: Are the McCanns getting to much attention?

And then you get stories like this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=459493&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source= which, if true, really extract the urine.

The portuguese police must be really clutching at straws if they are trying this, and what were the UK police doing acting on it? I think they, the parents, just need to concede that she is most likely dead and move on. I read during the Sarah Pain search, which was very close to me geographically, that if they(the missing child) isn`t found in the first three days then it`s very rare that they find them alive.

I, like everyone else, wants her to be found alive and well, but if this happens in this case then I`ll be amazed. :

RE: Buying property - any advice, pointers, blah blah?

Ok, maybe I didn`t fully explain myself so here`s what I mean.

I wouldn`t stretch myself to get on the housing market at the moment as interest rates are going the wrong way. on a £200k mortgage a .5% rise in interest rate is £100 per month approx.

With the rising interest rates you are also going to see a leveling off or slight, or more major, decrease in the price of houses - depending on how far rates go up to control inflation. This is being offset at the moment by imigration into the country and migration from more expensive parts of the country, read london et al, but it can`t last.

Perhaps i`m just a pessimist!

RE: TV makes up nearly 50% of all illegal torrent downloads

Lol, I`ve got one of those and it`s the illusion of control - excellent fun.

I can agree with that, now that lost/heroes/smallville(yeah i know ;)) have finnished I down`t download much at all.

RE: Buying property - any advice, pointers, blah blah?

I really think that it`s the wrong time to buy at the moment, due to increasing interest rates mainly. lots of housing is comming on the market from people trying to get out of the buy to let market because of the increase in the interest rates make it either not profitable or is costing them money now - with more interest rates due in the future to get inflation back under control.

If you can afford interest rates being 6% or more, i`d say no more then 6.5-7% at most, and are prepared to stay in the place for the long term(posible negative equaty) then go for it.. But myself personally would be inclined to wait for a while.

RE: A Brush with Royalty

Now your wife can say she was stood next to a group of workshy inbred foreigners whos only claim to fame is to sponge of the populace.. Back in the day they probably deserved some respect but now they are a total irrelevency.

And that`s me being nice about `them`!

RE: whats my pc doing?!

CCleaner is a free application from here: www.ccleaner.com

Use the issues part of the program to sort out the registry, it saves a backup files of the changes made incase it does something wrong - which hasn`t been needed for me.

RE: whats my pc doing?!

Does seem a slightly high number of processes but not overly so.

The first thing I`d do is defrag your hard disk, it might just be that your HD has become so fragmented that it`s really struggling.

The other thing you could do is to go into msconfig and reduce the number of programs that are running in the background. You could also use a registry cleaner like CCleaner to cut some of the crud from the registry..

All things to try but do the Defrag first and see if that helps, if not then use CCleaner to try and sort the registry and then lastly try msconfig but it`s not trivial to use.

RE: Windows Vista - worth it?

I installed a copy with no cd-key, which give you 30 days iirc, borrowed from a friend. I did a dual boot with my current XP install so I could fall back if required.

I used Vista for about the first week and haven`t bothered with it since. It booted up fast but it just looked to me to be too much eye candy - form over function. The Aeroglass interface doesn`t add anything above looking nice, and as I`ve said even that has very limited appeal..

Also I had problem streaming videos from web pages, when I had a look round the `net I found it to be the new copy protection system that was not letting me play them, so I had to boot back to XP to play these vids - Nice!

Direct-X 8 and 9 games played poorly, this might be down to imature drivers so give that time.

Also the UAC or user access control was soo picky I ended up turning the damn thing off.

Some food for thought..

RE: DVD RIPPING

Both those programs haven`t been updated in years to take into account all the newer copy protection tricks the studios are using..

Try DVDFab here: http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

RE: Why can`t I play like this man?

Here`s one of my favorites:

This item was edited on Wednesday, 25th April 2007, 00:49

RE: Motorized wheelchair question.

Looks like she took the corner too fast and lost the back end, resulting in her sliding into the arnco barrier :p She even put on some opposite lock to try and sort it but to no avail - could have been caught out by the damp conditions especially if she had slicks on..

BAck to the OP, 8mph ones need to be registered with the DVLA and taxed - but the tax is free for them so it`s a formality..