Posts by TeeCee

Catholic schism over mobile icons

Finger trouble.

So, with a simple typo on the phone keypad the faithful can now offer prayers to the Crazy Frog.

YES! <airpunch>

HMRC offers £20k reward for ID goldmine CDs

Sussed it!

I reckon the things arrived at the NAO as planned. Then (when they realised that the data wasn't "anonymised") the NAO flogged 'em to the Russian mafia to pay the last expenses claim of the Comptroller and Auditor general.

Why, because they're the NAO and they couldn't countenance paying for such extensive junketing and blatant snout to trough juxtapositioning directly from the public purse now, could they?

Dell punts $4450 World of Warcraft notebook

Smart marketing?

You've got to hand it to the folks in Dell's Marketing dept. Spotting that sad bastards with absolutely no life whatsoever are quite likely to have four and a half grand to drop on a new laptop rather than blowing it on going out with their mates, beer, clean laundry or food.

One thing they've missed. If you *are* a sad bastard with absolutely no life whatsoever and don't get out much, why would you want a laptop rather than a desktop?

I reckon that a product with a target market of Warcraft junkies who like to get out a lot isn't going to break any sales records.........

Mum defends suspected Kiwi botmaster

@the other steve

I'm a tad upset to find that Hitler posts anonymously here.

Will the anon cow who is actually Hitler please stand up and make himself known?

Is he using "[e-mail]" as a login? (Harvest that you b******s).

Beer makes people have sex with you

@Fred

Your wish can be granted, with Beer!

You will need one old, radium-dial, luminous watch, one clapped out Ford Fiesta, some duct tape and a cliff.

Open the bonnet of the Fiesta and duct-tape the watch to the rocker cover. Close the bonnet.

Now, drink *lots* of Beer.

Hey presto, nuclear powered flying car.

Counterfeit Vista rate half that of XP

@alistair

"You are correct, people did gripe at Xp, but XP worked out the box."

Ah. So you never used a not-always-on Internet connection with vanilla, no-service-pack-whatsoever XP then? XP most certainly did *not* work out of the box (well, not reliably) until SP1 came along. I can assure you of this from bitter experience gained looking after others' PCs until SP1 arrived. I stuck to '98SE until then 'cos XP stunk so bad.

Personally though, I don't hold to the "first service pack" theory of when a Windoze release becomes really stable. I reckon it's usually about the time MS schedule to cease support (98SE, 2k SP4, XP "SP3"....).

Microsoft offers $300m for web-washing ad campaign

How about:

"Windows Live. It's crap, you don't want it, but it's bundled with the O/S and YOU CAN'T TURN IT OFF!!!!! BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!"

"Windows Live. We didn't really want to make this, but Intel give us a shed-load of cash to come up with things to sell faster CPUs."

"The Internet. Some people think it could be safer. Some people think it could be better presented. Some people think that it could be easier to find what you want. We agree. But we only had fourpence and twentyfive minutes to spare. Windows Live."

Galileo pork punchup takes unexpected twist

@Northern Rock Anon Cow.

You reckon that 2.4Bn is a fair price to pay for a service we currently get for free, only owned by a different big-government entity with delusions of grandeur that we don't trust?

Boy, do I have some investment opportunities for you!

One thing you are right about though, it's a better investment than NR. But, since I regard that one as being not entirely dissimilar to piling 2Bn in cash on the floor each week and setting fire to it, I don't think that's a selling point.

(Piccy of Bill Gates looking chuffed, 'cos he knows a thing or two about taking billions off mugs).

Novell vs SCO will go to court after all

@Lance

Crikey. All those poor people with money in Red Hat are going to be disappointed then.

Remember, all generalisations are wrong.

Google permits Dell to sell Dell servers

Distinctive bezel?

I should say so! That one's going to stand out in a rack now.

Looks to me like someone's had a particularly nasty tummy problem after a couple of weeks on a paella and custard diet. I'd be looking to hide it behind a tape safe or something else suitably large, dull and opaque.

"Boy racer" stylie servers. Who'd have thunk it?

UK gov superfast broadband summit decides... erm... nothing

Behind closed doors.

We may not know exactly what was said, but from the public quotes I'll bet they had a bloody good round of "buzzword bingo" in there.

Capita-Lincolnshire IT venture scrapped

Other news today.

Pope issues encyclical entitled: "Allah is the one true God and Mohammed is his prophet".

Eight out of ten bears (who expressed a preference) said that they thought the most important thing to have in a cave was an indoor flush toilet with mains drainage and soft toilet paper.

Apple Macs

From a mac specialist yet!

".....most people buying a MacBook buy on their preference to colour....."

ROTFLMAO! (accompanied by the sound of blubbing fanbois).

Google agrees to cough Israeli blogger's IP address

@Sir Spoon

Nah. Google's ad serving technology knows the IP address of everyone who's ever posted anything on the Internet anywhere.

Dixons grinches Christmas

Translation.

We've got a lot of shit in stock, but we can't sell shit. Our support people are working their arses off trying to fix this shit. We don't know if we can get people to take any more of our shit next year.

Only bicarbonate of soda can save mankind!

Clarification.

The pile of CO2 in question will be the same size as a herd of cats. I'll leave the actual herding of cats and measurement of resulting herd size as an exercise for the reader.

Al Gore climate change site hacked

You swine!

I just got a mental image of Al Gore on Viagra.

<shudder>

Now I've got to go and wash my mind out with alcohol........

UK's toads menaced by fungal attack

Apocalyptic?

Exactly how trivial can something be and still be an Apocalypse?

The Apocalypse used to be defined as the End Of The World including a Final Battle between Good and Evil. Now it appears that one will occur if more than an undefined percentage of toads croak (oops, sorry) with the combined armies of Good and Evil still sat at home with their feet up watching it on telly.

I think we need a set of Reg units to define the exact relationship between the Apocalypse, catastrophe, calamity, disaster, database loss, cockup, extensive congestion at junction three, etc.

Revalue the Apocalypse now!

UK firm 'recalls' 575 knee implants

It could work.

Magnetic knees for kneeling Muslims to get a compass bearing with. There's a market there you know.

Dinosaurs derail desalination drive Down under

Dino smarts.

A load of crusties have to chain themselves to railings, live in muddy tunnels, chuck things at the cops and hang around outdoors waving placards in all weathers to put a crimp in a major development.

It seems that all a load of Dinos have to do to achieve the same is to lie around all nice 'n comfy in the subsoil strata.

I know which group my money's on in the "smart" stakes.

Boffins ponder Galileo signals as ocean monitors

Altitude? Cobblers!

Funnily enough, my GPS seems to know how far it is above sea level at all times. Equally oddly it's not a Galileo one. Presumably it's got a crystal ball built in or something since this is a unique selling point for Galileo.......

If you really need to justify something that costs gobs 'n gobs, do try to come up with something that can't be done already for free.

Also, the first example given is just so daft it's unbelievable. Delivery driver turns up, gets into lift, consults GPS to work out how high up he needs to go. Oh dear, the GPS doesn't seem to get a signal inside this steel box encased in a concrete building. The guy in 15a doesn't get his smutty mags, civilisation falls and the world ends.........

But, wait a second, this address says "15a", I'll bet that this is on (drum roll) the 15th floor!!! The smutty mags CAN be delivered!!!!!! The world is saved!!!!!!!!!

Britain's home front must go green, study

Yet again.

Following on from "we're going to tax the fuck out of you if you can't afford to buy a brand spanking new greener car", we now have "we're going to.............................house".

Must be marvellous to be as rich as Croesus these days and be able to take advantage of all the lovely inherent tax reductions for buying new stuff every time the bastards move the goalposts.

Time to break out the AK47s and start hanging environmentalists from lampposts before things get out of hand.

Melting ice kills polar bears, say boffins

@Risky

Panda?

Running queries on the HMRC database fiasco

The *real* insight here is......

"....... the fact that our government has demonstrated a complete lack of ability to protect our data is, for me, a strong argument against ID cards. But then, I'm not a politician."

And there we have it folks, the ID card problem in a nutshell.

Tasers can be instrument of torture, says UN

Taser?

Can it possibly be any more horrific than the Soft Cushions or, dare I say it, the Comfy Chair?

The red cloak and hat please.

Russia plans manned space launch centre

Cuba?

Well, since the primary driver here is to have the thing on their own territory, there's a small problem with this (hint: look at a map of the island in question, it has C-U-B-A written on it, not R-U-S-S-I-A).

Also a problem is that a quick look at the atlas reveals that Cuba is at a somewhat inconvenient distance from Russia.

If they're prepared to accept something on foreign soil and that far away, there's an existing facility in Florida that probably has some spare capacity to rent out.

Researchers find massive mud flow off African coast

Ho hum.

Cue the God squad flaming you for daring to suggest that anything happened 60,000 years ago.....

Hitachi 'collision avoidance' bot does a Ballmer at press do

@Pete

".....it operates on two wheels (a trick neither you nor I could manage)...."

May I suggest that you take the two little wheels off the back of your bicycle? I think that you're old enough now..........

Nokia cranks up twisty-turny phone design

Can't resist.....

Is this for making crank calls?

I think that this is a Nokia wind-up.

Fast taxi please.

Blu-ray dominates Japanese HD recorder sales

So the clear winner is......?

Remember folks that Betamax was king in Japan right up until videotape was superseded by DVD.

All these figures mean is that Sony rules the roost over there. Still cleaning up the bear shit in the Vatican are they?

Datapocalypse Now

Comic Sans?

"Most worrying of all, is the [over]use of Comic Sans"

WHAT!!?? The "most worrying" feature of those emails is the sodding font they're in? If only they'd used Times New Roman it would all be OK? Which bloody planet are you from?

It's the Government's focus on style, spin and presentation over substance, content and control that's caused this cockup to spiral out of control in the first place. Are you angling for a job from Gordon or something?

Need a new set of b*llocks? Try Argos

@Greg

"For example, all desks are bloke's names, IIRC"

""Fartfull," which I believe was a computer desk"

ROTFLMAO!!!

Orange unpeels HTC Touch Dual

Made my day.

Having recently bought a Touch, I was a little miffed when the Touch Dual shipped in the following week or so. The slidey keypad thing looked nice.

However, finding that it doesn't have WiFi (and not believing you and waffling off to the HTC website to check and finding that, blow me, it doesn't) I now feel quite smug.

While I'm sure that all this 3G stuff is full of meaty goodness to some, if your company punts you a bog 2G SIM and you have to live with it and/or you travel a lot, it's in there with the chocolate teapot in the "nice to have" feature list. WiFi is up there in the "must have" section for me (home, offices and most civilised places that you can get a coffee while you connect).

Oh, the ordinary Touch is bloody marvellous BTW. Not a fingerprint magnet at all. It wasn't a hot, sweaty day when you looked at it perchance?

First metal cut on BAE's 'Taranis' robot stealth bomber

IVR....

"Hello, welcome to the RAF. I'm sorry but all our pilots are all unavailable at the moment. If you have your GPS coordinates available, you may use our TARANIS service. Press 1 to drop a bomb, 2 to drop a smart bomb, 3 to order reconnaissance photographs, 4 to make a strafing run and 9 to nuke the bastards 'til they glow. This last option requires that you have previously set up an account with us and have your PIN number to hand. Alternatively, hold the line to speak to one of our clerks who will guide you through the process of provisioning death from afar. Thank you for using the RAF, a division of the Ministry of Defence."

Info chief renews call for data breach crime penalties

Penalty?

While I sympathise with the ICO what's the point? You prosecute and the organisation in breach is given a big fine. This is paid by HMRC (i.e. the Treasury) and given to, er, the Treasury. The deterrent value is what exactly?

I predict the following: A massive backlash bolting down all the Government's data tighter than a gnat's chuff. The whole Civil Service will be completely paralysed by the draconian security restrictions. The usual suspects providing Goverment IT will make a massive wodge of cash out of the process and the taxpayer. The fallout will cause questions in the House, senior Heads Will Roll and suffer the usual draconian punishment of, er, a massive payoff and retirement on a full index-linked pension.

From the OED, Civil Service edition: Accountability - something odd that happens in the Private Sector when they balls things up catastrophically. Gravy Train - see "Terms of employment".

Police arrest Welsh counterfeit music threesome

"That's not a ring, it's a triangle"

Including the sheep makes it a ring.

Will Darling's data giveaway kill off ID cards?

To answer the question, No.

In the paper:

"Alistair Darling said that the biometric identifiers that would be entered on to the ID database would make such blunders less likely."

So they're trying to spin this as a *positive* thing for the ID card database. Yet again the Government proves that between Them and the Real World there's a yawning chasm filled with bullshit.

Can we have an icon of Gordon Brown nailed to the cross with his bollocks on fire and being pelted with rotten fruit please? To save effort, just set it up and I'll come and take the picture for you.

Darling admits Revenue loss of 25 million personal records

Roundup.

Dan: Are you Mystic Meg in disguise?

Quote from today's Telegraph: "Alistair Darling said that the biometric identifiers that would be entered on to the ID database would make such blunders less likely."

Darling should go for that gem of mind-numbing stupidity if nothing else.

Also in the paper is a quote from Frank Abagnale, that well-known cheque fraudster turned FBI consultant who bears a striking similarity to Leonardo di Caprio. Apparently he's been consulting for the Government on ID cards and said he though they were a bad idea because: "You cannot trust any agency with people's personal data."

So, one of the world's leading experts on banking fraud and data security says this and the Government puts its fingers in its ears. However, the usual suspects in the consultancy world (who have repeatedly proved that they couldn't organise a piss up in a sodding brewery when it comes to Government IT) say it'll all be OK, so it's full steam ahead and snouts in the trough all around.

Next election I think I'll be voting Official Monster Raving Loony, it's the only safe choice for the genuinely sane voter.

Lost HMRC discs pop up on eBay

TNT

Are they called TNT because of the extensive damage to your career caused when their service blows up in your face?

Leopard security bug puts Mail users at risk

@Snot Nice

Very clever, very funny. Now explain how I remove the coffee spray from my laptop please?

Wii-like motion-control games to come to the PS2

That sound....

...I hear seems to be thousands of PS3 fanbois muttering "Et tu Brute?".

Brian May appointed university chancellor

@Fraser

"Cherie is one of, if not the, leading human rights lawyer in the UK."

I prefer "waste of skin". It's shorter, snappier and conveys exactly the same meaning.

Sony Ericsson ‘invents’ drag-and-drop for handhelds

One click?

All sounds a bit too all-encompassing to me. Somewhat like another patent that's caused trouble. How the act of sending a file from a to b by "gesturing" at it rather than thumping a button marked "send" makes this a uniquely patentable feature sums up everything that's wrong with the patent system to me.

Presumably, if I were to come up with a system that worked the same way but required the user to use his willy on the screen rather than his finger that would be sufficiently different to get me my own patent?

Now, if you could stick two fingers up at your oh-so-clever phone when it pisses you off (as it inevitably will at some point) and have it immediately fly off and shove itself up the arse of Sony-Ericsson's CEO, that would be worth having. Hmmm, I feel a patent application coming on.

Beer set to hit four quid a pint

@Danny

OK smartarse. Where did you get a pint of reasonably-priced beer in the UK? Go on, tell us.

Still look at it this way. You'll be able to fly cattle-class to Prague, stay the weekend, get thoroughly wankered, fly back and still save money. The best part is that your flight will contribute to Global warming*, pushing up the price of beer in the UK and next time you do it, you'll save *even more money*.

Yippee!

The Bomber jacket with the Pilsner Urquell logo please.

*Unless, of course, it's nothing to do with Global warming at all and it's just making an appearance as the usual trendy cop-out, in which case this won't work. Boooo.

Drink rats' milk, suggests battling Heather Mills

Rat's milk???????????

'cos of course she's, like, tried it and found it gooood, hasn't she. No?

Chalk up another entry in the Vegan=Loony list.

Why bother to take the piss when they're so bloody good at doing it themselves? Choosing Lady Teapot as your spokesthing is hardly the act of a sane group for a start.

UN mandates stability control in trucks - cars to follow

Shurely shome mishtake?

The Eurodroids being on their dictatorial high horses I could understand, but the UN? They don't have the authority to mandate anything anywhere.

The best they could do would be to pass a resolution empowering someone to ask the various governments *really* nicely if they'd like to find time in their busy schedules to possibly think about the potential of drafting legislation that might go some way towards this. They'd then get the usual answer involving sex and travel from most of them.........

Local govt think tank slams road pricing plan

"....£380m fule subsidy for bus operators...."

But any fule kno that bus operators rely on this?

Comet Holmes and the case of the Disappearing Tail

@Charles

Do you mean "tectonics" by any chance?

I must admit though, the idea of geological structures of continental scale stomping around in jackboots wearing uniforms covered in lots of shiny buttons surmounted with pointy helmets and barking harsh, gutteral orders at anyone within earshot is quite surrealistically appealing. Less likely to earn a permanent place in the pantheon of accepted scientific theory I'd have thought though.

BitMicro pumps solid state drives to 1.6TB

@Adam

Not so sure on the MTBF figures meself. These are flash memory based yes? AFAIK there's still a relatively low (compared to traditional storage) cycle limit on flash cells before they start to degrade to failure (was about 10,000 cycles).

If you went for a tiered solution with the most frequently updated data being on the SSDs (and, presumably being moved around and optimised by the storage management system), you might find them failing all too quickly.

Chinese cyber strikes will be 'like WMD'

'like WMD'?

How exactly?

Non-existant? Great for embarassing senior politicians? Handy for scaring the public? Making good newspaper headlines on a slow news day? Illustrating how bleedin' useless the spooks are? Covered in sand?

We need to know.

Still, nice to see the US government following El Reg's lead and putting out some vacuous fluff on Friday to provide a bit of light entertainment going into the weekend.