* Posts by Simon Harris

2773 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2007

xHamster reports spike in UK users getting their five-knuckle shuffle on before pr0n age checks

Simon Harris

Re: Answer: I'm working from home.

"Working from home"

Mitchell and Webb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk

Simon Harris

"Just wait, the microchipping is literally around the corner"

I'm just worried about where they'll shove the chip...

Are there any instructional videos on xHampster that may provide the answer?

"Call that a microchip? - it looks more like a thermionic valve to me"

Simon Harris

Re: They won't apply to sites on which porn makes up a third or less of the content

I remember one of the early cam sites, back in the early 2000s had a supposedly big non-smutty section where you could chat to people about hobbies, cooking, astrology, etc.

I doubt the family-friendly section ever made much money, and was retired, I think, by the mid 00's.

Smartphones gateway drug to the Antichrist, says leader of Russian Orthodox Church

Simon Harris

I couldn't help but be reminded of Lady Whiteadder's (Blackadder's aunt from series 2) head-gear after seeing that picture.

Simon Harris
Coat

Modern smartphones may herald the arrival of the Anti-Christ...

but old style watches are surely the domain of the antique-wrist.

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

Simon Harris

Re: I haven't updated my win 7 box in _MONTHS_

I used to have an offline Windows 7 box - after a few months of not talking to Microsoft it would declare the legitimate version of Windows to be a counterfeit copy and replace the wallpaper with a counterfeit label until it connected to Microsoft to realise it was a real version.

You were told to clean up our systems, not delete 8,000 crucial files

Simon Harris

Re: xfer

Only the one 'from key'? - I've got quite a collection of folders with names USB_STICK, SD_CARD, etc. where I need something for external storage/camera use but can't be arsed to sort it out properly, so just dump it to the hard drive 'temporarily' and then wipe the external drive.

SpaceX's Crew Dragon shows up at pad 39A, nearly 8 years after the last Shuttle left

Simon Harris

Re: Naming conventions

I take some of that back - in the 'Best Sci-Fi films never made' article in 2011 by the much missed Lester Haines, no less than 6 Niven or Niven/Pournelle books are listed.

Someone must have got the hint as some of Lester's list have since been filmed.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/sci_fi_movie_poll/

Simon Harris

Re: Naming conventions

Sadly, I think it took Jerry Pournelle dying to get much of a mention of Larry Niven on the Register - I think Niven's science fiction writing is the more entertaining of the two though, although I enjoyed Pournelle's Chaos Manor.

Simon Harris

Re: Excellent stuff!

I wasn't sure if you were referring to Musk's rocket, or El Reg's subheading!

Excellent innuendoing, El Reg.

More nodding dogs green-light terrible UK.gov pr0n age verification plans

Simon Harris
Happy

Re: Just like buying a magazine.

Apparently more options are now available for reaching the top shelf...

http://www.selfridges.com/GB/en/cat/gravity-industries-jet-suit-series-3_5161-10212-GRAVITYJETSUIT/

Simon Harris

More importantly, will the government be advertising for jobs to look for and thoroughly test porn sites, and what will the salary be?

Or have they just left Damian Green to get on with it himself?

Simon Harris
Facepalm

Re: Just like buying a magazine.

kids are perfectly aware that porn films are about as true-to-life as any Hollywood action flick, designed to entertain, not emulate.

I wouldn't be so sure about that - certainly not the Hollywood action flicks anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/03/netflix-bird-box-challenge-meme-sandra-bullock-blindfold

'Netflix warns viewers against Bird Box challenge meme: 'Do not end up in hospital'

The streaming giant has cautioned those mimicking Sandra Bullock’s character by walking around blindfolded to try not to injure themselves'

Simon Harris

Re: Just like buying a magazine. @ Dazed and Confused

Were you that boy?

Simon Harris

Re: All you need is......

Bring back the mutoscope.

Simon Harris

Re: Just like buying a magazine.

The only reasonable route is to have mandatory content filters set to on by default, and then you ring up your Internet provider to set them to off.

I thought that was how things were supposed to have been for the past 4 or 5 years - I remember when that came in having to update my accounts to unlock content on Virgin and EE.

Simon Harris

Re: Just like buying a magazine.

One of my school friends had a cunning plan to get around the local newsagent's age verification system.

He would come to school with a large brown envelope and type on the school computer (which in those days consisted of a PDP8-e and a couple of teletypes):

"Dear newsagent, unfortunately I cannot get to your shop today so I have sent my son instead with the money. Please could I purchase the latest copy of Penthouse. So that my son does not see the pictures, please could you seal the magazine in the brown envelope before handing it over."

Simon Harris

Re: So...

Will internet porn be available to wives and servants?

</Mervyn Griffith-Jones>

Happy new year, readers. Yes, we have threaded comments, an image-lite mode, and more...

Simon Harris

Re: holograraphic love dungeon layout

"I prefer a domain to a workgroup"

You'll have to take that up with your Domain-atrix.

Simon Harris
Coat

Re: How do the vultures find time to make these changes

If it's a love dungeon, surely that should be beater testing.

Simon Harris

Re: holograraphic love dungeon layout

In a holographic love dungeon, the last thing you want to do is iron out the kinks.

Simon Harris

Re: Only Mumsnet to go then ...

I suspect that if you drew a Venn diagram of Mumsnet users and El Reg users the intersection area would be quite small.

Simon Harris
Devil

Add an icon

Now that there is more width, I notice that the icons box is more capacious and just crying out for more icons to be added.

(I see others have already put in specific requests)

New Horizons snaps finish buffering: Ultima Thule actually two dust bunnies that got snuggly 4.5 billion years ago

Simon Harris

How about Stay and Puft after the Ghostbusters Marshmallow Man?

Oregon can't stop people from calling themselves engineers, judge rules in Traffic-Light-Math-Gate

Simon Harris

Re: Great for this Engineer

Indeed, both railways and networks can use tokens to prevent collisions.

Simon Harris

Re: Great for this Engineer

I can't help thinking that might be a euphemism.

Simon Harris

Re: Great for this Engineer

only three and a fraction of the planned seven volumes of "The Art of Computer Programming" have ever made it to the publishers.

I shall forthwith change my job title to Software Artist.

Simon Harris
IT Angle

Re: What an engineer does in the UK

I got woken up this morning by the wheelie-bin evacuation engineers.

IT angle? - broken computers are dealt with by the wheelie-bin electronics evacuation engineers, or WEEE as they are better known.

Detailed: How Russian government's Fancy Bear UEFI rootkit sneaks onto Windows PCs

Simon Harris

Re: The anti-intellectual Americans etc...

Eggheads?

But this is The Register, surely the proper term is Boffins...

or does El Reg's style guide have an Egghead/Boffin demarcation line between engineers and scientists?

Simon Harris

Re: The real solution

Of course, a lurking rootkit installer could sit in the background and watch for a valid attempt to update flash memory, and then add its payload before you've had time to switch off writes again.

As you said 'undefined value of safe' - 'safer' as it could protect against hit-and-run attacks but there could still be ways around it.

Simon Harris

Re: The real solution

Although that wouldn't solve the problem of a sleeper rootkit that might get backed up without you realising it was there.

It would however make sense if PCs were supplied with a fall-back BIOS in non-rewritable ROM that could be copied back, if possible without CPU intervention, if the flash version is found to be compromised.

China's loose Chang'e: Probe lands on far side of the Moon in science first, says state media

Simon Harris

"Probe lands on far side"

That really calls for a Gary Larson cartoon.

The Great British Curry: Put down the takeaway, you're cooking tonight

Simon Harris

Re: "Toast"

"Doesn't require a two and a half thousand word article"?

If you can't write 2500 words on toast you're not really trying - toaster/grill, white/brown/brown with bits bread, type of topping... so many choices to discuss.

Dutch boyband hopes to reverse Brexit through the power of music

Simon Harris

Obviously a UKIP plot...

To try to make us hate Europe more.

You can tell by the outfits - yellow and purple, the colours of UKIP.

Boffins don't give a sh!t, slap Trump's face on a turd in science journal

Simon Harris
Coat

"Indeed, some questioned why it hadn't been spotted in peer review."

They were looking for the wrong type of excreta.

It would never have been spotted in pee-r review...

Only the people in poo-r review would have found it.

Mine's the one with the hand sanitiser in the pocket --------->

Godmother of word processing Evelyn Berezin dies at 93

Simon Harris

Redactron

It sounds not so much like a conventional word processor as some governmental document processor where you feed in documents at one end, it analyses them for anything in the least bit sensitive and produces a version with vast swathes of it blacked out at the other.

Typical usage: "Fire up the Redactron, Hammond, we can't let the public see these budget cuts."

LG's beer-making bot singlehandedly sucks all fun, boffinry from home brewing

Simon Harris
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Capsule system.

The thing about a capsule based coffee maker is that I can choose which coffee I want and have it ready within a minute.

Naturally, after writing this, the next coffee capsule I used split and I had to spend the next five minutes mopping up hot water and coffee sludge from the machine and kitchen worktop.

More of a mess than this ---------------------->

Simon Harris

Capsule system.

The thing about a capsule based coffee maker is that I can choose which coffee I want and have it ready within a minute.

I'm not sure that having a capsule based beer maker, where you have to choose which preset beer you want to drink in two weeks is such a great idea - I'd rather pop out to the 24-hour Tesco* round the corner and see what's in their beer section. If it gave you more choice to select and mix your ingredients, as breadmakers do, drinking your own creation would have more appeal.

*better beer shops are available, but they're more than 3 minutes from my house.

Simon Harris

Re: Why?

"Bread makers are an excellent invention."

Agreed. The best thing has to be the timer so you have freshly baked bread straight onto your breakfast plate when you wake up.

Total Inability To Support User Phones: O2 fries, burning data for 32 million Brits

Simon Harris
Pint

Can't chat on Whatapp and Facebook?

Try the off-line alternative, and go to the pub.

FYI: NASA has sent a snatch-and-grab spacecraft to an asteroid to seize some rock and send it back to Earth

Simon Harris

Re: Giant wombats in space?

I'm worried - it looks like a Borg cube.

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

Simon Harris
FAIL

OneDrive: Failure is not an option...

... it's a graphic design opportunity.

Great Scott! Is nothing sacred? US movie-goers vote Back To The Future as most-wanted reboot

Simon Harris
Coat

Re: what the people want

"the CGI version of 'Steamboat Willy' is probably on the table, someplace..."

I'm sure there's already a live-action Steamboat Willy. Probably on PronHub.

NASA has Mars InSight as latest lander due to arrive today

Simon Harris

Times.

Are those the actual times of events or the times when we should receive telemetry of things happening? The time delay of signals from Mars to Earth is about 8 minutes at the moment.

Manchester man fined £1,440 after neighbours couldn't open windows for stench of dog toffee

Simon Harris

Having to put up with the smell of dog toffee...

the man's neighbour complained "Heaven knows, I'm miserable now"

Premiere Pro bug ate my videos! Bloke sues Adobe after greedy 'clean cache' wipes files

Simon Harris

100,000 individual video clips...

Did anyone else read that and instantly think 'My god! That's a lot of porn!' ?

iPhone XR, for when £1,000 is just too much for a smartmobe

Simon Harris
Happy

Danish Pastries...

a much better use for the change than 'something wrist mounted'.

Woman who hooked up with over 15 spectres has found her forever phantom after whirlwind romance and plane sex

Simon Harris

Re: Bah!

The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town.

Simon Harris

Sex with a ghost.

Do you experience la petite mort ?