Posts by anarchic-teapot

Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap

If all the energy wasted

on posting knee-jerk reactions in this thread was laid end-to-end, it would probably power a third-world country for a month. I'm off to the pub.

Where's the powered-by-cow-farts icon?

Firefox 3 Download Day falls flat on face

Firefox 3 Download Day falls flat on face

The word we're looking for here is "hubris". If you announce a world record attempt (yes that *does* include establishing the first one) on the Internet, you are asking for your servers to go belly-up asap.

@ Steve R: Sadly, Ubuntu is sticking with RC2 for now. I quite like Firefox (for the record, I find IE7 awkward, but yes Opera with v9.5 is at last useable without intensive retraining and profanity) and FF3 is now appreciably faster than FF2 or the beta. About bloody time.

AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

Bugger

So that's why hits to my site have apparently doubled over the past ten days or so, and here was me thinking that trying to put quality stuff online was at last paying dividends.

What bothers me - apart from all the bandwidth burning, which apart from being unecological is just plain rude - is that the information being provided to (mostly) individuals paying the odd cent to advertise on my site is now seriously distorted.

Moreover, there are hosting services who are perfectly capable of taking a site offline once it reaches a set bandwidth limit, and do. Not good for small businesses.

@ Phil Endecott : my sentiments entirely

@ AVG Look you do a nice antivirus suite, what on earth possessed you to do this shielding in such a damn silly way?

OpenOffice update completes bumper patch crop

@ netean

> Just crazy that a patch update can't just be that... a patch!

Agreed.

>I hate openoffice!

But at least they don't completely change the interface and then try to tell you it's more intuitive (anything that takes 2 weeks to learn to use in *not* intuitive, at least according to my dictionary).

Hacker cops to $70k botnet rampage

"He'd probably respond well if people took an interest"

If you actually read to the end of the lady's comment, apparently he didn't.

Fire at The Planet takes down thousands of websites

Has no-one thought to enquire

What the PFY was doing at the time? A transformer exploding and taking out three walls sounds deeply suspicious to me.

Discovery relief mission is go

@Joe Cooper

What, the cludgie?

9/11 an inside job, says Irish pop folkster

Friday afternoon "I know physics" flamewars

Now that's what I call entertainment.

Microsoft urges Windows users to shun 'carpet bombing' Safari

@Player_16

It downloads something onto your computer whether you want it or not, but asks your permission before opeining the file? So that's all right then.

(Yes I have used Macs. No; I wouldn't use Safari on a Mac either. I have this strange unexplainable distrust of any web browser knitted into the operating system)

Download al Qaeda manuals from the DoJ, go to prison?

@Chris Emerson

You need to work on your reading skills, son.

Economist: girls actually better than boys at maths

Of course, it might of helped

if they'd taken into account the _types_ of gender discrimination present in each country, rather than using an overall rating.

Then of course, that would be expecting an economist to actually make the effort to understand and analyse sociological data.

Ballmer and Gates defend Vista, drop Windows 7 hints

Children, children

_Do_ stop squabbling. In the end, it doesn't matter whether Vista is good or bad: if people aren't taking to it, then it's not a success. That's all.

Man barred from posting crimes on YouTube

@Simon Ball

Court decisions have long been part of the English legal process. This is called "case law", and can be damn useful in working out a sensible/coherent application of halfwitted legislation, or helping to plug gaps in the law.

It is, of course, always subject to review (i.e. appeal to yer higher legislatures) in the normal way.

Teapot backdoor probed by German telescope boffins

I may wear glasses

..but the rest of me isn't reflective, and anyne coming near my backdoor is in for some serious grief.

Unmanned Aerial Manhood outrage at Kasparov rally

Well obviously

it would *have* to be in Flash, wouldn't it?

Stem cell researchers claim victory in battle with Church

No squirrel tails

if we can't have pointy ears as well.

Otherwise, nice collection of knee-jerk reactions from the IANA brigade.

In Google We Trust: Health docs depo now open to Americans

@PeteDixon

Go for a beta service, run by a company and not an officil health organisation? That doesn't have the same legal and ethical constraints as real medical and paramedical staff?

Na.

The UK's National Health database sounds like a good idea, until you see the delays, compatibility problems, and huge budget overruns, it has thrown up. Not to mention the occasional dodgy contractor. And yet, I'd trust it more than Google. In a few years' time. Maybe.

Rose

PS Still that wretched "Cowboy & Cowgirl Dating" ad. I can only assume it's Mountain View that sparks them off. Either that or Google have got a US Reg hack's medical records.

Privacy? Forget it. Sell your brain and desires to the highest bidder

Toasters

Ha, I bet even in that (hopefully) far-off idyllic age the Pundits witter on about that toasters will still either send slices of warmed bread flying across the kitchen to the everlasting joy of the cat, or produce an end-of-cycle so lacklustre you need a knife and a willingness to risk second-degrees burns to lever the fodder out of its cavernous maw.

One can only hope that in the future beating a salesman to death with your cybernetic toaster will be legally recognised as justifiable homicide.

PS Would you two please stop smooching? The Google ads for this page are currently all trying to sell Asian or Russian brides, or something called Cowboy dating.

'Secure' PayPal page is... you guessed it

@Gordon Fecyk

Oh I'll include Netscape as well if you like. Hate all of them. But it was Microsoft that really inflicted HTML email on the world with Outlook Express . You could choose not to install Netscape, and considering what a bloated lump it had become by then, most did. However, for those of us forced to use Windows, there was no choice as to installing Outlook Express.

Amiga users (there were still vast numbers of us in those days) had YAM. God, I miss YAM.

@Herby

Considering that phishers are quite capable of producing HTML email that looks like plain text (it's not difficult), I don't quite see where the "much safer" comes from.

<mode="jaded_sysadmin">

"Much safer" would include not having email clients that display HTML. Many thanks to Microsoft, who started the whole HTML-email crap, and persisted despite numerous warnings of security risks.

AMD cries foul over Intel's 'river of cash' flowing to Dell

Hate that word "redact"

It's just wimpspeak for "censored"

The Moderatrix: Exclusive boudoir snap

Lookalikes

That big stick looks remarkably like the PFY's enhanced cattle-prod. Could they by any chance be related? I think we should be told.

Or maybe not.

Google Translate speaks in (more) tongues

@dervheid

> I'd like to see them translate "Late Saturday Night Drunken Glaswegian" into English.

Now lad, I know and you know that you can't even translate "Late Saturday Night Drunken Glaswegian" into Glaswegian.

'Crazy rasberry ants' target Texan tech

@Peter

> Apparently their colonies have multiple queens.

No, that's San Francisco.

IM represents 'new linguistic renaissance'

@Chris C

> I'm sorry, but I can never consider it a good thing when you lose the ability to effectively communicate with others.

You're implicitly assuming everybody that uses this shorthand (and no, I don't) loses the ability to communicate with everybody outside the same set, which is daft. For example, children don't talk to their parents the same way they talk to their friends, or their teachers, and this has been going on for donkey's. Ever since Granny was a boy and Jesus wuz a childer.

MoD begins full UFO-files public release

re: Classification of released docs?

Ever since the monumental non-release of the Jack the Ripper investigation archives, I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the documents classified as super-secret and Not For Release Ever, No Really, We Mean It would only reveal (a) mind-numbing incompetence, or (b) text so windy, boring and devoid of information that it would make 'Swann's Way' seem only marginally less snappy than 'Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy'.

Fedora 9 - an OS that even the Linux challenged can love

@ Steven Hunter

> Get a damn laptop and bring it with you. That's what us normal people do.

Yup. As an abnormal person - according to your definition - I like the idea of being able to carry a lightweight USB drive rather than hump around an awkward, heavy laptop. It may be easy for you, but then I assume you're not aged, handicapped, or a serious computer repair specialist who occasionally has to deal with users who've got a virus/trojan/rootkit on their PC and has to boot from something other than the hard drive, preferably using a different OS to avoid contamination.

Rose, not yet aged

Windows XP SP3 sends PCs into endless reboot

All went fine here

One self-built desktop, one Dell laptop with Media Centre removed and XP Pro installed (with the Dell drivers). Slight hiccup with the Bluetooth driver, nothing a cold restart couldn't fix.

Still toying with the idea of installing Ubuntu on the laptop once I no longer have need of the two Windows-only programs I run on it.

The battle of Lesbos: Exclusive combat pic

Not NSFL

but TGIF (Thank Gawd It's Friday)

More of this hard-hitting investigative journalism, please.

Astroboffins moot massive Moon-mirror heliograph

Did the "scientist" in question

...preface his exposition with the words "I have a cunning plan"?

Men could have kids with chimpanzees - gov must act

re: re: Chimpanzees in Scotland

"The ones there are would be well advised to stay out of sight for fear of being mistaken for a Frenchman and consequently finding themselves hung."

That, I believe, was an English howler. Scotland spent most of its history allied with the French against the English, and indeed this is still the case as far as football or rugger are concerned.

Brown opts for morality over science on 'lethal skunk'

"There are other considerations"

Yup. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, a dour git of a politician who only got to be PM because Blair needed someone to make him look good after he'd gone knows better than numerous scientists and psychologists who've spent years studying the situation.

Think I'll stay an expat.

Google tips hat to St George - finally

@all the moaners

Look, the English get regularly trounced at football, rugby, tennis, golf, cricket... just about everything really, except making real ale.

Fer crissakes let them have *something* to celebrate.

I'll be down the Frog & Rosbif if anyone asks.

Home Office won't appeal immigration ruling

@Spleen

Since even a successful appeal would probably go to Europe, where it would certainly be overruled by the European court, it is indeed saving taxpayers' money and civil servants' time. Which may well be wasted in other ways, but at least someone's been showing some rare common sense. Celebrate it.

Now if only the same common sense could be displayed re that bloody stupid ID card scheme...

New York lawmakers approve 'Amazon Tax'

@Steve

Actually, it's a complicated little setup based on turnover (sales) and whether or not you can produce a VAT registration number. Companies don't pay VAT on intracommunity purchases, although there's the administrative headache of having to declare the bloody thing in detail anyway. This latter is designed to create extra for for already overworked, overstressed, and underpaid accountants. They're the nice ladies who make sure the boss signs your paycheck on time.

Yer ordinary Joe will pay a rate of VAT depending on how much Amazon, Maplin, or Ye Olde Frilly Knicker Shoppe actually sell to his or her country.

World Bank chief: Ethanol cars run on human misery

@Steve

You mean, eat the extra children? I think Jonathan Swift had a few good recipes, must dig them out...

Local council uses snooping laws to spy on three-year-old

the lowest level of local government

Please get it right: the lowest *form* of local government.

London teen orders 'cab, innit'

Of course it's marketing

Cost of a call to Directory enquiries: 50p

One Displaysense cabinet: £180

Being able to tell your mates about it over a pint: absolutely priceless.

American ISPs already sharing data with outside ad firms

What I don't get

...is how they can target ads at you if it's all completely anonymous. How can you track someone if you don't know who they are (i.e. don't have some sort of identifier which at any point can be traced to a particular machine), let alone serve the poor buggers "relevant" ads based on their browsing history?

Sounds like someone is being economical with the vérité.

London store brews £50-a-poop cat-crap coffee

Fail to see the problem

After all, you all eat eggs don't you? You *do* know where they come from?

@Defex My new cat seems to like coffee. I guess it's not as weird as I thought after all.

EU sets cellphone users loose in aircraft

@Paul

"I find the "off" button on the phone works just as effectively, and is a hell of a lot cheaper than flying. If I'm not on-call, I don't need to be reachable whether I'm in the air or not."

Some poor buggers don't have that option, and are expected to have their professional 'phone on all the time. Sucks to be them, admittedly, but there you go.

Apple forbids Windows users from installing Safari for Windows

An exercise in hypocrisy

Not that I intend to install it anyway, I had quite enough of Safari on a real Mac, but how on earth are they going to check if everyone who clicks on "accept" is using Apple-labelled hardware? Sounds more like Microsoft's old stance on pirated copies of Windows: officially against it, but secretly pleased their damn OS got onto as many machines as possible, thereby building up a de facto monopoly.

I'm off to read Ubersoft.

X Prize comes to earth

Totally barking up the wrong tree

Where's the car powered solely by beer- and curry-farts, then?

Now that would be ecological. And fun.

Minister wants more mashups

@John

Mishaps/mashups?

No, I think you got the correct meaning. It's just the spelling that changes.

'Boil a frog' ID card rollout to continue until 2012

Re: Hang On...

"So, instead of only having the civil service lose your fucking data, we now have to worry about Corporation X doing the same?"

Oh, I wouldn't worry about them losing it. Selling it to other companies so's they can target their marketing at you, on the other hand...

US.gov disappears European-owned Cuba websites

How do they get off, if they shouldn't be there?

Good question. Dying doesn't work, they've still got Saddam Hussein on there.

El Reg decimates English language

Poor Cretans

I didn't know the inhabitants of Crete were responsible for the terrible decay in English usage.

Mine's the one with the beer stains, Press pass, and dogeared dictionary in the pocket. Ta.

7000 Leap Year Babies attack Steve Ballmer

If only it were the only date-related bug

I've had mine rejected a couple of times, and I was born on 29th Feb, or even in a leap year.

And yes, I did take into account that some countries (all one of it) get the day and month the wrong way around.

I can only assume that the webdesigner for those sites was convinced no-one over forty would want to sign up for the service. Well, in a way (s)he was right.

(as for "actually answers online questions with the truth?" - well it helps when sorting out which services I actually signed up for, and who's been selling my data, despite it being illegal in Europe.)

NASA reveals Moon's rugged south pole

There's nice

What's Mount McKinley?

And where are the Register equivalents of these measures?

EC jacks up Microsoft fine by €899m

@Chris

Amazing how there's always someone who's so desperately chauvinistic he just has to hijack a discussion to accuse the French of corruption.

Currently, small French famers are being forced out of business because of the monopolistic attitude of the big supermarket chains. I suspect this is happening in other countries, except the UK where Government incompetence and corruption appears to have already done the job (according to Private Eye). The EU has not subsidised prices for many years.

As for Microsoft's de facto monopoly: yes, of course it should be punished. And stopped. The EU fine is not, sadly, sufficient and won't be as long as MS continues to earn more money by flouting the law than by respecting it. It's just a shame US judges no longer have the gonads to do what they did back in the days of the IBM monopoly: break up the company. Microsoft is swallowing up companies with depressing regularity; if you can't bankrupt the competition you buy it out instead.