Posts by ian

Archbishop says Catholics confusing confessionals with couches

Religion

Good people will do good, whilst bad people will do evil, but for good people to do evil, why that requires religion.

Burn in hell, the lot of 'em.

Sharp creates true-hue five-colours-per-pixel LCD

Meh.

I've red-green colour blindness, so this means nothing to me. In fact, 5% of the male population is red-green colour blind, and won't benefit from this amazing technical advance at all. In any case, my colour perception is a bit like my moggie's, although I have better resolution than she.

Welsh mum amazed by Marmite Messiah

Looks like Zappa to me

And as he said: "It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you." Obviously this woman is taking his advice.

Vatican blesses iPope app for Jesus Phone

All Benedict, all the time

So, would that be Papal Bull, then?

LG shines light on world's brightest 3D TV

3D?

Shouldn't the specifications indicate resolution in all 3 dimensions (i.e. 1080 x 768 x 1024 fer instance)?

Boffins identify inherited 'werewolf' mutation

The ladies will all want one

I mean a werewolf fur coat. Here doggie, doggie!

Mine's the fur one.

Oz man fined for drink-drive rumpy-pumpy

Lovely!

Please bring us more from "down under". BTW, is this a pr0n site?

E-cars are a dangerous myth, says top boffin

Damnit!

Where is my atomic car? THIS is obviously the answer to global warming.

Analyst forecasts Apple Kindle-killer for 2010

Is it the boom box again?

I can easily see Apple making a kindle-killer that includes any number of apps that now require an iPhone. In fact, why not make it a mobile phone? I envision bling-hobbled chavs holding enormo boxes to their heads and nattering on, much like the giant boxes from the 1980s. They can't read, can they?

Bless me St. Jobs, for the marketing research I have rendered unto you..

London to become Europe's e-car capital, says Mayor

Red Ken != Blond Boris?

By my calculations 25000 charging points is equivalent to 6250 ev's (at 4 charge point per vehicle). If only ev's are allowed in the city, that will clearly solve all of the problems! Bravo Boris!

Exclusive: Mitsubishi's iMiEV UK launch revealed

Costs?

Does the iMiev require regular servicing like petrol burners? I suspect not, so there's a savings right there. Prorated over my lifetime, one of these will likely still be more expensive than typical iron. But then there's the satisfaction in telling the various ancient despot isms to sod off.

Hubble packing shiny new camera

At last!

I remember the first servicing mission and the difficulties they had simply opening & closing the doors. It seems they've got the hang of it now, just as they are about the abandon the thing.

Facebook denies denying Holocaust deniers

"Earth's diverse pool of jerks and assholes"

Time to add some chlorine to the pool, surely.

Boffins develop bendy, squishy, foldable display

"Suit"-able for purpose

I can envision marketing suits of this rubber to the B&D crowd. With strategically placed lighting, they should be quite fetching.

Mines the black rubber one.

Video iPhone coming in June?

meh.

This is just another disturbing/disgusting rumour. Nothing I've read about iPhone 3.0 makes it desirable to me. Just the opposite: these predicted applications are nothing but bloatware.

Scaled Composites refutes WhiteKnightTwo rudder rumours

There it is again!

"VMS Eve". Is the next one to be "VMS Mary"? If so, is the "spaceship" to be named "Jaysus"?

And will I burn in hell for this thought?

Supersonic stealth jumpjet passes hover thrust test

Re: "Well done Lockheed", et. al.

This one is supersonic. Kestrel/Harrier were never supersonic. Not that it made any difference in the Falklands against the argies' super-entendards: not one Harrier was lost in combat. A good craftsman never blames his tools.

Pirate Bay judge and pro-copyright lobbyist accused of bias

I know nothing about Sweden...

... but I doubt that a person is allowed to be judge, jury, and executioner there.

However, is Sweden so small that it has only one radio station? That might explain Pirate Bay's existence!

'Soon soldiers will have 3 tiny choppers in their pocket'

So disappointing

If the black helicopters come for me, I want them to be full-sized! Theres no respect in having a toy black helicopter come for you, with its whiny mosquito-like drone.

So does this one carry a tiny chin-mounted cannon?

DARPA gives Cal Tech boffin $6m 'to save Moore's Law'

Breaking Moore's law?

I was under the impression (mistaken it seems) that the problem with Moore's law had to do with quantum effects. Something about qbits not being the same as bits. No need for self-repair if transistors can be both damaged/undamaged simultaneously...

UK butterfly numbers hit hard

IT == Insect Termination?

That is all.

Brown pledges to make Britain's drivers greener

Lucas, Prince of Darkness

Let me be the first to welcome our inoperable automotive overloads ^H^H^H^H^H lords.

Failed Nork rocket bits straddle Japan

Norks at war?

IIRC, the Norks are still at war (the Korean War is only on hold). The truce is in force for now, but can easily be abrogated by either side (the Norks or the UNO). That being the case, the Typodung-2 is a potential casus belli.

BT does Italian Job on London traffic lights

So...

With all of the chaos caused by the boring machine, are the E. London video surveillance cameras still in operation? If so, why?

Are the black helicopters grounded for the duration?

Boffins invent automatic net-hookup roboffinry machines

A new meaning for 'outsourcing'

So I can indulge my fear of maths then, as we engineers will be made redundant by massive soylent-powered mechanical brains.

Israelis' invulnerable, 60-tonne robot bulldozer force to double

Rewards in paradise

Must be a bit of a deterrent to the suicide bomber knowing that to destroy an Israeli robot will only get him 70 inflateable virgin vinyl sex dolls in paradise.

Greenbird sail-car wafts in as future of zero-emission motoring?

Isn't that impossible?

Doesn't the theory of relativity explicitly rule out travelling faster than the wind? Eh? Oh, sorry.

Well, then! Perhaps if we went sideways to the light we could exceed "c".

Pics show North Korean rocket ready to go

@Outrageous

Looking for peurile (even sophmoric) comments are you? So as not to dissapoint, here you are:

Are they naming this rocket the "Big Type o'Dong"? Or Kim Il Jong's Ding Dong?

Either way it appears to be prohibited by the UNO, and may well become a test target for the US and Japan.

Enough of the willy-wagging.

Women's lust for shopping linked to periods

Typically bleedin' obvious...

I can see El Reg's write-up now: "Sir Isaac Newton sees apple fall and writes bloody great book about it." under the Department of the Obvious heading.

Or, "Galileo watches pendulum swing, gets paid for it."

Mines the obvious one.

Michigan man jailed for humping car wash vacuum

Saginaw: "This sucks"

I see the IT angle here. It is "hard"-ware isn't it?

Hyundai readies Volt-style hybrid

Is it powered by krill?

A Japanese whaler is likely to harpoon it by accident, unless the whaler is named Honda or Toyota. Especially given the crap drive system...

Sex crime 'lie detector' pilot could prompt wider use

Re "Only useful as paperweigths"

My wife is a biofeedback therapist, and what you've described is using biofeedback to learn to control what most people (including polygraphers) believe to be completely automatic responses. Imagine the fun you could have by presenting them with various combinations of responses:

Question 1- Heart rate up, perspiration down, breaths down (100)

Question 2- Heart rate down, perspiration up, breaths down (010)

... etc.

Might as well bring back trial by combat.

Philips 42in Ambilight LED array TV

Still struggling with LCD

I bought a Kuro (the cheap kind), and have all of the advantages of plasma in addition to a space heater!

I wanted to like the LCD technology, but artifacts and poor black rendition turned me away.

How police busted UK's biggest cybercrime case

".. staff subjected to .. robust questioning."

Were they sent to Guantanamo for a bit of water-boarding or stress positioning?

Playmobil reenactment, or it never happened!

Hefty 'battle strength' electro-laser breaks 100kW barrier

Portable

Portable. The concept is relative, as anyone who carried a "portable PC" in the 1980's knows. In any case, 1.5 tonnes is far better than the 20-tonne COIL chemo-beamer. If there is a linear relationship between weight and power, an electrical 1MW laser should weigh about 15 tonnes. That should adequate to toast friendly forces in short order.

iPhone chip designer trumpets multi-core GPUs

Multicore? iPhone?

I anxiously await my massively parallel iPhone 1024G.

Obesity witchhunt is a 'moral panic' - sense out of Texas

GOOOAAAALLL!

My goals in life are to:

1. Live to be an embarrasment to my children

2. Become a burden on society

3. And to do the above for as long as possible.

I hoist a 20-kilo beer stein, thus getting both my alcohol and my exercise in one go!

Lights out, Britons told - we're running out of power

@Paul Rhodes 12:33 GMT

" Anyone think the US would shut down power stations and leave themselves at a disadvantage.."

Why yes, yes I do think they would. In fact they did. It was done by Enron, and lead to rolling blackouts and hugely expensive 'leccy. And (surprise!) it was done during a conservative, pro-business, anti-regulation government.

Piratical free enterprise forever! Arrr!

Traumatised Tibetan monks offered singing bowl therapy

@Seán

If China "freed" Tibet, then we've "freed" Iraq. Odd how the Tibetans and the Iraqis are such ungreatful gits.

And here come the gunships to liberate you!

Superfast-charging batteries? Whoa there, MIT

Not economically feasable?

There's no need for a 10MW mains supply for a "charging station". If you look around the back, you'll see a very large battery constantly on trickle-charge supplying 'leccy for the customers out front. This evens out the load seen by the mains, and averages it down.

While it is a brilliant idea, I'll be modest about it.

'Sunshade' global-cooling plan would ruin solar power

Nuclear winter?

Let's have a lovely nuclear war! That'll solve the problem.

It's a bit of "The House That Jack Built", innit.

Vatican vetos 'dot god' domain

Keep religion out of IT?

That's a stunner. I thought the pope believed god was omni-present, omni-etc. Where is the .jewish, .atheist, .agnostic, .pagan, .wikkan, .heresy, and .infidel TLD? I hate to think ICANN are engaging in religious descrimination.

On a related topic, where is the .aggro TLD?

Boffins: Send robot lawn tractors to the Moon

"the Moon’s almost infinite number of impact craters"

Surely one can be found of the right size and shape, requiring only minimal retooling.

Mine's the one with the "Working smarter, not harder" award in the pocket.

UK kiddies cop a righteous tasering

C'mere lad and meet Mr. Tazer!

We're too civilized to condone caning, no putting in a bit of stick here, nooo! Its not technologically advanced innit.

The Equalizer prowls Albert Square

@FOTW for Sarah surely...

You should know that Mistress Sarah is known for her firm grip of the whip, and her textual floggings are unequaled.

You're for the lash now Ben!

Brit, French nuke subs collide - fail to 'see' each other

"French cooperation"

Is an oxymoron.

Prof: Save up fossil fuel reserves to fight the next ice age

Better uses for complex hydrocarbons

Interesting idea, that. However since we've got ice ages sorted for the next 55Ky, I think petroleum has more useful applications than as fuel. Those complex hydrocarbons are too valuable to burn, as we will discover when they run short. More expensive paint, medicine, plastics, fertilizer, etc.

Tesla names Model S rollout date

Disperse?

"Tesla also announced that the US Department of Energy has told it that it expects to begin dispersing in “four to five months” the funds.."

If they used the word "dispersing", then I'll dismiss it as they are no better than they should be. However, if El Reg used "dispersing" instead of "disbursing", consider yourselves roundly censured.

Mine's the one with the dictionary in the pocket.

Vatican endorses Darwin, slights intelligent design

The God of the Gaps

AC - "the questions that evolution can't answer can still be atributed to a god."

I'm not religious, but its clear to me that any religious person that attempts to reconcile science with religion by recourse to the "God of the Gaps" idea is dooming their religion in several ways:

1. If religion wasn't obscurantist before, then confining God to the obscure will certainly make it so. Remember, there is no security in obscurity, which leads to the next trap for religion in the God of the gaps idea.

2. As the gaps narrow, the God of the gaps diminishes. So much for your omni-everything God!

As a warning the religious: "MIND THE GAP!"

Norfolk town's schools first to be heated by burning cattle

Cow oil?

What exactly is the flash point of a pig? Can I run my car on bangers?