Posts by Simon Dummett

ID card scheme for foreigns extended

Ear prints

are as unique as finger prints.

"Are we being lied to? Or is the government simply mismanaged?"

Both: we're being lied to about how mismanaged the government is.

Surprised anyone needed to ask.

Apple seeks patent on reality

Two words...

"Holo", and "Deck".

Unused phone lines to be taxed for rural broadband

Rural broadband does not need improvement*

* for some values of "rural"

My in-laws live in rural Lincolnshire, in a small village with its own exchange. Their up-to-8Mb package is pretty much up-to-7.5+Mb during the day.

I live in an area of a large West Yorkshire city whose exchange is physically further away than the area covered by the exchange above - when the village became part of the conurbation, lines were put in to an existing exchange rather than building a new one.

All the providers in the unbundled exchange will offer is 0.5Mb at best - understandably I'm loathe to change from my current provider as my up-to-16Mb connection is a constant 2.3Mb, but if the best anyone says they will offer is 0.5, that's the most they'd have to try to provide.

Cable's out as well, as they won't dig up the Wimpy-laid brickwork street, and refuse to run the cable to the house through the back garden (no euphemism intended).

So taxing this city-dweller 6 quid a year to improve the lot of ruralites is not going to go down well.

And on top of that, what Value is Added by taking an extra 50p a month? How can VAT possibly be chargeable on it?

Ofcom's 116 discussions confirm El Reg advice

@Cynical Observer

West Yorks uses 08456 060606 for non-emergencies. Handily the number is on a not easily unnoticeable sticker on each panda car.

Duff DAB, megamogs and ass-assassins: Your thoughts

Cats with 20 claws?

"And it's 18 claws, actually, as they only have four on each rear paw. Don't say I never give you anything."

Polydactylism is quite common in cats; 6 claws on each front paw and 5 claws on each of the back paws isn't unheard of...

Euro project to arrest us for what they think we will do

Not Minority Report, Asimov's "All The Troubles Of The World"

For the benefit of those who choose not to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Troubles_of_the_World I provide this excerpt:

"Multivac, the world's largest supercomputer, is given the responsibility of analyzing daily, in essence, the entire sum of data present upon the planet Earth... It receives annually a precise set of data on every citizen of the world, extrapolating the future actions of humanity based upon the personality, history, and desires of every human being...

Recently, however, in addition to its existing duties, it has been given the responsibility of producing a daily list of crimes predicted to be carried out by the population at large, ranging from murder to spousal abuse...

The story begins with several of the administrators of the government being warned by Multivac of an upcoming murder attempt. Joseph Manners, the man accused of the crime, is quickly placed under house arrest, despite his protests that he is ignorant of any planned crime and the unwillingness of the law enforcement officers to inform him of what crime he is going to commit. In spite of the arrest, Multivac reports that the odds of the crime being consummated increase as a result of the governments actions, continuing to rise with every further movement."

Please, read the story, or at least the rest of the potted version at the URL above. The ending might be just what we need...

Florida cops taser satnav lake plunge woman

Re: tired of the PMS defence

"It's not bloody funny."

Freudian?

... mine's the one with t'missus' best kitchen knife in the back...

'Big Brother' - the price of self-driving cars

@Dazed and Confused

"You are driving down the motorway, and the car dies. You move over the hard shoulder and park."

Assuming that the car hasn't died due to a catastrophic systems failure within the auto-driving gizmos, resulting in nothing auto-driving the car whilst you're halfway through your beer and pasty with a laptop on your, er, lap, trying to work out which cup holder to stick the bottle in whilst you try steering with your knees*, or that you *have* had a catastrophic systems failure but are able to fight against the now no longer powered power steering pump and brake servo, both of which have a failover mode of locking out meat control when previously under AutonomousAuto(TM) control.

What wonders await us.

* I know this is a typical situation currently for [insert automotive company name favoured by hated drivers], they'll be used to it, but it's not so good for the rest of us.

El Reg pays tribute to father of Playmobil

Entendres?

"He was later found to have a brace of songbirds stuffed in his lunchbox, although there is no suggestion that Carli [sic] Bruni had a hand in it."

Carla Bruni had a hand in placing the brace within his lunchbox (a la M Sarkozy)?

Or

Carla Bruni had one of her hands in his lunchbox (also, no doubt, a la Sarkozy)?

YouTube goes spandex with MGM movie deal

Shirley Shome Mishtake?

Was the name "Malibu" chosen because "Geldof" really didn't work?

Top-end Fords will be watching your rear

if...

"If you wanted to make cars really safe you'd sit the driver in a glass box sticking out of the front of the car"

... and mount a large spike on the end of the steering column pointing at the driver.

Tell us, oh Oval of Blueness, what happens when the blind spot system goes wrong?

"Ah, no orange light, it's OK to pull ou..."

IBM unveils nano-projector based VirtuaHuman with 1TB of memory

Mine's the one...

... with the egg plant in the pocket.

Get your German interior minister's fingerprint here

Well...

"The magazine is calling on readers to collect the prints of other German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bavarian Prime Minister Guenther Beckstein and BKA President Joerg Ziercke."

If they've got nothing to hide etc they'd proactively provide them.

BT business customer contracts to change Thursday

Misleading title

If only there'd been an "on" in the title...

How disappointing to find the story was not about BT managing to somehow use a clause in a contract to change the day of Thursday into something rather different.

That would have been, in some small way, exciting.

Panasonic preps Wiimote-proof TV

re Las/zer

"why isn't laser spelt lazer in the US, just to be consistent?"

Because then it would be an acronym for Light wave Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation. Which would be just silly.

Actually, it's so silly it still justifies the question...

... mine's the monochromatic one...

Darling plays wait and see on HMRC disc loss

Shurely shome mishtake?

"the Treasury found out HMRC had lost 25 child benefit records"

Looks like Chris Williams lost 6 zeros there...

Let's hope he doesn't work for HMG - or it'll be business as usual...