Posts by David S

OpenSolaris axed by Ellison

My thoughts exactly.

Is it possible for an entire company to get out of the wrong side of the bed in the morning?

ASA: You can't say 'f**k'

Top Gear Anagram

I liked that. I thought it was some of the most subtle humour I'd seen from the show. "There were a lot of anagrams about..." (cut to JC's plate)

What the fork?

Deary me. It's all about appropriate use, isn't it? Like AC@09:34 said.

I was always a little disturbed by the French Connection thing. Some marketing w*nk (wonk) scored a brownie point or two when he realised the significance of their initials, I'm sure, but I'd say the joke's getting a little long in the tooth. It's been, what, over ten years? Surely they should have grown up by now.

ICANN delays decision on pornography domain

Quite so.

It's almost too obvious. I fail to see what the objection can be!

Carlos Slim is world's richest man, Bill Gates now number two

...and yet...

...they'd still manage to be fabulously wealthy and smug, somehow.

BBC: Grasp the high-speed runaway cloud nettle

Security problems

I used to like the analogy of entrusting your money to third party organisations (banks) instead of storing it all under your own matress or in a company safe. It was a good, effective comparison, until about eighteen months ago...

Still, myself I'm quite happy having proper professionals handling the security issues. Guys who know about security and have their defenses tested on a regular basis, just like the folks who are looking after my money. Maybe I'm too willing to let the experts handle what they're expert at, but I'm certainly not arrogant enough to assume I could do their job better than they do. Not as well as doing my own...

Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you

Kudos

That's a remarkably astute simile there. I like it!

2009's Top E-book Readers

Re: Re: No Mention...

Well... It may not have been RELEASED in 2009, but it was available to buy (that's when I received mine - best birthday present ever!) and, like Robert, I'd have to say that it compares well to the more recent models.

If it had had Search and Notes it would have been perfect, but as it stands I'm more than happy. It's amazing to be able to carry a bookcase in your pocket...

Why probe Google for antitrust? It 'does no evil'

Blame elsewhere?

Perhaps if the manufacturers of the woodworking kit put a little more effort into designing and promoting their website it would be better able to float above the referential crap. I'm assuming you actually found a website in the end, right? They did actually have one?

Reality these days is: your website is your online storefront. Services like Google mean that you don't have to have the online equivalent of a Harvey Nichols or Harrods - style premiere site; you can do good business with the equivalent of a charity shop tucked between a greasy spoon and a carpet remnants store. Key thing is to get people to look in your window, and make it reasonably appealing. Your SEO provides the passing trade.

Sounds like your chisel shop have hidden themselves down a back alley and plastered their windows with signs advertising competitors. Not great marketing. They could use a welcome mat. ;)

Muswell Hillbillies force BT to move broadband boxes

Unless...

...the issue you've come to fix is a failure in the hydraulics. Possibly caused by corrosion from little Portia's grateful tears.

Genius

Holy shitsticks, Marvin. That's blummin inspired! Street furniture as street art? Genius!

I especially like the mental (both senses) image of the sobbing kid with the balloon looking for a giant carrot. Carroll would be proud.

US boffins build, test working 2-qubit quantum processor

79% accurate?

Is this the new Pentium, then?

German boffins produce sim of 'invisibility carpet' in action

@Newt_Othis

They couldn't get any pink paint.

Michael Jackson planned 'robot duplicate' of himself

That "Read More" section at the bottom of the page...

...reads "READ MORE: Robot Michael Jackson Evil Twin Duplicate 3d" and would make a hell of an elevator pitch for a movie. Better that that Monopoly concept.

But who to play the lead role?

Oh, and @Lottie: Most triumphant! *air guitar*

NASA: the world will not end in 2012

I was invited to see that movie...

...I declined. I didn't see the benefit in paying Hollywood for the privilege of sitting in a dark room for a couple of hours despairing about Mankind's ability to ignore the fucking obvious. Bad science in movies annoys me. Probably more than it ought to.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the willing suspension of disbelief, but come on. There's a limit.

The matrix was bad enough.

Microsoft ropes in Family Guy to pimp Windows 7

@AC 11:16

You should be grateful to the Apple Marketing folks. When the inevitable alien invasion happens (it's coming, you know it is) the invaders will be convinced by our emissions shell to turn up with a toolkit for subverting every piece of apple hardware on the planet.

Most of us won't notice.

Ralph Lauren says sorry for incredible shrinking pelvis

Bastards

This is why our fourteen-year-old daughter is slowly developing an eating disorder...

Bitbucket's Amazon DDoS - what went wrong

@Kevin

I think you're thinking of Amazon's less-well-known service, the Knicker Elastic Komputing Service.

It's pants.

The one with the lacy stuff in the pockets, thanks...

Coin-sized nuclear isotope battery minted

@Matt89 - I call bullshit

Dollar is a corruption of "Thaler", an old German coin.

I'm not sure I'd pay a penny for your thoughts, matey... ;)

Ralph Lauren DMCAs thin Photoshop skills

Jeez. Did they not LOOK at the picture?

What kind of screwed-up headspace would you need to be in to look at that hacked-together image and think it sets your designs off in a good light?

I like the nourishing soup and sandwiches idea; delightful piece of whimsy. Sadly, the model here would seem to be beyond the help of soup...

Google tests clipboard in the sky

Well...

...there's a lot to be said for the collaborative capabilities of Google Apps (and, to be honest, I'm extremely keen to have a play with Wave for the same reason) but even to me this seems a cloud too far...

Perhaps I simply don't get it. Maybe I should have another glass of kool-aid...

New antimatter atomsmashers 'may destroy themselves'

@TeeCee - Hee hee!

Nice..

Can I just say, I've been to Wake Field, and it wasn't an entirely happy experience. I don't know whether it's damaging to particle colliders, but I saw a car missing its wheels...

Goggles on.

Google Chrome gets friendly with Native Client

I like the name...

...not sure I approve of the idea.

Honda develops motorised unicycle

Re "Robot Wars"

As Martin says, the mecanum wheel was developed a little before Robot Wars came about. Plus, the whole rollers-around-the-wheel is passive (the rollers allow side-slip) while Honda's development seems to involve POWERED sideways rollers.

On the whole, this looks extremely cool. Very slick. Also utterly pointless; pretty much anyone could walk faster, powered on nothing more complex than a bowl of cornflakes. Most people who couldn't walk faster would probably crush the device (or be better served by a wheelchair)

Still. Sweet.

Bureaucrat behind bars for creating 1,400 fake kids

Now, if we'd had the national ID database...

...and each of those "virtual" kids had had their own virtual biometric card...

...then they would have existed for real, and both of these guys would have been innocent. Reality would then need to be banged up for not matching the database.

Ah, if they'd only waited a few years they might have gotten away with it...

'Do You Want To See My C*ck?' asks budding author

Ah, the good old days...

...when people like this simply wandered around in shabby macs and breezy trousers. What's his follow-up title? "Want a sweetie?"

Abigail's Windows 7 Party

Genius

...as usual...

Philips waves farewell to point-and-press remote controls

Seen this somewhere before.

Um. That's a Wii remote, isn't it? I mean, this isn't exactly new...

Baby swing vid man cut loose

@Barney

I may have misread it, but I understood his "it's all over for me" to mean that the judicial process had ended with respect to its prosecution of him, but it was going to start on the retaliatory prosecution of the police.

Might that make sense?

Samsung S8000 Jet

It's shallow, I know...

...but I'm with Skavenger on this. The advert is enough to put me off the product. Nice thing about the market as it stands is that there are enough alternatives to allow me to make such a shallow decision without suffering too badly for it...

...were I actually looking for a new phone right now, that is...

Researchers forge secure kernel from maths proofs

@Apocalypse Later

Hey, I remember that proof! I was so impressed with it when I first saw it too...

Happy days...

Ring a bell? http://www.math.utoronto.ca/mathnet/falseProofs/first1eq2.html

US Stealth bombers may get nuke-bunker nobbler for 2010

Surgical and painless?

I'd love to see these criteria for "surgical and painless" being applied to general medicine. Obviously I'd appreciate a little warning beforehand so that I can step away from the local hospital first...

The white one, please. With the 5lb reflex hammer in the pocket.

McKinnon loses judicial review

@AC 4

Yes. I think you may be deliberately missing the point. I believe the question is more _where_ he should face justice, the degree to which the charges he faces have been trumped up and what our government's roll-over-good-doggie attitude to the extradition question says about our society.

Still. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?

(Sorry. Couldn't resist the hungry look on his little troll face...)

Lads from Lagos cut off

@Geoff Mackenzie

Shows what you know. I have wireless backup. Nyah.

But point taken. Tongue removed from cheek...

Botnets?

I thought the actual source of these spam messages was a distributed grid of pwned hardware which are unlikely to be affected much by this outage.

Mind you, I'm sure I remember someone explaining how the internet was supposed to be able to repair itself magically by rerouting around breaks like this. Sounds like I've been sold a lemon. Where can I get a refund for this broken internet?

Scotch lovers asked to cough up £10,000 per bottle

@Nater

"Scotch Whiskey"

Fail. Scotch Whisky. Whiskey comes from the rest of the world.

Scots tend to get quite irate on this point. Look at them all now, bristling away with fury. Y'scunner.

@lglethal

You left out the end of the story:

"And then it was flogged to some pretentious, gullible idiots and we lived happily ever after."

...The one with the half-bottle of Teachers in the pocket, thanks. *hic*

Oracle takes it to the bridge with GoldenGate buy

Didn't they just buy...

...the Brooklyn Bridge?

Or was that some other chump?

Canadian uni catches the rebranding sniffles

@Jesthar

Nail on the head! I was trying to think what that new logo reminded me of, and it's all the affordable housing developments that seem to pop up spontaneously across the south-east of England. They generally have a logo similar to this one on a hoarding nearby.

And fewer badgers, obviously...

Street View snooptrike stalks Siena

Nice to see Peter Andre back at work again.

isn't it?

What's happening with XIV?

What happened to XIV...

Wasn't it superseded by XV?

The leather jerkin, thanks. With the short sword.

Swedish devil girls fingered on Street View

Have a great weekend, guys.

You earned it. Perfect Friday afternoon fodder. Especially pic #3.

Oh, and @AC 13:29: Yes, that seems to be the consensus. Well spotted you! Help yourself to a pat on the back.

Kent Police clamp down on tall photographers

@Johnathan 6

Well, possibly not a criminal record, but even a caution will show up on a CRB check, and having ANYTHING show up on your CRB can rule you out of some more sensitive places.

Oh, and to the AC who said:

"As for the WPC saying she was intimidated, that comes under the public order act, not the terrorism act. She has to give a warning advising you to stop the action and only if you refuse does it become an offence."

How exactly does one stop being tall? Should he have knelt down, do you think?

"I fought the law and the law kicked me inna fork"

Microsoft apes Spotify with ad-stuffed tune streaming

Oh boy.

I knew Spotify was too good to last.

Now MS have spotted the market (by following the spoor of others, as usual) they'll move in, take over and then fuck it up. As usual.

Sorry, I'm doing an RW here, but I can't help thinking he's hit the nail on the head.

Google data center born without chillers

@Steve Evans

I remember driving somewhere at stupid-o'clock, listening to Farming Today on Radio 4, when a report came up on the subject of the cost-and-impact of heating all those greenhouses they use to grow out-of-season fruit. I had, the previous day, been reading about the problems with cooling datacentres, and the two problems kind of locked eyes in my head and made friendly gestures at each other.

Sadly, it doesn't seem that the kinds of company that run datacentres seem all that interested in diversifying into agriculture. Such a shame...

Staten Island manhole swallows texting teen

@The Vociferous Timewaster

"I just want to rip her face off and use it as a funny mask for my cat."

One keyboard and a clean shirt, please.

Darwin must be spinning

What should have been another triumph for Darwinian evolution is now going to turn into an opportunity for an undeserved cash-grab.

Deary me.

NASA promises 'greatly improved' Moon landing footage

Typical...

Holywood remake of a classic oldie. No doubt there'll be extra car chases and the moon will suddenly relocate to California or something...

Cats mix baby 'cry' with purr to score dinner

Sounds familiar...

...and, in terms of what possible uses this might be put to, it IS interesting, and may be useful, to know what types of sound we are conditioned or have evolved to find comforting, or arousing, or whatever. The fact that this arose from someone's (probably idle) observation of the different noises made by a hungry vs a full cat is happenstance.

Not that we're likely to have smoke alarms' shrill "Peep! Peep!" replaced by a hungry cat's purr any time soon, but there it is. I can sort of see the point.

I hope this wasn't VERY well-funded research, though. I hope the budget stretched to decent cat food, but not very much further...

Apollo 11 moon mission reincarnated as website

Scarier still...

The thought that my mobile phone (it's on a UK contract, so it's certainly not a cell) has a better sense of humour than Simon Taylor 2...