Posts by David S

Three Gorges Dam an 'environmental catastrophe'

No. 54

Crispy Rat in Yellow Bean Sauce

Hugo Chavez rails against teen Bulgarian airbags

Hmm... Am I being dense here?

So what is wrong with what Chavez is saying here? Fifteen _is_ too young for breast implants. Local mores aside, it's a bit wrong to be sexualising a child, which is what this amounts to. I have teenage children, and I know that they're always keen to explore that whole field of human interaction*, but that doesn't mean they should be inflated into pneumatic centrefolds as soon as they've outgrown their training bra.

As to the fans and fridges thing... How exactly does that differ from such worthy 'western' efforts as freecycle.org? It's a sensible suggestion, in fact, and could only be improved with a little more organisation lest every local town square be buried under piles of defunct white goods...

US Navy to remodel Hitler's San Diego bunker

Re: hmm...

I imagine the architect probably designed the four L-shaped buildings as four L-shaped buildings in a nicely symmetrical pattern. If you take out the trees etc in the middle, it looks a lot more like four separate buildings.

Must have been quite a forehead-slapping moment when he realised what it looked a little bit like. If he ever did.

And Tim's absolutely right. It's a disgraceful waste of $600,000. How many robotic pack mules could be developed with that kind of cash?

Google sued for 'crimes against humanity'

Um...

Is there any chance at all that he's just... you know... having a bit of a laugh? I'm sure we've all said something we thought was hilarious, only to be met with cold stares and silence and the growing realisation that everyone else in the immediate vicinity thinks there's nothing funny about <insert edgy subject here>...

Maybe this is like that, only bigger...

Brainstorm with Mindstorms

Lego? Pff...

Fischer Technik is king. Then meccano. Then lego.

That is all.

Google says go-go-Gadget Ads

Firefox, eh?

Typical. What about those of us whose employers' software policy prohibits the installation of "non-standard" apps like Firefox? Are we doomed to endure ever-increasing volumes of marketing drivel when we "work" online?

Build malware protection into operating systems

@Stephen Hewitt

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it a significant difference between Windows and the more popular Linux distros is that the Linux distro simply doesn't allow the users _ever_ to log in as root. They can adopt root-equivalence temporarily when they need to do something that requires that level of access (installing a new app, for example) and, to do so, they are required to enter their password.

It's therefore considerably trickier to sneak a secret something past *nix users, since by default they don't have the ability to install anything. If they click on something that claims to be a photo of their grandkids, say, and it prompts them to enter their password then alarm bells are sure to chime. If not by common sense, then at least by the most basic of training or instruction.

Windows, on the contrary, seems to have something of a "come one, come all" approach to administrator rights with the use of one of any number of exploits, many of which can be triggered from visiting the wrong website or reading the wrong email. _Reading_ the wrong _email_, in the name of all that is holy and good...

Or am I wrong?

PC superstore suffers breakdown over Linux notebook

@na101010

Funnily enough, I'd heard that vista had a habit of making machines unstable, but I had no idea it took such a direct approach...

PC superstore unhinged by Linux

that analogy again...

Neal Stephenson did the analogy thing best in his essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line" (reproduced here: http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml ) - scroll down to "MGBs, Tanks and Batmobiles"

As for the "newbies love windows" thing: After both XP and the OS Recovery Partition failed on my wife's PC-World-bought machine, and I refused to pay them £50 for replacement install media (£50 for software we already owned, the robbing ^"£&*^s) I installed Ubuntu and the machine's back up and running and our kids (and, more importantly, my technophobe-but-I-love-her wife) are happily using it to do everything they used to do and more, with less trouble and better performance than they ever had under XP. For free. My flabber is still gasted to this day...

And would anyone like to hazard a guess as to how much crudware has installed itself on the machine in question in the intervening few months? Anyone?

Ad agency pays Paddington to ditch marmalade for Marmite

Marmite good...

...but I prefer bovril. Especially since they went back to making it out of cow.

Returning to the point (as I saw it) of the story: I'd rather the ad-men didn't screw with the classics, but hey. Paddington and his marmalade sandwiches will still be around long after this ad campaign is long gone.

Naomi Campbell piles into Vogue

Paging Dr Beavis...

"Only white models, some of whom are not as prominent as I am, are put on splash pages. "

I had no idea she was into that kind of modelling. Ur-hurr.

Ah. My coat.

Boffins issue speeding ticket for FTL photons

@John Stirling

No. Bethnal green to maida Vale is acceptable as a one-stopper after trumps have been reversed under the Queensferry rules. Harkness was, if you remember, widely scorned for his interpretation of the reversal. Mind you, what does one expect from someone who frequently resorts to drubbing?

Diebold rebrands evoting business, revises forecasts

@Terence

Um. I'm sure you're trying to be funny, but here goes.

The phrase "to fully support" is a little like "to boldly go" - the verb is at the end and the adverb is in the middle. This is often referred to as a "split infinitive" (since the infinitive - "to support", "to go" - is split with an adverb) and is often frowned upon by people who forget that English isn't French.

It was very unfashionable for a while, but it seems to be making a comeback. Think of it as linguistic flared trousers and you might find it a little less upsetting. And you can always that we don't German speak rejoice.

Google and Sun tag team MS Office

@Kevin Brind

Is there nothing pure and good in the world?

I've used both for years...

...and they're both perfectly adequate for the job, as long as the job in question is writing documents, using spreadsheets, preparing presentations and so on. I have yet to come across a significant feature that either was missing which prevented me from producing perfectly professional output, and where there was a need for the result to be transmitted electronically for the consideration of a third party then Oo.o did a perfect job of saving the file9s) to a format which everyone else could usnderstand, and had the additional advantage of allowing me to save to PDF.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Neither cost me any money, because the M$ product was provided by my employers, and the Oo.o one was downloaded and used on my home machine as a replacement for the dire effort with which it was supplied (M$ Works).

That is all.

Ubuntu unplugs compromised servers

@anon

"But any OS besides Windows is super special awesome and never needs patches/updates ever. Everyone knows that its only MS that is not secure and has viruses/hackers.

Thats what the Mac and *nix lot have been telling us for years. How useless MS was and how secure *nix was.....

Were we being lied to?"

If you were being told that and believed it, then you were being gullible. If you seriously claim to have believed it, then I fear you may be being disingenuous. And just the slightest bit sarcastic, to boot...

Down with secular ringtones

Christian ringtone?

I had a very nice MIDI ringtone of "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" a few handsets back. Would that be considered a Christian ringtone? I liked it 'cos I'm a fan of Bach rather than anything else. Ultimately, I'm an atheist.

Tesla electric supercar may be delayed

Re:The rich won't save the world

Got one already. It's called the bicycle. It works wonderfully for commutes of up to ten miles with a little practice, and it has the additional advantage of removing the need for gym membership. For longer commutes it can be combined with the train (if you're lucky enough to live somewhere where the rail service is reasonably priced and reliable.)

Okay, it doesn't work everywhere, and there's a depressing tendency for people to live and work in places with no effective commuting links other than the car, but if I'm honest I feel more hope from biofuels than I do from soemthing that _could_ be charged from a green source, if one wasn't already using that green source to run the equivalent three-and-a-half houses...

Pff. In a couple of hundred years it isn't going to matter. The survivors will be rebuilding feudal societies and passing down tall tales of horseless carriages and flying ships and the magical land of Second Life where penises flew and furries talked... Difference is this time round there'll be no fossil fuels to power a second industrial revolution and we'll scratch around until the lizards invade or the comet hits. Best news is we won't see it coming.

'Hush drive' hand-launch spybot for US special ops

Deliveries

Okay, I'm basing this on all the combat experience I have, but I'm guessing this would be perfect for leaving an occasional couple of clips of handy ammo or a +25% health pack (maybe a couple of +10%) just where Sarge is going to need it. Sadly, I don't think it's going to be able to hide anything behind false walls.

I have no idea how much a soul sphere weighs, though. Anyone?

Clarins' electromagnetic-blocking cream ad blocked

@MattW

I think you'll find that's "make-up science" (tm)

I'll get me coat.

Alienware Area-51 m9750

@Geoff

...and the other question, which is how anyone's going to take you seriously in a grown-up business context with a klingon-head grey-alien-face laptop.

Having said that, I may be overcompensating for this morning's "standardise-your-email-signatures-individualism-will-be-crushed" round-robin email from HR. Ah, the corporate whirled...

MIT in Matrix 'Crowd Farm' plan

What Mr Tocker said.

I have always considered the phrase "jaw-dropping" to be hyperbole until now. I read this article and discovered its true meaning. Jon Tocker has pretty much summed up the rational response from anyone who's ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics (particularly the first) except that his revised description of the various morons is still a touch charitable in my opinion. Especially for the feckwits who judged the competition.

They should be condemned to build the prototype of their floor, and then use and maintain it for as long as it takes them to figure out everything which is wrong with their idea. They can make it whatever colour they like, though. I'm nothing if not fair.

Council worker develops PC energy-saving program

Re: A challenge

You've heard of Big Brother?

(Okay, it's a programme rather than a program, and it isn't written so much as perpetrated, but...)

Google juices Turing Award

@Colin

You're assuming he's human...

Motorola signs up for tiny projectors

@Leslie

Yes! You've hit upon the perfect next step! Forget phones with frickin' lay-zers or virtual keyboards or any of that stuff; make the damn things waterproof!

How many handsets get dropped in baths, or sinks, or 'borrowed' by toddlers and dunked in tea?

I'd buy that for a dollar...

(especially if it came with a decent camera...)

Sony claims price-driven PS3 sales hike

weeks vs days

Actually, it's fairly common practice to slice quarters (three months, thirteen weeks) into three months with 4, 5 and 4 weeks in each.

Whether these sales figures use a weekly or a monthly slicing assumption isn't specified. Cuold be either. "Lies, damned lies and statistics", remember?

Romanian cops cuff drunk, naked, handless driver

@Nick L

Temporarily.

Saudis to execute Sri Lankan teen

Death Sentence

Okay, I know I mis-spelt "sentence" earlier. I thought I was being clever, in a "practice/practise" way, and it turns out I was just being wrong. Figured I'd get my own correction in before Mr Anon used it as an excuse to reject my arguments...

Of course, he could always just ignore them instead...

Oh, and Allan: I understand the official tally was 15 Saudis. But I'm sure they were an unrepresentative sample.

@anon

Hmm. I think we're beginning to see Anonymous Idiot's true colours here...

"...the ‘children’ to whom you refer are most likely first/second generation immigrants from uninvolved, and uneducated countries who are incapable of learning and holding a decent job, and are taking out their “small penis” complexes on the society..."

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not, by the way) but Steve did specify "local" children. I can't see _any_ evidence in his post to back up your ass-umptions.

"English children, affected by the general inability of the immigrant children to learn and integrate start acting out as well..."

I don't think we can entirely blame the wilfulness and misbehaviour of children on influences from the foreign devils, you know. Children have been naughty throughout history. "...the whining school-boy, with his satchel // And shining morning face, creeping like snail // Unwillingly to school." is as familiar a childhood archetype now as it was in Shakespeare's time.

The reason might well lie in your later comment: "I believe that you should punish children who misbehave, but I am not going to go round my neighbours house and beat up his children..." - Well, I'm sure that's a relief all round, but I do remember my own childhood (only thirty-odd years ago) when it wouldn't have been commented on for a passing adult to administer a corrective clip around a misbehaving scamp's ear. I'm sure we all know what the likely result would be these days, and that's probably a pity. There's a difference between the ear-clip and beating a child up, though, and it's obviously important for the child to understand the reason for any punishment they're given.

"Most societies find homosexual marriage atrocious, and morally wrong.."

Yes, well that's just part of the rich tapestry of life, isn't it? Some people are enlightened, and others are idiots. Discuss.

"...And if the neighbour decides to cook his cat, it is his bloody business!" Well, no. It isn't. It's illegal, and I'd be well within my rights to report him to the police, as I certainly would.

Anyway, I don't think the major outrage is about the death sentance per se*; Saudi Arabia is hardly unique in using this ultimate sanction, although they do seem uniquely enthusiastic about putting on the old black hat. As I understand it, the problem is more that the girl who's about to be cold-blood-murdered has not had what we would consider to be a fair trial, and in any case was too young to be punished in this way _even if she were guilty_ (which there seems to be scant evidence for in any case.)

Call me a hand-wringing pinko leftist liberal, but that seems wrong to me.

* Okay, I don't agree with the death sentance either, but you picks yer fights, innit?

Rufus, Mok and Lai urinate on mean customers' baggage

Re: Egad^2

What a ridiculous comment.

Sin City director to remake Barbarella

Wilbur & Me

"This, buddy, is a California Cantaloupe..."

Student expelled for high school Counter-Strike map

Oof

Shame to see a young man's creative expression being misinterpreted in this fashion. And, in this context, I do mean "shame" in its truest sense.

Land of the free? Pfft.

MoD to publish secret UFO files

@Herbys

Maybe the pictures are blurry and undefined because the objects themselves are blurry and undefined. They could be perfectly pin-sharp reproductions of an object which looks fuzzy.

'Cos their quantum drive leaves the hull in a somewhat "uncertain" state while it's engaged. Obviously.

BT brings Wii-like remote control to PCs

Turn it upside down and shake...

Hurrah! The Etch-a-Sketch reset interface!

Reg readers total 3,238 years against cancer

Sorry...

Wish I could join in. In fact, I suggested that the (significant multinational) company for which I work might consider allowing its users to install the folding@home screensaver as an alternative. I was told that company policy forbad it; there was too much risk.

It's a shame; there was a lot of potential processing power here. Still, one home machine is better than nothing, I suppose...

Schools ban iPod cheaters

I feel like such an idiot.

I just used to learn the stuff. What a fool.

Boffins develop DIY musical Wi-Fi robot kit

Lurching teddies... spooky music...

Ooh... Akira flashback...

Sinclair ZX Spectrum: 25 today

One word

I can't believe nobody else mentioned this: Virus.

Actual 3D gaming. I mean to say. Come on.

Also: How to Be a Complete B*stard - the game of the book. Open the umbrella indoors and get turned into a cooker? Well, of course!

All my nostalgia is second-hand, sad to say. I had a TRS-80, and was dreadfully jealous of my friends' speccies and beebs..

Program Names govern admin rights in Vista

Heuristics?

Hmm...

Is it not reasonable to assume that the heuristics which Vista applies to judge the installiness of a program might include the name, but also other aspects such as the behaviour of the program. If it starts copying executables onto the hard disk or writing changes to the registry, for example, then it _might_ be a good idea to treat it with suspiscion...

The word "install" being part of the program's name could be a big clue. There may well be others. If it's the only clue for a given project, then its removal will, naturally, remove the "danger" flag. If there were other clues, on the other hand, it probably shouldn't.

Blu-Ray disks hacked by sweet talking teenagers

Captive audience?

Philip,

What captive audience? You, like Mr Dawson, are free to leave at any point. Or you can limit your reading to articles with which you agree. Any time you find yourself reading something that challenges your established beliefs you can just say "Woah Nellie!" and look away. <Alt>-<Left-arrow> will even allow you to page back without running the risk of glimpsing something challenging out of the corner of your eye.

By the way, the phrase "War on Terror" has been challenged since its invention because it's a ridiculous concept. You can't cry foul when people ridicule the ridiculous. Like Cliff said, we're among the people who are less likely to wear the wool quietly.

And Reg: Keep up the good work. All of it. Even the political diatribe. Just make sure that there's a right to reply, so that anyone who feels they have good reason to disagree with your views can air those reasons.

Listen up banks: women are worth IT

So. Leaving aside the typo...

Am I the only person to take offence at the suggestion that women are the only people who go through changes in their lives when the marry, have children, get divorced or widowed etc?

I've married, and it made a difference to my life. the impact on my lifestyle of children has been enormous. I have no plans to divorce, or be 'widowed', but I can imagine that, were the worst to happen, these would also make significant differences to my life. And I'm a man.

What is it that makes my experience of life changes less important than those of my female counterpart?

Intelligent machines expert heads for the hills

What's the point?

Once the oil runs out we'll be back to the middle ages if we're lucky. And there'll never be the option of another industrial revolution - we'll just sit starving and dying young in our new fiefdoms until we get wiped out by some cosmic debris.

Worst thing is: Whatever evolves to replace us will have a similar fate with no hope of anything better. We've used up all the fossil fuel, so they won't be able to develop anything more effective than the waterwheel, let alone space travel.

We're a' doomed...

GSK runs out of juice over Ribena claims

An alternative...

All these artificial drinks trying to appear healthy; "Our drink contains no artificial flavours" - "Contains no artificial colours" - "Now with 50% less vegetable fat"...

What's wrong with juice? You know - squeezed out of fruit?