Posts by Dr Patrick J R Harkin

Boffins build super-accurate atomic clock

Does it change automatically for BST?

And does it have a snooze button?

Prepare for Apple's self-resizing iPhone interface

I like this.

It actually looks useful. I suggest they call it iCompensateforclumsypeople

Jamaica cracks down on 'daggering' after broken todger upswing

@DrewHew

"Penile appendages are muscles and blood vessels - they cannot be fractured!!"

Although no bone is involved, "penile fracture" is the term generally used by urologists to describe traumatic rupture of the tunica albuginea/corpus cavernousm. And (if you exclude the smooth muscle fibres in the blood vessel walls) there isn't any muscle in a penis either - after all, without bone, to what would they be attached?

US parkies in 'burrow-buster' marmot detonation campaign

One word.

Sharks.

With lasers on their heads.

OK, that's 6 words. Sharkswithlasersontheirheads. That's what they need.

Brazilian ejected as lingerie arouses border staff suspicions

Brazillian. Sex worker.

Nope, can't think of a joke there...

NASA probes seek remnants of lost 'Theia' planet

@AC:Mondas

Well remembered - you must be as grey as I am! Let's start a petition at the No. 10 website calling for all UK-funded scientists (i.e. both of them) to use the name "Mondas".

Dungeons & Dragons slays its digital distribution

Easy to put right

Just cast Summon Bigger Fish.

Boffins list sci-fi words which wormed their way into dictionary

OK, which one have I missed?

I've read it three times, but although the article says 9 words, I can only find eight. "Robotics, Gas Giant, Zero Gravity, Deep Space, Pressure Suit, Virus, Worm, Genetic Engineering." (OK that's actually 13 words, but YKWIM)

Bacon sarnies cure hangovers: Official

Meat is murder

But a bacon sandwich is justifiable homicide...

Irish Blood Transfusion Service endorses Dracula

I do not drink...

...Guiness.

Leaked memo says Conficker pwns Parliament

We are continuining to work with our third party partners

Why do I hear that in the voice of GLaDOS?

Germans announce: Revenge is inefficient

The Germans say revenge is inefficient.

GET THEM!!!!!!!

Indian boffins mull zero-grav bhajis

Zero-G Pot Noddle?

But how will they pour the water out of the kettle?

Final countdown to Conficker 'activation' begins

"It's unclear who created or now controls this huge resource."

Could it be the BBC?

BMW driver follows satnav to edge of cliff

Stop picking on the poor driver!

If he spent time looking out of the window, he wouldn't be able to send texts!

UK boffins to breed syntho-blood from human embryos

Hang on...

Isn't this how one of the Blade films starts?

Google designer quits over performance obsession

I thought most sites could fine-tune themselves these days.

Rounded or square corners on dialog boxes? This blue or that blue? This font or that one? Set the server to give half the users one and half the other. See which gets more click throughs/return visits/purchases/other measure of success. Ditch the other one, rinse and repeat.

Zero-G vanishing bone issue solved, says prof

That's the legs sorted

but what about other bones? Skull? Spine? Arms?

Hmmm. If bungee-cord pulling down from the hips works for legs, perhaps they should make all the jumpsuits the crew wear (one-piece, with gloves/socks/hood attached) two sizes too small so their entire skeleton is under compression...

China nabs website staff for erotic audiobooks

Hmmm....

A rank miscarriage of justice will get Mr Gong banged up. There's nothing funny about that.

US reality TV 'star' attacked fiancé with laptop, cat, apples

cat, computer & fruit

S'obvious - the whole thing was sponsored by Steve Jobs. The cat was called Snowflake (as owned by LISA Simspon), the fruit was Macintosh apples and the laptop was a Sony Vaio TX-770.

Gmail offers 'undo' email option

@Geoff Johnson: Hopefully they'll do attachment warning next.

"Scan the mail for attach, attached, enclosed or other such words and warn you if you didn't add an attachment. That'd save plenty of embarrassment."

I have this already for Outklook - see http://manage-this.com/handy-outlook-attachment-reminder-macro/

Also warns you before sending a meeting request with no location or a message with a blank subject line.

Google kicks Amazon in the Kindle

Any one tried viewing Word docs with images on a PRS-505?

Word 2003 or RTF docs with images don't show the image. Convert to PDF and the images show - but when you zoom, text doesn't reformat (as you'd expect)

Astroboffins probe mysterious 'blazar'

Yes, but...

Can I use it instead on incandescent bulbs?

Robo-fish to hunt pollution in Spanish seas

Pretty cool, but I wonder...

Given that (I assume) they'll have to plug them in to recharge them, why do the data transfer by WiFi?

Secret Aussie blacklist leaked

A list of banned dentisis?

"Is it safe?"

Phone designers to improve reality

Perhaps, but the roll-up full-color OLED has been "just over the horizon" for a number of years

Boone had one in Earth:Final Conflict. And a cool gun which lived up his sleeve. Can we have one of those next?

Apple intoxicated with ex-Vista chief's musical stylings

@BLoad: Given the weak voice, the weak lyrics, the weak composition and the weak

Well, yeah - but wait for SP1!

London stab murder rate entirely normal, says top stats prof

Ah, statistical significance!

With a big enough sample, there can be a "statistically significant" difference in height between groups - but an actual difference of a quarter of an inch . Statistically significant, but of no real-world significance to a man who want to know what range of trouser sizes to stock in his shop.

Sony Ericsson crafts miniature boombox

I can see this changing the image of a summer afternoon

But not in a good way.

Irish ISPs rally against record label anti-piracy threat

@Youvegototbe Joking

"Lets see them drag all the ISP's to court. teehee" They may well do it: if they get the backing of U2, they can afford to outlawyer any ISP in Eire.

Amazon sued by cable TV giant over Kindle ebooks

"They don't have the right to read a book out loud,"

Please arrange for a refund on my copy of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", as it was obviously sold to me under false pretenses: "A wonderful bedtime book to read to your children".

Ex-Star Wars boffins build mosquito-blasting raygun

Millennium

IIRC in the film Millennium the future contains lasers which zap your fag ends when you've finished. The central character is sat in a bar, and chucks her finished cigarette in the air and ZAP - it's gone. How nonsensical. Just imagine! A bar where you could smoke a cigartette...

Man turns finger into storage

For pity's sake....

Don't let Wacqui Jacqui see this!

Web scam hoodwinks web founding father

So what actually happened here?

He found a phone number on the web and rang it. What has that got to do with infected systems?

Upper-atmos ion drive dart sat launch delayed

I wondered why xenon.

And then I wondered if it'll leave a pretty colour trail in the night sky.

And the I wondered if it'll say "Coca Cola"...

Drunken BOFH wreaks $1.2m in Oz damage

The cost wasn't just salaries of the restore workers

I'm sure they'll have figured in downtime losses, e.g. the biling department sent out $X invoices everyday, they were off-line for Y days, so we lose $XY cash flow. Or we have to pay the workforce for doing nothing for Y days. etc etc etc. It's the same financial model which makes a suitcase of pirate DVD's worth billions.

BBC zombie caper slammed by security pros

Justification

What the Beeb did was obviously against existing law. But a court may decide that their actions were justifiable. It's illegal for me to enter your house if I walk past and the door is open. And I wouldn't - or at least, I wouldn't do it to turn off the TV you'd left on. But I might, to put out a fire - and I would hope that any court would say that I was right so to do.

So the question is: where do the BBC's actions lie on the "Left on telly/telly on fire" scale?

3D laser maths models of women's bodies produced

Remember the auto-tailor in Sleeper?

It did all this precise laser measurement too.

Voice analysis trial gives wobbly results

I can see it now,,,

Thank you, Mr Green, I'll just pass you over to my supervisor, ED-209.

ED-209: ARE YOU CHEATING ON YOUR BENEFIT CLAIM? YOU HAVE 15 SECONDS TO REPLY!

ISS crew flees flying space junk

Why is the other craft safer?

Is it just a smaller target or is it tougher?

Texting peer released from prison

They keep saying the last text was sent two minutes before the crash

How was that established? I can see how they have an accurate time for the text - but who timed the collision? And if he had SENT a text two minutes before - why should we believe he wasn't READING or composing a text at the time of the impact? SOMETHING must have stopped him seeing the car he ran into.

Better stop typing before the capslock jams again...

Aussie firms makes Surface-readable business cards

"instead of throwing it into a draw"

It's a 'drawer'! The sliding thing under your desk is a 'drawer'! Perhaps a business card might the 'in a draw', but it would have to be one of the very low value prizes.

'WALL-E' robot grunt obeys military hand signals

Hand gestures in the battle field?

It's a command.

First syllable.

Little word.

A An And At - AT!

Second word - sounds like behind? Sounds like reverse? Sounds like back! SOUNDS LIKE BACK!

RACK, uh SACK, HACk, JACK , Tack - TACK! ATTACK!!!

Homosexuality does for UK blue duck population

@Mycho

"Or did you think that animals maintained an equilibrium population through celibacy?"

I thought they maintained it by being eaten or starving to death.

Linux-Lego man trumpets OSH revolution

Depends what you mean by "Open source hardware"

Unless you're going to fabricate your own chips, what's the difference between OSH and a marketed chip with a published specification?

"I need a chip to link two bits of kit. Shall I buy the 89 cent chip from Maplin or make my own in my multi-million pound fabrication plant?"

There's lots of OSH out there - I needed a brass bolt 4mm by 20mm and Homebase had loads.

Oz bloke in underpants wrestles 'lunatic ninja' roo

I so glad I live in the UK.

We had a mouse in the living room once. That's about as exciting as it gets.

Boffin unveils facial expression-controlled iPod

I hope it doesn't become too popular...

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Facebook client seemingly snaffled from Windows 6.5

@IGnatius T Foobar

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

Diebold e-voting software includes delete audit logs button

I think I'd program in a "delete log" button

In the early stages of development, as a "reset to clean state" option. Though I hope I'd remember to remove it before compiling the final build!

Butt-based watch UI uncovered

Do my eyes deceive me?

Has the left-most image been photoshopped for jounalistic effect? Shame on you El Reg! "Wake up!" at 20:40 - suspiciously the same time shown in the right-most image?