Posts by Dr Patrick J R Harkin

Texas lawyer sues Citibank over fake cheque scam

What I don't undertand is...

...he's a lawyer - so why did he pay OUT some money?

5,000-year-old 'ice man' was shot to death

S'obvious...

This man was an arms manufacturer and was the last remaining piece of evidence proving that the claim the tribe in the next valley had WMD's was faked and he had to be silenced.

ISS astronauts lose 'alarming' amounts of hipbone strength

Bone weakness is only a problem...

...if they ever come down.

Problem solved.

14-year-old charged with impersonating Chicago PD

@Jon

"It's a wonder they did not give him a gun as well.." If he lost the one they gave him at school, that's his lookout.

Microsoft Songsmith ad trumps Seinfeld shocker

"Everyone has a song inside."

Perhaps. But everyone has a liver inside, and that's where it should stay.

Apple to pay $22.5m for scratched iPods

Dear God,

I wish to claim compensation. Last Friday, while bathing my cat, I discovered that You do not supply me in a scratch-proof coating.

Yours truly

Dr P J R Harkin

Robot 'Spider-man' casts net to nab burglars

Why bother with the robot?

Stick one of the net-guns (if they're any good) near likely entrance/exit points. Cheaper, and fixed units could use heavier gauge mesh. No need for the expensive & potentially unreliable robotics. Or, sticking with the spiderman theme, just stick the robots to the ceilings and let them fall on the intruder. A 20kg thwack should slow them down...

Obama gets to keep his BlackBerry

Hey, honey, I got an e-mail from the President!

"That's nice - what does it say?"

"I don't know - it's super encrypted."

Goat hangs self in Canadian zoo

My heart goes out to the goat, but...

it's the kids I feel sorry for!

Thank you, I'm here all week, try the fish - I'm told the poached stingray is to die for...

New Italian Job ending revealed Friday

The sequel is obvious...

Once they've retrieved the gold, they all get on the bus and go on a lovely Summer Holiday.

'Miracle' plane crash was no miracle

Birds in the engine intake

It's the Death Star all over again - Can't we board it up or, you know, put some plywood over it or something?

Voice-controlled helicopter takes off

Not nother "Let's replace an interface with works with a geeky one which doesn't"...

Could have been worse though:

To increase thrust, press or say 1

To decrease thrust, press or say 2

To bank left, press or say 3

To bank right, press or say 4

To speak to an air traffic controller, press or say 5

Cows can't detect earthquakes: Official

If cows were smart...

"OK everyone - ready? On my mark - 3, 2, 1 EVERYBODY DOWN! HAHAHAHAH! Look at them! Running like buggery for the door! That one's pissed himself! OK, back up - and look innocent..."

NASA announces 'name the inflatable Moon tent' compo result

I seem to recall a posting about an inflatable pub a few years ago.

If this is a development of that technology, then it looks like they got around the tricky dartboard problem...

London Underground gets emergency phone network

@James Taylor

"they have the octopus card, like an oyster card...but better"

Presumably, if you put them both in your wallet, the octopus card will peel open the oyster card and eat it.

First case of sleep emailing documented

I've hung a picture in my sleep

Went to bed thinking "Must hang that picture tomorrow", woke up in the morning and it was done. So, either I did it and forgot, did it in my slkepp or - and this is my theory - the Picture Hanging Fairy did it in the night. (Well, not every applicant can be Tooth Fairy, the others must get other jobs. Stands to reason.)

Robotic exoskeleton gets gardening job

Well, obviously...

I wish to be the first toe welcome the arrival of our radish-harvesting wearable overlords.

Star Wars brainwave toy blows in

The instruction manual a hoot will be...

Next insert the alignment probe, yes. Force until until much resistance you feel.

Hands on with Sony's PRS-700 ebook reader

TANSTAFL

The drawback - based on the comments of a friend who looked at both in the US just before Xmas - is that the touchscreen/backlight layer has hit the contrast/readability badly.

Samsung camera recognises faces, names, shoe sizes...

@Peter Holgate

Well, I'm guessing that you don't select "the camera's smile mode"!

Terry Pratchett knighted for services to literature

Pratchett... Pratchett... Pratchett...

Rings a vague bell. I think I may have read one of his books...

US cybersecurity defences fail to thwart mock cyberattack

And thus we are divided into two camps:

The ones who read that as "Booze Allen Hamilton consulting service" and the ones who read it as "Bozo Allen Hamilton consulting service"

Boffins keep transplant lungs alive in glass dome

I don't follow the "reconditioned" bit...

...but this is a major advance for lung transplantation. Kidneys are easy (for suitable values of 'easy') - whip 'em out, stick 'em in an ice bucket, transport, reimplant, bish bash bosh another punter off dialysis, but lungs are much more fragile. I was taught (though things may have improved) that lungs are generally moved directly from donor to recipient, only being out of the body for a very short time.

This techniques offers donors more time to get to a transplant centre, surgeons more time to assess the condition of the donor lungs BEFORE anaesthetising the recipient and opens the possibility of moving lungs around the country in the way we now do for kidneys.

But even I think it looked spooky...

Prolific penis-pill pusher gets slap on the wrist

Suitable punishment.

Lock him in a cell with a large supply of paper, evelopes and a biro. He can go when he has written a letter of apology to everyone whose e-mail account got spammed.

Boffins beget bacterial biofuel bonanza

Don't believe these fools who say E.coli is good!

Just look at the name - "E coli"! E is a Class A drug which kills people and now they want to put it in our fuel tanks!

Gamer recovers Xbox 360 using controller

It would been even easier to trace...

...if it had been a wired controller....

Anti-radiation phone chip withdrawn from sale

Presumably Q would design one for Jame Bond

which projects Quantum of Solace Information Waves.

Yes, I know it isn't a very good joke, but then it wasn't a very good film.

Cryptic colour clock

I want one...

...but I don't know why.

Couple to get hitched in Halo wedding

The reception could get interesting

I've been to wedding where fights broke out... but no one had plasma rifles.

Original lightsabre sale brings big, big bucks

@Neoc

Well, imagine how much more it would have gone for if it had been Luke Skywalker's lightsabre!

The key to safe driving?

Who will buy this?

People who wouldn't use a phone while driving.

Who therefore don't need it.

Though they might give it to their kids.

Who will turn off the BlueTooth on their phones.

Who will therefore not use it.

Please tell me my pension fund hasn't invested in this company...

Mobile spy app pitched at paranoid partners

Sixteen hundred quid?!?!

I bet there's no app on the phone at all. They just bribe a telco employee to hack the system.

Apple files 3D-interface patent

That tubular view...

I'm sure that's the flight control panel from a Taelon shuttle.

I for one welcome the interface of our androgynous blue overlords.

Microsoft Surface helps Earth stand still

Quantum of Plot had a better one

And Minority Report.

Wait - you mean this one's real? Wow! Where can I buy one? I can't?!?! You can only see it in films - and I'm supposed to believe it's real? It's the Mechanical Turk all over again, isn't it - that's why we only see it as a table, not a tablet - they need room to hide the three midgets with iPhones doing the real controlling...

World's first 'thought images' seen on screen

Did they discern what the subject THOUGHT or what they SAW?

The optical cortex is on the surface atthe back of the brain and functional MRI scans have been able to distinguish whether the subject is being shown a vertical or horizontal line for a few years now. This sounds similar, rather than a true "thought reading" process.

Logitech makes play with 'comfort' gaming über-keyboard

The keys are backlit...

But all they have on them is (as far as I can see) a number. And they're under your hand.

Saw: The Videogame hit by setback

Still not seen the film.

I saw the DVD is a shop over the weekend "SAW: UNCUT". Sounded dull to me...

Leeds Council loses kids details

And now the data mining begins

With a quick SQL INNER JOIN statement, we can see how many 2 year olds are members of the BNP...

UK.gov resilience website feedback page falls over

We dob't need a resilience website

The main web servers will never fail - they're run by the goverment, who understand these things!

Intel trumpets world's fastest silicon photonic detector*

A ladybird?

Surely a creature which has to be TOLD it's house is on fire is not a good mascot for a line of photon detectors.

Logitech launches real wood guitar at virtual-axe Heroes

This this is a toy...

So why is it the price of a reasonable entry level instrument?

I wonder if you could design something to clip on a real (cheap) electric guitar? Most music stores do a cheap "decide if you like electric guitar" pack for about a hundred quid with a guitar and amp - bundle the two and you'd get Guitar Hero controller which becomes a real guitar after Xmas.

Gaming add-on forces players to excercise

And my next invention...

A USB-powered device which vibrates the Jog up and down so you can play while slumped on the couch...

Craiglist rant man on criminal libel rap

@traced the material to a computer Weichel "had access to".

I am disgusted that The Register posts material like this. That should read "to which Weichel had access".

Missile Defence multikill space interceptor in hover test

Very stable....

Overly so, I think. The "control jets" (if that's what they were) are all in one plane, and yet the thing never rotated or drifted along its long axis.

Designer sets sights on visual impairment iPhone case

"Blind" isn't a boolean attribute

"taking pictures and surfing the web will still be pretty difficult, if not to say pointless."

Whilst a totally blind photographer would be unusual (though NCIS did make a good episode based around one), someone with some residual sight might want to take a picture of an object or sign to show someone later - and every the totally blind do surf the web using audio-browsers.

M42 closed by marshmallows and beer

@David Harper

"It took the clean-up crew several hours to shovel up the spilled crustaceans, and by lunchtime, the stench was appalling."

Yeah, well, some of those cleanup crews have very low standards of personal hygiene.

Thank you very much, I'm here all week, don't try the fish, it's been scraped off a motorway...

Axl Rose may have undermined own case over Dr Pepper stunt

"Dr Pepper! What's the worst that could happen?"

Well, it could taste like Dr Pepper...

I'm not even sure he's a real doctor, to be honest...

The world's most deadly handset?

Urrrmm...

Wasn't that on here a few years back? I've certainly seen it before and as a loyal Reg reader I never look at any other pages of the intertube.

DARPA wants to develop an 'iPhoD'

I thought I had a good education...

...but the only bit I've understood of all this is that Apple might sue over the name.

Juror dismissed over Facebook poll

If the jurors can treat it like a game show, why not the accused?

Accused in the dock - You're currently looking at a minimum sentence of five years. You've already got rid of 10 years and 25 years, but with three pieces of evidence yet to open, the 15 years sentence is still in play. <phone rings> The jailer has told me to offer you..... nine years. Deal - or No Deal?