Posts by Chris Richards

Swine flu spam clogs inboxes

Sound advice...

"Web users are advised to ignore all such messages and get their information from recognised news outlets."

As I'm sure what's being peddled in the spam is playing it down compared to the BBC's "OMG we're all going to die" approach. But don't worry, facemasks and a helpline are on their way, for autumn - so you can watch the leaves fall as your friends and colleagues drop.

This pandemic is boring me. It's certainly not what 28 days later lead me to believe happens. Although that said, we have a few weeks left.

Oh crap - I've just coughed!! In case I don't have time to tell anyone this I want my ashes scattering by....\sgdfdh\\dhdnvcxvncbsdfhd

Lloyd-Webber calls for clampdown on ISPs

He's right...

...the percentage of bandwidth being sucked up by users (mainly teens) illegally downloading copies of the soundtracks to Joseph, Phantom of the Opera and Cats is simply staggering!! Something must be done!

Force 1800 superhurricanes snapped on far-off world

@Drawing a straight line...

Well you're even worse now!!

In the limit of large x the difference between x^2 and x^(3/2) is far far greater than the difference of x^(3/2) and x. So a straight line is an infinitely better approximation than a quadratic. It's pretty simple really - get back to maths lessons, arsehole!

Open-sourcers get with the git

@Robert Grant

My inner xml parser thought exactly the same.

Microsoft warns customers against bogus 'Blue Edition' Office

I guess...

That the 'high quality' refers to the counterfeiting, and not the product itself!!

North Korea photoshops stroke from Kim Jong Il

erm...

Is the main worry not the different shadows, lack of seam etc, but that he looks like he's posing for a family snap than a military picture.

Also, that one from the korean site is more than subtley different - he's standing on hay, not concrete ,and the guys next to him have nicely pressed trousers not the baggy pantaloons that seem to be en vogue with the korean soldiers these days.

US kicks off secure hash competition

@Christoph

If that was some distribution of a open source project in binary format than it's perfectly simple to carry out their scheme (obviously the smaller the project the easier!) and distribute an 'evilised' binary with the same hash.

But obviously now the republicans are (soon to be) out of the whitehouse there is no evil left in the world, so we needed worry :)

Re: is it really much of a problem?

yes, perhaps a human readable document is a bad example but executables aren't:

http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/md5collision/

Berkeley boffins save Moore's Law

Productisation??

Is that really a word? Perhaps I should just be glad it's an s rather than a z.

BBC's TV detector vans to remain a state secret

Ok then...

"it would damage the public's perception of the effectiveness of TV detector vans"

That's just saying "there's nothing in then, which we don't want people to know otherwise they won't be worried into paying their licence fee"

NASA kids' compo: Name the inflatable moon habitat

@Adrian

WTF do you propose they build!?!? For god's sake - what is going to stand up to something that blows chunks out of the moon's surface?

Don't forget they've got to get this bloody thing there - as the article says, there's a 125kg overhead for every kilo they get there; launching a 10in reinforced steel bunker (lead lined) is *not* an option!

Alarm clock becomes digital detective

quite useful...

..if you're epileptic and are not sure whether your nocturnal seizures have started up again or whether you're just feeling shite in the morning for no apparent reason.

Mine's the one with tegretol in the pocket.

Dutch court orders Google to reveal Gmail user

why...

does everyone seem to be showing sympathy for this guy!? Why should he be allowed to hide behind google to escape his crime! This isn't the 1600s when you could go running to a church for sanctuary after killng your neighbours goat. If you can't do the time....

I appreciate people may worry that this is the thin end of the wedge, but the EFF are just moany student activists who aren't students any more.

No mile-high pr0n for Delta passengers

@AC

If you're at 5280ft you shouldn't have your laptop on anyway as you've either just taken off or are coming in to land. So it's definitely not the filtered internet that's stopping you from tossing off. The passengers next to might have something to say though.

Stick health warnings on gays, says Stock Exchange chaplain

erm,...

I do hate to be picky, but I think you'll find tattooing 'FELLATIO KILLS' on the chin is a bit pointless as that's not where the person carrying out the act is looking, and it's obscured by something else for the person it's being carried out on.

And if he's getting preachy with the stockbrokers, they should probably start painting 'COCAINE KILLS' on the cisterns of the toilets.

Pirates, cos we've all seen what seafaring men get upto, thanks to Portsmouth museums.

Germans give peeking Google one in the eye

@Johan Hartman

erm, sorry? Can you not remember the series of pool raid parties down south that were planned using google maps. Imagine that, but with streetlevel view. Combine overhead shots with ground level photography (including streetlights, passers by [and lack thereof] etc) and you've got a great source to find that dimly lit mansion with a nice big patio window out the back.

And as for google 'not needing a permit' - who the hell do they think they are!!! I'm beginning to hate google as much as I hate MS.

Right: Which one of you lot invented 'tw*tdangle', eh?

nor was it me...

...but along with other commentards I'm all for the twatdangler icon!!

(in addition to the coffee + keyboard icon).

I know there's a specific story for suggesting icons, but I'm not yet bored enough to search for it.

Mine's the one with kebab meat in one pocket and a pitta in the other.

David Blaine tw*tdangle ends in controversy

He should...

Come to England and repeat the stunt - I'm sure there are plenty of people here who'd willingly piss all over him* even if he's not willing to himself. What a twat!

I'm pleased I'm from a nation that throw things at him rather than standing in awe of his clearly lacking talents. And as for being voluntarily catheterised! The only time I expect to be catheterised is either when I'm in a coma, or am sufficiently old and ill that one of my remaining relatives have the go ahead to switch the machine off.

*unless he was on fire

Daily Mail hacks get emergency bird flu jabs

PIMS?

Here's hoping they're 'accidentally' injected with an active strain (then taken to the Sun office and locked in with them). They could webcast it - I'd pay to watch that's for sure!

Mine's the one with the hyperdermics in the pocket.

LHC downed until after Xmas - Boo

oh, but that means...

...we won't have any stories about proton punishing, Higgs harassing and boson bothering boffins until after christmas!!

(and @AC, the media frenzy seems to be more aimed at the switch on than whenever the first collision happens - which is probably a good thing. Nobody likes expecting to be pulled into a not-so-microblackhole feet first - this way it'll be a nice surprise).

OpenSocial, OpenID, and Google Gears: Three technologies for history's dustbin

hired a funnyman??

Aaron - I think you'll find they hired Seinfeld, a man who is as far from funny as bill gates is from cool.

Carpetbomb bug tarnishes Google Chrome

@Chris Young

Webkit is the best renderer around (passing acid 3.0 100%) - so perhaps MSDN has been designed to look right when rendered wrongly by IE, but looks wrong when rendered correctly by webkit/chrome.

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard: Further poster outrage

absolutely...

made my friday! Thank you el reg for proving children's toys can be made adult.

Mine's the one with directions to toys'r'us on the sleeve.

Portsmouth punts naval boy-on-boy to innocent kiddies

please please please

can we have a playmobile recreation of this scene (evidently from bareback seamen 3)

mine's the one with easy release buttons.

Beeb to resurrect Reggie Perrin

rather harsh...

I remember when they discovered the top quark in 1995 that woman (judith something) stood around 6 boxes representing the quarks with a giant box for the top quark.

If she's the one to blame for me doing a phd on the subject 13 years later she's got a lot to answer for!!

Mine's the one with the Higgs in the pocket

Old timers rattle zimmers at 'Elderly Persons' sign

James Bassett...

for PM!

Ofcom tailgates Google with radio usage map

quite right too...

>They have never been on the side of the public; they are institutionally inept and they impede development of new services.

Never a truer word spoken about the public.

Killer Satnavs amok in 'Utah Polyhedron' phenomenon

@Is it just me..

If you're as bored as I am you'll welcome those extra reads!

Your job is obviously just too interesting - lucky you!

Mine's the one with the brain left in the pocket.

US customs: Yes, we can seize your laptop, iPod

@Here's an idea

My tip - do whatever the border patrol police say!!

They're scary scary people who full body x-rayed purely because I took a while taking my belt off (it's too wide for the loops so gets stuck). Think they're the only people in America who don't say 'have a nice day'.

BOFH: Server room secret panels

@Steve

I was wondering exactly the same thing...

Worms spread via spam on Facebook and MySpace

worrying...

...that I read it as "Paris Hilton Tosses off Dwarf On The Street".

And catched!!! Ee gads man - caught!

Can we not get some semi-literate worm writers out there?

Hacker murders Facebook word game

@Your poor Scrabble example

<antiamerican_sentiment>

www.theregister.co.uk

So sowpods is the dictionary of choice here - not the Americanised crap that is TWL - it lacks so many antequated words, making scrabble by guesswork very difficult.

</antiamerican_sentiment>

Although og still doesn't appear, ky does (and obscurely, according to the OED, is the plural of cow in Scottish and northern dialects).

Quantum porn engine foiled by strawberries and muffins

@Adam Azarchs

With that maths they've got somewhere between 1 and 2 employees. They're going to need them to bloody productive!

Excessive texting 'damages your health'

@AC

dirty texting in public would become a very embarrassing matter indeed if that became the norm.

And how would the younguns pronounce the sentences from which they've purged all vowels?

Paris, because I'm sure she's sent her fair share of filthy texts!

Ex-Googlers reinvent web search

poor john holmes...

this immigration attorney in orlando will not be happy.

I see cuil having some legal issues!

And I really don't like the image thing - I hope this is a work in progress!

Emirates takes delivery of its first A380 super jumbo

ceiling mood lighting

That emirates ceiling mood lighting is really annoying!!

It looks stupid and no-one is convinced by the fake starlight effect as it's only during their imposed nighttime which is probably when you want to be awake.

Though more annoying is the seatback screen that seems to be broken 90% of the time - a repeated showing of a linux box rebooting, whilst satisfying the inner geek the first 5 or so times, is bloody annoying!

/flames because a dirty scally stole my ipod today and I'm really not happy about it so I'm taking it out on anything I can. Including airlines. The copper who comes round tonight best be fit...

Chinese takeaway biodiesel man in garage explosion horror

@ Peter Hawkins

Scotch *whisky* is a drink, i.e. a whisky originating from Scotland.

Scotch is used (though I'd say it was somewhat dated) to refer to anything originating from Scotland, including its people.

Dancing to power London nightclub

@Martin

You don't get summat for nowt, so the dance floor *is* sucking the energy out of you - removing energy from the springs reduces the springiness of the dancefloor itself, making dancing feel even more awkward even the floor won't dance with you!

Though that's probably the least of your worries.

Mines the UV-glo alien!

Sony spin-off planning 2009 FED TV launch

or a cheaper alternative...

Would be to use a single electron source. This would have to be placed further behind the screen for obvious reasons, but an alternating electric field could be used to make the beam scan the screen which would be coated with the same phosphor pixels. I should patent it :P

Scareware runs amok on PlayStation site

@Sony fails again

yeah, but you're made my m$!

reason enough for me to steer clear (plus the xbox is so noisy! and the green on dirty white looks terrible, not matrixesque nor futuristic).

@myself

by, even.

Sony touts weird multi-sensor handheld gadget tech

or...

surely the 'tactile pixels' if suitably sensitive could be used as a(n extra) scrolling device. and quite a nice one at that - perhaps it would be less annoying than the iphone scroll which I hate!!

DSGi profit plummets 30%

@richard!

Oi! I used to work there, and I'll have you know it was a far from outdated building (although the air con was up to nothing).

And I was useless at my job, but that's because they paid me £2.70/hr to do it and I didn't feel that was enough to be useful. You try motivating yourself to shift a washing machine or remerchandise the games section on that wage!

scart leads were, and probably still are, their biggest profit maker. But it seems now their ridiculous markups will be their downfall... tee hee.

Science MPs horrified by UK bio-lab management

oh oh!

strategic overview - the 2 words scientists hate to see. Fund held 'until the results of the DIUS strategic review on bioscience are published', and when they do arrive they'll probably be cut due to a reshuffling (sorry, streamlining) of the research councils which always works as a nice little smokescreen (operating costs are huge, don't you know!).

CERN declares Large Hadron Collider perfectly safe

but...

surely the point of the LHC is to probe energy scales never probed (on an earth based experiment). As a theoretical physicist myself I'm sure not every theory to date can cover every possible scenario (much as some of them really are just crackpot), so saying we don't expect them doesn't mean they won't be there - Rutherford didn't expect to see his alpha particles fly back at him, but they did!

And RHIC hasn't produced any to date... right - so that doesn't say RHIC will never produce them, so it's therefore statistically possible that the first thing LHC could produce when running in Pb-Pb mode are the frankly terrifying strangelets.

Mind you - if LHC weakens string theory's stance further I'm happy to run the risk of annihilation!

Mobile phones to save airlines, by exposing passengers

oh great...

So if I turned my phone off on the way into the airport so I could avoid any work contact while I sat reading my book I'd just be bombarded with these texts on the other side of the world where I get charged for the pleasure of receiving them.

This is surely going to increase the number of cases of air-rage! I for one would be a lot closer to smacking the gormless assistant in whsmiths (who may be, or may not be, seconds away from writing their next piece of terrible yet terrifyingly extremist prose).

Rare Mac Trojan exploits Apple vuln

@Art Vanderlay

quote:"All systems are vulnerable if you have to download, install, and have to give your admin password surely.

Try this in a terminal window:

sudo rm -rf /

"

I really hope someone having a Monday morning brainlapse didn't try that.

Flirty texting could land Scots in jail for 10 years

how do you

..take a picture of an imaginary person?

paris, because she knows more than her fair share about indecent material!

Al-Qaeda targets net-connected coffee machine

reminds me of..

...the old linux howto

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee.html

flames because that's what my flat would be in if I tried it myself!

Glastonbury Festival forecast: very windy, hopes Orange

@stu

If glastonbury organisers are happy enough to erect tent after tent for gigs, festival goers are happy to sleep in theirs (provided they haven't, as I did, accidentally erected it with the flap pointing up hill :( ) then I'm sure orange will be fine!

securing my coat in case a gust of wind blows it into cow pat