Posts by Stylee

UK officials caught napping ahead of 2G and 3G doomsday

Re: Lychford Road

Usually replace the whole meter. It is possible to replace the communications module, but the meter batteries only have an expected 10-15 year lifespan and often don't last that long

Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata

SCL - for better elections

Ha ha, Cambridge Anal and SCL Elections; reminds me of a t-shirt I had for the Khartoum Hash House Harriers sponsored by SCL (Steel Construction Limited) proudly emblazoned with, "SCL - for better erections".

Cut price Android on steroids: OnePlus One – should we look gift horse in the gob?

Invite

How about an invite, Mr Orlowski, kindly please?

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Re: "cats are likely killing more than four billion animals per year..."

It certainly seems impressive when compared to the relatively measly 10 billion animals that humans kill for food every year in the USA. Although I suppose the human food animals are much bigger. If only the cats could learn to cooperate and hunt in packs, they might be able to bring down a cow - if we say one cow equates to a thousand mice, then cats would be able to cut their kill count to 4 million. If they were killing for food, which they aren't.

Yum, cow - mmm.

Apple: Samsung was in 'crisis' over our iPhone awesomeness

Re: @Thorfkin and others

You're right about the ease of use and overall user experience of the iphone being key to its success (also fantastic marketing) - but this is not why Apple is suing Samsung. Apple are claiming that Samsung imitated the look and feel of their phone.

Apple was so successful with their take on the touchscreen phone, for the reasons you mention, that people forgot what came before - even if it was poorly implemented by comparison. In the years before iphones, people would look at my HP H6340 and say, "what the hell is that?" After the iphone was released people would look at it and say, "Is that an iphone?" It was silver, black and had a green telephone icon too, after all.

Stylus required

"required a stylus to tap buttons on the screen"

No they didn't. My first touchscreen phone (released 2004) had a stylus, which I would get out occasionally when precision was required. Usually I would use my finger. OK, so resistive screens will not work with the feather-light touch of capacitive screens, but capacitive screens do actually 'require' a fleshy (or at least conductive) pointer. A resistive screen can be operated with a stylus, finger (with or without gloves), corner of coffee table, ball-point pen, camel's hoof - whatever.

Apparently, the first capacitive touchscreen phone was made by LG.

Higgs boson chasers: Now only 1-in-300 MILLION chance we're wrong

Re: To Infinity and...

Yes, 367 would guarantee two the same, accounting for leap years, and as long as we are ignoring year of birth - infinity was obviously a daft thing to say, innit. However, the size of the room (and people) does matter if we are talking about 'filling a room' with people.

Re: The chance of being killed by a shark...

Birthday problem: You didn't say how big the room was. We would need to know this to figure out how many people are in the room. Obviously, you would need an infinite number of people to be certain two had the same birthday. The interesting bit (to ignorant, non-degree toting people with an interest in mathematics, or even statistics - like me) is that you only need 23 people to reach a more than 50% probability that any two people have the same birthday.

Monty Hall: Best to change (providing Monty knew what was behind the curtains), I believe.

Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

Re: How would you save mankind.

There is only on real way to save mankind in the long run. We must colonise other planets. Other solar systems. Other galaxies.

Nevermind all this renewable/nuclear/fluffy panda stuff - we need to find a way out of here.

We will, at some point, get hit by some massive piece of cosmic debris. We will all get frazzled as the oceans boil off when the sun expands - admittedly not for a long time, but not that far off in terms of earth-having-existed timescales.

Most people I say this to take it as some sort of strange Trekky nutjob fantasy, and probably drug induced. But it's true (the world eventually ending bit).

Iran displays video footage of captured US spy drone

Bearded Camel Arabs

@RedRichie - "A country run by bearded religious lunatics that are trying to build a nuclear bomb"

Sounds a lot like the good ol' US of A to me. Except they already have thousands of nuclear weapons. And beards are not so popular these days.

@sam bo - "quite sure all they pilot are camels and carpets"

You must be a troll. No one is that much of an ignorant twat, surely.

@Anon-engy - "they are like all arabs"

Iran is Persian, not Arab.

Not so fast: Italian boffins say neutrinos not faster than light

2+2=4 therefore my Mama's a shoe.

It's a bit like saying the world can't possibly be spherical and must be flat, 'cause when I put my marbles down they don't roll off.

Or possibly, "It can't have been my Jimmy what done it your honour, honest - because, well, he's not like that..."

Or a bit like trying to apply Japanese grammatical rules to Catalan, or something.

Basically, they're saying that this completely unexpected and not understood thing cannot be happening because it is not behaving as expected and in a manner we understand.

Turkish groom accidentally sprays wedding guests with bullets

Re: Fireworks

I know two people who were hurt by falling firework remnants - the girl who it (metal casing - big rocket) fell on, causing a bit of bruising to her back, and her brother who burnt his hand picking it up, wondering what on earth it was.

Apple bars radiation nanny from App Store

Ise, Ise, baby.

"Phenomenally insightful advise, don't you agree?"

Advice, damn it, advice!!

Plod pioneers painless data collection

Not so painless

I was breathalysed on Friday night, plod was using one of these new-fangled devices. There wasn't "any" reason to take any additional information from me, so only age, ethnicity and gender was recorded. It took a good five minutes of frustrated button pushing amid comments of, "bloody thing" and, "the old system was much quicker" to actually enter these three items, however. They were taking pictures of everything as well.

Michael Dell sells you some s**t you don't need

Disservice to other people named Klaus

Must be something to do with my upbringing, but I always held the romantic notion that people named Klaus spend their days making dodgy porno films. As in, "Oh Klaus, geben me den grossen sticken, ja!"

Reg readers rage at comment icon outrage

Icons

How about a urinal full of ants?

For the pedants, of course!

BOFH: Server room secret panels

@James Pickett

Surely you meant Pedants'?

Mines not a coat, it's a jacket.

Apple forbids Windows users from installing Safari for Windows

Apple Label

Cox.

Mobo maker builds 'powerless' processor cooling fan

@Ian Rogers

In addition to criticising Mr Lai before checking his calculations, you refer to centigrade, rather than Celsius. The centigrade scale was abandoned in 1954 - you may not have been aware there was a difference.

Look up centigrade Celsius in google.

London Congestion Charge becomes CO₂ tax

@Zargof

As I seem to remember, the majority of the money raised from the congestion charge is spent on running the whole congestion charging setup. As JonB said, what's left is spent on "improving" public transport in London.