Posts by Chris Bradshaw

Megan's Law snafu fingered in rapist's murder

karma

He raped people (apparently more than once) and was punished, and he served his time. Does him being in jail make the rape victims feel better? How do they feel when he is let out? I think I can make an educated guess on this.

Now he is a victim of a crime, and the person who did it will (probably, hopefully) serve their time too. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the murderer, but I also don't have much for the rapist. Both thought themselves above the law and above other people. Both did something very wrong.

My sympathy is for the rape victims. And I would be GLAD if what happened to this rapist makes someone else think twice about committing rape. Even if it was a mistake, it can serve as a deterrent. What goes around comes around - karma.

'Extortionist' turns Wi-Fi thief to cover tracks

non-destructive usage of property

Temporary and non-destructive usage of someone else's property, as long as it is minor and not otherwise illegal, is relatively common and

If I am driving and need to turn into someone's driveway to turn around, I just do it without thinking. Am I trespassing? If they really want to keep others from 'borrowing' their driveway, they could put a gate on it, or tire spikes.... I do not damage it by using it, I don't see a problem.

I put garbage in someone else's bin when on a walk, they pay for garbage service but the incremental cost is nil - they will not fill the bin anyway and this one piece doesn't change that. If they really want to protect it - they could put a lock on the bin :-)

It is a different story if I have a loaded semi-trailer or heavy goods vehicle - I am probably doing damage, the driveway is not built for this, and I am inconsiderate to use it.. Also, if I put a sofa in someone's bin they would be right to be upset - I am using their entire capacity...

Sending a small text email over someone's unsecured wifi is fine by me - but of course sending a threatening or blackmailing email is different...

Tesco in X-rated Lawnmower Simulator shocker

Virgin isn't 18+ restricted

It's never as much fun playing with a Virgin one...

Just look at the time...

Exploding mobile battery suspected in S Korea fatality

language again..

You didn't use the word mobe once in the entire article...

Celebrity spam gang whips up a storm

better still :-)

"You have opened an executable file that was infected. To protect the Internet your Windows installation has been overwritten with a Linux distribution"

OT: Need those penguin icons...

US judge debenched for jailing entire courtroom

stupid judge...

He should have asked the court to point in the direction they heard the mobile ring from - there would probably be a pretty good consensus and the security goons would only have to search a few people...

Or he could have just relaxed and asked for a recess, during which everyone made sure their mobiles were off...

But, if he really doesn't like ringing mobes*, he should get a jammer... :-)

* now allowed, AFAIK

Air France compensates 170kg passenger

a solution?

The airlines could have a row of seats that were a little wider, for heavier-built people, and a row with more legroom, for tall people. Probably, if you wanted to get one of these seats, you would need to be measured for it (otherwise everyone will want them...).

Given that on almost every flight a few seats are empty, the actual cost to the airlines of losing a seat is very low - look at the frequent flyer programs where they say that the marginal cost of filling a seat is tiny... The cost should be the same - the airlines don't charge differently for bulkhead seats, exit rows, or the slightly thinner seats at the back of a 747...

And the larger people would presumably be more tolerant of being next to other larger people...

HMRC data loss could be tip of iceberg

This one doesn't count,

because they lost all this data last week. Shouldn't matter the second time around...

Drink rats' milk, suggests battling Heather Mills

What to do with all the cows?

Since we're not going to eat them (being vegan), and it would certainly be against the new moral code to just kill them all out of hand, will we just let them live? They will produce methane anyway, whether we milk them or not...

A better solution: develop a cow fart harvester, along with a small compressor and tank, presumably to be attached to the cow's rump. Voila - meat for non-vegans, milk and cheese for vegetarians, and Ms. Mills' car can be converted to run on the methane... I believe the biological term for this is symbiosis :-)

Ring-back tones to carry adverts

Hmmm

Going to be interesting, trying to create and sell audio ads which are not designed to be listened to all the way thru. And if the ad is more interesting than the call I'm making, is there an option to continue it... :-)

@'What about microsoft' AC - Microsoft already has ads in their boot-up time, if you hadn't noticed. There is a MS logo running...

As if advertising isn't ubiquitous enough already..

Beer set to hit four quid a pint

got this one beat

I live in Prague - a half-liter usually costs around 50p and always less than a quid. Now if I could just get the Czechs to make (and drink) real ale, I'd be set..

Their joke about British beer goes :

How do you make British beer?

Leave Czech beer in the sun for three days.

I've tried it, but it doesn't work :-(

:-)

Microsoft sells Windows twice

what <CENSORED>s

nuf said

Police aim to stamp out virtual child abuse

Hmmm

I am not a fan of first-person type shooter games, I think they decrease our natural resistance to harming other people. But I am even less of a fan of pedophilia... I would probably enjoy shooting games more if there was a good reason to 'kill' the 'enemy'.

What about if Second Life allowed shooting (ala Doom or Halo), with a 'time-out' (for the victim, or for both parties) after someone is shot? I think a lot of people would turn 'vigilante' - go and look for crimes such as virtual pedophilia and avenge the victims. And people would quickly learn that some behaviours are really unacceptable, even in a 'virtual' world. For someone who just wanted to try it for kicks, the possibility of getting shot would probably add to the adrenalin rush (or whatever it is they get out of it :-/ )

Aliens responsible for Italian machine uprising

not enough icons

We need more than one icon for this one - at a minimum the black helicopter, the alien, the exclamation point, and one or more of the satanic CEOs. When someone makes the obligatory 'Paris Hilton angle' joke we're up to 5...

How much work would it be to change the radio buttons into checkboxes?

California teen offers GPS challenge to speeding rap

analysis

30 km per hour is 8.3 meters per second (30,000m/3600 seconds)

GPS recievers get a signal every 6 seconds?? (I did not find a definitive source for this), so the reciever will go about 50 meters between signals. Assuming an error of 5 meters, there is a 10 % variance in speed calculated vs actual speed.

If GPS sends more often (say once a second), the calculated velocity is useless unless you average out the signals over time (5 meters of possible error in 8 meters of distance). If GPS sends a signal only once every 30 seconds, then a 5 meter error over 250 meters between signals means the speed calculated is accurate to 2% - you get the same if you average the speed over 30 seconds.

The problem is that the police are measuring instantaneous speed while the GPS is measuring average speed. So don't tell the judge this :-)

Sorry for not using Reg units, the conversion to such is left as an exercise for the bored reader :-)

eBay employee 'torpedos' fraud trial

@ Neil Weller

Uh - the passport actually reads "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Great Britain is the big island - Scotland, Wales, England. Together with Northern Ireland it makes up the United Kingdom.

Belfast is in the UK, but not in Great Britain.

Long lunching Luddites show world how to do IT

viva la France

As hard as this is to write (being British and American ;-) ), I am with the French on this - IMHO long lunches and shops built with bricks are preferable to mouldy sandwiches from a machine and shopping at Amazon. To be sure, I do some shopping on-line and some lunching alone, but I prefer activities with more social interaction. Call me a Luddite if you will (I don't have a TV and don't miss it), but I value quality of life over price of goods...

If the virtualization of social life continues in the same direction, the pub will be among the next casualties. And that will give even Reg hacks something to regret :-)

El Reg goes virtual with e-Symposium on virtualization

ac vs amanfromMars

Gotta hand the first round to amanfrommars :-) Very fancy wordplay...

UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys

solution

Encrypt files of interest using a public / private key method. Then you can say with impunity 'That's something I encrypted with someone else's public key. to send to them, and I don't have an unencrypted copy. You will need their private key to decrypt it, which I don't have... :-P ' They will have a hard time proving that the public key is yours (publish it on the web somewhere), unless you have a copy of the corresponding private key somewhere (which anyway would be a problem)

US rules vote swapping legal

proportional representation

Winner take all is not full democracy but just a shadow of it.... If there were proportional representation (i.e. 10% of the vote means 10% of the seats), everyone would vote for who they wanted and the problem would be minimized. The obvious problem with single seats (i.e. governer, president) could again be minimized with a 2nd and 3rd choice. If your first choice candidate gets the fewest votes (so is out of the running), your second choice candidate will receive your vote, then your third..

'Ads-funded' Microsoft Works pilot barges onto your PC this year

One word

Linux

Jordan names sprog 'Princess Tiaamii'

to DAJ

I can read hundreds of similar complaints here, too - you are wasting your time and ours... If el Reg dumped the odds and sods, it wouldn't be on the top of my list of IT news sites and I don't think I'm alone.

Spanish satire mag savaged over royal sex cartoon

bad taste

I think the cartoon is in rather bad taste, so I wouldn't buy the magazine. But banning it is going too far (for one thing, it backfires because everyone will try to see it :-) ).

I am not familiar with the Spanish royal family or Spanish public feelings about them, but if the cartoon has an element of truth in it (i.e. perhaps the prince does not work for a living) then it is a fair (but crude) potshot; if there isn't an element of truth to it, then it is just crude. Either way, in the context of the payout for making babies it is funny....

South Dakota rejoins the execution club

IT Angle is obvious

The IT angle is obvious - the article mentions that the previous execution in South Dakota was by electrocution.

And to Dillon Pyron (BTW, another nice name, are you from SD too?? :-) ), the death penalty does not act as a deterrent... US states which allow the death penalty have a higher average murder rate than those without, look at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org .

Chemical weapons are not WMDs

Let's define WMD properly

I would define WMD as weapons which kill or injure without regard to whether the victim is a fair target (combatant) or not. Rather than remove chemical and biological weapons from the WMD category, I would add High Explosive to it...

In fact, I think war would be very much more humane if machine guns were banned too, and even perhaps rifles... How many children were 'accidently' killed by soldiers with swords, in the days before gunpowder??? At least they wouldn't have the excuse of 'collateral damage'...

And (given that we are talking nonsense anyway), let's make the politicians fight it out themselves, rather than using young soldiers as proxies. I would love to see Bush and Kim Jong Il or Blair and Hussein fight it out in an arena with swords... It's a win-win :-)