Posts by Ishkandar

Terrifying farm mechanoid plan for Japan

*Correction*

I should have said "circumference" not "diameter" !! I blame that on the wasabi bring tears to my eyes !!

Brighton professor bans Google

@Billy Verreynne

Sorry to disappoint you but Bush Jr (Dubya to his friends). has already claimed that title long since !!

Register Books' online courses still up for grabs

Something more useful...

... like Fast Typing and Keyboard Usage for the One Fingered ???

DIY Russian war robot plays nanny to inventor's kid

Don't laugh, guys !!

Dealing with a 10-month-old baby 24/7 have turned many a battle-hardened veteran into a quivering wreck !!

If it's sheer firepower, then use a nuke. It's the sheer complexity of the problems of a (largely) animinated alimentary canal that has driven many a man to the bottle; and I don't mean the one with milk in it !!

Alcohol enema bloke wins 2007 Darwin Award

Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Captain

@lansalot - no you don't. you just get projectile....

@Anonymous Coward - the peanuts would have reacted, resulting in a claymore-mine reaction !!

Village shaken by GPS-driven tank invasion

@Dave

Well, he hasn't even made it to Lance-corporal yet !! Corporal comes a lot later !! I'm sure a certain Viennese house-painter could have told you all about this !!

@Alex - a panzershrek was an emergency, panic production of a copy of the bazooka !! The later German weapons were much better and they were known as the panzerfaust !! But nothing can beat a suicidal 16 year old with a satchel charge !!

Atlantis to blast off on 7 Feb

Nice, nice NASA

How nice of them to pick the 7th of Feb as the launch date. If the whole thing goes *BANG*, then they can claim that they were merely celebrating the Chinese New Year with some fireworks !!

Elephants take over transport network, mandate sex parties

@Tawakalna

Do you mean that yours was like an elephant's trunk because it's bendy and cannot be inserted anywhere for any great length of time ??

Toshiba quietly shows fuel-cell fitted UMPC

Capacity ??

Just wait for the boom !! If it blows up a city block, then it should be large enough to drive that device for a sizable length of time !!

Reaper airborne war-droids to patrol 2012 Olympics

A nice little earner...

Has anyone bought any life insurance on behalf of the javeliners or the shot-putters or the hammer throwers yet ?? And then there are the archers and shooters !! Money for old rope when the Reapers come by and zap them for their "offensive actions" !!

Becta excludes Vista, Office - again

@Anonymous Coward(s)

@Lucky Anonymous Coward - you had teletype ??? When I were a lad, we had to make do with punched cards.....

@Database Anonymous Coward - ...and where the nightmare for the support staff comes from when the users screw up their Access applications. That's also what causes data security auditors to wear brown trousers when they do an audit !!

Academics slam Java

@Basic Anonymous Coward

Of course, Basic screwed up your IT employment opportunities !! Unfortunately, that was saved by your knowledge of COBOL. These days, to get a half-way decent COBOL programmer, one, frequently, has to fetch a Voodoo practitioner to "re-call" them !!

Alas, excessively long hours, loads of black coffee and tons of ciggies have taken their toll !!

Fluorescent sow drops glow-in-the-dark piglets

@nickj

...or you've contracted a strange form of STD !! However, a more likely explaination is that you have not washed properly and are now harbouring a lot of bioluminescent fungi.

US Marines: Osprey tiltrotor doing OK in Iraq

@Maksim Rukov

The blades-pointed-downwards mode is also known as the Kamikaze mode in which you'll be making some ground-breaking news !!

Cash-strapped NHS seeks Project Manager

One quid ??

I remember hearing, in my youth, a saying involving peanuts and monkeys !! Perhaps this applies !!

China ramps up space programme

@Slaine

No !! This is the China whose citizens are treated as slaves by vicious hard-hearted capitalist companies from USA and Europe to produce cheap goods for their own citizens. It is also the same China that produced toys that were exactly to specifications and then got blamed for the *design* faults in those same specifications given to them by the "scientifically accurate" ordering company. The same China that encouraged careful management of their wealth instead of blowing everything on the never-never and then wonder what hit them when the sub-prime crisis blew up. The same China that a VERY LARGE US bank went begging, cap-in-hand, for funds to save it from collapse !!

The same China that, when threatened with punitive measures because its currency is perceived to be lower than the US$, replied that the solution is simple. They will just dump US$1,000,000,000 worth of US debt in the open market. At that point, the US retreated rapidly from their saber-rattling stance.

The same China that makes the chips and other products that allow you to access this very site !! You could, of course, try two baked beans tins and a very long piece of string.....

Microsoft pleads ignorance on 'one interweb per child' pork barrel

@Steve Renouf

Force-fed my kids with 16x tables and hex numbering. Kicked and screamed all the way till they got to the "IT" classes in school. Then they showed off how fast they could work hexadecimal numbers and do rapid conversions back to base ten numbers.

@Juhani Vehvilainen - I beg to deffer. Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was another language known as Microsoft Basic or the Gospel according to Saint Billy !!

I also remember that Saint Billy paid approx. $25,000 for something called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) and re-branded it as Microsoft DOS and the rest, as they say, is history. BTW I am very far Left of Genghis Khan !! Of course, Attilla the Hun is a mere softy !!

@Matt Bryant

NooLabour TH*NK ??? You mean they actually practice such filthy perversions as TH*NK ??? And I assumed that they were such nice people that wouldn't stoop so low as to actually TH*NK !!

'Draconian' Microsoft promises to make Office work again

@Anonymous Coward - Wiped from the history books

....unless you will have to use the Windows !!!

US colon cancer risk blamed on English couple

Some minor points of order...

@ AC - you forgot to mention assorted North African types, Afro-Caribbean types and Sub-continental types to your mix !! And stir in a good dash of the Far East to spice up the stew !!

@JeffyPooh - yours is the "brute force" method. Try a more pleasant method of 15 pints of lager* followed by a bloody good Vindaloo !! Guaranteed to irrigate your colon like nothing else on Earth !!

* my mate argues that the substitution of *real ale* for the "foreign piss" gives better results !! He cites as proof that "India strength" ales, shipped out to the colonies, were the cause of the famous(??) Delhi Belly when added to industrial strength local cuisine !!

@Anonymous Coward

But do you have enough suppositories for your troops to last through the journey from THERE to HERE ?? And if, by some lucky chance, they do arrive, will they be wading bow-legged ashore to the nearest NHS hospital with their trousers at half mast to get the badly needed treatment ??

Anyway, smart move by the Brits. If they are criminals, send them to Australia !! If they are diseased, send them to America !! And if they love sheep, send them to Kiwiland !!

Evesham Technology goes into liquidation

@peter

There are still a lot of little computer shops run by one/two persons who will offer that kind of service for reasonable fees. They also give value-added services like advice and training. Eversham's business model is to slap bog standard bits together, stick on a fancy label and called it "manufacturing". There were no value-added services such as the local computer shops could give.

@Andy

When that business model went down the pan, Evesham, et al went the way of the dinosaurs !! Dell realised this not long ago and is trying very hard to move into the server markets with uncertain success. And where is Compaq these days ? And Evesham did not have even a tenth of their financial muscle.

So chump, I may be but I am a realistic chump. I'm not a woolly-minded jingoist !! As a previous commenter said, the problems began with the Evesham management and ended up in liquidation, whether you (or anyone else) wish it to or not !!

Another one bites the dust....

Another so-called PC manufacturer bites the dust !! They have traded on the fact that many people cannot put together a decent PC from the component bits and have no one to turn to for help and that PCs, then, were expensive things.

Now that PCs can be bought with the weekly bread and milk in Tesco, the bottom has fallen out of that market. Watch this space as more of them bite the dust !!

Remembering the Cray-1

Re: computer seats

It begs the answers similar to that of membership in the Mile High Club - Those who say they have usually haven't; and those who have aren't saying anything, they just smirk annoyingly and leave you guessing !!

UK gov sets rules for hacker tool ban

Re: Techies take things far too seriously sometimes....

Well, yes. The first law will be that we will nuke any country that harbours a hacker !!

Oops, wait !! I've just been attacked by a hacker from the US of A .....

Pope tells astronomers to pack up their telescopes

The mind boggles....

....at the thought of the proximity of long instruments and nuns !!

Former beauty queen cuffed for torturing ex

Duh ??

He was tied up with plastic cable and duct tape and held in *TWO* places ?? Did he feel a tad cut up by that and who got which bit of him ?? And after all that, he still manages to grab a gun ??

He should call himself - Houdini : Return of the Master !! - and make a fortune touring with his act !!

Chinese shun sex for a good, old-fashioned bank

Actions speak louder than words....

...how else would there be 1.3 billion of em !! No point in being self-satisfied in front of a PC screen !!

Sony BMG to drop Custer stance on DRM

Chief Sitting Fool bites the dust !!

Hooray !!

Schools minister touts 'one interweb per child' pork barrel

The evidence is clear, M'lud

Yet another minister pontification from the wrong end of his alimentary canal on a subject that he has *NO* knowledge of simply because the sound-bytes appear to be good and contain all the latest buzzwords and jargon.

Until the Labour (Blair+Brown) government stop handing megabillion quid projects to incompetent favourites, all this will *NEVER* succeed !! Japan is about the same size as Britain but they have the whole country covered for 100 Mb/s broadband while this country is still struggling to provide anything better than dial-up to some parts of it.

Every child on broadband ??? HA ! = (HAHA !!)/2

@Sam Millner - He has !! He has !! Just *NOT* on the right part of his anatomy !!

US Army loads up on Apples for 'better security'

@DeFex and @Niall Campbell

I know !! In fact, I've even been there. Hence that last paragraph.

And if you took that Mac paragraph literally, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you !! Cheap !! Cheap !! Only one previous owner !!

@virii - shows a sad lack of classical education around here. But then, that's to be expected. Perhaps a copy of "Latin for Dummies" might be of use !!

The *real* security reason

I think you guys may have missed the point. They reason the US military is going for the Macs is that there is a perceived notion among the Washington illiterati, oops, sorry, I mean US senators, that, since a major US PC maker has been purchased lock, stock and barrel by the Chinese, then *ALL* PCs are compromised.

Who knows but the "Yellow Peril" may, even now, be inserting chips into the PCs which, at the stroke of midnight, will convert the PCs, transformer-like, into the electronic equivalents of the Gremlins !!

Since Macs are made by an American owned company, they must, by definition, be safer !! No nasty commie chips inside em, can there??!

If you believe all that, PH has some nice home movies to sell to you at a reasonable price. After all, a girl has to fund her lifestyle somehow, now that granddaddy is giving away 97% of his assets to charity !!

Tote to punt online casino from the Channel

@Chris Williams

Haven't you heard of the immortal phrase "Don't do what I do; do what I tell you to do" !! The government obviously wants everyone else to be registered where they can be regulated and taxed easily but is moving its own operations off-shore to "facilitate its operations" !!

It's well past 1984 now and Big Brother is truly with us !!

Capgemini ‘not talking to Wipro’

Official denial

Could it be that the denial is a ploy to lower the target's current share price so that those in the know can buy a few more in the open market *before* the actual takeover talks begin ?? Once the talks begin, it will be considered as "insider trading" and is severely frowned upon.

It could be a matter of timing or mis-timing of the announcement on someone's part.

Feel the burn: in the aftermath of year's biggest hype

Re. Verizon - biggest cell phone operator

How silly of me. And there I thought that China Mobile has 100+ million subscribers (almost half the population of the US).....

MasterCard's Maestro struggles to cope with Xmas

@dave

But not so if you are from Wembley. Alperton, Southall or points yonder !!

US air force, Boeing press on with alternative jet fuel tests

@Anonymous John

Yes but you'll have to stoke up aplenty on baked beans just before take-off....

Presenting the inaugural Vulture Central Hall of Lame™

Re. frozen PH -

According to Larry Niven, the cryogenically frozen "persons" were to be known as "Corpsicles" !! If that is the case, will someone shove a large stick into said subject ??

Cloudy outlook for climate models

@Maverick

Sir, you missed the original scientific prediction that London will be three feet deep in horse shit by the 1900s. This could explain why our public transport is always running late since they have to plow through more than that stuff (in 2007)....

And then there was the Great Malthusian Theory that everyone will starve to death before the end of the 20th century.......

Now eat up your vegetables !! Poor children are starving to death everywhere outside London. It's only thanks to that thick layer of horse shit that we have such nice veggies to eat !!

Dell's laptop customisation options not very customisable

@Drew Cullen

Are you sure that you are full of Christmas goodwill and *NOT* Christmas spirits ???

@Walter Brown - That must have been when Fastbuck Fiorinna was booted out and HP regained its sense of commitment to its customers !!

Tories offer NHS IT rescue plan after major patient data losses

@Jon Axtell

Taking you argument to its ultimate conclusion, we will see individual data stored on individual devices. Where will these devices be stored and how will they be accessed by those in need of access (legally or otherwise) ?? Can they be clone-proofed if they were "acquired" for what ever time period; e.g. "borrowed" ?? Can they be damage/destruction-proofed in the event of a disaster ??

My friends and I had this argument before and one suggestion is to keep the data store up where the sun don't shine and, thereby, limiting the amount of damage to it. Data access can be obtained by the insertion of a data probe.....

Sorry, blame it on the Christmas spirits....

Tesco to start flogging Dell computers

@Rich

What you say about the kiddies is partly true. However, there are more savvy kiddies out there than you'd suspect.

Re. laptops - they are just like desktops, only more fiddly. What you need are the right sources of bits and pieces. Laptops are *NOT* magical black boxes that blow up if you try to open them. I've opened many a laptop to fix/upgrade them. Semi-literate persons in the Far East regularly open laptops for the same purpose and make a good living out of that. So it is a sad comment that, in the West, laptops have this mystique that prevents ordinarily knowledgeable persons from opening them up and doing things to them.

The only difficulty with many laptops is that many of their component parts are "built-in" to the motherboard and cannot be easily repaired/replaced.

@Matt Bryant - to avoid the Thiefrow baggage-handling treatment, just order online for home delivery.

@Thad - It's just the shell that you need strong. If that is your requirement, then I can recommend that you get military-grade cases that are guaranteed to be bullet-proof (not shell-proof, though). I've used Tempest-spec (US military specs) HP PCs that were deliberately dropped from the third floor to the concrete below, picked up and plugged in and works first time, every time. Then again Uncle Sam buys $20 hammers that are on sale at Walmart across the street for $2 !! WYPIWYG - What you pays is what you gets !!

The Dell business model !!

When will people realise that the Dell business model is no longer valid in these changing times ?? Back in the days when it involved black magic and wizardry to build a PC, Dell minted it by supplying that service. All power to them.

Now, every other kiddie can build one without too much effort and DIY books and mags are a penny a million, that business model will not work anymore. Add on the fact that Dell executives are paid fortunes while the High Street computer shop owners earn peanuts and you can see the worm doing flip-flops !!

Since almost all PC parts are manufactures in China anyway, many people are sourcing direct and by-passing Dell just as Dell by-passed IBM for their parts. It really pinches when the boot is on the other foot !!

FYI, I built my first PC from bits and parts sourced from Taiwan (the renegade province ??) in 1988, so I do know a little about DIY PCs !!

The art of software murder

Foxit ??

In the days of yore, when knights were gore......there was/is a nice bit of freeware called Ghostscript.

About 10 years ago, a techie(?) sayeth unto me that PDF files *cannot* be modified and I proceedeth to prove him wrong with Ghostscript. Lo and behold, modified PDF files flew at him thick and fast and smote him hip and thigh. A beam of pink light shone upon him and he converteth unto theTrue Faith although he was *NOT* on the road to Damascus !!

It is a sweet and tiny little application that pops up instantly when needed in any version of Windows from 3.0 to NT !! No data for any later versions of Windows available to me.

And Ghostscript saves files in any of the common formats and prints nicely too. In fact, it used the Unix concept of "print" as in "print" to printer, "print" to screen or "print" to disk !!

US switches off the incandescent lightbulb

Bulbs in a crapper

If you are flicking the light on and off at short intervals in a crapper, then you are either (1) bored out of your skull while doing a massive dump or (2) you need more fibre in your diet or (3) you have a switch fixation that needs psychiatric help as soon as possible !!

The only es bulb I have any quibble about is the very first one I bought about 10 years ago. And yes, it's the slow starting that gets me sometimes. The others work fine. Please don't tell the manufacturers but ALL my bulbs are the es type now and I haven't bought a new one in the last 5 years.

BTW the Aussies passed a law on this issue just a few months ago so the Septics are really following them !!

Russian railways in robot repairman revue

Watch it, guys...

...tis but a small step to replace those "worker" arms with the latest model AK variant !! And since it will not tire, it can carry vast amounts of ammo, too. Certainly more than Rambo can wrap around he undoubtedly manly chest !!

Reindeer kebab, anyone ??

IBM forges Solid acquisition

High speed garbage....

...,by any other name, is still garbage !!

GIGO rules OK !!

NHS frets over Brits' genitalia

@Rob Aley

This is exactly what Big Brotherism is about. By censoring the educational material, they can control the deliberately unthinking peasants !!

BTW, is that Prof. Gray in any way related to the author of that most famous of all anatomy books - Gray's Anatomy !!

Concerned comrades floor China's anti-graft website

Corruption in a Democracy ??

Of course there isn't !! Who would be so corrupt as to pay cash to gain a peerage ?? Or fund a political party in order to get a few "state" contracts ?? Unthinkable !!

And it is perfectly legal for Haliburton to charge the government lots of money to transport *sailboat fuel* since one of its bosses "just happens" to be the vice president !!

And incorruptible democracies do not trade with autocratic, totalitarian dictatorships like the various sultanates !!

Long live incorruptible democracy !!

If PH believes in Smurfs.....

Germans debut kitesurf-powered autonomous windjammer

@Hein Kruger

Don't laugh !! I hear that a fart-powered one is on the drawing board ....