Posts by Ishkandar

Satyam's mood-detecting motor to run in-car disco

@Given the chaotic nature of driving in Indian cities,

You have obviously not "arrived" in the Indian IT world !! *Real* programmers have chauffeurs to ferry them about !!

Congo lynch mobs attack penis-snatching sorcerers

@Well, you'd look pretty stupid saying it in Cricklewood, wouldn't you?

Yeah, it would make most of the people around there wonder if they've got into the wrong container at the Shenzhen Container Terminal !!

@stupid pricks...... Well, not to be too pedantic about it but it's actually *little* pricks !!

@Actually, I think we should start replying to the 419 spammers offering our shrunken-willie restorative cures in return for their bank details, BIG RETURNS guanteed! - Nothing so crude !! I just offer to make theirs backfire !!

EU plans to boost organ donor numbers

The MEPs have volunteered to donate their brains...

...which are highly sought after since they are hardly ever used !! However, recent studies have found an undesirable side effect that the recipients have been padding their expenses after receiving the organ(s) !! Furthermore, they found a disturbing tendency among the recipients to be economical with the truth !!

Seagate ships 1 billionth drive

I had one of those 5MB thingies !!

All in, it cost me £1000 and I connected that to my TRS80 Model 1 Level 2 !! It was a significant improvement on the audio cassette deck that it replaced !!

Now kiddies complain that 80GB is not enough !!

Microsoft's Ruby lead sounds Balkanization alarm

Does this mean that...

...all of Microsoft's legacy crap will underlie their implementation of Ruby ??

Pioneer picks Panasonic as plasma telly partner

"Pioneer's first next-gen Matsushita-made plasma TVs..."

ALL Pioneer products are "Matsushita-made" because Pioneer *IS* a Matsushita-owned company !! Matsushita owns Akai, Pioneer, National Panasonic and Ten. They also own part (half?) of JVC (Japan Victor Company). The main differences are the levels of tech and quality and the "percieved" value of the products/brands.

The statement above is almost as good as "The Toyota-made Lexus..." !! Toyota owns the Lexus brand and ALL Lexus are made in Toyota factories and rebranded !!

Now, if Panasonic started making Sony products that would be news indeed !!

Brown gov will make 'big commitment' to carbon capture

Carbon capture ??

@Jamtits - I'm sure your neighbours love you when you squat over that little hole in your garden to capture your carbon output !!

The easiest govt. solution is to place an emperor-size bucket next to Two-jags and capture HIS carbon output !! They can even help the crime statistics by sentencing serious criminals to months of removing the resultant capture. Those crims will be too busy barfing to go out and commit any more serious crimes !!

Lib Dem mayor candidate jumps aboard muni Wi-Fi failboat

And every poor person in London...

...will receive a free Wi-fi enabled laptop or PC from Santa this Christmas !!

Whatever he's smoking, I want some of that !! Gotta be good shit, man !!

Yet another "expert" talking from the wrong end of his alimentary canal...

Does he have any idea of the cost of (1) setting up such a wide coverage of London and (2) maintaining this coverage at a usable level ??

If he thinks he can just build a few towers to cover vast swathes of London, then he truly belongs the LSD* !! The radiation alone will totally destroy his Green credentials !! The alternative of building lots of little stations will cost more than the bribes for a defence contract !!

Then there is the running cost per MB/per GB/per TB and the routine upkeep of the entire "system" !! Finally, there is the hostility of the other ISPs and he will have to build an entirely new company/organisation/lash up from scratch to operate that....thing !! I'd be hostile, too, if you try to steal my job !!

If he naively thinks that ALL those costs will be covered by business advertising, then he is too naive to be the mayor of our fair (well, sort of greyish, actually) city !!

* I mean the Liberal Social Democrats, not the other sort as some people might unkindly assume !!

Iconic representation of his chances of being a mayor of London !!

I wouldn't park there, mate - Honda adds sat nav warnings

@Bill Ray

You sir, may be charged with disruption of local businesses Sarf of the River, viz sales of pre-owned vehicles of dubious origins. How can they sell any if no more are brought in by the local self-help societies ??

'Virtual strip search' arrives at JFK and LAX

@Mark Re.Go through the line stark bollock naked.

Then they'll charge you with a public order offence for carrying and displaying a WMD (Weapon of Mass Disgust), namely your bod !!

Dubai mobe cracking demo barred by Heathrow boffin bust

@Steve Evans

"who knows how much "restricted" material on something you could hide in your ear!" Not unless you are a bleeding elephant, mate !! Now, I wouldn't dispute what you might hide at the other end but they are going to deploy millimetric-waveband radar at airports soon !! Alternatively, you could try taping a memory stick to your todger !!

Yahoo! pulls Alibaba out of hat, posts big Q1 profit jump

"Or it will kick off a proxy battle to install its own directors."

So, now Microsoft's Panzers will march into Sudetenland, oops, sorry, Jerry Yang's office !! And young Billy Gates will announce that there will be "Peace in our times" !!

Icon on the signboards at the camps, with tall chimneys, outside Redmond !!

Western Digital uncages ferocious VelociRaptor data hunting drive

I've had this HDD die on me...

...but it was a 20+ years old Seagate(Shugart?) 5MB one !! Yes!! 5 Megabytes !! Ah, for the days when HDDs were the size of a copper's shoebox !! And you HAD to use SASI (Shugart Associates System Interface, precursor of SCSI) to interface with the damn things !!

PETA offers $1m for test tube chicken

Please, please guys, don't knock PETA

They have some of the world's best adverts. Especially the anti-fur ones where they show many (female) stars in the buff protesting against the wearing of fur !! I have a complete collection of that !! I will encourage them and ask for more of the same !!

Letching aside, if I were to vat-grow any meat, I'd start with lobsters. Since they are a lower evolutionary order of animals than chickens, they should be easier to grow in the VAT. And have you checked the latest prices of shellfish ?? Meanwhile Tesco flogs chickens at 2 for a fiver !!

Alternatively, I could vat-grow brains !! Whoever thought(?) up this prize(?) is in serious need of some and might pay well for that privilege !!

I can't find an icon with a leer so a smiley one will do !!

Satyam ups the ante for World Cup tech

As Johnny-come-lately...

...Satyam can't muscle in on the areas already tied up by the others like Infosys, e.g. cricket !! Also, the success of various tycoons in getting into football, e.g. Roman Abramovich in Chelsea, must have influenced their decision !!

Anti-paedophile police treble arrest figures

Not much bloody good...

...if they are let loose into society in no time at all by the do-gooders !!

Re.I keep wondering, though - these days, you are guilty until proven innocent !!

Chinese hackers call off CNN attack

"And I am probably the billionth person to say this"

My, my !! And there I was thinking the George (Dubya) Bush was dead set against cloning !! How the American population must have grown !!

If I've told you once, I've told you a million times; stop exaggerating !!

Europe moves against Internet's 'virtual training camps'

Right !!

So that's the Labour Party Annual Conference done for !! Next ??

Shrinking patch windows hit by automated attacks

So what's there to stop some hacker from buying a legal copy of the app...

...and legally get the (secure ??) patch, reverse engineer that and create an attack based on the reverse engineering ??

Who guards the guardians ??

MSI to waft Wind Westward in June

"Asus Eee PC and friend: troubled by the Wind?"

Actually, she looks more like she's troubled by constipation !!

Mine's the asbestos-covered kevlar one, thank you !!

Why is Ruby on Rails so darn slow?

@@Does it matter ....

"The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia" Ol Genghis was quite successful at this, you know !! And all he had was men on lots of little ponies !!

Oops, forgot to mention the 4 1/2 foot plate-armour-piercing arrows that rather upset his plate-armoured foes !!

@Re: Scripting? JVMs? Bah!!! - Just take them all out and shoot them !! Then we can all go back to assembler programming like I used to do !!

That bamboo armour next to the double recurved bow on top of that fast pony !!

Korean astronaut recounts 'ballistic' Soyuz re-entry

Politicall correctness at its best

Ballistic = Uncontrolled free-fall !! I'd bet the young lady must be glad of her space suit's biological functions !! I'd also bet that, along with the flames, she saw her life flash by before her very eyes !! The ultimate extreme adventure !!

A very apt icon, methinks !!

They should have added....

..."on opening the capsule, the aroma of pre-digested satay was prevalent !!"

He probably looked and felt as gob-smacked as this poor little bird !!

US crunch hits India

Sounds like..

...the US crunch is bringing tears to Indian eyes !! Wonderful what can be done with two half bricks !!

Biofuel backlash prompts Brussels back-pedal

@if the whole transport industry could switch to using nothing but ethanol ...

...when the moon is made of green cheese and the cow jumped over it !!

@dervheid - Yes, stop idiots driving 100 yards in a Chelsea tractor to fetch the papers !! Or slap a massive ( and I mean a REALLY MASSIVE) tax on Chelsea tractors within any urban areas !!

@Alternative and readily available fuel source..... Unfortunately the pollutants inherent in the ASBO supply are even worse that of fossil fuel. Consider, if you will, the junk food consumed in the production of that supply !! OTOH bring back chariots !! A six ASBOpower chariot will do nicely for urban areas !! Acceleration and course can be controlled by the proximity of a dangled Big Mac !! Pearl handled whips are optional extras !!

Scottish Government scuppers Lewis wind farm plan

Quite right, too !!

There is enough hot air generated in the Scottish Assembly to power all of Scotland !! No need for more !!

How a pair of American spies created the Soviet Silicon Valley

Lend-Lease

The American tanks "lent-leased" to Britain were so hopelessly outclassed by the German tanks that they were virtually death traps. However, the American, in their arrogance ignored the British requests for up-gunned and up-armoured tanks and went to war with the same models.

During the American landings in North Africa, the Afrika Korp shot up so many American tanks that there were wild exaggerations of the German strength to "explain" away their failure. The Americans were only saved by their possession of masses of artillery !! German tanks used to sit out of range of the American tanks and pot them one by one while the American tank ammo would bounce off the German tanks like peas !! The Grant and Sherman tanks could barely match the Panzer III which were already obsolete. They were out-classed by the Panzer !V which were being phased out and they were hopelessly out-classed by the Panther just coming into operation by then !!

The good thing from the Lend-Lease were the destroyers used in the Atlantic convoy battles !! Those were desperately needed and they did a sterling job fighting the U-boats !!

And, *NO*, U-571 did *NOT* capture the enigma machine that broke the German codes, no matter what Hollywood says !! Those codes were broken at Bletchley Park using a very early form of computing (IT angle !!) .

Windows Vista update 'kills' USB devices

Yet another triumph of DICTATs over technical expertise

This sounds like the salesmen demanding the release of yet another untested "update" against the wishes of their techies simply for the sake of some marketing "advantage" !!

Truly the Chinese, with their thousands of years of collected wisdom, are right to rank salesmen below that of prostitutes in their social hierarchy !! At least prostitutes give honest value for money !! Techies (scholars) are very highly regarded !!

Samsung chairman faces tax dodging charges

@Michael Jarve

"a brand new 63-inch Samsung HDTV" is for the peasants. The higher-ups have higher expectations than a mere TV !! 1% of moneys "saved", for example ??

@StopthePropaganda

There are not too many cottages where you can hand-build a 63" TV though !!

It is also strange how the "do-without" brigade are always the first to scream loudest when they actually have to do without !! Try asking them to squat over a hole in the garden instead of using a modern flush toilet....

Virtualization: nothing new on the Sun or the mainframe

@Novacaine for the corporate brain?

Please, update your information !! Novacaine is so yesterday. Lanacaine at the very least. Even my butcher of a fangman used Lanacaine to extract some teeth (and the subsequent extraction of a hefty wad from the wallet/credit card) !! The dentistry may be painless but the subsequent extraction wasn't !!

Pissed Russian sleeps off knifing

@Pierre

Unfortunately true !! Too many of them still have blood in their alcohol stream !! :-(

@Chris Wareham

"as the medical staff were unable to administer strong painkillers to a drunk!"

Oh yes, they can !! Why do you think they keep them old socks with lead shot in em for ?? Then there's those 10 pound panel beating mallets....

And they have category-A NBC masks in case the fumes from either end.....

Alcohol

It's been know since pre-history that alcohol is a wonderful anaesthetic !! It is also a wonderful antiseptic, especially when circulated in the blood stream. So, unless the knife hit something vital, he should be quite safe !!

And finally, last but certainly not least, should he be killed, the alcohol in him should preserve(/pickle/mummify) him in a fit state until a decision is made on the disposition of his remains !!

Alcohol !! One of the greatest discoveries of mankind !! Ask the El Reg staffers. They should know all about it !!

Motorola remodels mobile division

Lessons on how good companies go bad...

... as the English say,"Too many cooks spoil the broth !!" They've have various "product" heads spitting into each others' broth as we can see from their products !! Ericsson, who got themselves into a jam sometime ago, merged with the Sony's phone division and now they are doing nicely, thank you !! Ericsson's phone technology and Sony's various Walkman technology have dominated a niche market within the mobile phone market !!

AT&T waves goodbye to 4,600 staffers

@This is one of the reasons I won't do business with AT&T

Of course they are !! Them drug cartels have much bigger bucks to spend that you do !! Money talks, bullshit walks !!

@Quite the golden handshake... - well, there is the cost of hiring outside consultants to fire those managers so that the senior management can "truthfully" say it wasn't them that fired those sods; so the "blame" can be passed on to others and, thereby, pacifying/suppressing the union(s) !! Axemen cost money !! It's a shit job but someone has to do it and I'm sure they cried all the way to the bank !!

@pctechxp

It's called "deadwooding" !! Getting rid of the old farts who can't do their work but clung on to their jobs for dear life and got promoted to managers by sheer attrition !!

'Rowdy' rectal extraction op vid hits YouTube

@David Wiernicki

Naw !! Them Nazis are all talk and no ..... Not even after partaking of Pfizer's most famous product !!

@AC@Wrong party - not as good as the one in the Darwin Awards who had a mobile phone in the same place. Appearantly the phone went off while the operation/procedure was taking place !! What was not said was :-

1) was the phone set to vibrate to announce incoming calls ??

2) did anyone answer that call and HOW ??

At least it wasn't a 3G phone, complete with video, text and camera functions !! If it was, the subsequent footage would have been of significant medical interest !!

"As a doctor "gingerly" pulls out the canister..."

Obviously the doctor has read about the Darwin Award to that German zookeeper and his elephant !! He must be very wary of explosive decompression !!

El Reg celebrates 10th birthday

A more villainous crew cannot be found...

...outside Edward (Capt. Blackbeard) Teach's merry(totally plastered) men !! And the ladies will probably have his men *JUMPING* off the plank to preserve their honour and virtue by the looks of it !! :-)

Well, you've done your first 10 years so you'll only have another 89 more to go !! :-) I'll be here every day to see that you "do" it !!

Ballmer bitch slaps Vista

Perhaps Ballmer will do the honourable thing...

...and dive head-first through a plate-glass window, preferably from the 10th floor !! Shouldn't hurt his head one bit considering the density of the material it is constructed from !! I pity the landing zone, though. Not nice being struck by a kinetic weapon !!

(FYI, grey matter is mostly water and not very dense !!)

US gov may forbid BAE Eurofighter sale to Saudis

@Ian

UK has sovereignty ?? I thought it was sold by the Labour government long ago !! 10 pieces of silver from the EU and 20 more from the US !!

And now Brown is over there performing for his puppet masters !!

At least Mrs Thatcher stood firm against the prostitution of British sovereignty and honour !! I'm sure various Labourites must enjoy spending their 30 pieces of silver now !!

This icon as a classification of something toxic !!

F1 chief seeks French ban on orgy video

Ubik !!

Between this, the divorce-by-internet-video case and Heather I'm-such-a-wronged-woman Mills, is there anyone who can lend me a can of the reality spray ??

I'm sure Gordon Britain-is-in-a-great-shape-under-Labour Brown could do with a whiff of that, too !!

YouTube divorce rant vid wows the crowd

A prostitute by any other name....

....is still only after the money by fair means or foul !! At least the real prostitutes provide a service for their money and don't leave you feeling like a piece of poo afterwards !!

This is a perfect argument for legalising prostitution !! Level playing field and all !!

Naomi Campbell cuffed in Heathrow Terminal 5

@AC@To Anonymous who visited on Monday...

The same twi*t also designed HK's over-budget CLK Airport that opened in 1997. It's still a fugly building to me !!

American Apparel's tags start tracking your pants

@Moss Icely Spaceport

If you've nothing to hide, why wear trousers ?? If you got em, flaunt em !! Having said that, there is a significant (and rising) proportion of the population that make beached whales look sexy !! Perhaps they should be forced to wear canvas tents to spare the rest of us some ghastly sights !!

HSBC e-payments system goes titsup (again)

Relax, guys !!

They've just been hit by one of the biggest losses in the sub-prime crisis. Those poor things are still reeling from the loss of their massive bonuses and their annual junket^H^H^H^H^H^H board meeting in their Bahamas Headquarters !!

Please take pity on those poor, deprived persons struggling to make do with their last Rolls Royce and multi-million quid country home !!

Chipzilla counters Wall Street doomsayers

Perhaps there were a few bumps in the kerb...

After hours trading is also known as kerb trading in English. This dates back to the days when shares and commodities were traded in various London (and other) coffee houses. When the coffee houses were shut, trading continued privately, if desired, on the kerb outside !!

Please DON'T tell any of this to Starbucks, Coffee Republic, etc. !! They might ideas above their station....

Monroe BJ film goes for $1.5m

@trackSuit

Perhaps they were wary of dodgy se(a)men .....