Posts by pastamasta

Moderatrix quits El Reg: Latest

the long arm

Aargh... "John H. Armblaugh"... have only just spotted the obvious. Can't believe I was hooked, lined (?) and sunk for this long.

Dutch search engine ignores IP addresses

Does the job nicely, thankyou

Excellent. I've already switched my default search engine and I must say it works a treat. Publicise this as widely as possible, I say.

Extreme porn law goes live - are you ready?

Well, shit.

Any law which is so poorly-defined that an ordinary citizen can't tell whether they are breaking it or not should be no law at all, regardless of the subject matter, because it runs up against the fundamental legal principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse, i.e. you can be prosecuted for breaking the law even if you didn't know about the law. The justification for that principle is that the law is discoverable, and therefore if you have a law which is _not_ discoverable (by virtue of being incomprehensible), then how can it be a just law?

Hell, 12 miles - handcarts available for hire.

Peter Mandelson exerts party discipline in cyberspace

I kissed a girl?

“I have blogged before... and I enjoyed it.”

Dunno if Katy Perry would have had as much success with this as a single.

...the one with the watermelon stencil on the back, please.

Yelpian astroturfers invade Blighty

@Steve Evans

...or, possibly, because the genuinely useful UK site Yell.com is only a slip of the finger away.

Apply some pressure

The problem with reviews of this kind is that people are more likely to write a review if they've had a bad experience than if they've had a good one. I certainly would be. So the system is weighted in favour of negatives from the start, particularly here in the good ole UK where complaining is practically our national sport...

...mine's the one with "How Objective Can I Be" printed on the back.

Internet gambling mogul surrenders $300m in guilty plea

Anurag?

'Nuff said.

Grand Theft Auto IV PC debut gets SecuROM sideshow

How to shoot yourself in the foot

This DRM bollocks absolutely _guarantees_ that I will download a pirated version rather than purchasing the retail copy. I can wait a few weeks for the genuine cracks to filter through the torrent sites, no sweat.

1. Insert shotgun muzzle into trouser leg.

2. Pull trigger.

3. Hop around in agony while your erstwhile customers laugh.

Well done, Rockstar. Well done.

Judge says tech-addled jurors undermine justice

What's in a name

Delighted to hear that such an appropriately-named wig-bearer exists. On the same subject, my second cousin Mr. Dredd has recently applied for a position in the judiciary, and has high hopes of success.

Serial troll vents steam through ears

Look under the bridges...

...that's where they hide.

Doormen's database boss goes

I believe the phrase we're looking for is...

...quis custodiet custard?

NASA's greatest clanger

Clanger invasion of Earth?

I for one welcome our woollen overlords.

Coming soon: Spider-Man - The Musical!

Could be worse

I await, with a heavy sense of impending doom, the inevitable arrival of "X-Men!", the forthcoming Lloyd-Webber musico-theatrical extravaganza, featuring songs such as "Magnet Man", "Requiem For A Jellymutant", "Get Outta My Head, Charles" and "I Get No Kick From Yellow Spandex" which are doubtless destined to become all-time classics.

500,000 oppose Red Arrows Olympic ban

Time travel?

>> On 27 September, the government weighed in with: "This allegation is not true...

Really? Will they? What sort of hats will we be wearing in the future? Will we all be flying personal turbohover jetpacks to work? And, perhaps most importantly, will our alien overlords permit Morris-dancing?

Royal Society: Schools should show creationism 'respect'

I for one...

...welcome our creationist overlords.

Google's comic capers: what they really meant to say

@Stephen Gray, David S

Ah, so that was my mistake. Yes, scroogle.com is indeed liberally plastered with tits and other miscellaneous lady parts. I am awaiting the smite-happy wrath of the corporate IT admins as we speak. On the plus side, I believe I may have set a new world record for Fastest Closure of Browser Window.

A little consideration, please

AC - next time you feel the need to put the name of a website such as Scroogle into your posts, please consider the wellbeing of those who do not know what the content of that site is, and who might therefore (out of pure curiosity) visit it from their office computers.I realise that I'm probably the only person on teh Internets who didn't know what Scroogle is, but there you go. I believe "NSFW" is the correct term, yes?

Scientists unravel galactic spaghetti monster

Scientific vindication of the Pastafarian faith

Proof at last!! Now all will worship at the Galactic Temple of The Noodly One, may sauce be upon his name. I await with eagerness the discovery of cosmic background radiation from the creation of the first midget.

Ramen.

Malicious gossip could cost you your job

Vote for Davis? Shurely shome mishtake

Until recently, the thought of coming even within farting distance of putting a little "X" in the box next to the name of a Tory candidate would have filled me with the desire to shove a live ferret up my nose good and hard and listen to it eating my brain. To my own occasional incredulity I now find myself considering the unthinkable possibility that David Davis might be exactly what this country needs, assuming that one can believe what he says about his political aspirations (to wit, rescuing Britain from the quagmire of Orwellian shite into which it appears to sinking more deeply on an almost daily basis).

Perhaps if voting Lib Dem were not such a pointless, self-arsefucking exercise in futility, I would do that instead.

Google and the End of Science

I concur with everything

...or, to put it in language I can understand without needing a quadruple espresso first, Anderson's datafest can tell you what is happening, but not why. Models are dead? I don't think so.

'Anaconda' 200m rubber snake generator scheme gets funding

Refractory period?

What's the projected wear and tear on a device like this? I would imagine that if the mighty tube were to be compressed too often and too strongly by repeated wave thrusts, then after a certain amount of energetic bulging it would be able to bulge no more, and might need to be withdrawn to replace the exterior rubber and perhaps allow the device to recover its stability.

The one with "Overextended Metaphor" on the back, please.

Virgin warns 800 punters for file-sharing

Vote with your chequebooks

The fact that my ISP might be monitoring what I'm doing online - regardless of what that is - gives me the willies anyway. Yes, I know, that's the society we live in, but why should it be? Personally I will always subscribe to the ISP which gives me the greatest privacy, period. Moves like this from VM simply guarantee that they won't get my custom. If enough people avoid or leave their service over this issue, perhaps they'll get the message.

King Arthur was English 'propaganda', French claim

@Paul

"Hate to be a pedant, but The Winter King was about King Alfred, not Arther, who did exisit. Still a dam good book though (alont with the rest of the Uthred & Arther books)."

Irony, anyone?

Heart Internet spreads the love passwords

Monkeys, banana factory etc.

In the event that there are any e-commerce sites amongst those hosted by these donkeys, perhaps we should be told their names...? I submit to you that entrusting my personal details to such sites after this fiasco would be akin to handing my house keys and credit cards to the stubbled chap with the mask, stripy jumper and large sack marked "SWAG" whom I can see lurking just beyond my hydrangea bush.

Enraged devil dog lover locks on to Reg photo team

Shame on you

Anthony is absolutely correct in his assessment of the gentle and unassuming nature of the Staffordshire bull terrier. I've spent many a peaceful mealtime feeding my own Staffie chips, which he takes delicately from my mouth. I'm unable to feed him with my fingers since he viciously ripped them off with his slavering jaws after a game of tug got slightly heated, but otherwise he is a model of canine restraint.

What I learned from a dumb terminal

Beep

Once on a weekend evening shift, I received a worried call from a cleaner who had heard a loud beeping emanating from our client's server room. We asked him to describe the noise, and even to hold the phone up to the offending server so we could hear the noise. We spent hours checking every service and log event we could get our hands on, with no clue as to the cause. Finally we rang the client's own local on-call engineer and got him to drive out to the site and have a look. It turned out that some idiot had left a book on the server console keyboard, which was overflowing the keyboard buffer and making the speaker beep repeatedly. Classic...

Russell T Davies bows out of Doctor Who

Goody goody

"The Girl in the Fireplace" - another Moffat special - was an absolute blinder; I'd have hired him on the strength of that one alone, or indeed "The Empty Child" from series one. Top notch. I look forward to more actual plot substance and less tremble-puny-Earthlings-before-the-might-of-the-Sontarans-muahahaha.

BitTorrent tracker Mininova faces legal action

...and the horse they rode in on

@Anon. Cow. #2 - amen to that, brother. I am fed up with having to wait months for a decent US TV series to be broadcast in the UK, <rant> especially when ITV pulls an episode of Pushing Daisies because they can't fit it in before the footy starts </rant>. I don't download movies but sure as hell will continue downloading decent overseas telly until the networks can sort themselves out.

How these agencies think they are going to put an end to the many-headed uberhydra that is P2P is beyond me; cut off one Mininova and two more will spring up in its place. The old business model for media distribution is dead and buried twenty feet down in a steel coffin, guys - you'll have to wake up and realise that at some point...

(Paris, for her enthusiastic contribution to the new distribution model.)

Stungun shootout in Colorado leaves slowest man standing

Faster, granny, kill! kill!

"Apparently the plucky mother picked up her fallen son's weapon..."

Er... stop or my mom will shoot?

(The one with "I Love Rocky" on the back, please.)

'Great tits cope well with warming'

I don't get it

Perhaps someone will explain it to me when I'm older.

(The one with Bob the Builder on the back, please.)

Air France pilot in white-knuckle near miss

@Tim

... I foresee an imminent Al-Qaeda recruitment drive for dwarfs.

(Mine's the one with the "Time Bandits" logo on the back.)

Shell pulls out of Thames Estuary mega-windfarm

@dervheid

If we could burn dead horses instead of flogging them, I'm sure I'd be willing to consider them as a viable alternative. Horses are a renewable energy source which can be produced reliably by placing other horses in close proximity to each other and to lots of grass. Additionally, their "industrial by-products" would make an excellent secondary fuel source.

Paris, because there may just possibly be a video out there somewhere involving horses and flogging. Allegedly.

Anti-Scientology crusader vaporized from YouTube

The Darwinian approach

Surely, Scientology is one of the finest methods ever dreamed up by man (or indeed ancient spacefaring alien) of fleecing the terminally gullible of large amounts of cash, thus contributing subtly to their decline and therefore the gradual improvement of homo sapiens as a species? As such, we should welcome its effect on the likes of Messieurs Cruise, Travolta et al, who would doubtless otherwise squander their millions on wooing impressionable young ladies and procreating like a bunny with a really big basket of carrots in a field full of impressionable young lady bunnies.

Mine's the one with the tinfoil-lined hood and the army surplus label.

Pirate Bay-probing cop on Warner Brothers payroll

All your daisy are belong to us

ITV's recent decision to drop Episode 2 of Pushing Daisies means that I will be practically forced to download it in order to afford myself the missing 45 minutes' worth of Anna Friel-coated goodness. I'm sure the friendly chaps at TPB will be more than happy to oblige...

YouTube divorce rant vid wows the crowd

Now I ain't sayin'...

Oh, I'm just _wetting_ myself with sympathy for the paltry three quarters of a million quid she'll be left with, and that's only if she loses. However will she survive? How will she pay for reproducing that godawful interior design all over her tiny bedsit in Hackney, and more importantly, will it have enough wall space to fit all her gaudily-framed self-important posters?

Surely young Kanye has something to say about all of this.

Anti-paedophile group targets child abuse sites

@Graham

Pedantry alert...

...if the definition of "child" had indeed been reduced from 18 to 16, it would have rendered a whole load of previously illegal images (e.g. those of 17 year-olds) suddenly legal overnight. The 2003 Act in fact raised the defined age from 16 to 18.

My coat is already on and I am beating a hasty retreat from the pub.