Posts by Will Shaw

Swiss effectively disappear Alps: World's largest tunnel opens

Wait for it...

This has to be the most boring thing I have ever heard of.

I'll get my coat.

Amazon boss Bezos' Blue Origins declares test flight 'flawless' ... if you overlook one snafu

Sorry, but https://youtu.be/GiWQZhUmmRw

Look out, world! Are you ready for John McAfee: THE MOVIE?

Reproduce the McAfee experience....

I assume that all future dvd/blu-ray players will come with a copy of the film already in the tray and you will have to remove it before watching the film you actually want to...

MYSTERY programming language found in Duqu

Re: It's written in Voynich

Except for the bit where she ate that lawyer. Terrifying. Just imagine the gastrointestinal problems you could cause by eating a lawyer.

Ubisoft to turn games into movies, TV shows

Case In Point

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400426/

Spuds for laptop fraudsters strike in Huntingdon

$10,000?!

I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $100,000,000 USD.......

Battle of the US super-soldier robot suits hots up with XOS 2.0

Software sheet.

Drones bitter.

Snot my burd.

Gulf spill to annihilate all earthlings, says seer

too right...

But don't forget War's sons, Terror, Panic.

And of course his wife and daughter, Mrs War and Clancy.

Rainbow plane warps in from gay dimension

DAMN YOU!!!

I really thought I was going to be first to get it in that time. Er, if you see my point. Um, no wait hang on.

Oh come on!

What the odds of a gay plane being snapped flying over Enola Drive???

Woot!

Radical hypersonic glider vanishes above Pacific

Hmmmm.....

Launching intercontinental ballistic missiles from miltary bases on trajectories overflying potentially unfriendly countries?

What could possibly go wrong?

Nine year-old blamed for US school system hack

It's a classic example....

.....of an undocumented ID-10T feature in the meatware manifesting as a POBKAC.

Neil Armstrong slams 'devastating' Constellation cancellation

Not often I'd quote a Micahel Bay film

But Steve Buscemi summed it up nicely in Armageddon:

"You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it? "

Ok, apart from the nuclear weapon bit. That we're aware of.

Overzealous Orange cuts off customer, still bills

There is another lesson here.

Don't do anything for feckless freeloaders, even if they are family.

Fear 2012? Bunker hustler has you covered

Much, much cheaper....

....to just spend a couple of grand on an old V8, some sheets of corrugated iron, some castoff hockey armour with spikes bolted on, and a modified blunderbuss. As a semi-feral roadpunk, you're bound to survive the apocalypse by sheer force of narrative causality. Just stay away from any lone drifters.

Tinfoil Condition Red! LHC 7 TeV mega-blasts today

woot!

"and the event horizon of the LHC Blackhole hasn't reached Lancashire yet."

It's probably being deflected by Burnley, as the Pauli Exclusion Principle forbids there to be two holes in the same place at once.

LHC particle-punisher in record 7 TeV hypercollisions

Boo! Hiss!

I want my catastrophic ensoupening, and I want it now! Booooo!

Former model sues Universal over 'x-rated prop' outrage

Right....

Something tells me that Little Miss Shocked-And-Indignant will become substantially less shocked and indignant when it comes to the inevitably substantial settlement cheque.

And that lawyer should be shot for trying to insinuate paedophilia into his argument. She was 21, FFS! Closer to the age of a child, my arse.

Paris, because it's all about the money, beeyatch.

That is all.

Interpol issues arrest warrant for fake passport hit team

WTF?

I'd be very, very interested to hear about the professional qualifications by which you'll be backing up that rather definitive statement.

Though, on the off-chance you actually can, I'd prefer it not be during a personal visit......

Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you

Referee required

May I be the first to offer my services as arbitrator in the inevitable and imminent spat between all the Trekkies and all the people that seem to think that liking science-fiction is tantamount to a delusional mental illness?

Playmobil throws down animation gauntlet

A year's supply of playmobil?

How exactly do you quantify that? I mean, for me, that would be no Playmobil at all: very disappointing. For my daughter, some sort of medium sized panel van full should do the trick.

Germans unveil robots 'controlled by chaos itself'

ROTM, dude.

Chaos, my butt. It's clearly drilling through the wall with a fairly focussed and determined bearing about it. Presumable to get at the cowering fleshies within, before feeding them into some kind of centralised bio-reactor.

US gov Photoshops bin Laden wanted pic

I'm your boogeyman, that's what I am.

Hmmm, should I be surprised that the identikit version looks a bit like Mahmoud Amadinejhad??? Are the 'merkans becoming so hysterical that all their "enemies" are starting to blur in their collective consciusness into one all-consuming, non-white, non-christian boogeyman?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Mini-asteroid sneaks up on Earth

Very quick.

If it's going to cross the orbit of the moon in 22 hours, that's about 5km per second (rough reckoning), which means it's going like sh*t off a shovel.

Dadaist user manuals - a call for submissions

Duuuuude

Not sure "widely spoken" is the same as "spoken by the largest number of people". Dude.

Paramount prepares to scale Dune

Casting suggestions....

If the studio gets their claws into it, expect:

Lady Jessica - Sandra Bullock

Leto Atreides I - Vince Vaughn

Chani - Kristina Kreuk

Paul Atreides - Zac Efron

Duncan Idaho - Will Ferrell

Also expect reimagining as "sci-fi action comedy" - except all the interviews will have the cast banging on about how "it's about the people so it's not really sci-fi".

Woot! Anyone got worse suggestions than that?

'Doctor Dark Energy': The Ultimate LHC eccentric?

A spiritied attempt....

....but no Golden Tinfoil Hat for you today.

It's like Les Dawson playing the piano badly. You have to either really, really talented or a genuine whacko. You can't fake this.

Two US men charged with running phony Cisco biz

Cisco, not Cisco. Meh.

Kind of reminds me of the Simpsons episode where they buy food from different counters at the mall's Food Court, and it all comes from the same vat of gunk in the basement.

Can we get a "meh" icon, please?

LHC knocked out by ANOTHER power failure

Speak for yourself.....

I lost count of the ninjas I couldn't see in that photo. Sneaky!!!

Pentagon world-sim tool making good progress, say profs

I don't believe this is real...

...on account of it not having a ridiculously contrived acronymic name.

I am proposing "Cascading Linear Interpretation TOol Running Integrated Stochastics".

Replace Bulldog gridiron mascot with robot, PETA demands

Dribbling....

This would be the same organisation that wanted the "Pet Shop Boys" to change their name to the "Animal Rescue Centre Boys".

Object lesson in what happens when a seemingly reasonable philosophy is enacted by drivelling loons.

US Military cyber forces on the defensive in network battle

Is it me...

..... or does "Operation Screaming Fist" sound like it might be at risk of an embarrassing misunderstanding with the extreme pron laws?

Combat games disrespect war laws, report claims

Missed the point as usual.

And of course the laws are always followed in real life aren't they? Just because a law exists, doesn't mean it gets followed. Abu Graib? Guantanamo? That's why cretins like this irritate me. Typical hand-wringing liberal attitude. It's the individuals involved that choose whether to follow the law or not, and govern their actions accordingly.

However, it might actually be interesting to build a war game where these laws do have an effect. Plenty of RPGs have a moral mechanism built in which affects gameplay. I think it's actually got potential. Fight clean and be lauded as a hero, or go rogue, get the job done and then escape into the jungles of Cambodia to run as soldier-for-hire? Games with a moral choice and ambiguity I find very interesting.

Savage roo mauls Oz man

PLAYMOBIL NOW

You heard me!

New sensitive space gloves: NASA spends wad freely

Measure & Manage

Just because you corporate culture is to chuck massive resource at a problem, doesn't mean the problem "requires" it.

New 'reversible' paralysis-ray turns victims blue, flaccid

@ Martin 6

No wonder the NHS costs so much to run, if every single patient is coming away with a new set of rugs.

"Thanks for coming Mr Johnson, here's your complimentary Axminster. We'll just keep a hold of your large intestine for you, shall we?"

'Hybridisation' tech to quintuple battery life

Simples

They just need to have a word with my kids. Their Wii controllers NEVER run out of batteries, according to them. I just need to figure out where all the batteries I buy actually are going.....

US data firm blows s**t out of server

AMERKA!

FUCK YEAH!

IBM lab builds computerized cat brain

I for one

Welcome our slow motion robofeline overlords.

Michael Jackson planned 'robot duplicate' of himself

I for one

welcome our gargantuan, charmona-muthafukka-shrieking overlord. May we be ground beneath his huge but immaculate moonwalking sequinned loafers.

Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber

Weird

There was a theory around a while ago that the LHC might be sabotaging itself from the future by the simple expedient of ensuring that the quantum waveform of the universe always collapsed in such a way that the experiments failed. Think it was on New Scientist.

I speculated in a comment at the time that if this were true, then the faults and accidents would become increasingly outlandish and far-fetched as efforts to get it working ramped up.

And now a passing bird drops some bread right onto critical equipment and nobbled it again. And that was only the SECOND fault.

Can't wait for the next one. Hope it involves blancmange. Or rodeo midgets.

Agincourt: The sensational truth

Still not right....

I'm fairly sure at least one pirate was involved.

Microsoft drops Family Guy like a hot deaf guy joke

@asdf

Do we get to watch Family Guy???? Between them and the Simpsons THERE'S NEVER ANYTHING ELSE ON!!!!

Pig plague could crash interwebs, say US feds

We all need to get a fucking grip.

This is one step away from saying "Industry observers fear that a more severe outbreak of H1N1 could severely impact the coffee bar industry as people will be unable to leave the house for their usual decaff half-frapp skinny mocha chocca latte".

When we did we become such pansies that in the face of an admittedly so far overblown global pandemic, we fret about whether we'll still be able to post Twitter updates (@loser: help, apclypse is here! Loadza z0m813s at my door!!! LOLZ!)

Head for the mountains! Begin stockpiling ammo! Weld scaffolding and corrugated iron to your car!

FAIL ON US ALL!

Lily Allen exits Twitter, bins BlackBerry

Oh FFS

Blatant insipid publicity stunt.

I can't stand a great swathe of modern comedy but Katy Brand's send-up of Lily Allen is spot on.

"I am a neo-luddite. Goodbye."

"Good for you. Fuck off."

GCHQ outsources net snooping... to EDS

FAIL

"powerful tool for identifying suspects"

Not "tracking known suspects". He said, "identifying suspects". As in, if you're not already a suspect, you will be soon.

I'm starting a company specialising in sound-proofed Transit vans, black cloth sacks (head-sized), and bitumen-packed lengths of rubber hose.

Mine's the one with the Guy Fawkes mask and two bayonets in the pocket.

Japanese algorithm 'can tell if you're about to die'

Lame.

Coincidentally, I've just finished writing a program that can tell if you're about to snort with derision.

Astronomers spy 32 new exoplanets

"Circulating"???

I've never heard planets described as "circulating" before. Circling, yes. Orbiting, definitely. But "circulating"? It's not a bloody cocktail party.

Subaru set to show stylish hybrid

What the hell is it with....

...using bloody gull-wing doors to show just how futuristic your concept car is?

It looks bloody ridiculous. No, actually, it looks like "Supervan" from that bloody awful 70's movie called er, Supervan.

And, I'm sure your kids in the back will be dead-chuffed that you have to expose everyone inside to the pissing rain just to jump out for a pint of milk.

FAIL.

Ex-GCHQ chief compares Iraq whistleblower to Soviet spy

Let me get this straight...

He's having a wobbler because he got rumbled doing something he shouldn't have been doing?

My 4-year-old daughter uses a similar gambit on a daily basis. Mind you, she doesn't run a major intelligence establishment.