Posts by blackworx

BOFH: Hammer time!

Brilliant

To paraphrase the Indian office dude from Family Guy: "HA HAAA! IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE!"

Feminist org declines nude calendar cash

No Title

What's the betting the SWA is run by 70's-vintage white, middle class, radical anti-porn feminists?

One good thing will come of it however - they'll sell a fcukload more calendars and whoever does get the pennies in the end will be a damn sight better off, and no doubt grateful for it.

PC repair shop caught trying bank fraud

Goes both ways

I've had people bring me their PC to fix after having been ripped off by one or other of the local "pros" at prices which usually run well into three figures for the privilege of not repairing anything, cracking the case (if it's a laptop) and stealing a few screws.

At the same time the queue of gringos who want you to "take a look" at their machine because "it's running a bit slow" and "doesn't work properly" and they think it "might" have a virus, never gets any smaller. The one thing they're always fucking sure about however is that it's just a five minute job and that you'll to do it for the price of a couple of beers (if you're lucky).

Too-tall terror snapper stopped by cops again

@ Catkins

10 headdesk

20 goto 10

Also, lol @ "uninnocent".

Fantastic

I have read or skimmed through every single comment here and (small comfort though it is) there's not one single person speaking out in support of the police's behaviour in this and many, many other instances of harrassment.

I remember when stories like this started appearing occasionally in the news pages of Amateur Photographer a few years ago, and at the time thinking: "wow, that's just insane" but as the months have passed the same thing is happening more and more frequently.

To begin with it seemed like it was always over-zealous and under-informed PCSOs who were at the centre of these incidents, but now just as often it's "proper" police officers.

If things carry on like this, I should stop worrying about IF it will happen to me and instead start planning for WHEN it happens to me.

@AC 12:15: That is a fantastic idea and one which I think may very well happen if the police keep acting like this.

Unpatched Firefox flaw lets fox into henhouse

Chrome, Safari, Opera

Chrome: Completely unsecure in normal config (only time I ever got drive-by download nastyware was when using Chrome).

Safari on Windows: As bad as FF/IE, security through (relative) obscurity.

Opera: Same

Firefox may not be very good security wise, but NoScript and a small army of other security/visibility-enhancing plugins go a long way towards fixing that, and also makes Firefox much, much easier to keep an eye on. Using any other browser I'm constantly worried about what's going on behind my back.

China halts memory-wiping electric shocks for net addicts

Zen and the art of...

...population maintenance?

Regulator sniffs around Live Nation, Ticketmaster merger

Ticketmaster are a bunch of Thieves

Booking fee on every ticket plus card surcharge - there is only one word for it: robbery. They want investigating now, never mind if they <strike>merge with</strike> swallow up Live Nation.

They make me so f*cking angry AAAAAAAAAAAARGHGSD;KUJGDGSK;UJSDFGGUO/

Mobile directory blames press for latest failure

No Title

Funny how ever since I sent these people a text to go "ex-directory" I've started receiving spam texts every day.

Net sleuth calls eBay on carpet over shill bidding

Of course they tolerate shill bidding

It means more money for them.

They are also really pushing this "offer your customers free postage" thing, which basically means the seller budgeting the postage in to their starting price, which in turn means eBay get more money from your sale because they get their final value percentage on the postage as well.

Robot land-steamers to consume all life on Earth as fuel

Chapeau

Lewis old chap you have outdone yourself.

Man hooks home into Twitter

What a complete and utter

Twat

Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance

@ "This isn't journalism, it's a rant/blog/spunkbubble" comments

Fair enough, the man is spouting quite boring invective but, er, it's called FailBLOG, not ParagonOfJournalisticWinningness.

AMD locks and loads 'Istanbul' six-shooter

You had me hooked at Mutara Nebula

That is all

Beeb names new Who companion

Helllllo nurse!

Glad to see they're back on the eye-candy wagon

Geeks make least selfish lovers: Official

@ Daniel B

The braindead fitness stud is a stereotype and not a very accurate one. Unless you're a lowly gym floor monkey or wannabe instructor after a weekend's training, being a fitness professional actually takes quite a lot of learning.

No Title

As a geek cohabiting with a fitness pro I feel uniquely placed to comment on these statistics, but I'm not going to. She might beat me up and take my lunch money. Again.

Another 0.03% of Blighty goes wind powered

@ Twunts

For the love of god get down off your bloody high horses. The article is not anti-wind or anti-green, it is anti-bullshit, anti-greenwash, pro-realism.

RealNetworks claims CSS license lets it copy DVDs. Sues studios

Juxtaposition

Did you have to? It's half past nine in the morning and I haven't even had my toast yet.

Home Sec: No more funds to e-crime unit

FFS

How many billions for ID and IMP? What is the f*cking point trying to argue with intellect like that in charge?

Lost jungle tribe research: Nice guys can get the girls

Hmmmm

Er, two words - evolutionary stability. Very old hat.

Austria pulls out of Large Hadron Collider

Subhead

Large Hadron Collider to Midge Ure in one step. Well done that man.

Ron Howard accuses Pope of scuppering Dan Brown movie

Dan Brown

I've never read any of his books but I hereby roundly condemn his writing as utter drivel based purely on the sheer volume of "non-readers" who have asked my opinion of it.

Top Tip! To really piss off reverent note-taking Dan Brown fan types at the movies: buy a ticket for the movie, making sure to take a book or some other form of personal entertainment for the duration. When the credits roll, stand up and yawn, then proclaim loudly: "well it was alright, but it's no Harry Potter."

In conclusion: spunkbubble.

Paris because mumble mumble, IQ in the shoe size range, something something, spat them out etc. etc.

@ Stevie

Nice one!

Kebabs pose 'no danger whatsoever', Russians claim

Oh dear

"...the poor girl looks like she's gagging for a bit of hot meat action."

That's just shoddy Lester.

No-go woe for doughnut co after Vo-Vo blow

Best Head/Sub Ever

Have sudden hankering for spongy biscuit with fondant coconut topping, but of course I'm bound tae! Geddit?! .... Bounty! Ha ha oh I am a one.

Wacom Intuos4 L

Schoolboy sniggering

Touch ring, bwaaaahahaha

Phorm boss blogs from a dark, dark place

HHOS

Wow, just wow. The sheer audacity. What an absolute twunt.

And El Reg: a big +1 from me re. the requests for some kind of generic anti-snooping icon. It could replace the largely superfluous smiley face, with the sad face to be replaced by, oh I don't know, Jackboot Jacqui's head on a swine flu-infested pig's body, eating greedily out of a trough filled with taxpayers' souls. Or something. You might be a bit pushed for space on that one but I'm sure you're more than a match for the task.

UK.gov to spend £2bn on ISP tracking

I smell a rat

So they overcooked the original IMP uberdatabase proposal, instantly making whatever crock they dreamed up as its replacement easier to swallow. I f*cking hate politicians.

Oh yeah and while I'm on it, I saw some nonsense reality TV program about the "UK Border Agency", in which its agents were battering on some poor pleb's door shouting "open up it's the Home Office". The producers must've cut the "if you've got nothing to hide" rider off the back of it (HHOS). And anyway, since when did the Home Office become an executive agency?

What on earth do you think you are doing, Darling?

@ AC re:UKIP

Who cares? I don't agree with UKIP's silly populist nonsense, but that doesn't mean the article is worthless. Far from it.

Short, to the point, and very fair comment IMHO.

@ Secretgeek - lmao nice one!

Scots to pioneer remote sex via glowing ring

@James

RTFA

Pirate Bay fans: Lay off our neo-Nazi Sugar Daddy

Hmmm

I think a lot of you are missing the point. Andrew isn't smearing TPB or Lundstrom, he's having a pop at freetards. I don't think it's smear to simply point out that the guy is a Neo Nazi when freetards (especially the noisy opinionated banner-waving element) - a group I'd consider leftist to say the very least - don't seem to want to know who's paying as long as they continue to get their free shit.

It's not a question of who you're giving your money to (as in corporate boycotts) but who you're taking it from, no questions asked.

Meanwhile casual users have been left in a situation where they have a choice between either paying for a crocked copy of their digital media because music/video/games/book publishers have totally failed to deal with the new technology, or turning to the likes of TPB where they can get the same stuff (plus some shitty malware "bonus tracks" if they're unlucky) in the space of a few clicks.

Both sides of the argument suck fat ones. All AO has consistently done is to point that fact out in his own inimitable, acerbic, shit-stirring style. Keep it up I say.

Oh dear

Come on Andrew, surely even you can see that money spent funding TPB is money NOT spent on right-wing thuggery? TPB is actually saving us from the Nazis bit by bit (cough).

Pirate Bay guilty verdict: Now what?

Tsk

"But, if the trial would have taken place in Blighty..."

Try: "If the trial HAD TAKEN place in Blighty..."

Tough on e-vehicles, tough on the causes of e-vehicles

Yeah

You could do all that, or you could force lazy gits out of their cars with cattle prods. For huge numbers of people, leaving the house = climbing in to the car, regardless of what they are doing or where they are going. That habitual unthinking mentality needs to be broken.

BT chief: People don't need fibre to the home

"above my pay grade"

For some reason I read that as "above my gay pride"

Doughnut balloon-chute spaceships to reach Mars, Neptune

Ballute is rubbish

Paraloon is much catchier

Boeing: Raygun dreadnoughts will rule the oceans by 2019

pew pew pew!

pew pew!

Phorm director advises UK.gov broadband minister

Bent as a nine bob note

That is all

Google chief lectures newspapers

Bureaux

That is all

BT does Italian Job on London traffic lights

Snigger

You said large thrust borer

Failed Nork rocket bits straddle Japan

Brown trousers time perhaps...

...for Arec Barrwin!

Sun packs 150 billion web pages into meat locker

Awe-inspiring

Richard Dawkins was dead on when he said that the gene was being replaced by the meme as a basic unit of evolution. We have here one big tank full ready to outlive all of us, and not a piece of meat in sight.

China brands Tibet beating video fake

@ Daniel Garcia

If you knew anything about the Dalai Lama you would not say that. The man is universally loved by his people and with good reason. When your religion is your way of life, theocracy is just a word smart-arsed westerners use when they think they know better.

Astroboffins probe mysterious 'blazar'

Re: subatomic-particle-based cosmic bukakke

Like it

And Ron Murray I can't resist it, sorry: the Gregorian calendar may not have been devised in year 1, but that doesn't stop it from having a year 1 any more than 2011 being in the future stops it from having a year 2011. You know, what with it being an abstract concept and all.

Brussels: Old-school lightbulbs to be gone by 2012

200W Bulbs

Time to stock up on those 200W bulbs I love so much. When you need instant short term bright light for a room or cupboard no halogen or bayonet/screw fitting fluoro comes even remotely close.

HP hits UK workers with canteen, car, pension cuts

Surely

...they could just cut down on their global packaging consumption? Presumably that would free up a few mil.

Councils clamp down on Strategy Boutique Newspeak

Hurrah

I am so glad that "proactive" (SPIT, GOB, PUKE, COUGH, SPIT) comes under the category "why use at all?"

Obesity witchhunt is a 'moral panic' - sense out of Texas

Not the medical profession's fault

I'm surprised at you Lewis.

As rough and ready and as completely useless as a reliable indicator of future health problems BMI may be, we are kind of stuck with it, because people want numbers - as a society we are absolutely OBSESSED by weight and BMI as a measure of overall fitness - and no *real* method of ascertaining the ratio of fat to lean tissue is even remotely as accessible.

On the BMI scale, at the borderlines between the categories it imposes, there is a lot of leeway and it is entirely up to the individual's judgement (or their health professional's if they really need help deciding) as to how to interpret the result - and whether they want to investigate properly. At the extremes of the scale there is almost no room for doubt, save for extremes of body type i.e. pumped up body builders vs willowy couch potatoes. It is the willowy couch potatoes who need to worry, as the BMI system won't flag them up (whereas the body builder would probably come out as morbidly obese but there is no way they are not going to be aware of the shortfalls of the "system" and will probably know their body fat percentage to a tenth of a percent). On the other hand a big fat bloater can have no doubt when BMI tells them they are just that - a big fat bloater.

Bottom line is if you're fat, you know it. BMI and the medical profession are not at fault - they are only trying to get the message across in terms that even the terminally hard-of-thinking can understand. It is the diet companies like Weight Watchers and Slimfast who prey on peoples obsessions who need to be given a slap.

Tried every diet going and can't seem to shift the weight? Do really well but always put it back on again? Well then here's a diet that's guaranteed to work - it's called THE EXERCISE DIET. Put down the fork and get on your bike.

Scientology spokesman confirms Xenu story

Hmmmm...

Established religions: made wacky through thousands of years of whispers, stories, plain faced bullshitting and indoctrination.

Scientology: one wackjob, one idea; some credulous fools buy it (literally) from the get-go.