Posts by Michael Dunn

Phone-hack backlash BBC in embarrassing headline gaffes

@ AC

"Note to self: find and kill OSX Lion autocorrect before I stab the screen with a pen."

I am sure you can get black Tippex for computer screens.

@ "Worker suspended over missing body."

New keyboard, please!

On counterfeits, fakes and Apple stores

Ah, Kunming!

City of eternal spring, visited by H M the Queen during her tour of China - bet she didn't buy an ipod, though.

Python orgy menaces Yorkeys Knob canoes

Title!

And here's me expecting an article about an exciting ending to a code-fest at a LUG.

Pick a winner: The Sarah Hunter Google competition

WOM?

A similar article appeared in the April issue of ETI (an electronics magazine) many, many years ago, when hobbyists used things like transistors, resisters and capacitors to build circuits to carry out various functions. Another April issue article described a device called a FEVA - Field Effect Vacuum Amplifier - with a complete description of, and an explanation of the workings of, a triode valve, hailed as a new breakthrough in electronic device invention.

'Unconvincing' Met top cop Yates: My phone was hacked

Chav spelling?

Actually pretty close to the Hebrew spelling.

Obviously a Jedi mind trick!

Well, there you go then. "No, officer, I didn't steal this Porsche. No, I'm not still sitting in it with the engine running. These are not the sports cars you are looking for. I can go about my business."

Sweaties decode ultimate mystery of chips

Or self-peeling?

That's it!

Has UK gov lost the census to Lulzsec?

Lost census data?

No! Lockheed Martin have bought a quantum computer, so all the data is present in "superposition" state and has become totally entangled.

Brewer bashes Beeb over anti-beer bias

Floyd

As an ardent fan of the Keith Floyd school of cookery, I usually cook with wine.

Sometimes I even put some in the food.

New Cassini pics of Saturnian 'Ice Queen' Helene

Units

You might have mentioned "miliHelens." as the measure of beauty necessary to launch single ships.

AMD trumpets next-gen GPU architecture

Lazy language

I couldn't agree more! We lost so much when academic papers and reports stopped being delivered in Latin.

Iranian pimp plates arse up Afghan car sales

the world is full of credulous fools

Yeah, even the Daily Fail prints a horoscope!

Eh?

Oh, no! "having a hard time of it."

Also

Difficult to sell cars with 4 in the number, especially if repeated, to Chinese. (The sound of the word for "4" is similar to the sound of the word for "death."

Chinese lexicon in the pocket.

Facebook fuels Israeli cottage cheese insurgency

Yeah

With all the activity and movemengt around the borders of Iran, Turkey and Iraq, it can finally be said that the Kurds are on the way!

"Imports are useless"?

Aye, and unlikely to be kosher.

Verity Stob and the super subjunction

Split Inginitive?

Hey, just a minute, the Latin infinitive does not consist of two words, so cannot be split.

Vatican crackdown at Rome's Playboy Mansion-style monastery

I am amazed

I presume these monks are not the Cistercians of the Strict Observance!

I am amazed at the news: in my youth I always admired the Cistercian order, since they appeared to embody the very best of coenobite community life, and were amongst the most austere of the religious orders. An Englishman, Stephen Harding, was one of the three rebels against the decline of monastic discipline they observed among the Benedictines at Clairvaux, and they set out to re-establish the pure rule of St Benedict.

The British Isles have a number of ruins of former Cistercian Abbeys - Fountains Abbey is one - and many years ago there were at least two in Britain - Mount St Bernard at Charnwood Forest, and Caldey Island off Tenby. Also Mount Melleray in Ireland; don't know if they are still extant.

Otherwise known as Trappists, they had a very strict life, living in Silence. An American Cistercian, Thyomas Merton, wrote a number of books about life in the Cistercian houses in America.

The Belgian Trappists, of course, made some of the best beer in the world, so perhaps the mortifying of the flesh had abated somewhat byt 19th - 20th centuries!

Yeah, it's a white scapular I'm wearing!

Lockheed-Martin signs on for D-Wave prototype computer

Quantum leap?

A quantum leap is actually of the order of 0 to 6.63*10E-34 J.s, considerably less than the jump from 0 to 1.

People keep mis-using the term!

Rapture postponed as world inexplicably fails to end

the different bible written in Aramaeic (?) or Greek, or Coptic Egyptian or Arabic

Wasn't there an American Televangelist who is quoted as having once said: "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."

One just cannot conceive of the ignorance of some of these people who set themselves up as leaders of the flock.

@Shonko Kid

Yeah, remember the story of Lot and the cities of the plain. Lot kept tendering the possibility of finding 50 - 20 - 10 - 5 just men, so the the Lord would not destroy the cities, and failed, so only his family was saved (except the inevitably curious wife, of course.)

The rapture did happen, and the two truly believing good people were taken up, leaving the rest of us sinners here below. Wonder who they were? Certainly not Blair or Bush!

At least the Lord left the brewers here - Alleluia.

Re:Perhaps

Yes, an amazing sentence - but what did it mean?

Re:perhaps

Come again?

Re: it would have been funny

Even more so, if all his followers had been taken up to heaven, and he alone left behind.

one man's random and provably dodgy prediction

Think "dodgy dossier" a good majority of MPs must have believed it!

Lock up your lungs, here comes Grimsvotn

Loss of summer?

And here in Crete (Greece - not Texas) it is still raining at the end of May!

Yeah, it's a raincoat - specially imported for this year.

Welshman attempts to board train with pony

Something foul smelling?

When I was a lad, the whole street used to wait with buckets for the milkman's horse.

(Just off to the allotment)

Hammer

Also, a tap with a large hammer is often the best way to 'repair' a malfunctioning computer!

EXPLODING MELONS terrify Chinese

Gilding?

"Painting the lily, gilding refined gold" if you please!

CATS to be saved by BLASPHEMERS after the RAPTURE

Volunteer vets

Who will take care of the Papal Bulls?

A fifth of Europeans can't work out how much a TV costs

Novel use for an iPad

To use as a backing when writing on paper with a pencil!

Discount, free gift.....etc

Marketeers are always at it (commercially, I mean!). How often the word "value" or the word "worth" is mis-used.

"You get a free coppleflog value £30 when buying our happlecod at the low price of £250"

"The prize is a holiday for two in the Bernese Alps worth £1500, including air fare and transfers."

Or take the Merkins' woo-woo web sites for "self improvement. "Join today, and get a $300 discount, together with these bonuses free: 'Stop smoking in 4 days' worth $67, "14 days to deep meditation' worth $132..........

The real meaning of "value" or "worth" in all marketing-speak is "priced at" or "arbitrarily fixed at" or "figure picked at random out of the air.

People still fall for it, though.

Mental arithmetic

Also betting on the gee-gees!

Majority of them is a reference?

Sir, you are a C programmer, who understands pointers.

Density

And the temperature at which it is measured!

Catties

Be very careful, if you are Cantonese, not to ask a Thai butcher for a catty of meat!

Must be a quantum thing

You can be sure the gubmint will put a Spin on it!

Clegg'n'Cameron seek Director of Digital

Consultantese

"The job spec is written in the appealing mixture of civil service jargon and management consultantese..."

Did you really mean appealing - or is it a typo for "appalling"?

GIVING UP BOOZE CAUSES CANCER - shock study

Units

The other arbitrary unit in constant use by nanny is the portion - make sure you eat 5 portions of fruit and veg per day. So what's a portion? One grape, one pineapple, a pea, a kilo of potatoes?

A slice of bread could be described a a portion of vegetable matter - at least it used to be made of wheat, before the bakers and supermarkets discovered flour "improvers" which ensure that the bread goes mouldy two days after buying it.

I'll join you for the pint, though, as long as it's real beer.

Middle England chokes on Nice Baps

Taking his deity's name in vain!

Oh, is he a Satanist, then?

Scientists eye curvaceous Earth gravity map

Liebig

It _is_ pronounced leebig, you know - think of the condenser.

Lindsay Lohan ditches her surname

@Thomas 4

Hey, you don't use a gerund after dare(s).

Landlocked Bolivia seeks legal route to Pacific

Re: A wunch of Bankers

The BBC has already used it - it was a line in an episode of Hustle back in 2005 or 2006.

Hadron Collider 'could act as telephone for talking to the past'

Bootstrapping

That, of course, is the gist of a Robert Heinlein story.

@Les Dowling

"borrow "energy from their future selves. " So the LHC is issuing credit cards to subatomic particles now!

Still, something along these lines might be used to lower our present gas and electric bills against the time when the bills fall due, and we've already passed on.

@SpeakertoAliens

because seen from outside the universe ...

Hey, just _what_ is outside the universe, and where did the observer come from?

Chemists create current-bearing plastic

Gilding the Lily?

You are right - it's from Wolsey's advice to Thomas Cromwell from the unfinished Henry VIII in the speech which starts: "I charge thee, Cromwell, fling away ambition, for by that sin the angels fell." and the actual words were "They paint the lily, they gold refined gold"

Not actually an English major - I only studied Eng Lit up to School Cert level in the 1940's, but schools turned out literate people in those days.

Council busts breast milk ice cream parlour

Sick and pervy?

Why do you "asterisk" the word "folks"? Though it is actually plural without the "s" ;)

Portsmouth redefines the Olympic-sized swimming pool

Adjustable length

Why not adjust the temperature of the water to ensure that expansion/contraction of the pool structure hits the correct length?

And, BTW, Lester, to be pedantic, you really must learn to use the accusative of pronouns after prepositions:) Otherwise you just sound American.

Fowler in the pocket, as usual