Posts by Michael Dunn

Das überdatabase: Inside Wacky Jacqui's motherbrain

Won't take "No" for an answer

Obviously she has never heard of democratic processes.

It's the KGB uniform coat.

Geode - the Firefox add-on that knows where you are

Misuse

I've always assumed the Reg originated in Blighty - so PLEASE will you not commit the sickening Americanism of using the word "leverage" as a verb? It's a noun meaning "use of a lever," either literally or metaphorically.

There's been too much of bringing American management speak into use in Britain, and it's disgusting; we have the richest language in the universe, why can't we use it?

PH because richness of language would be irrelevant.

Catholic priests cane YouTube over blasphemous vids

Hippocracy

I believe Jonathan Swift was the first person to speak of a Hippocracy, in the last voyage of Gulliver.

Mine's the one with the dictionary in the pocket, because I could never spell or pronounce the name of the kingdom of horses.

Scientists study near-death sensations

Lingering death?

Dr Sam Parnia, an expert in the field involving consciousness during clinical death, explains that contrary to popular perception, death is not a "specific moment".

"It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death.

He's been reading the "Tibetan Book of the Dead" - every Buddhist knows this - it takes 49 days (subjective) to find a rebirth.

My Mala is in the pocket.

DARPA seeks sticky-goldenballs Casimir forcefields

Re Photon Space Sailor

OK, but do they still splice the space mainbrace?

The one with a bottle of grog in the pocket - though, of course, the idea of grog was that it wouldn't keep, so could not be saved up for a real bender.

Ubuntu zoo preps for new arrival

Q @Paul Ryan and Roger Laborde

Yes, Quirky Quagga seems a good enough Q-name

Lockheed demos AI-based roboforce command tech

Naming names

I've always been amused by people who choose what they consider to be 'cool' names for their physical or intellectual offspring. Icarus is a good example - there is an Icaros (Greek spelling) travel agency in Agios Nikolaos, Crete - how far do their customers get?

Also intrigued by people who call their daughter Jocasta - lining up a fate worse than death for her? Or how many Judes and Judases are there out there?

Paris because her name is the same as that of the man who brought about the destruction of his homeland by carrying off Helen.

Portsmouth punts naval boy-on-boy to innocent kiddies

Appropriate News Section

Interesting that you chose to put this item in the "Odds and Sods News"!

Council clamps down on 'man on the street'

Trumpets

No doubt Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Person" will now sound better. I don't know, though - that title sounds pejorative.

Mine's the one with the baton in the pocket.

Hacker unearths young Chinese gymnast scam

Chinese ages

It maybe of interest to people to know that the Chinese do not count their age in the same way as the Anglo-Saxon speaking nations.

A child is one year old when born, and becomes two on the occasion of the next Chinese New Year.

One of these athletes is reported to have been born on 1st January. This would have been followed within 2 to 6 weeks by that year's Chinese New Year.

I was born on 28th January 1934. Chinese New Year in 1934 was on 14th February, so according to the Chinese way of reckoning I am 76, though my British documents put me down as 74 (Wow, an extra 25p a week on my pension next year!).

More importantly for those who have any faith in Chinese astrology, I have always been labelled as born in the year of the dog - the major portion of 1934 was the year of the dog - but in fact was born in the year of the rooster. Characteristic: excessive talkativeness!

UK bank chief stung in ID theft scam

Vicious and Vindictive behaviour

I'v just been reading up on the John Munden case.

The first trial accepted a report by - KPMG? The report indicated that HBOS's systems were fine - who were they run by? KPMG

Just as farcical as the MOD asking Boeing if their FADEC system was reliable after the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash: surprise, surprise, Boeing said it was!

HBOS, of course, did not allow the defence team the access to audit their systems, as ordered by a judge, so the appeal succeeded.

It is to be hoped that the bank will now pursue their own boss with the viciousness they displayed in the Munden case: presume he's guilty of fraud, of course. They could always get KPMG to cook up a suitable report!

Don't bet on it.

@ Stephen Gray

Well, Stephen - hung is the past tense and participle of what you do to game; hanged is the past tense and participle of what used to be done to criminals.

Mine's the one with Fowler in the pocket.

Fake feet trip up Olympic opening coverage

Chinese Alphabet?

There is an alphabet for Chinese called pinyin.

However, the order of the national teams would have followed the order of their names as they would appear in a Chinese dictionary.

The left hand or top part of the character, known as a radical is listed in the front of the dictionary, arranged in order of the number of strokes of the brush used to write the radical, giving the page number at which words (characters) made up from that radical will start. From the page starting with each radical, characters are then listed according to the number of brush strokes used to form the rest of the character.

So, to look up the word for honest, for example, one would split the character into two parts: the left hand side or radical, which is the radical for 'human', and the right hand side which is the character for 'words'.

The radical for 'human' has two strokes, so it will appear early on in the index. One finds the page number in the dictionary from which all the words based on the radical for 'human' start. The radical for 'words' has 7 strokes, so one looks at the top of each page following until one gets to the page(s) containing words with the radical 'human' and seven more strokes, and then finds the dictionary entry.

Complicated? Not really, it is easy to get used to.

Paris because she might distract one from the dictionary, into thinking of other things.

Daily Mail loses employee info

Password Protected? HA HA

This story, and a previous one on a similar subject, both carry a "reassurance" from some dim spokesperson say the data or laptop was password protected.

Surely a savvy 10 year old could get round that one....Knoppix boot disk, hex editor, or in the days of plain DOS, Disk Doctor!

Mine's the one with a Linux boot system on a memory stick in the pocket.

2010: the 5TB 3.5in HDD cometh

Changing Times indeed

By 2010, Vista SP5 will eat up 2TB and take 3 days to install - once a month at least.