Posts by Paul Murphy

Egyptian cuts off todger to spite his face dad

Shock - Ms Bee in animal cruelty charge!

>Bet you lot wouldn't cut off your ponytail for love of a woman.

I think encouraging people to mutilate a pony in the name of love is just plain WRONG.

Back to the story though .. what was he hoping to achieve? I'm sure the love of his life is really pleased that her beau is now no longer ... err long and able to perform his duties so to speak.

Unless marrying a looney is seen as a good idea of course, it seems that people can have some strange ideas at times.

ttfn

World's first electric jet ski surfaces

Seems like a good idea to me.

Though I don't live near water (I suspect that AC@13:58 might) and I can see it being used in the next Bond movie.

ttfn

Revealed: Full specs on SEAL Team Six multimedia setup

Umm

>it will definitely not be used for watching ...important sports events

Is there any sports event that is important? interesting possibly, but hardly important.

PH on the other hand would benefit from large screens and a good sound system...

ttfn

UK2 brings support back to Blighty, culls execs

Something is wrong - a disturbance in the force

Can it be that a UK company is actually deciding that having people that can speak it's customers language, share their timezone and talk to them in person is desirable?

Must be 1st of April or something.

Or maybe someone has done what they feel is necessary and then told the accountants to shut up, rather than listening to the accountants first.

I really hope this works out for the company, it's about time that this exporting of our jobs is halted, it just doesn't make any long-term sense.

ttfn

Shifty study proclaims Brits a nation of freetards

Oh no!!

I walk to the train station - that must mean I have denied income to a taxi driver,

I am not ill today - that must mean that I am denying a doctor a living,

I am listening to a radio - that must mean that I'm not buying 100 CDs a day and listening to one track a time.

so on and so on.

If, of the worlds population, a quarter is Chinese, does that mean I have a Chinese leg or something?

Statistics need to be presented and thought about very carefully otherwise they are meaningless.

The cult of the copyright is not serving it's customers, but itself, lets hope that things change to actually embrace the practice of file-sharing rather than trying to fight it.

ttfn

Blog homeopathy horror hammers hippy herbalists

Be fair everyone ...

After all it takes a long time to gather and organise all the scientifically-validated tests and trials that have been done around the world to show the effectiveness of homeopathy.

oh wait....

mines the one which appears to be a piece of thread, but is actually as effective as a real coat, cos I say so and you believe me.

Sky dishes up iPlayer-style service for Xbox 360

Pricing?

You mean it isn't free* as on my Wii's iPlayer service?

It's a shame that football is popular, I suspect the world would be a better place without it, though of course the poor footballers would have to get proper jobs and make do with less money than SKY can extract from it's subscribers.

Still, I suppose I shouldn't complain too much since I don't use SKY anyway - I spend my evenings enjoying playing 'Plants vs Zombies' or 'Fallout 3', rather than wasting my time on the TV**.

ttfn

*I pay my TV license so it's not totally free, I mean that there is no additional cost

**ever since the 'Paris Air Show' turned out to be something other that what I was thinking.

Welsh mum amazed by Marmite Messiah

Yep - looks just like him

Got that special birthmark as well.

sheesh - religion is so last century, who really bothers with it any more?

ttfn

Nork nuke quite a lot less powerful than Hiroshima

Welcome to the club NKor

Now you too can decide who shouldn't be allowed nuclear weapons.

wait .. that didn't come out right...

ttfn

Taking a first bite out of Wolfram Alpha

It's getting there.

Asked:

airspeed of unladen swallow

-----------------------

Input interpretation:

estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow

Result:

there is unfortunately insufficient data to estimate the velocity of an African swallow (even if you specified which of the 47 species of swallow found in Africa you meant)

(asked of a general swallow (but not answered) in Monty Python\'s Holy Grail.)

-----------------------

tee hee

ttfn

Take-Two sues over death of Duke Nukem Forever

If they wanted DNF out of the door then they could have done it.

After all lots of other companies produce game and follow-ups, so it's not impossible.

.

As Barney says, even individuals can produce highly innovative games in their spare time, so what was going on?

Has anyone followed the monen on this one yet? I suspect that there are some execs with expensives houses and fast cars etc. waiting to be found.

ttfn

JA because expecting DNF to be released has been an on-going joke for years.

Canadian Sex Party stands proud at polls

I for one welcome our...

Black leather-clad mistresses.

Joking aside our society would be much healthier if we backed off the prudishness and health and safety dogma and started ephasising personal responsibility more.

Anyway PH, black leather ... I'm off for a lie-down.

ttfn

US airforce looking at winged-rocket booster 'X-plane'

And of course there is also Orion/Daedalus

Nuclear bombs to provide enough lift to shoot a cruiser-sized object into space.

Very promising concept, very fuel-efficient and still the only way to get 10,000 tons into orbit. Funnily enough it seemed that the heavier the object the better the ride was going to be, since the mass evened out the thrust pulses.

Shame about the radiation though.

ttfn

go on - you know you want to ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

PH - go on, you know you want to..

Film industry turns up P2P heat on Carter

So shall we sue the post office..

whenever someone sends a letter bomb,

or DVLA whenever someone crashes a car,

or a water company whenever someone gets waterboarded,

or the telephone company whenever people make crank calls.

and so on...

When the copyright holders work out their mechanism for making it worthwhile for people to pay them money for their products in a fast and simple way they can then complain, until then they had better work on facing up to the fact that the people that provide the medium are not responsible for peoples use of it, and attempting to use them to police themselves is doomed to failure - mainly because it's going against their core purpose of suplying the service in the first place.

People will copy and steal because that's what people do, until they mature or get caught and thrown into jail.

ttfn

Taiwanese rat snake bites Taiwanese trouser snake

I for one...

Do NOT welcome our todger-cobra overlords.

Ouch ouch ouchie ouch.

No PH for him then!.

ttfn

Microsoft: Windows 7 release in August '09

Installed it last night and it wasn't too bad.

Since my XP install died rather spectactularly (the most visible problem was that the graphics went down to 4-bit mode!) I thought I might as well, so it's now on my 32Gb SSD and performance is really rather good.

Problems:

It can't see the SATA RAID controller card (with my 2 RAID1's) and the scanner is driverless so far, and for some reason it sees my RAID0 but won't let me access the drive

it does respond quickly and the interface is not too dissimilar to XP's to make it a pain - though of course I haven't tried any games yet (on the RAIDs) and I'll probably install openoffice this time around.

The big question is how much will it be, since I may also try out a flavour of linux and see if I can get the games running under wine, or maybe try out cedega.

ttfn

Microsoft to EU: Cut me down, and Google will rule the world!

I guess I was being sarcastic.

@Tom

A bit tongue in cheek - after all the company that used that slogan would like to force you to go to a particular page of their choosing, or at least not visit another particular page :-)

A bit like jumping into a taxi and the driver saying 'you don't want to go there (where you have asked to go) mate, why not go to (another destination) instead.' could you really believe the driver has your interests at heart?

Another approach would be that each browser had to go to the home page of their respective manufacturers site, at least that way everyone would be consistant and it's easily measurable.

ttfn

Let them compete equally.

Who says a home page has to be a search page?

Maybe all browsers should instead point to a page that then lists a load of potential homepages, sorted by category, so that people could then choose 'where they wanted to go today'.

Or maybe a list of popular ones (http://lifehacker.com/software/reader-poll/reader-poll-whats-your-browsers-homepage-247479.php)

Or maybe a quick wizard to determine a shortlist of suggested homepages.

Or maybe just some random website/page combo (http://www.labnol.org/software/browsers/change-browser-homepage/8139/)..

The possibilities are almost endless (http://www.endoftheinternet.com/)

maybe someone should start a homepage wiki.

ttfn

Secret US robo whispercopters head to 'undisclosed location'

all references to...

massive chopper,

PH,

newdspaper,

are all deliberate, thanks for noticing.

I was also going to mention (as part of the vision) the Suns' attempt at radar baffling by using smooth and rounded objects on the surface of the craft to absorb and deflect radar signals, but I needed a lie-down by that time.

I guess PH is used to vibrating machinery by now.

ttfn

I for one welcome our quiet flying black overlords

But I'm sure I won't be the first one to say that.

It's nice to see that the yanks ability to fight a stand-off war is improving all the time, hopefully this increasing lack of risk to their people will encourage them to become peace-loving and stop trying to be a global police force or resource thieves.

Wait .. maybe I haven't thought that through properly.

For some reason I just had a vision of a stealth chopper designed by the Sun (the newdspaper that is, not our nearest star) which would achieve it's stealth by dangling a PH lookalike underneath the helicopter, thus diverting everyones attention from the massive chopper above.

back to work I guess, coffee break over.

ttfn

Swedish couple demand right to name baby 'Q'

Cue the queue of Q synonyms.

Could the child have a middle name of 'uit'?

Maybe they could have a competition to seek alternatives - I can think of 25 right off the top of my head..

ttfn

Department of Homeland Security to destroy swine flu victims

Living Dead....

Is it cancer?

Doc: if we're lucky...

I also liked the girl dancing on the grave, a great series of films, very educational.

ttfn

Peugeot preps 4WD diesel hybrid

Looks good - no plug-in though?

Seems to hit all the right buttons, except it can't be recharged from the mains, which is a shame.

I guess it would also be nice if people were planning for fuel cell use, so swappable components would be an idea, though of course a car manufacturers motives are more about selling vehicles than they are about the customers long-term needs.

What else? induction charging and/or plug-in ... air con and toys, range and speed would be useful to know.

oh and price.

ttfn

Musician dumps instruments for iPhone

Jonathon Coulton

Has been using an iPhone to control his synth for quite a while, running around the stage tapping buttons to insert sounds etc.

Still, it's all progress I guess.

ttfn

Swine flu apocalypse: Batten down the hatches

Twelve monkeys

Yes - I saw the above documentary, shame they got it a bit wrong and it was pigs rather than monkeys, still maybe there was a copyright issue or something.

Still waiting to be selected for our companies 'survival of the human species'(tm) programme, I'm sure they will let me know which server room/lurv pad to attend any time now.

still waiting....

ttfn

PH - can you imagine a world 're-built' courtesy of PH ???

Strumpets strut Spain's Street View

Keep up the good work..

We need to know this.

can I have your jobs please?

ttfn

For security's sake! Send your kid to hacker camp

I agree with Simon

>Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik missile.

Should read satellite shirley?

Any approach that get kids thinking again would be good, though nowadays it's more a case of making it acceptable to their peers. Kids seem to think that it's acceptable to be ill-educated and as stupid as possible, since the state will look after you and you don't need to do anything.

They then have kids and 'raise' them the same way - vicious spiral of idiocracy.

ttfn

Germany approves strengthened child abuse law

sites or pages on the sites?

Won't someone think of the scorpions album cover and wikipedia?

ttfn

Flying-rifle robocopter: Hovering sniper backup for US troops

So if I shoot one down do I get a free rifle?

Just asking, since it would seem to me to be a good way to up the terrorists ffirepower.

I wonder how long it'll be until all wars are fought by computer and people just carry on their lives - until the computer decides that you were in the wrong place and time and can you please step into the chamber now??

ttfn

Start-up Bee pledges 'affordable' British e-car

Getting better

100 miles @ 80mph, swappable batteries and seperate motors.

Now we need a small diesel motor to replace one of the batteries (if/when needed) for longer trips or too long in the traffic queues.

Regenerative braking,

Also induction charging would be good (at home and at traffic lights) and motors in each wheel, for those slippery situations.

Now - does it have aircon?

ttfn

PS3 players prefer gaming to bonking

Err .. does not compute

>A survey has discovered that almost three-quarters of PlayStation 3 ...

Ok so thats around 75% then?

>Of those respondents in relationships, 32 per cent .....

so thats around 32% then?

So what's missing from this story? presumably the men that don't have partners?

Or am I missing something?

ttfn

Moderatrix quits El Reg: Latest

RAF - Real April Fool

Those initials aren't a co-incidence you know.

Hopefully SB will be back soon to tell us off properly (oh yes!) since we obviously need controlling.

Of course us blokes could always say that it's our time of the month (I have my time of the month in 10-minute periods oops sorry, intervals.)

:-)

ttfn

Advertising watchdog okays 'gaming equals early grave' ad

What else could they do?

Commuting on a train (driving a car being a little less worse)

Watching TV

Knitting

doing jigsaw puzzles

writing comments on websites ...

oh.

ttfn

Sky calls for access to cable network

So when will sky open their satellite customers to other operators?

I'm sure they wouldn't want that.

Though the regulator should really look at the lock-down that sky has over live 'premiere' football (and other events), which means that all the football-addicted sheep in this country have to use them to watch people kicking a pigs-bladder around a field.

ttfn

Great Aussie firewall claims first victim

A complaint?

Just the one?

Singular?

Complaint?

Not peer reviewed?

In that case I'll go and write a spider for every web page on the MMM* and submit each page in turn, because, well there are bound to be some in there that should be banned, I'm just submitting them all so that they can be judged.

ttfn

I like 'MMM' since it's 'WWW' upside down, which is particularly appropriate for several reasons:

1) It's Australia, and everyone knows that they live upside down,

2) The web was based on free exchange and access to information, and this is story is the opposite

3) Todays 'Letter by TBL' suggesting the Magnificent Mondial Mesh as a suitable name for his invention

Dell Inspiron Mini 12 notebook-not-netbook

re: resolution

>Of course, what really separates the Mini 12 from the herd is that screen. At 12.1 inches corner to >corner and with a netbook-beating resolution of 1280 x 800, the Mini 12 is a handy choice for >anyone not wanting to make do with the usual 8.9in or 10.1in 1024 x 600 netbook-standard >screen size and resolution.

top of page 6.

Still keeping hold of my money.

Not all tick boxes there yet.

ttfn

Scottish Parliament pr0n law faces angry opposition

How can we tell if a picture is extreme (etc.)?

Would it be a good idea for the governement to host a number of pictures on a website (or links possibly) to pictures, with a caption of 'Ok', 'not Ok', '5 years for this', 'fine unless the tomato is removed' and the like.

Obviously the more pictures the better since sampling a larger data set gives more accurate results and all that.

That way we would all be educated on the sort of things that we are now allowed.

Of course, they couldn't show us the really naughty pictures, so maybe they could use stick figures or something.

Maybe they could host it at porn.gov.uk or similar.

only a thought.

ttfn

Swedish police claim massive anti-piracy bust

Interesting contrast

TPB hosts torrents, files that point to (potentially illegal) files,

Sunnydale by the sounds of things hosts the very files that RIAA et al are actually trying to get to.

It's not a question of fail or succeed - it's more about understanding how things work and then targetting your response.

Now if the RIAA etc found a way of tracking torrents to expose the real locations of those illegally held files ... hmmm

TPB promotes piracy to the same degre that (TV, radio, etc) advertisers promote irresponsible buying, that alcohol companies promote drunken behaviour, that cigarette companies (used to) promote DIY suicide, that car companies promote dangerous driving and road deaths.

They're not directly responsible, but then again they don't really help stop it.

ttfn

Magna boils up EV kit for car makers

Is it plug in only?

Because if it is then the market for it will be small.

Make the batteries into swappable units, and allow one or more of the swappable units to be replaced by a petrol, diesel, fuel-cell, hamster or whatever additional energy source.

Batteries and a solar cell will only be good for very local trips.

Also the electric motor needs to drive it at 60mph at least, any less and it won't be able to keep up with modern traffic, so people will (again) not buy one.

Aside from that it looks a good effort, though I do wonder if the design gets in the way of practicality.

The next thing is to get the government to give an electric vehicle away when people reach 18 - don't give them an excuse to go petrol...

ttfn

Brit nuke subs exposed on Google Earth

Calculated risk.

After all if someone is determined to attack somewhere then they will find a way.

I think I would prefer things to be open anyway, after all if you have nothing to hide ...etc And it's not as though these places can't defend themselves after all.

ttfn

El Reg suffers identity crisis

Well I was trying to be serious...

And everyone else goes for the lesbian thing (do you mean the people on the island of Lesbos, or those girls that like to touch other girls in the no-no place(s)*?).

Why isn't there a 'More interesting than most other sites' option...

PH - is she from Lesbos?

ttfn

*The 'no-no' place(s) can quickly become 'yes-yes' places if touched in a certain way. Be warned people!

Hollywood to totally recall Total Recall

Ringworld

If you want to do an original story with CGI effects then look no further than the Ringworld, or in fact any of the Larry Niven books (Gift from Earth, Protector, Long arm of Gil Hamilton etc etc.) would be a good start, let alone so many other authors.

Just make sure you do it properly, maybe as a 4-parter or something.

There are SO many stories out there, why oh why do they insist on re-doing the past.

ttfn

North East to get £30m e-vehicle re-charge network

Bold moves

And good luck to them - it deserves to succeed.

The problem would surely be a chicken and egg one though, do you have subsidies for the vehicles, which then have nowhere to charge, or loads of charging points and no vehicles.

I would imagine that it would be a bit of both, put some charging stations up in car parks and parking bays where they will get used, and subsidies for the initial users, since hopefully later vehicles will get to be cheaper anyway.

Shame we didn't choose to go for electric vehicles at the dawn of the car age - we'd have much better batteries as well as vehicles by now.

ttfn

UK kids presenter gets online support

Whatever happened to Chris and Pui..

Apparently they are working on new material which will be making an appearance later in the year:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/11_november/25/childrens.shtml

My disabled son loves Something Special (which teaches a disabled form of sign language, not BSL) and several of the other programs, he's gone off the night garden though.

I agree that her singing is not exactly the best, but then the two presenters are both rather err dull compared to Chris and Pui (sorry if you're reading this) which is a shame, but maybe it's early days.

Anyway as far as stupid parents go there are lots of them about, the BNP membership has to come from somewhere.

Off to the daily hate to see what I can add in terms of bored support, since this shouldn't be an issue in the first place.

ttfn

iPhoney nano found, tested in Asia

Apple ...

Are you watching??

A very good copy, I especially like the user-upgradable battery and the micro-SD card. With a larger screen to help keyboarding, or a palm-like pen area it could be worth it's money.

What's it like as a phone?

ttfn

Small biz still struggling for funding as RBS flounders

Why not ....

Too late now, but

Wait for each bank to fail, the Bank of England then buys them up cheaply.

Then the government (is that still the right word?) can control bonuses, lending etc. whilst protecting jobs, not rewarding failure and keeping money circulating.

The big change would be allowing the bank of England to take deposits and make loans.

So much of our money wasted, and we'll spend decades paying it back.

I'm sad...

ttfn

Debt collection can be harassment, rules court

Well done.

Hopefully this will prompt other companies to be better behaved.

PH - better behaved? hope not...

Samsung unsheathes screaming phone

Needs a boom-box .. hmm ..

Lets call it the 'iScream' it would be a bluetooth device, running on rechargeable batteries with enough power for, say 2 hours, of 100db (or more) noise, though the iScream could be made even more useful with the addition of a few buttons as well as the GPS...

'I'm in the boot(trunk *) of this car '

'Help Me!!'

'No No I don't want to be hit/ raped/ converted to another religion'

Hmm i wonder if it could be built into a chastity belt? - the iChaste?

Ok, that's enough I think, I'll get my loud coat.

ttfn

*Since the Ameriyanks can't use a language properly, sheesh.

Home Office plans to force CCTV on shops and pubs

What about supermarkets?

It's on display to anyone visiting, so surely that should be videoed as well.

Sigh ...rather than making the drinking of alcohol a banned activity (yeah good luck with that one) how about legislation making it mandatory to give children between 8 and 15 small amounts of alcohol in adult-controlled situations, such as dinner time, so that they learn to accept it as part of family life.

PH - on display, videoed ... say no more.

ttfn

Spaceborne-forces planners meet with orbital joyride firms

Starship Troopers - the book not the film.

Been done before by Heinlein.

Well, not for real of course, because the starship troopers had starships, and powered flying armour, and micro-grenades and other toys.

ttfn