Posts by Alan Esworthy

Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO

Re: No more Acronyms

Here an pronounceable acronym for you: TOOMSOMSI

trouble originates on meat side of meat/screen interface

A single typo may have tipped US election Trump's way

"...may have tipped..."

Yes, and El Reg's editors may have been abducted by space aliens and replaced with exoskeletal silicon based lifeforms wearing disguises.

"May have..." is not news, nor is it informative.

It's not us, it's you: Boffins ditch supercomputers in lust for new materials

Yes. It told them that the cat would be alive or dead.

Periodic table enjoys elemental engorgement

yet more suggestions

113 (RIKEN/Japan): Nipium, Ninjium, Udonium, Tempurium, Unagium

115 (Dubna/Russia): Putinium if they know what's good for 'em

117 (Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA): Yallium, Jackdanielsium, Bluegrassium

118 (Dubna/Russia & L.Livermore/USA): All I have are shitty suggestions: Crapon, Poopon

RFID wants to TRACK my TODGER, so I am going to CUT it OFF

Stun gun?

I'm thinking that a low-end stun gun, one of the small ones, applied to one of those damned RFIDs would kill it dead, dead, dead. Anyone try this? Opinion from an EE?

As McAfee runs for US President – we ask a crucial question: Will Reg readers back him?

Fsck Yeah!

As a voting Merkin, I say that the rest of the presidential candidates are just as crazy or crazier but hide it better. They're also more dangerous to me, my family, the U.S., not to mention the rest of the world.

So, YES, I'll vote for him.

Google burnishes Chrome to patch over 43 bugs

Re: Even newer new version

Same here. I wonder what they missed with the update to *.89? (Don't tell me if there's a way I can look that up; I'm far too lazy.)

WIN a RockBLOCK Mk2 Iridium sat comms unit

THIGH Test

Telecoms High-altitude Investigation and General Heuristic Test

A Cambridge boffin told me YOU'RE A BIG, FAT LIAR

Fidget training seminars coming soon

We suspect it might be quite hard to fidget deliberately at exactly the same level as you do when you’re not feeling guilty.

I suspect it might be quite easy to learn to fidget deliberately at a constant level regardless of whether or not you're feeling guilty.

For those unable to exercise such a demanding level of self-control, perhaps a packet of live crab lice dumped down the Y-fronts would do the trick.

LOHAN seeks stirring motto for spaceplane mission patch

Here, here!

Hic, hic!

High

Volo ut altum.

(I want to get high.)

Yo-yo

Lohan ascendit, tunc descendit.

(Lohan goes up, then goes down. Nicely ambiguous, if I do say so myself.)

Canuck reader threatens suicide over exact dimensions of SPAAAACE!

random thought

How about a little variety/uncertainty to spice it up a bit?

Beer in SP(substr("AAAAAAAAAAAAAA",1,int(rnd()*10+2)CE!

Spanish struggle to control spelling of 'WhatsApp'

I bet you didn't provide this translation, Lester

"Lo vi en internet" ("I saw it on the internet")

No, the English would be "I saw it on internet." The article ("el" or "la") is specifically what the Spanish leaves out in order not to have to assign or recognize gender.

Sticky Tahr-fy pudding: Ubuntu 14.04 slickest Linux desktop ever

Re: re: command line (@ A J Stiles)

Now that's a surprising thing to read. What should be done, of course, is "Click Start, type cmd, then press enter". When the command window opens type <command>.

Then you have an editable command line and a window that stays open. Did you not know that?

RISE of the LIVING CHAIR: Boffins recruit E coli to build futuristic materials

Warning to those new on the employment market

The bosses may tell you it's biotech, but it's really just another crap factory job.

Previously stable Greenland glaciers now rushing to the sea

local effect, global hype

Read the paper. The authors describe the increased mobility of the glaciers under study as a local effect. In fact, nearby is another glacier where temperatures are below normal (another local effect).

Alarmists take this local effect and scream about it being part of a global pattern when there is absolutely no support for such an assertion. Can you imagine what the well-paid warmist propaganda mill would say if anyone focused on that other, cooler, region and crowed that it was a sign that global warming was untrue?

Move along. There really is very little to see here.

ZEPPELINS to replace Goodyear blimps in American skies

@Stevie - I hate to break this to you, but Dunlop is a Goodyear brand. I'm sure they market tyres in the UK, but I assure you they spell it "tires" at corporate headquarters in Buffalo, New York.

Now the good news! DMACK definitely is in the tyre trade!

Elon Musk slams New Jersey governor over Tesla direct sales ban

Musk credibility own goal

I greatly admire Elon Musk -- and wish he had better judgment. On the one hand, he decries as unwarranted govt intervention in the marketplace when NJ mandates dealership franchise sales. On the other hand, Tesla and SpaceX both make out very well indeed from govt intervention in the marketplace.

Google's mystery barge flounces out of San Fran, heads to Stockton

Misdirection

Google is doing something naughty somewhere else and they want us busy not noticing. Barge is mostly empty.

Eurocops want to build remote car-stopper, shared sensor network

cops/govt exempt, of course

I'll offer good odds to anyone who wants to bet that police and other govt vehicles will not be exempt from any remote-control systems.

Seagate's LaCie whips out bonkers posh silver-plated storage ball

ugh

Christ. Awful.

Locked-up crims write prison software that puts squeeze on grub supplier

expanded horizons

I'd like to see those two write an inmate inventory auditing system. They'd likely determine that there were two extraneous inmates in the system who would have to be released to reconcile the difference.

How I BLEW my co-workers' HEADS OFF ... without going to jail

Power Frisbee

This was exciting only in the aftermath. Many years ago when I was a lowly midnight shift computer operator at a bank, the four of us on duty would fill some of the empty time by tossing round tape canister lids around the computer room like Frisbee discs. We did this, anyway, until I skipped a lid off the top of the 2540 card reader/punch after which it sailed into the big POWER OFF button on the front panel of the IBM 360/40 that was most of the way through the nightly 6-hour demand deposit account update batch run. We did recover by deadline, but just barely.

Obamacare goes LIVE, and so do the survey-spewing spambots

call the govt

If you get scammed, all you have to do is call the govt hotline at 1-800-F1UCKYO.

I did not make that up. Using the Merkin phone pad, that's what you get for 1-800-318-2596.

Exciting MIT droplet discovery could turbocharge power plants, airships and more

for the greater good

I wonder if it is possible to capture enough water from the breath of blow-hard politicians to drown them?

Fan whips out own pair of iPhone 32Cs, 'unlocks' mobe using breasticle

lock/unlock?

As penises and nipples both undergo dimensional and morphological changes when suitably stimulated, this raises the question of whether or not Apple's software can determine the same body part independent of said body part's engorgement or surface moisture level. If not, then choosing the excitement level for unlocking becomes very important for fanboi (and girl) wankers.

Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)

Re: How do you pronounce it?

Bugr me if I know, Cosmo. Typical marketing twadl.

Ex-CEO Elop's plunder to total $25m in voyage from Nokia to Microsoft

Order

Elop knows the order: pillage first, then burn.

IT bloke denies trying to shag sheep outside football ground

You all assume a ewe when he might have fancied the wether.

ATTACK of the ROBOT BANKERS brings stock market to its knees

Value!

Oh good. We have "researchers" who blithely admit being hampered by insufficient information building models of models whose characteristics are unknown. I do see the value in that, yes indeed.

Headmaster calls cops, tries to dash pupil's uni dreams - over a BLOG

Re: Twas ever thus

Nice troll, John, you coprophagous cur.

WIN a RockBLOCK Iridium satellite comms module

The "Oh Shit Button"

No acronym, no abbreviation, it's simply what one says in these circumstance.

ADIOS - Alas, Dying Is Our Sorrow

3D printed guns are for wimps. Meet NASA's 3D printed ROCKET ENGINE

Re: "3D-printed parts"

On profound difference is that existing subtractive manufacturing methods do not have the capability to make intricate internal structures in a single-block product. There's no real limit to that with additive (3-D printing) methods.

Boffin snatches control of colleague's body with remote control brain hat

Why?

"Hmm. I wonder why I just removed my underwear," she said.

While I certainly hope so, it's not clear how this work will apply. Your unfortunate friend's brain cannot control some muscles. Somebody else's brain telling your friend's brain to move those muscles isn't bypassing the problem.

Obama prepares to crawl up NSA's ass with microscope

I'll be polite

This is a load of fœtid dingo's kidneys.

Xerox admits there's no fix yet for number-fudging copiers

For a faster fix...

...Copy your monthly Xerox bill on their faulty gear. You've got a 50-50 chance any error will reduce the total you pay. Spend the difference at the pub.

Yahoo! announces! plan! to! change! logo! 30! times! this! month!

Huh?

"What do you think of the Yahoo! logo?" you ask.

Nothing.

Telly bigwigs try to close down Aereo streaming service - again

arrogant judge

Judge Chin's arrogance is showing. If a piece of legislation is flawed it is the job of the legislative body that crafted it in the first place to fix it. Each and every judge, heck, each and every individual, can make up his own idea of the "spirit" of a law but there is no authority to appeal to for saying just what that spirit is save the legislators who wrote it and voted for it. Chin's job is to hear evidence for and against the proposition that some party has violated a law or has damaged another party, not to impose his own creative view of what the law should mean.

PRISM scandal: Brit spooks operated within the law, say politicos

Re: Let's not forget

@John Smith 19: "Despite the McCarthy witch nuts America has never experience a real repressive regime."

Demonstrably untrue: 1861-1865 under Abraham Lincoln, and during the ensuing Reconstruction in the former CSA. To a lesser (but not much) degree during the Great War (WWI) under Woodrow Wilson.

D'OH! Use Tumblr on iPhone or iPad, give your password to the WORLD

Re: Tumblr is a website, right?

@DijitulSupport: "tumblr is, basically a blog site. (the lowest possible value for "blog" - ie pictures of cats and boobs)"

ITYM "cats and dugs"

How the clammy claws of Novell NetWare were torn from today's networks

Re: History as experienced by the average forty-something IT boke?

@DrGoon - "As others have noted, DOS-based Windows (as early as WfW 3.1) broke the Netware stranglehold in very many small office environments."

Yes, indeed. Also note non-Windows DOS machines benefited from file and printer sharing by means of the Workgroup Add-on for MS-DOS. Very handy, that, for (at that time) legacy non-Windows applications.

And come on, fellow geeks, the term ABEND is still alive and well in z/OS mainframe shops, Note I say the TERM is alive and well as z/OS shops don't really tend to see many abnormal terminations, at least not like a few decades ago. (Hmm. I'm 64. I wonder what age percentile that puts me in amongst El Reg readers?)

Watch LIVE tomorrow: LOHAN team attempts second pop at SPEARS

Abuzz with excitement

I'll be following your progress online and will try for the streamed launch and chase video. Who will be operating the Digital Instrumentation Laboratory and Downrange Observatory? I'm sure she's quivering with anticipation.

Human error blamed for toxic Russian rocket explosion

Re: Big Bang Expletives

По большой голубой Санкт Кирилла яички, кто-то за это заплатит!

Seven snazzy smartphones for seven sorts of shoppers

Re: Yes, but how good are they as phones?

@David W. "flies walked on the monitor and browsed the internet. I never found out what they were looking at."

Well, if it drew flies my bet is farm pr0n.

(obligatory) Fnar.

How Alan Turing wanted to base EDSAC's memory on BOOZE

Gin: miracle material

Gin is truly miraculous! We've long used it to help us forget, and now we find we can use it to help us remember.

How does it know?!