Posts by Alan Esworthy

Chinese screw sex theme park

Never ever!

'Local officials slammed the scheme as "vulgar, ill-minded and misleading" and claimed manager Lu Xiaoqing was "interested only in profiting from sensationalism".'

Note to those local officials - "vulgar" is in the mind of the beholder, "ill-minded" suggests that the "healthy-minded" are to be prohibited from thinking pleasurable thoughts about sex, "misleading" in this context is incomprehensible, and of course government officials *never* *ever* profit from sensationalism.

Sigh. I was *so* looking forward (upward?) to the giant rotating pudendum!

<Where's the IT angle? It is not as though your IT-employed readers are preoccupied with sex. No, no not at all. I think I'll go back to eating my mango and bananas in cream now.>

Hacker claims whaling expedition harpooned Steve Jobs

Nice phrase choice

Yes, this guy has done a public service the way a stallion services a mare.

Boffins develop bendy, squishy, foldable display

First adopters

I can see it now...the first profitable application will be an inflatable "love" doll with the size and color of each and every naughty bit separately controllable by the, ah, user.

Hmmm. It may even be possible to make it omnigender - and either serially or simultaneously at that.

(if you don't understand the Paris tag then ask your mother or father to explain it to you)

Torture case against Boeing subsidiary resuscitated

Third option

I don't wish to be overly negative, but aren't there three options for Miami Mike?

(a) moron

(b) troll

(c) moron AND troll

MIke the Moron Troll is peering east when he should be focused on west. Whether the tortured are terrorists and murderous bastards or not is utterly irrelevant (I suspect most probably are). What is relevant is the *other* set of murderous bastards claiming to be my government representatives and agents, and those who appear ready to do anything for a buck.

/black chopper because I feel a bit prescient today.

Obama pledges 3% of GDP for science

Arrogant Despot running dogs

@Latham: I resent having an ever higher proportion of my productive effort taken away from me without my consent and spent in ways of which I disapprove. Even if the goal is feeding a starving granny I suspect you would not want to get there by means of armed robbery.

@Mike: Yes, I see how a democracy works, you twit. The US is a constitutional republic with a constitution that enumerates the powers of the federal government. Those powers do not include the use of force to support scientific research. The method for modifying the constitution exists and involves actions by democratically elected representatives. This method of amendment has been used many times, but not for this purpose.

I am glad for scientific and technological research. It has made my life immeasurably better. increased the whole world's standard of living. Cretins in government are interested only in feeding their political power hunger and feathering the beds of their pals and campaign donors. Whoever supports the idea of making politicians and bureaucrats in charge of such serious affairs is either very, very stupid or is making his living sucking on the government teat.

Arrogant Despot

Note how he assumes, and assumes all his subjects acquiesce to the idea, that 3% of GDP is his to spend. The view this man has of the relationship between the people and the government is nothing less than perversion on the grandest scale.

May Bo bite him on the ass.

US lawmakers to de-silence electric cars

ratio

Given the ratio of blind pedestrians to vehicles on the road, wouldn't it be cheaper to issue each blind person a small radar set?

If electric vehicles simply *must* make noise, just attach a playing card to a brake caliper bracket with a clothes pin so the card goes clackety-clack against the wheel spokes. Or perhaps a sound system with an external speaker to play back recordings of politicians' campaign speeches wherein they promise to fight against big intrusive nanny-state government.

...mine's the one with the huge book in the pocket, "Famous Kept Campaign Promises."

Sheep ad not cruel, bleats Samsung

PETA

I'm not one for locking up people who are "a danger to themselves and others" but PETA makes me re-examine that position from time to time. These are, after all, the people who euthanize almost all of the dogs and cats and other animals they "rescue." One might wish that they would find something useful and productive to do with their time such as sanitizing telephones.

PS3 players prefer gaming to bonking

I take quiet satisfaction...

...in the fact that these people are taking themselves out of the gene pool all by themselves (literally).

NYC 'Top Model' stampede: The truth revealed

One question...

"Wood was, sources say, cloned from a small fragment of DNA taken from a dress used in 1953 classic Glen or Glenda."

How did they know, I mean really know, that DNA came from Ed? It might have been Dwight Eisenhower's for all we know.

/mine's the one with the used cigar in the pocket.

BOFH: Cable entanglements

Quantity versus Quality

Oh, goodie! I check every Friday, of course, and was delighted today to find a new episode. Simon, keep up the good work. I won't complain about the reduced frequency of late because when you do at last produce a new BOFH it is a special treat.

<undeserved cynicism> Just please don't trade that special treatitude for story quality! </undeserved cynicism>

Diebold e-voting software includes delete audit logs button

Co-opted

All your votes are belong to U.S.

Earthworm blamed for laptop crash

Dogs. Cats.

Dogs are ideally suited for those who cannot get love and respect any other way.

Cats are best for those secure in their maturity and merely desire the occasional surprising diversion. And cleaning up hair balls.

Flame away!

'No Office 14 this year,' says Ballmer

Decade boundaries

<pedant>

"Productivity software is so next decade"

Current decade includes years 2001 through 2010. Next decade starts in 2011.

Unless, of course, the first decade of the Christian Era only had nine years in it.

</pedant>

Other than that, meh.

Rail workers get shirty with see-through blouses

Alternative

I respectfully suggest the use of the uniforms worn by the submarine crew on the old and delightful TV series UFO. The outfit is ranked #2 in the Top 10 Science Fiction Outfits as seen here:

http://www.neonbubble.com/article/top-10-science-fiction-outfits

BTW: NSFW

(The #1 ranked outfit is simply...eye/mind-boggling but is primarily for the ladies.)

Geekerati brace for Unix timestamp milestone

@easyk not so smart?

Since a date prior to epoch start is a negative number it looks to me like using a signed int is a good idea.

Apple joins campaign for real breasts

"heart" warming?

Rather than with puppies and kitties, I'd rather go for heart-warming cuteness in opossies and hyenies.

...but not kiddies, no no no not at all.

/mines the one with the pepperoni in the pocket

Librarians redubbed 'audience development officers'

Title for those who come up with these titles

Microcephalic Autocoprophagic Designator

GM's Lutz shows luxury 'leccy Cadillac

Surely

This should be called the Cadillec.

Forget Google rationing: Only lighting farts can save the planet

Carbon credit?

Do I get a carbon credit for using Gas-X then?

Indulge your fecal fantasies with a doll that craps

We can only hope

If the world is fortunate, we will progress to the Hello Ouroboros doll that starts with eating its own toes, working upwards, and pooping it all away until there's nothing left. Sort of an incarnate (inplasticate?) metaphor for the Federal Reserve System of the US and the ECB.

/The "GO" button for obvious reasons

Bees on cocaine: The facts

Researchers on Government Grant Money

New has emerged of a long-standing threat to unbiased basic research: money-crazed professors and post-docs willing to debase themselves shamelessly for hit after hit of government grant money. Some experts in the theory and philosophy of scientific research believe that government cash has "as devastating an effect on free inquiry as the Spanish Inquisition."

<Obligatory>

All together now: And No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

</Obligatory>

First lady of Star Trek dead at 76

Thank you

Thank you, madam. You enriched my life for many years.

Russian's emoticon trade mark won't wash with EU

I just do not care.

So there!

(-;

Brazilian hackers blamed for aiding Amazon deforestation

olympic fun

I prefer to think of that as enough timber to make 1,140,210,678 very, very durable Bulgarian funbags. Mind the splinters!

Indian court urged to 'ban Google Earth'

@AC (2008-12-11 01:12 GMT)

No, I'm not kidding.

1. If the magnitude of this tragedy might have been reduced by firearms in the hands of private people then now is the perfect time and the Mumbai attack the perfect platform to make my point.

2. A world-renowned advocate of private ownership of firearms was, in fact, an Indian: Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi. "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." See Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446 (Beacon Press paperback edition)

3. You complain that I have not provided a source for saying that Indian law enforcement refused to engage but then fail conveniently to provide a source for your claim that the U.S. "has more urban gun crime and related fatalities than the rest of the world put together."

Here's mine: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862839,00.html

"Sebastian d'Souza, a photographer from the Mumbai Mirror who took the chilling pictures of one of the terrorists training his weapons on Mumbai's main railway station, watched the attack from a train carriage. 'There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything,' he said he told the Independent. 'I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them.'"

Where's yours, please? I agree that you should be offended, but it should be directed at those with the responsibility to act who refused to do so and not at the one pointing their failure out to you.

4. There are many reliable reports, police and otherwise, of armed civilians successfully defending themselves from armed attackers. Just how do you tell, in the excitement of the moment, whether your attacker would be regarded as a terrorist? What difference does it make in any case?

5. You do not have sufficient information, and you should know that you do not, to evaluate my degree of ignorance. El Reg's comment section is hardly the proper venue for much more reference material than I provide here in this post.

Unban

One of the eyewitnesses told of armed police refusing to engage the attackers. Instead, the police hid or ran away.

We are told by police, teachers, government in all forms, and punditry galore that we ought not to have general ownership of firearms because we need to leave the use of force to the trained professionals.

Screw that. When the trained professionals piss themselves and run away that argument evaporates. The only people in a position to stop madmen such as those in Mumbai are those who are right there at the time, but only if they have guns as well.

I was tempted to post this as A.C. but that just won't do this time. I firmly believe what I've said and am not at all afraid to say so under my real name.

2008 goes into one-second overtime

(several million)^3 yoctoseconds

At ten-to-the-minus-two-dozen each, you'll have rather a lot more than just several million yoctoseconds to add to your New Year's Eve bash.

...and just why is there not time unit on the highly useful

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html

page? Eh? Eh? If New York can have the "New York Second" (the time it takes for the taxi driver behind you to blow his horn after the traffic light turns green) why not an "El Reg Jiffy"? The Windows-installation-completion to first-compromise will do nicely. How about a compo for this Friday?

Firm touts anti-radiation chip for phones

Low-tech solution just as effective

No need for anything this sophisticated and (I suspect) expensive. A simple barrier made of conductive material deployed as a continuous surface between the cell phone transceiver aerial and your primary neurological nexus should attenuate hazardous EMF to a safe level.

See examples at http://tin-foil-hats.blogspot.com/

Why is information delivery so bloody hard?

depends on nature of question asked

The company I work for does a very good job of delivering information as long as it is directly doing production work or planning changes to or growth of that work. For so-called ad hoc information requests, on the other hand, or for one-off analytical undertakings, things get a bit more difficult. What has developed, and has done so largely without deliberate decisions, is a smallish crew of highly knowledgeable people who can turn oceans of data into the information needed.

This is a bit risky. I am one of the smallish crew and if I were run over by a beer truck it would take at least weeks if not months to find the right replacement and get him up to speed. In the meantime a few dozen highly-trained (and paid) business planners, mathematical modelers, and statisticians would be very significantly less productive.

(When I say "oceans of data" I really mean it: among other things I manage to receive, process, and store...let's call them "event records"...to the tune of about 100,000,000 per day.)

Sun readies entry Sparc T2 kicker

Not a new chip?

Perhaps these are chips that failed QC but only in the network functions, and would otherwise be trashed.

US couple sue over McNudes

coinage

This is sufficiently obvious that it may well have been thought of and used already, but given the rate at which private photos of privates get leaked, I'd like to try to add this to the wonderful English language:

"You've been prned!"

/Paris KNOWS about being prned!

Judge says tech-addled jurors undermine justice

Over my dead body!

I am deeply disappointed by the comments denigrating juries. Have you all lost sight of the full role of juries? Please do not forget that it is the right and duty of the jury to decide not only the facts of a case, but also the whether or not the law is just, and whether or not the application of the law to a particular case is just.

Noteworthy examples: In 1670, a jury refused to convict Quakers William Penn and William Mead. The judge refused to accept the verdict, ultimately fining and incarcerating the jurors. The Court of Common Pleas turned the jury loose and ruled that they acted within their rights in finding the illegal assembly law unjust.

In 19th century USA, many juries refused to convict people who were incontrovertibly factually guilty of violating the hideously unjust fugitive slave laws.

Do you really-really-really want only "professionals" deciding whether or not government has become despotic?

(Black helicopter because it is symbolic of unfortunately real tendencies within government)

US lost Cold War bomb under Greenland ice

@Martin Lyne's penguin overlords

You must be referring to those new stealth long-range penguins as their ordinary brethren don't live farther north than the Galapagos Islands.

Cream drummer may flash ginger nuts in court

orientation

Now, now. Just knowing a scar is somewhere in or on the naughty bits isn't necessarily enough. The unanswered question may very well be something like, "are the scarified bite marks longitudinal or circumferential?"

Puzzled Paris doesn't remember either...

Yes! It's the Darth Vader breakfast toaster

Missed opportunity

Had the developers of this wonderfully unnecessary item been thinking, they would have had the toaster burn a negative image on reverse. Then we'd all have instant access to the Dark Side.

Mine's the rumpled floor length one with the deep hood.

Mobile blocking tech for trains

@Edward Clarke with the ball gag

The gag will only muffle them a bit. If you don't have the entire body harness, buckles and all, then just give the little bastards a tube of Super Glue or two. They will then soon become much less active.

Now, ball gag *and* super glue...!

Why Paris? She's the favorite El Reg ball gag, of course.

Holy f**k, Microsoft covers up ‘undesired’ words

@Chris W

Thank you so much for finding such an amusing and endearing way to let us all know of your cognitive difficulties and the unfortunate result, namely a minor prejudice regarding Americans' abilities to be both insulting and polite. Bless your heart!

Reg competition: Cisco goes isup

VOBOFH

It was the Very Old BOFH. He was trying to steal all the £ he could get and forgot to switch his editor from EBCDIC to ASCII.

I'm not making this up. Check 'A3'x in your character maps.

Hey! Where's the Grace Hopper comment icon?

Daily Mail hacks get emergency bird flu jabs

ITYM

"Pandemic Influenza Management Plan".

'Idiot' pulls cables, downs ISPs at Telecity

@Big_Boomer - Sorry but no.

I might have been forgiving if he had stopped when told to stop. Not stopping by plugging wires back in randomly disqualifies him for any sympathy. He is a dangerous idiot and should be fired.

And yes I certainly have made a few boneheaded mistakes in my time. However, not knowing what "STOP! DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!" means isn't one of them.

Google restores Chrome's shine

Next section to fix: 12.1

"12. Software updates

"12.1 The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services."

So, we have to agree in advance to allow Google to inject into our machines whatever code/functionality it wishes? Whenever it wishes? And with no promise of any notification much less explanation of new functionality?

Mine's the one I'm not minding and with the wad of cash, my car keys, credit card, and passport in the pocket.

Reg launches Chrome-o-drome

Here we go again

Chrome I/O, Chrome I/O, wherefore art thou Chrome I/O?

Any time you've got nothing to do - and lots of time to do it - Chrome on up.

Hi, Ho, the carrion Chrome bow and bend to me.

Stop me before I Chrome again. Apologies to all, especially to I. Bard, M. West, G. Dead.

British boffins perfect process to make any item '100% waterproof'

How would you wash things?

Why, you would dry clean them of course.

Mine's the unusually dry and clean one.

Wind turbines put bats under (low) pressure

@AC with common sense in the pocket

Um, yes. The idea is to take it _out_ of your pocket from time to time.

Why Paris? Surely you see the fast breeder connection...

NASA's Ares V may crush Kennedy crawlerway

Test load?

I think what's needed is a test load or three to see what happens to the roadbed with extra weight.

Let's see...10.9 million Kg divided by about 80 Kg per "unit" means they'd need no more than 136,250 fanbois to get the desired weight. Easy! Go to any Merkin shopping mall on Sunday afternoon and shout "Free 3G iPhones!" You'd need a lot of buses, though.

Prof says fatties a bigger menace than bin Laden

Professorial fatuousness a bigger menace than bin Laden

Government health adviser Professor David Hunter proves by example that fatuousness is now a greater threat than terrorism.

Hunter said: "The government was quick to move for things like ID cards or 42-day detention without trial - now it needs to show similar leadership in public health...The threat to our future health is just as significant as the current security threat," he said, according to the Beeb.

Hunter is clearly enamored of academia's obsession with public/private "partnerships" which thrust mindless wankers into the Beeb spotlight with weekly cries of some crisis or other demanding Better Leadership to make the Hard Decisions to Enhance Tax Revenues to Fund More Research. Oh, yes, and to buy and distribute copies of his new book in all schools, colleges, police stations, airports, and fast food restaurants.

IBM's Ubuntu deal favors the server

"No consumer will ever use the Ubuntu work on Notes."

Hah! A challenge! I *will* do this, just as soon as I finish demolishing this brick wall and my head heals.

Mine is the one with the extra-long sleeves with buckles and ties on the ends.

US scientist commits suicide as Feds prep anthrax charges

@Dave Bell

If Ivins was not involved in sending those anthrax letters, then his "suicide" would be supremely convenient for the true bad guy(s). This way they can blame one man with, as you say, "a genuine mental health problem." A misdirection must be believable, after all.

@Brian Miller - I also smell an anthractic rat.

Toyota unveils Segway rivals

@Ashley

The mind reels at the implications of a prehensile penis.

O! M! G!