* Posts by YouStupidBoy

57 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Mar 2009

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Linux lover consumed a quarter of the network

YouStupidBoy

Re: "something like a dozen CD-ROMs."?

Yep, I think I paid 15 quid at PC World in 1997/98 for a box containing a Mandrake distro. I think it was 4 CDs. Worked out that it would have cost me double that (and several days) to FTP them over my crappy Psion 33.6 modem - that only used to like to link at about 20kbps.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

YouStupidBoy

Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity

And the fix will likely take weeks! Sir.

OpenAI's ChatGPT may face a copyright quagmire after 'memorizing' these books

YouStupidBoy

Fly fishing

But does it have an accessible copy of Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley?

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

YouStupidBoy

Re: I believe the story

Topless Secrets

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

YouStupidBoy

Re: MSX

I, too, still have my MSX up in the attic. It was my very first computer that I must have spent thousands of hours either playing or programming, or just waiting for the tape to load, making sure it was at the right volume setting for the title in question.

That box of happiness gave me 5 years of happiness in my childhood. Was finally retired when the keyboard membrane gave out to such an extent that even reassigning keybinds with the "KEY=" command to rebind the function key(s) to either "C, B or L" so I could load games :)

Next machine was a spectrum +2a, which did me another good 5 years, then in '94 or so a 286PC (no more tape loading, yay!), then a "proper" PC in '96 running a Cyrix-something-90.

Now I wanna go back. Again....

UK Prime Minister calls on internet big beasts to 'auto-takedown' terror pages within 2 HOURS

YouStupidBoy
Mushroom

Vengaboys: Boom boom, obv ;)

Foot-long £1 sausage roll arrives

YouStupidBoy

Re: Healthcare may be nearly free in Blighty, but you get what you pay for. Draw again.

No, you just have people like my grandfather, who paid into the NHS all his life, then when he needed an oncologist, had a 7 month wait between first GP visit and the specialist during which time the tumo[u]r had become inoperable.

Neither system is perfect, my fiance here will be paying off medical bills for the rest of her life for a procedure she had 5 years ago that is the reason she's still here. And she had insurance at the time, too. But at least she's still breathing.

I still haven't found what I'm malloc()ing for: U2 tops poll of music today's devs code to

YouStupidBoy

I find it depends on the type of day weatherwise as much as anything.

Nice, sunny day - fire up a Test Match Special podcast and my productivity goes up a good 15-20% in terms of time taken to complete a task. Fewer mistakes, too.

Typical Brit weather day, can be anything from Abba to Hooked on Classics, Metallica, Snoop Dogg, Chainsmokers, Yngwie Malmsteen, Madonna, Spice Girls, or some current US country songs (Blake Shelton, Rascal Flatts).

Used to drive my girlfriend crazy when our music playlist would skip around genres like Bambi on meth :)

Missing defective BEAGLE FOUND ON MARS! Amazing claim

YouStupidBoy

Re: Cute design but risky

Looks like you may be onto something - the pic on the BBC website [ http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30784886 ] with the overlay seems to indicate that two of the petals didn't open or are otherwise missing. Don't know if they were just for power or if they contained the comm. equipment. It would be a bit of a bugger if it was otherwise functional but just unable to talk to us.

Edit - after reading the article it looks like they were required for both power and comms. From the BBC site above: "Without full deployment, there is no way we could have communicated with it as the radio frequency antenna was under the solar panels," explained Prof Mark Sims, Beagle's mission manager from Leicester University.

That's just bad luck, I feel extremely bad for them. Wish the professor could have known what happened.

DANGER: Is that 'hot babe' on Skype a sextortionist?

YouStupidBoy
Joke

Misleading name

Sophos' "Naked Security" blog is nothing of the sort.

'F*** you', exclaims Google Translate app, politely

YouStupidBoy

Lost in translation

I wonder how this deals with regional dialects and usage. Even within a given language there are often words that can be perfectly permissible in one region but grounds for getting your teeth knocked out in another area a couple hundred miles down the road.

Makers of Snowden movie Citizenfour sued by ex-oil exec

YouStupidBoy

Re: Traitor to the USA (not America)?

Free world? You must mean Mars.

Q*bert: The Escher-inspired platform puzzler from 1982

YouStupidBoy

Humphrey

Remember playing this back in ye olde MSX days. I believe it was named "Humphrey".

Ah, memories.

Merry Christmas and a happy, safe new year to all Reg staff and commenters. May your pagers not go off tomorrow as you're tucking into turkey.

Mars rover Curiosity snaps 'pale blue dot' image of Earth, Moon

YouStupidBoy

It's been a while

Since an image, a thought has made me stop and think in quite this way. The quote it in the article was almost an epiphany - something that I'd considered before but not that ... powerfully. The comments, also - the one about being a piece of a supernova that came alive now looking back at it's (ultimate?) creator honestly bought a tear. That comment, and others like it here, are the reason I keep coming back to this site.

And yet - humans are the reason that picture was ever in existence. I honestly feel the high point of mankind's achievements came 40 to 50 years ago with the Apollo and Mariner/Gemini/Voyager projects. There was a man on the moon more than half a century ago. We should have had a long-term, if not permanent, lunar colony there by now. Yes, I'm sorry, even if it killed a few people in the learning process, the same as the start of space flights did. A few heroes made the ultimate sacrifice to help inch humanity along the way to the stars, which, on whatever timescale you please - is where we'll eventually need to be in order to survive.

The skies will be clear tonight. I will be sure to look, and wonder which of those soul stirring splashes of arcane brilliance, colors whirled from the universe's palette onto an infinite backdrop I came from.

IT bloke denies trying to shag sheep outside football ground

YouStupidBoy

Well it's nice that /someone/ thought of taking care of Bales sheep after he left.

Court throws out Icahn's demand to stall Dell shareholder vote

YouStupidBoy

Icahn?

No, you can't.

Jurors start stretch in the cooler for Facebooking, Googling the accused

YouStupidBoy

Warning the jury

The top beaks said every effort was made to try to warn jurors not to use the internet or social media in relation to the case, but it was difficult when there was no consistent system for explaining things to the jury.

Difficult? Is it bollocks! "Until you are discharged your service to this Court, you will not, under any circumstances, seek out any material that may be related to this case in any manner whatsoever. This includes discussing it with people other than your fellow jury members. It also pertains to information on the internet. If, for whatever reason, you obtain information pertaining to the case that doesn't come from within these four walls, you will not disclose the information to other members of the jury under any circumstances. You will immediately notify an Officer of the Court in this event. You also acknowledge the statements made to the Court or her officers regarding this case are sworn statements. If you DO NOT understand these instructions, please do not sign the form indicating that you DO. If you screw up, we will throw the book at you. "

BAN UK tax breaks on patented tech, fumes German finance minister

YouStupidBoy
Happy

Sorry...

Sorry about hijacking the thread, there will never again be a more perfect spot for my moniker.

Agree. If the Germans really want a level playing field, they should just adopt the same breaks as everyone else. We are still capitalists, aren't we?

Ashes latest: Don't show Ozzies THIS perfect spin bowl science ... too late

YouStupidBoy

Nice spoiler in the article that was in no way required. Thanks so much.

Silly me, remembered to avoid BBC News, Google News, the cricket forum I belong to, foolishly thinking that I wouldn't know anything abou the days play until I got home, cracked open a beer and sat down with a big grin on my face.

I'm going to leave it at that before I say something that will get me banned.

MSX: The Japanese are coming! The Japanese are coming!

YouStupidBoy
Pint

Nice article.

I remember being excited as could be xmas morning 85 when I got my first computer - the Toshiba HX-10. I must have spent literally years on that thing, either playing games (or typing them in).

I remember hating DATA statements with a passion. Large chunks of seemingly incomprehensible numbers where one digit wrong would wreck the show.

Social studies type question to ponder - how many kids (I was 6 when I got the machine) - so say 6 - 12 year olds would spend be willing to spend hours typing in a computer program to play a basic (in most senses of the word) game? And when it didn't work right, spend more hours going back through line by line trying to pinpoint the error. And then find out that it's not working due to a printing error in the book and you have no idea what the correct value should be?

When I got my spectrum +2A, I sold the MSX. Got a call a couple of hours later that it wouldn't load any of the cassette games. Went over there, tried for an hour to get something to load - fiddled with the volume control on the recorder, tried different games - nothing would work. Gave them the money back, bought it home and it worked immediately. I always figured it wanted to come home ;)

It's still up in the loft and continued to be used until the keyboard membrane stopped working on so many of the keys that it became impossible to use - the keys just wouldn't register.

Ah, for the days of LOAD"CAS:",R - just leave the ,R off so it doesn't automatically run, then go find the line that sets "available funds" or similar and set it to 99999999 :)

And now I can download pretty much everything that was ever written for it in far less than a minute over t'internet.

Sorry for the length of the post. I do tend to ramble on these trips down memory lane.

Beer - a toast to a machine that kept me entertained for more of my childhood than was probably healthy, but loved every second of it :)

Microsoft in sexism strife again over XBOX rape joke

YouStupidBoy
WTF?

Re: Its a joke about rape ffs

Excuse me, what the fuck are you bleating about? This was no more about rape than it was about the loser needing to do the drying up tonight. Unless you're one of those poor sods who examines every word, every action for any possible way to be offended.

Rape = physical act of violence or unwilling coercion.

Banter != physical act of violence

Banter that doesn't mention rape or sex - *newsflash* - has nothing to do with rape.

Go find somewhere else to be pseudo-offended. Alternatively, just shut the fuck up until you can engage the thinking apparatus that you refer to in your post.

Congress: It's not the Glass that's scary - It's the GOOGLE

YouStupidBoy
Happy

Re: Letter from Larry...

What's that? You want to know about Google's Taxes? Erm, *couch*, *couch*, Er, I think I'm starting to lose my voice!! No-- really, its true!!!

May I suggest looking between the sofa cushions?

Half of youngsters would swap PRIVACY for... cheaper insurance

YouStupidBoy
Meh

Re: then add engine management control

Control/limit speed - yes, to some extent. However, 50 in a 30 is far more dangerous than 80 on a motorway, assuming all other things are equal. If the system doesn't tie into GPS with a (frequently updated) map of speed limits, then it's not that much good.

Restrictions on acceleration is a bad idea IMO. There are times when you need to get moving sharpish, especially as an inexperienced driver - the last thing you need is a black box with no situational awareness artificially limiting the power available. Just have these events logged and (optionally) a notification sent to parents if the events exceed a predetermined level in a given period of time. If an accident occurs within a few seconds of one of these events and the driver is determined to be at fault, then throw the book, bookcase and possibly the wall at them.

Standard Model goes PEAR-SHAPED in CERN experiment

YouStupidBoy
Joke

When my uncle first heard about the LHC, he thought that it wound end in disaster. IIRC he said something like "Mark my words, that banging atoms into each other, no good will come of it. It'll all go pear-shaped".

Turns out he may hve been right

Library ebooks must SELF-DESTRUCT if scribes want dosh - review

YouStupidBoy
WTF?

Re: Literary Obsolescence.

No more godawful advertising popups. The fact this function, along with it's creators and proponents, hasn't been erased from history is proof that I'll never get my hands on a time machine. Maybe a discreet notification at the "library" page at the most, but outside of the sciences and teaching textbooks, I can't really see a need for an updated version of any book.

Agree with the comments regarding proofreading. Whatever proofreaders there are left seem to be under the impression that the product deserves no more than a cursory glance.

As far as the original idea goes, it's frankly a load of bollocks. What's next - digital degradation of *bought* copies of e-books? After all, despite best efforts, even if you buy a dead tree book brand new and read it a bunch of times, it seems that it'll eventually fall apart. Literally, the last 3 books that I've bought have had chunks of pages come unglued from the spine. Digital is just *better* for the consumer and the planet for many reasons.

Operators look on in horror as Facebook takes mobe users Home

YouStupidBoy
Meh

Re: Maybe Zuck knows more than we do.

Could they get more than one billion accounts? Possibly.

Users, however, I don't think so. And it's unique eyeballs, not accounts that advertisers will demand. For instance, I have 4 accounts, my cat has 3 and my wife also has 4 (I was hooked on Mafia Wars for a couple of months and was too cheap/smart to pay $ for extra action points). However, I got bored of FB a year or so ago and have logged on with one account maybe twice so far this year, both times for about 5 minutes. If FB did a deep-clean of their old/inactive/unused - say no activity for 90 days - or ran a relatively simple check to weed out duplicate accounts, I'd be surprised if more than 30-40% were actual individual live users. Then remove the fan/tribute/corporation pages and you're probably down to 25%. That's still a horde of eyes, but sounds a lot less impressive than the current userbase figures that they tout.

They do seem to have a particular grip on parents, if only because many I know use it to stay in touch with parents of their kids' friends and to organize whatever. Whether that cycle will continue remains to be seen.

TL;DR - Yes, FB is big, but not near as big in terms of actual users as they make out. As more and more advertising creeps in, it's usefulness and, arguably, relevance will decline. Time will tell what that does to the volume of active, individual users.

Health pros: Alcohol is EVIL – raise its price, ban its ads

YouStupidBoy
Thumb Up

Re: In other news...

If I could upvote this more than once, I would. Bravo. The icon is for your comment.

This whole government reaching into your life and trying to stop what could be termed "unapproved activities" is truly scary and must stop. If you think it can't get worse, just re-read the article, think where we were 25 years ago with government reach and attempting to "modify the behavior of the population" and where we're likely to be in another 25.

Somewhere the fact that the government, indeed all civil servants are just that - servants. The point of our democratic system was intended to be that they serve the public. Somewhere along the way this got turned around and seems we're now the ones serving them and whatever their latest crusade-de-jour happens to be.

I realize this is never going to happen but I believe the following:

1) New laws should be drafted in principle by the people. Basically, someone should collect a percentage of signatures of eligible voters - say 15% within their constituency, and present it to their MP. Unless this happens (and if something is truly in the 'public' interest, then there'll be no problems meeting this requirement). Then, and only then, can the minister bring the proposal up.

2) If the majority of MP/law-lords (forget the workings of the system, sorry) approve of the measure, a draft bill is published. Each proposed law is considered separately and cannot be merged with, or have extraneous, non-related additions made to it to garner some ministers favor (as happens so damn often in the US) "Oh yes, i'd be happy to pass your bill making it illegal to smoke in your car, especially if my proposed bill to limit the hours of operation of power tools in residential areas could somehow be included"

3) The draft bill is reviewed by independent lawyers to make sure it contains language that addresses the proposal as submitted in Step1. If the proposed law does not fulfil the requirements of step1, it's sent back until it does.

4) At the next round of local or general elections, the question is put back to the electorate. When you vote, answering the legislation question(s) are mandatory and there is no indication of which MP or constituency the law was proposed by. The question is posed in the form of "Do you believe the below items should be signed into law" and a yes/no box next to each item, which has been summarized by the lawyers as part of (3) Of those people who vote, 50% plus 1 person need to response "Yes" for the bill to be made law.

5) Assuming a positive response in (4), the bill is signed into law. If not, the process has to start over.

There should be a similar method to enable the public to *remove* legislation that is already on the books.

I don't see a need for expediting this. The police and security services already have (some would say more than) adequate legislation to perform their functions.

This will insure that only legislation that is truly in the public interest - in the truest sense of the word - will be made into law. Personal responsibility needs to become the norm again rather than the exception. The PC, we-know-better-than-you, can't-ever-offend-anyone, want-to-rule-your life brigade need to be rounded up and taken somewhere far away. May I suggest Antartica.

Iceland thinks long and hard over extreme smut web ban law

YouStupidBoy
Happy

Re: About this proposed ban

He also wants to ban online poke from being accessed from Iceland. So he is not just after banning porn.

Sounds like that's all he can think about. Disgusting man :)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Off for some offline poke.

Silly gits upload private crypto keys to public GitHub projects

YouStupidBoy

Development code accessed by search engines

Development code for private firms is often available via your search engine of choice. Just put in the terms 'review board' diff ship view, or some other likely combination. As of a couple of months ago, there were dozens of pages available, including a bunch of code visible for a not-too-insignificant e-commerce site that included the admin override URL and testing logins. Another review board for a different site that was accessible had a link to a SQL table with a couple hundred (not much, admittedly) rows of customer info - name, address, password - all in plain text, although thankfully no payment info.

I emailed the companies concerned, so I would assume these two are gone. Haven't bothered to check though. But there are many other examples out there.

On a side note, reading some of the comments on various articles makes me realize how lucky I seem to be to work where I do. Yes, the business needs and what's a priority seems to change on an almost daily basis, certainly weekly, but we have been explicitly told that if doing something right takes more time than a rush job, then the paycheck-signers would rather we do it right. It's probably an attitude that's grown out of the first two years of the business having exactly the opposite mantra, and we're *still* cleaning up the mess that some of the devs left behind, 3 years after they've gone. Some of the most incomprehensible stuff that you'll ever see on dailywtf came straight from our original codebase. The current attitude certainly does reap such benefits, both with staff and customers in the medium to long term, that it amazes me that I see so many people on here whose companies seem to have the opposite approach.

Facebook tests feature to let strangers pay to message you

YouStupidBoy

Re: How many of these harebrained ideas will it take to really sour their users?

Because their business model is based in part around no-one being sure how many users are active. Sure, they can tout they have "a billion" accounts, but i'd be surprised if more than 25% of those are legit/regularly used. Before I stopped using it, I had 5 accounts, 1 for workmates, 1 for family, 1 for close friends, 1 for games and one for the cat (don't ask).

Their share price would implode faster than Mt St. Helens once their finances were released to the SEC and world+dog realized that there's far fewer eyeballs out there than

YouStupidBoy
WTF?

No win for the uesr

I'd like to know how this is going to work. From the release it sounds like that any given account I may have will only receive (up to) one message per week. So if both A+B are willing to stump up the cash to send me a message, does that mean one of them is SOL until next week? That model fails for the user if A is a marketer and B (and the rest of the alphabet) are people they may actually - for whatever reason - wish to communicate with.

Or is it "each user can send as many messages as they want to pay for, but only once per recipient per week". If it's the latter, prepare to be deluged with even more dross as there's technically no limit to the amount you can receive. Another fail for the user.

Almost makes me want to sign back into my accounts and update them to make sure they're flagged as active. Nothing i'd like more than for pondscum-feeding bottom-dwelling marketing organizations to spend their dollars on the premise of reaching eyeballs that will never exist.

North Korea releases first computer game

YouStupidBoy
Unhappy

... Learnt programming from the ground up

We all had to start somewhere, but wow, this is bad.

I confess that I watched the entire clip in the hope that something, somewhere would happen.

It doesn't.

Most interesting/funniest bit is the woman cop "Don't look at me I'm on duty"

Note to devs: Having touristy snippets of text appear is probably not the best idea in a 'racing' game. Maybe that's the reason for the lack of other vehicles as there were times when you could tape the accelerator key down probably nip to the loo and come back with nothing happening.

And I thought Skyrim was buggy....

Senator threatens FAA with legislation over in-flight fondleslabbing

YouStupidBoy
Go

Reports from pilots and aircraft crew members...

As listed in the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, available to search at http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/search/database.html - has multiple accounts where interference with the (usually navigation) systems were demonstrably caused by a passengers electronic device. Usually they just ask folks to make sure that stuff is turned off, but several accounts have accounts where the aircrew asked the passenger to turn the device back on - and the interference resumed.

So there is a problem (although rare) that needs to be addressed, at least with some devices in some plane combinations, which maybe down to a maintainance issue with the aircraft where something wasn't shielded properly or terminated correctly when the mechanics finished fiddling about with it last time they had it in the shop.

Personally I think that device manufacturers can afford to pay for a few test flights. If restrictions are relaxed for certain models, then sales of models that aren't approved for in flight use will drop sharply, especially among the business community. There's probably not more than a few dozen aircraft types in commuter service within the US. Just have the several devices onboard and in various power states, streaming data, hunting for signals/wifi - on each model type and note any interference that happens. If it does, one of the testers can turn the devices off or switch modes one by one until the problem goes away.

Once devices are certified allow them on commercial flights. The caveat being that if interference is noted at any stage of the flight, everyone turns their stuff off and packs it away for the remainder of the trip, never mind whether it's got a shiny "FAA Certified" sticker on it or not. Anyone who persists in using a device when the aircrew has announced such a state of affairs will be met at the gate by security agents, their device removed and tossed into an industrial shredder. Airlines could make this a condition of carriage.

Having said that, I hope they don't allow cell calls. Ever. Like someone above said, it's bad enough hearing someones squealing progeny for hours on end from the row behind you, but to have a whole bunch of folks starting calls with "Hello? HELLO! YES, I'M ON THE PLANE" would probably lead to a new form of in-flight entertainment, although not one the air marshals would much appreciate. Allow devices for texting, streaming/watching movies/music or zebra porn for all I care, just wear headphones so I don't have to listen to it. And turn it off in the instances when you're told to.

Game over for legendary 1980s games designer Mike Singleton

YouStupidBoy
Pint

RIP

And thanks for the memories.

UKNova drops torrents after threats from FACT

YouStupidBoy
Facepalm

It's just not cricket

If anyone knows someone who works @ FACT, they should consider it their civic duty to beat them over the head with a rolled-up newspaper like the dogs they are.

Honestly, you have a site that catered to thousands of ex-pats worldwide, enabling them to get their TV fix, whether their absence be caused by vacation, extended work assignment or something more permanent. Nothing was available there that would be used to generate revenue at a later date for the copyright holders, last weeks episode of Corrie (for example) is never going to be broadcast again or feature in a "Greatest moments of Corrie" DVD or whatever they come out with. So what was the point of them serving notice, except to drive home the point that they're a bunch of worthless fecks.

Extra disappointed since I'd literally just found out about the place a month ago and was drooling over the cricket coverage they had there, which it seems nowhere else has. I've tried connecting through a free VPN (bestukvpn) to access the channel5 catchup service for the highlight shows - and it's a painful experience.

If any sympathetic chap or chapess reading this knows where cricket coverage resides or any free, working, UK vpns can be found, info would be much appreciated.

China could penetrate US with new huge missile

YouStupidBoy

Re: Sceptical,,.,

Not personally tried selling one, but I've heard that buying them can be done relatively easily and cheaply.

New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

YouStupidBoy
Stop

Re: Noone harmed? Pull the other one! Try 2500 deaths.

@indulis

So you quote two articles above, one of which predicts 2500 cases of cancer, the other 1300 deaths. That's a little over a 50% mortality rate, which is a little harsh given remission rates for multiple types of cancer in Japan, but lets play along.

According to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 353,000 people died of cancer in Japan in 2010, accounting for one in every three deaths. [source http://www.jcancer.jp/english/cancerinjapan/]

So, assuming their projected figure of 1300 deaths from cancer occur in a single year (it would almost certainly be spread out over a number of years, if not decades, but we'll take this as a worst case scenario seeing as that's what you're apparently concentrating on), then at 2010 cancer death rates in Japan, that would represent an increase of just 0.3%. Taken in another context, the population of Fukushima prefecture in 2010 was just over 2 million [source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Prefecture]. Based on that figure, approximately 0.125% of residents *may* develop cancer as a result of this event during their lifetime.

The tsunami itself and its associated damage was responsible for (at last count) 15,854 deaths. [source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/9132634/Japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-478-bodies-remain-unidentified-one-year-on.html]

So a natural disaster of epic proportions caused a meltdown of two reactors in an ill-maintained, generation-one reactor (read as 'outdated as all hell') that wouldn't have passed routine regulatory inspections in either the US or UK, which has no deaths directly attributable to it at this stage, *may* (the term used in the study you quoted) cause an uptick in cancer deaths of less than 1% at 2010 levels in Japan if all the proposed fatalities occur in a single year, therefore less than a 0.1% annual increase (not compounding) if any cancers emerge over the period of a decade, which is a more likely timespan.

I'm already paying out the nose for "environmental technology subsidies" every month to my local power co for wind and the like. I'd be far, far happier for the same amount to go instead to the construction and maintenance of a generation-3 nuclear reactor now, or further research into generation-4 reactor technologies. And yes, I'd be happy to live next door to it. Why? Because I understand that the risk of having something bad happen in a new plant with modern technology, trained and experienced staff, overseen by an anal-retentive regulatory body (probably one of few instances where this is a good thing), built in an area that's not prone to floods, seismic activity or other geological or natural disasters are miniscule.

And even if something were to happen to the plant on a comparable scale, I'll take the 1 in 800 odds that the event would result in cancer (figure based on the possible deaths quoted by the study you reference as measured against the approx population of the area).

In return for this, I get reliable power that is a near-zero carbon emitter fueled by an energy source that will be available for centuries, if not tens of centuries if the technology referenced in this article can be adopted. But the general population hears the word "nuclear" and instantly stops thinking rationally. The NIMBY brigade are no better. However, I'm willing to bet that people will change their tune pretty damn quick when our fossil fuel supplies dry up, the lights (and heat) go out, and it's zero degrees outside (that's Farenheit daytime temperatures). Unfortunately by then, it'll be too late.

Your last sentence however is brilliant, considering the content of your post. Have a petard.

Apple, Samsung blast away in patent case closing arguments

YouStupidBoy
Pint

Error in the questions to the jury?

It's late (and my Friday), so I'm not completely sure if I'm reading this right, but on question 29 posed to the jury, it appears that the iPhone and iPad are listed as Samsung products.

If they've got this wrong, I wonder whether it's a technicality that the losing side can use to appeal.

Curiosity success 'paves way for Man on Mars by 2030s'

YouStupidBoy
Boffin

Good job and all, but

First off, congratulations to NASA. Historically Mars has been a bit of a tough nut to crack, but if this new rover lasts half as long as the previous generation of rovers, with the instrumentation it has on board it should hopefully yield some interesting data.

However I can't help thinking that we should dig ourselves out of the mess we're in before we blow what'll probably amount to tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars on a manned mission that (and I'm completely open to hear anyones ideas to the contrary) probably won't achieve much more beyond a "Look what we can do" feeling.

They should put the money that would be used on this project into science programs for schools and science scholarships for colleges. Recruit the best astronomers, physicists, chemists, metallurgists, stick them in classrooms and lecture halls with state of the art labs and teach the next generation, who in 40 or 50 years will probably be able to do it quicker, smarter, safer and with the probable advances in technology could maybe turn a manned mission into the beginnings of a semi-permanent biosphere, paving the way for what would truly be the next chapter in the human race.

Booth babes banned by Chinese gaming expo

YouStupidBoy

Re: Wow... in ride...

Agreed.

IT support bod? Whatever you earn, it's not enough

YouStupidBoy

Re: your role as IT support

What's the option?

Family - pretty much none, you're screwed. Just hope that you don't have the type of person in your family that'll hover like an irritating mayfly asking every 10 minutes "d'you think it's done yet". If they drop it off one weekend and come back the next it's not so bad - one operation a night after work and you barely even notice it.

Friends - Agree to do it but hold their machine hostage until they show up with compensatory beer

Friends of Friends - see Friends but replace beer with cash.

YouStupidBoy
Mushroom

Re: Last week

We have a client like that.

Our sysadmin/developer is the most laid back guy I've ever known. Seriously, he'd make Bob Marley appear rather high-strung. Or rather, was, until this week when he had to spend most of his time working with his counterpart at one of our newer clients to setup and test a webservice that exchanges information between our two systems.

Something that he's done a dozen times before with various customers and has taken a couple of hours and an exchange of a half dozen emails each time.

We're still not entirely sure what happened, as he starts rocking back and forth in his chair when asked about it, but after two days worth of email exchanges and 4 hours in the conference room watching her bumble about on her terminal via go2mypc, there came this banshee wail and the sound of something breaking. I'd hazard a guess it was his spirit, but the broken glass suggests otherwise.

It took four of our wallets to calm him down somewhat at the local bar afterwards. Perhaps the biggest clue should have been the email from their previous vendor when they switched to using our services with a subject line of "LOL" and no message body.

Behind every great athlete is a nervous network engineer

YouStupidBoy

“It’s a real unknown, because they have to try to plan when they really have no idea. On the cellular side, it’s all a bit finger in the air,” he says.

At least the telcos have plenty of practice at this aspect. Especially if it's the middle one.

NatWest seeks volunteers to bonk with their iPhones

YouStupidBoy
Happy

Re: Bonk?

Either that, or Officer Crabtree from 'Allo 'Allo is their new marketing wiz.

"I was breezing the internots and on this Nitwest site they offered a great bonking experience."

Biennial boner blights Beemer biker

YouStupidBoy
Happy

He should have invested in

some Bulgarian airbags as support. Too late now. I don't suppose he even wants to see a pair. Poor bastard.

Having said that, he'll lose, unless it's clearly related to the manufacture, design or installation. And if there's [x] more people out there who haven't experienced similar problems - then it's not unreasonable to conclude it's down to some underlying freak physical abnormality that you can't attend to because there's no ROI. Or he's just not set it up right.

iPhone/PS3 hacker Hotz arrested in pot bust

YouStupidBoy
Holmes

Re: I think they value it like this -

I'm positive that incineration is actually the plods preferred disposal method of reefer. Just need to wrap it in paper, first and remember to send Joe down to the 7-11.

Speaking of...

iPhone con man knifed to death in knock-off mobile brawl

YouStupidBoy
Coat

Re: Feng brandished his chopper and they dispersed..." <snigger>

Presumably he stood at attention for a time, shui-ing in a passing breeze.

Sorry, could not resist that. I'll just get me coat. That'll be the one with a couple of iphones, a half dozen rolexes and some gen-you-wine imitation Gucci shit. I'll be at your local car boot this weekend.

UK student faces extradition to US after piracy case ruling

YouStupidBoy

@NoDosh: Given that everything here is a giant willy-waving contest, I wouldn't hope for much until a good generation has passed into and out of the positions that enable things like this to happen.

I've been here 10 years and it's all over the place. Everyone has to have something *bigger*, *better*, *newer* or otherwise perceived as superior to what their neighbours/friends have. Otherwise they think they're a failure. Personally I think it stems from childhood - nowadays some schools and other institutions don't use words like lose - it's "runner up" (even for last in a field of 8) or "fail to execute". You lost. No-one died, no-one was hurt, accept it, learn from it, be better next time. It's not a crime, like some I know seem to think.

Speaking of crime, the UK needs to grow a set and tell them where they can shove their treaty until it's re-worded that the extraditable offense must be considered a criminal act in both countries at the time of the signing of the treaty and the requestor has the burden of proof to convince the requestees government/judiciary that an extradition is warranted. Since they won't get a conviction at trial based on "reasonable suspicion", they must have proof. Surely....

Of course the US probably won't like this, but the UK could always make the point that, regrettably, it was considering switching a percentage of its national reserve from the dollar to the yuan.

Otherwise the US won't stop. After all, there's a whole world out there that can have a willy shaken at it.

Beer. Cos it's Friday :)

Mafia hit suspect cuffed after BlackBerry chatter intercept

YouStupidBoy
Big Brother

Should be an easy verdict for the jury

The prosecutor in the case [said] he would "advocate for preventing the disclosure of wiretap warrants" and refuse questions from defence attorneys on the subject.

Unless I read this wrong, this means that during the trial, the jurors won't know where the evidence came from, whether it was obtained lawfully or whether it was cooked up by a PFY in the forensics lab told to produce something so they get to keep their job and family fed.

We the people need to start standing up to the courts and legal system since it's becoming blindingly obvious that the principles of law seem to no longer apply to certain individuals or interest groups. That super-injunction is even a term is chilling, now a prosecuting attorney plans to "refuse questions from defence attorneys" pertaining to how/when/where evidence that apparently forms a large part of the prosecutions case comes from?

I completely understand that some information relating to *active* investigations needs to be hush-hush. Once it's reached prosecution though, there should - no - there NEEDS to be complete transparency as to every pertinent aspect of the case. This continued slide towards obfuscation of information from the public from judicial and government officials must stop.

If I was on the jury and the prosecution acted like this, to me it's a simple Not Guilty, unless the suspect walks in covered in the victims blood and carrying a severed head in an M&S bag. If they can't tell me where evidence comes from and how it was legally obtained, that must surely introduce reasonable doubt.

They need to be reminded that "they" work for "us".

BlackBerry BBM, email downed in epic FAIL

YouStupidBoy
WTF?

Hyperventilating

If you hyperventilate because a portion of your personal online experience goes AWOL for a bit, then you are psychologically unbalanced and should seek help.

Their family should get them on with Dr. Phil. For the Brits, he's Americas answer to Jonathan Ross, only with infinitely less class.

It seems that so many people spend so much of their lives watching/reading/discussing other peoples lives that they forget they have one, too.

I really do hope he/she gets help.

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