* Posts by northern monkey

199 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

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Give the Met Office £10m, says Transport Committee

northern monkey

But...

NWP needs fast interconnect, hence the expensive MMP machines. Without each cell knowing what's going on at the boundaries of its neighbours it's not going to work too well. SETI on the otherhand doles out completely independent work packages, and there's hardly a time limit - we need the T+24 forecast quickly, but we can wait (a bit) for the little green men to be found.

'Death to browsers!' cries Apple mobile-app patent

northern monkey
Coat

Is this a piss-take?

<< $425, I think not!

Not only is it a sickening patent application but also they've spelt 'Sudoku' as 'Soduku' (Fig. 702), and the iPhone says 'The Great Equalizer' on Fig. 800. Either that or the people in the Apple's patent-firing-out department are so sick of writing patents they know are bullshit are just starting to take the mick.

Anyway, I'm off to TK Maxx to see if I can get a nice brown anklet. I hear they're reasonably priced there.

Egyptians uptight about 'Artificial Virginity Hymen'

northern monkey
Stop

@Anonymous Coward

"What are the rape stats in UK by the way?"

As for reported rapes then they're probably higher than they are in any conservative Islamic state since here the rapist is prosecuted, cf. the situation in Islamic states where the woman would be arrested for extramarital sex.

northern monkey
Paris Hilton

Under causes of hymen tear...

...it lists premarital sex but not post-marital sex. Does your hymen not break if you've been a good girl in the the eyes of Allah and kept your v-plates attached until after getting married?

Anyway, if Allah is so vengeful surely he'll deal with the hymen-hoaxers in the appropriate way.

Paris, because not even one of these babies is going to convince anyone that her hymen is anything but broken.

'Stop NASA bombing the Moon!'

northern monkey
Thumb Down

Whilst these people may be nuts...

..their rantings do pose an interesting question - should we not start any colonisation of the moon somewhat better than our planet-destroying colonisation of Earth? That would include not shooting chunks out of it - I'm sure there's a less destructive way of testing for water, etc, on the moon but they've obviously gone with the 'meh, no-one lives there so lets just blow a chunk out of it' approach.

Nation's moral guardians snap over 'shag bands'

northern monkey

All I can say is...

..at least they don't follow the handkerchief code colours! Or perhaps they do and all those children wearing livestrong bands didn't accidentally wet themselves. Urgghhh, so wrong.

iPhone voted UK's 'coolest brand'

northern monkey

@Mahatma Coat

You really need to sort your marriage out. If you come across like that in real life I'd say there's a pretty good chance she is boffing her boss on the side.

Vodafone is all thumbs on multitouch

northern monkey
Headmaster

@Tim Hale 1

I'd say monotouch would be the more catchy trademark friendly way to say it.

Nokia 3310, now with Monotouch

Google hits Android dev with cease-and-desist letter

northern monkey

@Shadowfirebird

It's hardly an apple style wobbler - as I understand it he's actually redistributing their apps, and it's only their closed source apps they seem to object to. If Apple threw a wobbler if some apple developer started redistributing itunes with their software I'd not blame them either - an apple style wobbler is not letting people run your OS on anything but your machine, randomly bouncing apps off the appstore for no apparent reason and developing an irrational and childish dislike for an online IT news source.

Apple seeks cure for iPhone battery woes

northern monkey

@Roger Garner

Yes, though you do have to keep taking said battery in and out to forcibly reboot it due to it running out of memory every 5 minutes, despite the fact that absolutely nothing is running, the internet cache in empty, you've emptied your inbox/archives/sent message folder...

I was glad to take my sim out of my N95 and put it in my iphone - and I've never looked back!

Trucker prangs rig while cracking one off

northern monkey
Thumb Up

@Mike Flugennock

I was expecting exactly the same it - it shocked me that they came from this hemisphere, though I knew exactly who was responsible for the tip-off when I saw the precise geographic region

Ammo rationing at Wal-Mart as panic buying sweeps US

northern monkey
Stop

Reading that Walmart sells bullets...

...is one of the more surreal moments I've had. It's truly terrifying that a nation intent on disarming the rest of the world can arm up when getting in their weekly shop.

Secret teen hacker army ridiculed

northern monkey
Coffee/keyboard

Hahaha!!

are forbidden from "tell[ing] their parents or girlfriends what they do in the windowless basement area in the Security Service building beside the Thames".

Girlfriends - is he kidding us!?

Microsoft and Intel port Silverlight to Linux

northern monkey
Thumb Up

@John Doe 6

^| I'm with him - firstly I don't want silverlight, I've yet to find any site I've not been able to view because of not having silverlight (primarily because so few sites actually use it - not even MS!). Secondly if not having silverlight did become a problem I'd use moonlight as much as possible, and since larger and wider uptake of silverlight would lead to faster development of moonlight that should work fine. What we need is a *light-based porntube - then the number of people sacrificing their principles to work with Miguel would skyrocket.

Mozilla plans to tie Firefox 3.7 pigtails in pretty Ribbon

northern monkey
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Well...

...it won't be getting one from me. Pleased to hear they're not going to force the ribbon on us linux users though. Oh that reminds me, I wonder what decision OOo made on their ribbon development.

Hospital loses vital cancer research to thieves

northern monkey
Stop

Can we have some sympathy please...

...frankly, when you're working in a fast paced research environment like that, the analysis you're carrying out takes priority - when you're in til 10pm each and every night you tend to forget about the backups you haven't done due to sheer exhaustion. Yes, they probably should've carried some out. No, they didn't.

Do people just come on here to vilify since, due to their own perfection and the perfection of their working procedures, they have nothing to sort out themselves?

US deputies taze traffic dodging rogue emu

northern monkey
Paris Hilton

@John J

That sounds like some sort of bizarre zoophilic porn!

Facebook 'fesses to bad hair day

northern monkey
Thumb Up

I couldn't help but note...

...the irony of downrightnow allowing you to share the status of various web2.0 sites via the wonders of web2.0, as well as their twitter feed.

Linus calls Linux 'bloated and huge'

northern monkey

@Sooty

I am a software developer actually, in the HPC community. Cycles are expensive so we use them well. I'm sure some DB developers see where I'm coming from --- DB lookups should be done wisely, in the right places and if necessary cached - all too often you see people looking up the same bloody (non-volatile) thing in every iteration of a loop.

northern monkey
Megaphone

@Anonymous Coward 2:20

Aaaah - I hate that argument! Just because computers are getting faster does not mean we should write our code less well, less efficiently 'because we have room too'. Write the same streamlined efficient code you wrote for old, "slow", memory challenged machines and it'll run like s**t off a stick. Write bloated inefficient code because there's no need to bother putting the effort into good programming then it will run OK, but give it to a colleague with an older slower machine and you're stuck.

They should put a contract on every copy of every programming language tutorial book, every computer science course, every training course, that requires the owner/attendee to promise to endeavour to write efficient code. If they can't promise that or don't see why they should then they should be shown the door.

Pull the plug on Pandas, declares BBC man

northern monkey
Thumb Up

Absolutely...

It's thinking we can win over natural selection and our environment that has got our species so royally fucked anyway. When the case is that of the panda (fussy eater, fussy shagger), we should just accept that the whole line of them is a bad mutation and let them go! Obviously the case is different for orangutan, their plight is due to deforestation and therefore the onus is on us to sort the problem.

Now lets get Chris Packham on the board of NICE - "what's that you say, caused liver failure by alcohol intoxication? pull the plug".

Harrods web Grotto snowed under

northern monkey
Thumb Up

The 2006 Santa's...

...behaviour seems completely in keeping with what I think Santa would be: popping into all those chimneys to surprise little kids; drinking sherry like there's no tomorrow; being to lazy to have a decent shave; always having to wear a coat because he'd rather spend the money on booze; and keeping little elves locked up to do his work for him. Santa really isn't a nice person.

Futuristic head-mounted PC launching in 2010

northern monkey
Paris Hilton

Hands free computing

Fnaaarr fnnaaar.

Paris, well - use your imagination (or, come 2010, your handsfree computer)

'Evil' Windows 7 campaign goes global

northern monkey
FAIL

@me

"poor coding writing skills"

obviously that was meant to be poor coding skills (or poor code writing skills) but due to my poor English writing skills it got muddled.

northern monkey
Flame

@Oliver Jones

Firstly, users shouldn't have access to system files. They generally don't on linux - only on windows does such a heinous thing happen.

Secondly, you may find this hard to believe but people *like* using shell based text editors, it's faster and there's no need for anything else really (it is *text* after all!). There is absolutely nothing I cannot achieve using the magic of emacs or vi.

Thirdly people like using the command line (see above) - it's sometimes far far easier to achieve something using the command line than anything gui based. If it involves lots of flags, etc, either alias it or wrap it up in a script. Of course the joy of linux is that there are so many free (as in opensource, not that 30 day free trial click a button everytime you start it paypal me crap) development tools that one can write their own gui around it.

You, Sir, are an eejit - sometimes I just want to return to the days when everyone using computers really needed to know what they were doing. These days the sheer stupidity and poor coding writing skills (in languages that detach you so far from the machine they might as well be logo) of some people frightens me.

Cosmic flashbulb effect caused by 'black-hole invaders'

northern monkey
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@FourOhFour

Firstly the copy on the arxiv is a preprint (that's what the arxiv is for). Preprints generally have spelling mistakes and far worse in. Further to that I'm sure Dr Barkov and Prof Komissarov are perfectly proficient in their native Russian, and for Russians their standard of Eeenglish is pretty damn good. Try reading a preprint by some Chinese authors (with no non-Chinese co-authors) - it's worth a laugh (though can be painful if you're actually trying to extract some useful information - running it backwards and forwards through google translate sometimes gives you a clue).

Google Apps sics crawlers on public docs and sheets

northern monkey
Stop

@Kotonoha

In with what? Your comment means nothing, except as a placeholder stating no real opinion --- for instance you don't actually state whether you feel this is a 'bad thing' or an 'invasion of privacy', merely that you're 'inb4' someone else states that.

And @AC06:38 --- "Freetards of the world unite ! You have nothing to lose but you livelihoods!" --- freedom does not imply loss , indeed people can and do setup entire business infrastructures on FOSS and make their and other's livelihoods.

Society bible lectures students on etiquette

northern monkey

I forgot the most important bit!

Free barbecues, toastie delivery services or anything involving free food full stop (outside of freshers' fair) are not random acts of kindness - it is the God squad attempting to reel in vulnerable prey. Try to avoid at all costs unless you're a hardened Atheist and are able to have a sensible argument with these people (hint: this, whilst seeming like it should be possible, is in fact impossible - you may spout perfect logic and sense but they claim to carry the word of God)

northern monkey
Joke

@Dan 7

Wow, you really enjoyed university didn't you - I bet you were the life and soul of every single party.

northern monkey
Thumb Up

@Gordon is not a Moron

As a corrolary to your fire alarm story: if you're going to experiment with your sexuality in your first year remember that there will be a fire alarm and whoever you're experimenting with will be seen leaving your room (I wasn't experimenting, I was the subject).

Oh, and make friends with people with bar experience. They will end up getting a bar job at one of the bars you frequent and will give you cheap/free drinks. Just make sure it's not the first question you ask. Also don't offend the cleaner - they see everything (*everything*). And if you're in M block D&R, Liverpool be aware that large cable drums do not fit through the door - it has been tried, it failed, and it took the wing-mirrors off an ambulance in attendance.

northern monkey

I'd recommend...

...not heckling a comedian and being made to get up on stage and sing eidelweiss.

'Do You Want To See My C*ck?' asks budding author

northern monkey
Paris Hilton

My suspicion is...

...that he'll be surprised how many people he can indeed show his cock, although an entire book devoted to the various cruising spots of his locality might get a bit boring (and shock a number of people as to what's really going on in their local library!)

Apple sends iPhones into 'Coma Mode'

northern monkey

@Simon Banyard

Do you not realise it's all part of Apple's obsession with slimming everything down? Next year he's having some good alpha effects applied to him so that his shadow isn't as horribly sharp. They didn't want to do it all at once because, well, they needed something new to unveil next year.

northern monkey
Joke

@The Cube

In other news, according to the latest poll carried out by thehun.com 98%* of web users view pornography

(+- 2%)

IBM tries to patent teleconference sound effects

northern monkey
Thumb Down

Is there *anything*

that IBM won't patent!? What's the betting a few Big Blue employees were sat having a laugh in the break room talking about how funny if would be if this existed, unbeknowst to them the Big Blue Boss was stood at the coffee machine behind them. Several internal e-mails later it has been established that since they came up with the idea whilst working for IBM it remains the intellectual property of IBM and that they're going to patent it..

Fraudsters add IM to phishing attacks

northern monkey
FAIL

@Jay Castle

Did you read any of the previous comments? They [the banks] might not ask you for your account number but they will ask you for your mother's maiden name, first line of your address, date of birth, 3rd and 6th letter of your password, etc. And as has been pointed out they refuse to give you enough information for you to be able to verify that they're actually your bank.

As you yourself point out most banks have a clearly set out policy on what information they use to identify you, so any miscreant calling you knows exactly what they need and what to ask you for.

Rich people cannot feel pain, don't care if they're liked

northern monkey

Interesting...

"being (or feeling) rich means you care nothing for the opinions of others"

So, Tories and Tory voters are selfish bastards concerned only with having their tax reduced since they've 'never got anything back from the system'. Nothing new here.

Abigail's Windows 7 Party

northern monkey
Pint

@Seth Galitzer

They're not, they're worse! At least snobbish New Yorkers, if they attend self-defence classes, actually learn something - snobbish Londoners wouldn't hear anything because they'd be too busy relaying the most hilarious story about how their waiter served their chardonnay 1.5 degrees too cool and they "just simply had to send it back - it was dreadful, oh and of course he was an immigrant so perhaps it's not his fault he didn't know (do they have wine in latvia isobelle, you holidayed there last year didn't you? Oh of course, I forgot about that - poor trixie, she's never quite been the same has she.)"

Bus driver becomes Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov

northern monkey
Pint

Oh my god..

..Chewbacka is accurate - he's like a (slightly) shaven version!

I need a drink to calm my nerves.

British TV firm dumps Silverlight

northern monkey
Thumb Up

yes!

Now I can watch the x-factor I missed whenever I want (the repeat rate is dire at the moment, though so is the new format).

Japan gets to grips with train-grope websites

northern monkey
Unhappy

RE: Sarah Bee RE: I'm all for women only carriages...

That sounds like quite a horrible thing to happen, though I'm glad it hasn't traumatised you. What a pathetic little man to think that assaulting a woman would impress his mates (and what pathetic mates to be impressed by it!). Those are the sorts of men who should spend an evening courtesy of Her Majesty in a cell with several men larger than themselves and see if they find it so funny the next morning when they're doing a very passable impression of John Wayne.

On the women only carriage thing I do feel there is some need for that here, as well as carriages for those who feel vulnerable in general - as a gay man, and one who is visibly gay (not waving rainbow flags or anything, you can just tell - somehow), public transport late at night can sometimes be far from a pleasurable experience and I've been quite frightened at times - if it was one on one I know I could handle it but there's no way I could take a group on. Unfortunately it's just a sad indictment on society that some idiots really do get their jollies by scaring and upsetting others.

Boxer sets lawyers on Facebook

northern monkey
Headmaster

*rolls eyes*

I've just had a look through some of the many Amir Khan groups (though there appears to be another Amir Khan with whom the boxer is sharing some of the hatred at least), and all I've really learned is that the people who created these groups are poorly educated fools!

Take, for example, the prototypical but nonetheless real "AMIR KHAN SHOULD OF GOT BEAT". Indeed, and perhaps you should have taken your caps lock off before starting the group (inexplicably the group photo is of Pob, the children's TV character famed for getting children across the country to spit at their TVs)

Perhaps we should take "Amir Khan got knocked the fuck out!!!!!!!!!!". Whilst from your heavy use of exclamation marks I presume you are trying to make a point I'm unable to parse the name of your group properly. Oh, and there always has to be one making use of the perfectly late 80s/early 90s "not" humour: "the love we have for Amir Khan....NOT..."

Well, I'm off to find more topless pictures^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgroups showing the nicer side of society's opinion of Amir Khan, but with good spelling, grammar and a general lack of idiocy. There must be some!

Ballmer garnishes Bing 2.0 with iPhone 'stomp'

northern monkey
FAIL

I'm not sure I get their strategy here...

"engine update will apparently combine maps that use Microsoft's Silverlight browser-based media player"

According to their own claims MS want to get into web search in a serious way, rival google, etc. So why in attempting to enhance their search engine are they locking out anyone not using IE on one of the few supported platforms? Surely they don't think people will actually download IE (and, in the case of linux users, switch to windows) just so they can use bing when they're perfectly happy with google!?

Well bye bye bing, I didn't use you while you lasted and I certainly won't now. They have moved through the motions of embrace extend extinguish far too fast and are just going to extinguish themselves!

Brown apologises for 'appalling' treatment of Turing

northern monkey
Megaphone

@AC

"That the modern fashion is different is irrelevant."

Just because a law exists does not make it just! Should we forget the holocaust ever happened because 'that was the fashion in Nazi Germany' - I certainly hope they don't outlaw idiocy as you'll be first against the wall!

northern monkey
Thumb Down

@Mike Cardwell

So would you expect the German government to never have apologised for their history, on behalf of their ancestors?

And an aside whilst Labour may be unpopular with some gay people I get so angry when I hear other gays saying they're going to vote Tory - how quickly they forget Section 28 and the way certain members of the current so called "progressive" Tory frontbench voted when it came to the final Commons vote on repealling it!

Florida cops cage 'Dracula'

northern monkey

@Not too fast

My teeth were not horrendous and my orthodontistry was completely and utterly free, and not bad either. The rest of my dental treatment is not, and I'm not a woman so I can't get pregnant and get it done for free 'while I'm at it'. It is, however, heavily subsidised (partly by the gov, partly by people paying on denplan et al) to the point of being deemed a pretty good deal.

Church altar smites devout Catholic

northern monkey
Welcome

Perhaps we're seeing the beginning...

..of the God delusion correcting itself! Soon there'll be scores smothered by their prayer mats, hundreds drowned in the baptismal font, thousands crushed by falling rocks on pilgramage and eventually I'll get some bloody sleep on a Sunday morning instead of being woken up by the local God-botherers bothering God with their incessant bell ringing !!

Google moves to micropayments

northern monkey
Thumb Down

Hmm..

Google gets exclusive rights to books.

Google starts looking into micropayments.

Google... well, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.

Apple squeezes video camera into iPod nano

northern monkey
Jobs Horns

Now 40% thinner...

...with an overhauled hepatic system I present - Steve Jobs (woooooo)

Tesco gets Flash of Silverlight in 'virtual DVD' deal

northern monkey

Either...

..this means the possibility of pressure from tesco will mean microsoft will maintain their current "we'll not do you for patent infringement, yet" stance with respect to moonlight, or the powers that be at tesco are too IT illiterate to know what moonlight and mono are and expect that people "should just get windows".

Unfortunately it's probably the latter.

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