Posts by northern monkey

Airbed-fixing German blows up mattress flat

It could've been worse...

..it could've been an inflatable 'playmate' !

Paris, because I'm sure lots of people would like a go on her inflatables (myself not included!)

Cats mix baby 'cry' with purr to score dinner

@mafro

Whilst you should probably refrain from starving your cat on purpose (just 'forget' to tell the neighbours next time you go for a long weekend) I do know what you mean - about 8 years ago I heard the exact same noise from my parents' cat after I made the unilateral decision to get the house sprayed with flea-killing-stuff (it needed it!).

Not long after - they were away, I was staying out of the house - I heard the most terrifying noise emitting from said cat (FYI it could've done with a bit of a diet anyway!) and I was convinced the cat had somehow ingested the flea stuff and was rapidly plummeting through its 9 lives. I eventually had to fess up and tell them what I'd done, only to be told that that was its hungry noise!! Any animal that makes that sort of noise when it's hungry should be wiped out!

I'm with everyone else..

...whose angry these people get funding. Anyone from the street could've told them that cats are manipulative little shits that should be drowned in bags with rocks in, and as someone else pointed out it was put in a study a while ago.

So how *HOW* did they manage to get funding for this, when physicists are struggling to get the funding they need to actually find out something new!!

Bloody ESRC I bet - they'll give money to anyone, most of it going on getting people drunk and buying computer games for them to play whilst intoxicated (all in the name of academic research, of course!)

Mobile directory blames press for latest failure

Could the problem be..

...that they now have absolutely no listable numbers whatsoever left in their database because everyone has asked to be made ex-directory?

Tee hee - serves them right for having such a pants idea in the first place.

Whining serial commentard bemoans Reg bullying

Favourite Rant

Of the rants I've found so far the one below contains an utter gem from Aaron, and one I find very tempting:

"GAG ME WITH A SPOON"

from

http://www.excelforum.com/excel-general/384823-the-best-elegant-solution-to-override-65k-rows-limit-in-a-sheet.html

I wonder if he's managed to find another job yet after his little '10mbit router issue'

http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/DotNet/microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb/2007-01/msg02129.html

Given employers preference for a quick google I doubt anyone would take the risk!!

Orange introduces mini-SIM

@Jason Bloomberg

"easy to remove glue"

Because that glue is never 'easy to remove' - the stuff they used to stick media on the front of PC magazine was bloody lethal!

Google's vanity OS is Microsoft's dream

@Mr Spoon

"This is being based on Android...."

Do tell us your source because AFAIK the only people who've said it's going to be based on android are commentards speculating. Google haven't said anything of the sort, though if they have do let us know!

Google polishes Chrome into netbook OS

by 'windowing system'

Do they mean they're going to continue using X11 and just write another window manager (a la metacity etc), or are they going to replace X11 too?

I hope they're forced to call it google linux. If not, well, at least we'll know when uname -a says it!!

And is anyone else a bit suspicious that their guy is called linus too?

Sony preps hi-res Atom N netbook

@MarkOne

<rant>

MarkOne? Is that your favourite shop and you're just pretending to dislike "council estate pikeys" because you are one, or is my first instinct right - you're just a complete and utter twat who probably shops in jack wills and thinks nothing of buying their overpriced at a quarter of the price toff clothes.

</rant>

Anyway, my actual point was going to be that at a price in the region of £400 I'd not want such a machine because it doesn't feature a CD drive!

I'm perfectly happy with my netbook not having one because it cost me just over £200 and I can accept that sort of omission, but at £400 I'd not be particularly happy to have to shell out for an external CD-drive on top of that!

CompuServe signs off

(why can't nothing be a title?)

"It's important to note that CompuServe users will be able to convert their ridiculous classic 9 and 10-digit email addresses to the CompuServe 2000 service in order to retain their well-earned sense of superiority over youngster internet users everywhere. Nothing says stay off my lawn like [e-mail]"

Thanks, you've just made me feel old.

Nokia staffers kick rugged phone into touch

erm..

..not that I'm being suspicious or anything, but in the second video the guy finding the phone clearly has a phone in his pocket. Could this be the one that didn't survive?

Boffin predicts pee-powered cars

I'm no chemist...

...but if you take out the hydrogen are you not left with something that could be NOx or carbon monoxide? Not really a great improvement over gas-guzzling cars really!

Hopefully someone who studied chemistry past GCSE will be able to put straight my naive view of chemistry - I understand QCD but say 'carboxyl functional group' to me and I'll look blankly at you.

UK DVD sales plunge...

@serviceWithASmile

OED:

pirate, v.:

2. trans. To reproduce or use (the work, idea, etc., of another) without authority, esp. in infringement of patent or copyright; to produce a pirate copy or edition of.

First quote:

1706 D. DEFOE Jure Divino Pref. p. xxvii, Gentlemen-Booksellers that threatned to Pyrate it, as they call it, viz. reprint it, and sell it for half a Crown.

I think that predates Microsoft a wee bit!

Satanic blob beast menaces North Carolina

Oh my days!!

That's bloody 'orrible!

I have vomited on my keyboard and am thus owed a new one!

Marie Curie voted top female boffin

Grita Loebsack

What an attractive name!

iPhone 3GS turns yellower shade of white

It's already happening...

From the O2 forum:

"I can tell you that the 3G is warmer than the 2G and the 3GS is even warmer "yellower" than the 3G by design, apple claims its easier on the eyes."

Jobs has gone with the ergonomics line, and we should all be greatful that he's trying to save our eyes by inflicting yellow screens on us.

A worrying number of people who've shelled out for their new iphones seem very willing just to wait until they get used to it. These people should be shot to ensure they never reproduce. Ever. If they've already reproduced their children should be rigorously tested to ensure they show none of their parent's sheeple-ness. If they do - shoot them!!

Conficker left Manchester unable to issue traffic tickets

Could it be...

..that conficker is a worm designed to fight evil? Houses of parliament (boo), traffic wardens (hiss) and an accidental strike on a hospital (perhaps it had something against the surgeon?)

I, for one, welcome our new (ok, old) evil-fighting worm. I wish I had windows so I too could become a zombie to fight evil.

NASA, Japan (nearly) finish topographic map of Earth

Oh this simply won't do...

...I can see my carp pool in that map. Remove the image post-haste - you're infringing my right to privacy you filthy filthy people!!

Japanese airport trials 'personal mobility vehicles'

I for one...

...welcome our new Chub Chariots

Stallman: open-source .NET 'danger' for Debian

Oh come on!

I'm as anti-MS as the next linux user, but as several people have pointed out C# is an open standard!

Yes, microsoft can create their own flavour (as they did with C++ :P ) but the current version will remain - that's not going to affect tomboy, and mono will still work for legacy apps (indeed perhaps it could become the only platform on which legacy .NET apps will run).

And personally I'm a C++ programmer most of the time but I've dabbled in C# (including .NET on mono) and I've not found it an unpleasant experience - in fact I've found it particularly easy!

Dell Inspiron Mini 10v netbook

I like mine...

...but took off the dell desktop thing and replaced it with the proper ubuntu UNR desktop thing which in my opinion is a lot smooth and a lot more useful. With a few tweaks you can minimise firefox's screen hogging habits (not just by using F11!). I'll upgrade to 9.04 when I can be bothered/when I need to.

When I bought SSD was an option (the standard) but I opted to stick in a proper hard-drive just because I need the space.

All in all it's a pretty good example of what an SCC should be!

Chaps: Give up, you'll never understand women

@Jacqui

You better not be making slurs against north-easterners!? Jacqui and Tracey - you're pure class (not in the mackem sense) your family are!

There's only one answer...

...Go gay: "We're only picky if you're ugly."

Google mocks Bing and the stuff behind it

@What does that even mean?

Well a) if you bing for it, you won't actually find it (he probably already knew this),

and b) I think he was highlighting that using bing in place of google in that ubiquitous 'just google for it' phrase just sounds stupid.

I'm surprised the bing bod didn't go away and straight away ensure that a search for that ensured it was at least somewhere on the first page!! Even giving bing a significant amount of help by giving it the publisher as well it didn't provide it within the first 5 pages (by which point I was bored)

Microsoft's Bing in travel trouble

(this is not a title)

They definitely seem to share similar elements, and the texts next to controls are almost identical. Could MS just have looked at various other sites for inspiration and have gotten a bit carried away, or is it something far more sinister. Has anyone diff-ed the page source?

Man hooks home into Twitter

@Timo

No shit, Sherlock!

MoD halfheartedly blocks Wikileaker 'dissidents'

Well I've learned something today...

...the only way to kill an Iraqi suicide bomber is to hug and kiss them to death.

And who'd have though the MoD would ever mandate making love instead of war.

Kate Moss kills Kills cuts

There's something suspicious...

...about that girl's choice in fellas. They're typically way below her weight (metaphorically, obviously!) and musos. She's so just doing them until she gets a solo track on one of their albums. I couldn't have given a flying toss if pete asbo doherty had let her, but it will be over my dead body that she sings on a kills track.

I really cannot see another reason for having slept with the skankbag that is pete doherty! It's like trying to find amy winehouse attractive!

Nokia to develop Intel-based pocket internet gadgets

I

...don't have much to say, I just wanted to use some of the new snazzy icons.

Though I agree wholeheartedly with Warhelmet, and the other posters. I don't want frazzled sperm, and I don't get why they're moving from ARM to intel.

I am pleased to see 2 big players collaborating on linux - with the windows 7 price tag looking more than some distributors are willing to shoulder on netbooks and cheapo laptops it could be linux's time to shine!!

I, for one, welcome the new iconery!!

Don't call me Ishmael

Help me out...

My old laptop is called brandon (in honour of brandon flowers) and I got my work hostname changed to stevieg (in honour of steven gerrard).

I really can't decide what to call my new laptop though - ideas??

a) It must be a man's name

b) He must be fit (in my eyes)

c i) Preferably a musician or footballer

c ii) Definitely not a rap-star/crappy dance dj or man u/chelsea/arsenal/everton/blackburn/newcastle player

It's a dell mini 10v if that helps (I don't really want to name it after people of diminutive stature, unless they satisfy conditions b and c(i) )

Punters 'confuse' netbooks with notebooks

I can see it now...

I'll just rip this cd for you. Oh crap!!!

Top 500 supers - world yawns at petaflops

@Toastan Buttar

Well I know the FZJ, LLNL and Argonne machines are used for (not primarily) lattice qcd calculations. It's pretty annoying being here in the UK since the STFC funding debacle has left us with an ageing (and crap) computer which we can't even use because we don't have enough money to pay scottish power!!

Increased computational capacity obviously increases the range and accuracy of what we can do - and academic institutions had computers long before lattice qcd had been thought of (and a fair bit before qcd had been thought of!)

Street View solves Dutch mugging

I knew this would happen!

I wonder if it changes the privacy watchdog's minds, now they know the data can be used for good as well as evil. I mean what's the difference between being caught on a CCTV every third lamppost to being caught on mountain-view-cam?

Boffins: Gigantic crustacean sperm is 'viable strategy'

Love it!!

"She and her fellow jumbo-jizz experts "

I bet some of her colleagues entered the field solely because one day they knew someone would refer to them as that!

Microsoft bribes Oz to ditch Firefox

@fink

oh my god, I think I've just done some damage to my sides!!

I can't imagine the microsoft bods could write that without tongue firmly planted in cheek either!

Microsoft cries foul over Google Outlookware

@AC

"Remember WordPerfect?"

Yes, somewhere I still have a keyboard with all the lettering on the function keys worn away.

Johnson shuffle returns ID cards to the table

Rolls eyes

"Or rather he's pressing ahead with the project, but doesn't intend to make carrying the cards compulsory."

Then what the hell is the point!! Honestly - it's all or nothing and I'd really quite prefer nothing.

Windows 7 to push up netbook prices

It's this the EU need to get onto...

...not bashing MS after they actually go someway to meeting a request!

I quite fancied an NC10 but I didn't want to pay the windows tax (on principle and on money).

Unfortunately I need to stick with x86 chips as I'm do quite a bit of low level tuning of code I need the SSE instruction set, otherwise I might go running to a next-gen ARM netbook.

And @jim45, I'm assuming you're meaning putting xandros on the eee was an opportunity wasted rather than assuming all linux distros are as bad as xandros??

Brits can't tell their heart from their elbow

@Mycho

Sadly, anatomically speaking, our abs should go up to our pecs (the top 2 curve nicely around the bottom of our pecs).

Mine don't quite because I get bored doing situps, and where I should have a nice set of lower abs I have a reminder that I drank quite a lot of beer last weekend (and the weekend before, and before, and before). And that's with going to the gym 4 times a week. So depressing.

hmm...

...the diagrams in that paper are different to the ones on the BBC news website (despite BBC news citing Biomed central as the source).

On their image for the pancreas I'd confidently answer if it were a who wants to be a millionaire question, but the one in the paper might give a little more pause for thought.

It concerns me if the BBC news image is the actual image that lead 50% of respondents to incorrectly locate the heart - do they not realise the heart is not just under your adam's apple??

German lad hit by 30,000 mph meteorite

@John H Woods

Well, as we all know from Final Destination and it's sequels, you can't escape death so it probably counts as unlucky - now he knows wherever he goes, whatever he does, the Grim Reaper will be stalking him.

Christ!!

That's one lucky boy!

Incidentally, surely it deflected (very obliquely, at that) off his hand - unless this boy is actually of Krypton origins and is impervious to something capable of creating a foot-wide crater in the ground.

Chinese firm hits back at cyberspy claims

@AC 10:11

Erm, that's called protectionism and it's historically proven to not be a Good Thing.

I'm finding a company whose name sounds like a north-eastern exclamation hard to take seriously as it is, but I certainly agree that basing out nation's communication backbone on what could easily turn out to be compromised kit is definitely an even less Good Thing.

Microsoft to bomb Europe with IE-free Windows 7

Any bets...

...that come the first patch tuesday it all goes wrong and all 18 editions get patched with the same crap. IE included.

An accident, of course :)

Periodic table adding new element

German nouns...

You've just got to love them. The scientific ones are the best (although I must say they're the only ones I know).

Berners-Lee hired as gov internet adviser

thank god!!

Some common sense in realising that the web is not all about pretty sites that tell you sod all! The internet was a source of information well before CSS proliferated. Ok, so the animated gifs and marquee headings mightn't have looked attractive but did it matter?! So glad we've got a scientist on the case and not a web designer (in the standard sense).

Let's all get back to web 0.1.8 (animated gifs and marquees were introduced in web 0.1.9)

RIP Personal Computer World

I, for one...

Would like to offer my condolences.

I think I can safely say that without the guidance of PCW in my formative years I would not be where I am today.

I may have to go and dig out the old floppies and shed a tear over them (as I can't actually read them anymore due to complete lack of a floppy drive!!)

RIP, Personal Computer World.

p.s. On the gillette front, surely at that stage 90% of the male readership did not care for such things as razors, proudly stroking their bushy beards as they wrestled over opcodes?

Palm Pre's inner iPhone revealed

@AC 10:33

I absolutely hate my N95 (original, not 8GB)!!

* It's a brick

* It keeps warning me I'm running out of memory (but giving me no way to easily rectify this!)

* It's far too easy to accidentally exit any app you're in

* It's slow (possibly related to point 2)

* It's poorly integrated - it has these features you're so proud of but it's such a disjointed user experience, everything just stands alone.

Frankly I can't wait to get rid of this brick (oh I forgot to mention, the battery compartment cover is held on with blutack because the clips that hold it on are made of pathetic plastic that breaks far too easily). And who designed the two-way slider!! Bane of my life!!

People without broadband in 'I don't want broadband' shock

@Kerberos

Please tell me you're not being serious!!

If you can't appreciate that there are a lot of people out there living hand to mouth - particularly given the rising unemployment - then you really have problems. Shelling out on broadband comes quite a long way after 'buy food'.