Posts by The Indomitable Gall

Texting teenager plunges to his death

Did it say what height his is?

The centre of gravity of a human is neutrally the navel. In guys it's slightly higher than ladies (more shoulder, less hip). If he was texting, he would have raised his arms. Each of these things raises his centre of gravity.

He may also have been wearing a backpack. If it had a laptop in it, that's a lot of added mass to raise the centre of gravity.

The grandmother says the rail was waist-high, so he was clearly a tall bloke.

A safety railing only prevents accidental falls if it is higher than the centre of gravity. The population is getting taller, so maybe it is time to raise the limit to account for this.

And as for tripping...

Well most car parks have kerbs, right? Even if not a full pavement kerb, those little ones to stop the wheels getting too close to the walls So it's possible he tripped on a kerb or other obstacle *before* hitting the rail? The article doesn't go into detail.

And, to be fair, it shouldn't HAVE to go into detail. What sort of person reads a news story about an accident and starts publically slagging off the person without full possession of the facts?

What sort of person?

I would tell you, but I think Sarah would be obliged to censor it.

Elon Musk's rocket booked by Google X-Prize moon robot

"Satisfaction"

" For fans of the internet, there may be some satisfaction in reflecting that the money behind the mission comes from the rise of Google and PayPal "

Yup, I'm sure fans of the internet will be glad to see their wrongly-seized PayPal accounts, interest on withheld payments etc burning off into the atmosphere.

And I for one am proud that my eyeballs have been assaulted by stalkerish ads in order to fund this nonsense.

Man stabbed to death by chicken

Law of cause and effect...

Seems like we're putting all our eggs in one basket and our problems are coming home to roost.

Ofcom okays Derren Brown psychic-baiting

Oi, Bee

Less of that. It's now a matter of public knowledge that it's a collaborative work. Get your people to call my people and we'll pitch it to them Holly-would types.

Don't be daft.

Brown provided evidence that this guy lied to him.

Even if the idea of a god/gods was demonstrably false (rather than simply not being supported by current evidence*) then you would still have to prove that the hierarchy of organised religions don't actually believe in their particular deity. I think you'll find that most do. As most ministers of religion in this part of the world are significantly worse-off financially than myself, I don't think they're in it for the money.

* Which is to say that I claim no authority to say it is either true or false. I, like everyone else, do not have that data.

Showed up?

"really showed up this "psychic" as a scam artist"

I'm not sure I'd put it like that. I'd say it wasn't the show that showed him up, but the guy himself. That was part of the beauty of the whole series.

Consider this: he made similar observations with both the medium and the taped voices guy, and every difference in the two episodes was instigated by the comportment of the subject of the episode. The medium tried to get one up on Brown at every turn, and was smug about it. He initiated all confrontation up until the final revelation on the neighbour. Meanwhile the tapes guy was genuinely cooperative and enthusiastic about trying to demonstrate his craft to a willing sceptic. There was no confrontation.

Die-fi

Oooh... cheap horror flick alert.

[mock American accent]

On spring break, 5 schoolkids find an unsecured hotspot. As they start downloading movies, strange things start to happen.

Will anyone survive?

Die-fi: Connection... terminated.

AOL buys Huffington Post

They also downvoted...

They downvoted my unary post too.

Too many non-geeks commenting here these days, methinks.

Oooh, lookie!

I thought Huffington was a moron, but she's clearly brighter than I thought. I don't know many people who can count in unary.

Robot naval stealth fighter takes to the air

In a word, no.

http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric.02_1_climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team-metric-system?_s=PM:TECH

The prosecution rests.

Punters 'pooh-pooh video on demand'

And they say responsible parenting is dead....

"My kids seem keener on watching what they want, when they want [...], but that's far more likely to come off YouTube (or Megaupload) than BT Vision, as I really don't see any value in paying for TV."

To paraphrase:

Kids, Daddy can't be arsed buying you stuff, so go out and steal it, OK?

Catalans to hunt wild boar with bows and arrows

Reasons...

"In 2009, there were 199 "incidents" involving wild boar penetrating the Barcelona suburbs. Between January and September 2010, this jumped to 540, meaning roughly a threefold increase in incursions for the year as a whole."

I don't know if this is a direct result of population size. If you look at most migrations of wildlife to urban areas (eg foxes, herring gulls), it seems to be more about the ease of finding food in urban environment than the difficulty of finding food elsewhere.

Reducing litter and securing bins is the first line of defense.

'You don't even know what change management is'

No, not "... management"

Change management is specifically (wait for it) management of business/process change, as opposed to management of a steady-state/"business as usual" service. Most management frameworks consider it a specific job function, even if carried out by the same manager.

So the BBC job ad says that experience of business-as-usual management isn't enough, because the job is specifically about change.

The slaggable angle in the ad is thus:

"extensive knowledge of implementing change programmes in large and complex organisations to successfully deliver a change programme as part of the Digital Media Initiative"

"Implementing change programmes to deliver change programmes" is either:

A) tautologous/redundant

or

B) the onion of bureaucracy gone mad -- "we need a change manager to manage the change to the change management procedure that manages change of change management within the management of change management changes"....

Mexican woman gets litigious on Top Gear's ass

No lawsuits there.

The BBC have been very careful not to show repeats of the cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys episode of Blackadder to avoid lawsuits. They've even avoided including it in any of the DVD boxed sets, to avoid lawsuits. They have removed all trace of ever having filmed the episode to avoid it being used as evidence in court. In fact, they were so concerned about lawsuits that they went as far as never filming it, never writing the script and never even thinking once about that line.

You would say that.

You right-wing Marxists are all the same.

Post-a-puppy woman hit with cruelty charges

Airmail...?

Jeezy peeps,

What with the temperature the hold of a plane drops to in flight, you'd be left with what a Yank would have to call a pupsicle...!

Documents in Assange rape probe leak onto the net

But wait...!

Assange posted data dump detailing live military actions that put lives in danger. That's not just "exposing work related documents", it's massively irresponsible.

And the diplomatic memos didn't tell us anything new about international diplomacy, they just made international diplomacy more difficult.

Assange has gone well beyond the boundaries of responsible disclosure, hence why people consider him fair game for the same sort of treatment.

Mexico demands apology for Top Gear outrage

Corsica...

Napoleon Buonaparte was born one year after Corsica was signed over to France by the republic of Genoa. So he was technically French, as well as being Corsican.

And his army had a hell of a lot of people from the mainland in it, too.

The difference...

The stars in the reasonably priced cars have agreed to the abuse and are being paid for it.

Invective

ici.chacal is a ignorant lazy waste of space who probably won't complain about this message because the word "ignorant" has so many letters he won't be able to read past it. And his cooking tastes like dining out off the refuse of a paper factory.

Now, if this makes it through the mods and you get to read this, do you feel it is acceptable under the label "banter"...? Particularly given that I don't know you -- is it ever really possible to give a gentle ribbing to someone you've never met?

Ok then....

Let's see if I can get past the moderatrix with this next message....

Official: PhD in 'Essential Oils' or 'Natural Toiletries' = 'a Scientist'

Exactly.

Stating that "BSc=science" is just silly.

Most UK computer degrees are BSc or MSc. A computer programmer is not regarded as a "scientist".

All Maths degrees are BSc or MSc. A mathematician is not regarded as a "scientist".

And what about Physiotherapy?

The list of BScs out there is endless and this is a stupid ruling from the ASA.

Spelling

"And even though the word "scientist" now officially means nothing, we still aren't going to apply it to homeopathic smellies experts."

Can I suggest creative misspelling?

Like "sighuntist" or something?

Homeopaths can be "placebo sighuntists" and essential oils guys can be "girly stink sighuntists".

UK probes ebook pricing

Well, to be fair...

A book is the buyer's property. An eBook is merely a license to use someone else's property (cf lack of resale and lending rights).

Until the eBook industry treat eBooks like books, why the hell should the government?

Embrace your outsourced future

Usually short-sighted micro-economic crud.

Seriously, this is the same old bollocks.

"Look, the past was like this, so the future will be Exactly The Same."

No it won't. Every change in society offers unique problems.

The whole "service economy" thing was nonsense in the first place, because information is logistically easier to offshore than manufacturing was, and it didn't even protect jobs for a generation.

Our "service economy" is a big old pyramid scheme that's trying to maintain higher wages here than elsewhere, but as a result, we've devalued Real Work so much that we have to subsidise our farmers to stop them all ending up in call centres and leaving us importing all our food.

Sites like Freelancer could shape the future to some extent though, but only because it increases the number of suppliers, therefore increases the competitive pressure, and if eBay and Amazon Marketplace have taught us one thing, it's that once you start an auction, there's always someone daft enough to take the price a couple of quid too far. Various design and coding "competitions" have also shown that this holds for the job market too -- unemployed people will happily complete a full job for the mere possibility of being paid a distinctly average sum at the end of it.

Competition closed

I know...

How about an app that lets company executives induce people to give away marketable ideas for the mere possibility that they might one day win a smartphone?

Just what every penny-pinching BlackBerry-weilding executive needs.

Apple clips publishers' wings

Re: Unbalanced Argument

" "All of the competing vendors are also doing at least one unethical thing, so there's an on balance argument to be made"

The familiar "two wrongs make a right" argument. "

The previous poster was not defending Apple, and his point is valid: if you say "but they're unethical" you will get the answer "everyone is". As he said, you're going to have to present an "on balance" argument to say why Apple's unethical enough that to justify other people giving their money to someone else.

Boots punts over-the-counter paternity test

Sexism!

"The test is available to anyone aged 16 or over and requires signed consent and identification documents from father, child and mother – and from the mother on behalf of the child if the latter is under 16."

Hang on... surely that's discrimination -- "parent or guardian", surely? Why mother specifically?

Panorama stalks alleged stalker's twin brother

Since when...

Since when has the Register comments section been about ignorant ranting following a formula. This is a waste of advertising money. It's a Bulgarian airbag-bursting outrage. Why don't they go and do some real work.

CSC cost-cutting spreads to Europe

Wowzers

So they're artificially messing up next year's figures worse than they're improving this year's then? Clever.

What measures will be open to them to fix it next financial year?

This sort of bodging wouldn't be required if they just aligned the benefits year with the fiscal year. Muppets.

Yuppie cellphone-style iPhone case comes to Blighty

Missed opportunity.

Stuff that thing with Li-ion and you've got one hell of an external battery pack.....

Toshiba intros laptop that CHANGES COLOUR

If the article's right...

The article says

"The trick lies in Toshiba's use of several polyester laminate films, each comprising thousands "nano-technology" layers,"

If this is accurate, this means that unlike interference paints (ChromaFlare and the like) they've not done this with suspended particles, but actually made the case as a polylaminate. This would make the technology fundamentally different in terms of physics, although it is clearly derived from the same principles. (Chromaflare uses particles of laminate to show the surface of different layers at different angles, if this case is a single laminate, it will rely on varying refractive indices and total internal reflection for its colour-changing jiggery-pokery.)

If it's just spraypaint, on the other hand, you're quite right.

Microsoft insists autistic Xboxer is a cheat

"Looks like someone is getting a PS3 for his next birthday"

"Looks like someone is getting a PS3 for his next birthday"

f Sony's marketing team are on the ball, he shouldn't have to wait that long....

Mexican army interdicts dope-slinging catapult

"Back in the day..."

Wow, that there's some creative English. Describing the age of chivalry as "back in the day". How old was the guard, and did he fight in the Crusades? "I remember ole King Richie, now there was a man. You don't get his sort these days -- it's all Playstations and management training meetings now.... not the same at all...."

Facebook offers 500 million users SSL crypto

"Social authentication" - old news

The photo-based authentication has been in place for several months at least -- I was on holiday in November and when I logged on from Cybercaffs it said I'd connected from a new location and had to verify myself.

You're presented with several pics of the same person (I can't recall the exact number), drawn seemingly at random from tagged photos and a selection of several friends' names to chose from. This happens 4 or 5 times, and you're given the option to skip (I think you get 3 chances to skip) just in case the photos are bad or it's someone you don't really "know" know.

It's a sensible system, but there's two little flaws.

1) It seems to select very strongly connected people (one of my brothers or sisters was always included) so if the attacker knows you at all, he's likely to know these people. Of course, this is because they're trying to make it easy for *you* to recognise them, but hey-ho...

2) Judging by the wording of the message, it's about registering the location the first time you connect from there, so if you're in an unscrupulous cybercaff, the same people who sniff your login details will have access to the terminal/subnet/geographic location (whatever it is that Facebook considers a location) you used to connect, which will now (presumably) be whitelisted by Facebook.

It's a step in the right direction, but they've got a very, very long way to go yet....

Cameroonians cleared in 'surreal' dyed banknote scam

Ouch.

As most conmen pick out naive marks of below-average intelligence, doesn't that mean fraud is effectively legal in Spain? Jolín....

PSP 2 'as powerful as PS3'

If it is just a portable PS3...

If it's a portable PS3, there'd better be some way to synch across the games you've already bought and take them on the road.

But as it's Sony, there won't be, will there?

O2 to fling out free Wi-Fi for all

You have to *supply* a phone number.

As you have to supply a phone number, this cannot be fully integrated. It would seem likely that you connect to wifi, get greeted with a login page, enter your phone number and activate. The MAC address and phone number are in different parts of the system, and only seem to be linked by the user's actions., not tech.

Femtocell experts create even tinier porta-base station

Retrofit to Kindle.

If you could retrofit this to a Kindle, you'd bankrupt Whispernet....

Sat-spotters find secret payload launched by giant US rocket

It would be funnier...

It would be funnier if they had actually used the correct verb. The motto makes no sense.

Israelis seize woman packing 44 iPhones

For about six months...

For about six months I was flying, several times a month, without realising that there was still a razor in the bottom of my laptop bag. Nobody ever noticed.

Rescue mission begins for Hitchhiker's Real Guide

Wealth of Nations

The latest edition of "The Wealth of Nations" has been retitled "The Wealth of Formerly Bankrupt Banks" after the events of the last few years.....

iPad propels Apple into top-three PC vendor placement

If tablets are PCs...

If tablets are PCs, then the iPad is not a tablet.

The iPad is a locked-down appliance -- if I'm not allowed to break it by installing duff software, it's not a PC.

Next smartphone tech? Predator style thermal cameras

Does she fancy me? There's an app for that.

Elevated body temperature is a sign of sexual arousal.

That's the only app I can think of.

Toshiba shows second-gen tablet

Hmmm....

"Anyone who thinks the iPad is too big isn't going to take to this one."

Anyone who thinks the iPad is too big really isn't in the market for a tablet....

IPTV UK: failure to launch?

For once, self-interest == consumer choice

" Virgin portrays its beef with YouView as an attempt to stand up for consumer choice, but it is clearly motivated by self-interest too. If catch-up services remain separate and incompatible, Virgin's ability to combine them for a price is more attractive than it would be if there were an alternative, free-to-access unified service. "

To be fair, Virgin are in the right here. Virgin's On Demand system is vastly superior to broadband iPlayer, and people currently find that a service worth paying for. The lack of stuttering alone is worth paying for, and the difference in video quality is night and day.

Capitalism is build on consumer choice, and YouView does threaten to take picture quality out of the equation, commoditising video on a compromised, compressed quality level.

As everyone's investing so heavily in SD, now seems a bit of a silly time to start throttling the video bandwidth unnecessarily.

Big new wind turbines too close together, says top boffin

Slowing the winds, slowing the tides

Well, as we've already built massive amounts of buildings on land and many causeways and walls at sea, and as we've razed mountains and while raising other land, not to mention the dozens of aircraft stealing disrupting the high-altitude air currents, we're already interrupting the winds and waters more than a few turbines can.

Man killed by own cock

iShall be cancelling my subscription.

Where's the IT angle?

I mean, seriously, razors are so clearly analogue technology....

Boffins sex pterodactyls at last

Silly boffins...

" Apart from crestlessness, according to the investigating boffins, another distinctive feature of the lady pterodactyl is wider hips to permit easier passage of eggs. "

Last I checked, all female vertebrates had bigger pelvises for this very reason. (Well, either eggs or live young.) Surely a correlation of crests with relative pelvis size would have given them their answer yonks ago?

Texter who fell in fountain threatens to sue

Nonono.

Put it this way.

The mall has security cameras ostensibly to protect its shoppers. The mall has not asked consent for security footage to be used for entertainment purposes. The mall's security company has therefore violated their agreement, and they have to be held to account.

If behaviour like this goes unchecked, security cameras become a routine invasion of privacy.