Posts by disgruntled yank

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

jet pack

"hydrogen peroxide powered model"--I find myself thinking of Paris Hilton.

Facebook's stock rally may be shortlived: Small advertisers enraged

Speaking of Zuckerberg

Is "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" Facebook's company anthem? It does express a degree of optimism that seems to go well the internet business models, venture investing, etc.

Education Secretary Gove: Tim Berners-Lee 'created the INTERNET'

He can get a column with the Wall Street Journal

A few months ago, a columnist there decided the government was not responsible for the development of the Internet. His evidence was largely Xerox PARC, which developed "the ethernet". The tech community was not impressed.

Newsweek succumbs to ad slippage, will kill print pub

Vanity Fair?

Does Tina Brown no longer run that, then? And in any case, VF has never been the most serious magazine, nor the one with the least funky covers.

The whole "news magazine" model always was a little odd--get last week's news back, with snark and (if Time) funny syntax. Perhaps the odd thing is that it lasted 80 years, not that it's finished.

Boffins explain research with interpretive dance

Dammit

Why couldn't they have started this earlier in Jules Feiffer's career? Think of all the discoveries his willowy babe could have danced to.

Quite contrary Somerville: Behind the Ada Lovelace legend

oh?

“The IT industry uses Ada as a kind of mascot to disguise what is really a bad situation for women in the field.”

I have a hard time making any sense out of this statement. As far as I can tell, the disguise isn't working--nobody seems to think that women are in a great situation, whatever explanations they may provide for this--and practically nobody outside the avionics community thinks about Ada, the countess or the language, more than a couple of times a year.

Next up: the Navy uses JOVIAL to disguise what is really a bad situation for extroverts in the field.

Jimmy Wales: It was Wikipedia that ended the evil of SOPA

the problem I see here

Is that "Wales" is already part of The Register's table of standard measurements, for area. Adding it as a measure of self-importance will lead to confusion

Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain

Important omissions

1. Albert Broccoli

2. Ian Fleming

Bloomberg's bomb: How SEC shredded Facebook's pre-IPO claims

so

1. The SEC did its job in this case.

2. The filing was at least somewhat more sober than the first draft.

3. The investors had chiefly themselves to blame.

But it is too bad that Steve Bong didn't get a nod.

Sarah Brightman plans International Space Station gig

classical superstar

I am really foresakenly sorry, but you do not get to be a "classical superstar" by singing the works of Andrew Lloyd Weber and doing the occasional turn with fellows who sing opera. You had better have had a number of leading roles at the major opera houses: Bayreuth, Salzburg, Convent Garden, the Met, or their like. Deborah Voigt is a classical superstar, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is a classical superstar, retired But Ms. Brightman? I think not.

Target Silicon Valley: Why A View to a Kill actually made sense

Odd how I had forgotten the plot

What I chiefly remember are the costumes of the female leads. Grace Jones's, described by a co-worker's boyfriend as "no front, no back, no sides", and the other one's white dress that passes through fires, explosions, and flying crud without getting smudged.

Oh, and the latter's lines, which in my recollection amounted to "Oh, James!"--not quite enough words for a Donna Summers song.

Perth porkfest crowned ULTIMATE BACON SARNIE

A quick word for the BLT

Tomatoes are about over for the year at latitude 38 N, and without fresh tomatoes, a lot of the soul goes out of the bacuon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. But it's a great sandwich when tomatoes are in season.

'It is absolute b*ll*cks that contractors aren't committed'

that depends

"as employers seek more flexible workers"

Gee, yoga classes don't help?

Uncle Sam likes to hire contractors, on the Charlie Sheen theory of paying the talent not to show up but to go away. It does not bring them in by ones and twos, where the overhead of managing the payment would be too much, but in whole large contracts. The quality of staff varies greatly, but the level of commitment I would say, is all over the place, rising to "it's my job to do and I want to do it well" and falling to "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work."

Hackers leak 120,000 student records in raid on world's top unis

splendid

Next let's protest against the cost of health care by leaking patients' records.

McFlurry McMisdemeanour costs Welsh lass McJob

Or worse yet

Life imprisonment with a McDonalds diet. That should teach Mounsey and his like.

Politico's locked room mystery Linux install crime solved

Does Richard Stallman have an alibi?

He is about the only person one hears speaking of the "open-source operating system GNU/Linux".. (Though maybe he dislikes the expression "open-source"--I forget.

Freetard-idol rock star Trent Reznor gives up, signs to major label

Suggestion

The Register's style book should ban the word "freetard", not to avoid offending the easily offended, but to limit editorializing in (what I take to be) news stories. Leave that and "fanboi" to the commentariat, which will surely keep them current.

Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us

back again!

Those of us who are old, jaded, and American enough may remember that the motion picture industry tried to levy a tax on VCR tapes about 30 years ago now. One of the first big name, bipartisan lobbying firms laid out a detailed, eloquent, and (I thought) unconvincing case for this.

Ig Nobels 2012: Physics of ponytails, chimp arse-cognition and more

Re: "...actually, that is a kind of useful thing to know" I am absolutely certain that monkeys.....

Before or after an uninstructed colonoscopist has exploded it?

Climate sceptic? You're probably a 'Birther', don't vaccinate your kids

Re: Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is an ignorant idiot or a political hack

"The Italian legal system is working on this today."

Does one require rigorous biomedical training to join the Italian bar, then?

Juries: The only reason ANYONE understands patent law AT ALL

juries and jargon

Juries are an excellent political tool: to pervert justice, you have to corrupt a jury pool rather than just the bench. As an administrative tool, they have their drawbacks, for criminal and civil trials both. The noted American judge Learned Hand said that in his worst nightmares he was the defendant in a trial by jury.

Jargon has its uses in many fields. Where would techies be with "normalize", "initialize", "parameter" and innumerable other such words that have a clear meaning in their context but are barbarous to the outsider's ear? Certainly it can be abused.

Gigantic Roman bathtime-fun mosaic found under Turkish field

" proving that the ancient Empire's influence reached far into the area"

Golly, next they'll be finding squash courts in Pakistan. Who'd a thunk it?

Mobile phones still failing to kill people – Nordic scientists

Re: Mobile phones do kill...

Or at least injure. We all remember the tragic case of Tiger Woods.

Reg hack uncovers perfect antidote to internet

Re: Bah!

It appears that the french drains into which the downspouts of our house's gutters once discharged did run to a dry well. Now, this is in Washington, DC, which is not an arid zone. We are up on Piedmont, with some slope to the ground.

The iPHONE 5 UNDERMINES western DEMOCRACY: 5 reasons why

"Taking technology advice from someone like Stephen Fry is like making decisions by rolling dice or consulting a witch-doctor. Capitalism and democracy, systems which allow important choices to be made by many people rather than just a few, cannot function if this sort of behaviour becomes too widespread."

Don't watch many commercials, do you? Or, for example, actresses testifying on the effects of pesticides before US congressional committees.

Australian tabloid decides to fight trolls ... with trolls

Not above Australian law.

Will there be a kangaroo court?

UK: 'We're legally bound to arrest Mr Assange'

Wow

1. Is he going to read the Harfleur speech from Henry V before he charges on in?

2. Do the Ecuadorans possess a cow and a catapult?

Yahoo! bureau! chief! sacked! for! Mitt Romney! racism! jibe!

Re: Hoooooo-lee Shitttttttt

Al-Qaeda is indeed a trifling threat. But you diminish the force of your argument when you put "Amerika" so spelled and the adverb "honestly" in the same sentence. You do get marks for using "believe" rather than "think", though.

dogs on cars

I was a number of long car trips across the Midwest back in the day, and never saw anybody with a dog carrier on top of the car. I'm not saying nobody did it, just that I never saw it.

Middlesbrough culinary giants battle for parmo supremacy

coram non judice, surely

I thought that by El Reg's rules, such matters could be judged only in Spain.

Don't download that app: US presidential candidates will STALK you with it

"[the applications] request permissions, access to services and data and capabilities beyond their core mandate."

Not unlike successful candidates, then.

I suspect that the social networking/mobile app thing is more effective in amusing developers and would be political movers and shakers than in actually affecting the election.

WikiLeaks haters launch DDoS assault on Russia Today

Re: How odd

The US law enforcement agencies are now and then put to considerable expense to defend the free speech rights of various nogoodniks: the Klan; the weird dirtbags who protest at servicemembers' funerals; etc. etc. Hell, various Iranian nationals used to protest in Washington in support of their countrymen who had taken our embassy staff hostage, and none that I heard of were harmed.

And I am no canon lawyer, but can you "desecrate" a cathedral by singing inappropriate songs in it? If so, I have a few choirmasters to turn in.

SHOCK: Poll shows Americans think TSA is highly effective

Polls

Now and then, in a weak moment, I succumb and answer a pollster's questions--sometimes about media, sometimes about schools, sometimes about plans for IT spending. My usual priority is to get it done and off the phone, and my experience leaves me skeptical about tech news articles about the umpteen percent of shops that have virtualization plans including thus and such for 2012, not to say those that give Americans' opinions of schools & the media. So I would not put much weight on this poll.

As for TSA: I find the staff not impolite, probably more polite than the many of the BOFHes in the readership would be if they had to deal with the public 40 hours per week. I doubt many of them turned down job offers from Google or Goldman Sachs to deal with plastic trays full of fragrant shoes. It is Congress and the Executive that are responsible for this nonsense.

Privacy snafu as TOPLESS Mark Zuckerberg picture leaks online

Re: I'd like to see

And a notable underwater archaeologist, I recall. Are the judo skills as well attested as amphora-retrieving ones?

British radio telescope genius Sir Bernard Lovell dies

"the observatory was used to ... provide early warning of a missile attack from the cold communist state."

First, I know that we Americans tend to ignore British news, but which missile attack was this? Second, I know that this was in cooler decade or four, but 'cold communist state'? Was the system expected to function in the summer?

as I recall

The Mossad has traditionalists, and sticks to plumbum.

Bill Gates, Harry Evans and the smearing of a computer legend

Re: Where would we be now?

As one who has just lost several days trying to chase down some sort of funkiness in the CIFS world, I am no Microsoft apologist. Yet I am curious to know what this wonderful machine is. Does it run a Unix variant? Those have true multitasking, but their security models have been pretty flaky at times. Does it run Multics? That was pretty secure, but not invulnerable, and I don't know it had every been shoe-horned into PC factor back when QDOS was out there. OS/2? That I can't comment on--I've known users who thought very well of it.

I don't quite follow.

The nearest thing to a smear of Kildall I can see is in the reference to the circumstances of his death. I will say that

"Breaking this statement down, I determined that “jnz” was a standard program assembly language statement for “jump if not zero."

is hardly worth breaking out the deerstalker and pipe for.

Wikipedia collapses threatening the very fabric of civilisation

breaking out

I first read one of the tweets as "facts are breaking out." before I looked again and saw it said "fights".

I don't spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, but find that it can be handy now and then.

Why women won't apply for IT jobs

Re: well

We'd need to see income and loan statements to judge that, wouldn't we? The hairdresser could be a bad week ahead of the repo man.

Or actually, maybe we don't need to. I am the fool. After about the 10th posting on women in IT at El Reg and a few more at Hacker News, I could write the specimen entries for all points of view, and throw in the typos for the ones that need them. Yet here I am.

New target for 419 fraudsters: Struggling 'weak' banks

foomf

"You'd expect bankers to be wise to this sort of shenanigan". Anyone who remembers some of the classic S&L shenanigans of the 1980s or for that matter Countrywide Mortgage in the oughts, will understand that the Lads from Lagos are up against the experts.

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Bauernfrühstück v bacon sarnie

Brown sauce?

Neither "HP" nor "brown sauce" conveys anything to [most of] us on this side of the Atlantic.

MYSTERY as six people SURVIVE deadly VAMPIRE BAT BITES

survivor

Back in the 1980s, a Marine out hunting in Quantico, Virginia, contracted rabies from a raccoon he had found--there are a lot of rabid raccoons in this area. He was in a bad way for weeks, but to everyone's surprise did survive, and as I recall the story made a full recovery.

Using Facebook causes less eco damage than farting, figures show

Have they run this by the bean counters?

I don't use Facebook, but on the other hand. ...

Military-grade IBM kit senses love, hate in Wimbo fans' tweets

mil-spec

So, does Obama unleash Predator drones if he finds tweeters hating on the US team?

Beeb stuffs $21tn into Olympic-sized swimming pools

dollars per second

Shouldn't we we pro-rate for inflation?

Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers

Re: no emacs users?

Oops, you're right: C-x, k.

"Knowledge is in the fingers' --- Thoreau.

Oracle hurls MySQL at Microsoft database wobblers

Re: It depends, but usually MySQL is the choice

I prefer Oracle, mostly because I prefer PL/SQL to T-SQL, but it takes very little time to get Apache on Linux talking to a SQL Server database.

Iranian nuke plants rocked in midnight 'heavy metal blast'

Must be the US

I remember that when Noriega holed up at the papal legate's, the US forces played bad rock & roll at high volume until he came out with his hands up (and fingers no doubt in his ears).

Austrians drool over 15th-century jub buckets

Who knew?

I'd have voted for Achilles or Thor as the archetypal dominant male figure in Western Lit, but evidently it's Captain Underpants, for whom see Wikipedia, or the volumes themselves.