Posts by disgruntled yank

Council spunks '£100k on how to wash your hands' vid

Re: As ridicilous as it may sound...

Actually, I learned this from Thoreau's journals (http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-journal-1837-1861/)... An improved standard of living, as you say, and much excellent reading besides.

Human 4G masts assemble roaming hobonet for pennies

The good news

The good news is that it has this has in now way affected my opinion of ad agencies.

That steady diet of EastEnders is turning her into a shrew

Well, I wonder

Some of toughest women I know come from a class that looks down on soap operas, unless of course they are imported from British television. Some of them don't even watch TV.

Top Gun 2: It's happening - and the choice of star is stirring controversy

Re: Spare me

Well, maybe strutting, too, but mostly those.

Spare me

Bruckheimer and Simpson were the Shakespeare and Marlowe of the ADHD age, makers of movies for those whose attention span was regulated by the speed of a thumb on a TV remote. (Seductions at Hollywood speed; courts of inquiry that take about two weeks; etc.) And I greatly fear that hundreds of young men who could not carry a tune in a bushel basket will again be butchering "That Loving Feeling" in American barracks across the world.

I must say, though, that it was a movie well suited to Tom Cruise's abilities.

Election hacked, drunken robot elected to school board

Hate to tell you, but

In 2006, Adrian Fenty ran for mayor of Washington, DC, and was elected, on a platform that included a takeover of the city schools from the school board. By late 2007, the school board had effectively no function at all. It was a pretty humble start for ROTM.

GPS glitch leads perp-pursuing cops to wrong house

Questions. First, 500 pounds is the price of how many iPhones?

And why did they need to break the door down? So the guy wouldn't flush the iPhone?

Microsoft tripped up by Blighty's techie skills gap

Re: Re: Teach how to think

"The problem with teaching people how to think is that it only teaches the same approach to solve problems so the solutions (if any can be found) tend to look the same - for better or for worse."

An interesting definition of "to think".

Hey Commentard! - or is that Commenter?

Re: Re: "most Brits find it hard to understand why "Jap" is a racial slur in the US."

Context, my friend, context.

Of course, if one (not you) wishes to pretend that there is no such thing as context, and that there is no mood but the indicative, then nothing at all can be offensive.

Re: It's not just retard

I would hazard a guess that you are wrong. What about all those wizards and buzzards out there?

Russian search biz grabs Twitter's fire hose, sprays everywhere

Firehouse, or fire hose?

Or maybe hydrant?

Sony 'fesses to Whitney Houston price hike 'error'

Re: Re: Not sure why people complain of ethics now

One can live comfortably off inherited wealth and damage oneself with booze and drugs. Does the name William Burroughs ring any bells in the UK? (Not that he died young--he just looked like an embalmed corpse for about 50 years.)

Celebrity and odd hours can make the vulnerable more vulnerable. Yet are we going to blame Scribners for short life and unfortunate end of F. Scott Fitzgerald?

HELLISH LOVE INFERNO TO SWEEP LONDON

Is London still standing?

The morning paper only arrived on my porch a moment ago.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

LSL

"Lost Wages" is a nickname for Las Vegas, a city that must have had a pretty fair density of lounge lizards when the species flourished--maybe it still does.

Years ago I worked with some computer operators who were finding their way through the game. About that time, one of them came up with a 1970s "Playboy". It later turned out that he had taken it from somebody's desk elsewhere in the building. As he said, "Larry would've done it."

Barack Obama: Bland, predictable and cheesy ... on Spotify

The Hill is Alive with What?

Hold on, here. Counting only voting members, and not the delegates from Guam, the District of Columbia, etc., that's 535 persons. I would quit regarding virtually every as a gross exaggeration somewhere around 500. Even allowing that they aren't going to be listing "Dogville" or "Last Year in Marienbad", there ought to be a fair number of votes for "Patton", "Stagecoach", "Miracle on 34th Street", "Wonderful Life", etc.

Did this newspaper editorial appear in The Onion, perhaps? A lot of the hard-core "Sound of Music" fans one encounters these days seem to have nun fetishes.

Penang fraud gang 'ringleader' snared by Taiwan police

narrowly interpreted

is it perhaps the New Straits Times?

Newt Gingrich wants Moon to be 51st US state

why not?

If Newt's riding the rocket, I've got $20 to kick in toward the fuel.

Americans in middle age or older may remember the one-term senator Harrison Schmitt, who had been to the moon with Apollo 17. He was not an engaging speaker, as I recall, but as a geologist he had realistic notions of the economic prospects of moon colonization--one needs to distinguish "mineral" from "ore", he said. But maybe he was too tied to 50-year-old technologies.

Juror jailed for looking up rape defendant on Google

She was told

And now the state has to pay for another trial. Also, if her grasp of spoken English is not so good, why is she teaching psychology in the UK?

Banana war: Velvet Underground shoots holes in Apple bag

cool

Can I be there when he tries to repossess Mike Tyson's tattoo?

US killer spy drone controls switch to Linux

Thanks, DOD

I've been waiting for somebody to provide incentives for Linux virus writers. Time to tighten things down a bit, or maybe move to BSD.

Kids should be making software, not just using it - Gove

revolutionizing IT as we know it

It has occurred to me many times that if education could be accomplished by mission statements, the US would put Finland, Singapore, etc. to shame. I'm glad to see that that the UK is keeping up with us in this department.

Darth Vader dies peacefully in hospital

Umm

""The sword is the ultimate weapon. It’s not so threatening shooting at someone 20 or 30 paces away or while hiding behind things. When you get into a sword fight, you’re standing toe-to-toe with someone who’s trying to kill you and you’re looking him in the eye - now that’s thrilling."

This is Extreme Fencing? I don't remember body bags at the Olympic games, or for that matter hearing of much use of cutlasses in the Royal Marines of the 1940s.

But all respect to somebody who was very good at what he did. Too bad he's not around to take a saber (light or otherwise) to the NY Times obit writer who described his service as "a sailor in the Royal Marines".

Boffins drill into human language by terrifying chimps with vipers

outstanding

I wonder if I can get funding to try the experiment in executive board meetings....

Solicitors from hell website unplugged by libel judge

clearly, sir, you are a student of architecture

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tugendhat_House.

"Tugendhat" looks as if it ought to be a cognate of the German "Tugendheit", approximately "virtuousness".

Parody is illegal, say barmy bureaucrats

actually

I just upvoted this. Yet it seems to me that most of who read "You are old, Father William" or "I passed by the garden" really don't read them as parody. I certainly didn't at 10, or whenever I read them first. And I think that if we read them for the parody, the interest would be as dead as it is in the poems parodied. Does Isaac Watts still get a look in outside the occasional hymnal? How many Carroll buffs have read as many lines of "Hiawatha" as they have of "Hiawatha's Photographing"?

What, Me Worry?

Would I get in trouble for bringing a copy of Mad Magazine into the UK? Or William Zaranka's "The Brand X Anthology of Poetry"?

Jedi light-sabre beats Taser in Oregon parking-lot fracas

What would you do without the Americans?

To feel superior to, that is.

Somebody called the police because a person either intoxicated or insane was harassing people at the store. Now, he might've been tiny and frail, but he doesn't look it in the picture. So what should the cops do when discussion fails?

I'll add that according to the linked story the picture was taken during a September booking at the county jail--Mr. Canterbury seems to have some history with the police.. TNow, of course this could be a case of the Portland cops persecuting Jedis for their religion. If the UK considers it a cause for political asylum, I've got a $20 bill to contribute for his plane fare.

Whitehall Post-Its, Ministers' GMail to come under FOIA?

why?

"If the bureaucrats don't like something, like the Digital Economy Act for example, then it gets kicked into touch, and the law is not implemented."

Why FOI? The US approach would be to haul people up in front of a congressional committee, which really doesn't need FOI--the committees can issue subpoenas. Hasn't the parliament some equivalent power?

Virginia ponders tax breaks for (dead) human space flights

they the peeps

The only person I remember to have his ashes shipped off into space was Timothy Leary, who was hardly the sort I can imagine the Virginia legislature regarding as a role model. On the other hand, paying taxes has never been popular in Virginia (see: Jefferson; Henry; Washington), so perhaps any old excuse will do.

REVEALED: People write things on Twitter, Media

I hope to live to see it.

Someday the expression "perfect storm" will disappear, or at least take on an obsolete look.. That day cannot come too soon.

Iran displays video footage of captured US spy drone

Britons...

A remark like that I might regard as reasonable from a Swiss. From a Briton, I'm force to fall back on--I can never remember whether it was Clive or Hastings, but certainly one of those noted sovereignty-respecters--and say

Considering your opportunities, I am not astonished at your moderation.

Busty Ohio mannequin survives assassination attempt

which idiot?

Tessel or the shooter?

Mythbusters cannonball ‘myth-fires’

Wording

I'm not sure I'd use the word "shot" here.

building codes

Is it the prevalent notion in the UK that houses should be built to withstand cannon fire? I had the impression that the War of the Roses demonstrated the difficulty of doing so.

Alec Baldwin kicked off plane for playing with his phone

I always wondered

Why America is bankrupt. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin.

‘Blogger not a journalist’ says Oregon court

She who is her own lawyer...

Without reading more of the decision it is hard to make sense of this all. However, suppose that I were to write on line that The Register's hacks eat bean sprouts, wear Mormon underwear, and use IBM 3270 green-screen terminals, and they were then to haul me into court for defamation. It would be up to me to prove that I have evidence to back up my statements. Saying "a little bird told me" might not impress the jury. Saying "an inside source told me, but I swore a mighty oath not to disclose his name, and I'm a journalist so I don't have to" is not significantly different.

Shield laws are not enacted to cover such cases, but to keep journalists from being held in contempt of court when they refuse to disclose sources' names.

Artists craft the ultimate iPhone fanboi holiday gift

Cornucopia?

It's time to pick this up and run with it. Accessorize with a helmet to which one can attach two of these for the Viking look. Then write an app to synchronize the iThangs, and you're off.

Navy training mine washes ashore on Miami Beach

live?

Live, but not as explosive as a regular mine? Given the incompressibility of water, at all explosive does not sound like a good thing for the divers the Navy is training.

Snowbound Alaskan survives on frozen beer

planning

His beer selection seems to be in line with the rest of his planning.

Boffin's bot spots red light jumpers before they kill

outstanding

This way you train the red-light runners that new and improved cars will make way for them.

PayPal founder helps steer super geek cruiser

throwback

In Raymond Chandler's <i>Farewell, My Lovely</i>, there is a gambling boat moored outside the three-mile limit off Long Beach. (Well, Bay City in the book.)

James Bond savages the Kardashians

the forum, though

Using GQ as your medium to complain about anyone's idiocy is like using Sumo Monthly to complain about John Goodman's figure.

Fahrenheit 451 published as Bradbury finally succumbs to ebooks

So, this would be

Cyber Montag?

Rock star physicist Cox: Neutrinos won't help us cheat time

who?

I thought that Brian May was only rock-star physicist out there.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

Maybe

Maybe because he would have obstructed passenger access to the toilets and crew access to the toilets and galley. And if sudden turbulence were to cause the unsecured to lose footing, better it be a comparatively svelte 200-pounder. Would you want the 400-pounder to fall onto you? American football players have such things happen, but they are padded, trained, and themselves bulked up to withstand it.

Huge PDP-11 in a lorry: How I drove computers into schools

don't know about trailers

A guy I shared a house with years ago had been a computer operator at a base in Vietnam. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was a 1401 he tended--I think he was running payroll or other personnel applications. As far as I know, the only danger he ran was from MPs, officers, and unpleasant infections.

Coders are creatives too: Where's our love?...

unsatisfactory

Is this supposed to butter up a readership still smarting from Dominic Connor's thrashings? If so, it could use some work.

In particular, the author could distinguish different sorts of design, say the one "make the cover mauve" from the one that draws up UI guidelines. He could also compare the salaries for graphic designer to those for programmers, and make very sure that he's not comparing a PFY PHP newbie to the principal at a design shop. And furthermore,

"Our society is moving from one in which the educated took pride in knowing how the world worked to a more blinkered place; today, it’s about how you feel."

And this would have been when, and for whose definition of educated? if the latter means "having college degrees", perhaps that is so. Yet I can remembers hordes years ago getting the diploma without knowing squat about anything in particular. I didn't go to a great school, but evidence suggests that such things happened elsewhere.

"Granted, in the UK today it's hard to find many under-forties who wouldn't be considered alcoholics in the US..."

Well, if you do your research in pubs I suppose that might be the case. Props to you for an engineer's precision of statement.

"It’s not just about reward – self-perception of status rarely hinges on salary."

Perhaps, but you might want to check with Mr. Connor on this one.

Man faces prison after enormous red chopper panics woman

pity

Akron used to be the heart of the American rubber industry. You'd think that the cops, if only out of nostalgia, would be sympathetic to creative uses of the same.

Gates: Novell are sore losers, Word trounced WordPerfect

don't know

I don't know about any technical shenanigans. However, I do recall that WordPerfect 6, the first one written for Windows, was pretty bad. I am not a fast typist, and I could get ahead of the cursor.

Attention swingbellies: Pizza sauce is a healthy vegetable

No, not really

Somebody raised a hypothetical question, and somebody else answered it distractedly.