Posts by Christos Georgiou

Hard luck lads, todger size DOES matter: Official

Re: Isn't the cost of your car inversly proportional to the size of your penis?

Lack of car could suggest fullness of penis; a.k.a he might be a dick ;)

Public told to go to hell, name Pluto's two new moons

Re: Unfortunate that...

Just follow some transliteration rules, and you're set:

Bophis and Piphys

Now, a quick edit in Wikipedia introducing these relatively unknown minor Hades-related deities *just* before the committee verifies the entry, and Bobus is your uncle.

Microsoft: Old Internet Explorer is terrible and 'we want to help'

Re: time to troll

Pissing off in such a few lines both Opera and Google+ users at the same time

You mean Sam and George? Use their names, it's ok. They both don't mind.

Squillions of bytes in one cup of DNA

Re: The open questions are:

- How does one apply copy protection to that?

Ban sex.

Prudes and copyright holders unite!

Yes, hundreds upon hundreds of websites CAN all be wrong

Comprehension

One of the reasons I decided to learn English on my own (I had French in school) was to understand the songs I liked. My name is a giveaway, but in general, languages born and spoken around the Mediterranean sea (or the same latitude in general) have mostly comprehensible lyrics; you know, balance between vowels and consonants, since the closer to a pole, the more closed your mouth tends to be (more consonants), while the closer to the equator, you want to expel more heat (more vowels).

Anyway, I remember a summer vacation when I was 12-13, and we were at a camping site and next to us were two British ladies in their 50s. We became friendly, and at some time, I found the courage to ask for their help: “listen, this is a Dire Straits song that I can't understand the lyrics at some point, would be so kind to help?” They agreed. They listened. They couldn't tell what were the lyrics. One of the ladies explained to me: “You know, we don't always understand what the singers say.”

*That* was a revelation to me; I wasn't (that :) stupid!

Later on, I discovered that many LP records had sleeves with the lyrics in (bye bye cassette tapes!) Of course, even then there were other difficulties (“sings a streetsuss serenade”? “helluva start”? or the damned handwriting on “the Wall”...) explaining what it is you were reading.

Music. The world needs more music. Cheers and a happy new year to everyone.

'We are screwed!' Fonts eat a bullet in Microsoft security patch

Re: I'm sold

I have completely replaced Arial with the on-purpose same metrics Liberation Sans, with much better glyphs to my eye. And for Unicode coverage, DejaVu Sans is great ( http://dejavu-fonts.org/wiki/Main_Page )

ScanJet sings number one hit

How many autographs to a cartridge?

Too many fans requesting autographs and the band goes out of business.

Curiosity parks for a day, looks back in wonder

Re: Question?

Earth and Mars are (more or less) on the same plane, so it's easy to use the same “north” and “south” regardless of magnetic fields. “East” and “west” follow.

Steve Jobs memorial brings out tech titans... and Bono

Graham Chapman's Eulogy

I believe this is the top, and nothing could ever beat it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek

LucasArts Day of the Tentacle

Favourite puzzle of DotT

How is a guy supposed to make it rain?

Actually, the solution was quite obvious to me, as I bet it was for countless other guys, given the state of the cart outside. I laughed very hard.

The Dig was a great game, too, which nobody mentioned. That one was the most movie-like adventure experience I had. I believe the original idea was used for some movies later on.

Gotta love POSIX systems

stty intr ^@

dosbox

stty intr ^c

IPv4 addresses priced at $4 on new trading site

Which Dr. Martin v. Löwis is it?

The one who also is/was a core Python developer? A well known member of the PSU, I pres

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester

Far better than almost all Hollywood scripts.

Wanted: Nude female web coders

I need my eyes checked.

> Wish their website looked as good as their offices.

For a moment I thought you wrote “as good as their orifices” and I wondered whether you saw a different picture than the one I saw in the article.

Man found guilty of battery after ejaculating in co-worker's drink

“I just found semen in my bottle!”

…says the poor employee.

So the specialist colleague offers: “Here, let me taste it. Mmm, definitely someone from Sales.”

Naked cemetery man was simply photographing orbs

Nude man sitting on a tree…

…and having chocolate-covered cotton as a snack, I presume.

Perhaps we should decorate him.

Leslie Nielsen dead at 84

Greatest line

–Who are you, and how did you get in here?

–I'm a locksmith… and I'm a locksmith.

Ridley Scott talks up 'nasty' Alien prequel

Seemingly forgotten fact

Scott did not make a tetralogy (or trilogy with four movies so far, RIP DNA; and no, I don't need an explanation of what trilogy means). Scott created a fine thriller: “Alien”. Then Cameron made a fine action movie: “Aliens”. Fincher made a sequel which I do not currently remember whether I liked it or not: “Aliens³”. Then Jeunet made a movie which I remember I disliked.

So, Scott has no obligations to the world regarding the rest of the movies in the saga.

Men at Work appeal Down Under plagiarism ruling

Now's the time to deal with thieves!

Then how much Scorpions should pay to Lynyrd Skynyrd (rather, their record company) for the "homage" they paid to the 1971 “Simple Man” by recording their “Always Somewhere” in 1979?

Men at Work swiped Down Under riff

Money to be made

Hello, all. I would like some information as to where can I buy the rights for the French national anthem. I'm thinking Beatles and “All you need is love”, here.

I'd ask for the rights to the anthem of the USA, too (think Hendrix), but let's take the long road step by step.

Zaphod Beeblebrox home sun 'shrinking', may have blown up

Re: Cosmic neighbours

"So Zaphod and Ford live next door to Kodos and Kang?"

As much as Zaphod and Ford live "next door" to Tom & Jerry. It's a further 250 to 450 lightyears to Rigel.

Fedora 11 leaps into filesystem unknown

"First seen on ZFS"

Actually, not. One filesystem I know that uses delayed allocation is XFS (much older than ext4 and ZFS) as can testify anyone who was running on SGI machines that happened to lose power while not protected by UPSes… I'm sure other big-iron filesystems did delayed allocation too.

Strumpets strut Spain's Street View

Internet queries

I'll be waiting for the unification of Wolfram Alpha and Google, so that when I type "Where's the good stuff?", the uber-search engine understands exactly what "stuff" I mean and will point me to the nearest provider, with photos and all.

That will be the real Deep Thought (DNA had to rephrase the Throat part, and so will Google and Wolfram). Hopefully results will come faster than the original imaginary one.

Nokia adopts LGPL for Qt popularity

@Rick Stockton

I'm sure the Anonymous Coward knows very well what the LGPL is. I'm also sure that you missed why they "misspelled" it as LGLP. I believe you should re-read more carefully the (already mentioned!) first paragraph of the article, and then re-read the AC answer.

That said, your answer is useful for others that might not know what the LGPL is.

Supersonic fighters could snuff out hurricanes

The reason for the patent

They know their method has no practical value. They just wanted to apply for the patent before Hollywood's Twister 2 arrives at screens worldwide.

Forcefields will guard Mars ships from solar ion storms

“Deep space”?

How on Earth (off Earth, perhaps) can interplanetary space be called “deep space”?

DoS attack reveals (yet another) crack in net's core

I am not sure, but…

…does this have anything to do with send/receive windows and their buffers?

Ubuntu zoo preps for new arrival

Re: Alphabetic Alliteration

// The big question is what follows Zonked Zebra?

Spreadsheet column notation:

Aahing Aardvark.

Sumerians cracked world's oldest joke

Re: How do you make a dog sound like a cat?

And how do you make a cat sound like a dog?

Pour pure alcohol on the cat and throw it a lit match.

What does a blonde put behind her earlobes to become more attractive?

Her ankles.

Why the average woman prefers to be pretty rather than intelligent?

Because the average man sees better than he thinks.

And, to make my comment relate to this "IT news" site, the old but so very true:

-How many HW engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

-None: "We'll fix it in software"

-How many SW engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

-None: "We'll mention it in the documentation"

-How many doc writers does it take to change a light bulb?

-None: "The user will work it out"

Prius hybrid to get rooftop solar panel

Don't be harsh on the Chris guy.

Y'know, the one who said that a Lexus reaches 0-62 in 3.5″. He didn't specify the speed unit. Although a moderately intelligent reader will automatically assume it's 62 mph (since 62 mph ≈ 100 km/h), I believe that 0-62 km/h is easily achieved in 3.5 sec by a, say, GS450h.

Mine's the one with the conversion tables on its back.

CherryPal out sweetens Apple with 2W, ultra-cheap PC

Fit PC

I own a Fit PC ( www.fit-pc.com ). A bought another for a friend. A company I know bought several units, because they are selling haematological analysers, and since they have to sell PCs too to run the analyser SW, they prefer to *fully include* the PC inside the analyser enclosure; yes, it also runs Windows. Mine runs Gentoo, heavily customised for my needs, and 198MiB of its 256 MiB RAM are still left for disk caching.

Discoverer of LSD dead at 102

Obligatory Joke

-Grandma, did you see a little pill I left on the kitchen counter?

-Forget the pink pill! Did you see the blue dragons?

Google mistakes search for teleportation

Re: I for one...

IBM WEBSITE SEARCH RESULTS:

This web page intentionally left blank.

Wife rings up £11,000 downloading bill

@Adam Reiniger

She puts her knickers back *on* because, obviously, the rest of the day she *doesn't* wear them (due to the bill you already mentioned).

Spammers crack Gmail Captcha

spamservices.google.com

Now in beta!

Polish IT worker calculates exact speed of snail mail

Re: There is an RFC for Avian ..

Since you're doing it, do it correctly :)

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html

Last.fm unveils 'free global jukebox'

Re: Easier for pirates?

About the bitrate of last.fm tunes: I am almost sure (ie I don't have any hard evidence :) that it's 128 kbit MP3. But they do need to replaygain their tracks. Users (like I) who have a broader music taste that spans decades have to fiddle constantly with their volume knob.

MS to bundle 'broken' random number tool in Vista SP1

re: Think of the terrorists!!!!!

I am almost sure that Cameron was being sarcastic. I just wanted to add my €0.02 by saying that whenever someone next to me says in a straight face "If you're innocent you got nothing to hide!", I usually reply, "yes, but when I send emails to friends with my opinion about you, you wouldn't the rest of the world to know what a complete arsehole you are, isn't it?"

Gollum to play Haddock in Tintin

Re: Asterix + Motion capture

The first Astérix movie, as I perceived the movies, wasn't much to the spirit of the comic book; nice images of the village, fun, but that's it. The second one was closer to the spirit (mixing today's issues in the story, e.g. bad GSM phone reception, references to other movies or cultural items, puns etc). But that's just me.

BOFH: Spreading the festive cheer

Great, great BOFH

Last episode and this one reminded me of good old BOFH. Welcome back, Simon, whatever the distraction was (and it lasted for years!), it seems it is no more.

Stuff string theory - try E8 to explain the universe

If they're 248 dimensions...

...then probably the group should be called F8 rather than E8. (I won't add the necessary prefix to make it more obvious, although I just helped).

The first rule of Reg Club is...

re: Rule 8 is wrong

Anonymous Coward said:

“to supplement the rule "you don't talk about reg club" I'm surprised noone offered the real rule 8, which should be

"If it's your first time at reg club, you have to fight" ”

No, rule 8 is correct. You are wrong. The existing rule 8 is actually a paraphrase of your version: "If it's your time commenting at reg club, you have to flight."

BOFH: You think you know a guy...

All the way up to 11

ben edwards: I'm betting that it's a Spinal Tap reference. Simon is old enough to know.

And for the SGI Irix workstation users out there reading the Reg (all 3 of them), open a shell and run:

audiopanel -spinaltap

NY probes Facebook over pedophile controls

Pedophile?

I thought it was paedophile. Or pædophile. Or is it Peter File?

Wrinkly, faulty geology uncovered on the moon

correct, not geology

Actually, 'selenology' is more successful than 'lunology':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenology

Puddles on Mars, aerospace boffin claims

Dust Devils cleaning the solar panels?

The correct answer was clearly given in http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20041107&mode=classic , as many of you perhaps remember.

Belgian bj politico reneges on election pledge

Seems like the farce continues

IANAJ (apanese), neither do I speak Japanese, but I:

a. notice that the girl simulates licking of female genitalia

b. assume that the subtitles little have to do with what she says

Hotmail is dead! Long live Hotmail!

GMAIL's POP3 is broken?!

Actually, when in GMail, there's a link strangely called 'Settings'. In that settings page, there's an obscure "When messages are accessed with POP " setting, which can randomly be set to "keep GMail's copy in the Inbox".

Weird stuff, computing.