Posts by Alan 6

Hybrid CD vinyl unites warring tribes

Frank Sidebottom

in his days with the Freshies used to put Spectrum games on the b-sides of his singles.

With a shitty Dixons turntable you got the play the game once before the paper-clip stylus wrecked the grooves...

Running time

If memory serves, and I can't be arsed checking discogs at the moment, Peter Gabriel's Biko was the longest 45rpm 7" at 8' 12", followed by the little know Sidewalk Talk by Jellybean Benitez w/ Madonna on vocals at 7' 59"

I'm sure some train spotter will put me right though...

Nokia C5

Off-line

Without Wi-Fi is it possible to download map data onto a PC for transfer to an SD card. As a PAYG user I wouldn't like to have to top up my phone before each use of Ovi-maps...

Owner of Russia's biggest breasts sues over airline buffeting

Why work for a living

when you can just keep suing for compensation...

Want nips like church coat pegs? Click here

Advert

Perhaps an advert for these could use The Happy Song by Shane MacGowan's old group The Nipple Erectors...

Cheshire lass, 8, wins Playmobil vid challenge

Quite simply stunning

Much better than my super 8 recreation of Bullitt with a Scalextric when I was 12...

Death row inmate claims allergy to lethal injection

must contain letters and/or digits.

Whilst I strongly oppose the death penalty, I do feel that if it is lawful in their jurisdiction then they should perhaps use whatever method the killer used in the first place, so they get a dose of their own medicine so to speak...

Overzealous Orange cuts off customer, still bills

BT

BT once cut me off by accident, they should have cut off a line in Reading (01707) but cut off my line in Rochdale instead (01706).

When I complained they said that I'd died and a relative had requested that the line be cut off.

I explained that as I was still very much alive I still had a use for a phone line, at which point BT said they'd reconnect me as soon as I coughed up £100+vat for reconnection.

I promptly contacted the local radio station, who coincidentally had a BT person on their phone-in that morning. I had a working phone that afternoon and a £50 credit on my account...

Virgin Media downed by thick Leeds 'copper' crooks

Copper price down

Over the last couple of months the scrap value of copper has been falling, partly due the the vast amount of stolen copper on the market...

Polaroid enthusiasts unveil new instant film

Nudge Nudge

when I worked in retail we always looked suspiciously at people buying polaroid films. you just know they were being used for "candid" photography, Know what I mean, nudge nudge

Man could face prison over six second 'extreme porn' clip

Watch out

They're busy tracking anyone who downloaded "Two Girls One Cup" because if 6 seconds of CGI tiger porn counts as extreme god knows what category that video fits in...

Scots unleash world's strongest beer

respect

I notice you missed this line from the BBC story, which they've now pulled, but it's been retained in The Huffington Post's story...

"It is important that you be careful with this beer and show it the same amount of sceptical, tentative respect you would show an international chess superstar, clown or gypsy."

Think Aussie election rules are draconian? Look at the UK's

Radio

Local DJ (and demi-god) James H Reeve used to be taken off air during Elections as he wasn't trusted to keep his well researched and argued left-wing views to himself...

Teletext toddles off as licence taken

Online

I remember visiting www.teletext.co.uk and being really disappointed that it didn't look like the web developer had used a ZX Spectrum to create the page...

Spanish towns vie for nuclear dump prize

I'll bid

I've already got 4 wheelie bins in the back yard, so another one isn't going to be too much of a problem...

TVonics DTR-HV250 DVR

Time Machine

Did you send this box into the past during the review?

Or did you just use screen grabs from another TVonics review last June?

I'm waiting for a HD freeview+ box with built in Blu-ray to replace my ageing Panasonic PVR that's started to breakup when recording long programs, I wonder if TVonics will be looking in this direction when more regions turn on the HD signals...

US mum calls 911 over Grand Theft Auto

He's lucky

Perhaps they should have sent the snow-ball hating Washington cop round - a .38 size hole in the forehead would soon put a stop to his gaming...

Vatican awards self 'unique copyright' on Pope

@Documented?

Actually there are a few mentions of Jesus in various Roman histories.

Suetonius mentions the name 'Chrestus', which is debated whether he actually mean Christ...

Pliny the Younger doesn't mention Christ directly, but shows by his writings that Christianity was already widespread by 110 CE and the Christ was their object of worship.

Thallus attempts to explain the darkness which covered Judea at the time of the crucifixion as a natural event of a eclipse - this is significant because it shows that the details of the crucifixion were widespread enough in the 1st century so that non-Christians would contest them.

Probably the earliest pagan testimony to Jesus was a letter written by Mara bar Saraption to his son. He mentions the Jews killing their 'Wise King'.

One could suppose that he was influenced by Christians, but some of the other things he wrote (that Jesus lives on in his teachings, rather than because of resurection) show that his opinion was formed more by non-Christians.

Tacitus mentioned Christus, who was put to death by Pontius Pilate. Most philologists will admit the authenticity of this passage. Also there are obvious anti-Christian tones, and a failure to mention the ressurection, which makes it implausible to be of Christian origin. Also the importance in this passage is that it mentions that Jesus died under the authority of Pilate, as said in the gospels.

Many rabbinic sources mention Jesus in a more hostile way.

Although Josephus contains some Christian interpolation in it, it cannot be thrown away completely, because the interpolation may only have changed some details and the general tone of that passage. This can be seen because Josephus later on mentions James as Jesus' brother in a way that would assume that he had already talked about Jesus himself (the language he uses presupposes previous knowledge of Jesus.

3 billion have suffered Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody'

@Have you heard...

Bob Dylan has blatantly ripped off Schnitzelbank by The Animaniacs...

Judge Dredd 'Black Box' recorder/spy kit for guns unveiled

Dirty Harry re-write

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself, but thanks to this new Black Box gizmo my onboard computer tells me it's in fact 6, so you're OK.

Legless woman falls onto Boston train tracks

@Andrew Moore

I can't see the YouTube footage, just the two images here, but i would guess the rectangles are part of the Analytics engine in the CCTV software...

NASA hands over $900K for Laser propulsion system

<Witty Title>

Surely this could be done in a few hours by a team from Scrapheap Challenge using nothing more than an old Land Rover and a few bits of angle-iron...

Wallace and Gromit get the Google doodle treatment

No wallace & grommit for me

As I sit here in Rochdale I see Big Bird's legs as part of the Google logo.

For reasons known only to our IT department, our IP address sets us deep in the land of the cheese eating surrender monkeys, so the ggogle.co.fr logo celebrates "40ème anniversaire de Rue Sésame"

Electronic ink: The whole story in black and white

Photoframes

A good colour E-Ink screen would be handy as a digital photoframe. It'll save running them on mains, you'd just need enough juice to change the image now & again...

Amazon coughs $150k to student over lost notes

@WTF?

By doing as you suggest he wouldn't trouser $50k, or whatever his half of the settlement is less his lawyer's "charitable" donation...

Brooke Shields pic exposes real/online rift

Porn vs Art

Just like the furore surrounding Lady Chatterly's Lover only kicked off when the paperback (read plabs) edition was published, this issue only occurs when the so-called child porn is exposed to the gaze of the unwashed masses.

If this picture of Brooke Shields is porn then we'd best burn all of Jock Sturges work, as much of it includes small children in little or no clothing

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=jock+sturges+and+david+hamilton&gbv=2&aq=2&oq=Jock+Sturges (definitely NSFW)

Montblanc punts £14k Mahatma Gandhi pen

@Rafael 1

Get your Buddha Beer here

http://www.luckydrinkco.com/

Freeview website titsup ahead of big retune

<Title>

to be honest, if you can't work out how to retune your friggin freeview box you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a net connected PC...

Google shuts down bank snafu Gmail account

@DavCrav

So you further inconvenience the bank customers because a Court (note Court, not Google) has forced your account to be closed.

If anything should be published on Wikileaks it should be the email address and signature details of the idiot who sent the email...

USB 3.0 webcam streams 1080p video

@AC & Radio

This camera will do 22fps at 1080P, with encoding in the camera

http://www.arecontvision.com/uploads/product_images/9Arecont_Vision_AV3105_0709pdf.pdf

Without a lens it'll set you back a mere £700.

Seeing as this company has increased the resolution and frame rate significantly in a year, I'm sure they'll manage real-time by next year.

<Title>

A high quality, full frame rate, 1080p H264 stream is only about 6mbit/s, so could easily be sent using USB 1.1...

USB supreme court backs Apple in Palm Pre kerfuffle

@ AC 07:33

No, if iTunes was an MS app they'd have been dragged before the supreme court for not letting World + Dog have free & open access.

the answer to all this is simple, stop buying low grade music from iTunes, get it from somewhere that doesn't compress the hell out of the music...

Oz bottle shop falls for 'double your money' scam

@Juliusz

Go back and read the article again - you may then spot that the fraudsters have been charged with just that offence.

The "no fraud committed" comment refers to the idiots who handed over the money thinking they'd get double back...

Swedish military bras burst, melt during 'rigorous exercise'

@Graham Bartlett

"flamethrowers and IEDs aren't generally standard issue on the tennis court"

That would make the average Murray match a little more interesting...

Bus driver becomes Julius Andreas Gimli Arn MacGyver Chewbacka Highlander Elessar-Jankov

Small Print

How small have they had to print to get that name on a bank card....

Cyclists give TV chef a Wikikicking

@IPB

From the highway code Rules for Cyclists Section 66

"never ride more than two abreast, and ride in single file on narrow or busy roads and when riding round bends"

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_069837

Top Chef

I've had a disinct dis-like of James martin for some time, especially as he's from the wrong side of the pennines.

But now I've changed my mind, he's a hero to everyone who's had to wait behind a bunch are sweaty arses riding 4 abreast on narrow lanes talking to each other instead of following the highway code and riding in single file...

Japanese CE firms partner on 'standard' CPU project

mmm

Japanese companies joining to create a computing standard.

Anyone remember MSX? What a great success that was...

Custard Creams can kill: Official

Research

If you get stuck in concrete retrieving a biscuit, is this dilemma caused by the biscuit, the concrete or stupidity?

Where do I apply for funding to find an answer to this question?

Samsung YP-Q2 v. Sony E-series deathmatch

Creative

Have you looked at the new Zen X-Fi 2 yet?

The spec looks pretty impressive, including Flac support.

iPhone rescue girl gets head stuck down bog

ewww

I wouldn't even put my arse near a festival shitter, never mind my head. It's bushes for me every time.

Mind you, I'd rather stick my head down a dunny than own an iPhone...

Google blames Gfail on 'availability' upgrade

Still good reliabilty

I'll qualify this by saying I only check my gmail about 5 or 6 times a day, but since I signed up when it was an early Beta 2004 I've only seen about 5 outages, which makes it way more reliable than the mail service provided by huge globo-corp I work for...

Google applies patch to nasty Chrome vulns

@dave lawless

I think you may need a double layer of foil in your hat...

Up to Date 2

Mine shows as up to date at v3.0.195.6 so why is my beta one version behind Dave 145 - or maybe he is posting from the future...

Government unbans dirty vids but bans 'legal highs'

<Title>

I spent half my life between 1985 & 1988 putting new age certificate stickers on videos and cases all for nothing...

Thatcher, I want those hours back!

Boffins build World's tiniest 'laser'

Never mind sharks

You could mount these babies on frikkin tadpoles...

Want Gmail? Best have your mobile handy

Seriously what is the problem with you people?

Paranoid much?

Google are providing an excellent FREE email service - don't like ads, then don't look at them, or use POP to pick up the mail in Thunderbird then you'll never, ever be exposed to the evil advertising.

Don't want to give them your mobile number, simple, pay a pound for a sim from the local pound shop, use that to receive the sign up code then burn the sim, just in case google can track your whereabouts using the number...

From tracking sex performance to tracking sex offenders...

passion...

Do Apple sell a device to strap the iPhone to your hand whilst you have sex with yourself, because I'm not sure iPhone users ever have to opportunity to have sex whilst someone else is in the room...

WD unfurls 1TB Scorpio

@Rik Hemsley

Read the article again, but this time read it all the way down, then you'll find your answer...

Google kicks Maestro into touch

First Direct

When my Switch / Maestro card was renewed in January First Direct sent me a Visa Debit card instead, maybe Google had forewarned them...