Posts by not'[e-mail]

Cartoon Law goes live

Well that's us up Pooh Alley then.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X (aka FSX, Flight Sim. 10 etc) is proud of the fact that the scenery is as realistic and accurate as possible, adn there are loads of after-market addons with photographic scenery taken by real aeroplanes and satellites - and then there's Google Earth, all the online map and route-finding apps that anyone with Internet access can get at...

I often wondered how architects and the emergency services got away with having information of use to terrorists... guess I'll never find out - I can't ask, or I'll be in possession of info etc.

Oh, excuse me, there's a knock at the doopamju oapihju-0)&&*%^ YJG THVRRi^*tt7iu

[CARRIER LOST]

Stats Agency savages Brown over immigration claims

Murder <=> Victimless crime

So some [expletive deleted] murders lunch - does that mean tea, supper and midninght snack just go on as if nothing has happened? Or are they, and anyone else who knew the victim, or stumbled onto the body, or is in some other way affected, do not count?

Who is pimping out the victims' details for the BCS to contact them? Cos either someone is giving out information that is probably *not* in a victim's best interest, or the BCS is getting data from, ooh, I don't know - maybe the Police? Either way, surely youy can see that a crime HAS been committed, even if the BCS tries to pretend it has not.

The only way I see ZaNew Labour being "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" is by taking so much of my money that I cannot afford to buy anything worth stealing. I cannot walk down the street without seeing literally dozens of CCTV cameras, but somehow crimes still take place. Crimes with real victims, like assaults and robbery, not such threats to public safety as someone overstaying their parking ticket by three minutes, or Granny Smith refusing to pay the increase in council tax this year since her pension has gone up by far les than the cost of living while her local council has had its money from Central Government (ie the theiving bunch in power) cut again...

I suspect that ZaNew Labour would just love to have us all conveniently forget anything they don't like, but some of us remember that Murder is a crime - even if they try to hide it by getting the media to refer to it as 'homicide' now.

Software engineer demands source of his speeding collar

I can believe it...

I once passed one of the UK's temporary speed camera/display jobbies and clocked up a speed of 26mph in a 30mph zone...

Which was quite impressive for a knackered old Ford Escort 1300 turning left from a standing start... 0-26 in about 6ft... 8-0

English language falls to the Slashdot effect

@kissingthecarpet

There are quite a few meerkats in central Europe, unfortunately most of them in zoos. And whilst I agree with you on the prevalence of comparison site ads, I personally feel that the Meerkat ads are better than the majority of "proper" programs on the idiot box at the moment.

Given my druthers, I'd choose 30 seconds of cgi'd overgrown rodent over the drek they call "reality TV" every time...

But what I find most worrying is that said cgi'd furball seems to have a significantly higher IQ than most of the humans you see onscreen...

Apollo 11 moon mission reincarnated as website

@hugo tyson

'Twas a science fiction (or SyFy, if you're a TV Exec in the Good Ol' You-Ess-ov-Aye) author by the name of Jerry Pournelle. Kinda sad, really, given how true it appears to be.

FIJAGH!

@Simon Taylor 2

Back in the early '80s, the Smithsonian in Washington DC had an exhibit with one of the computers used to control the trajectory of an Atlas ICBM. It noted that the computers used to guide the Apollo missions to the Moon and back were not much bigger or more powerful, and that the average American schoolchild had a calculator that was as powerful, if not more so, than this machine.

And this was in the days when the four basic mathematical functions were all you got, unless you could find a really high-tech one with *gasp* percentages and square roots on it...

(ps I think the bit about "sound stage on **MARS**" means Tom was having a larf...)

Staten Island manhole swallows texting teen

Do Teenagers Dream of Electric Sheep?

The workers should have put the barriers in place before lifting the cover, even if they were only checking they had the right location, or whatever. Fdailing that, one of them should have stayed at the hole to make sure some wandering idiot didn't miss the hole (figuratively!) and fall down.

On the gripping appendage, it's about time something made idiots like this pay more attention to what is going on around them - it's not always somebody else's fault, and it is high time someone pointed out to these idiot kids and their parents that the Real World is harsh and unforgiving, and if you do something dumb, something bad will likely happen.

There may not be any real animals left around my neck o' the woods for kids to have ever seen a real, live sheep 'face-to-face' but the oblivious little buggers walk around like they are dreaming of something...

Cats mix baby 'cry' with purr to score dinner

@Sarah Bee

You don't have a cat, do you?

It's not that they are rude (although I will agree with the 'psychotic' part!), more that they never got past the pre-Copernicus view of the universe...

Pussy want some fish? Nice piece of fish, pussy want some?

As I sit typing this, our white cat has just wandered in and butted my leg, giving me a short "mraow" to let me know he wants his daily sachet of wet food (I better be quick typing this or it'll be followed in a few minutes by a subtle reminder in the shape of a longer, louder "mi-i-r-a-a-oww!" and claws in my leg).

Said felonious feline has definite 'words' in his vocabulary - the noise he makes for "feed me" is different to the one for "let me out, I need the toilet and my litter tray needs changing again you lazy human slob". There are very noticable differences between the noises for "give me my wet food", "my water bowl needs refilling", "why does he get a cat treat and I don't?(*)" and "I want some fuss please". Even the electrickery-meter-reader once asked "Did he just say 'out'?"...

(*) Rocket gets the treats and you don't, you great lump, because he chews them and you do not. All you do is gulp them down and then leave them lying around the house in little piles for me to clean up later, 'Mr Pukey'.

No extra-terrestrial explanation (despite the title), but I didn't think any of the other icons looked particularly cute... we need a cat icon!

Business throws cold water on gov hot air proposals

Energy != Created, != Destroyed

If the amount of energy in a system stays constant and you start using it to drive wind turbines, where do the clouds go?

Using silly figures I know, but if you had a perfect wind turbine and a 10kW wind then you'd get 10kW elctricity at the end, wouldn't you? But what about friction and inertia in the blades, sound (you have actually listened to these [EXPLETIVE DELETED] things close up, haven't you? Puts 'Wailing' Gail Platt on Coronation street to shame!), mechanical losses in the reduction gearing, generator(s) etc, and all the other things the Green Lobby either don't know/have never been warned about or seem to ignore? Suddenly your 10kW of electricity looks more like 6 or 7kW going into the grid... on a very, *very* good day.

And, if you could take all 10kW out of the wind, how are the clouds going to move? People keep on about how Global Warming is going to see us all living under water unless we act NOW! but then thirty seconds later they start bleating about the droughts we've got coming our way...

And now we only have 19-and-a-bit years to Save The World! What, like the edge we'd all fall off if we sailed to the edge of the world, the way we'd suffocate if we tried travelling at more then 25mph, or the way the Earth would disintegrate if anyone actually managed to 'split' the atom?

Here's a little thought for all you "Green" readers out there - if you really are *that* sure we are destroying the Earth, why don't you all go and live in a nice little cave somewhere, without anything you cannot grow yourselves, or make from what you can grow? No more plastics, no metals, woods or fabrics without a lot of hard work and a few years wait, and no more whinging to annoy the rest of us.

I'm all for saving the planet, but how about a reailty check to go with it? Wind farms are not the answer... unless, of course, you live miles away from them - then they look pretty wonderful. Ever looked at a map to see how close the windfarms and their supporters live?

Police headcams burst into flames

Field of view?

Is it just me, or do the shoulder-mounted camera sseem to be pointing the wrong way for most of the time? The film I've seen from the vest cams seems to end up facing about five feet to the left of whatever or whoever is in front of the occifer involved...

Still, at least this would allow ITV to cut their budget but still produce The Bill - they could do away with the camera crews and sound techs and just use BobbyCam instead!

Royal Society of Chemistry hunts Janet Leigh

I'm with Queenie

Victoria that is - I have one bath a year, whether I need it or not. And no speccy-four-eyed git in a Royal Society is going to tell me otherwise - that's why I have a water meter, you hairy-faced killjoy.

Go play with the particle flow in a fast breeder reactor. (mumble mumble)

Hollywood prepares to battle Asteroids

ELITE!!

Why bother with Asteroids, there's a whole galaxy (or 8) of adventures just floating around.

Or, for a more updated, open-source version, try OOLITE. There's even some brilliant fanfic based on Oolite out there that beats The Dark Wheel any day of the week...

Dammit, where's my coat with the fuzzy, slimy frogs and Alterian Poets in the pockets, and "Hoot if you love Trumbles" on the back?

Trading Standards calls for online knife sale ban

Best tactic to win a knife fight?

Run away. Quickly.

Most El Reg readers - heck, most peole who live inthe "real world" - know that Government bringing in newer and "tougher" laws are not going to stop the knife problem. But how are we, the general public, going to stop our increasingly despotic leaders bringing in these laws anyway?

You are not even supposed to organise a mass protest without getting agreement from the local Police and Council (unitary authority, whatever) beforehand...

Software firm goes after Google for internet invisibility cloak

@Joe Drunk

So Google will automatically filter out websites it deems to have "malicious content that could be harmful to your computer", hmm?

Not wanting to be too much of a troll here, but how many times have Microsoft been guilty of releasing software that has caused problems - and I don't even mean such things as saying "old" hardware will "run" certain Operating Systems... and I'm not counting leaving gaping holes in apps that allow (or even encourage) unwanted software to run on a machine (and YES, I AM sure I do NOT want to participate in Microsoft's "quality" control process where Windows tries to send details of every sodding fail back home - even if they are nothing to do with Windows, or Microsoft, at all. Allowing those nice, helpful chaps at MS-HQ to see what I have on my machine counts as "harmful" to me, thanks all the same) .

Defense-contract discs sold in African market for $40

plus ce change.

Blame the underpaid Outsourced staff again, why don't they? Pay peanuts, let all the experienced staff go first as their salaries cost more and wonder why the morons fresh out of school don't have a fscking clue.

Bitter and twisted after getting shafted with 22 years of service? Hell yes!

F-22 may live on: Cheap secondhand Eurofighters on offer

@"The worst bomber"

Fighters have been flying with helmet-mounted cueing systems for several years now - it is NOT something new and funky being fitted to JSF.

"Off-boresight" means you don't have to have your nose pointing straight at his aircraft to shoot at him - something else that's been around a while. You are thinking of "all-aspect" and even the 'Winders used by the RN during the Falklands War were capable of that.

Has the JSF's radar actually flown yet? I know that LM and friends are claiming that it'll be mega-impressive, but until it flies and gets a lock-on without the Typhoon getting one back, it's just so much vaporware. And let's face it, it's not unknown for manufacturers to, um, "overestimate" the 'real-world' performance of their hardware, is it?

So far, JSFs have taken off and landed with a bit of flying in the middle - until one goes head-to-head against another fighter, it'll just be marketing blurb. And it's almost certain that - like with the F22-v-F15 fights - the "bad guys" will be limited to what they are allowed to do ("using OpFor tactics" is always a good excuse) and the "fights" will be pretty much rigged in favour of whichever jet is being "shown to be the best fighter".

Hell, so far nobody other than American pilots have been allowed to get into "real fights" with F22's - the official excuse is that it is to prevent the Bad Guys learning the Raptor's true capability. Of course, the fact that it "proves" to Congress that the F22 can "beat" any opposition doesn't hurt either... (Cynic, moi? Say it ain't so!)

Britain looks to export net censorship model to Europe

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

"(The IWF is praised internationally for its work and) its achievement in bringing down the proportion of child abuse sites hosted within the UK to 1% of the total accessed."

Sez who?

How much kiddie porn was accessed before IWF? How much of the reduction has been through other agencies (ie the Police, Childline, other abuse-reporting procedures - maybe even including social workers)? How do "they" know that it's 1% of all sites? Accessed from where - within the UK, from within the EU, or from anywhere in the world?

Given the number of websites hosted in the UK, a mere 1% still means there are a hell of a lot of these sites around. Of course, if you take the view that /anyone/ having pictures of kids on a website is merely pandering to the perverts then I suspect there's a bit more than 1% still active... and given the reports of a tiny minority of parents in public places (parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, school sports days) getting arsey when someone takes photos near their children, I can quite easily see the politicos mistaking "innocent kiddie photos" for "evil kiddie porn" when telling us what a wonderful job the IWF have done, and are doing.

Beware Citizen. The Computer is Watching YOU.

MPs launch probe of massive net snooping project

Parliament Act?

Does anyone have firm figures on how many politicians are having doubts?

All Gordon Brown needs to do is invoke the Parliament Act and it doesn't matter how much fuss the House of Lords or the Public make, he can push this through anyway... MPs launching a probe won't make a blind bit of difference - and besides, if Brown promises not to snoop on his fellow MPs then most of them will believe him and just turn a blind eye to this "minor project". After all, if the Electorate has nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear (*cough* Damien Green *cough*)

Iosef Stepanovich must be cheering in his grave.

BOFH: Stick this

Any fule kno you can always make a file bigger

Microsoft do it all the time. It's called "Windows".