Posts by rpjs

Google 'experiment' crossbreeds Python with C++

Just what we need

Another programming language, as we have so few to choose from already.

Iraq launches tourism drive

If he succeeds,

then there's a job waiting for him to run the Labour Party's election campaign next year.

Fat Reg slims down for spanking new mobile phone version

Browser sniffing

PLEASE if you do this give us the opportunity to choose whether to go to the mobile site or not, and an easy way back if we change our minds.

Nothing annoys me more than being forced to a crappy "mobile" version of a site automatically and having to go through a hundred hoops (if I can) to get back to the proper version.

Forcing me to use your mobile version would be just about the only thing that would stop me reading El Reg.

El Reg receives message from planet 'Female Pigeon'

@Ed Blackshaw

Trouble is, naming an extra-solar planet Jehovah would probably result in astonomers being stoned to death somewhere...

Roman vs other mythologies

Graeco-Roman mythology has already been pretty much exhausted as a source for names just within our own Solar System, hence recent minor/dwarf planet namings from other myhtologies such as Sedna (Inuit), Quaoar (Native American), Makemake (Easter Island) and Haumea (Hawaiian).

I can understand the IAU's reluctance to start using up potential names on extra-solar bodies when there's so many bodies being discovered in our system that are going to need names.

Accused NASA spy billed US gov for swimming pool upkeep

ObComment

to the effect of "well when he gets out he can come here and stand for Parliament"...

Historian slams 'absolutely crazy' UK time zone

@Alastair McFarlane

No, GMT remains what it says on the tin, the solar mean time at the Greenwich meridiam. Currently we're on British Summer Time and won't be on GMT until clocks go back on Sunday. This also means that France and Germany *are* currently on GMT, except they know it as Central European Summer Time.

Speaking as a historian myself

Well, at least I did a history degree before getting into this IT malarkey, but the good professor hasn't really looked very far into the history of this.

France and Belgium were both on GMT until the Germans made them adopt their time during WWII, and whilst Spain is nominally on CET, they actually do all their activities one hour behind the rest of the timezone, opening shops and offices around 10am, and going to dinner around 9pm, equivalant to 9am and 8pm in Blighty (and Portugal for that matter, which is when the Portuguese tend to do those activities).

So really it's the countries west of Germany that use CET that are out of step, and they really should be on GMT like us. Pro-EU as I am, this argument that we should fall into line with France and Germany to aid business is ridiculous. After all, the US has four main timezones plus zones for Hawaii and Alaska, and they seem to cope OK.

Ares I-X trundles to launchpad

Is this the one

that some folks at NASA think will shake its payload to pieces, or is that Ares V?

ESA proposes ion drive Sun-dodge Mars commsat ploy

Lagrange points

Wouldn't putting a commsat in one of the Eart/Sun or Mars/Sun L4 or L5 points be easier?

Guardian gagged over Commons question

Petition

There's a petition been submitted to No. 10 asking for the right to report Parliament to be absolutely enshrined in law. Funny that, I thought the Bill of Rights already said that but I've signed it anyway: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/PressFreedom/

Post Office will snap and dab for ID card scheme

@Gilbert Wham

"I'm surprised they haven't posited using bloody Tesco's"

I think Tescos have the commercial nous not to touch this with the proverbial 10 ft bargepool.

Baroness Scotland fined for failing to follow own law

"The Home Office has been getting sulky when we edit the dull bits out of their canned remarks."

The Home Office haven't quite got the hang of this "Press Release" thing yet, have they?

Opaque Wi-Fi laws 'damage UK economy, social inclusion'

Shurely

If you want to share your wi-fi, set your SSID to a name that shows this.

If you see a SSID name that indicates such, connect, otherwise don't.

Or am I missing something?

London desperately seeking Strategy Boutique

Greater London *has* a "logo"

The coat of arms it was granted in the 1960s

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Arms_of_the_Greater_London_Council.svg

Stephen Hawking both British and not dead

"Worse, it'll be a GOVERNMENTAL bureaucracy"

Personally I'd rather take my chances with a governmental health bureacracy whose purpose is to give me the health care I need, but occasionally faile, than with a private sector health bureacracy whose purpose is to keep profits as high as possible, and usually succeeds.

US bank deposits checks via iPhone camera

@Squits

You can still write a cheque on whatever you like in the UK, and the banks will still accept them (they have to as all a cheque is a written instruction from you to your bank to pay someone from your account) but expect to be charged £stupid_amount by the bank as a "non-standard cheque processing fee" for the privilege.

What's Welsh for Orange?

In answer to the article title

"oren" for the fruit, "melyngoch" for the colour, at least thats what www.geiriadur.net says.

Apple, Microsoft sued over iPod, Zune controls

@Cliff

The canonical format is to refer the complainant to the reply given in the case of Arkle vs Pressdram.

Glasgow unbans Life of Brian

All I can say is

Romanes eunt domus!

NASA takes stick over feet and inches

A modest proposal

1kg = 2.2lbs therefore 1 metric pound = 0.5 kg

1km = 0.52 miles therefore 1 metric mile = 0.5km

1m = 1.1 yds therefore 1 metric yard = 1 metre

1pt = 0.6l therefore 1 metric pint = 0.5 litres (works even better for US pints)

and 1 metric gallon = 4 litres

So everyone's happy. We get to use a sensible measuring system, and all the old folks and Disgusteds of Tonbridge Wells can carry on thinking in units familiar to themselves - they won't be the exact values they used to be but they'll be close enough for everyday use.

I understand the rest of Europe does this already, at least for weights. Ask for a "livre" or a "pfund" of something in a greengrocer in France or Germany respectively, and you'll get half a kilo.

'Alien' lifeform wakened from 120,000 year Arctic slumber

Reminds me of a quote, oh yes:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die."