Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Elon Musk envisions small town of vegetarians on Mars

Re: I would laugh if

It's pretty much bound to happen. Just so long as they can be civilised about it, and not waste gargantuan quantities of delicious tea in the process, I don't mind.

Re: Dreamers

"but its good to see a billionaire doing something interesting with his money rather than just get a yacht."

Dave,

Perhaps you give him too much credit. Maybe all he's doing is laying plans to build a giant space yacht...

With a name like his, he's clearly going to go mad at some point, and build an underground volcano base, or space station, and fill it with henchmen (and henchwomen). But fortunately they always build them with a convenient self-destruct system. Which makes thwarting them a lot easier.

Is this a terraforming attempt?

Elon is going to send only vegetarians, so he can get lots of methane to start global warming on Mars, and get it nicely terraformed. As a bonus, they can also help refuel his rocket.

I guess it's viable, so long as you can grow enough brussels sprouts, cabbage and beans in Martian conditions.

Second PAC-MAN orbiting SATURN: Local absence of dots explained

So how do you get a moon shaped like a ghost?

Clearly NASA's next mission needs to drop some cherries into orbit.

Nokia Lumia 820 WinPho 8 review

I disagree with you on the memory bit. Most users don't even get through 8GB. Therefore it's much better to have a cheaper phone with either an SD card slot (so you can upgrade if you need it), or reasonably priced models with more. Extra models cause extra production costs, so as long as the OS doesn't go wrong if you have many files on your card, then that's fine. I've not used Win Pho with an SD card, so I've no idea if this creates the problems it sometimes does with Android.

Did you hear that Apple? I said reasonably priced memory upgrades! I don't believe the extra flash chips in my iPad are made out of unicorns' toenail clippings - so stop taking the piss on price.

Re: That bright yellow one

I love it. It's sooo YELLOW!!!!

Sadly I wouldn't have one though, I use my phones for work, so I'm Mr Boring Black.

[Big yellow smiley face, for obvious reasons.]

Where were the bullet holes on OS/2's corpse? Its head ... or foot?

Re: uhm...

ShelLuser,

If I remember rightly IBM came up with Aptiva (and later Ambra) as sub brands that would sell to consumers, without cannibalising their much more expensive corporate PC market. So it's possibly that there was no OS/2 support due to it being a different division, accident, incompetence - or even deliberate decision, so you'd have to buy the most expensive IBM PCs to get it.

My first PC was an Ambra, because it was very cheap. That's the last time I bought a PC by simply going through the pages of PCW and ripping out all the adverts that looked to be a decent buy. Took ages, buy going online wasn't an option. That was in the days when PCW was a 600 page behemoth, with only about 100 of those being editorial. Many many adverts, some with things stuck to them, so the magazine would fall open on their page and others with fold out pages (for the same reason). Some cheapskates trying to stick whole catalogues in about 2 pages of 6 pt type, in black on blue. Ugh!

Happy days...

Heroic Register reader battles EXPLODING COMPUTER

Re: Buy a decent PSU, and have a suitable (NOT WATER) fire extinguisher handy!

Infernoz,

Powder extinguishers need regular maintenance, or they refuse the work. The powder gets compacted, and won't come out when you press the button. I'm not sure whether this maintenance is simply turning them upside down for a bit though. There's also a bit of a knack to making powder work, which you're probably not going to get with your first go, and only a small extinguisher.

CO2 has it's uses in the home, but there are plenty of places you wouldn't want to use it in the kitchen. Unless you fancy a face full of burning fat.

Apart from the obvious point mentioned above, that you're advocating buying cheap, crap safety equipment from discount stores - you're often more of a risk to yourself than to the fire when it comes to first-aid firefighting. I'd suggest that the best thing to have in the home is a fire blanket. Anything you can't easily put out with that, or just turning the power off, or sometimes a bucket of water, is probably dangerous enough that your best bet is to run away and call the fire brigade.

Re: No-brand power supply

cornz1,

Thanks for the tip. I shall upgrade my production line immediately, by the introduction of small water tanks to my PSUs to add weight and fool expert PC builders. What could possibly go wrong...

El Cheapo PSUs: Power To You (possibly directly if the guy doing earthing was hung over that day).

[small print: We absolutely guarantee that our PSUs won't kill you. We will pay £1million to any person who has been killed by any of our shoddyfine products. The victim simply needs to apply in person to our head office, to receive their pay-out]

Jubcropgate: El Reg in snake-fondling nude nipslip outrage

Re: Speaking of fun bags

"It's friday. Enjoy."

That's a funny name for a girl...

Re: Erroneous zones

Noses are red,

Violets are blue.

My nose is naked,

And proud of it too!

Jokes of no more than 2 lines

Re: Entendre.

Oops. Thanks for the spelling correction. Typos are bad...

Woman walks into a cocktail bar and asks for a double entendre.

The barman asks if she'd like a large one?

A woman walks into a cocktail bar, and asks for a double-ententre.

So the barman gives her one.

A horse walks into a bar.

The barman says, "why the long face?"

I looked at the price list in the butcher.

Deer's expensive.

Woz on Microsoft: Whoa! They really changed things drastically. Whoa!

Re: "Autonomy was audited by Deloitte every quarter...

The accountants didn't do anything wrong on the Facebook IPO. Audit has a very limited purpose, and if you don't understand what that is, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. All an audit is supposed to do is broadly confirm that the published balance sheet is accurate. The Facebook IPO problem wasn't due to the balance sheet, just that some people hoped for short-term trading profits and others dreamed that Facebook would grow its profits insanely, and now worry that it'll only grow them massively. If it turns out they can only manage some growth, the share price will probably drop a bit more...

Thanksgiving in orbit: Irradiated turkey, yam-and-marshmallow mix

Always a bit worrying when your 'food' requires barcodes to identify it. Presumably on the grounds that otherwise you'd be loading it onto the old Progress capsules for waste dumps.

It's even worse than what turns up in front of you when you order a meat curry.

NASA's Mars rovers feel effects of TITANIC DUST STORM

Re: Opportunity

NASA haven't forgotten it. They're going to bring the 2 together for an interplanetary episode of Robot Wars.

My money's on the one with the laser beams.

Fanbois: The Next Generation. YOUR CHILDREN belong to Apple now

Re: Google T's and C's

As a brewery owning astronaut, with three 21 year-old wives, I find your son's lack of truthfulness appalling.

Apple cultists slaver as Mothership landing now foretold in 2016

Re: Scary

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Oh sorry, did you mean someone else...

'Rare for tech not to be involved in child abuse cases'

Re: I also hear that 100% of child abusers..

Editorial: The Daily Heil

Di-Hydrogen Oxide is a chemical that's known to have been used by 100% of paedophiles. It is feared that this chemical can turn ordinary people into paedophiles. Ban this sick filth now!

NASA admits hiding 'really good' news from Martian soil

Re: Life?

"The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one..."

Million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten...

World's LEGGIEST BLONDE is super-rare millipede living in SF

What goes 99, bump. 99, bump. 99, bump.

A centipede with a wooden leg.

Fart-buster underpants selling well among Japanese salarymen

Re: Somebody step on a duck?

Can I point out an error in your terminology? If you're trying to suppress one, then it's not you that's trapped in the meeting, it's everybody else. As they will soon discover, once you manage to release the nostril offending goodness, in all it's glory. Preferably in a silent, non-traceable manner.

Re: Definately a Friday afternoon article

I've been telling people it's Friday today too. I've got tomorrow off, so the weekend starts here.

You can take our weekdays but you cannae take our FREEEEDOM!!!!!

Election today for Police Commisioners. Spoil your paper!

The candidates may not get to see the spoilt papers. There is often someone checking for each party in election counts, who would. This being an election with large constituencies and many independent candidates, they may not all have sufficient people to do the checking, especially if counting is happening in more than one place.

I'm no expert on the law of libel, I don't know if you have to 'publish' something for it to apply, or just write it down and show other people. Or perhaps those 2 are legally the same? I guess the usual rule of thumb applies. If you have to ask someone else if something is a good idea, then it usually isn't.

Lord to sue Twitter users who falsely accused him of abuse

"NO, not 'because it was an easy button press', because it was an easy mistake to make - hitting the wrong link on a page or mobile app happens a lot...

Will "I went for delete, but hit retweet" be a defence ?"

Tom Chiverton 1,

I'd guess it would be a perfectly valid defence if you subsequently delete the tweet.

I tell you what it would make though, an excellent limerick:

One day Tom switched his phone on.

And noticed the media maelstrom.

He missed the delete,

And pressed his retweet

Now he's part of the whole Paedogeddon.

I can see the point. But why should you be able to get away with trying to ruin someone's life, just because it was an easy button press online?

Try thinking about your fucking actions perhaps...

This is an interesting area, that's going to be an absolute bugger to deal with.

I would argue that one of the reasons we got super-injunctions is that the press started taking the piss. They don't like people getting injunctions against them, and with the modern era of t'internet, all you need to do is report that so-and-so has taken out an injunction, stoke the rumour mill online, until said rumour is so far into the public domain that the injunction is defeated. Then you can tell the court that everyone already knows this - so can we now report it please. I believe that's one of the reasons that courts then banned journos from even mentioning the injunction. Although the courts apparently aren't granting them any more.

There's debate on having a privacy law, which I don't see as viable in a world with an only slightly-regulated internet.

I guess we'll end up with more the American model of freedom of speech, where anyone can say anything - and you can't get a court injunction to stop them. You can of course sue after the event. Just on the grounds that it's so hard to keep things from being globally known now. Particularly as the media know they can pursue this route. So if you can't make a story stand up, all you need do is stoke the rumour mill, then watch the internet light up.

I know someone who's worked for the Torygraph and the Times, and it's interesting how much is just known in the small world of the Westminster/Media Village. It doesn't always leak out, but it's easy enough to find out. Now you don't even need to be in that world, or know someone, just know the right blogs/forums.

Interesting times ahead. [end ramble]

Humans becoming steadily STUPIDER, says brainiac boffin

Hmmmm

Boff a prof

Grapple with a geek

Get under the desk with the helpdesk

Get between the sheets with the elites

On your knees for PHDs

Get boffing with a boffin

Perhaps I should have taken that job in marketing after all...

Automatic Facebook couple pages: Nauseating sign of desperation

So? The word shebopdadoowop begins with SHE...

Re: Divorce

I've got an idea for a new website. It's a combination of Facebook and Tripadvisor. All we need to do is to add user-ratings to couples pages, and we've got a brilliant resource for helping us to avoid bunny-boilers and bastards.

Liberator: the untold story of the first British laptop part 2

Kneetop

What a shame about the demise of the word 'kneetop'. It sounds so much nicer than laptop. But as one of the model numbers was LPTP101, I guess kneetop was a Civil Service thing, rather than coming from Thorn EMI.

Well I say it sounds nicer. I'm not sure if "for my stag night I'm going to a knee-dancing club" quite works...

El Reg mulls Forums icon portfolio shake-up

Re: A classic Cat line from Red Dwarf

Do we really need individual fanboy icons for each type? Surely a general one will do.

Also I want a smiley face icon for when I'm being politely insulting. Instead of the few times when I get a bit more grumpy and tell some other commentard to get stuffed. Only used when justified. I hope...

I wish to second (or is it third?) the Tony Blair/hypocrisy icon idea.

For some reason I felt it was appropriate to post my choice of new icon here. Can't think why...

I would like a vomit icon please. The new keyboard please is more coffee than sick. For those times when the sanctimony or 'think of the children' are getting to me, or when some bootnotes story comes along involving penis self-surgery or the like.

A man laughing his head off would also be nice, for those times when Apple have to re-post an apology 17 times, because they were just too childish to get it right first time. Or for when someone custard pies Larry Ellison.

Liberator: the untold story of the first British laptop part 1

Re: Amstrad NC200

I had one of these in perfect working order, and I'm afraid I threw it away 2 years ago, when I moved house. Wrote quite a bit of stuff on it though, and it was great for taking notes in lectures/training courses.

Bitcoin Friday sale event kicks off with deep discounts

Re: We don't own our money

Ole Juul,

I'm struggling to understand what you mean with this post.

"The use of conventional currencies to micromanage things which have no direct connection to the role of money is derailing economies and preventing money from serving it's primary purpose."

Surely, the primary purpose of money, is as a means of exchange. Thus saving us from being forced into barter. And as far as I can see, our money fulfils that purpose perfectly adequately. As for:

"National currencies are subject to controls and confiscation."

Well so would bitcoin be, were it the main means of exchange. Governments can control that about as well as they can control cash, i.e. by the threat of locking you up if you don't pay your taxes/fines.

As for the next paragraph, I don't see how bitcoin is any more efficient or competitive, and I'm not even sure what you mean by them. If you were to add 'modern' to that list, I'd think you were Tony Blair in disguise...

Obviously QE is a risk to money's role as a store of value, but that's a trade-off against the damage to the economy of not doing it. There's an upside to that, as long as it stays an extraordinary thing, only done to stave off the worst crises. QE has the opposite problem. As a system with a fixed money supply, it suffers from built-in deflation. Now this makes bitcoin a great investment / pyramid scheme, but an absolutely dreadful currency.

Add in the other problems, like almost nobody accepting it, and bitcoin doesn't look like anything other than a bizarre fad. If you've got any, sell them, before this becomes obvious. At some point in the future, they'll be totally worthless - at present it appears you can exchange them for real cash, although I'm not sure exactly how safely.

"Bitcoin has a fixed rate of money supply growth, and can't be controlled by our bankrupt governments. That isn't a disadvantage... It's the same reason gold has outlasted any fiat printed currency as a means of saving and exchange."

Spoddyhalfwit,

As pointed out below, you've got that a bit wrong. There's a fixed number of bitcoins, so once they're all 'mined', there can't be any more. Money supply growth is therefore not fixed, it's dependent on random chance and effort. Total money supply is fixed though.

Sadly this is a disadvantage. If your economy grows, and your money supply doesn't, you have deflation. Which is bad. That's ignoring the many other problems of bitcoin. But does somewhat bugger up its claim to being a good currency.

Goatse.cx opens up again - as an email provider

Pro-Tip

Be very careful about clicking on any links in this comments thread...

How to spot a terrible tech boss within SECONDS

Re: A one-legged man goes to the doctor ...

While there's something in what you say, I wouldn't totally agree with you. There are some roles where inspiring leadership is needed/helpful, along with goal-setting. But some jobs are pretty mundane, and the goal is simply to keep x process working with a minimum of fuss, or to process y paperwork in a correct manner.

This is all quite dull, and there's nothing to get inspired about. But a bit of honesty and common sense tells us that this stuff needs to get done, we're all being paid to get it done, so let's do that with as little fuss and stress as we can. I don't think that we're helping matters by trying to 'inspire' people, because we all know this is fundamentally dull. A bit of humour and reasonable expectations should do the trick, without resorting to the military metaphors so beloved of some management types.

Re: A one-legged man goes to the doctor ...

Technical areas are a big problem. Having had a couple of accountants as managers has shown me this (I'm not in IT), as well as knowing quite a few IT people. Both these managers were good accountants, who got promoted because of it, both of them were nice people, but neither had a clue how to be managers.

This is also true for certain types of sales people. Hard-chargers who always make their numbers often aren't too scrupulous, and so make horrific managers. On the other hand, some sales guys are brilliant analysts of people, which is how they sell so well, and they often make brilliant managers.

Of course, you do have to wonder how much we're the problem? Having ended up with some management responsibilities a couple of times (not really one of my skills) - some people are easier to manage than others. So a barely competent manager who knows their limitations should be able to do a decent job, with goodwill on both sides.

FOlA judges: Secret 28 who made the BBC Green will not be named

Re: Self Represent?

So what you're saying is that the public isn't able to hold the government/establishment to account? I rather doubt the guy could afford legal representation, but he's pursuing a legitimate public interest. Even if there's also a perfectly reasonable argument on the other side as well.

The whole point of setting up non-legal tribunals and FOI requests should be to allow normal people to represent themselves. So long as they're not idiots they should easily be able to make the necessary logical case - even if they need a bit of help, understanding and guidance in how to do cross-examination. If the tribunal can have lay-panellists, then there's no reason why there should need to be legal representation from either party. Although obviously a barrister is trained to put an argument professionally, so if you've got the money, they're the right person to use.

Re: @Marv Stunning

Whilst I can fully understand scientists' frustrations here, some of the major movers-and-shakers in climate science have brought (at least some of) this down on themselves. They've reacted, understandably, to circle-the-wagons against outside pressure and they've not always been transparent. Sometimes they've been downright deceitful, and that's made things worse.

This area is way too important for people to be keeping their methods and data secret - as well as that being fundamentally against the scientific method.

It's a shame that this has become so nasty and politicised, but this science can't avoid politics. The implications, if the most catastrophic models are correct, require the spending of hundreds of billions by most of the worlds governments - and massive changes to the global economy. The level of debate from the senior people on the 'warmist' side has been absolutely appalling, and polarised things even more. Whoever is 'right', there seem to be a good few idiots on both sides who damned well ought to know better.

Tomb-raid boffins find golden hoard of the warrior Thracians

Re: I am Spartacus!

I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not sure...

Re: I am Spartacus!

No. I am Spartacus.

Re: eh?

Well the Athenians would have won, having forced Sparta to make peace. Only they got greedy and started it all up again, and lost everything in Sicily.

As you say though, Alexander did a lot of wandering round Turkey beating up the Persians, and he still liked a good phalanx. The Romans were still using something similar until one of their military organisations (Marius I think?), about 100BC. The third line of troops in a legion was still basically a mini-phalanx.

Volkswagen Beetle car review

Re: weird

It's a hell of a lot nicer looking than the last abomination attempt. But, as you say, the back looks wrong. It seems to be riding higher than the front, and seems a bit too long, and not quite curvy enough - I guess to get a bigger boot.

I still think the Fiat 500 wins hands-down though. It's not horrifically expensive and looks great. The problem with doing a reboot of the Mini and the Beetle is that they were both supposed to be cheap cars for the masses, and now they're premium 'lifestyle' products.

The other big problem is that modern safety systems, not to mention modern lard-arses, require cars to be so much bigger. I guess that's worst for the Mini, which simply isn't, because of the name. But the Fiat is also huge, compared to the old 500, and it doesn't look wrong, in the way the Mini does.

Stob on Quatermass: Was this British TV's finest sci-fi hour?

Re: Quartermass - Goon Show Style

It's good to be alive, in 1985!

Which is one of my favourite Goon Shows, and also an excellent version of 1984.

It pits the Big Brother Corporation against the Independent Television Army.

Sellafield's nuclear waste measured in El Reg units

High Level Waste

In order to aid understanding I can help with the precise amount of high level waste. Saw it in a government report a few years ago. Well, OK being honest here, a newspaper's version of a government report.

There were about 3 semi-detached family homes worth of high level waste at Sellafield. The rest is intermediate or low level. I don't know how much of that they've now vitrified and dumped in barrels though. I'm not sure how one converts the semi-detached family home into the Olympic sized swimming pool unfortunately...

Apple iPad 4 Wi-Fi only tablet review

Re: Fanboi Tony

That's a disturbing mental image!

Incest: A game all the family can play...