Posts by Michael Fletcher

Aussies get gov-backed uber-broadband

glowing and chundering

Beers flows, men chunder

or

Women glow, men plunder.

You crossed the streams, Oates.

Duff UK nukes risk 'popcorn' multi-blast accident apocalypse

Lewis Page's writing

I'm a bit concerned about subliminal, or even liminal, messages hidden in Mr Page's stories.

As soon as I read that last line about drinking booze, I had an almost irresistable urge to crack open a beer.

Surely the potential for millions of Reg readers to do Mr Page's bidding is far more frightening than any half-arsed nuclear catastrophe.

19-year-old p2p botnet pioneer agrees to plead guilty

@ac

because you're drunk again, mum.

US bars ID refuseniks from planes - but not ID losers

@David Wiernicki

Sir, there are more than two countries in the world, and www.theregister.co.uk is available to read in those other ones also.

Were the snatched Brit sailors in 'disputed waters'?

Didn't this happen to the Aussies as well?

I'm sure I read somewhere that Iran tried the same thing with an Australian boat, and were told by the aussies, in no uncertain terms, to F@!K OFF!.

Which they did.

Can anyone confirm this?

US spooks see Sadville as potential terrorist paradise

duhhh

It's called "Freedom."

I think they used to have it in real life once too in the USA.

New Jersey bans sex offenders from the web

Australia

Yep, sex offenders should definitely be sent to Australia. It still makes as much sense as it did when the English were sending convicts there in the 18 century...

A beautiful tropical and sub-tropical paradise with almost unlimited resources, endless sunshine, plenty of land for everyone, and the world's best beaches.

That'll teach em.

NHS frets over Brits' genitalia

Americans

Don't go pissing off Americans, or they'll bring you democracy.

Huge jellyfish pack slaughters 100,000 salmon

Killer Jellyfish

I am wondering if these killer jellyfish had frickin' laser beams attached to their heads...

Reg Standards Soviet defines temperature, force and weight

The Norris is too weak

Really, if you were to hit anyone with the force of 1 Norris, their face should implode and their teeth should scatter through the air, drawing beautiful enamel arcs through the golden evening light. I believe the definition of a Norris is 1 or even 2 orders of magnitude off.

Flaming kamikaze squirrel torches car

exploding fauna

Once, a pelican exploded outside my place of employment, blacking out the power to our building, and setting fire to some scrubland near a drainage pond.

From what we could tell, the unsuspecting avian had landed on a power line, had himself a big stretch, and touched two cables with his wings. The resulting short flashed his fluids to steam, blew his guts open and sprayed roasted pelican intestines for metres around, while he fell, burning, to end up draped over a low fence among tall grass below the power line.

Interesting morning, that was.

His pelican girlfriend was still over in the pond, alone and sad. Those birds mate for life, I'm told.

NASA sats snap California wildfires

Californian correspondents

Two Californians write comments in response to the story. One is articulate and makes a lot of sense.

The other one is the reason the USA isn't doing so well in public opinion polls around the world.

As for the fires - I agree with Mr Cummngs. I come from sunny Western Australia, which faces similar issues. It too is covered in species of flora which require a good, hot bushfire to open their seed pods. People build in the bush out here at their own risk, and routinely lose their houses as a consequence.

Nevertheless, losing your home is a hell of a trauma.

Not being a TV watcher, I've missed the TV coverage, so I'm not bored of the story yet. I didn't even realise there was a fire issue at the moment, to be honest. Bugger.

RIAA aims lawyers at usenet newsgroup service

MP3 =/= Copyright

As a sound engineer, I routinely send and receive MP3 files over the internet, using all manner of protocols. They're mostly my recordings or recordings made by friends or colleagues of mine. A lot of them are songs, some are sound effects, some are individual elements of either.

None of them have had their rights assigned to the RIAA.

MP3 can be used for purposes other than ripping off the music industry. Someone needs to point that out to them.

Symantec accidentally warns of internet meltdown

ThreatCon/DEFCON

To those who were so quick to bag the comparison, how does "whose moniker mimics" end up meaning "which works the same way as" in your heads?

UK Gov boots intelligent design back into 'religious' margins

Old-school religion v atheism arguments

Dear Richard Kay

Do you think it would be at all possible to cram any further logical fallacies into one argument? Or is that why you started resorting to ad hominem attacks?

In paragraph 2 alone, you imply that somehow evolutionary theory is supposed to explain abiogenesis (it has never claimed to), and then link that in the most beautifully schizoid way to the anthropic principle. Sweet.

Your last paragraph shows your true colours wonderfully. Cheers for that.

Oz boffins to polish perfect pair of balls

accuracy

My reading is that the Australian reference to accurancy is with respect to the perfection of the spherical shape, not the mass, whereas the French issues with accurancy are to do with changes in the material affecting the total mass.

Is this not apparent to anyone else?

Pupils flog public school on eBay

the great divide

Why do the seppos call the poms Limeys, when they are clearly poms?

Sun may never set on British Empire's pint

Look to Australia

Metric doesn't mean you lose out on beer.

In Australia there are 2 main sizes of beer: 285mL and 570mL. In my home state they're called "middies" and "pints." In Victoria a middie is called a "pot," but then all Victorians are weird anyway. The middie is half a pint.

New South Wales has an even better size, the "schooner," which at 425mL is absolutely right for the hot aussie climate. Big enough to hold its chill, but not so big that it takes too long to drink, so you don't have to deal with warm dregs.

Who says you have to have 500mL of beer in a glass?

Go here for more info on the genius of aussie beer sizes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_beer#Beer_glasses