Posts by DiViDeD

'Best known female architect' angrily defends gigantic vagina

Re: So what?

"A vagina without a woman is "

Available from several specialist retailers. The Japanese ones seem to be the most 'singular'

HEADS UP, text-flinging drivers! A cop in a huge SUV is snooping on you

Highly Optional

"Radio is electronic. Are we allowed to change stations?"

Well, if it's one of those stupid touch screen setups, you really shouldn't be."

Can't agree more. My 'entertainment system' is a 9 inch touchscreen for station selection, input selection, audio functions and doG knows what else, and hitting the right spot without looking is damn near impossible.

Oh, and it also gives you a touch keypad when using the phone on Bluetooth.

At least most of the audio controls are replicated on the steering wheel, but have you ever tried switching to USB, selecting a track, setting the volume and EQ and STILL having attention to spare for steering out of the path of the approaching 15 tonner?

Australia's States in online shopping tax grab

Re: Gerry Harvey Tax

Oh, you HAVE to feel sorry for poor old Gerry. I mean, he's spent a lifetime shifting crap like Kriesler stereos and dodgy crosswired Chadwicks at enormous markup, under the protectionist system that made even Binatone a premium priced brand in Oz.

How's he going to support his new helicopter if these evil online shopping people force him to play on a level field?

Apple Schill-er: 'I was shocked - SHOCKED! They went and copied the iPhone'

Re: Hmmm....

Ah, I see you've fallen for the classic logical error there. As a result of many conversations with merkins, I can put you straight. Lust because the Soviets got:

The first artificial satellite in space

First animal in space

First man in space

First woman in space

First lunar orbiter

First lunar landing

First Venus probes

First photograph from the surface of another planet

there are NO Russian footprints on the moon, therefore the Soviet space program was a steaming pile of shit, while the US space program, which dedicated itself for 10 years to the single task of getting a man to walk on the moon to the exclusion of just about anything else, was victorious and, mor importantly, the US WON!!

Of course, it's easier to win a race when you decide afterwards what the goal was, and make sure your competitors aren't taking part in the same race.

Doctor Who Episode One: Through a glass. Darkly

Re: Bah! - Sometimes it's best not to go back

I remember to this day that sense of wonder, although I always wondered how they opened a wooden door which was magically transformed into to massive swinging safe doors when they switched to the interior view. On the Planet of the Zarbi, they actually walked out of the double doors onto the surface of the planet, and in the very next shot were shown exiting a single narrow wooden door,

I remember the intense discussions with my brother as a 7 year old me tried to come up with more and more fantastical explanations to convince him (and myself!) that it was something to do with interdimensional wossnames, or perception thingummies, rather than admit it was simply a confusing bit of continuity on the cheap. Bloody Hell! Even back then I so much wanted to believe!

Anyways, about the huge interior. On revisiting the early episodes on UKTV as an adult (or at least a very much older child), it's pretty obvious where the physical Tardis walls get replaced by a painted scenery sheet, even before you notice the shadowed creases in the painting.

I was surprised to discover, after nearly 50 years, that the pretend nature of the tardis interior was way more disappointing for a (supposed) grown man than all the shaky sets and polystyrene rocks.

I'm sure there's an award winning psychological study in there somewhere.

You THINK you're watching your LG smart TV - but IT's WATCHING YOU, baby

Re: I've got an LG fridge

Yes we do. We're also pretty certain that you didn't need that SECOND chocolate dessert at 21:57 on Tuesday.

LG - Only thinking of your health

Re: Linked to the TV Guarantee card

"...do people really fill out warranty cards?"

Not in Europe where there are enforceable consumer rights whether you fill it in or not, but in the less civilised and more predatory bits of the world, where the corporation is king and the consumer is cannon fodder, it's pretty common to be refused a refund or replacement on some shoddy piece of crap simply because you didn't provide the manufacturer (or more commonly these days the repackager/distributor) with a piece of cardboard containing enough personal information for them to steal your identity.

Australia. Why do you ask?

Data of 42 MILLION seekers for love plundered from Aussie dating site

Re: Ummm

Well Spotted. INTERNATIONAL, eh? So those numbers include Tasmania as well then.

Got it

;o)

Vint Cerf: 'Privacy may be an ANOMALY, now over'. And it's no secret I think that

Re: One does have some choice

Assuming for a brief moment that we are all at least a little more tech savvy that the average user, how ould you go about maintaining your false identity/ies? Relatively unclever programs can match originating addresses, so if you have, say, one persona for each of five online sites, they'll be profiled and added to one or more sales packs. Now you have the problem of logging in to a new site. That site might already have info on one of your 'aliases', but which one? YOU don't know, you have to guess. Or you invent yet another persona. Either way, that gets added to the profile for your originating address/es. If it's a new one, it's added. If it's an existing one, but not the one that site has, it goes looking for that persona. Oh, here it is, in Farcebook, aggregate it.

Big Data isn't just big, it's SMART. Algorithms get cleverer year by year, matching processes become more and more complex.

And the more sites you login/register with using your Farcebook/Twatter/Google minus account, the more quickly a discrepancy will be spotted and accommodated in your new Sale Item persona.

Blimey. There's a monograph there. Even actively working to retain anonymity will work against us. I think a tiny bit of poo came out just then.

New Retina iPad Mini not sold out HOURS after launch - world REELS

"I shouldn't accept gifts from strangers"

Hey! I present that accusation because its hold me up to ridiclue</grauniad>

I'm not stranger, just <ahem> differenter

@SuccessCase - here, have a snark detector. No, take two. Your need seems greater than most

Re: You missed the step

Yabbut merkins still use pounds and feet and something called gallons and buy Miley Cyrus videos, so hardly a reasonable cross section of the global marketplace, eh?

Oz government science funding to rise...

Re: Tony is a believer

I believe he's referring to the widely held belief amongst Australians that Kevin Rudd's penis is so vast in girth that it needs to be supported against the possibility of it rolling down a hill and crushing a bus full of schoolchildren

Re: Science? Tish!

"Labour lost the election, get over it and stop moaning"

Interesting. Because I think our current prime minister is a twat (and half his cabinet, to be generous), you assume that I'm some sort of labor supporter/apologist?

Get off your high horse, stop automatically assuming a cunch of bunts in Canberra are doing a good job because they have the right colour rosette, and face up to the fact that we've replaced one bunch of lying weasels with another bunch of lying weasels.

Incidentally, I don't see how ' We r;efuse to tell the press what's going on with our policy of pointing guns at asylum seekers', or 'If we remove the forum for discussion of climate change/gay marriage the issues will cease to exist' can be regarded as 'much better' than Rudd's 'We'll save the planet with pink batts and electrocuted installers, and force the schools to let our friends in to build unnecessary new buildings at taxpayer expense'. If you could explain?

As it stands, the only 'choice' we get at election time is the choice of which thieving bar steward gets to shove their hand in our wallets for a few years

Science? Tish!

We now have a Glorious Leader(tm) who believes gay men and women are, at best, confused, at worst dedicated to undermining our doG given right to be beer swilling patsies for our merkin 'friends'.

He believes that pointing guns at refugees is the best way to deal with them , that if nobody researches AGW then it doesn't exist and that Australia is protected by his own personal Fairy Sky Being.

He also believes that allowing Uncle Sam to station 25,000 troops in Darwin makes Australians somehow safer.

What need has he of science?

Post-Profit Prophet RUSSELL BRAND is the HUMBLE CHRIST of STARTUPS

Re: It's a pretty sad joke when...

"He produces nothing you can touch, feel with your hands, feed or shelter people with."

So rather like a bank or a stock market commodities trader then?

Easy. 'Communism', 'Marxism', 'Whateverism' are simply labels. labels, moreover, that carry a lot of associative bollocks with them.

For example, when a European uses the word 'Marxism', it generally relates to his/her understanding of Marx & Engels' principles and writings.

When an American uses the same term, it relates to his (usually) or her understanding that 'I don't know what it is, but it has something to do with raping my family, stealing my money and taking my gun away. Oh, and Barack Obama is one.'

It's best to drop the labels and talk about the clear and concise (or in the iBong's terms, drug addled and buzzword infested) ideas and principles you want to get across.

For example 'As a terminal cancer patient, would you support a health system that would give you at least a chance to survive long term' is different to 'that Socialistic Obamacare our Marxist president is trying to force us into - is it a piece of shit or what?', although they both relate to the same subject.

Re: I would like to point out

Yeah, and Donald Trump has a net worth of $3.5B. but he's still a git with a stupid combover. Your point?

Google, Microsoft to drop child sex abuse from basic web search

Re: ...

"Apparently the guy that killed the 5 yo in Wales was searching for "naked kids" and shit"

A likely very unpopular interpretation follows:

Maybe he was unable to find what he wanted/needed to whack off to and therefore went out in the real world to make his own. Maybe, if he'd found the images, he would have settled for Mrs Palm and her five delightful daughters and that 5 year old would be alive now.

I don't know, maybe. But do you know, for certain, that jerking off in front of some images WOULN'T have changed the outcome?

Re: Title is too long

I'm not sure I agree with the 'making it harder to get hold of might make them clean' argument. Although I can't approve of child porn images, simply because there WAS an abuse occurring when the pictures were taken, I'm not sure that restricting access would actually help. There will always be a market for this shit, so the images and videos will never stop, even if their customer base is limited to the very rich, but on evidence relating to 'normal' porn, it would appear that the availability of porn leads to a reduction in sexual offences and the restriction leads to a rise. http://www.yapaka.be/sites/yapaka.be/files/actualite/pornography-rape-and-the-internet.pdf is an interesting study on correlation (I know, correlation doth not a causation imply!) between the availability of porn and the incidence of (in the study's case) rape.

The implication is that, starved of fantasy targets for their compulsion, paedophiles will incline towards acting out their desires in real life with real children.

And while I'm boring everyone: When we learn of a child who has been abused, our sympathies go out to him/her. The child is a victim, whose trust has been viciously assaulted. The child deserves all the compassion we can give them, all the help and therapy available (the help and therapy bit very often doesn't happen due to budget restrictions, of course).

The majority (I used to have the figure, but the brain cell that held them appears to have died) of adult child abusers were themselves abused as children, so there is a clear cause > effect correlation here. And yet, for the abusers themselves, we have no compassion. They are animals, worse than animals. The only right course is to cut their balls off and bang em up for the rest of their natural. The compassion we had for them as abused children has evaporated to be replaced by raw hatred.

I wish I had a solution, but TBH, I have a tendency to feel the same way about the abusers when these cases come to light, but it seems to me that we, as a society, or culture, whatever, are failing these children if we are not rescuing them from the cycle of abuse.

Yes, I know not every abused child becomes an abusing adult, but a higher proportion do. Certainly higher than the proportion of kids who ride bicycles who later join murderous bikie gangs.

Just my coupla pennorth. Please feel free to ignore/downvote - it's been a long day.

Sonos and I: How home media playback just gets SO FRUSTRATING

I've always found that having more than one music player/clock radio/tranny assists greatly with the 'playing something different in a different room' scenario. I didn't realise that it was an issue in these days of cheap leccytronics.

Must be just me.

Curmudgeon Much?

This magical streaming of music to every corner of the house seems to have passed me by. I have 'reasonable' TVs in the bedrooms attached to mid quality sound systems, allowing guests to listen to radio, TV, Foxtel, CD or anything on the media server which feeds to a little box to the optical input of the sound systems (data travels along the mains cables from the central server).

Then I have the Denon Home Theatre amp in the main TV room. All HDMI outputs go to the TV (a not particularly new, smart or clever LG plasma) which has a single switched optical out audio out to the Denon. Switch the TV input and the sound source switches so I don't need a dedicated channel for each device. PLUS I can plug in a USB storage device and have the sound auto directed to the Home Theatre.

The TV room is for TV, so the two exposed cables for the rear speakers simply hide under the skirting cover.

Suits me, and has done for many years.

And if anyone asks me why they can't watch the Optus Direct box (don't ask!) in their bedrooms when they have pretty much everything else in the house to choose from, I simply offer to arrange the house so that they can wash and slice vegetables while sitting on the toilet. Usually quiets em down

;o)

YMMV of course, but if someone could explain why they'd want to be able to listen to a TV programme they can't see while on the loo, praps you could enlighten me as to what I've been missing all this time

Hey! You! Get outta my cloud says Google with balloon broadband patent

+1 for the giggle, but seriously, just how long have you been hanging on to that joke in the hope of an opportunity to ewes it?

Fukushima fearmongers: It's your fault Japan dumped CO2 targets

Re: No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

Holy Zarqhuan's Flying Fish!

Haven't heard the term 'crypto fascist' since Citizen Smith. And it still means as little now as it did then. A true linguistic survivor, that one!

Brit ISPs ordered to add more movie-streaming websites to block list

Re: "the rights-owner can apply to have a website blocked...

"Pity there isn't an additional clause saying that, in order to have a site blocked, the stuff that it's made available should, instead, be made available by the rights-owner at a fair and reasonable price..."

Too true. When I was looking to get a replacement for my vinyl copy of Spooky Tooth's Ceremony, all I got was torrent sites, mega and a few 20 second clips in the progarchive.

Anything that was less than popular on release is almost (and in many cases completely) impossible to get through legitimate channels, and then only at an outrageous markup (How much of that 11 quid for At Last does any member of Frogmorton actually get to see?)

Meanwhile, in order to protect a few blockbusters (mickey mouse, snow white - is there a pattern here?), thousands of lesser works languish in copyright hell, unavailable to buy because they're unknown (ie: not big profit earners) and not available in the public domain because that would hurt the Disney Corp (don't take my word for it, ask the guys at the Gutenberg Project).

Surely with storage so cheap these days, it's not too much to ask that every piece of media be available legitimately, at a reasonable cost? Good or bad, popular or obscure, it's our cultural heritage. Historians speak of the Great Library of Alexandria, and the terrible loss of so many ancient writings, but at least the stewards of Alexandria didn't deliberately set the fire to protect their outmoded business model.

Ultimate electric driving machine? Yes, it’s the BMW i3 e-car

BRILLIANT!! A couple of solar panels per house would work really well in, say, Aberdeen. Can't let that 5 daily hours of drizzly, grey winter murk go to waste now, can we?

MPAA, RIAA: Kids need to learn 3 Rs – reading, writing and NO RIPPING

Re: It's simply amazing...

After careful consideration, I have decided that the most reasonable and objective response I can offer to your comment is BOLLOCKS!

Copyright Infringement is NOT stealing. It is copyright infringement. 'Piracy' is not a bunch of venomous scum attacking ships and putting everyone to the sword after buggering and torturing them. It's copyright infringement.

Whether right or wrong, it's not on a par with murdering someone or setting fire to orphanages, despite the penalties the MPAA/RIAA would like to see imposed.

And on the subject of the rights of creators, it's not creators who get the money, it's Copyright OWNERS. And owners of copyright are generally publishing or distribution companies, not creative artists.

Re: The MPAA and RIAA are pitching the idea of grooming kids early?

"By "grooming" you mean teaching kids to respect property rights and not steal?"

We're not talking property rights or stealing here. Walk out of a Virgin Megastore with a copy of Avatar under your coat and you've stolen from that nice Mr Branson. Before you did that he had 300 copies, now he has 299 (steal enough copies and he can order a smaller skip come stocktake time)

Make a COPY of existing media (from whatever source) and the sum is:

Before 'theft' the owner had one

After the 'theft' the owner had one.

And I'd love to know why MPAA/RIAA are so keen that WE respect the rights of the content creators while they work so hard to rip off creators in any way they can.

Re: Mind control

Don't you hate those non-skippable 'You wouldn't steal a policeman's helmet, go to the toilet in it, return it to his grieving widow and then steal it again' (thx IT Crowd) and 'Here's some other shit movies we'd like you to buy' sections on DVDs?

They're a bugger to remove cleanly when you're ripping a disc. or so I've heard..

HUMANITY STUNNED - Apple Retina iPad Mini arrives. A solemn moment

@Vociferous

"...in gold"

Would that be SPACE gold, or just ordinary everyday gold like the poor people buy?

Re: Retina?

"Anything above that number is just nonsense for marketers who like to put higher numbers in spec sheets to suggest they are relevant"

Too true. Just like the 'BAZILLION MEGAPIXELS!' they crow about on new cameras, a figure that is meaningless without reference to the sensor size.

In the same way that 42 million sensor pixels is a waste of time on a 4.8mm sensor, so 2048 display pixels is utterly wasted on phone/phablet screen sizes.

Ten top stories from New Who

@Oh Bother

Have to agree about Turn Left. Superb acting from Donna, especially when I'd already decided she would be the worst possible companion, but ended up being amongst the best.

I'd have to vote for the Library episodes, Vincent, The Doctor's Wife and of course Blink deserves the No 1 spot.

But the vulnerability of the doctor in Human nature/Family of Blood was a joy to behold, especially when you learn he was hiding for the Family's safety, not his own.

Three Men in a Tardis

Re: notable mathematicians of Rome/Byzantium

"Was Bangor a Raman fort, aye?"

Have to correct you there. According to Clarke, the Ramans never even landed on Earth, let alone build anything there.

The CURSE of WHO: WHY has there never been a decent videogame with the Doctor?

Re: Doom?

" have a vague memory of some kind of plug-in for doom ( or wolfenstein 3d ? ) which added Doctor Who themed graphics to the game "

You might be remembering the Quake III mod. Basically Quake III with Dr Who skinning. Not one of gaming software's highpoints to be honest

Brit spymasters: Cheers, Snowden. Terrorists are overhauling their comms

Re: I'm not...

Well said sir! Have an upvote for being my kind of pedant!

Or is that 'up-vote'? Up Vote'? 'Vote Up'? just 'Vote'? and should it be 'kind' or 'sort'?

Bugger this grammer naziism is tough!

Unfortunately, in the kind of world we live in, intelligence services are part of the package. But it seems this is no longer a case of operations to determine threats to national security, or to track known terrorists/criminals/paedophiles/liberals.

I don't accept your two implied arguments here:

1. There is no indication of ANYONE 'making a call' about privacy. It seems our intelligence services are in a mad dash to collect absolutely every bit of data, no matter how insignificant, about absolutely everyone on the bloody planet, and then store it forever. That's not 'making a call', it's indiscriminate snooping.

2. You appear to believe there are only two options here: to collect absolutely everything about everybody, or to collect no data at all. Surely those are only options for people who are incapable of applying any common sense or judgement, and if that's the sort of person our intelligence services are recruiting these days, maybe it's high time we turned the spotlight on them.

And THANKYOU El Reg for the edit button. Sometimes the rabid froth obscures the screen and hides my typos.

Re: actually...

"more people are overhauling their comms and using VPNs and other proxy / encrypted services by default because of all the site blocks we're seeing lately"

And the thing is, these are no longer just 'tech savvy' users. I've had so many requests for advice from people who have traditionally put their entire lives up on FarceBook who now want to become a little more anonymous. Some of this is because their pictures have started appearing against endorsements for products they wouldn't use with a gun to their head, but there's a significant undercurrent of 'I don't want the yanks looking over my shoulder' requests

Apple patents technology to STALK YOU in your own HOME

"I would definitely like a remotely controlled house."

Me too, although I'd rather have remote control of somebody else's house. That's where the REAL fun lies

Re: Will it have Couch Potato mode?

You know, technology is wunnerfull an all that, but TBH, I AM capable of turning my bloody telly off MYSELF. And I don't want any product of the Sony Corporation deciding I'm dead and switching stuff off neither.

And while I'm in technophobe mode:

Do you remember the old days, when you had to go upstairs, rummage around to find your camera. check there was film in it, take a photo of your dinner, finish the roll, take it down the chemist, order 20 copies, wait a week, then go round each of your friends' houses with a copy of the photo so you could show them what you ate?

No?

Neither do I, so stop it!

Ten top stories from Classic Doctor Who

Re: Tabs...

Plus 1'd (that appears to be an acceptable English phrase these days, unfortunately) and a hearty 'Me Too!' Sometimes you need to be sure you've left enough downtime for all the Dpctor Who articles and obviously the best way is to get your Who fix first

Here's what YOU WON'T be able to do with your PlayStation 4

Re: Storefront Technology

"Seriously, who in their right mind is going to buy a product that will not work with the gear they already have?"

Umm that would be the folks who bought the iPhone 5 and happily replaced their clock radios, stupid plastic floorstanding speakers and the other stuff they'd only bought because it had an iThing dock.

I suppose they junked their BMWs at the same time

iPad Air peels off in racy pics for wide-eyed geeks, reveals 'worst battery ever

Re: The point is

"it's a genuine manufacturer part"

Well yes, given that their are not too many batteries in this world NOT manufactured by ...erm... manufacturer's.

or were you trying to suggest that Apple hand manufacture special iThing batteries in their US based manufacturing complex?

Re: Recyclable not landfillable

"I would suggest that putting them in an oven is the very last thing that you want to do."

Or indeed, the third to last thing you ever WILL do (followed quickly by screaming and dying, of course)

'Tablet' no longer means 'iPad': Apple share PLUMMETS below 30%

Re: Niche Product

"iPads and iPhones should be regarded as niche products, not mass market"

So all the chavs I see ostentatiously holding their 5Ss at arms length for us mere mortals to see wot they got represent a 'niche market'?

Coulda fuled me.

Big Content says Pirates of the Caribbean do their worst in Australia

Re: @AC

" the IP owners should have no grounds for complaints - they are getting paid anyway."

Not at all. Why should they settle for being paid loads of money when they can hold out for loads and loads of money?

I would say it's more likely to be:

- 30,000 bought in shops by Australians

- 20,000 bought online from overseas

- 10,000 pirated

making it (in the MPAA's mind, at least) 50% legitimate, 50% prated. After all, only a PIRATE would try to buy something from a country he didn't live in (unless it's a US company buying labour, of course!)

Re: Interesting

"Does anyone else think it slightly sad that Australia's internet is so bad that people are still pirating physical DVDs?"

Yes sad, but that nice Mr Abbot's interthing will make it all better for us, won't it?

But their not (generally) pirating physical DVDs. What they're doing is BUYING Region 1 DVDs and then selling them in a country the MPAA doesn't want them to. After all, why should Australians get the chance to buy a DVD at the same time as mekins and for only a little more money when Hollywood wants them to buy them a year or so later at three times the price.

Gotta love the removal of 'restrictive trade practices' by giving us region free players but only allowing us to buy Region 4 DVDs to play on them.

bar stewards, every one of them

DON'T BREW THAT CUPPA! Your kettle could be a SPAMBOT

Re: I suppose,

+1 just for mentioning the great (and greatly missed) Martin Gardner. Also used to a regular column in Ben Bova's Omni magazine, where I first discovered him.

Digital radio may replace FM altogether - even though nobody wants it

Re: Keep grinding that ax Andrew

"The TV switchover took place at a fortunate point in history when the prices of LCD TV's were coming down fast, and the quality (and size) of almost all flat screen TVs was so immeasurably better than CRTs that wholesale replacement was being undertaken"

I think you'd be surprised at how many analogue CRT sets were being used even a couple of years ago. Digital TV took off primarily because so many people had bought into digital capable set top boxes (Sky/Freeview/etc) that there was no need to replace the CRT until it died or until flatscreens became affordable.

Re: I'm Curious

"Compare that to potentially 100+ DAB stations"

Abso-bloody-lutely. On my many and various FM radios and receivers here in Arsetrailer, I could only get two decent, quality stations plus a dozen or so auto playlist shit stations churning out endless Top 40 or 'Classic Hits' (ie multiple plays of Hotel California, Baker Street and My Angel is the Centrefold, rinse, repeat), while on my spanky DAB radio, as long as I put it on a high shelf next to a window and moving very carefully so as not to disturb it, I can now receive well over 100 auto playlist shit stations and a low bitrate version of one of the quality stations.

This is not the Brave New World we were promised by Raymond Baxter!

Just saying