Posts by Rich 11

Bacon is not my vodka friend

Re: @ Ol'Peculier

Marmite, peanut butter and plutonium.

Two out of three ain't bad...

My plan to heal this BROKEN, BREXITED BRITAIN

Re: Parliamentary Sovereignty

Don't worry, I'm sure the spooks won't be worried about you quite just yet. After all, you haven't risen up against the lack of democracy in the selection of members of the Upper House nor against the democratic deficit in our choice of Head of State, so you probably won't rise up if one referendum is ignored.

Democracy means different things to different people. You might think that the recent referendum is binding in law, but it isn't (contrast that with the Scottish one). Your opinions don't make it so (and indeed neither do mine, although I don't think it should be ignored either). Sadly we've seen evidence that some ignorant and resentful people thought the referendum result meant that anyone not born in Britain (not to mention quite a few who were) would soon be kicked out of the country. Do you think their idea of what the referendum was about or what it enabled is correct?

At the risk on invoking Godwin's Law, I wonder if many Germans were thinking the same when they elected Hitler?

In all fairness, Hitler hadn't created the mess Germany was in. He temporarily got the Germans out of it, but then got them into the biggest mess of the century. Their mistake was handing him more power than even traditional Prussian absolutism allowed a Chancellor.

Of course, it's unlikely that any of them will suffer for the damage they've done to the country.

This is why I want Boris Johnson to be elected as Tory leader. I want the bastard in office, not slithering off to private life while still raking in five grand a week for one column in the Torygraph. I want him to have to face the shitstorm he's done so much to create, to demonstrate once and for all to everyone that he is utterly incapable of running the country, of keeping us afloat when he plunges us into a new depression before we've even clawed our way out of the last one.

When people lose their jobs, I want them to see him at the helm. When pensions have to be re-evaluated and contributions go up, I want people to know he's to blame. When essential services are cut, I want people to hear his bumbling excuses. When he admits that migration levels will barely change, I want the vile xenophobes and racists who are currently insulting people in the streets to know how they've been manipulated -- I want them to stop hassling people who aren't to blame and start flinging dog shit at Boris's front door in Islington. And I want Boris's failure in office to go down in history as his toxic legacy, so he will only ever be remembered as the incompetent idiot who put his own ambition above the good of the country.

Re: Missed a trick.

vacate the continental shelf

I knew there had to be some way of getting our money's worth out of Trident.

Tesco Mobile does what? Hahahahahahaha. Sorry customers

Crapita

I see Tesco are moving their phone business into the Value range....

Re: What a shame

Why do companies deliberately screw themselves up when everything is working fine?

More profit if they're already doing well, more cost savings if they're doing badly. Sometimes both at the same time.

Gun-jumping French pols demand rapid end to English in EU

Re: DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

Some Dutch I know even dream in English they use it so much. This despite living and working in NL with their countrymen.

I heard a similar thing from a German friend. He was fluent in French and English and used to go meet his family in France for three weeks each summer (he couldn't visit them in Germany because he was trying his best not to get conscripted). He said that about a week after returning to England he'd suddenly realise he was thinking in English instead of in German.

UK digi strategy on ice post Brexit results - sources

Re: Early [human] days

It certainly looks like the UK is going to end up leaner, probably by about 35,000 square miles.

Oops, sorry, forgot where I am. That should read 'by about four times the area of Wales'.

Time to re-file your patents and trademarks, Britain

Re: 'EU' -> 'UK' -> 'K'

The UK is the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland. If Kiltland want to leave it still remains the UK.

Completely wrong. The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The 'United' refers to the Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland in 1707. If Scotland leaves, we've got to find another excuse if we want to keep 'United' in the country's name.

Brexit government pledge sought to keep EU-backed UK science alive

Quite. I'm torn between financial action to protect my pension and stockpiling weapons while I can to enhance my future Road Warrior status.

[deep breath]

I'll commit to trying the political and financial route before expanding the cellar into a revolutionary war room. But if Nigel gets a place in Boris's government, all bets are off.

I want to learn about gamification but all I see is same-ification

He'd transcended before he even got here. After that he just condescended.

PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU

Are you another idiot who can't tell the difference between race and nationality?

That status is reserved for those who saw his Breaking Point poster and couldn't see anything wrong with it.

Holy Crap! Bloke finishes hand-built CPU project!

Serves me right

and are now integrated on an atomic scale for modern microprocessors.

Being in a foul mood this morning, I was going to quibble that modern microprocessors aren't yet working at the truly atomic scale. However a quick scribble on the back of a ballot paper suggested that copper atoms sit about a quarter of a nanometre apart, so a 9nm fab process is as near as damn it atomic scale. Better than I could manage with a shaky hand after a night on the Guinness anyway.

Genes take a shot at rebooting after death

Re: Not that surprising

If so, doesn't that make them zombie zombie genes?

Deploying software every day is... actually... OK – what devs tell their real-life friends

Re: Military Platform - back end

Or they're just crap at design, testing and debugging. If they don't fix those problems first, picking up the pace isn't going to help much.

Indisputably

Not a good choice of words.

Supermassive black hole devours star and becomes X-ray flashlight

Re: No black hole required

btw, saying the x-rays are created using electricity is a bit of an odd way of phrasing it.

It's sometimes a signifier that someone is about to launch into a rant about the Electric Universe. Given AC's denial of the existence of black holes, I was not looking forward to what might come next...

Re: No black hole required

The black hole nonsense is made up because you need something that big to exert sufficient gravitational pull to make x-rays.

Other lines of evidence are available.

US Senate strikes down open-access FBI hacking warrant by just one honest vote

Re: You what...???

Just like a "gun free zone" will guarantee your safety because no criminal would ever bring a gun into one of those zones.

I don't recall anyone claiming that gun-free zones will guarantee safety, let alone that the restriction would be observed by criminals, but they do significantly reduce the risk of death or injury from an argument getting out of hand, an idiot pratting around, a drunk losing control or a toddler reaching into a handbag.

Why you should Vote Remain: Bananas, bathwater and babies

QMV replaced the veto for most things after Lisbon, so we can't really veto anything.

Yet we have voted on the winning side in 87% of the QMV votes. That's a better hit rate than the current government has in Parliament!

Re: @Custard Fridge: Cracking article

So thie choice is for an "Ever Closer Union" of people who hate each other, or, keeping a reasonable distance from the forthcoming mess.

False dichotomy. I'll leave you to work out why.

Re: @Custard Fridge: Cracking article

Returning briefly to Greece: the country does provide an object lesson in the illusion of sovereignty. Last year the government ran a referendum against the offer from its creditors. It won the referendum but sill had no choice but to accept the offer from its creditors. This was a humiliating and unnecessary climbdown from an untenable, maximum position.

A humiliation brought about by the stupid decision to hold a referendum on something over which they knew they had no choice, as they were bound by the Eurozone rules which a previous Greek government had signed the country up to. Sovereignty had nothing to do with it. They wanted a bargaining chip and the referendum failed to provide them with one.

The UK is a member of NATO. NATO binds its members to support each other and not attack one other. If a UK government ran a referendum asking the electorate whether or not to nuke Denmark, and in its wisdom the Great British Public replied "Fuck, yeah!", you'd hardly be surprised if the government then decided not to carry out the will of the people because it ran contrary to the country's international treaty obligations. However if the referendum was on whether or not to leave NATO, they would be able to carry it out because the UK has the sovereignty to do so. Do you see the difference?

US House to vote on whether poor people need mobile phones

Re: gummint shouldn't pay for anything

John 104 likes to watch people die.

I don't expect he'll bother thinking that conclusion through.

Microsoft cancels Remain speech after death of Labour MP

So none of these corporations invested in Britain before the EU existed?

Of course they did. But now that the EU exists, they see it as providing them with a better option.

Re: Debrief?

Maybe all the Microsoft employees had already used their postal vote...

Re: State of disappointment? @ Flatpackhamster

Everyone I have met has been courteous

the vile Remain campaign

Everyone has been courteous except you, apparently. Oh, and except for those of your allies who have been blowing racist dogwhistles about Syrian refugees, foreign rapists and Turkish visas.

Watch as SpaceX's latest Falcon rocket burns then crashes

Re: ... and the tinfoil hat brigade rides in!

Teach the controversy!

Should we teach our kids how to program humanity out of existence?

or for a government health minister to be a brain surgeon.

I'd settle for a government health minister with an actual brain.

BOFH: Follow the paper trail

Is it just me, or does every techie have that thought while on a work mandated course?

And on two-thirds of staff development sessions with a guest speaker.

I've lost count of the number of times over the years I've had to rebut the validity of the Briggs-Myers test. And as for fucking graphology...

London Mayor election day bug forced staff to query vote DB by hand

Re: If it sounds dodgy, it is dodgy

I've got a trick with an eraser that might blow your mind...

If it's the one I saw in Amsterdam in 1989, you're too late.

Wales gives anti-vaping Blockleiters a Big Red Panic Button

"Whatever you do, Dougal, don't press the red button."

"I understand, Ted. Not the red button."

Study of asexually reproducing honeybee ponders: But why the mass murder?

Bee-have!

Another surprising find for the researchers was that the Cape honeybee is actually genetically very similar to other African bees, suggesting that the Cape honeybee subspecies formed recently or is interbreeding with other African bees.

If they don't have any drones and don't always flick the biological switch that enables them to reproduce asexually, then they must be interbreeding with other bee subspecies. If they're so good at getting into other hives to lay eggs, then surely sneaking in for a quickie with a frustrated drone isn't beyond them.

Eds off their meds: Does this headline REALLY need to be so astronomically long it can be measured in parsecs?

The weird trick marketing experts don't want you to know

*tumbleweed*

One entire US spook base: Yours for $1m+

Re: Trumped

He could gather his followers around him, and together they could build a wall.

I'd give it two weeks before it turned into this.

Reg photography special: Get a better snap of a BLACK HOLE

Re: Wonderful

Pfft. That's thinking too small. We should resurrect Project Orion, tunnel out a cube of rock containing the Arecibo dish and launch it out beyond Pluto. Once at the focal point of the sun's gravitational lensing, we'd have the solar system's largest possible simple telescope.

Marauding monkey blacks out Kenya

Oopsie

That animal certainly put a monkey wrench in the works.

FBI tries again to get warrantless access to your browser history

The House of Lords tends to take a more principled stand on such matters, since they are a bit more divorced from party politics than the House of Commons. However, successive governments have loaded the chamber with enough placemen over the years that there's no guarantee any proposed amendment will pass or that the bill will be returned to the Commons for revision.

'Massive great big' vulture goes AWOL in Somerset

Re: Optimism required

"Scrotum! Pass me me pistol. I'll see if I can't bring the blighter down in the lake."

Brexit: UK gov would probably lay out tax plans in post-'leave' vote emergency budget

Re: equivalent terms

The UK is a substantial net importer from the EU. BMW will not be the slightest bit happy when the tariff on UK built Nissan exports results in a similar tariff on their beemer imports.

Woo-hoo! Trade war! That's bound to make us popular with everyone and have them all bending over backwards to sign agreements beneficial to the UK.

On her microphone's secret service: How spies, anyone can grab crypto keys from the air

Re: OT

I haven't.

UK Home Office is creating mega database by stitching together ALL its gov records

Arse biscuits

a Hadoop Use Group UK (HUGUK) meeting

'Hug'? I think they mean 'suffocate'. Gently and lovingly, no doubt, and for all the right reasons.

and that the department's current approach to data would remain in place.

Yes, that's certainly true. The fact that their current approach of 'grab, amalgamate, and tell no-one' might be wrong never quite occurred to them.

Virtual reality will take over the world by 2020, reckons analyst haus

true digital predators

I see some marketing gimboid is trying to appeal to the self-styled shark in the marketplace.

Life after Safe Harbour: Avoiding Uncle Sam's data rules gotchas

Re: Summary

though if it's anything physical they reserve right to...

...extraordinarily render it to a black site in a foreign jurisdiction?

Shhhh! Facebook is listening

"We use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching, based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify."

Like that's not just as creepy.

Re. But what about the people around you?

Start interspersing your conversation with bursts of white noise and insist that everyone calls you Jeremy (unless your name really is Jeremy, in which case I suggest you insist that everyone calls you Jemima).

Brits don't want their homes to be 'tech-tastic'

Re: LIfecycles of tech

Can you rely on manufacturers to continue updating their software to allow uninterrupted control of all of your Things?

Whose uninterrupted control of all your Things?

Microsoft warns of worm ransomware, finds fix in Windows 10 upgrade

Redmond...

...recommends users protect themselves by first upgrading to Windows 10

F off.

and porn sites avoided.

See above.

US computer-science classes churn out cut-n-paste slackers – and yes, that's a bad thing

Re: And this is supposed to surprise anybody?

what, besides IT, am I supposed to do in life?

Go into management.

Juno yields to Jupiter's gravitational embrace

Deorbit?

With language like that it clearly can't be a precautionary first strike. Phew. What a relief.

Brexit? Cutting the old-school ties would do more for Brit tech world

Re: I'm glad my mind doesn't image this.

Perhaps even by at least one of the protagonists?

The horse?