Posts by Stevey

Here's why online social networks are bad for humanity, the nerds who helped build them tut-tut

It was ever thus

2010s - kids today, their lives are ruined by facebook and mobile phones.. not like it was in my day

1990s - kids today, their lives are ruined by video games.. not like it was in my day

1980s - kids today, their lives are ruined by video nasties.. not like it was in my day

1960s - kids today, their lives are ruined by TV.. not like it was in my day

1930s - kids today, their lives are ruined by radio.. not like it was in my day

1850s - kids today, their lives are ruined by penny dreadfuls.. not like it was in my day

Mm, sacrilicious: Greggs advent calendar features sausage roll in a manger

'you can get 3 heavenly sausage rolls for a quid, amen.'

Is that what they mean by the holy trinity?

Inventor of McDonald's iconic Big Mac dies

Re: Guilt complex

I'm with you, but we must protest against the heresy that is sliced cheese. Let's make Britain grate again.

NASA's asteroid orbit calculator spots a hot rock zipping past

Re: Five days notice

Yay! Instead of having one massive rock hit in a vaguely predictable location, we have thousands of radioactive pebbles burn up in the atmosphere and coat the planet. Nice.

Google man drags Emacs into the 1990s

Re: zx80

Trying to figure out just /why/ it ran out of memory and what to do about it was my first experience with figuring out how the internals of a computer really worked - like many people here, I suspect.

The fact that it was cheap got it, and the later Sinclair computers, into a lot of homes. The corners that had to be cut to make them cheap made for some great opportunities to introduce kids to real-world engineering.

Two new dinosaurs walked from South America to Australia, via Antarctica

Re: Waltzing Matilda

Looks like it's a reference to being found in a billabong:

http://australianmuseum.net.au/diamantinasaurus-matildae

The bones of Diamantinasaurus (nicknamed ‘Matilda’) were found with those of the theropod Australovenator (‘Banjo’) in the remains of an ancient billabong.'

Mars' 'little green men' buried alive by merciless meteorites – new theory

Invasion

Bombarded by meteorites, and then the magnetic core of the planet extracted.. I think we know who the real culprits were

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dalek_Invasion_of_Earth

Drowning Dalek commands Siri in voice-rec hack attack

Re: drowning dalek ?

That happens for me too ( somewhat modified north-east accent ), unless I do my best Dick van Dyke impression, especially with the sat nav.

It's made more annoying because it recognises my wifes' ( quite strong ) West African accent with no problems at all

Mutant space germs threaten International Space Station

War?

'....scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians -- dead! -- slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared'

Why should I learn by ORAL tradition? Where's the DOCUMENTATION?

This may have the unfortunate side-effect of immortalising the Dabbsy name

there once was an old man called Dabbs

Who's pubes were infested with crabs

his de-lousing attempts were all met with strife,

until half life wife decided the answer was a knife

Big data hitting the fan? Nyquist-Shannon TOOL SAMPLE can save you

Re: Just occurred to me

If you're measuring something that is periodic and predictable then you may be able to do that. But if it's periodic and predictable why are you measuring it?

If the signal isn't periodic and predictable, then the longest sample period ( lowest frequency) of your non-regular interval needs to be half the period ( or twice the frequency ) of the signal change that you are interested in, otherwise you will run the risk of missing something.

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

Doom?

I have a vague memory of some kind of plug-in for doom ( or wolfenstein 3d ? ) which added Doctor Who themed graphics to the game - replaced the gun with a sonic screwdriver, aliens/nazis with daleks etc.

Those kind of fast-moving arcade-style games fit in better with how the show feels now, rather than 'classic' Who, which seems better suited to a puzzle solving 'myst' style of game.

Maybe an adventure game to find and unlock the 'lost episodes', with points scored for esoteric Who knowledge would be just the ticket for the older fans?

Chrome for the slurp-weary: Cookie-binning Aviator browser arrives

Re: iron

last windows version released last friday (18-10-13 )

I believe 'auto updating' was one of the things they turned off - the idea being that it shouldn't be doing stuff in the background that the user isn't aware of..

I've used it for a while, not seen any issues with it, but dunno if it does quite as much privacy-wise as aviator claims to do.

Grand Theft Auto V: Violent, sweary and amazingly ambitious

Re: I've not even looked at the multiplayer yet.

Does anyone know if he's looked at the multiplayer yet?

'Clippy' coup felled by Microsoft twitterati

Re: Or you can roll your own :)

Indeed.. and here, with the rest of his chums:

http://www.smore.com/clippy-js

Who should play the next Doctor? Nominations needed!

John Cooper Clarke

would be cool but I'm doubtful he could much of yer actual acting

Failing that an unknown face that can make the part his/her own - the more well known will bring too much baggage to the role.

Going under the knife? Avoid Fridays. Trust us, we asked a doctor

Huh?

From the data in the report, it's not just that the risk is significantly higher on Fridays & weekends, it gradually increases from the lowest point on Monday.

The report lumps Saturday & Sunday together, which doesn't help, but if poorer care over the weekend was a significant cause, I'd expect Friday to be worse than Sunday, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Perhaps minor ops that happen toward the end of the week have a tendency to be pushed to the start of the following week, surgeons being unwilling to give up their weekends unless they have to, resulting in the figures being skewed by the percentage of serious/non-serious cases done on each day?

EU boffins in plan for 'more nutritious' horsemeat ice cream

Yum Yum

Is this really very different from using gelatin in ice cream?

As wikipedia tells it, "Gelatin is derived from pork skins, pork, horses, and cattle bones, or split cattle hides"

Or how about finings used to clear wine & beer - often ground up swim bladders from fish?

NEW ITV Player app IS HERE ... for Samsung fandroids only. Ha ha

Re: Samsung exclusivity for ITV?

I'm taking this as 'if you're going to get an android thing, the samsung flavour is the one most likely to be supported'

As for fragmentation in the Android market - haven't we all been here several times before?

Impoverished net user slams 'disgusting' quid-a-day hack

Re: To be fair, Lester ...

Don't mention p*o-p*o-ing where Lester might see - That diet of rice and chickpeas has got to have some serious consequences...

Unwearable tech: Five ways IT garb's gone HORRIBLY WRONG

Re: Many

I give you: "A Fully Integrated RF-Powered Contact Lens With a Single Element Display'

http://wireless.ee.washington.edu/papers/TBIOCAS_jyb_Dec2010.pdf

Fatty French Kilogram needs a new-year diet, say Brit boffins

Kilogram Diet

If the kilogram standard is now heavier than it was, that must mean that I now weigh less kilograms than I used to. Hurrah for basing weight measurements on an physical object.

Now, can we do something to get the metre back to a physical object as well? - preferably one that also increases. After Christmas my waistline badly needs a re-definition of standards.

Half of Milky Way's mass found in million-Kelvin gas cloud

'1 million and 2.5 million °K'

Degrees Kelvin? Degrees Kelvin?

Scientists find safer way to store hydrogen

Climate change

Extending the scenario so that we have lots of hydrogen factories situated near big water sources, and each of these factories shipping the hydrogen ( via hydrogen powered transport ) to where it is needed - i.e. the big cities of the world...

Whether we 'burn' the hydrogen, or use it in a fuel cell, it will produce water as an 'exhaust' - effectively moving water from the hydrogen factory to the middle of the city - giving us reduced oxygen and permanent cloud over each of our cities.

Lots of grant money will then be needed for the climate boffins to figure out the new number of ways in which the world is doomed!

Beeb rescues old Who episodes

Date?

Umm... date of the article?

Curved light drives boffin one-upmanship

Picky Picky Picky

If we're being picky here, velocity is also a vector - speed is a scalar. So while the speed of light (in vacuum) is a constant, the velocity aint necessarily so

CATS to be saved by BLASPHEMERS after the RAPTURE

What time ?

Any idea what time on Saturday? Only I'm supposed to be going to a Christian wedding that day, and it would be handy if we could arrange the rapture before, say 10am please, just so I don't waste the whole day..

El Reg space paper plane christened Vulture 1

condom, toilet roll & gaffer tape

Insert a condom into used toilet roll. Inflate the condom, until it is nice and snug, then seal one end with gaffer tape.

As the air pressure decreases, the condom will inflate, and the tip will push out of the open end of the roll. Position a release switch an appropropriate distance away, and wait for the condom to achieve the appropriate erection...