Posts by Andy Bright

Microsoft cuts out paste

Really?

/rant

"It's just a shame we'll have to carry a pencil and paper until then." No.. it's just a shame we'll not be using Microsoft's mobile products at all any more. Because the market has what I like to call alternatives. That also applies to the iShite, the piece-of-shite-berry or whatever.

Anyway I digress. I won't be one of those retards that loyally backs a corporate manufacturer to the point that I will put up with unnecessary limitations. I use an android phone at the moment and there is absolutely no issue with implementing touchscreen cut and paste at all. But if I find that it becomes too annoying to carry 40 batteries in order to get enough power to last a business day on standby, then I will drop kick my HTC Eris into the nearest toilet and get a Crackberry or Treo or whatever.

To me if you are so retarded and sycophantic that you think any of these wankers gives a shit about you, you deserve everything you get the next time they screw you over. Every corporate is the same. Apple are most definitely no better than Microsoft, who are most definitely no better or worse than Google. Or Palm. Or RIM. They're all cunts and so are the network providers these cunts use. Treat them the way they'll treat you. If they do ANYTHING you don't like, hand them back their device and tell them how shite their OS is for doing it. Make sure they understand that their arrogance has and will cost them customers. We give these pricks the privilege of being their customer. It's time all of us started remembering this and dropping them as soon as they show they don't agree.

\rant

El Reg insults 'millions of Irish Catholics'

*shrug*

Send them a few potatoes, I'm sure that'll cover it.

US kiddies treated to Playboy TV

Explanation

It did take me a while to work this out, but after about 10 years of living in this extremely weird, religiously contradictory country, I came to this conclusion.

If you see naked people on TV that aren't gay prostitutes having sex with your Baptist (or Presbyterian) minister, you're going to hell, regardless of age or intent.

On the plus side, according to the new Bible as approved by the Fox News Network, you can now officially buy your way back into Heaven, because Jesus has changed his mind and now prefers people who are stinking rich and have no desire to help those who are worse off than themselves.

Air France offers two-seat deal for fatties

Uh oh

I like the idea of the lard ghetto.. it would be amusing just to see what happens if two two-seaters were forced to sit next to each other.. BUT.. all the weight in one area of the plane? I see nothing but bad things happening!!

"I can't control the #$%^ing plane.. we're going down!!!!!"

California votes in HD TV power pruning law

What we really need..

Is a remote control that can pull plugs out of sockets.. problem sorted.

I do love the round TV idea though, because he's right.

Glenn Beck loses and wins domain name case

Yep definitely not a reporter..

The beauty of that site was that it indeed worded the accusation in a manner that Glenn Beck often uses during what most would call his less lucid moments.

"I have no evidence of this but.." precedes much of what he says, which is usually followed by some utterly insane statement during which he will be balling his eyes out and weepily claiming he loves his country.

His most notorious opinion was that FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is sent to disaster zones to give emergency relief, has changed its purpose to something significantly more sinister on the order of Democrats and President Obama. Instead of, say, giving emergency aid to hurricane and flood victims, it now runs concentration camps for right wing Americans. This is a delightful twist on the fact they provided mobile homes to the displaced victims of hurricane Katrina. Obviously providing shelter was a cover for creating concentration camps to house right wing protesters - and thanks to Glenn Beck our saviour, we can now all see the plan for what it is, an evil plot of the new devil worshiping, Muslim President.

Fox "News" itself is nothing more than the right wing propaganda engine of the Republican Party. During the Bush administration they were famous for reporting White House statements as news, ie. the White House would issue a press release and Fox News would report the contents of the release as news, without reference to its origins.

The channel is now in a frenzy of right wing propaganda directed at the Democrats, in particular President Obama, and are responsible for these so-called Tea Bagging protests. Amid denials of collusion, they will end a news segment giving the time, date and location of these protests and mysteriously be able to report live from all of them despite the so-called spontaneity of the event, often inflating the number of protesters present by 10s of thousands.

Naturally we are all having a lot of fun with this, I myself have nearly been fired after falling about laughing during a meeting when my female boss said she wanted to go tea bagging.

Of course those of us enjoying such moments do see the irony given the right's hatred of all things gay. Naturally Glenn Beck is a proud Tea Bagger himself, which is just too good to be true.

Nutt sacking row deepens

I watch this with interest..

The screams, the cries and the anger. Yet for some reason come election season the same yokels are voted back in.

My decision on whom to vote for is made from the following conclusions.

If the current government was in any way competent, explain the economy, housing crisis, ID cards, DNA databases, complicity with US rendition, Iraq in general, a surveillance society, thought crimes and the creation of legislation based on "I had a good idea while walking the dog."

If the opposition was in any way competent explain why I should trust them above a European government when they will certainly refuse to repeal or oppose any of the above.

So that leaves me with the choice of voting for someone, anyone, that doesn't currently hold office.

I know they can do a better job, have adequate experience and so forth because quite literally an infant school toddler would be more trustworthy and competent than any incumbent MP.

The mentally ill could do a better job than a party whose solution to all these issues is to "I'm going to cancel Europe.. wibble.. drool.. buurrrp".

Way to consign British business to irrelevancy on the world stage Tories, as well as removing the only checks and balances the British have on Parliament.

Well having said all that you can still consider yourselves fortunate. I moved to a country that voted George W. Bush President.. twice... not to mention the hundreds of congressmen that willingly admit they don't believe in evolution. Quite literally they'll say that out loud on TV.. it definitely puts paid to the notion that the BBC produces the best comedy in the world.

Irish brogue voted world's sexiest accent

Not cool..

In the US I was always told my English accent was second only to the French.. even after marriage, although I'm not prick enough to take advantage of it..

I know it's hard to believe but they genuinely didn't recognise what an insult that is.. French?!? They're so... French.. (carefully ducks under cover from a number of French ex-girlfriends).

Scottish? Seriously? Can't have been a poll of 5000 Americans then, because not a one of them can understand even the most mildly spoken Scot. In fact they warrant subtitles on BBC America, which surprised me because I thought the only English requiring subtitles came from Tyne and Wear. Irish? Yes, well, it surprises everyone, including a large number of fake US Irish, that you lot don't all talk like pixie-sized leprechauns in a Disney movie.

Personally I find the only worthwhile accent is the true Southern Californian..

More than 5 million people now on DNA database

Everyone is a criminal?

Here's a direct quote for you from the Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/28/dna-database-innocent-profiles

"Ministers said they wanted to keep the profiles of innocent people for between six and 12 years depending on the seriousness of the offence."

Riddle me that one batman. Anyone failing to see an abuse of power here? Let me translate this for you.

If the police swab your DNA during a period of time that a serious crime is being investigated, your DNA can be stored for 6-12 years. Your link to this crime might be as strong as living in the same area it was committed, say London. The police may know you haven't committed the crime, in fact they probably do know this. But a serious crime was committed, your unrelated DNA was taken and therefore logically they can keep this for a decade if they choose. No don't argue, it's there in black on white. We want to keep the profiles of innocent people (that means people who've committed no crime) for a period of 6-12 years depending on the seriousness of the offense they haven't committed.

So why do ministers believe the entire population of Britain are criminals simply biding their time, waiting for the appropriate crime to make itself available? Take a look at their own behaviour. It's often said a thief will suspect everyone else of being thieves.

Interesting isn't it. Next you'll be saying something like innocent unless proven guilty. Oh how naive you are. Innocent UNTIL proven guilty.. by the DNA we just happen to have on file. You can trust us not to contaminate a crime scene with your DNA, after all when has government tech or the UK police force ever made a mistake in the past? 'You may use the other side of the paper if you run out of space' is the quote that springs to mind.

Magpies hold funerals for fallen feathered friends

I wonder

If there is a Magpie vicar lamenting that his time is being wasted attending Magpie funerals only to see the corpse sent off to the sublime tunes of Tina Turner and bad poetry..

Windows 7 - the Reg reader verdict

Question

What I'd like to know is how people rate their game performance after installing Windows 7. One of the reviewers indicated he felt that he no longer needed to upgrade his ram, which is encouraging, is this a common consensus?

Blogging vicar casts Tina Turner into hell

Pah..

If I've leveled my Pally to 80 is it bad form of me to take bookings for funerals or should I make sure I spec Holy first?

oh yeah..

I almost forgot.. I can't offer them Salvation but I can give them Kings, which is just as good if not better.

Apple flounces out of US Chamber on greenhouse gases

*shrug*

"on balance, be beneficial to humans” because of fewer cold-related deaths in winter months"

Yeah I remember that one too, a few people don't die from cold as opposed to the huge numbers dying from flooding, more powerful hurricanes and other natural disasters, water being polluted from said flooding, starvation as crops are wiped out due drought and.. err.. that flooding.. entire cities forced to relocate..

Millions die from climate catastrophes.. but the great news is we get a shipping route through the arctic circle and 5 people that would have died from hypothermia live long enough to be one of the millions that die from natural (unnatural?) disasters.

Never mind, being naively optimistic we can buy homes in Surrey or Essex and wait for them to become Hawaiian-like sea front property, warm enough to grow palm trees around the driveway and turn our back gardens into a pineapple plantations. Because in these people's fantasy world that will happen as opposed to the reality of what's left of the country alternating between deserts and mosquito infested swampland, before the new coast of Essex disappears under a brisk tide.

Palm rejected Jobs's 'no poaching' Applers offer

So what?

Not sure I understand why an agreement not to poach staff from each other would be illegal if worded sensibly. All you have to do is agree not to 'deliberately' poach, or headhunt. As long as you didn't say you would refuse employment to someone based on who they've worked with in the past, you aren't breaking any laws. Agreements between companies are not illegal as long as you don't collaborate on product price, something that's difficult to prove apparently, given the remarkable similarity in the price of oil, gas and petrol sold by multiple oil corporates.

Oh and hiring via immigrant visa when there are local people qualified to do the job is illegal in the US and that isn't the way they do it. The way you illegally hire cheap foreign labour is to 'train' employees in company culture and procedures - and where better to do that than at your company headquarters in the US? The fact you were coincidentally forced to lay off the exact same number of employees because of market factors in the US is seldom investigated due to .. well I'm sure it has nothing to do with political contributions or backhanders.

When you can produce plausible explanations you'll get away with it, even if they are outright lies, because the burden of proof still lies with those doing the investigating and prosecuting.

Still there are strict limits to all kinds of visas and in reality the likelihood of an educated person losing his or her job to an immigrant is very small. Unless you decided to abandon your IT job because you really enjoy cleaning hotel rooms, picking fruit, landscaping gardens or building cheap houses. No this is where the infamous off-shoring comes into it and most Americans who lost their IT jobs to foreign workers did so because their companies went the significantly less dodgy route of moving their operations overseas.

A quarter of Brits packing multiple mobiles

re Explaining Things Like..

Both 'sofa' and 'couch' are good, although sofa is more prevalent. Settee would probably result in blank stares from 2/3rds of the population.

As for multiple personal contracts - why? What point would there ever be in having more than one contract for yourself? I understand work and home, that makes sense, but if you want 2 or 3 lines all you do is pay an extra few quid per phone rather than an entire new subscription fee for a second or third phone. Even in the US which still uses archaic billing systems that aren't per second, they allow additional phones for around $10 per month on unlimited plans and if anyone was going to rip you off it would be the country that bills you (or deducts minutes) for calls made to *your* phone as well as calls you make to others.

Soviet military-surplus manned spacecraft to fly again

I knew it!

EA eh? Tell me this isn't just a division of Electronic Arts making a really, really convincing version of Elite! Obviously the armaments will not be removed, otherwise how could you kill space pirates while you mine ore from asteroid fields and collect fuel from the sun with your scoops?

Sony reveals slim PS3, drops price

You don't want to stack it

Like most modern consoles, they don't want you putting the PS3 in an enclosed space, especially if you intend to stack anything that might generate additional heat on top of it.

Most receivers put out pretty large amounts of heat for example and that would almost certainly kill a PS3 if you put one on top of it in an enclosed audio cabinet. The XBox 360 is even worse.

Same with putting the PS3 or XBox 360 on top of a heat generating device like a receiver. Very bad.

IT Crowd writer defends NHS

@AC 15:38

If you lived in the US you'd understand what a godsend the NHS truly is. Anyone who is out of work and financially normal can not afford private insurance in the US. Roughly 1/5 Americans are in this predicament.

That means instead of visiting a doctor and getting medical bills they have no hope of paying, they are forced to go to their equivalent of Casualty (ER). This is the most expensive and wasteful part of their system and the bill is put squarely on the shoulders of the tax payer.

You talk about unsustainability of a government program, what about one that insists every doctor's visit for a cold, the flu or whatever minor ailment was re-routed to casualty, taking away services from those that really need life-saving treatment.

60% of all personal bankruptcy in the US is caused by medical bills. Approximately 60 people die every day in the US because they can't afford to go to the hospital. Since 9/11 166,000 people have died in the US because they had no insurance and 800,000 died because their private insurance forced them to either forgo treatment or receive limited care.

Costs in the US private insurance system are set to rise 3 times that of most people's wages and is the most expensive system in the world, despite only coming in behind Morocco in terms of effectiveness - at 39th.

Simply put, when health care is a for-profit system there is no incentive to treat people effectively. The sicker the person is when they leave a hospital the more likely they'll have to return and receive more expensive treatment. There is also no incentive for prevention and educating people on a healthy lifestyle. Instead television is filled with unnecessary commercials telling them to turn their doctors into dealers by demanding new and usually unsafe medications. They have no concept of the dangers of prescription pills and think the more they take the better off they'll be, failing to grasp that taking a combination of medicines could lead to poisonous and fatal interactions.

Americans take more pills, go to more doctors and have more surgery than any other population in the world, which is strange don't you think, when they have to pay for it. They are usually stunned when I tell them most Britons go years between doctor's visits, because they think that having 100% coverage would mean abuse of the system. They almost treat doctors offices as some sort of desirable daily activity.

The NHS and National Insurance is hardly perfect, but it does save lives and it does reduce costs.

Microsoft at a loss in Word patent case?

No Potential About It

"Not being able to sell Word would potentially hurt sales of Office."

Not being able to sell Word will *definitely* hurt sales of Office. Word and Excel are the only reasons to buy Office, there is far superior software available that can replace the rest of the package, especially if you are a personal or small business user and haven't bought the Professional version.

Yes people use Project, Power Point and Access - some are even stupid enough to spend money on Exchange servers and pay Microsoft instead of using superior products that do the exact same thing but with far less overhead and disk space and with far more reliability.

Any business that requires Office installed on their PCs will also require that all documentation is created and modified using Word or Excel. Only companies that have no standards or organisation will allow people to use whatever they feel like and even then they'll probably insist the documents created are compatible with those products.

People are obviously going to bring up Open Office and it's ability to do the same thing. But that's completely missing the point. The point is whether or not Office will lose sales if it doesn't include Word. Of course it will. You don't buy a product that doesn't include the software you bought the product for.

If you're going to do your work with Open Office, why are you buying Microsoft Office? It's like being given a BMW and then buying a Mercedes without a steering wheel to do your driving because you like the colour of the Mercedes better. The argument you can take the steering wheel out of the free car and install it in the one you bought is kind of retarded.

I suppose the best part about this would be that their rivals could use the same kind of FUD that Microsoft created for Linux. Why not suggest that any business that uses software that violates a patent might find themselves liable too? It doesn't have to be true to work, just look at how many businesses SCO managed to scam money from. And these weren't small businesses, they kept SCO running for years.

Men in Green step back from GM's 230mpg Volt claim

50 or 5000?

The Chevrolet Volt runs on electricity that comes from two sources, a battery as well as a petrol engine.

When petrol is providing the power, the Volt is supposed to get about 50 mpg (US gallons are smaller than UK gallons so I reckon that equates to about 60-65mpg in Britain).

Anyway if the car is driven 50 miles in a day, for the first 40 miles no gas is used. During the last 10 miles, 0.2 gallons are used, which is the equivalent of 250 mpg.

The way Chevy tells it is if the driver continues on to 80 miles, total fuel economy would drop to about 100 mpg. And if the driver goes 300 miles, the fuel economy would be just 62.5 mpg.

They imply that it would perfectly reasonable for a driver to travel 300 miles without needing to charge it up. Because if it was charged, why would the fuel economy drop over distance?

So my guess is that this isn't a normal electric car, instead it has more in common with a hybrid.

They also admit that first time adopters aren't going to save any money, as the cost of the car is going to be about $40,000 but would qualify for a $7500 tax rebate that dealerships generally work into the sales price. What they might do is subsidize the cost of the first few thousand cars, hoping that with enough volume, the price of building it (also $40,000) will fall. It isn't unusual for car manufacturers in the US to sell cars at a loss, in fact it shouldn't surprise anyone given the mess they're all in.

Even with the rebate that's at least $10,000 over the price of something like a Toyota Camri, a larger car with a pretty decent mileage of its own, especially if you buy the hybrid version. $10,000 buys a lot of petrol, even in Britain.

HP sued by own sales reps

Mitigating Circumstances..

It's a well known fact that 99% of HP's computing resources are tasked with designing the largest cardboard boxes known to man, as well as the string theory-like maths needed to discover the greatest large box to small object disparity possible.

I would imagine this also means nearly all their analysts and support personal are tasked with maintaining such a complex system, as well as eating up all of the R&D budget left over from the alchemy required to turn precious metals and stones into the incredibly expensive liquid their inkjet cartridges require.

So it really shouldn't come as much of a surprise to the guys in charge of selling this stuff that nothing and no one is left to fix their commission calculating software. Perhaps they could ask for a couple of hp inkjet cartridges to cover their missing commission payments.

Powered robot suits make debut on Tokyo streets

Bah..

It's been almost a week since you did this story and still no one has mentioned the obvious fact that this is little more than a move towards building our first Cylons. So the end of the world, etc is upon us.. so much for pig flu signaling the Apocalypse, we're going to go out in blood bath of our own devising.

No doubt when the last 20K or so humans create a rag tag fleet and head off into the deep black yonder, we'll pass that other lot coming the other way..

Palm slams Apple, hoodwinks iTunes

Yeah this doesn't seem right

iTunes isn't an OS, it's a media syncing application and music/video purchasing tool. Now that nearly, if not all, music has been made DRM free on iTunes there isn't any valid argument that demands Apple make it compatible with other products.

Pretty much all of the content on iTunes is available from online stores like Amazon anyway, so this was never a monopoly issue - which I suppose Palm know given their weird decision to attack from a USB standards viewpoint.

The ironic thing is if Apple decide they'll be damned if they'll let Palm use their software, Palm may very well have made their device incompatible with every online store. Amazon for example are explicit about their video files not being compatible with the iPod and it wouldn't surprise me if that incompatibility now includes the Palm Pre.

And even Apple fanbois admit iTunes is at best an average media management tool. It's slow, messy and unintuitive. In fact it isn't any better than Media Player.

If Palm had decided to make a decent media application, their iTunes using customers could have continued to use iTunes and may well have decided to get any video or audio book content they wanted from somewhere like Amazon. Not that it matters, not many people use a cell phone to watch movies or TV and probably never will. There just isn't a need for it outside of waiting at an airport gate or sitting on a train. Even then pretty much any computer would be better, which most traveling workers with cell phones have in the form of a notebook.

A real breakthrough would be to create a media organising and purchasing application that sync'd and organised music bought from iTunes (or any other store) as well as allowing direct purchasing from Amazon and perhaps a few others.

If the application improved the experience of organising, playing and syncing media then pretty much everyone, even non-Palm users, would take a serious look at it. Other applications exist that do some of this, but none of them allow you to purchase directly from non-iTunes stores (as far as I know) apart from those stores own klutzy and even worse than iTunes media players.

Buddy, can you spare a PC processing cycle?

Alternatively..

If you give me your email address, I will send you enough email to save a plethora of children from all kinds of awesome diseases including, but not limited to, aids, leukemia, foot and mouth, mutated apocalypse-enabling swine flu and radical conservatism.

All you need to do is forward these to 20 people in your address book and back to everyone you see in the email header.

Famines will be stopped and if you repeat this 3 times, the atmosphere will be purged of human-causing carbon emissions and the sun will be accesorised with a New Labour logo.

UK teens bullied into sending sex texts

If only..

If only there was some sort of supervisory figure in their lives, an adult who could make sensible decisions like revoking the privilege of owning a cell phone if they did something inappropriate or even not giving a completely unnecessary device like a phone to children.

Think about it. If we were to introduce this system, these adults could do all sorts of things like keep an eye on the internet content these children are viewing and make sure that IM or text messages were age appropriate.

Some might think the cost of placing an adult with every family is prohibitively expensive, but you could make it worthwhile by expanding their responsibilities. You could have adults that do things like teach children how to behave in public or teach them to treat other people with respect. They could take on responsibilities like making sure these children learn a work ethic by doing things like homework and chores. They might even solve the problem of children playing adult video games underage thus taking away the need to prosecute video game store employees.

I know, you're all thinking where on earth could we find adults willing to do these tasks and even if we could, there probably isn't any incentive for them to do the job very well anyway if we can't afford to pay them. At least not if adults are anything like the children we want them to look after, which of course they soon will be.

One thing we can be proud of though, is that we've successfully taught our children they aren't responsible for anything they do, don't have to do anything they don't want to and if there isn't some sort of material reward, no need for them to do anything for anyone else.

Think about a world run by people with that kind of mindset, it's almost the ideal utopia of self absorbed free will. No, it isn't just a dream, we're on the verge of making this a truly awesome reality. Wonderful.

Apple tablet spooks world of PCs

No fanboi either

But I've been highly tempted now the lowest priced Macbook Pro is around $1200. You can still get a better price on a PC, but Macs offer more of what I want for a travel and home computer. By the time you factor in the price difference of the software I use on both platforms, their cost is almost identical. And I'd be able to get a more intuitive and more stable set of programs because Macs have been in these fields far longer.

As for their new product, whatever it is, if it is anything like the iPod Touch or iPhone, but with a larger screen, more functionality and more processing power, then I'll want one last week.

I use several devices for on-the-road entertainment (another reason for thinking about combining everything into a Macbook Pro or PC notebook) and if this offers what I want I may forget the notebook, continue doing my hobbies on my home desktop and get one of these new devices for my in-flight and layover entertainment.

ATI FirePro plays leapfrog with Nvidia

Re: Today's To Do

Try modeling a 30 mile, six lane road, with relevant bridges, soil types, hydrology, etc overlaid with survey data using a $100 video card on a $400 Dell and you'll see why these things aren't quite up to the job.

The software I use can not only keep track of my design to automatically correct everything if I modify a part of the road outside of National Civil Engineering standards, but can then be transferred to the equipment in the field so it can do its work automatically and conform to my design to 1/100 of a millimeter accuracy.

When we integrate satellite imagery over our designs to verify simple things like the bridge is in the right bloody place, the same software will correct perception errors making the satellite image more accurate.

We also use the same 3D CAD software for project management. For example a bridge required new supports, a new bridge would have been better but we didn't have the funding. Using the software to figure out alternative options that fit within our budget, what we did was create the supports next to the old bridge and then transfer the "road" to the new supports. We then joined the new bridge to the existing road on either side and removed the old supports.

The software created an animated version detailing the process together with the required paperwork and a machine copy for the equipment that would be automating the work. The cool factor came when the video recording (actually sped-up time lapsed photography) of the real work looked identical to that 3D animation we'd created for the field engineers.

Can we do these things using a gaming card? Yes and it will still have the same accuracy, but because it isn't accelerating the right kind of graphics it's like using an onboard chipset to run Crysis with all the knobs turned to max. Are these cards worth their price? Probably not, they probably aren't any more complicated than the cards that can push 60 FPS plus in Crysis, but because they're seen as tools for professionals in an industry that builds billion dollar projects over decades, $5000 isn't exactly a bank breaking amount.

Labour MP quits over McKinnon extradition vote

re:You get what you vote for

The other thing to remember is people are always frightened of voting in new MPs because they think they'll do something incompetent like blow us up with our own nukes or delete the stock market.

But all MPs really do is what they're told by their corporate sponsors. Need a law to put people in prison for not paying credit cards? I have an MP for that. Need a law to create a useless ID card so your corporate can cash in by the billion making them? I have an MP for that too. Need a generous contract to build a half-arsed database filled with personal medical information and guaranteed to be mailed to a random member of the public, well guess what? Yep I have an MP for that. Whatever you need, for the right price I can get my team of MPs to create whatever law or government contract you require.

And that's all they do. Show me a single bill that isn't either a knee jerk reaction to "won't someone think of the children" or the result of a corporate bribe and you've found the only honest MP in Parliament.

There is nothing to be afraid of if you vote for someone who has never been an MP except the possibility that they will introduce legislation based on what people want and maybe a few extra bank holidays during the summer.

Civil servants do the day to day running of the country, all we really need is a court system that is honest enough to strike down legislation that is illegal under our Bill of Rights and it wouldn't matter if infant school children ran Parliament. At least the only dishonest and greedy legislation would involve sweets and school holidays if that were the case, as opposed to ID cards and permission to read all our email if we cross the road when the traffic light guy starts flashing red.

Helium hole hiccup halts Hadron

Yeah.. riiight..

"said that the damage was caused by a faulty splice in the high-current superconducting cable"

Like any of us are going to believe that. Science fiction abounds with comments like "the simplest explanation is usually the truth" and other such sage advice.. and the simplest explanation is that the monsters they ripped from other dimensions in their devil-worshiping apocalypse inducer have borrowed their way out into the world.

It's a well known fact in Alaska that one of them is controlling Sarah Palin, having wormed its way into her brain. Obviously only something that can crawl through micro fractures is small enough to fit in such confined and cramped quarters.

Riot police raid birthday barbecue for 'all-night' Facebook tag

2 Pence

Only the best parties get raided by the police, it's a mark of honourable distinction for your party to be so invaded. To be raided by the riot police? Even to be present at such a party will write your name in history and the George Cross seems in order for the host.

I know, I know it was just a mistake. But how often do you get to say "my parties are so good they get busted by riot police"?

Dubya surveillance exceeded warrantless wiretaps

I'm a little confused..

Are you saying that Pelosi was accidentally vindicated when she said that intelligence agencies routinely lied about what they were getting up to? Because if so this is an absolutely awesome smack in the face of all those right wing congressmen that called for her head.

I'm so far left that Pelosi and Obama represent to me nothing more than the new Republican Party and what was the Republican party is nothing more than a bunch of religious lunatics these days.

The Democrats block important healthcare and social programs whilst at the same time support un-constitutional programs like this surveillance as well as a plethora of corporate entities. They also backed the invasion of Iraq despite the obvious lies (obvious to everyone except Cable News apparently) and they backed torture in the case of the mythical ticking time bomb scenario, something any intelligence officer who doesn't have his head stuck up his arse will admit is pure fantasy.

So if Pelosi went down I'd be as happy as when I saw Gingrich et co get busted for their corruption and congressional page kiddy fiddling . The only silver lining to her accidentally telling the truth would be it would infuriate those right wing religious nutjobs that call themselves conservatives. The problem is we won't be able to tell if she's laughing or not because her face muscles haven't moved in a decade.

Does any of this surprise me? Of course not. The Register has done a magnificent job reporting these sorts of violations of the last 8 years and they weren't the only ones.

Eurostar tunnels through UK border ring of steel

@AC 16:04

I don't mean to be flippant or facetious with this comment, it isn't a matter to joke about. But the events of 9/11 clearly show that the US is far from able to prevent undesirables from entering their country and a number of them were actually on the very watch lists that were supposed to stop them.

The reality is despite all the expense and fuss, not a single useful thing has been done to improve security in the US and repeated internal tests have proven that this is the case.

All the changes to visas and processing has achieved is raise the number of tourists that vow never to return to the US, which if you ask anyone other than a small number of xenophobes passing themselves off as politicians is actually a very bad thing for local economies.

Firefox 3.5 - it's not a 'web upgrade'

Geolocation

"The other snag is that Firefox currently relies on WiFi points and IP addresses and does not use GPS even if present. Which may explain why it was out by 125 miles when I tried it."

This is a good thing, not a bad thing. You do not want any website or application being able to identify where you are unless you manually enter the information.

The fact that knowing an ip address can give a potential stalker no more than your ISP's local address is most definitely a good thing, and the likelihood of a stealth application being able to grab GPS information directly from any device that gives it up is always going to be high on a Windows PC. We don't want or need anyone being able to find out our physical address without being in control of the situation ourselves. Overriding protections that prevent this is precisely what black hats are good at and they don't keep the software to themselves.

Demand for IT staff jumps, claims employment agency

There is demand..

Just not in our country. Did anyone check to see if these guys are from India? I hear there's a massive demand for IT workers there, no idea why that would be though.

Court reinstates ID theft charges in email hack case

re first amendment

No, I think they were trying to say that sending messages using the email account of someone else is protected free speech. Which is equally the bullshit you're calling. He was free to send those messages, provided they were true, using his own account and the government did nothing to stop him from doing so.

The State on the other hand is saying using someone's email account without their permission is the same thing as pretending to be that person. And in this case you have to say they have a point. ID theft is not just about stealing money, it's the pretending to be the other person for malicious purposes part that's important.

I don't get why the guy killed himself, he could have got this person thrown in prison and cleared his name that way, so he must have been on the edge anyway.

Disney punts hetero luuurv to wide-eyed kiddies

These arguments solve nothing..

No one cares what real people get up to in their bedrooms, most of us would rather not think about it and it does nothing to fix the problem clearly highlighted by this study.

The obvious conclusion to this is we need an unrated Disney porn channel that caters to a variety of sexual fantasies and desires. After all won't someone think of the children?

German old timers torture financial adviser

Hypocrites..

These hypocrite anti-smoker whingers get all upset about second hand smoke - and yet you'll notice they never take you outside when it's time to torture you with their burning cigarettes.

Always the same with these people. In my day a proper torturer would give you the cigarette while you were comfortably taped to the chair. They would never be so barbaric as to force you go outside to enjoy what might be your last drag on your favourite brand of coughin' nails. Obviously these people don't have the class of a good old fashioned SS torturer. Where is their national pride for god's sake?

NASA takes stick over feet and inches

Proof of Life

Surely the Mars crash test dummy was proof NASA does use metric measurements already. It's just they don't use them until they're half way through the mission.

When the inevitable happens, and we end up crashing a shuttle or probe into an alien spaceship, we can even use this as an excuse on the insurance claim form.

"I drove into the wrong orbit and hit a space ship that wasn't supposed to be there."

11 Time Lords plan charity shindig

NO!

11 Doctors my arse. There have only been two real Doctors and including those that preceded them, if they aren't Tom Baker or John Purtwee then they are NOT Doctor Who. If you don't have a perm you can't be The Doctor.

I believe it's time to start an official e-petition that demands we officially recognise these two as the only true Doctors and maybe an addendum stating only Sean "That's not what your mother said last night Trebek" Connery qualifies as Bond, Jamesh Bond.

Please don't eat your horse, EU asks owners

@Sarah Bee

I'm guessing you haven't had a Burrito made by a Mexican restaurant with actual Mexicans in it. Or you're being hilarious. Either way Burritos are just meat of some kind (minced beef, shredded pork or beef, steak or chicken) re-fried black or pinto beans and rice. Some have potatoes mixed in too.

The rice is usually made with tomato paste, cilantro and chopped onions which gives it an orange colour and tastes awesome. In the US they call this Spanish rice.

If you do travel to the US, remember that anything served from Taco Bell is probably the donkey you were talking about. If you're lucky. Taco Bell is to Mexican food what McDonalds is to filet mignon.

Microsoft: 18-month Windows 7 downgrade rights

@Paul

No, this is how you get free certification. Now most people would argue that running Windows Server was certifiable all by itself, but that's just nitpicking.

These days employers, heads of IT departments and generally anyone else who doesn't understand IT demand Microsoft certification for most jobs.

Those that do understand what they actually need sometimes do this too, just so they can chuck out thousands of applications for a single job without having the need to write up pages of justification. Saves running afoul of discrimination laws, stick a "Must have MSCE" or whatever and you can legally discard any applicant that doesn't.

So as an employee the answer to this problem is to demand "retraining" every time a new version of Windows arrives. Admin and Engineer certification costs thousands of pounds/dollars, and without this handy tool most of us wouldn't have a free way to get re-certified before our existing documents become obsolete in the eyes of the prospective employer.

As a favour to everyone in our industry, I'd ask you not to make it clear the true value of such certification to your own employer or any other person you happen to meet, as well as keeping quiet about the need to "retrain" for every version of windows.

After six months, Steve Jobs speaks

After six months, Steve Jobs speaks

For some reason I'm reminded of a few scenes from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy..

UK gov admits gamble on massive net snoop plan

Awesome

I've always loved this idea. Nothing would make us more safe from the police and their fellow snoopers than a copy of the entire internet on their hard drives. Personally I'd setup two hotmail accounts just to forward all my spam back and forth just to see whose head explodes from analysing it all.

By the time they'd find anything that would actually criminalise someone that someone would probably have been dead several hundred years.

I do pity the poor helpdesk jockey that will be employed to sift through several million terabytes of data armed with a desktop search engine and pencil. Not sure how long it would take to drive such a person to suicide, but the Facebook accounts of a dozen teenage girls ought to be sufficient.

Apple won't let Commodore onto its baby

Game Pack

It wouldn't be possible for them to release a game pack built into the emulator unless they were able to verify the games were now public domain or freeware and not many are. To get licensing for C64, BBC Micro or Speccy games is hardly worth the bother.

Amiga Emulators fell foul to the same issue, with the corporates that grew from the garage-based coding businesses now interested in grabbing licensing fees even from the worst and oldest of games.

I think the terms are pretty clear, and if anyone is going to understand these sorts of things it ought to be coders. They live and die by legalese even if they despise it. Also I would question why anyone would be happy with apps that 'phone home', updated versions to clean up sloppy coding should and could be released through iTunes. Nothing good can come of allowing a 3rd party control of your phone.

Catholic social club ousts coven of witches

Retard Alert

"Does the Church check everyone's beliefs"

Extraordinarily classic. A group of people that think they're hobbits not only tried to insult their arch nemesis by having a party in their club house, but then had the brilliance to ask the mother of all stupid questions when the attempt fails.

Are you sure this wasn't a coven of retards? Do they need a reminder of what the International Pedophile Club used to do to people they thought where witches over the last couple thousand years?

They ought to know that the only magic tricks allowed are from the babies of virgins that can walk on water, turn wine into beer (or something) and whose blood is a fine claret.

For an encore why not go to church next Sunday and ask for 'kings'* instead of salvation.

*If they're allowed to play at being witches in real life, I'm allowed to pretend the local vicar is a pally who can grant me World of Warcraft magical enhancements.

Gay animals going at it like rabbits

@Inachu

Although you're talking complete bollocks, I applaud your attempt to engage the gay community in online handbags given you have no chance whatsoever of coming out on top. Their handbags are always going to be a lot cooler than yours and more likely to coordinate well with the rest of their ensemble.

Speaking of which, has any evidence been unearthed that point to sharper looking albatross nests, snappy dressed penguins or an abundance of drapery in the homes of boy-on-boy fruit flies?

Plus there is already ample evidence that our gay brethren have contributed positively to human evolutionary development, for which everyone here owes them an extraordinary debt of gratitude.. Soon all men will be able to make a decent cup of espresso*, with only Starbucks employees somehow immune to this massive step in our evolutionary cycle. Still survival of the fittest and all that, so I'm sure the side of humanity that normally applies for a job there will eventually disappear.

*Not to mention the cost of the damn machines has fallen to reasonable levels given the mass production required to sustain the gay community.

'D'oh!' tops fave kids' TV catchphrase poll

You've got to be joking right?

What dickheads thought it necessary to bring back memories of such abortions as The Krankies and Crackerjack or the See You Next Tuesday that thought renaming Ninja to Hero made a cartoon less violent.

As you noted the adult input had to be key because no kids watching TV today would know what the fuck you were talking about if you mentioned at least 18 of them.

If this had anything to do with kids, you'd have to ask where the catch phrases of Monsieur Squarepants, Timmy Turner's dad or any from the programs kids (and unfortunately myself as a parent of kids) actually watch these days. All I see is a bunch of shite canceled 2 decades before any of today's TV watching kids were born.

New York cops seek tech solution to plod-v-plod shootings

Suicide by Cop

Yeah I have to agree that this guy committed what is called "suicide by cop" in the US. You don't wave a gun at the police because while most won't just start shooting, there's always the possibility you're facing an inexperienced cop that might.

Being a cop this is probably something the victim was aware of. Also the words "Don't shoot, I'm putting my weapon down!" usually work pretty well when you actually follow them before turning to face the police.

That's because cops in the US are used to members of the public carrying weapons, and are supposed to be trained to not shoot someone just because he has a gun - 'the criminal could be the victim' . There is actually a fair amount of training that's supposed to stop this very scenario from happening, and it sounds like this guy just ignored it all because he was too caught up in catching the person he was chasing.

There are far less dead Brazilians in the US than you'd believe and despite what television tells us, most US cops aren't all that trigger happy. You do have to be fairly stupid or suicidal to get killed by one. Of course there will always be exceptions, but I doubt this was one of them.

Apple punts batterylicious MacBook Pros

re: price drop

Perhaps the lesson here is wait until after the conference before buying an Apple product.. I believe iPhone owners felt similarly stung, but then what do you do?

They can't really afford to stop selling things for 3 or 4 months just to avoid people paying more for something and all electronics go through similar price drops eventually.

I'm sure someone who shells out for an intel processor a month before the newer model arrives feels similarly irritated. Or someone who buys a Samsung LCD TV only to see newer models push those prices down a couple months later.

I'm not sure you can play a waiting game with any electronics and win. You'd never own and enjoy any product if you did that.

The key questions are do you like the product you have and does it do the tasks you bought it for? If the answers are yes to both then you haven't really lost anything. If you want to put a positive spin on it, consider that for the extra $300-$400 you got to use the device a few months longer than you would have if you waited.. and if you like it enough perhaps those extra months are worth the additional 'rental' price.