Posts by Andy Bright

RAF strafes Next in pirated duvet copyright rumpus

Don't think there is a copyright on the union jack

and as that's the only symbol or flag on the bed linen, I fail to see what the RAF are hoping to achieve, except maybe to prevent their roundels from being seen in photographs.

Dell touts Windows XP to 2009 - and 'likely longer'

Windows 7

After reading

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/msid-3085914.cms

I'm wondering if this will finally push even corporate users to switch to a non-MS operating system.

Cool, an OS that not only slows your PC down in the best Vista tradition, but goes on to insult your customer base. Surely even today's retarded consumers will acknowledge that suggesting they stop writing joined-up words and do a spot of finger painting isn't exactly a compliment on their intellect.

But slowing the performance of your PC another 30% just so you can do it? There's only so long people can look at Mac and Linux and say "any more from Microsoft and I'm switching".

(No I'm not a Mac or Linux user).

New York talks net giants into child pornography crackdown

Everyone knows

The best long term answer to any major issue is a knee jerk reaction, sensationalist press releases and the passage of a bill that should not be read by anyone under any circumstances. How else do you explain the Patriot Act?

US bars ID refuseniks from planes - but not ID losers

Regional Dialects

I think the problem people outside the US have with security here stems from a misunderstanding. I've noticed everyone keeps banging on about some war on terrorism, and that what we're doing won't prevent terrorists from reaching our shores. To be quite frank we don't care about terrorists coming into this country at all - they'd be light entertainment compared to what we're already doing to ourselves.

I believe it all stems from a misconception that GW can't speak clearly and mispronounces most of what he says. Wrong.

Say the following words whilst affecting a GW accent. Tourism, Tourist.

Is it starting to make sense now?

It's a War on Tourism, and if I do say so myself, a very successful one at that. Tell me that the idea of coming to the US doesn't fill the most hardened Tourist with dread and loathing.

In fact not a day goes by when I see on these very forums comments by users saying that if we carry on with our current policy of fingerprinting, data snatching and so on they'll simply choose not to come here.

Angry? Try the Tw*t-O-Tron

riiiight

I just find something on the internet that makes me angry, it's not difficult, just spend five minutes reading a tabloid news website like CNN or Fox News. I then just pick a random story from the Reg with a comment form and start ranting until my fingers bleed.

What do you mean that's not what the everyone else does? Then how do you explain what they're writing?

Speaking of homolesbians, what's the latest on the gay flamingos and cows? Haven't seen a decent gay animal story on the reg for a long time. Have the world's grant writers actually started reading applications for funding?

US air force chiefs sacked in robot-armada brouhaha

Stupid things happen?

My theory is the the population of the world is getting more stupid with every generation that passes. One day we'll all wake up and the intelligent people will be gone, and we'll be left with a bunch of shit no one knows how to fix.

Look we all know it's happening, we just won't admit it. I mean, tell me that 20 years ago anyone would have been surprised at finding the administration lied about their reasons for invading Iraq. But you listen to the media now, and they're all saying "wow, so that press secretary said GW made it all up and we didn't need to invade at all" as if this was some sort of revelation.

However I also think they're wrong. He didn't lie, it's just he's stupid. And I think the Republicans did it deliberately. They want to find out how stupid Americans were, and put George Bush up for election to find out.

"If they don't notice, we'll be able to do anything we want. If no one complains they have to be complete idiots. No, don't worry, it's not like he can do anything catastrophic... He did what? Invaded which country? How did he come to that conclusion? Wow.."

And you know one of them is sitting in the back of the room saying "I think we can go even more stupid..".

So you see it's not their fault they lose things. They're just stupid. The stupid are out-breeding the intelligent. Is anyone checking? Is anyone making sure intelligent people are getting sex? No!

NASA chief: Europe should have own astronaut ship

@MaXimaN

You should be more worried about the US doing the same, especially given their track record on friendly fire..

Painting by numbers: NASA's peculiar thermometer

When it rains in Alaska

Living in Alaska, and having done so for only 10 years, I can tell you that temperatures have steadily risen during that time.

From October to May the southern most areas of the main portion of Alaska average 1 foot of snow a month, historically. During November through March, temperatures dip to around -30 F and rise to around + 30 F, historically. +30 F is 0 C, or freezing point.

In Anchorage, for example, it was common for snow to become packed down and frozen onto roads permanently from November to April. We're talking over 6" of ice that can't be plowed or removed.

The ground itself is frozen. If there is no snow during this period a natural insulation that protects sewers and water mains is missing, causing some pretty nasty consequences. High pressure steam is used to blast through the ice to unblock drains, but this doesn't help home owners with burst and frozen pipes under drives, followed by a particularly disgusting back flow of sewage.

As I said the ground is frozen, making digging even a single foot impossible with something like a spade until sometime in May.

But as I also said, things have changed. Over the last 3 - 4 years, roads have been melted clean of ice and snow in the middle of January... by rain. The absolute coldest month of the year, with sunlight lasting maybe 4-5 hours, and temperatures usually well below -20 C, it warms up now and rains.

This causes it's own havoc. Because the warming isn't consistent. So the freeze returns and that insulated layer of snow that protected our pipes is gone.

Then you have the rain itself. SUVs.. well it's curious but while driving with studded tires is safe and reliable on plowed roads, it takes about 1 - 2 days to clear a city like Anchorage. Obviously the airports and main roads are cleared immediately, but travelling around in 3 foot of snow is not unusual in the outer and less important parts of the city. Try doing that with a clearance of only a foot and you may be stable, but you're also stuck as the snow piles up under the car.

But that rain is ice rain, because while it may not be -20, it is close or just above the freezing point. This means sheet ice, and funny thing about metal studs is they slide really good on smooth surfaces. Great for getting traction in soft powder, shite for ice. 4 wheel drive is awesome unless you lose it, and then it's worse than anything you've experienced in even a rear wheel drive vehicle.

Funny how the very vehicles we relied on for so long to get us to work in Alaska have turned out to be one of the major causes of our undoing.

So when people tell me we're going through a cooling phase, and that temperatures in Alaska are normal - I laugh. Because I live here and I can tell you they are anything but normal and we are definitely NOT going through a cooling stage.

One of the worst things that can happen to frozen roads in a place like Alaska is rain. It gets under the tarmac and freezes, expands and breaks it up. Our roads are littered with pot holes, and even with the wealth of oil (that again ironically is the cause of our own downfall) a limited number of road construction companies can only do so much work in the 3 to 4 months of Summer that we have in Alaska.

The good news is the moose seem to be enjoying it. The bad news is a bit too much, and too many moose means too little food to go around (leafy trees and shrubbery not being overly common in a winter wonderland, even if the snow has melted) and of course they starve and die.

Breach disclosure laws have 'no effect' on identity theft

hahahahahahahahaha

Or 'lolz' and 'roflmao' in todaze yoof speek.

Yes, stunning conclusion. Telling people that their identities have been stolen and they're about to face years of hell trying to clean up their credit, is not stopping identity theft.

Tell me, who actually thought just making a few businesses do nothing but admit they're shit at security was going to stop id theft?

Hmm.. my bank tells me they've signed me up for a free alert every time the person who stole my identity rips me off. But only for the first year. After that I'll still be ripped off, but blissfully ignorant of the fact. Because nothing of actual use has been done.

The only, and I mean only way to secure data that these companies are allowed to store is to make them bare the full financial consequences of losing it due to incompetent security or the use of inadequate software. If they don't have the tools to protect the data they're storing, after making them pay in full to clean up the credit of every customer affected, they should then be banned permanently from storing personal data. Again the punishment for failure to comply must be hard. Jail time for CEOs, who should bare the full responsibility for going cheap on IT. Quite happy to rake in the dollars selling personal data to marketing companies I'm sure, but maybe not so much if doing so means they lose everything.

There should be no legitimate defense, no 'but it was the company I outsourced my data collection and storage that done it', no 'my minimum wage employee lost his unencrypted laptop' and no 'the user checked the box that said (under a mountain of legalese) it was ok to hold his data on an insecure database for the purpose of marketing when he bought xyz from us'.

And it should not stop there. Cleaning credit won't give back the dollars/pounds you lose when you credit card interest rates skyrocket in the months your credit was shite. It won't pay back the dollars/pounds you lose when you're forced into a 'mortgage for the homeless @ 20% interest rates' in order to buy a home. It won't even pay back the dollars/pounds you lose when your insurance rates go up.

So either those services and loans should be provided by the criminals in charge of the companies that lose this data or adequate compensation paid if they can't.. Does anyone else wonder about how often these are credit card companies.. makes you wonder if shafting your credit one week, and then raising your interest rate the next isn't.. well.. you figure it out.

Qinetiq ships first 'Transformer' war-droid

I wonder..

If one of these could be controlled over the internet by monkeys.. (thx Lewis)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/30/monkey_brain_robot_weblink_boffin_race/

Boffins prove the existence of jet-setters

Anonymised Data?

"How could they not know who they were studying if they had latitude and longitude?"

I have a simpler question and probably more relevant. How can you tell if a person only moved 10 miles or less from their place of residence if you don't know who they are or where they live? Let me put it another way, even if you didn't know their names, you would at least have to know their address. Now tell me that marketing couldn't use the same information for mass mailing to consumers, especially the more affluent that they could identify as moving 100 miles away from home on at least a weekly basis.

Sure having a name for personalised mailing is proven to be more likely to end in a sale, but even "Dear Sir/Madam" will yield a 1% response rate, of which 1% will purchase something. For those that didn't know, that's the maths that calculates the value of names and addresses to mass mailing / marketing companies.

Personalising those names and address - a task by the way performed by minimum wage employees, using a post code book to add post codes and a telephone book to verify names - increases the odds of an actual sale dramatically (however I can't remember how much).

As you can probably guess I worked for such a company once upon a time, and my knowledge is from first hand experience. Yes it does pay to have people looking up names to match address, as well as their post codes (post code books can be obtained from local post offices at little or no cost). The Post Office uses it's own numerical equivalent to a post code, and if a mass mailing company pre-sorts and pre-bags it's mass mailing it receives a significant discount on the cost of postage. This is then partly passed on to the magazine / junk mail / whatever company that wants all this crap posted. Probably more information than you wanted, but it does explain how these things become profitable and how having no name is hardly an obstacle to profit, nor a good way of anonymising someone.

World+dog ignores Sweden's Draconian wiretap bill

Fucking excellent..

Given the random nature of internet data travel, wouldn't it be ironic if this ended up as a wiretap on US communications and somewhat sweet revenge for their pilfering of our private data.

Personally I only see this as a problem for governments or people living in Sweden, as it seems fairly unlikely that the Swedish police will be interested in the general public living outside of their country - unless that general public plans to visit Sweden in the company of a few kilos of nose candy or something similar. I suppose if someone's had a credit card stolen, which was then used to pay for online child porn, that might be a bit of a worry - but then most of those unfortunates have already had their names dragged through the mire.

So they're watching us? Well join the rest of the world, because if you believe this isn't happening in the UK or US, or indeed any other western nation, you're sadly naive to say the least. Just because you have privacy laws and warrentless tapping is eventually found to be illegal (again - it's odd how it suddenly became a legal practice in the US isn't it) doesn't mean they aren't doing it. The US fun and games with AT&T and warrentless phone tapping is surely proof that something as flexible as the law will not stand in their way.

A quarter of UK adults to go on child protection database

Huh, we can fight back..

..and place 3/4 of kids on an adult protection database.. so there! Bloody kids and their hoodies and yoof speek.. bring back hanging, corporal punishment, work house orphanages and ship the rest to Australia.

RSPCA calls for dog chipping

There are good things to be said of this

First, chipping dogs means a quick scan and the owner of a lost dog can be found pretty sharpish - even if they've moved since the rfid was injected - "who? Jim? yeah he was the old tenant, lives down the road now, let me get his number.." or whatever.

Then of course you have the idiots that own dogs they can't handle and refuse to train properly. Pitbulls and so on don't actually need to be violent dogs. If you have strong but never-abusive owners, they can be properly controlled and won't feel the fear that causes 999/1000 dog attacks. Because nearly every time you'll find that the dogs psych was fucked up. Actually it's quite easy to do, and even well intentioned individuals can do it. Forcing nervous dogs to meet strangers for example, letting kids irritate and annoy them, over-coddling - convincing the dog something must be wrong if the owner keeps trying to reassure it. Do that enough times and the dog lives in a permanent state of fear and feels the need to protect it's territory and owner.

So finding out who the owner of the dog was is sort of important if you want to stop idiots from owning dogs. Nothing worse than having to put down a dog, and knowing that this is nearly always the fault of the owner doesn't particularly help.

Time Warner gives America metered internet

Nothing new

I know many smaller ISPs that offer similar subscriptions and charge about the same for downloading additional content. The theory is that your average consumer doesn't download more than 4 - 5 gigabytes of data each month, but of course that was before the advent of youtube and hasn't taken into consideration IPTV or legitimate movie downloads.

Of course these same providers also offer un-metered internet at a higher cost or if your broadband is bundled.

Actually I've also seen what happens when it all goes pear shaped. A friend from work got a $320 telephone bill (instead of the usual $60) after his daughter discovered bittorrent. I tried my best, but ultimately failed, to not laugh.

The thing is the people that say subscribers will ditch the service are dead wrong. At the moment the number of users that download more than 5 gigabytes of data a month is still very low. The general public tends to use the internet for Amazon, Google and email and not much else.

But even when people realise they're being metered, there's no evidence they switch providers. At least not so far and not when unmetered alternatives are available from the same company.

Hidden messages buried in VoIP chatter

Wojciech Mazurczyk and Krzysztof Szczypiorski

You have got to be kidding me. They may be experts in cryptography, but they seem to be have incredible linguistic skills too. Explain to me how you even start to pronounce the second guy's last name.. just the first bit, it doesn't even contain a vowel until you get nearly half way through the name.

I take my hat off to their forefathers, and to anyone that can say their names at all.

Over half of US HD TV owners blurry on Blu-ray

Screen Size

The theory is that the size of the screen horizontally should be equal to twice the distance you sit from it - if you want a cinematic experience. So if you sit 3 feet away, a 36"-40" TV will give you the same sense of going to the movies - or at least that is what the TV dealerships will tell you.

Personally I'm not convinced. I sit probably 5 feet away from a 52" DLP HDTV. That's a bit further than recommended, but I definitely don't get the impression I would feel like I'm at a cinema if I moved forward 12".

Still having said that I'm not complaining. I love my TV, and as space isn't an issue for me, don't see the value in buying an LCD TV. For the same picture quality (or better, because what point would there be in replacing a TV for the same picture quality), I would need to spend 3 times what I paid for my DLP. For those that don't know, a DLP HDTV is the modern version of a projection TV. It's about the same thickness as a 26" tube TV, and the new ones are capable 1080p resolution, have better refresh rates than LCD, have better response times (no trails) and have better contrast ratios than all but the latest and absolutely most expensive LCDs. Is 1080p important? Not if it costs any more than the 1080i equivalent, but these days it doesn't. The reason I say this is that most HDTV via satellite or cable is only 1080i anyway, and many Blu-ray and HD-DVDs aren't particularly well mastered, and therefore don't look any better than upscaled DVDs. There's no rhyme or reason for this, big studios do as badly as the small - I suppose it depends on who they contract to make the originals.

Because when comparing either HD format to upscaled DVD - it depends on the quality of the original master. I've seen some terrible HD-DVDs and Bluray disks, and some awesome upscaled DVDs. But if done properly there's no comparison.

America.com auction fails to hit cash target

Seems about right

I'd pay 17 pence for that too, but no more. By the way, I didn't realise American dollars were still legal tender.

DARPA's Heliplane retrocopter project in trouble

I don't understand

I don't understand why they contracted this out. Surely the answer was to purloin some more alien technology. Just ask the CIA to shoot down another spaceship, only this time go for one with spinny things on the top.

Chinese crackers blamed for US power blackouts

You what?

Chinese white people shut off our leccy? Typical, now even Al Quaeda are contracting out to Asia..

American auto dealer offers free handguns

And you found it offensive why?

""We did it because of Barack Obama," Muller explained. "He said 'All those people in the Midwest, you've got to have compassion for them because they're clinging to their guns and their Bibles.' I found that quite offensive. We all go to church on Sunday, and we all carry guns.""

Thus proving his point, no?

US firms use own staff to snoop on co-workers

Actually you'd be surprised..

I worked for a telecommunications company in the UK for 5 years. We produced software that logged the call details of every phone call coming into and out of a company's telephone switch. No they don't record the phone call itself, it's a lot more boring than that, and a lot more useful if you want to sack someone.

Their phone system, they can do as they wish as long as it's not actually listening in on the call.

There were plenty of good reasons for having the software - Police forces would keep track of response times to 999 calls, Hotels would charge customers, RAF and Army would keep track of phone card use, businesses would keep track of their customer support response times.

But they'd also keep track of the calls you made, to whom, how often and whether that could be considered abuse. They would keep track of when employees ignored phone calls, and which extensions ignored them, and in which order. I ran the software myself and could tell if the helpdesk people I managed bumped the calls of difficult customers to the next person in line, and then the next person and so on until someone finally answered.

Believe me when I say we dealt with the largest employers in the country - and if we had offered them the ability to track web use or read outgoing email, I doubt a single one of them would have turned it down. At least not unless it was proven illegal. I recall the court cases involving tracking the internet use of local authority computers, and all of them have said the employee has no expectation or right to privacy when using publicly funded computers. I doubt they'd rule any differently for private business. You don't own the computer you use, the company does, and therefore it has the right to know what and how it's been used by its employees. If you think using IM or blogs are in the best interests of your company, I'd make sure someone in management not only agrees, but writes and signs something to that effect. Unfortunately it's unlikely, because not most management fail to see how the massive advantages these tools can give.

Teapot backdoor probed by German telescope boffins

How much?

hmm.. spending $2700 to rip credit card details to buy a $2000 big tv? Anyone else wonder at the improbable investment required and whether just not spending the money on an expensive telescope might be a much safer way of buying what you want off the internet?

Ok, industrial espionage then? I've found that telescopes would normally attract attention, especially when planted only 30 ft away from your victim. Sure the 90 ft away crowd might be able to peer in through tinted windows, but telescopes are particularly funny about stuff like that.

Anyway I reckon that most info hijackers usually employ the following devious techniques to hack into someone's account, employing Q-style cunning and intellect.

1 - Phone up and ask for the user's username and password.

2 - Walk in and copy the username and password from the postit stuck on the monitor.

Cornish lingo gets standard written form

huh

I don't know why people get so fussed about other countries and languages, everyone knows the whole world understands English if you shout it loud enough.. although if you want to show the proper respect to a foreign culture you should add suitable language modifiers at the end.. "EL PINTO BEERO, IS THAT SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND!?"

Jovial comments about saving them/beating them in WWII always go down well too, as does a healthy mistrust of anything on a plate not recognisable as coming from your average chippy.

Stem cell researchers claim victory in battle with Church

This should be stopped immediately

Shame on you for joking about squirrel tails and whining about left over bits of animal DNA. There are real issues here, like if we can make glow in the dark pigs, can I have a glow-in-the-dark baby? Also where's my talking dog? Until these and the issue of a glow-in-the-dark-talking dog (or a glow-in-the-dark-baby that can speak dog fluently) are properly satisfied (i.e. I own one) all this tomfoolery must stop.

Linux thing because my baby must have penguin feet and flippers too. You might laugh, but I bet it wins gold at the olympics.

NATO primes cyber defence centre in Estonia

Is it just me

Or does the idea of not being able to run WoW for a few days not fill the rest of you with terror either?

So far these attacks seem limited to script kiddies taking down websites no one even visits. The idea that the world will end because a government website is out of service for a couple days seems like a bit of an overreaction.

You can't turn off a nation's electricity, poison it's water supply or blow up gas pipelines with a website. You can't blow up GPS satellites with a worm, shit even Sky TV will survive such a horrendous assault on freedom and democracy.

So what exactly is the problem here besides a few red faces and some extremely boring website going offline?

If governments want to concentrate on something internet related, it ought to be something along the lines of forcing those that keep financial and personal records on internet accessible computers to be financially responsible to everyone effected by their incompetence.

Dixons admits 'it's even worse than you thought'

Same thing happening in the States

The equivalent stores CompUSA (died as recently as last year) and Circuit City (barely alive and very soon to follow) are examples. It should come as no surprise that the employees from both locations would fit in perfectly in PC World or Dixons, they even look the same, talk in the same condescending manner, offer the same crappy finance - having just enough knowledge to make the old feel stupid and the informed extremely irritated.

The curious thing is that Best Buy, no more than an amalgamation of the two stores + Curries thrown in for good measure, is actually doing ok and feels confident enough to think about opening up business in Europe.

By the time CompUSA died you could barely tell the difference between the three, except maybe they didn't stock washing machines and ovens.

Perhaps that's the answer, red and white is no good for selling electronics (yet another thing these illfated stores shared with their UK brethren) - you must paint your logos and signs blue and yellow if you want to prosper.

Royal Navy warships could run on sunflower oil - if fresh

Huh

Wind Power FTW. Ahoy Mate, shivver me timbers, hoist our colours and man the rigging.. (queue Pugwash theme tune to be played on full blast on all HMS warships).

Samsung to demo next-gen, 240Hz LCD TV tech

Games!

Not sure about TV, and as for "too smooth" the human eye can't actually see animation that fast - so it would appear to us as if the whole thing was sped up and I imagine that would look odd.

But it wouldn't take much to fix either.

The real potential I see from these screens are for PC/Console video games, particularly first person shooters. It would fix the tearing problem video cards produce, because currently flat panel monitors can only support 60 FPS. Anything faster and the image is corrupted (torn), hence the vertical sync (vsync) setting that forces the game to cap at 60 FPS.

Romanian and Turkish scientists turn circuit boards into oil

Thinly veiled threat

"You don't want too much polybrominated diphenyl ethers in your diet if you cherish your liver and brain"

I believe the alcohol I consume will protect me from such threats, no matter how much of it I choose to eat on drunken accident.

MS whips lens cap off WorldWide Telescope

I think I know what your problem was

Perhaps it was night time where you were trying to look at. I though everyone knew this. The reason why telescopes often don't work is you're not taking into account the time zone of the celestial body you're attempting to watch. Simple answer is to wait till it's bright and sunny outside and take a peek then.

USAF Colonel goes on the offensive with botnet destroyer plan

I like it.

"His proposal is one of the more hair-brained ideas to come along in a while."

Then we should do it! But we certainly shouldn't stop there. Air strikes against the domiciles that house these computers is surely the next logical step?

I like this guy's attitude. Why should we consider those who've willfully allowed their computer to become the unwitting tool of the enemy as innocents? Surely they deserve to be on the receiving end of nothing less than a good ol' fashioned Mounty tasering!

Windows XP SP3 leaps into the tubes

SP3.. err ok

I've downloaded and installed it, and I've noticed.... nothing. Could someone tell me what it does besides use up another couple hundred megabytes of HD space?

If all it contains is the patches issues since SP2, why would some with all the patches issued since SP2 need it? Unless there was some pressing need to store another copy of them in 3 places on your hard disks, I can't really fathom the point.

Sony details PS3 DVR pricing, launch date

40GB?

As plenty of people have stated, just pay $100 for a terabyte hd and be done with it. Not that I think you'll fill up even 40GB with SDTV very fast. Its HD programming that eats up hard disk space.

As for HD recording.. well don't know about your internet connection, but uploading even an hour's worth of HD programming is going to take a bit longer than you'll probably be willing to wait.

Anyway the idea behind this is not so much replacing your existing DVR, but rather that you could watch your subscription TV (cable / satellite) whenever you want and wherever you travel to - provided you have an internet connection.

Don't care what gizmos the best DVR has, none of them can do that without an equivalent piece of hardware attached - and some not even then.

The DVR capabilities are just a bonus, and another method of taking your movies and tv shows with you - record them and then copy them to portable devices. Personally I don't care about HDTV when I'm on holiday, but if I'm traveling through a non-English speaking country, it'd be nice to watch a bit of English TV on the plane, by the pool or while I'm recovering from sun burn. Besides on my budget, hotel rooms, airplanes and work PCs don't often come with an HDTV.

Pain ray really killer ray gun, many goats dead, says 'expert'

Scared yet?

Now consider that people like this and the other nutters described in this story, make up a large percentage of the population of certain states in the US. Also consider that many similar people broadcast incessantly on national broadcast radio, as they have no neutrality policies or laws to stop them.

So a right wing nutjob can broadcast his inane ramblings and conclusions all day and night, and the aforementioned retards populating certain states just lap it up.

Perhaps you'll begin to understand how Bush became President.. twice. In comparison he's a tolerant, socially responsible and intelligent fellow whom the crazies put up with. Yes that's right - put up with. They'd prefer someone a lot more fanatical about religion, invading other countries and dealing with the Mexican invasion. Now be scared. These people gave Bush the popular vote - in other words they outnumber the sane. Amongst their number is Dick Cheney - a man convinced that not only are there huge numbers of Hezbollah sleeper cells in the US, but also that they're awaiting a completed nuclear program in Iran to supply them with the weaponry required to blow up US cities. Neat huh? This guy takes over if Bush fails to recover from another pretzel attack.

Now while Hezbollah are usually a group of individuals living very much in Lebanon, he's stuck with them because Al Quaeda and other terrorist groups aren't allowed in this country on political grounds. Remember the chase for WMDs turned into "fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them here".

So there you have it. The US will try desperately come up with a sane President next time around, but actually you should be grateful he isn't the sort of person described in this story. Meanwhile the two relatively sane contenders are doing their level best to destroy each other's careers and let a GW clone back into the White House. Three cheers for the man that wants another 100 yrs of war in Iraq.

Texas man tries to cash $360bn cheque

Stupid

Obviously trying to cash a check for 36 pence would raise suspicion. I mean who writes a check for such a ridiculously low amount of money?

But I suppose US dollars are still worth something in that country, so let's look at this another way. The bank actually phoned the account holder to find out if it was ok for them to cash the check? So if she'd said, 'yeah no problem, I wrote the check' they'd have given him the money?

Ok.. where is this bank? I'm going to cash a check for $400 billion.

Ian McKellen to reprise Gandalf

It is a blatant attempt to cash in..

And brilliant as far as I'm concerned. We should have more of it, the world is far too nice. Hated it ever since the 80s went away. More commercialism this time please, there wasn't nearly enough Lord of the Rings junk to buy after the first 3 movies.

Seriously though the period between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings lends itself very well to a new movie, as long as they get the right people to do the story and script. The Silmarillion is to complicated for popcorn eating, soda swilling movie watchers to understand. It would be better served with a full blown TV series, and has enough blood, guts and horror to keep people watching for several seasons.

Eye-o-Sauron™ border beam barrier tech too crap to keep

I always said this would fail..

.. if they didn't build the obligatory paper mache nazgul and hang from the towers as deterrents to foolhardy folks that dream of working in a Walmart Layaway office.

Boffins ponder 100-year archive made of TOMES

Arcane Toimes?

So they're Scryer then, not Aldor - because then it'd be Fel Armaments.

Hellboy helmsman to direct The Hobbit

Huh, who cares?

The elf on elf sex in the Hobbit was crap compared to The Lord of the Rings anyway.

The terror dam of doom that looms over Boise, Idaho

Sandleheath nr Fordingbridge

If terrorists were to find out that the footpath that crosses the stream in the village I used to live in is vulnerable, can I get some money too? Last week my mum told me terrorists (or school kids, always confuse the two) were toiling away with buckets and spades. We believe they were building either a large pile of mud or were they trying to redirect the stream that rises to nearly 6 inches in the rainy season.. with disastrous consequences. If you aren't welly boots that is.

A decent set of shoes could get really muddy or wet.

Brain-plug weapons could provide war crime immunity

I can shorten his entire theory into one word..

Dalek.

UK Reaper drone wrecked in Afghanistan

Are you absolutely positive?

We're still missing a Beagle we sent to Mars, perhaps you just found it?

EU plans to boost organ donor numbers

Brussels..

.. seems a good place to start harvesting human-like organs, and as we don't do brain transplants yet no one human would be affected if we just took everything we found there. ;)

US watchdogs threaten vanity gene testers

err good i think

Finally it seems the regulatory people in the states have got something right. First time I've seen them put people before business in a decade.

If the FDA was in charge of this, no doubt these companies would be free to dispense their snake oil DNA tests. An FDA that oversaw the release of arthritis medicine that causes congenital heart failure and bags of salad that contain e-coli, should be trusted over the far more reliable Canadian regulatory body? I don't think so, especially considering their whole argument is that drugs made in China are safer when dispensed in the US as opposed to Canada.

But happily a real and unpaid for government agency is in charge of these things and until Opra and the courts get involved, business will come second best to bullshit diagnosis. Opra btw is the one that suggests we all pay $1000 for a meaningless catscan, so we can plague doctors and surgeons with problems that don't exist or will never pose as much danger as having surgery of any kind. Personally I loved her endorsement of the idea that we don't need to work for the things we want in life, like good health, money or tvs, instead we should just think positively and we'll get everything our greedy little minds can imagine.

/soapbox

In-flight calling given lukewarm reception

I present the following challenge..

The first person sounding like a small robot to say "Raiders coming in" in their best Starbuck voice (remember girls, anything close would represent at least +1000 on the hotness scale) will be forgiven all their in-flight calls.

I shall forego my inclination to rectally implant their cell phones on this one occasion, but only if they a/really are girls and b/sound convincing.

Biofuel backlash prompts Brussels back-pedal

Use it or lose it..

Look as any good right wing fundamentalist knows, Armageddon and The Rapture are fast approaching, so all this talking about climate change wiping us off the planet is hocus pocus nonsense.

Use it or lose it is the order of the day and we'll start with oil.

There, I've just summed up the current Administration's environmental and global warming policies in two sentences.

Thing is, some of you think I'm joking. Are you suitably scared yet? Because they actually do believe this stuff, along with the notion that Heaven is really the ultimate good ol' boys club. Only the suitably rich will gain admittance, your staff may be allowed in through the service entrance, but not if they do shoddy work or belong to a union.

Flames because the world will soon be engulfed in them, one way or another. ;)

Aussie gov to treat laser pointers like knives and guns

Someone forgot to say...

Sharks with frikkin' laser beams ;)

Friends Reunited killer gets life

No, can't agree

Death is the only answer. Bring back hanging, six of the best and buggery... with one small provision.

If I'm the one that gets caught, my wife should remember that not just life, but testicles, are sacred..

Anti-paedophile group targets child abuse sites

I think we already got this one covered

We already have a government backed initiative to handle this one, in fact most countries do. It's called The Police, and backed by billions in funding. No it doesn't catch them all, but I feel it does a better job than some charity and a bunch of script kiddies would.

Injustices? Yes plenty of those too, including hundreds who've had their credit card details stolen and found themselves on the receiving end of dawn raids across Britain and the US. The Police never were perfect unfortunately.

But I fail to see how an organisation that takes no consideration of local culture and laws, but in a rather American manner decides to impose their own can be better than the organised law enforcement we already have. The Police are quite dedicated to the task too I think you'll find, have excellent methods of searching out paedophiles and the results are usually more pleasing.

Rather than shutting down a bunch of websites, prison seems to be a much better way of dealing with things. It's a karmic thing really, kiddie fiddlers gang raped and tortured warms my cockles somewhat more than taking away their internet.

Look we have no right to say that consensual sex at puberty is wrong if the culture we're interfering with says its okay. What we do have a right to do is stop that and worse in our own country, where we are entitled to say its wrong.

As for Child Protection Services the world over. They are usually worse than the people they take kids from. They certainly have no regard for children, and while none of us would disagree with removing kids from sexually or violently abusive parents, this is hardly the reason 99% of children are ripped from their homes.

Tell me a single parent that was forced to leave her kid in a car while working nights is worse than ripping a child away from his family, and placing them somewhere where they will suffer all the kinds of abuses we cringe about. Tell me that literally destroying that child's possibility of a decent education because of mental trauma is worse than playing with his toys by himself for a few hours.

Yes we'd love to say "get child care, a baby sitter or a relative" but usually these people are estranged from family, can barely afford to feed and clothe their kids, certainly can't afford over night child care and are usually refused the services they're entitled to by judgmental people working in social services.

Those are the people I'd love to see prosecuted, along with the CPS employees who negligently place children with foster parents that have had no background checks and are not inspected for abuse.