Posts by LaeMing

Egyptian bloke dubs sprog 'Facebook'

Youtube

That would be her cousin?

Susan Ridge is a real name

And she revuses to let her first name be shortened.

To be fair on her parents, it is a married name. Why she didn't hyphenate is beyond me!

Sheep as smart as humans: Official

We love to make fun of sheep's "follow the flock" mentality

While ignoring the fact that we are the ones that spent thousands of years selectively breeding them for exactly that behaviour.

...

As a girl, my mum had a pet sheep that was raised with the farm dogs. It thought it was a dog and behaved just like a working-dog. Came when called, and tried to round up the flock. The other sheep were not so convinced of its doggedness.

Who needs 600 friends when you're a bride of Christ?

Faith can move mountains.

She's a big strong girl.

Pitiless teen burglar murders three witnesses

I was going to suggest...

...flushing the perps down a huge toilet. But I like yours better.

Watchdog turns a blind eye to Danish fu*king

Most gratuitous

use of the word "fuck" in a serious ... um... article.

(The one with the 80's e-book in the pocket.)

Storm brews over Chinese synchronised goldfish

Re: something visible to them but not us

Goldfish have a colour-perception range that leaves ours for dead. They can see down into the high infra-red and well up into the UV ranges. So it is quite plausable they may be using visual cues we can't detect.

Apple suppliers: Child labor, bribery, suicides

Cleaning up for the sake of improved reputation is fine with me.

Lets hope this encourages consumers to pressure other big companies to follow suit.

HTML5 kicked into 2014

Yes

While I can see the point of a big fixed screen and a little mobile one, the TV screen is definitely a bit redundent for me, at least.

Wooden spaceship descends into Moscow sandpit

Likely already there.

Even without lax sterilisation on recent unmanned probes, Earth and Mars have been swapping bits of rock with eachother forever. So chances are we (as in Earth-life) are already there.

Easier

Have a random event generator and suitable safe consequences substituted for the lethal ones might improve realism a bit. For example, that at the end of your ordeal there is a small but real chance you won't get paid, or will have to spend a year in a simulated hospital room might tweak the psychology in the right direction.

Techies floored by 'virus' after Playboy mansion party

It's a good thing

they weren't vaccinated! They'd have all got autism instead of headaches!

Australia’s NBN too expensive: EIU

In the end...

...it comes down to whether we want our broadband supplied by the corrupt (business) or the incompetent (govt.).

Of course, not long after the tax payer has finished funding it, the whole lot will get sold off to the polliticians' (both sides) big business buddies for a song anyway. Then the pollies take their large pensions and retire to a nice comfy board position.

Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card

Possibly

as part of the lad's punishment?

EC parades common phone charger

China

basically took the Australian standard and turned it up-side-down (I used to like claiming it was because China was in the Northern Hemisphere and so up-side-down itself compared to Aus.).

The Australian configuration has the advantage that a two-prong plug (no earth pin) can only be inserted one way, which since Australia wires the neutral pin back to earth at the box (extra safety), is a very good thing.

As for the inversion: the Australian plug was designed back when plugs were all bakalite and the leads came strait out perpendicular to the wall. In this case, having the earth pin on the bottom made sense as a drooping plug would disconnect this pin last. When flat-to-the-wall plugs were thought up, the lead had to be bought out at an odd angle, so as not to clash with the position of the earth pin.

When China started to switch from the 2-pin US plugs to 3-pin Australian plugs, they had the benefit of being further forwardln time and put the earth pin on top, with flat-to-wall plugs with the lead coming out the bottom the standard (a pulling-out-from-the-wall plug like this needs the earth pin opposite the lead so it will dis-connect last) .

I have never encountered a better-thought-out mains plug than the Aust. one, other than the slight modernisation from China. So careful who you call "weird" :-D

Also, China uses 240V@50HZ so using an Australian-like plug makes more sense. Silly visiting USians just don't understand why their radios blow up and their electric clocks run fast.

Facebook's position on real names not negotiable for dissidents

I guess.,.

... by real name, they don't mean actual name. Just any name that sounds real goes?

Yes, how do they know?

How do the know a legit-sounding name it real or ficticous?

I wonder how the guy from around here in the 90's who's legal name (by deed-pol) was "Zero Population Growth" would get on?

And what if my online identity is better-known than my real one anyway?

Immaginary people want to know!

Man stabbed to death by chicken

Oh, I don't know.

There are far worse ways to go!

'Suspicious toilet' provokes Maryland bomb scare

Remember also...

... said bowl was packed with wires and a mobile phone (it's there in the article, for people bothered to read beyond the headline). Assuming it wasn't just an abandoned loo on the streetside was almost certainly sensible.

PSP playing boy plunges onto railway

Kids don't have good peripheral vision - it is a developmental thing.

Though this one is about the age when adult-qualtty peripheral vision starts to develop. That is why kids under 12 aren't supposed to be riding bikes on the road - they are not physiologically equipt to see sideways.

Super-thin materials could POWER our WORLD

Likely,

once the big power gradient has turned the turbines, the smaller gradient of the waste vs ambient temperatures is run over each side of the the transducer sheets to extract a second round of energy from it, and so on until the returns diminish too much.

Depends...

...whether you are producing patented material commercially or for personal use too - the latter may not be illegal, depending where you live.

Myer breaks ranks on 'net retailing

The funny thing about the whole exemption thing is...

... it is there because it costs more to collect than revenues raised. If G. Norman et. al. get their way, the government increases administration costs without an equivalent gain in revenues raised and has to pass this cost on to the tax-payer. Who ends up with less money in pocket to spend on shopping.

And they will still buy on line because 1) most of the online shopping is local and GST is already paid, so it will make no difference, 2) whatever the price, if online is the only source of what you want to buy, that is where you buy it and no ammount of crocodile tears from big retailers will change that fact, and 3) where imports are genuinely parallel, it will take a LOT more than a little GST markup to make big retail look like they are even trying to be price competitive.

With people like that in charge of a big chunk of the economy, is it any wonder it is tanked?!

Go Myer. Some sanity from an otherwise delusional economic sector.

Scanner snares senior servant

I recall our very own Edna Everage had something to say on the matter a few decades back:

Something along the lines of: "every girl should ignore the ockers, 'cause every woman has her knockers"

The moral of this story is:

Get a cheap bloody netbook for home use. Yes, a work PC is for work. Duh!

(Former PC deployment tech for an international organisation - you don't want to know what the internal software/content auditor finds on the users' server space, let-alone their work PCs!)

Motorola Super Bowl ad rips Apple drones

I personally...

...don't see the 'copied Apple's 1984' in those adds. The only similarity is that they all use the well-established (long before Macintosh) 1984esque meme. Does apple now own all the IP rights to the idea of an oppressive technocratic society?

Next we will be getting told the US invented democracy and capitalism and everyone else copied them.

Oh, wait...

Microsoft reinfects Chrome with closed video codec

Actually it is good for Google in one way

They get h264 support in Crome without needing to cough up for a licence.

Wheras this way

Microsoft (one of the IP owners) supplies a codec plugin for free.

(as mentioned above for Chrome, I know, but the point is very relevant for FF too)

As much as I dislike MS

I doubt this has anything to do with the GoogleSlurp allegaions. MS is too big a company for things to flow that neatly that quickly.

Julian Assange wins peace prize

The reg is terrified...

...the news organisation he has an insurance bomb on is them!

Sorry I should have warned!

But the meme is so ancient and the users of this site so 'net literate I didn't think of it.

Give him a Golden Goatse

Award for exposing huge arseholes!

Egypt back online

Govt. drinks cool-aid on importance of internet.

Don't get me wrong, the internet is important. But obviously not important enough that shutting it down has any real effect on quelling public unrest. I imagine the the thought-stream went something like:

"That new-tech internet thing is allowing people to express discontent."

"Lets shut it down, then people will stop because it is only the power of the internet driving the discontent."

"Oh, the people are still discontented, but now we look foolish as well."

The internet is a tool - a very powerful one. But if you take away my hammer, I will just go find half a brick to drive the nails in with.

Google to Microsoft: You're stealing our search results!

Divorce tactics required

But Google bought me the big Lego police station. What will you (Microsoft) buy me to prove you luv me more?

Assange relishes US banks 'squirming' over 'megaleak'

In PR China...

... they have a constitutional right to free speech. But use it in a way the Govt. doesn't approve and watch out!

In the USA, they have... [duplicate data removed].

Next smartphone tech? Predator style thermal cameras

Re: Use Linux

But only with a text console....

Pothole-spotter app aims to stop arse ache

Timely

Yesterday morning I fractured my right wrist falling over a raised paver. Luckily it was on my way to work, so my workplace insurance covers it (though there are no medical costs or lost work-time anyway - not much you can do with a wrist except ice-pack it). My workplace will make sure the council resets the section of pave I reported though (being the second largest business in the city is good like that).

(Luckily I use a left-handed BAT keyboard, or I would be typing this much more slowly. I can do the mouse with minimal movement of the hand/fingers).

Apple $10k winner hangs up on 'prank caller'

According to Apple it is...

...10k pounds.

1:1 rate with USD. They can hardly claim otherwise, though I bet they will!

Man killed by own cock

I doubt it.

Most folks are not inteligent enough to link cause and effect on that level, sadly.

More to come (hopefully)

Remember another arsehole has bagged the cock for himself. We can all pray to our respective deities or equivalent for a rematch with same result.

Apple seeks touchscreen display mouse patent

Apple the king of ergonUmics

because constantly looking down from the screen at what your hands are doing is recomended by nine out of ten ergonomicists*

*And you should have seen the trouble we had finding those nine!

'NBN is like a bathroom' says opposition, BCA agrees

TiSP

Opposition has been here:

http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html

An oldie but a goodie.

Microsoft readies official Kinect support for PCs

Yes, but this is MicroSOFT HARDWARE we are dealing with.

Ironically, the only part of the company that seems to earn respect from its customers.

Third party developers blamed for Windows security woes

A lot of the arguing on this thread seems to be along the lines:

"I have never been outside the MS-Windows environment and so have never experienced seamless package management as a system built-in function, therefore cannot conceive how such a thing could possibly work so it must not be possible."

The answer is, of course: in the outside world, package management via a single central program has been the norm for longer than Windows has had a version number greater than 3.1.

Yes, you do get the odd proprietary supplier who, coming across from the MS world, simply DOESN'T GET IT, but they tend to spent all their time whinging that no-one in the non-MS space is taking them seriously. Linux/BSD/etc. users have better things to do with their time than piss around with manual installs and updates, so a product has to be pretty damned compelling to get them to bother.

If Adobe released for Linux

You would add the Adobe repo to your package manager. Problem solved.

(Assuming they are releasing in a manner they expect to be taken seriously, at least).

Shocked mum muzzles foul-mouthed toy mutt

I liked the comic I saw on TV once...

Got the live audience thinking it was add-break entertainment time and had them in a rousing round of "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands... stamp your feet... etc."

Finished up with "If you're a dick-head and you know it clap your hands" and pretty much the entire audience clapped along. Good times.

When one oligopoly screws another

I think

that was sort of his point. Irony and such - we do have it down under!

Oh noes – they've stolen the internet!

Daleks stole my internets

Burglate! Burgulate!