Posts by electricmonk

Tracy brothers are back: Thunderbirds Are Go! again in 5... 4... 3...

Re: Might brilliant.

Not entirely. Thunderbirds was conceived as a half-hour show and Anderson and team were halfway through production of the first series when their backer Lew 'Low' Grade decided the length should be doubled. Which helps explain why certain TB episodes slow to a crawl in the middle as they desperately splice in offcuts to fill up the time. (Let's have another long shot of the meter edging towards critical... now a close-up of a bead of perspiration on Alan's forehead and his eyebrows set to "Frown"... now back to the meter getting infinitesimally nearer critical... back to Alan...)

On the other hand it did give them space to build up the characters a bit more, which was where TB really scored over (half-hour) Captain Scarlet.

What a Liberty: Virgin Media in buyout talks with telecoms giant

Re: Liberty Global ?

Of course I've heard of Liberty. I'm looking forward seeing all Virgin broadband routers clad in nice paisley-patterned fabric covers...

Buying a petabyte of storage for YOURSELF? First, you'll need a fridge

Answers

Dear Martin, to answer your questions:

"But will we ever need a petabyte of personal storage?"

Yes, I need at least 2.5 petabytes so I can take a backup copy of my brain.

"How many copies of EastEnders does the world need to be stored on a locally spinning drive?"

None. Not one. Delete them all, everywhere, and make the world a slightly happier place.

Australian Police say don't use Apple's iOS 6 Maps

Stargate?

That's nothing - according to the Ordnance Survey maps we have a "Satellite Teleport" facility here in central Hampshire. It saves a lot of money on those old-fashioned rockets. See http://binged.it/Z4II5X

Barclays Bank buys 8,500 Apple iPads in one go

Re: What the staff wants and what the staff gets are two different things

Wow, tablet prices really are dropping fast...

Debenhams cafes ban outré terms like 'espresso' and 'cappuccino'

I guess the gateau and the panini will be off the menu as well. And what's with this weird foreign word "cafe"? How pretentious is that? What's wrong with "Debenham's Tea Shoppe"?

British car parks start reading number plates

Re: Just as towns are discovering that free parking

>>> "Exactly. I was charged GBP6.50 for parking for 2 hours 7 minutes in Reading yesterday (a Sunday). I'm not likely to shop there again. Greedy car park operators are making life even more difficult for retailers."

Yeah, that explains why Reading's car parks are always half empty and it's always easy to find a sp-

Hey, wait a minute...

Re: Confuse the system

You think too small.

Drive in, park, cover number, drive out, find arch enemy and commit horrible MURRRDERRR of your arch-enemy by running him/her down, return to car park, uncover number, drive out. "It can't have been my car, detective inspector, I was parked in town all afternoon..."

Climate change threatens to SHRINK FISH AND CHIP SUPPERS

Re: Where's Lewis when you need him?

Good question. I was just thinking to myself, "What this article *really* needs to round it off is five paragraphs of knee-jerk ranting."

Want to avoid another cookie law mess? Talk to EU bods next time

Re: As per the rest

"...we have an EU no smoking ban..."

You work for the Daily Mail and ICMFP.

A fine story, spoilt only by two tiny details: (1) there is no such thing as an "EU [no] smoking ban", and (2) Belgian law allows smoking in cafes - though admittedly it's supposed to be in a separate room from the one where the food and drink are served.

How talent-spotting boffins help Team GB bag Olympic gold

They were just categories - if you click on one of them it shows you exactly *which* sports in that category you're suitable for. For instance in my case it highlighted road cycling specifically, which is lucky as that's what I do. (Sadly I go slower downhill than Wiggo goes uphill, so I won't be in the medals yet awhile.)

Re: Maybe start younger

"Kids aren't allowed to play competative sports until senior school (or if they do no score is kept) "

Newsflash: Some of the things you read in the Daily Mail are Made Up (shock).

Google for "primary school football results". (or netball, if you prefer.) What's this? Dozens of links to match results, league tables, tournament reports. Well I never. It took me all of 5 seconds' research to disprove that claim. Next!

Airline leaves customer on hold for 15 hours

Re: no u in Qantas

7 downvotes? Somebody didn't get the joke...

Sean Parker launches Chatroulette killer: For why?

>>> People use video-chat on Phones/FaceTime all the time in the commercials.

There, fixed that for you.

Carriers, prepare to bleed: EU pops a cap on data roaming

T-Mobile

Got to agree. I like the idea that my phone can't run up the bill in the background unless I actively buy some more time.

I paid £5 for 20MB last time I went to France - that's 25p/MB. I had to buy another 20MB during the week and only used half of it, but even so, that still worked out cheaper per MB actually used than the proposed cap.

Anyway, the smallest T-Mobile bundle is £1 for 3MB in one day - sounds ideal for a quick bit fo work over an SSH connection, and only 33.3p/MB.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Blu-ray

The only extra I want with it is...

...A SHRUBBERY!

British 4G mobile data rollout 'will mean NO TELLY for 2m homes'

Re: All the extra channels are crap

Just so long as I can have ITV4 for the three weeks of the year that it's showing the Tour de France. (Haven't a clue what it shows the rest of the time)

Ghost of HTML5 future: Web browser botnets

Quick, driver, follow that money

"Robert McArdle, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro..."

Alas, if only someone could sell me something to protect me against these so-far-completely-hypothetical-but-really-scary-sounding threats.

Oh wait, maybe this nice Trend Micro chappie can suggest a suitable product...

Basic instinct: how we used to code

Re: Ughh... Still shudder when I recall those days

I hope you also avoided using the BNE instruction, seeing as how you think it has two different meanings.

BMI, maybe? (Not to be confused with BMI Baby.)

Minister blows away plans for more turbines

Re: Translation...

>> "The Greens have no power in the U.K. Where are their representatives in Parliament? Totally locked out by First Past the Post."

Point of order, Mr Speaker... allow me to introduce Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Not *totally* locked out.

But I agree, the idea that this government would worry about keeping the Greens happy is ludicrous. Not when there are huge, wealthy corporations behind the nuclear lobby.

Google fined for stalling Street View cars' Wi-Fi slurp probe

Re: Everyone smells Google money!

Not a fair comparison, as I think you know. A closer analogy would be:

"So if I open my front window so you can hear my stereo in the street, does that give you the right to listen to it?"

Not so clear-cut now, is it...

Nuke plant owners to pay out up to £1bn per balls-up

Re: Level playing field?

I think you'll find the rest of the energy industry *does*, but it tends to happen further back in the supply chain because that's where the risk is - with the fuel suppliers rather than the power station operators. Fossil fuel power stations don't melt down, but rigs catch fire, oil storage facilities explode, supertankers hit the rocks, old coal mines collapse (something the Coal Authority is still paying compensation for on behalf of Britain's vanished coal industry). How big do you think BP's insurance premium is?

If you mean the other industries don't pay for the daily pollution they cause, you might be closer to the mark. But then let's not forget that the only way a previous government managed to privatise this allegedly viable industry was by selling off the assets and keeping all the long (long, long) term liabilites of waste disposal. Strange, that.

Microsoft shows Bottom to Young Ones

not available in my region

I tried to have a look, but everything is marked "Not available in your region". As my region is Hampshire, this can mean only one thing: Wessex has finally gained independence from the UK. Hurrah!

Mozilla gives passive-aggressive missive to pre-Firefox 3.6 hold-outs

Not a bug, it's a feature

Anon Coward: Opening new tabs next to the current one is also what Chrome does and (surprise surprise) some of us actually prefer it that way. You can't call it broken just because you don't like it.

Anyway, this is Firefox. There is already an add-on to make 3.6 work the way you want (the cryptically-named "New Tabs At The End 1.0").