Posts by Lghost

Lester Haines: RIP

A Lester Haines commemorative book

On reflection, a paper book would not be practical, it would be huge. But , it should be relatively easy to put all of Lester's articles ( with the full comments threads that they sparked ), the playmobile re-enactments, the photos and recipes, the interjected comments, the lot, ( just copy and paste what you have reg , exactly like we have read it , pages of HTML and jpegs ) including the photos of the great man and Emperor of the Chuckling Sheds and Rockets onto an USB key with the Vulture crest and fittingly inscribed to Lester Haines, make it available permanently for sale in the Vulture merchandise section..and again send all the profits and our sympathies and condolences to Lester's wife and children.

it will be impossible to look at playmobile without a bitter-sweet smile thinking of you Lester, which is as it should be.

ps..maybe el reg could consider a Lester haines book

Missed the edit window while I was trying to add this to my above post..Jamesi mentioned maybe a collection for Lester's family, what would be great if el reg could manage it, would be to produce a real paper book of some ( there are so many great ones ) of Lester's articles and allow us to buy copies..proceeds to Lester's family, he gave us a great deal of laughter and smiles, it would be a way of allowing us to give back..and it won't be easy for his family now he's gone..

Stunned and sad

One of the funniest writers I have read, always looked forward to Lester's articles and comments, I was catching up ( not having been reading for a while ) and reading the comments on the pastie article, at 04.30 Saturday morning, when I saw the last three saying Lester had died, smiling at the article and the comments and then bang..Oh how those of us who read your words will miss you, and how much worse for your colleagues , friends and especially your family, deepest sympathy to your family especially..

Jamesi suggested a collection or similar, maybe el reg would consider printing some of Lester's articles with the comments that they got into a book form and selling it ? proceeds to Lester's family..

French Google fund to pay for 1 million print run of Charlie Hebdo next week

Merci el reg pour les "Charlie Hebdo covers" et le courage

we are all Charlie,

nous sommes tous Charlie

je suis Charlie

et

pour l'anonymous la haut

je t'emmerde

Posted from France

Cheap Android phones? Bah! How about a $29 mobe from Microsoft?

Dual SIM

I suspect that dual SIM phones would be very popular everywhere, were they to be available everywhere..Where I am ( France ) they are, but from what I've read here in the past, they are not offered in many places, including the other side of the channel ?

I'm soon to be in the market to replace 4 phones, if these go on sale here , I'll take two .

No cellphones in cells, you slag! UK.gov moots prison mobe zap law

Moving Prisons

Neddie Seagoon already thought of that one..

Tornado-chasing stealth Batmobile set to invade killer vortices

As soon as I read what they were going to use it for

A voice ( which I think comes from a kamikaze pilot at the back of the room, to whom it has just been explained what his mission is, in "a child's garden of grass" ) spoke in my mind's ear.."you gotta be outta your fuckin mind(s)"

Will they also have Mr T hair and large amounts of gold chains ( to weigh them down ) around their necks ?

The year when Google made TAPE cool again...

Shirley Google uses

Shigawire

Microsoft reissues September patches after user complaints

Re: Just more proof of the obvious

Eadon ?

'Beat the lie detectors' trainer sentenced to 8 months in jail

"I'm sorry Don, I mistook your Stoat for a Weasel ..."

How ?..weasels are weasly distinguishable from stoats..a stoat is stoatly different...

Big Data is bovine excrement says Obama's Big Data man

Re: Most French IP addies are fixed..and have been for a good few years now

Typo ..it is late here ..02.56am Wednesday..

Fr 1200.oo ( about €950.oo ) per year

should read..

Fr 1200.oo ( about €180.oo or so ) per year..

Merci :)

Most French IP addies are fixed..and have been for a good few years now

Posted from France..and have been using the internet here via fixed lines, as a business and at home, since France telecom were charging Fr 1200.oo ( about €950.oo ) per year, to register a dotcom ( minimum period 2 years ) ..way back then, we did indeed have "non permanent" IPs..

But my current provider ( Free ) and all the other majors, have provided "permanent IP addies" for the past 5 years at least..on ADSL..

The article in le monde is not so far fetched, as some may wish one to think..

TARDIS materialises in Sydney

Re: " ... Dr Who homewares, a range of crockery and other kitchen kit."

But the original Daleks were made with sink plungers, egg whisks and pepper pots..

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

ding dong :)))))..dancing :)))))

yes ..I'm Irish..and for her support for apartheid..and so many other things..and I was 30 when she came to power..and she proceeded to ruin the UK, the insane, vindictive hag..

Jobs' first boss Nolan Bushnell: 'Steve was difficult but valuable'

There is no c in grok

Which makes anyone who uses one ..

a) Unreliable, in whatever they assert, in the sentence in which they use the word ..

b) a word which does actually include, nay begins with, a c...

c) both...

US bill prohibits state use of tech linked to Chinese government

ishiny stuff is included in the ban ?

appl is not going to be pleased..

Pyongyang Photoshop tomfoolery shows wet Norks, skirts blown up

They have been cloning their hair for years..

They ( and most of the Chinese politicians ) have always had the same bad Elvis impersonator hair..

Predates photoshop..possibly that hair is what happens if you started in the 1950s, using Grecian 2000 at age 12 ?

I have this fantasy when ever I see large numbers of Chinese or NK politicos that they'll all begin running about and break into song like Sha Na Na :)

Forget the invisibility cloak: Boffins invent INVISIBILITY FISHNETS

Emma Watson in fishnets

Mmmmmmmm :)

Review: Renault Zoe electric car

Carlos Ghosn must be pulling your legs in the UK

My local supermarket in Brittany has one of these, as part of it's "cars you can rent by the day" etc fleet..

cost per day " all in including insurance and charging" ( Ie it has a full charge when you take it out ) ..and when you bring it back,you don't pay to top it up..( like you would if you'd rented a car with a full tank of diesel/petrol etc )..Rental Cost for 24 hours 25 euros ..about £20.00 ? ( cheaper rates if you rent for longer ) ..

They don't park it out front of their supermarket "attached and charging"..and almost no-one here has a domestic charging point unless they already own an EV car..So it is a thing that one can rent for a day ( having read the article here, I'm going to rent one for a day just to "play" )..I did ask the supermarket owner about the £70.00 per month battery leasing , and how he could be making money with those overheads, if he wasn't renting it every day..his reply.."WTF" ( in French ) .."What !! course I'm not paying that much per month just for 'kin battery leasing..Carlos is really sticking it to the rosbifs"..

I run a clio 1.9 diesel..( I get 75mpg ) so..even at half what you would pay in the UK for the leasing..and my leccy ( domestic ) costs 6p per kwh..I'd still be better off with the clio..

Another MYSTERY evacuation: Google UK empties swanky offices

Oompa-Loompas worship at shrine to Yggdrasil

Wood also explain their interior design..

Tux..because LGX..and I used the same design ( I had to paint it on a ceiling in St Tropez as a classic trompe l'oeil ) on business cards at the time.. 1995

Touch screens and greasy mitts: All you need is glove

Of course you leave fingerprints everywhere

your name is Dabbs ..FFS..what did you expect!

USA is the best country in the WORLD... for sending spam

re..Looking at the figures

The problem in France is twofold..

1) It is not illegal for businesses here to send other businesses unsolicited email..

2) Most domestic users know just enough English to click on "to see my sexy pictures, click here, love Katrina"..

From the compromised machines I see belonging to friends and neighbors, and the French B2B spam that hits my business email addresses ..I'm surprised the figure isn't higher, although the USA being highest, doesn't surprise me at all..'scuse me while I check my credit rating, and order that new electric wheelchair ( apparently the US government will help me towards it's cost )..if one was to follow the money ( that is to say whose products/services are being pushed by the spam ) the trail for almost all spam received worldwide leads back to USA corps..

Dotcom plans Mega IPO as case grinds on

logged in to upvote amanfromMars 1

I missed your post on 03/06/13 12:06 PM..

much appreciated..as are many of yours :)

Sergey Brin emasculated after HORROR smartphone disaster

Google is emasculating..

http://catalystseries.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/anyone-seen-sergey-brin-like-this/

Microsoft: It's not Metro, it's Windows 8

W849 ( again)

Microsoft dumps Metro from Windows 8

W849

that is all

Anonymous declares war after French firm trademarks its logo

Oh putain ..les cons

ça va faire mal ;-)

Metro, that ribbon, shared mailboxes: Has Microsoft lost the plot?

One day maybe :)

Brittany ..North west corner of France..looks a lot like home => Ireland originally..

Re: Yawn

"I believe very strongly in the following:

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but the needs of the few outweigh the desires of the many. The fact that most people are not capable of separating need from desire is where most strife occurs.

If you fundamentally disagree with my ethical viewpoint above, then many economic, ethical or political opinion topics will never be resolvable between us. We simply disagree at too fundamental a level for any of the higher order operations to work themselves out."

Once again Mr Potts..Trevor, if I may ? ..

I raise my glass to you..

Long may you continue to write here..

Long life and good health to you Sir :)

Creepy Ads

image ad or text ad ?

The text ads here are indeed always relevant to the on page text..

If you are outside the UK ( I don't know what the US visitors get served by way of image ads ..nor the UK ones ? )..the image ads are anything but relevant..and the advertiser "pool" and their ads appear to be limited in my case to Groupon, (various things made in 3D software, such as watches that look like "Rolex" "ray traced", "burgers" that "look like food" ray "traced", interiors of hotel rooms "ray traced", an illlustration of a scary old woman pushing an online fortune telling service , and a totally text-less and explanation-less photo of a piece of floor underneath a boiler in a factory somewhere ) <= I clicked on the last one once and discovered it was for a French company who makes resins for industrial floor treatments..and who sells them B2B..

None of those ads had anything to do with what was on the site , nor with anything I had been looking at previously elsewhere..and any text was in French..pure Geo-targeting based , non contextual ads..

All these ads appear to be CPM ( the advertiser pays per 1000 displayed ) and none of them appear to be CPC ( where they pay if clicked upon ) CPM ( particularly of the Groupon "ficticious example of a possible coming offer" ) are worth so little to the site that they are just WTF ads, that make the place look tacky..

Google say they always show the highest paying ads..Google say a lot of things ..many have been proven to be totally untrue or worded in such a way as to make 99.99% of people think they mean one thing, when in fact they mean the exact opposite..

When an adsense publisher "opts out" they are not opting out of showing ads based upon what the visitor was doing or seeing prior to arriving on their site but they are "opting out" of the visitor being shown ads on subsequent sites that they visit being influenced by what they saw or did on your site..

Drew..adsense settings dont actually mean what you think they do

<<We do run Google ads in many territories and Google does work with remarketing companies. But we have set our Google settings to:

-Block ads targeting consumers using cookies based on remarketing lists

-Block collection of data for subsequent use in targeting or remarketing

-Block ads targeting consumers using cookies based on interest-based categories

To recap, we are not remarketing and we don't allow remarketing on our site, so it is a mystery as to what is happening here.>>

Merely means that you have "opted" that ..what someone reads or sees whilst on the register, will not affect any ads that Google may serve them on sites which they subsequently visit..Publishers have no choice as to whether their sites serve interest based ads to visitors..Google chose to word the "opt in or out of "interest based ads" on your site" in the adsense" publisher control panel, in a particularly misleading way..

I challenged them , via their adsense advisor "rep" ( in another pro webmaster forum when they first made the "opt in " or "opt out" of showing "interest based ads" available ) , to be precise with what they actually were doing, after some confusion from their "rep"..they checked back with Google's legal dept, it was confirmed.."webmasters cannot opt out of showing interest based ads on their websites, if they show adsense ads"..

btw..at the moment their targeting on the register of ads to me is "dire"..80% are for groupon " example of coming offer" ads..except they are in French..and I've not visited Groupon ..ever..Your non UK visitors are ( IME ) getting served totally irrelevant image ads, based entirely on geo-targeting..I have a large collection of screenshots of totally irrelevant image ads I've been served here over the last 15 days..only on the rare occasions that Google serve text ads to me here, are the ads at all related to the article contents..

Yes I see the ads..IMO to run an ad blocker on an ad supported site would be churlish of me, and deprive the webmaster of any potential revenue that they might get if I actually was served an ad that was attractive or relevant..

Trekkie wants to build USS Enterprise … in twenty years

TARDIS

Solving traffic jams with maths

Priorite a droite

"Is legally the default rule on every road in France, unless there is a sign indicating otherwise."

Many French and almost all Parisians, ignore the signs which indicate otherwise..especially on the entrances to roundabouts.. and in true French tradition treat you to the "bras d'honneur" ( little old lady drivers use this one too ) if you who are already on the roundabout and have the right of way have the temerity to sound your horn or flash your lights at them when they cut you up as they pull across you from the entrance road..

They also are incapable of driving in their own lane whether on or off a roundabout, they straddle the white lines in the middle and then move back to their own side ( grudgingly ) if something is coming the other way..We even have a TV ad for an insurance company ACM which shows an animation of a road viewed through the car windscreen , with the white lines in the middle of the windscreen coming towards the car..impossible unless the car is straddling the lines..But as nearly all French ( including police and Gendarmes ) drive like this, right down the middle of the road ..they think that this is how "normal" driving looks!

France only counts road deaths as such ,if the death of the person occurs within 3 days of a road accident..if they die on the fourth or subsequent day after being involved in a road traffic accident ( as a pedestrian , cyclist , driver , whatever ) their death is not included in road traffic accident statistics..Even so the death rate due to RTA is about the 3rd highest In Europe, and they're leaving out most of those who are counted in other countries..

In over 20 years here I've never seen anyone stopped for using a phone whilst driving, but the police or Gendarmes do wait on roundabouts to see who is not wearing a seat belt..or just to check ID papers..

Facebook co-founder renounces US citizenship pre-IPO

Re: Sean Timarco Baggaley@NomNomNom:

logged in just to up vote you for that post ..Sean :)

Boffins embiggen data storage space with 'phase-shifting' material

Please stop using "embiggen" and "bigup", and all such "chav speak" inspired non words, the illiterati have enough problems with basic grammar as it is, the insistence of some of your journalists in using expressions ( lifted from teenager's "facepalm" accounts ) in their titles and articles, really grates, adds nothing, and risks encouraging those readers whose mother tongue is not English, to do likewise in the mistaken assumption that their use is correct..

If your excuse is that their use is meant as some sort of ironic joke..? it is not funny at all..

Groupon CEO plans to 'reinvent local commerce ecosystem'

anyone have a fork ?

Groupon appear to be nearly done..a light grilling, from all sides, should be enough to finish them..

.eu is a Euro domain, for Euro people - top legal bod

.co.uk

.co.uk

Considering that the world and it's dog are able to get .co.uk domains, ( and very many scammy, rip off people do from vary many countries ) without any oversight whatsoever..Those pontificating about how the .eu or any other register is being "difficult" should first ensure that Mr Pot isn't name calling in the direction of Mr Kettle..

Those who can't get a dot com, dot net or dot org because the domain name they want is already taken go for dot co dot uk..and can get it with no problem at all even if they register from Shanghai or Argentina...co.uk is the scammers dream..sure it publishes your name and address, but more than half of them are not in the UK , nor are they UK companies..

I have multiple UK limited companies, and only ever register the .co.uk versions to prevent cyber squatting, ( I never use them, the .co.uk may have some reputable domains on it, but is also a refuge of thieves and scoundrels, "passing off"..and I'd rather not be associated with it ) it is as wide open to abuse as .com ..and as most of the public both within and outside the UK think there is a some sort of "policing" of it , or some requirement to be UK based and thus "traceable" if they have a problem, the potential for abuse is greater than that of .com..

It should be restricted to only UK citizens or businesses..until it is , it is at best a joke, and at worst a "Union Jack" painted rock for non UK based scammers to hide under..

I own ( strictly speaking one leases them ) at present just under 200 domain names ( used to own very many more ), less than 10 of them are .co.uk..

Suppressed data on mutant H5N1 human-killer virus PUBLISHED

why is the address bar url showing "h4n1_flu_study_published"

if the article is about H5N1 ?

Web hosting

tidyhosts..ask for Ian

Used them for UK hosting for SEO GEO reasons..very efficient, very reasonable prices, made to measure service.. and they answer their phones and emails fast when you need "tweaks"..

US doc finally fingers elusive G-spot

@Yes, but what's the IT angle?

Depends where you're cuming from..

UK.gov to unveil reborn, renamed net-snoop plans in Queen's Speech

Doubleplus ungood

next...

Disappearing bees mystery: Boffins finger regicide pesticides

Re: Colony Collapse

Oi!! amanfrommars1 does the "strange posts with caps" gig here ..

and he makes a great deal more sense..

I presume the tin foil lined coat is yours..

Weeing Frenchman sues Google over Street View photo

@Doug Glass

If that was for me ? ..I'm Irish not French..but live in France..

Left te UK ( where I had lived for near 30 years ) in 1987 ( after Thatcher and Major had ruined the Uk it looked to be wanting to go down the same path for the next 20..Maybe John Smith could have made it somewhere worth staying..but then he "cough" died "cough"..so I was time to get out :-)..

traveled around a few years wound up here..

It has it's faults..

But at least it didn't have Blair...and it is waaay less chavvy than the UK...nor is it the de facto aircraft carrier for the US..and it doesn't bend over and hand the lube to Google, Facebook and other US mega corps..

It reminds me of Britain or Ireland in the late 60's..apart from the large cities ..and large cities are crap in every country ..I know..I've lived in many before arriving here..

Street view camera height is way above normal ( 2 metre hedge ) height

Google street view cars have their camera mounted on a tripod/ pole contraption which places the camera at 2.7 metres above road level..or about 8 feet and nine inches above road level for the merkins and the metrically challenged Brits..

Here in France you need planing permission to build your garden wall ( on modern houses ) higher than 2.00 metres ( about 6 feet 6 inches ) ..this is to stop you building bloody great walls and blocking out the light from your neighbors garden or house windows..and you get flak from the local council if you let your hedge etc obscure their light too ..so most garden walls ( on modern homes at least ) stop at around the 2.00m or 6 feet 6 inch mark..

This guy was photographed by the street view car..over the top of an 8 foot, dense hedge ( the man, the house, the garden , the hegde, the lawyer etc, were all on French TV here this evening ) running along side the road that runs by his garden.. the street view camera is not at a height that any pedestrian could see things at..it is incredibly intrusive, and in France it is illegal to photograph someone who is not in a public place without their permission ..blurring them after the fact does not give Google or anyone else the ability to flout the law here..

He was in his own back garden behind his own bloody high dense hedge..he can do what he wants..

Google have also been in trouble for photographing over the tops of cafe style curtains ( the kind that only cover the lower 3/4 of windows, but that stop people less than 2m tall seeing in ) into peoples houses..and even for photographing into their bedrooms on old houses with low first floors..In Japan they had to lower the cameras to the eye level of an average person or as close as they could get to Japanese average ..had to be under 6 feet IIRC..

France takes privacy very seriously..a fact which some of you should be grateful for as the CNIL here seem to be the only ones with the balls to tackle Google and Facebook et al over online tracking, privacy etc..

New forum Wishlist

new long posts and layout..idea good..implementation total fail..

As a firefox user said further up "it breaks"..the "new" longer comments and page layout etc also breaks entirely in Opera ( 11.6 on mint )..long comments are "expanded" by default with no way to close them, ( can see what I presume is the "expand" button text ..but no button ) so the "expand" is on by default.

Thus they run on down the page over the comments below them..any page with a long comment or or long comments, becomes totally illegible until the long comment(s) is / are finished..on this page, starshapedscar's post goes all the way down the page, munging in with everything until it stops halfway into the post by Sean Timarco Baggaley..except it slides behind the all buttons ..

I suspect if I looked at the source code ( Html and the CSS ) I'd be ill..

Amazed an IT tech site's web devs ( or was it done by the kid on work experience ? ) didn't test this in all browsers..major fail..

btw

In case it isn't clear ..the same abominable "long comments overlay" thing happens in the "comments" attached to each of the articles on the main site..not just here in the forum..

It doesn't happen ( at least as at the time I type this ) in "hardware" ..

Suggest you get the person who codes the pages over there, to come over here to the the main elreg site and fix it for you ..

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is dead at 56

a huge loss

IT , telecommunication and animation, his influence was huge.

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

You'll bee missed miss Bee

: c

Cabinet Office talks to Facebook & co about new ID system

Never have I been so glad to have left the UK over 20 years ago

Salut! Steve..same here ;-)..it's like watching the Titanic go down, looking across the channel from France.

Cookies law: Only two EU states implement full measures – so far

is there a cookie or two

Which if I accept it, will disable the ghastly hordes of mobile phone images that have appeared in the page background since I was last here ? ( ironically enough the only place they are not , is on the page that they link to ), but apparently el regs pony tailed designer forgot that if one has been to the "our new mobiles service page" one no longer needs to be haunted by massed blackberrys and shiny phones..

And another cookie please ,that will also allow us the option of setting the new , hyper-saturated red to go back to something less retina obliterating ..?

In otherwords give us the option ..via cookies ..to put el reg back like it was ..before you lose at least one reader ..and probably anyone else who doesn't want zombie phones and dayglo red webpages on a tech site.

You have those cookies ? ..great I'll take two..