Posts by Dangermouse 1

US military spends weekend shooting down Useless Floating Objects

Re: Where did they launch it from?

Several, in fact.

Retro Microlympics concludes with possible reopening dates for UK computer museums

Re: Elite

The term "procedural generation" gets used a lot these days, wrt modern games, but I think a lot of people don't realise it's not such a new concept!

UK Supreme Court declares Uber drivers are workers, not self-employed: Ride biz's legal battle ends in a crash

Re: An Uber driver wrote (somewhere)

How do you think Hermes et al keep their prices so low? It's not by paying their drivers fairly, that's for sure.

Fujitsu scrapping fuel card benefit to cut costs, threatens dissenters with fire and rehire

Re: Illegal

If you make someone redundant, don't you have to pay them statutory redundancy pay?

12 weeks salary for 200 people on, say, 100k a year ... about 15k per person, comes to about 3 million.

Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

Re: I've just uploaded my music collection to...

Can recommend Pulsar music player, even the free version does gapless playback, which google play music can't seem to manage.

Fitness freaks flummoxed as massive global Garmin outage leaves them high and dry for hours

Re: But I NEED to know how 'old' I am

Agreed about Garmin - I've got a Montana GPS - nice hardware let down by appallingly flaky software.

They stopped being good sometime after the classic 2610.

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Perhaps it detects 5G signals

Heh ;)

Father of Unix Ken Thompson checkmated: Old eight-char password is finally cracked

Re: DES

Deprecated, not depreciated :)

FBI softens stance on ransomware: it's (sort of) okay to pay off crims to get your data back

Re: Tragedy of the commons

Larkin actually wrote 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad'. If you're going to quote what many would regard as great literature, don't fucking well censor it :)

Mods I have known, Mods I have loved, Mods I have hated: Motorola's failed experiment is now a savvy techie's dream

500 Wh Battery?

That's a hell of a battery!

Smut site offers VPN so you don't bare all online

Re: Save yourself embarrassment!

You're not allowed to divulge what goes on in the jury room, what happens in open court is surely a matter of public record.

F-35 targeting system laser will be 'almost impossible' to use in UK

Finnmeccanica rebranded as Leonardo - but their corporate website is leonardocompany.com. Which says to me that no one thought to check the domain name was available before spending a few million on rebranding...

Smartphones aren't tiny PCs, but that's how we use them in the West

Re: Paying for fuel

[CITATION NEEDED]

Docker hired private detectives to pursue woman engineer's rape, death threat trolls

Re: Troll mentality? - a story of abuse

> I suspect, but can't prove, they became a voluminous and slightly

> incoherent commenter on the popular blog of a well-known sf writer.

Either SF writers' blogs attract a lot of nutters, or we all know exactly who you mean ;)

ICO fined cold-call firm £350k – so directors put it into liquidation

For this company to have earned so much money, someone must have been willing to pay them to make these cold calls. Can't these companies further up the chain be traced and prosecuted too? Or at least outed. If no one was willing to send spam, spammers would be out of a job.

Full of fear at work: Blame the boss, or yourself?

Was that 50p for a pair of gloves or for a box of 100? Just curious cos a box of 100 nitrile gloves costs about £5 on ebay, so if hospitals are getting them for £1.27 or less, they're not doing bad.

Feeling a physical present: Ten summer games and gadgets

AVP game looks a lot like Space Hulk. Which admittedly owed quite a lot to the Alien franchise in the first place, I guess we have come full circle.

Cops turn Download Festival into an ORWELLIAN SPY PARADISE

I gave up on festivals a while ago, they're less about the music and more about extracting every last penny from the 'customers' these days :(

'Lenovo, Superfish put smut on my system' – class-action lawsuit

Remember when Belkin did something similar in their routers? Another company to add to the shit-list!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_router/

Elite: Dangerous 'billionaire' gamers are being 'antisocial', moan players

Sploiting and duping in a MMOG - I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you.

Space Oddity redux: Hadfield's cover back for two years

Well I guess R Cheese Esq is wrong on that count then! Thinking about it, I seem to remember Weird Al being denied permission to parody 'Gangster Paradise', and doing so anyway. What Yankovic does is definitely 'parody' though, and Hadfield's song very probably isn't.

edit - having just read Weird Al's FAQ as linked above, my recollection is not entirely accurate. Not a big surprise.

I was going to post something along the lines of "How is Hadfield's situation different to that of other artists who record other peoples' songs, for example Richard Cheese or Weird Al Yankovic?". But, contrary to the spirit of the internet, I decided to look it up for myself, so here's a snippet from the great Mr Cheese's FAQ which sheds a bit of light on the situation ( http://www.richardcheese.com/rcfaq.html )

5.3.2)  Do you have to get their permission to include their songs on your CDs?

Nope.  Doing a remake of a song is legally allowed, as long as you give proper credit to the songwriters/publishers, as long as you don't change the lyrics, as long as you don't make a video, and as long as you pay the statutory royalty rate of 9.1cents per song per CD sold.

5.3.3)  So this isn't like Weird Al having to get permission from the original artists?

No, you idiot.  Weird Al Yankovic, who is a very talented and hilarious entertainer and close personal friend of mine, does SONG PARODIES, in which he changes the lyrics of the songs.  My Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine band does COVERS, which are simply new performances of the original songs.  Our arrangements remain faithful to the original song's lyrics and musical composition.  Please don't call what we do "parody."  We might satirize, bastardize, and swankify, but we are not parodying.

So there you go, because Cmdr Hadfield made a music video, and changed the lyrics, he has to get permission from Bowie's 'people'.

DVLA website GOES TITSUP on day paper car tax discs retire

Seems to be working again. Or maybe I just got lucky.

Anyone notice the stealth ripoff with the new rules? If you buy a new car, you have to tax it even if it already is taxed by the previous owner. And the PO doesn't get a refund for partial months of tax remaining.

Wolfenstein: The New Order ... BLAM-BLAM! That guard did Nazi that coming

Laserkraftwerk - Laser power station? Wouldn't that be a bit heavy to carry around?

JJ Abrams and Star Wars: I've got a bad feeling about this

In the words of Tim Bisley, "Jar Jar Binks made the ewoks look like fucking Shaft!".

French software developers are all beautiful women

What's with the bizarre self censorship?

Last time I checked, "porn" was not a swear word. The concept may be unacceptable in some circles, but the word itself? And why censor "p*rn" but not "shitty"?

The mind b*ggles.

Today's bugs have BRANDS? Be still my bleeding heart [logo]

Boolean types in C

C99 has a bool type. Mind you the standard is only 15 years old so I can see why most people still don't use it.

(That was sarcasm)

BT finally admits its Home Hub router scuppers some VPN connections

4.7.5.1.83.8.94.1.37

That's one hell of a version number!

How to Poo on a Date wins odd book title of the year

The Origin of the Feces - not so original

Type O Negative got there first with their 1992 album. The first release even had a photo of Pete Steele's chocolate starfish on the cover.

It's not just incredibly hard, it's really quite pretty: Dark Souls II

If you attack while its tail is up, it'll fire a laser at you!

That's quite funny, considering:

a - That's from a game released 17 years ago

b - The dodgy translation actually said "Attack while it's tail's up!" [sic], "It's gonna counterattack with its laser." with no implication of the former causing the latter.

Morrisons supermarket hit by MASSIVE staff payroll data robbery

A little thing that bugs me...

Why do companies, and it seems to be mainly supermarkets, insist on using the word "colleague" when they mean "employee"?

There's a sign at the local Asda, along the lines of "Don't reach up to this high shelf, ask a colleague for assistance". Well I would, but none of my colleagues are here shopping with me. I think what they mean is "ask an employee" or "ask an assistant".

Is it some sort of politically correct newspeak designed to make employees feel in some way valued or empowered, by not calling them employees? In the same way the people who empty your bins are apparently "operatives"?

Massive new AIRSHIP to enter commercial service at British dirigible base

Bruce Bruce

"Bruce Dickinson - well known as a former Iron Maiden vocalist"

And probably more well know as Iron Maiden's current vocalist, but he did take a break while Blaze Bayley was doing the duties, so both are true :)

'It seems that the OSes and devices are based on the Devil'

"Punch the Spaniard"

As it's nearly the weekend, how about a few more euphemisms? :D

Make the bald man cry

Take Captain Picard to warp speed

Hand to gland combat

Shaking hands with the unemployed

A big date with Rosie Palms

Ding-dong, Cthulu calling: Infogrames’ 1992 Alone in the Dark

Nice review, but the compression artifacts in those screenshots are horrendous! Wouldn't PNG have been a better choice than JPEG?

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs muzzled by delays

THALES

Being French, it's pronounced TA-LEZ.

Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

"Unexpected Item in Bagging Area"

According to Viz, this is a euphemism for having pooed your pants.

Our magnificent Vulture 2 spaceplane: Intimate snaps

It's possible that painting the plane might actually increase drag. When I looked at the photos, it reminded me of studies I've read about into reducing drag by using non-smooth surfaces. Think golf balls, but with much smaller undulations in the material.

Sadly, I can't remember where I read this, probably a report in New Scientist or similar. But a quick google for "aerodynamics non smooth surface" shows that several people seem to be working on this topic.

It would be interesting if the non-smoothness of the aircraft skin (which is presumably a byproduct of the 3d printing) turned out to be actually beneficial in terms of drag - and you'd save the weight of the paint!

Glowing Nook knocked to under 50 quid for Xmas

I gto a cheap Nook in the sale last year - liking it so far. The screen is good and the battery life is all that is claimed. I can't imagine reading books on my phone!

The one gripe I have with ebooks is the price - a lot of titles seem to be just the same price as the paper equivalent. I know it's been said that the physical productions costs are a small part of the overall cost of a book, and fair enough, but the customer perception (well mine anyway) is that ebooks are a worse deal - you can't lend them to a friend and you can't trade them in at the 2nd hand bookshop / ebay when you're done.

Having said that, there are a fair number of free titles out there if you look, for example from Baen (if you like scientifiction) and their non-free books are reasonably priced and DRM free too.

Roll up, roll up: Cash, Bitcoin and booze offered for iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner hack

Re: Will they do the same for Android?

Everyone keeps forgetting that there have been Android phones with fingerprint scanners for years - the Motorola Atrix. My wife has one, but it might be telling that she usually unlocks it by typing the PIN rather than scanning her finger! :)

It's the software, stupid: Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch bags big apps

I know plenty of runners, cyclists etc who will gladly spaff 2-300 quid on a wrist worn GPS enabled 'exercise computer' device - eg a Garmin Forerunner, that sort of thing. Those are quite chunky, waterproof (IPX7) and the battery life is rarely more than 20 hours in use.

So I can see a smart watch being able to compete in that market, if it had comparable software. Never used RunKeeper so I can't comment on that but the firmware in the Garmin units is pretty well featured. But I bet the keen athletes would be interested in a smart watch that does what a ForeRunner does, combined with calorie intake / dietary information (barcode scanning your food as mentioned above) and stuff like that.

Dopey dope-growing dope smoked out by own dope dope-growing vid

Gardening offences are the most serious!

Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

Have to answer this: "the amazing SAM Coupe - the last UK home computer until the Raspberry Pi."

SAM Coupe - 1992. Acorn RiscPC - 1994. Castle Iyonix 2002.

Scottish council muzzles 9-year-old school dinner photo blogger

What's particularly great about this story is that in the last 24 hours, the donations to "Mary's Meals" on Martha's justgiving page have gone from £2000 to £26,900. In fact it went up by a few hundred quid in the time it took me to type this!

Motorola Motoactv GPS fitness tracker

I have to say, a Garmin Forerunner and a cheap MP3 player seem like a better buy. The latest forerunners (400 series I think) are pretty slick and compact.

WTF... should I pay to download BBC shows?

Agreed about the cost! BT seem to think that charging nearly £2 per episode is a sensible price for programmes on their catch up TV service. Surprisingly, I have never bought a single one.

Christ appears in phone advert, secular authorities act

Buddy Christ

It's clearly the 'Buddy Christ' from Kev Smith's Dogma. Snootchie bootchies!

iPhone users get more sex than Android fans

iPhone users are easy

This data doesn't say iPhone users get more sex, it says that they sleep around more. For all we know, the android people might be at it every night, but with the same person. (Not all of them with the same person, obviously).