Posts by IT Drone

Microsoft on the Threshold of a new name for Windows next week

Replacement Windows

(complete with annoying adverts)

Alien gimp gag or cosmic golf ball? NASA tackles question everyone's asking

It's life Jim, but not as we know it...

Silicon-based life-forms. Climate change. Cold weather. Just saying.

5.5in iPhone 6, iWatch hypegasm: What will Apple reveal - BE the rumour

Re: dont care but:

iSunDial? A compass with a little stick. In white. If they did, Apple could still get away with charging fortunes for it.

Reg Latin scholars scrap over LOHAN's stirring motto

Bladdered

Given the lack of balloons in Roman times (or helium either but never mind) an alternative metaphor might an inflated bladder. It has the added bonus of alluding to the after effects of a few celebratory drinks.

Google Translate then suggested "to the stars on an inflated bladder" becomes

vesica inflata ad astra

Sorry.

Read the proposed US ASTEROIDS Act to green-light mining IN SPAAAACE

Footfall

I can't read these asteroid mining stories without thinking of this book...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall

Aliens launch a "dinosaur killer" asteroid at the earth and destroy India. (Except there is no need for alien intervention given the stupidity of humans.) Thinking about it though - perhaps the dinosaurs were space-faring and did themselves in?

Microsoft wants to lure biz users with fondleable Windows 8.1 'Apportals'

Welcome to the 21st century...

Desktop PCs in the enterprise? Really? Instead go thin client to give users a follow-me-anywhere, server-based virtual desktop experience. MS Windows Server doesn't look like a Windows 8 kiddy-tiles desktop rather a more enterprise-friendly Windows 7 desktop with a proper Start menu and all. Training issues? No. Software compatibility issues? Nope. (Windows 8.1 - a futile attempt at turd polishing? Roll on Windows 9?)

So, what exactly defines a 'boffin'? Speak your brains...

Boffin versus mad scientist

Other comments have got it right - a certain absent mindedness and lack of recognition of just how smart they are would seem to define a good boffin. The boffin is an amiable chap who only causes the end of the world accidentally. The rest of us apes owe the comforts of modern life to boffins.

SCIENCE explains why you LOVE the smell of BACON

Re: It's how you cook it

or use a George Foreman type grill - crisps it up if that is your preference (but no good for a decent bacon sarnie with brown sauce!)

NASA agonizes over plan for Mars rock sample return mission

Re: Add this to the bill

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one - but still they come?

Charity: Ta for the free Win 8.1, Microsoft – we'll use it to install Win 7

Neither up nor down

"... exploit a clause in the licence to downgrade (or upgrade depending on your point of view) to Windows 7 rather than settle with version 8.1"

sidegrade?

Yosemite National Park bans drones

What would John Muir do?

Ban traffic in the park probably, not just drones.

Watch out, Yahoo! EFF looses BADGER on sites that ignore Do Not Track

El Reg Badgered

... thanks for the tip - Privacy Badger has greatly improved my browsing experience of The Register as it has the effect of blocking ads. Flashblock did a good job of not distracting my eyeballs but page loading is much faster now that I don't even see the space a blocked Flash ad used to take up. But ultimately I guess my selfish actions are contributing to the death of "free" content made possible by advertising. Oh dear...

Voters pick luminous tech spacesuit as NASA's off-world fashion statement

Humpty Dumpty

... enough said

Microsoft: You know we said NO MORE XP PATCHES? Well ...

Re: Luckily unaffected

@Charlie Clark - try Puppy Linux?

Microsoft were "warning users that if they don’t upgrade soon, hackers will lie in wait each new Patch Tuesday to reverse-engineer a full set of new vulnerabilities."

@Microsoft - when making a "what-a-caring-company" gesture that also FUDs users into moving off XP perhaps it would be best not to pick one of your many zero day vulnerabilities that highlights the crappy security in all of your operating systems and software...

Vladimir Putin says internet is a 'CIA project'

Internet censorship object lesson

Seems Putin is planning to show Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan how to do it properly.

Minecraft players can now download Denmark – all of it – in 1:1 scale

Siphonaptera

"All of Denmark is now a virtual world in the ratio 1:1 inside"

... including Miniland, the scale model Lego world at Legoland, Billund?

Brazilian president signs internet civil rights law

Going, Going, Gone?

"Any data collection or treatment should only be carried out with full agreement of the parties involved"

Agreement and *understanding* of the Ts&Cs? How long before the biggest serial privacy abusers (FesseBook, Goggle, et al) announce they are no longer doing business in Brazil - or get caught should the law actually get enforced?

Most Americans doubt Big Bang, not too sure about evolution, climate change – survey

Re: @IT Drone -- Creationism proves evolution?

Apologies but that was for the benefit of the Creationists. Met some, seen how far evolution has gone with removing unused mental faculties. Most have guns...

Creationism proves evolution?

Evolution dispenses with unused organs. Blind cave fish don't retain vision in an environment where it is not needed. (But interestingly a study published in Current Biology showed that crossing members of different poplations of Astyanax mexicanus could restore sight demonstrating it is a different genetic mutation in each.)

So could it be that evolution has simply dispensed with unsed parts of creationists' mental faculties such as reason and logic? (However, cross-breeding someone from Texas with someone from Arizona is unlikely to restore those mental faculties just increase the belief in Brawndo's Electrolytes...)

Happy 40th Playmobil: Reg looks back at small, rude world of our favourite tiny toys

Numerical advantage but not by mass...

http://xkcd.com/1338/

ROBONAUT to find feet after Monday ISS supply mission

Alcohol fuelled?

Legless at work - been there, done that...

Mozilla takes Windows 8-friendly Firefox out back ... two shots heard

Re: Desktop users use the desktop

"... only 1000 daily users of Firefox in TIFKAM ..."

I would be surprised if there are more than 1000 daily users of *any* of the Windows 8 kiddy mode apps if they have a desktop alternative. I pretty soon stopped visiting the bizarre TIFKAM world that Microsoft decided I would want on my new work PC.

Heroic Playmonaut wowed by LOHAN's bulging package

Re: Missing a servo????

Tea... Rolls... Will there be bacon too?

Windows 8.1 Update 1 spewed online a MONTH early – by Microsoft

Evolutionary pressure?

> "We are making improvements to the user interface that will naturally bridge touch and desktop, especially for our mouse and keyboard users," said Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone. "We have a number of targeted UI improvements that keep our highly satisfying touch experience intact, but that make the UI more familiar and more convenient for users with mouse/keyboard."

Working with a 27-inch Windows 8 desktop machine, I have it pushed quite far back on the desk where it looks like a really gigantic mobile phone even compared to the 1980s monsters.

The main improvement I need is longer arms when I am forced to use the kiddy toy features of Windows 8.

Ever get the impression a telesales op was being held prisoner?

Vocational training?

The prison service has always offered work and training as a means of improving the lot of prisoners when they get out. Nowadays the Ministry of Justice says vocational training is typically in engineering, plastics, printing, tailoring, footwear, woodwork, etc. In the past it majored on the building trades. The trouble is call centre *work* in prison is not particularly brilliant training for a future career. Banks and financial institutions are unlikely employers. Many other firms will have rules / stigma about employing ex-prisoners. The capabilities prisoners develop will be the softer skills that are more difficult to evidence in an interview. There are probably good jobs that could be given to prisoners but surely modern day call centre slavery is not one of them?

Who earns '$7k a month' but can't even legally drink? A tech intern!

Leave Adam Smith out of this...

Your comment about "Adam Smith's large, uncaring invisible hands" is a bit off track. Adam Smith was making the point about supporting domestic over foreign industry. An invisible hand would guide the individual to do what was in their own self interest and in so doing benefit the annual revenue of the whole of their own society (and not that of other countries). Something Adam Smith suggested statesmen and lawgivers should not mess about with. Not really an argument over one person getting a better paid job than the rest...

Insecure hipsters with BEARD ENVY spur facial hair transplant craze

Hoxton fashion

Forget New York. What is the current state of play with the Hoxton hipsters? Facial hair waxes and wanes in Hoxton. It is still being catered for though - check out this hispter barbers: http://www.murdocklondon.com/

Booze and bacon sarnies: A recipe for immortality?

Re: George Foreman - hero!

We have the Tefal version of the grill in the house. Makes the best crispy bacon I have ever tasted. (Mind you a proper bacon sarnie is not made with crispy bacon but thick, juicy, fatty bacon smothered in HP sauce between two slabs of white bloomer...)

There is a lot of speculative or even contradicting twaddle from health professionals fuelling the journarselists space-filling articles - BMC says salt and chemicals in bacon, BHF says it is the fat. Boffins at Harvard say avoid creating nitrosamines or heterocyclic amines during cooking.

All I know is if the choice is no more bacon or an early death, well...

Google Glass: Reg man tests tech specs

Not just the people wearing them...

Surely the correct British response to Google Glass is a slight raise of the eyebrows or at most a barely audible tut. All this upvoting and downvoting shows a lack of sang-froid, chaps.

If Google Glass takes off at all it will probably just be a passing fad. Only a couple of years back taxi drivers, white-van men and salemen used to have bluetooth headsets permanently attached to their heads.

Google gives Maps a lick of paint, smears it over screens worldwide

Re: Missing stuff just for me?

I agree with your point about the search nearby function - it seems to have disappeared from the map pin options. You can still get the same results by entering "abc near xyz" but personally I then find the new presentation style a bit naff. You get a tantalising glimpse of the old clean and easy-to-read style by entering, say, "pubs near wembley stadium" on the Google web search. Then click on the map to see the same results in the updated Google Maps. Pants...

The Vulture 2: What paintjob should we put on our soaraway spaceplane?

Homage

I noticed "Herbie: Fully Loaded" in the telly listings yesterday with Lindsay Lohan herself in the lead role (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400497/?ref_=nm_knf_t1). Why not keep it white with some simple red and blue offset stripes to one side. Ticks lots of boxes?

LOHAN cops a faceful of smutronyms

SCRAM

Safety

Cut-down

RockBLOCK

Abort

Mechanism

[Nothing to do with SCRAM® (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor), honest.]

Our Vulture 2 spaceplane sprouts sleek pointy beak

Re: Yes, but

Perhaps learn from the Mercury program where engineers saw astronauts simply as passengers but reacted to complaints and included a hatch with explosive bolts, a decent-sized window and manual controls? All lovingly rendered in trompe-l'œil, of course - http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/lores/S61-03698.jpg

Wot no laser cannon mounting point?

The recent story of Russian cosmonauts removing the ISS "External Onboard Laser (Communications, hem-hem) System" got me to wondering...

Germany warns: You just CAN'T TRUST some Windows 8 PCs

Oxymoron ...

... Windows, security, trust and remote updates all in the same sentence (without the word "not" appropriately placed as well)?

Is NASA planning to send LAVA LAMPS to Jupiter?

Re: Question.

He explains that the 120V is running through an audio plug (as used in an electric guitar) allowing the centrifuge arm to rotate through 360 degrees. Excellent chap for risking both decapitation and electrocution for our enjoyment.

ULTIMATE cuppa contenders prepare to go mug-to-mug

Milk has its place in tea

There has been serious scientific research into the important question of milk in tea. Boffins at Sheffield University have studied how tea polyphenols react with beta-casein in milk to affect the atringency of tea due to the reduced opportunity for interaction of the tea polyphenols with chemically similar salivary proline-rich proteins.

Obviously the proportion of tannins in the blend of tea itself and the amount extracted by the infusion process will determine the personal preference for milk or not.

As for biscuits, anyone else tried Moores Dorset Knobs dunked in tea? (http://www.moores-biscuits.co.uk/dorset-knobs.html).

Tickle my balls, stroke my button and blow the fluff from my crack

Embarrassing language

A young programmer colleague assigned to support a big project implementation in Norway couldn't work out why all the middle-aged ladies got a fit of the giggles when he asked if he could use their mouse to show them something. One day it was explained to him that "mus" was slang for female genitalia. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mus#Derived_terms_3).

Norkoshop: How Pyongyang well and truly forked Adobe

Re: Where can I pick up a copy?

And Adobe's incessant update nag is surely less obtrusive than any in-product brainwashing bundled by the Norks.

Relaxed Windows 8 rules hint at smaller slabs to come

Re: I am not saying W8 is bad BUT............

And a recent high street retailer newspaper ad tried to calm us luddites by saying that the familiar desktop is *just one click away*. (But failed to mention that once you are in the desktop the Windows key takes you back to kiddy-tiles mode because that is where you should be doing all your real work of course.)

Reg readers scuffle over the ultimate cuppa

Agitate the pot?

Part of the folklore of tea making for my elders was to agitate the pot to guarantee infusion was doing its magic. This was done by holding the handle and alternating several times between pointing the spout at the ceiling and tilting the pot as if to pour - but obviously stopping before any spillage - and saying the magic incantation of "show it to the pictures". It works equally well with the loose leaf tea of last century and the lazy man's bagged tea.

(I know coffee is barred from this discussion but a similar agitation technique can be applied when lifting the coffee pot from the hotplate to avoid a weak first mug of that other essential IT fuel.)

Balanced, neutral journalism is RUBBISH and that's a FACT

Balanced but unfair?

A problem with so-called balanced reporting is the need to go off and find two opposing points of view even when one side is a bonkers or minority view.

An example from a few years back was Global Warming (a term found to be too biased) aka Climate Change. Despite the majority of scientific opinion pointing to man-made influences being detrimental to the environment, journalists still had to find someone who disagreed for “balance”. Of course it could be that scientists had to take the view they did in order to get funding?

I reckon there must be some truth behind this research though - I still get a feeling of nihilistic despair if a climate change discussion kicks off again in the media...