Posts by Wombling_Free

Apple tells staff to 'capture' iPad 3s with Wi-Fi troubles

Re: Capture....

"take a new one home"

Er, no. If you have ever had to take an Apple product back (and I have) you DO NOT get a new one. You get a 'refurbished' one. Which may then have it's own set of problems (as mine did) and you take that back and say 'hey, how come the replacement stopped working? Isn't this a NEW one?' you discover, no - they will only give you a 'refurbished' one back. So what? Well if it's an item that uses 3/4G and thus has an IMEI number, say one that has been reported as STOLEN you are in for a whole bundle of fun when your phone provider gets involved...

Square kilometre array decision delayed again

Why build only one?

When for just twice the price (or less) you can build TWO?

I would hazard a guess that twice the telescopes would give your FOUR times as much science.

And everyone knows MORE SCIENCE is a good thing.

Star's guts turned INSIDE OUT in supernova mega-blast

Re: So any explanation offered...

...but it doesn't explain WHY the Hrung collapsed.

Shock jocks take NBNCo cash, then trash its ads

And it's here, on the AM waveband...

[put your Sir David Attenborough voice on]

...that we find one of nature's most deadly creatures. Secure in it's small, dimly-lit studio the Australian Radio Personality fires millions of poisonous barbs into the airwaves, completely unseen by it's victims. It feeds on a steady stream of cash that flows to it from advertisers and what are termed 'mates' in the nations government. No female of the species has ever been spotted, though there are stories amongst the natives of Sydney that the call of a female can be heard in the early mornings. The Australian Radio Personality, or 'maaaayte' as it is called by the natives, shares a symbiotic relationship with another dangerous Australian species - the Bogan.

The Bogan is a unique creature in that it's entire set of senses, indeed it's very thought processes are actually supplied by the Australian Radio Personality. The Bogan by itself has no intellect or thought processes whatsoever, and if it fails to hear the ARP every morning the Bogan cannot do something as basic as get out of bed to feed itself or it's young. If left too long, say for 6 hours or so, the Bogan is in great danger of starting to think for itself; tragically this is almost always immediately fatal. Luckily for the Bogan, the call of the ARP is very loud, and is frequently mixed with the enticing calls of other creatures such as the Fuudy, the Criggit and the Orse.

Unfortunately this means that any creature actually wanting to have new ideas or think for itself in Australia must either permanently wear industrial ear protection or move to another continent entirely - which is often the best solution.

No-strings nookie radar tugged offline in stalking backlash

Looking for women = BAD EVIL

Looking for men (Grindr) = fine, carry on.

What does the Titanic's sinking tell us about modern science?

SCIENCE!

I think I'll do a doctorate on the topic of whether a better arrangement of deckchairs could have saved the Titanic, and if the deck chair arrangement used was actually to blame for the sinking.

Mae West thanks. No, not the life vest, the buxom blonde please.

Terrafugia flies first prototype: Flying cars 'within a year'

Just don't drive it on a a road or park it anywhere.

The first time some dickwad in a SUV with 'My Family' stickers all over it slams their door into your wing at the supermarket your flight-worthiness certificate is revoked.

Interesting design, bravo for trying to get it to work, but maybe all that effort could have gone into something useful rather than what is essentially engineering performance art?

Parents shocked by priestly PowerPoint pr0n

"16 in all, suggesting that someone wasn't too shocked to count) before McVeigh realized what was wrong."

*boggle*

"yes, well, on to the next slide.... um.... thats Peter & Jesus expressing goodwill & kindness to all men, at least all the men in that picture.."

"next slide please, er... thats John & Paul showing how to love your brother. Very much."

"next, this one is Ellen Degeneres & OH MY LORD THAT'S PERVERTED!"

16? seriously? it took SIXTEEN slides before someone realised what was wrong?

Sydney's CBD heading off the grid

For those of you who don't live in Austfailia, or Shitney in particular....

Lord Mayor Clover Moore wears a dog collar.

No, seriously, she really does wear a dog collar - all the time. She is never seen without it.. I don't know why.

Imagine what you would get if you crossed a hipster with Judy Davis and Germaine Greer. - Clover Moore is a nightmarish version of that foul abomination.

Gas generator plants - on building roofs? What could possibly go wrong with that?

Mind you, it fits with our glorious council's slogan - 'City of (Third World) Villages'. Maybe we could power the gas plants with dog turds (parts of Shitney CBD are starting to smell like Paris (both versions) FFS.) and use wind co-generation with hills hoists covered in plastic shopping bags - that will give the place a rustic hipster-craft village feel for sure. Oh, and ban cars and force everyone to ride unicycles.

Disappearing bees mystery: Boffins finger regicide pesticides

no, look it's very simple.

Albert Einstein was a physicist. A pretty good one.

He was NOT the world's leading expert of everything.

Yes, he was smart. At physics. Not terribly good at writing symphonies, and he was a completely crap stonemason. His lead-light window skills are, frankly, LAUGHABLE.

He came up with no great insights into the deeper workings of DNA, and made no progress WHATSOEVER in the conundrum of RNA-based origins of life.

You want to quote Einstein - cite primary sources or GTFO.

Situation normal

1. develop pesticide or industrial technique that makes modern life a microscopic bit better.

2. fail to take into account mind-boggling complexity of ecosystems

3. break planet.

4. oops.

100 EARTH-LIKE PLANETS orbit stars WITHIN 30 LIGHT-YEARS!

Re: Fermi Frightens Me.

Could I have a glass of whatever they are having?

Re: Fermi Frightens Me.

The answer as always is C

C) ALL OF THE ABOVE

Goldman Sachs in email muppet hunt

You mean this kind of investigation?

"Goldman Sachs has launched an investigation into its corporate email"

Investigation? Does it look like this:

DEL /Q /F "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\First Storage Group\Mailbox Database.edb"

DEL /Q /F "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\Second Storage Group\Public Folder Database.edb"

Top tip! DON'T try these commands out. Well, unless you are a Goldman Sachs exec standing next to the server rack with a password scrawled on a postit note.

BOFH: Dawn raid on Fort BOFH

So you HAVE met my clients...

"a rat-eating madman who also publishes horoscopes based on turd divination."

It's amazing how much money one can make in the turd divination field, especially if you can get a daily column in an Evil-Empire fishwrapper! (don't say his name! he'll buy the reg out!)

440m² screen has fewer pixels than iPad

Re: Hopefully now we can see some great closeups of....

"racehorses love to race - in fact, all horses do"

Riiight. Yes, actually I have seen racehorses up close. I don't know what country you're from, but the ones I have seen in Australia epitomise the expression 'fear'.

"check out a point to point race - amateur horses and riders" - totally agree with you. But point to point racing isn't supported by a massive industry worth a lot of 'stupid tax' (tax on people-bad-at-maths) to the government, nor is point-to-point racing or gymkhana used as a massive money laundering scheme by organised crime, nor does amateur racing heavily promote a culture of extreme binge drinking, excess and consuming mountains of cocaine.

I'm also a supporter of animal rescue groups who look after old racehorses after the racing industry has discarded them - (and discard they do! Not the glue factory these days, more likely pet food) - and have seen racehorses with scars from being whipped and having caltrops put under the saddle.

If you are only involved in amateur racing then I suggest you get along to Flemington or Randwick during one of the 'carnivals' - it's carnage.

Hopefully now we can see some great closeups of....

...jockeys beating horses until the horses bleed.

...horses being shot in the head after they have had a fall.

...organised criminals laundering money through the on-course bookies.

...massive queues of 'fillies' lining up to 'powder their noses' in the bathrooms.

...the perpetual expression of fear in the eyes of the horse.

...dead race horses being turned into pet food.

...crowds of over-moneyed over-entitled bogans delighting in cruelty to animals.

Taxpayers

I'm sure there would be some guvmunt scheme that sets aside money for important sporting facility improvements like this.

Baffling barcode-on-steroids stickers plaster the Earth

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET MAGINOT BLUE STARS

Anyone made a decent SCORPION STARE with class IV Basilisk capability QR code yet?

The possibilities of pwning any phone that passes by is intriguing.

Giant kangaroos wiped out by humans, not climate change

Not a new theory...

Tim Flannery has been saying this for three, maybe four decades now.

It isn't politically correct to say that Austfailia's original 'custodians' wiped out more species and destroyed far more ecosystems (through the dubious practice of, um.... burning down all the trees*) than us white-bread newcomers have in the past 200 years.

Austfailia - failing since 50,000BC - continuing the proud tradition into the 20th century**.

* - the native fire-clearing served only to retain species that are fire-resistant. Before native fire-clearing Australia looked more like the Daintree across the tropics, and Wollombi across the termperate zone. The deserts are only a new thing in the past 50,000 years or so - suspiciously coinciding with the spread of the plague of homo sapiens currently infesting the planet.

** - we're a bit behind down 'ere, maaaaaayte.

Musk muses on middle-class Mars colony

There's ten born every minute these days.

I recall Pan Am doing this with moonflights as PR stunt / BBQ money raising event back in the 70's, probably to coincide with their logo being used in that awful film.

I'm taking bookings for my proposed flights to JUPITER in 20 years time - $500,000 a seat, deposit of $5,000 payable now.

If the trip is cancelled you get your deposit back - in 2032.

(beer money until 2032!)

The Beatles' Yellow Submarine set to sail in 4K by 2K

Re: Unless it also comes with

i'll take an A3 size piece of blotter paper and some Lucy, thanks.

I might be able to make some sense of it.

You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

Would you rather be right or wealthy?

"If the mindset mentioned in this article is the only way to get anywhere then that's wrong. Very very wrong."

Maybe. But it IS the only way of getting somewhere.

I have in the past few months deduced some of these ideas from first principles, and put it into practice in my current job hunt.

Result? salary gone from $75K with no icing to $120K with 10% super, share options, staff discount card (major supermarket / liquor store / department store chain? 15% discount? why, yes!), allowance for phone, laptop, conferences, salary sacrifice for gym, rent, bills, and a20% performance bonus.

So I have to smile a bit more; I get to pay off my near-melting credit card and look forward to significant increases to my Lego collection.

Have I sold my soul? maybe.

Do I care? no.

'Now we understand what's required to explode a supernova' - NASA

Preposterous

"these results could suggest that the dwarf-conkers theory is actually the correct one"

I have never heard a theory of such zarking belgium.

Any hoopy frood knows that Intergalactic Bar Billiards is the reason. Potting a planet into a black hole gets you 4 million points, I just can't remember what a White Dwarf Double Zarquon gets you though.

Pan-galactic gargle-blasters all round, barbeing!

Oz billionaire says CIA backs Greenpeace

Re: Sorry ...

Hey, I've known some nice weasels!

I think you mean maggots - fly larvae eating a rotting corpse is the perfect analogy for the Austfailian guvmunters.

Re: Assuming the accuracy of the 'facts' mentioned

"ecomilitants"?

WTF?

SEA SHEPHERD are ecomilitants, and good on them!

Greenpeace are a corporation that makes money by being corporate hipster.

The most militant thing Greenpeace does is ambush you in the street with chuggers wearing koala costumes.

It was the time of the preacher....

He might have a point, I seem to recall Darius Jedburg claimed to have started Greenpeace (or it's fictional equivalent) when he worked for the Firm, before going somewhat freelance.

"Dallas? That's where we shoot our presidents!"

I guess when you live in a diamond encrusted mansion of 11,000sqm and have your own 737 to get you to work, and 'work' involves eating a lot and taking politicians out to lunch and claiming to run all Australian industry while employing about 70% foreign backpackers, then yeah, fiction must seem a lot like reality.

First against the wall when the revolution comes...

FAA mulls scrapping in-flight iPad, Kindle ban

I'M ON A PLANE!

Wonderful. I can't wait for mobiles on planes.

DOOFDOOFDOOFTISHDOOFDOOFTISHDOOFDOOFDOOFTISH...BIP!

YEAH, WOT?

NO! A PLANE! PLANE!

YES! I'M GOING ON HOLIDAY!

WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

NO! A PLANE! HOL-I-DAY!

YEAH OK! NAH! YAH OK! NAH! REALLY? REALLY? LIKE, REALLY? DID SHE? DID SHE? SHE DID? SHE DID WHAT? REALLY? LIKE NO WAY! LIKE NO WAY! LIKE NO WAY! LIKE NO WAY! LIKE DID SHE? LIKE REALLY? LIKE REALLY? LIKE REALLLY? DIIIIIIID SHEEEEE? WHO? WITH WHO? WHAT? WHEN? WHERE? DID THEY? DIIIIID THEEEEEEY? LIKE, REALLY? AND THE WERE WEARING WHAT? LIKE REALLY? REALLY? REALLY, LIKE? LIKE, NO... LIKE NO WAY!

NO! I'M STILL ON THE PLANE!

NO! WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? LIKE, WHAT? REALLY?

OK YEAH, CALL ME BACK IN FIVE!

NO YOU CALL ME BACK!

YEAH IN FIVE!

FIVE!

YEAH SISTAH!

At least on a train you can suggest they just open a window and yell.

Aussie hardcore gamers set to be legit

I think you mean Austfailia?

And the happy-clapper Hillsong right-wing WASPs will launch a bid to ban anything with the R18 rating in 3... 2... 1...

Windows 8 tablet freezes in Microsoft keynote demo

Some people have the 'knack'

No, some people just have the knack of causing any piece of hardware they touch to crash.

My boss can cause my iPad to freeze every time he touches it. My theory is that he must be slight scared of technology, so in stead of touching a screen or pressing a mouse button, he uses only very light, anxious pressure that the poor hardware interprets as about 1,500 inputs per second - result - instacrash.

Yes I know about anti-bounce, but it's the only theory I have to explain the way everything he touches plays up, crashes & locks, from phones to PCs to lifts, even his car.

I've watched him get frustrated when Outlook takes more than 1 second to open (come, on, really, be fair) and he goes into a clicking frenzy saying "see, it won't open", and then poor Outlook tries to open about 200 windows. He can click so fast he'd probably be pretty useful in a CS or QW match.

Mobile phones cause ADHD in rodents

Re: Mobiles are Banned by Big-Pharma

Code MAROON HAMSTER QUADRANGLE EPSILON

BigPharma is onto you. They KNOW about your oxygen-free-copper cabling. They KNOW about your colloidal silver. They KNOW you have been avoiding free radicals. They DO NOT like this; they are coming for you.

As per previous advice: destroy all your records and digital connections - they are compromised. Proceed to your nearest forest, discard your clothes; they have nano-thermobaric-red-mercury (spread by chemtrails) in them - you can be TRACED. Cover yourself in baked beans & tofuballs to avoid surveillance by Predator drones. Assume the lotus position at the base of the 34th birch; further instructions will be sent to your pituitary gland via Defocussed Natural Aerophany (DNA). These are your last digital instructions; these channels are now COMPROMISED. Only accept new information via the GAIA Harmonic Network. Blessed and lighted be! Spirit of Eagle guide you!

How the hell do you spot ADHD in a rodent?

What does a rat do when it has ADHD - steal your car? Paint graffiti on it's food bowl?

Tourists follow GPS, drive into sea

In defence of the tourists...

Firstly - the GPD might have been wrong ie. showing a road where there wasn't one. The fact that it plotted a course to the island suggests this may be the case. I have seen a few GPS aps in Australia that have very creative ideas about the nature of reality (roads that don't exist, guiding you onto an expressway going the wrong direction).

Secondly - have a look at the photos and the weather. Dead calm sea, high hazy overcast, sun directly overhead, so no clear shadows - these conditions can produce a whiteout-like effect where it becomes impossible to see the horizon. The calm water reflects the hazy sky, and all you can see is hazy grey-ish white. Combine that with an inversion layer over the water or the island and you get prime conditions for mirages - which can look like roads. To someone already a bit nervous due to language, a dodgy GPS that keeps telling them to turn left in 100 metres and the guys in the back having a laugh I can see how you might make an error.

There are roads in our glorious nation's capital that will be dual-carriage freeways, letting you tear along at 100km/h that suddenly turn into empty fields as you round a corner - no signpost, no warning, the map even shows a road... that hasn't been finished. The government will get around to it one of these decades.

A lot of mileage has been made in the press here of 'haha stoopid toorists!' but the locals make bigger and more spectacular blunders all the time.

Busty blogger bursts Bulgarian airbag in mud-wrestle blunder

Re: Won't someone think of the children!?!

"Short sighted specs would be useless for firelighting."

Hey, don't spoil hundreds of good plot devices with facts!

Yes, 'Lord of the Flies' I'm looking at you. (Piggy was shortsighted, so there is no way they could have lit a fire with his glasses)

Also - try lighting a fire with broken glass.

No, take your time. I'll wait.

New NASA snap of game developer's electric cart FOUND ON MOON

conspiranut alert

I was going to explain how to do a google search for LRO imagery, but since you got to El Reg you clearly aren't a clueless noob who pulled onto the information superhighway in an IBM Golfball, so I'll just say this instead:

This is CODE THINK BLUE COUNT TWO MAGENTA ALBATROSS

A government modified 747 just overflew your bunker leaving a chemtrail of thermobaric red mercury and rhodium nanoparticles. You have been compromised. Destroy all your documentation and hard drives NOW and head for the nearest forest; discard your clothes (they are nano-rfid tagged) and smear yourself with baked beans and meatballs to confuse any Predator drones that are following you.

You'll be doing yourself (and us) a big favour.

Did it not have steering then?

They rolled it right through a couple of craters, and looks like they bogged it in one at the end.

I suspect they might not have had steering, or maybe even control at the point it stopped!

Austrian daredevil Baumgartner skydives from 71,581ft

Re: While we're all digging this guy's jump...

It would have worked quite well - even feasible now with our better materials.

I'd have a go; after someone like Felix or Joe has tested it first....

Re: Joe Kittinger

careful - your argument is likely to get used by UFO nuts to say that they clearly had ET influence.

The reality is actually scarier - the US spent SO MUCH MONEY they sent the USSR bankrupt and are themselves still paying off the debt...

Re: looks

Er, the ISS orbits within a 'fair old fug of atmosphere' as you call it, as the air molecules around the ISS are not actually in free orbit; this is why the ISS needs a regular firm thrust to keep it up.

A balloon is an entirely rational way of getting to space, the problem is reaching orbital velocity from one - hence LOHAN, which will also be in need of a long hard thrust to get to its (her?) peak.

The official definition of 'space' is somewhat arbitrary as you could say it starts at the altitude where you need a pressure suit to survive more than a second or so (70,000 ft, but that means HEAPS of people, even James May, have been to space) or it should more correctly start at the altitude where you don't need to keep boosting your orbit - the altitude at which air molecules start to follow truly ballistic paths (around 1000km I think) instead of smacking into one another every 10km or so like they do around the ISS , but this means that embarrassingly only 24 people have been to space - the Apollo astronauts who entered trans-lunar orbits.

Vendors smack Thunderbolt punters with massive pricing markup

Apple Tax

Royalties? On Thunderbolt? It's tech by Intel, I don't notice other Intel products, such almost 50% of the chipsets on PC motherboards attracting such ridiculous markups.

This is just Apple tax, like Audiophile Tax and casinos - a tax on ignorant hipsters with lots of money.

Xbox 360 video cable boasts NOISE VIRUS protection

I think you'll find most audiophiles agree

...with the virus-in-your-cable theory.

Anyway, what's wrong with parting rich idiots from their money?

NASA's 5-rocket mission to blast off tonight

Re: Methinks-

I love how Chemtrailers think that all world governments are in collusion with scientists and have this huge scheme going.

Just look at out governments - most of them would struggle to run a bath successfully, let alone a global conspiracy.

terrier-improved malemutes...

how exactly are strapped-together dogs going to tell us about the Jet Stream?

Oh I wish we could post pictures - you'll have to imagine a whole bunch of small yappy yorkies strapped to a confused Malemute being released in the middle of pad 3B...

Microsoft warns of RDP attack within next 30 days

Re: Lets be a little realistic here...

"This doesn't concern end-users."

Fixing that? Nah, mate, more than me jobs'worth.

Do you happen to work for CityRail?

I think even the BOFH's dad has machine with a "professional" OS with RDP enabled, so the BOFH can remove the virii remotely (we are all tech support for our parents, right?).

End-users - exactly whose PCs make up up the countless botnets?

Re: Blowout soon, fellow Stalker!

Don't just stand there, Stalker, come in!

Next 30 DAYS?

What bloody planet are they on?

Next 30 HOURS is more likely now they have publicised it.

Possibly even 30 Minutes.

Tin-foil hat time.

Hey, there should be a tin-foil-hat icon!

Atari pings Pong Apple champion wannabes

Pong? Apt name.

If there was ever a game that did NOT need a reboot Pong would have to be a contender.

Since Neverwinter Nights was published by Atari (or at least it's Raised-From-Dead zombified corpse) I've been hanging out for a good port of NWN to the iPad; maybe they could consider that?

The iPad is in dire need of some serious games instead of the horrid steaming pile of refuse that fills the App Store. Galaxy On Fire 2 is the only game I play on my iPrecious; it's the only decent game. I had high hopes for Civilization, but it is the Nintendified cartoon version rather than a slick reproduction of Civ2 or Civ V.

The old Bioware Baldur's Gate engine would run like a dream on the iPad; I'd pay good money for the Baldurs Gate series & Torment!

NASA orders study for all astronauts over vision concerns

Risk found - stay on earth!

Risk. What with space travel? Who woulda thunk it?

I would have thought the risk of rapid firey death might weigh more heavily on your mind than bad eyesight; even given a chance of high-G combustion and bad eyesight I still want to go to spaaaaace!

I have shortsighted vision, which apparently gets BETTER so that's a win-win!

Have the now-grounded astronauts properly considered that far great risks of a desk job in a standard office? At least in space you don't die of boredom!

Jupiter and Venus get cozy in revealing late-night display

According to my horoscope...

I should beware of falling double-decker busses, make sure I don't eat a box of nails coated in arsenic, not wash my hands in chlorine trifluoride and avoid making decisions about money, love, sex, what to eat, decisions, major airline purchases or crossbreeding bears & egrets. I will meet a stranger of a certain height and will encounter universal love and happiness if I happen to be a billionaire on holidays.

I am amazed how accurate these things are.

iiNet turns brand into global domain

erm...

So is my domain name going to be iinet.net.iinet?

yuck.

Mind you, however much they are paying, it's probably cheaper than .au! The Australian domain registry is a tad expensive; probably because Australia is so far away from the rest of the world, and they have to ship the letters in - tech imports are very expensive with our tax rates - can't get the wood these days - they provide employment for tens of Australians - all the usual excuses...