Posts by Felix Krull

Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

Re: James is a dick...

@Peter 45

The exact same thing happened to me.

About 15 years ago, while studying, I was employed as a coolie in a small municipal institution. My job was to answer phones, type out minutes, write letters, make photocopies, that sort of stuff. Since I had very little actual work to do, I installed a network, built them a home page, designed a client database and wrote an application that presented calendars, address books and database access in a neat, personalized manner. I installed all new hardware, cured their PCs of their inevitable ailments and fixed the printer three times a week.

It was all strictly amateur league, mostly patched together by blind trial-and-error, but it worked as long as I was there to mollycoddle it. I might not have known what the hell "TCP/IP-addresses" were, but I knew which values they were supposed to be and which parts of the operating system to poke, if the little critters got above themselves.

Then my coolie colleague got fired for being useless (which he was) and after a couple of months of me having trained his replacement, the boss decided the coolie office was overstaffed (which it was) and fired me. I tried to explain to the one guy in the office who wasn't a useless social studies-type how the whole bag of snakes worked, but I hadn't documented anything and he didn't take notes, so after a few weeks I had my former boss on the phone: their internet connection didn't work.

So being such a nice guy, I fixed that for two bottles of - admittedly excellent - wine, even if I found it a bit galling. Next time he called I didn't bother to call back.

Spanish town trumpets 'Clitoris Festival' thanks to Google snafu

Re: Ah! Clitoris

It's called a chlamydia, you cretin.

Blade Runner sequel might actually be good. Harrison Ford is in it

Re: "Always leave them wanting more"

Deckard was human but might have failed the test he applied to a subject to determine if it was a replicant.

Deckard was a replicant.

The key is the origami-guy, who always seem to know what Deckard is thinking, making little origamis to illustrate it. At the end, when Deckard and Rachel are fleeing, Deckard finds an origami unicorn outside his apartment, just like the one he dreams about when slumped over the piano. This mirrors the scene where Deckard tells Rachel about her childhood 'memories'. Deckards memories are implants, that's how origami-guy knows about his dreams.

And no, memory implants don't grant longer lifespan. At least one of the rogue replicants had memory implants too. You could even argue that Roy's memories of space battles were implants too, fit for a soldier droid.

How HAPPY am I on a scale of 1 to 10? Where do I click PISSED OFF?

A word of warning

Next time you go to an airport, prepare: empty your pockets beforehand, don't wear a belt, wear shoes you can step out of without unlacing, don't wear clothes with zippers or metal buttons, don't bring a two-liter diet coke and don't be cute with the goons.

Because if I'm behind you in the queue and it takes you five minutes to negotiate the checkpoint, I'm going to drag you into a toilet cubicle and kick you to death in a puddle of stale piss.

Pirate Bay co-founder jailed for three years after massive CSC hack attack

Re: CSC Deserves What They Got.

It's far easier to criminalise people for exposing your weaknesses than to address those weaknesses.

Reminds me of an anecdote from when Richard Feynman was working in Los Alamos during the war. He spend a lot of his time cracking their safes to prove how lax the security was, and as a result, the personnel was instructed not to let Feynman near the safes.

Was Nokia's Elop history's worst CEO?

Re: Um, no...Stalingrad smartphon

That was Leningrad, sorry.

No, it was Stalingrad. Leningrad was supplied over a lake under German fire.

To Russia With Love: Snowden's pole-dancer girlfriend is living with him in Moscow

I'm supposing that if the US gets it way, she'll be charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive. Or maybe "giving comfort to the enemy"?

Provided she's not an NSA plant, of course.

Class war! Wikipedia's workers revolt again

Private companies have exactly the same problems.

African samba queen: Don't cut off pirates' net connections – cut off their FINGERS

Re: Nigerian 419's

It is absolutely amazing how the smell of big money makes people deposit their brain in the ice box.

I had a girlfriend who was into - inter maxima alia - anthroposophy, and during one of the countless workshops she attended, the teacher distributed photocopied Nigerian letters from a millionaire Steiner couple who wanted to give away all their money to other Steiners, just send us your bank account number, a copy of your passport and a $100 to cover the transaction cost and you'll receive a million dollars within the next few days.

The photocopy had been reproduced so many times, it was hardly legible, but even when I showed her articles about the Nigeria scam, she refused to believe that a fellow Steiner would do something so foul and underhanded. I mean, doh!

I had to threaten to report her teacher to the police, or she'd have beelined for the nearest post office.

Measure for measure: We visit the most applied-physicist-rich building in the UK

As you're clearly too lazy to use Google, I used it for you.

I googled 'caesium atom flip' and got zero hits on the first page. I didn't google caesium clock because I know how it works already. The only 'flip' I've heard about in nuclear physics is a spin flip, and atomic clock works on exciting atoms.

The process of converting to a higher energy is what's referred to as "flipping"

Only in this article.

So thanks for taking the trouble answering, but thanks for nothing.

NPL gave us the atomic clock, but now it’s going further: working with laser-based time keeping to put an extra decimal point on the current definition of the second – defined as the rate at which caesium atoms flip when agitated by microwaves at a set frequency.

That sounds suspiciously circular to me. How do you determine the microwave frequency without precise time-keeping in the first place?

And how does an atom 'flip'?

Real, hovering SPEEDER BIKE can be YOURS for cheaper than a house

Re: Depends on your expectations

It's not like it's difficult to make a contraption like this, it's been done many times already.

And the problem remains the same: the propwash will blast anything inside ten yards of the machine into the next county.

Re: Huvr board

Also, it's a hoax.

SpaceX touts latest gear: new module, rocket demo

No thanks

I prefer the sound of the booster.

Fancy joining Reg hack on quid-a-day challenge?

Been there, done that, ate mashed potatoes every day for two months. On Sundays, mashed potatoes with baked beans. Yummy!

BEHOLD the HOLY GRAIL of TECH: The REVERSIBLE USB plug

Re: @ Frank Long - @ frank ly - Am I the only one ....

It's not the insertion that I find dubious. it's when someone just pulls the plug, as it happen so often.

Well, they're not likely to do that more than once, eh?

Homeopathic remedies contaminated with REAL medicine get recalled

I had a girlfriend who was into all this crap: astrology, healing, crystal healing, remote healing, homoeopathy, eurythmics, biodynamics, hypnosis, herbal medicine, aura therapy, the works. She ingested 'natural' medicine of all kinds by the decalitre, but whenever she got sick, she went to see a real doctor.

Battle of Bletchley Park: TNMOC chief calls for review of museums' Mexican standoff

"The Bletchley Park Trust (BPT) is the custodian of the site and regards its tenant, The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) as part of the Bletchley Park family," the Trust said.

That's the most condescending BS I've ever heard in my life.

Object to #YearOfCode? You're a misogynist and a snob, says the BBC

Re: Keep the kids dumb!

Keeping children dumb is a important function of modern schooling. Society needs only a few percent smart people, the rest are better off not being given a proper education, because that will only lead to a sense of failure when they find themselves being unemployed or sitting at a supermarket checkout counter.

All most children need, is to be able to sign their own name, read street signs and a vocabulary that lets them understand television commercials.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

That video is boooring!

Elderly Bletchley Park volunteer sacked for showing Colossus exhibit to visitors

Three (very acerbic) comments in, the Youtube-comments were disabled.

Thanks, BBC.

Re: I don't understand

Thanks, interesting link.

Ancient carving of 'first human-built holy place' = Primitive Vulture Central

A vulture, is it?

I've always thought it was a dodo.

Even 'Your computer has a virus' cold-call gits are migrating off XP

Re: At least they're not scamming someone if they're wasting their time on you....

Reminds me of a friend of mine's father, back when phone salesmen (here in Denmark) were only allowed to peddle newspapers, for some reason. They'd usually call at dinner time when they knew you'd be home, so he'd just say: ' Oh, how nice of you to call, please hang on for just a minute'. Then he'd put down the phone in the recliner seat and go back to his dinner.

Half an hour later, when he'd finished his dinner, he'd sit down in the recliner with a cup of coffee, pick up the phone and say: 'sorry to have kept... hello? Hello?'

Funny thing is, this was in the eighties, and back then this was considered terribly rude.

Civilization: how I miss it!

Mexican drink-driver shopped to cops - by his own gobby parakeet

Re: Odd timing.

You can't be too careful with African Greys. Could've been a ZOMBIE PARROT!

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/grump

Mars One's certain-death space jolly shortlists 1,000 wannabe explorers

Re: :::Horse::>Cart

Clearly, they are idiots if they are going to sign up for this without any ship even close to *begun*.

I dunno. They get their 15 minutes of fame and they don't risk anything since they'll never get off the ground.

Joke no more: Comedy virty currency Dogecoin gets real in big Xmas heist

Re: Hmm... (A.C. 11:38)

Yes, for many years now asking for your "pounds" has resulted in you being given another note of the same denomination - and a well-we-haven't-heard-that-one-before smile from the cashier.

I remember an anecdote; I can't vouch for its authenticity, it's probably an internet thing, but ostensibly there was this American employer who decided to pay his employees in specie dollars - old school gold coins. So the employees would be paid nominally only a couple of dollars per month and likewise, only pay income tax on the nominal value of gold coins carrying a specie value equalling several hundreds paper dollars.

Ghosts of Christmas Past: Ten tech treats from yesteryear

Re: FX570 was a superb calculator

I an the proprietor of an IBM Selectric ballhead typewriter, an electro-mechanical masterpiece that's four years older than your calculator. It performs to the same spit-polished perfection as the day it was first plugged in, and until 2002, it had seen heavy daily use in a public office.

Now - and here comes the amazing part - this superb machine does not contain one single circuit board; all the magic is done with gears, levers, rods and, bigod!, strings and pulleys.

Damn, I miss civilization!

Swedish teen's sex video fine slashed: Unwilling co-star girlfriend furious

Re: Mixed signals regarding privacy

Yes, and if you do not want your pocket picked, you should not have pockets or at least put nothing in them.

Yes. As several posters already said, this is for life, this is for your grandchildren. If getting my pocket picked would mean that my grandchildren would be teased about it 40 years from now, I wouldn't carry anything in my pockets.

I'm not defending the clown that uploaded the video - just as I don't defend pickpocketing - but it's not illegal to use your head.

Panasonic throws in towel on plasma tellies, preps for BILLION-dollar kick in pants

You spelled 'beelion' wrong.

Nokia Lumia 925: The best Windows Phone yet

Cor, that's one fugly statue. What's wrong with bikini babes?

Scramjet X-51 finally goes to HYPER SPEED above Pacific

it would not even make space launches cheaper!

The idea is to launch it by mass driver so you won't need the rocket stage. The SCRAM takes the craft to escape velocity and then you'd just need a little rocket-nudge to get orbital insertion. This means that you can ditch the oxidizer - a big part of any lift budget, weightwise.

Bill Gates offends Koreans after sticking hand down trousers

Re: Maybe

What would YOU say if Bill Gates walked up to the queen of England, slapped her round the face and said FUCK YOU.

I'm a staunch royalists and I'd laugh for a week.

Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay

They probably don't want to see their shiny toys going for $1.95 once people find out they're completely useless.

Space elevators, vacuum chutes: What next for big rocket tech?

Re: Space elevators simply won't work. Never.

Sorry, forgot the rest:

The lag incurred by lifting the car is compensated by keeping the elevator cable under sufficient tension. When the car stops, the centrifugal force will straighten out the lag.

NASA put money into this. You think they'd have done that if it required the same amount of fuel as conventional reaction thrusters?

Re: Space elevators simply won't work. Never.

This means with every object we send up, the counterweight will start to lag. Energy is taken from the counterweight to speed up payload, so it will lag and it's orbit will decay. And this will get worse with every payload we send up.

No orbital decay. The energy to reach escape velocity comes from Earth's rotation, all you need is fuel to lift the car to the required altitude.

The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME

Re: Bah

I followed your link and now I won't be able to have an erection for a month! If my mother-in-law was a computer, she'd be a Holborn.

Satanic Renault takes hapless French bloke on 200km/h joyride

<i>Our source for the above is this report in the Courrier Picard, plus the linked radio interview. English-language reports say toll gates were raised to allow Lecerf to pass, and that he drove the car off the road when it ran out of petrol.</i>

Aha! Trying to save money on toll AND parking.

Pristine WWII German Enigma machine could be yours

Rommel

To a large extent, this machine was the key to many of Rommel's successes.

Hitler would send Enigma-encrypted orders to Rommel, the orders would be intercepted and de-crypted at Bletchley Park and forwarded to Auchinleck (or Montgomery), Rommel would blithely disobey Hitler's orders.

If only I had £50,000. I'd spend them on drugs and teenage prostitutes of course, but still...

Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

<i>He had moved in Bond's supposed milieu while drinking at Dukes and mixing quietly with the elite of Westminster and Whitehall during WWII. Fleming wanted to show that his hero - an intelligence officer - not only mixed with the big boys but drank like them too: hence a martini, and certainly gin in that crowd at that time. </i>

Toffs drank Scotch. A Martini is an American concoction and Fleming wanted to impress on the reader that Bond was a prole.

New Zealand issues Hobbit money

That's great!

So can I ask my boss to get paid in Hobbit money and only pay tax on the nominal value?

File sharing arrests move to Germany

Re: Yes it is justice

Damn straight! I say shoot the fuckers, that's REAL deterrent and let's have none of that £10K/download nonsense.

Speed driving? Crank up the effect on those lasers, blast the little shits off the road right there!