Posts by Richard

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El Reg are "public relations experts"

It must be true - Wikipedia says so!

Revo Blok

"Kontroler"?

Sounds like a Linn wannabee

Goat hangs self in Canadian zoo

Please stop ....

... bleating on about this.

Banks told to spend £1bn on new IT to prepare for failure

Spend lots more money....

.... seems to actually increase the possibility of more banks failing?

M42 closed by marshmallows and beer

On my way now.....

... to join the cleanup team.

Any more volunteers?

Sirius satellite radio squashes 6-year-old bug

@Ian

Unless you live in the UK and don't have a TV - they still hound you for the license fee.

Link spammers set up shop on GMTV sofa website

What was the rest of the punishment?

"the person who handled the issue was tied up"

Was that it? Or something further?

Playmobil reconstruction, please!

Organized crime tampers with European card swipe devices

@ various - the retailer doesn't care

It's not the retailer that takes the hit. The info is used to clone a mag stripe card, which is then used at an ATM somewhere abroad where chip'n'pin doesn't exist yet.

Two solutions - either ban using the same PIN for chip and stripe, or do proper x509 cards with on-chip authentication.

Autopilot blamed for Qantas plunge

The autopilot may not "go down" ...

... but anyone remember the scene in "Airplane" when the autopilot started to deflate and the stewardess had to reinflate it?

Tri-corders, alpine oxy-pills: Acropocalypse at DARPA

Respect

Lewis, with your acronym generating skills, you'd be a top man in just about any IT organisation!

New hydrocarb X-51 scramjet ready for flight

re. Why a barrel roll?

It looks good at the air shows.

Royal Navy won't fight pirates 'in case they claim asylum'

Don't bring them back to Blighty ...

... just sail across the straits and offload them somewhere like Saudi, who will no doubt give them a warm welcome.

Skype ignores PayPal siphoning hijack scheme

Worth a try.....

Paypal are now a bank, regulated in Luxembourg. The regulator is Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier.

See their website, in particular the complaints procedure at

http://www.cssf.lu/index.php?id=75&L=1

Dunno what would happen if they got inundated with complaints about paypal?

Late-breaking April Fool prangs snoozing Guardianista

@ashley

That wasn't the first one, either - back in the late 1800's and early 1900's there were a number of cameras made to look like pistols, and much sought after by collectors. What would happen today if you tried to use one of those in public?

Not to mention the WW1 Lewis gun conversion, used for training air gunners!

Who do you think you are, knitting Mr Hitler?

Headline of the week ...

.... or maybe of the month!

Much respect, Sara!

Divorce for shouty YouTube wife

Sara ....

Have you been borrowing Lewis's thesaurus again?

EU Commission plots to end rip-off Britain online

@JasonW

The EU is already on the case for interchange fees - but don't expect to see any reduction on your credit card bill, as the merchants will probably just pocket the difference, as happened in Australia.

Sixth British Columbia stray foot a hoax

Appropriate category ....

.... filed under "Bootnotes"

Obvious, really.

Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap

Scary...

Someone has actually applied common sense and hard maths to what has been up to now mainly a hot-air (ouch) debate. The guy is going to get abuse from all sides due to entrenched positions and narrow-mindedness, but this seems like the first practical scientifically based analysis.

Total respect!

Snail mail goes hi-tech – literally

@AC

"I think you'll find Agent 003 is a girl"

Or a boy ... or both - most snails are hermaphrodite

Franco robbed Sir Cliff of Eurovision win

Violation of the Trades Descriptions Act?

In filing anything to do with the Eurovision Song Contest under "Entertainment"?

Vultures crash out of the Indian skyscape

Picky?

Vultures? Picky?

eBay ponders Skype bail out

Swings and roundabouts....

Good news - may stop the intensely irritating Skype pop-ups on almost every ebay page :-)

Bad news - even higher ebay fees to cover the loss? :-(

BAE aims to keep all-u-can-eat ticket at MoD pie-shop

BAE is the main problem

A couple of things would help no end:-

Buying off-the-shelf stuff that does the job that needs to be done, rather than fancy long-range programmes where the needs have changed competely by the time it's delivered,

A bit more competition in the industry

But I guess BAE would do everything in its power to prevent these.......

Google and Yahoo! skewer anti-DoubleClick law

About time too

The guy appears to have hit a real raw spot. Looking at the list of companies opposing this can only add more justification for it!

NASA gets intimate with Phobos

@Ashley

It's a basic Mr Potato Head Asteroid / Moon kit

Apprentice contestant to offer Zeppelin trips above London

Not the first attempt...

A few years ago another company was doing this over London (using a British-built blimp, as I recall) but the service only ran for a year or two (sort of fizzled out rather than went with a bang?).

Intel shows Atom-powered Eee PC clones

Wot - no beach babe pic?

They're doomed to failure if they don't have a picture of a typical user on a sun-drenched beach ;-)

Wombat rape ordeal turns NZ man Australian

@bob_blah

Is that a typo or are you admitting what many have suspected actually hides behind the Oz macho veneer?

NASA, UK boffins plan tunnelling Moon mole robot

@amanfromMars

Has someone hacked amanfromMars's account - that post made sense! I do hope he's not ill or anything - maybe an attack of Lunacy?

Cops admit CCTV no use in deterring drunken violence

Bleeding Obvious

CCTV cameras are useless for reducing anti-social behaviour unless:

1. Someone is monitoring the things in real-time

2. There is enough police manpower to respond - quickly!

Maybe put the CCTV feeds on the web - then anyone interested can keep an eye on what's going on - and maybe go and join in the rumble if they feel like it ;-)

BBC's iPlayer launches Christmas Day

Re. not beta quality

Ah - being of a certain age I misread that post as it not being of Betamax quality yet.

Thinking about it, it probably isn't. That Betamax system was very good for its day.

Brussels arms bod: Don't buy Yankee deathware

Also great value....

... compared to a C130J Hercules with a range of 2,000 nm and a payload of 20 tonnes, list price to you, sir, £33 million.

I know it's not that simple, but the much cheaper C130 covers most of the operational requirements, and I assume there will always be a need for the greater capacity of the C17 for extreme lifts, what's the actual market demand for this latest EU vanity product? Probably depends on how much the taxpayer subsidises it.

Brazil braces for TV soap-induced blackout

@Paul

You're right - it made sense - I hope he's OK and not gone crazy (or is that sane?) ....

Privacy chief condemns weakening of EU data protection

@Did we join.....

That post must be the candidate for the comment of the week. But why did you post anonymously?

Oh - yes - guess I understand .....

Free-market think tank urges EU to unbundle Windows

Not necessarily Linux

Who said the alternative had to be Linux?

Vista is still too new for me to be happy to use it - it needs another year or so in the wild for all the bugs to be fixed. If I was getting a new PC I think XP would be a better option at the moment - but how easy is it to buy a PC with XP nowadays?

Bank holiday transport farrago

ROTM?

Is this the first sign of the ROTM plan to render humanity helpless?

Insidiously insinuate themselves into the everyday fabric of life, then deny services at a crucial time once humankind has lost the ability to function without them?

Time for the NLRA to head for the resistance command centre - Oh B***er, the location was stored on my (now defunct) TomTom!

Channel 4 cans Celebrity Big Brother

Gutted.....

...as there was a rumour that Paris Hilton was being signed up for this year. Remember she's just had a bit of practice by being locked up for a few days, too!

Google invades Outer Space

Just waiting....

... to see what comment amanfrommars posts to this one ;-)

Helium balloon Brit breaks distance record

Gordon Bennett

The competition and the expression derive from the same guy - see

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gordon-bennett.html

Also, maybe we need another entry in El Reg's english dictionary for ginger nuts - for Brits, that's a kind of biscuit.

Team America to launder $24m North Korean cash through Russia

419 email?

How long before the boys in Lagos get hold of this one? Watch out for the email!

UK Gov seeks 'scientific' basis for nationality

Not easy!

DNA can determine ethnicity (racial origin) but not nationality - and would probably need to look at many more markers than the current UK database uses. It may be possible to identify the geographical origin or long-term abode of someone by analysing ratios of elements and isotopes in bone or teeth, for instance, but I think this may be a step too far in terms of giving a sample!