Posts by Francis Boyle

German Foreign Office kills desktop Linux, hugs Windows XP

Otherwise known as

I can't get on der internet* - there's no blue 'e'.

*or das elektronischübahn or whatever.

Facebook reviews smut policy after slave site uprising

"Not going to go away"

They said that about Myspace.

And probably about Geocities.

And probably about the Roman Empire etc. etc. etc.

Facebook will "go away" when people get tired of it and decide they like something else better.

Battlestar Galactica vets needed for online roleplay

True to the show?

I didn't watch it much but I'm pretty sure Adama wasn't made out of bronze.

Wrinkle-faced smartphoners demand 'BlackBerry Botox'

Just as well

with an SE they wouldn't even let you in the front door.

Scotland bans smut. What smut? Won't say

Yes, of course that's what they are 'saying'

What there saying, however, may be a little different.

I suspect the author's reading skills are a little better than yours.

Matrix 4 and 5 in works, threatens Keanu

re:XKCD!

Please: Gary Larson had about three jokes* recycled endlessly. Randall Monroe on the other hand manages to think up at least three new jokes each week.

*Wouldn't it be funny if animals were doing this,wouldn't it be funny if cavemen were doing this and the other one.

NOVA 2 for iOS

You're not the only one

to be reminded of Quake 2. That badly cooked lasagne lava looks very familiar.

Beeb say sorry for Stephen Fry A-bomb quip

Or, indeed, the luckiest

because, presumably, having chosen to marry Julie Burchill would mean you were some weird kind of masochist able to find pleasure in just about anything.

Shhhh

Whatever you do please don't tell anyone about this: http://www.cracked.com/article_17416_the-7-most-bizarrely-unlucky-people-who-ever-lived.html

If it gets out the author will spend the rest of his life apologising.

Stupid complaint. Stupid apology.

Beeb gets the measure of the London Eye

Yep

last time I used a phonebook was to replace a broken castor on a swivel chair. Tough buggers but unfortunately not much good against sheer forces.

NASA 'naut falls off bike, misses shuttle launch

Falling

is what astronauts do best.

The trick is , of course, to miss the ground.

Brazilian cult condemns USB

Oh Please

If I use Google I will find a thousand different brands of lunacy - you need to specify which one you're selling.

'NBN is like a bathroom' says opposition, BCA agrees

I'll agree to your comparison

the day I get the chance to vote the chairman of Telstra* out of office.

*for non Australian readers replace with the name of your least favourite company.

Volvo demos automobile auto-pilot tech

Not here in Oz

We can multi-task!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/09/drug_runner_jailed/ for those who came in late.

Who are the biggest electric car liars - the BBC, or Tesla Motors?

Oddly enough, Tim

there are "asinine" people who do just that. Not the rental bit, of course, since you're not likely to find one at your local Hertz but a small genset trailer kept in the back or the garage makes a lot of sense.

Social media and Queensland's floods: some fail, some win

Exactly

You write a cheque, you make a press release, your donation appears in the published list. Corollary: you earn goodwill or rather that goodwill is freely given in return. If on the other hand you make your generosity a part of a marketing scheme people will perceive your efforts as manipulative and in the context of a situation of ongoing death and suffering that clearly crosses a line.

So there's really no mysterious hidden rules - just common sense and a bit of basic human sensitivity.

US air force has new scramjet hypersonic plane plans

I think you'll find Lewis' official reaction to the J-20 is

Ho-hum.

Google founder sinks $45m in toy boat

Probably

a bit too much glass for a destroyer. (Unless there's a conning tower hidden away in there somewhere.) I was thinking more along the lines of lighthouse resupply vessel. Definitely will not be appearing in the next Bond flick.

NASA taps Unisys for flight sim mission

And one has suceeded

Already been done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_sim

OK, not strictly open source, but hell, this is a highly realistic simulator that is the work of one man. Imagine what a open source project could do.

Arcam Solo rDac wireless digital-to-analogue converter

Methinks

we need a sarcasm icon.

From the second link

"extremely precise dacs can be very unforgiving and too-controlled sounding, while other dacs can be extremely musical."

<sarcasm>Yeah, and my arse can be extremely musical too.</sarcasm>

Swedish Pirate Party leader quits due to boredom

People

still read "Dilbert?

WTF?

Does she have hairy feet or something?

Firefox ahead of IE in Europe, boosted by Chrome effect

Magnetised needle

FTW

Standard smartphone charger to dominate in two years

Why wouldn't they

Anything to save a few bucks.

On a less cynical note I was glad to see that my Pixi came with a micro USB cable, a tiny mains charger, and nothing else. If I want Useless junk I can buy it later on eBay.

Intel unveils itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny SSDs

I don't think it's sata

the pins are all the same length. It looks suspiciously lke the ssd in my netbook - sata in a mini pcie physical connector - but if Intel has any sense it will be real pcie.

Catfish: A fanfare for Facebook fakery

Well I believe there's a good one

called "How to Recognise Different Types of Trees From Quite a Long Way Away" but I doubt you'd be interested in that either.

The subject may be 'bollocks' but that says nothing about the quality of the film.

Scientologist overlord declares victory over Anonymous

Agreed

Someone should make a film about Elron's naval career - It would make McHales Navy look like Das Boot.

Miscavige

described Anonymous as a group of "mask-wearing subversive and anarchistic internet denizens"

Meanwhile

Anonymous described Anonymous as a group of "mask-wearing subversive and anarchistic internet denizens and totally not a bunch script kiddies with no social skills and delusions of importance yeah that dude".

'London black cabs to go electric in 2 weeks' – Boris Guardian

Yes it is

Just with extra obfuscation (and possibly self-deception).

David Attenborough dino doc shows limits of 3D TV

They just increase the camera separation

Of course that makes everything look like toys - and a ten inch tyrannosaurus, for example ,isn't exactly scary - but, hey, you can't have everything.

US Army 'to issue every soldier with a smartphone'

Don't know about "Trios"

but everyone in the US Ballet Force should definitely be issued with a Pixi.

Naked cemetery man was simply photographing orbs

Indecent time exposure?

- considering it was after dark.

Primary school miss flashes porn vid at kiddies

Either that

or someone who knows what Poe's law* is. I hate the joke icon but some times it's needed

*strictly Poe's corollary: if the parody is indistinguishable from the real thing then the real thing is indistinguishable from the parody.

Actually it was a matter of size

VHS tapes were longer than Beta's so nothing at all to do with porn!

World of diamonds bigger than the Ritz discovered

Don't

Even as we speak an invitation is on its way to the Waspians to join the cartel. If you've got diamonds De Beers will assimilate you.

Herts cops 'ate the evidence' at scene of crime, court told

A perfectly good pizza?

I thought w'ed established it was a Domino's.

'Looking and acting like an employee' didn't make him one

Exactly

And well and truly hoisted by it as well.

Apple throws a wobbly over Steve Jobs dolly

I'd prefer

the USB connected Steve Balmer with patented chair flinging action. It'd beat the pants off those wimpy missile lauchers.

Plasma space-drive aces efficiency numbers: Set for ISS in 2014

Re: But

Unfortunately you're ignoring the fact that your craft and both planets are in orbit about the Sun. Doing a reverse slingshot (which is what Frumious Bandersnatch is suggesting) involves making use of the relative velocities of the interacting bodies in creative ways. In the situation you're describing the craft will always gain velocity as it approaches its destination - size notwithstanding.

Paris, because she's being known to make creative use of relative velocities.

MS drops drive pooling from Windows Home Server

Scary

Not only is there no replication but if one drive goes MIA it takes all your data with it. Maybe bearable for systems used purely for backup but the point of WHS is supposed to be that it's much more flexible than that.

I'll take

Linux 0.6 over Microsoft 1.0 any day. We all know MS doesn't even get into the game until version 3.

Now Oz to ban online cigarette ads

Yea, because prohibition always work

Banning ads, on the other hand, I have no problem with.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Seconded

And yes Minecraft isn't the answer. From the videos I've seen Rome is beautifully rendered in the game and I'd love to experience it first hand but I have zero interest in stabbing people in the neck. Now, I'm not asking for a renaissance version of bus simulator but this is a game with Leonardo in it - I don't recall Captain Janeway stabbing anyone when she met him on the holodeck.

Asus sidesteps tablets, debuts e-reader-cum-jotter

If you going to go LCD

why restrict yourself to grayscale? I've been waiting for Asus to do a decent portable tablet device but without colour this ain't it.

DARPA: Hypersonic strato-ship crackup was no biggie

The Buran flight

was fully automated from liftoff to touchdown - a great technological achievement at the time. The problem DARPA is trying to crack here is not autonomous control during re-entry but any sort of control at re-entry velocities. The Shuttle and Buran may have been splaceplanes but their mode of re-entry was fundamentally ballistic - bottom (heatshield) first. As far as I understand it this thing is designed to actually fly into the atmosphere the way God and Captain Kirk meant it to be.

Paris because I said 're-enty'.

Kinect hacked for OS X

Logic Fail

Development costs are sunk costs - having paid for the development it's in Microsoft's interest to ship as many units as possible given that they get a good part of £95 every time they sell one.

Samsung's Android tablet: split and eviscerated

Real mean have real pockets

And women have handbags

It's worse than that

Squeezing too many pixels into a tiny sensor is just asking to ramp up the noise.

Opera feted for playing chicken with Steve Jobs

Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes

You have seen the Internet, haven't you?