Posts by skeptical i

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Link in the sidebar to the airship article would have been nice ...

... missed a trick there, lads.

Is there anything to find on bin Laden's hard drive?

a downloaded copy of _Recruiting Jihadis for Dummies_

From the "Tips and Tricks" section:

Don't let on that you live in a swank walled compound with toilets and access to real food when those who would die in your name live in caves eating bugs. It's bad form and may cause resentment among your underlings.

Note to Mozilla: We don't get the Firefox billboards

That would be "does well", wouldn't it?

Unless we're going for regionalisms, in which case it should be "But ain't all browsers done good" or some variant thereof.

Animal lovers stamp on goldfish racing

Also, there is the financial investment.

Thoroughbred horses of real racing stock cost in the hundreds of thousands (millions, if the parents have impeccable track records) of dollars and such an investment will be treated with utmost care, whereas 10-cent feeder fish would almost be cheaper to replace than maintain.

Greyhounds, for that matter, are considered similarly disposable and some are literally tossed in a dumpster when they are deemed "underperforming" -- fortunately, many greyhound "rescue leagues" offer other options for racing dogs the owners no longer wish to support.

Calling all readers: Want some new icons?

"of uncertain LGBT persuasion"? Ew. "Probably radically inclusive" much mo'better

and less confrontational than "not het". Not that this has anything to do with the robustness (or lack thereof) of the beverage in question, mind you, since beverage choice runs the gamut from the deepest blackest stouts and trippelbocks to the lightest "lite" yellow fizzy water among LGBTQ quaffers.

As for icons, how about a "meh smiley" -- with a horizontal line where the smile would be if it were denoting joy -- the one that's usually typed :| (colon pipe)?

DARPA: Send limbless troops back to war with robo-arms

I'm not dot-mil, nor do I have friends who are, but ...

... I have read and heard many interviews with wounded warriors who want to go "back there" -- because they feel they need to complete the mission, they don't want to "abandon" their buddies, or other reasons. Now, there are probably many woundeds who are quite happy to be back stateside, thankyouverymuch, but if soldiers genuinely want to go back and the technology will allow them to do so reasonably competently they should be able to do so.

True, many who enlist are coerced by poverty and lack of other options (and may want to go "back" despite injury for same reasons), but I don't think that's a good reason to condemn the technological advances involved.

Arkansas governor spanks arse cleavage

Yoofs are competing over how clothing is worn (or not)?

Really? Is this at real school or at schools for the, um, "challenged"?

FBI asks for help to crack mystery code in 12-year-old murder case

But how will they KNOW they've cracked it?

Since the code is unique to Mr. McCormick, his experiences, and his own brain quirks, and does not have to be consistent or logical ("*I* know what I mean") how will the "correct" crack be determined? Nifty little puzzle, though.

New York vows review of AT&T deal

Does the fact that Wall Street is in New York make a difference?

Pardon my ignorance, but [I thought] I'd read of some merger 'n acquisition cases that were disputed in New York because the stock exchange (where I would assume the stock part of the deal would change hands) is on Wall Street (or something to that effect). Perhaps I misread and am wrong ... ?

Spurned nonagenarian lets rip with semi-automatic

Are "Gramma's little helpers" small, blue, and diamond-shaped?

The grandkids swapped out her calcium supplements for viagra, didn't they. It always starts as a joke ....

Apple 'gay-cure' app severely slapped

As it contains false and possibly damaging information, it should be removed, no?

Unless this app is clearly stamped "satire" or "humor, not at all to be taken seriously" I would think the Apple people would have a modicum of responsibility to ensure that what is available is at least safe for consumption.

Since more than one professional medical association (real deal ones, not preachers in white lab coats) has declared reparative therapy ("pray the gay away") to be somewhere between damaging and outright hooey, these apps should be removed accordingly. (Are there apps that endorse the idea of bloodletting in order to properly "balance the humors"? Didn't think so.)

Side note: I'm an atheist with Pastafarian leanings, but not all Christians (or Muslims or Jews or ... ) are bigots -- there are many who embrace and celebrate ALL of their god's children just as their god made 'em.

Apple: If you're under 17, you can't use Opera

First class response, Jan!

Best laugh I've had all day.

Google opens curtain on 'manual' search penalties

the google rep discussing white-/black- lists is named 'Cutts'?

Kudos to the casting director.

Texting teenager plunges to his death

Would it have cost THAT much more to install a higher railing?

Yeah, yeah, the owners probably wanted to spend only the minimum necessary to meet safety code, but, as has been pointed out many times above, 1 meter (~39 inches and change) seems a bit low for keeping people from falling (or being pushed) out of a structure and onto the street below. Did anyone involved in the construction actually stand next to a 1m piece of railing and say "Yep, I'd feel safe if this were the only thing between me and a multi- storey plunge"? Methinks many rules and regulations should be revisited to see if they are still adequate (too strong given current technology, not strong enough, what-have-you).

Poor kid ... should have known better, but it's still a loss to his friends and family.

Italian bloke sneezes out .22 bullet

Actually, it's common practice here in parts of southwest Amurka ...

... oh, wait, you said "civilized", didn't you. Nevermind.

Man charged in bizarre EXPLODING VIBRATOR plot

@Aaron, re: options

The fact that mullet-man Lester could get vibrators would indicate that there ARE options ... even in the furthest reaches of Minnesota.

Cell phone search needs no warrant, say Cal Supremes

This goes too far, methinks.

It's not a cigarette pack, it's not clothes with who- knows- what crumpled in the pockets, a cell/smart phone (as stated above, a warrant is needed for a phoneline tap) can be the entirety of someone's documented life -- mail (can a cop open my mail without a warrant?), medical records (doctor- patient confidentiality?), banking/ financial info, and that's just a bit of what's available today to say nothing about what the next generations of technology will bring in.

Perhaps some of the judges were thinking of circa- early- 1980s pagers?

Stephen Fry security whoopsie leads to prank fart book order

Trying to hold two almost-contradictory thoughts:

1. Shilling for stuff in teevee adverts? Oh, Stephen, MUST you stoop so low to keep your mortgage paid?

2. Good on ye, son -- ride that money wave until you crash the beach.

Masked Santas disarm Swedish royal guard

Dang, how naughty were those kids?

Forget coal, you brats are getting LEAD!

Mexico mounts ROBOTIC ALIEN INVASION of US back yard

Jheez, even their hardware is trying to jump the border.

The economy down there must be even worse than we thought if their drones can't find work and are heading for el norte ... not that there's much work here either, though.

Delicious, Yahoo! Buzz, MyBlogLog, AltaVista all face axe

I wouldn't say they do NOTHING about spam ...

... they will put the kibosh on any email sent to "too many" addresses (where "too many" is in the neighborhood of 50, from my experience); it's probably more accurate to say that they do "spam prevention theater" the way TSA does security theater.

Too bad, because other than this I have generally had a positive experience using Yahoomail.

Google questions tests that praise IE's bad website blocker

"the open sauce browser"?

As opposed to the proprietary "special sauce" ones?

Zuckerberg beats Assange to claim Person of the Year™

Laughing all the way to the bank.

We should all be so lucky as to have a cheap bit of monkeytwaddle we create for our teenage cousins/ classmates/ co- workers become such a money maker.

Having said that, I'm not entirely sure that _Time_ should be blithering on as if this is a good thing.

Feds probe '100 site' data breach

A marketing firm doesn't have a PR department?

It's all bullshit, just slightly different flavors. How competent are they if they can not cobble together a canned "apologize for inconvenience, valued customers, thorough investigation" spiel to lob at the press and other inquiries? There's hardly a dearth of such copy/ paste-able twaddle provided by politicians, Wall Street, et cetera. Yeesh.

Email protected by Fourth Amendment, says appeals court

Even penis-pill-pushing scum are good for something, I suppose.

If only their hiring of lawyers to push freedoms of speech and against unconstitutional seizure issues that benefit the rest of us.

Governments stonewall interwebs porn domain

Prefer truth in advertising?

I would assume, naively, that it would be in everyone's best interests to have porn on the .xxx domain, leaving the other domains free of it (i.e., so that 'whitehouse.com' will not give unwanted surprises to those looking for whitehouse.gov ... although there ain't much daylight 'twixt politicians and whores, is there).

Wouldn't those who piously wring their hands over /the children/ prefer a separate clearly- labelled playroom on the 'net for porn instead of having it interspersed throughout the other TLDs for young minds to accidentally trip over? History clearly shows us that wishing something away does not work very well.

Primary school miss flashes porn vid at kiddies

"... mating behavior of human bed bunnies in their native habitat ..."

I s'pose this vid was on the same shelf as old "Wild Kingdom" or "Animal Planet" reruns and got popped in the machine by [easy to make] mistake.

Walmart falls in with Washington's war on terror

No, it all happened because that's the Wal Mart Way:

Step 1: Announce intent to move to a municipality in region X.

Step 2: Sit back and watch municipalities in region X compete with each other on how much "incentive" (discount land, tax breaks, you name it) they will offer if only WM will bring "jobs" to their community.

Step 3: Pick a winning location, build a ginormous building and parking lot (often requiring reconfiguration of access roads and/or traffic signals -- at the "winning" municipality's expense). Hire sales and management staff at the lowest wage the market will bear (usually minimum).

Step 4: Buy boatloads of plastic crap from China; price it all to undercut prices offered at existing stores, including a handful of loss- leaders sold below cost.

Step 5: Grand opening. Mobs flock in. Cashiers ring.

Step 6: Watch locally- owned smaller shops close as customers flock to the big box.

Step 7: Once the competition is dead and buried, raise prices and cut service down to the bare minimum. If customers complain, tough luck: where else are they gonna go?

/That/ is the Wal Mart Way.

US Air Force studies fruit-flies to build killer insect swarm drones

Didn't they have these in _The Diamond Age_?

Airborne nanobots for surveillance and other purposes, that is.

PARIS concocts commemorative cocktail

Blue Horizon

Good work, Tito!

My Droid EXPLODED mid phone call, says Texan

Hi, Yeehaw:

I don't disagree with your opinions about gubmint's abilities to run things efficiently and on- budget, but consider that private corporations, if publically- held, have to return profits to stockholders first and foremost: if this means cutting corners on care, so be it. For all the concern (justified or not) about hypothetical government "death panels", does anyone for one minute think that such panels do not exist at HMOs or insurance companies? "Sorry, that's not covered." "OK, we'll cover it this time, but you get nothing else this year." "Regret to inform that we will not be renewing your policy, and now that you have a 'pre-existing condition', good luck finding another" Et cetera. Nothing personal, it's just business.

The big mistake, IM!HO, with Obamacare was not going with Medicare for all and cutting out the insurance industry entirely (what value do they add, exactly? If they do serve a real and useful purpose, please educate me). Yes, there would be the usual government budget leakage, but even so I think more cents per dollar would go to actual CARE and not to a pointless layer of functionaries (everyone's covered and everyone's paid so that eliminates a large amount of gatekeeper and billing overhead), plus the volume discounts a national care system (or several regional ones) could command should realize some cost savings. What emerged as the final "Obamacare" product may have some good points but I am not optimistic about what the long- term performace record will look like.

Some points to consider:

1. I don't know how much a new Droid costs ($300? $400? plus service contract?), but it's entirely possible that whatever Mr. Embry paid for it would only have gotten him one month of insurance coverage. Your "priorities" point is well taken (if I had that much money burning a hole in my pocket a new shiny shiny would not be on my short list) but insurance and health care costs are insane enough in Amurka to require their own separate logic.

2. I'm surprised he only got away with four (4) hours in the emergency room, actually; I've heard of folks waiting many hours longer for far worse injuries. Here in Amurka, as I understand it, ER has to care for anyone who walks in, regardless of ability to pay or lack/ degree of insurance coverage, so consequently they cover people too poor to afford insurance or to pay for medical care out of pocket for even minor dings. Many of the injuries seen in ER could probably be more quickly (and cheaply!) tended at an "urgent" or "better have a doctor look at that" care unit, but I don't think these facilities are required to take anyone so the poor and/or uninsured do not go there and are parked at an ER waiting room instead. Yes, it's a horriffic fustercluck, but as long as the insurance, pharmaceutical/ medical "stuff", and health-care industries own huge chunks of the political process, no sane, rational approach to meeting Amurka's healthcare needs will be able to take effect. In the meantime, we taxpayers get to pay emergency room prices to provide Mr. Embry with four non- emergency stitches, yee-hah.

Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity

I hoped I would not have to see the cocked-up phrase "culture war".

Could someone please explain what this phrase means?

I hear it bandied about, and all I've been able to deduce is that "culture war" roughly means "loud discussions between people who want civil rights for all people and people who still wish to withhold rights from some excluded- group- du- jour".

Someone implied that this "war" began in the 1960s, when youth dared to express their disagreement with Vietnam, and their desire for social equality (black power, Chicano power, &c).

If any of this is true, why on earth should there be any argument (let alone "war") over extending equal civil rights to all?

'Smear agricultural land with human poo'

With all the pharmaceuticals humans ingest ...

... I'd approach the use of human outputs for fertilizer with caution. It's been reported that many drugs (including psychoactives, post- menopausal hormone supplements, and caffeine) are not being fully metabolized by the users and these "leftovers" are showing up in the waste stream. Perhaps once the output is composted these leftovers break down into inert stuff (so we don't get caffeinated cabbage ... or would this be a good thing?).

Also, at what point would these outputs be harvested? Once they get to municipal processing plants, they are usually contaminated with stormwater runoff and other sources of heavy metals and other toxins (I believe the "biosolids" sold by these plants are banned for use as fertilizer in some areas for this reason). From a product purity standpoint, encouraging the use of composting toilets would be an ideal starting point but I suspect there will be ... resistance ... to this idea amidst the public.

Otherwise, the general idea is worth exploring as it could be a win-win for agriculture and for municipal waste management.

Yes! It's the Reg Top 5 FUTURISTIC GUNS Thanksgiving Roundup!

What, no bowel disruptor?

Set that baby to "prolapse" ....

Filthy PCs: The X-rated circus of horrors

Going for that "sepia tone" look?

I helped a friend collect some belongings from the home of a longtime chain- smoking relative, and I don't think there was any surface in that building that was not some shade of yellow/ brown/ tan/ bronze. I felt bad for the dog, who had no choice in the matter.

Apple throws a wobbly over Steve Jobs dolly

Agreed

I was expecting the worst while waiting for the photo to load and was surprised to see that whoever sculpted/ molded (and then painted) them did much better jobs (yeah, that pun's done to death) than is probably warranted. If Steve must deny that his likeness be promulgated without his permission, he should at least be grateful that it was done this well and not as I'm sure others would have done.

Motel guest trashes room to free imaginary 'midget'

And he's only 73 ...

... so he's got another election or three left in him. Heaven help us.

Official: Playboy back cat stashed on hard drive

Vintage adverts

The old cigarette and liquor ads, plus those mah-velous late 60s - early 70s muscle cars, would certainly be worth a closer look than they probably got when first published.

^^ cue favorite -- or inescapable -- 1970s beer jingle here

Most coders have sleep problems, need 'hygiene and care'

Hygiene and care? Maybe.

Strong coffee and to be left the hell alone until $project is done? Yes.

Punching in at 9:00AM solely so that "management" can more easily interrupt me (usually to ask "is it done yet?")? No. Oh, no.

DHS airport spooks stalk star hacker

Unless brown citizens are arrested for looking "illegal" and not carrying their IDs.

AFAIK the capitol building of the state of Arizona has not been stormed Bastille- style, but I don't catch teevee news that often so I must have missed the coverage.

Or unless lesbian youth are told to leave the high school prom when they arrive with their girlfriends, despite the fact that the parents of these youth also pay the taxes that pay for the prom. Did I miss that coverage too?

I'd be more inclined to accept that Tea Party folks believe that repression of even one person for bullshit reasons is unacceptable in "the land of the free", and will fight to end government harassment for ALL citizens, if I saw some Tea Party people at immigrants' rights rallies, at Pride events, or otherwise out and about standing up for equal treatment under law and keeping the gubmint out of people's personal lives.

LIDL punts circular saw blades to innocent kiddies

What, no more Bags O' Glass?

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76jconsumerprobe.phtml

Ex-Google duo open wallets of angels and Ashton Kutcher

CNN engaged in a Twit-mob race?

If this is what CNN thinks it needs to do in order to stay relevant, that's pretty sad.

Prof to drill camera into own skull

I guess one DOES have to have eyes in the back of ones head to teach.

If he's not already a side-sleeper, he soon will be.

Calls for US nudie perv scanner 'opt-out day'

Heard on radio today:

1. Doctors at some universities have stated their concern over the radiation to which passengers will be subjected; there is reportedly a small but definite increase in cancer risk. Spokesperson for the pilots union at one of the airlines raised concerns about pilots and other crew who have to go through security checks multiple times a day as part of their job, which would increase their cancer risk by quite a bit.

2. Passenger who refused the scan and the the grope was told he would then have to forego his flight. He was also threatened with a civil suit (on what grounds?).

*sigh*

Woman charged with stealing nude pics of baseball star

Good point, but ...

... if I have a boxful of something (comics, bottles of beer, garden tools, whatever) in my backyard and you hop my fence and take some of them, is it not theft even though your intent was probably not to deny me use of the full boxful but to get a bit for yourself? "Taking without permission" would make it theft regardless of intent (although I can see exceptions for emergencies).

Chicago officer beats off dildo-wielding bill-skipper

dildo, crab shack ... {shudder}

Not that the actual story is less ... vivid.

'One-trick pony' Zuckerberg yet to prove CEO worth

But with a trick like that, maybe one is all ya' need.

As long as the company is privately held (i.e. does not have a fiduciary duty to return maximum profit to stockholders), his ability (or lack thereof) would seem relevant only to the company staff who value job security. He'll make a pile when he cashes in (I'll leave it to others to argue "unjust enrichment"), however he ranks in the pantheon of CEO-dom.

The forgotten, fat generation of Mac Portables

SyQuest cartridges, 44MB and 88MB

I still have a half- dozen of 'em. Zip drives were just coming over the horizon; we (I + former business partner) were concerned about their flimsy construction (vis-a-vis transporting and archiving customer projects) and went SyQuest instead. *sigh* Live, learn.

<-- Roughly the same shape and heft of the SyQuest drive.

Reg hacks crawl from London to Brighton

WHEEEEEEE!

Add mine to the pile of thanks for sharing this adventure!

Is it possible that the Crestmobile took the sign for Crawley as an order and not as a border crossing notice?