* Posts by TeeCee

9433 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

Voting reform finally on the agenda

TeeCee Gold badge

Be careful what you wish for.

The inevitable end result of a full PR system (as seen elsewhere) is some minority bunch of tossers holding a wobbly coalition but the short hairs.

We could end up like Germany. Staring down the barrel of energy poverty as the CO2 lunacy bites, 'cos some arsehat decommed all the nuclear power stations to keep the leaf-munching luddites on message. Worse still Israel, where every step in the right direction has to have a raft of sops to the barking zionists attached to it.

Spitzer 'scope spots Buckyballs in spaaace

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

Eh?

"...have since been found to exist in nature, notably in candle soot."

Did they get the IgNobel as well? "Simulating Red Giant Atmospheric conditions using a high-powered laser and graphite to sucessfully recreate the by-product of an ordinary household candle" sounds like a guaranteed winner to me.......

Boffins develop greenhouse invisible to night-vision goggles

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Aha!

So all I need is to take a thermally invisible greenhouse and put it *inside* a visibly invisible tin shed and I can sit inside the whole thing all invisible like.

Wait.....Ultraviolet you say?

Mine's the one that looks suspiciously like an enormous set of Matroska dolls coated in radar-reflective paint, or it would if you could see it.....

Possibly the world's most pointless review

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

300 washers for a bean-bag?

Soft, washable covering?

I'd like to think it's made of individual strands of Unicorn hair with each one hand inserted into an Unobtanium mesh backing by Tibetan nuns at that bloody price.

Apple ad-addled OS scheme resurfaces

TeeCee Gold badge
Joke

Disabling functions.

Ah. Now I understand!

"We would like to show you an advertisement. Please put your hand over the antenna while we play it so as you are not interrupted while viewing it."

iPhones dialling up premium-rate bills again

TeeCee Gold badge
Flame

Explanations, whatever.

Of course, if AdMob were anywhere close to being a halfway reputable organisation, they wouldn't take ads with click-to-dial premium rate numbers in anyway.

But they're not, so they do. What's the point of getting quotes from an obvious scam-merchant? You're only ever going to get bullshit, equivocation and outright lies by return.....

Microsoft lines staff pockets with Windows 7 phone

TeeCee Gold badge
Gates Horns

Nothing new.

Many companies give their employees free shit..............just not usually the warm, brown and steamy sort.

'Howling lesbian gangs' greet jailed Lindsay Lohan

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Re: I'd pay a fiver to see that in a cinema.

Oh dear. English Heritage are going to have to lower their admission prices to compete with that.

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: Stereotype

For quite some time, "Kelvin" was used as a euphemism for "holiday" in Private Eye. Everyone knew that it was short for "lying in the sun"......

Zuckerberg: I'm 'quite sure' I own Facebook

TeeCee Gold badge
Badgers

This Ceglia bloke.

Is he a spotty, egotistical little twat with a god-given talent for stuffing both feet in his own gob?

If not, for the sake of keeping El Reg's department of pisstaking fed with a ready supply of quality material I hope that Zuckerberg wins this one......

Microsoft issues stopgap fix for critical Windows flaw

TeeCee Gold badge

Airbus

I believe the inflight entertainment system is windows based but you're right, that's a very different kettle of fish.

After all, it's not like anyone would ever directly connect the inflight entertainment and flight control systems* now, would they?

*any resemblence to any recent Boeing design cockups is entirely intentional.

1984's MacPaint source code hits web

TeeCee Gold badge
Unhappy

Re: text colours.

You were spoiled.

When I used WordPerfect the colour of the text depended on what colour the bloody monitor was. Orange to me meant: "I am using the Toshiba portable* with the gas-plasma screen".

*If you were a weightlifter. I attribute my lack of fitness these days to advances in technology.

Raptor over Blighty: Watch the stealth fighter in infrared

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: Mmmmmm A-10

"....pretty durable aircraft bits...."

A masterpiece of understatement. I remember seeing an interview with an A-10 pilot from GW1. He was sloping along, felt a bump and lots of warning lights lit up. The horizontal section of the right wing was completely missing bar the spar and the now exposed undercarriage, leaving only the upturned section at the end. He flew back and landed, carefully as the right wheel tyre was also missing.

That evening in the bar when the usual ribbing from the fast jet boys started he opened with: "I did something today that you bastards can't do."

"What was that?"

"Took a SAM in the right wing and flew home afterwards........."

Hup Holland, viva España

TeeCee Gold badge
Flame

Cephalopodian prognostications.

That was bound to happen.

Spineless bastards are always going to stick together.

Facebook buys, kills travel rec site

TeeCee Gold badge
Grenade

Data sharing.

So no personal data will be shared with Faceb0rk? Facebook's track record on data-sharing prevention in the past would seem to indicate they'll be the only ones on the entire planet who don't get a copy then.

eBay shill bidder gets £5,000 fine

TeeCee Gold badge
Thumb Down

Turning a blind eye?

From the eBay Q&A: "If the item sells, you are charged a Final Value Fee. The Final Value Fee is based on the final amount the item sells for."

In other words: The more it sells for, the more they get paid.

In other, other words: It's very much in their best interests to turn a blind eye to any devious or underhand practices designed to jack up the sale price.

In other, other, other words: You can bet your bum that any industry leading fraud detection cobblers they may shout about exists purely as a figleaf to ward off any pesky "aiding and abetting" charges that might otherwise come their way.

For sale: Dr No's Scottish bunker complex

TeeCee Gold badge

Come on, answer the important questions!

Does it have a shark pool?

Microsoft seeks patent on ebook page flip

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

A blast from the past?

"sources other than fingers may be used to execute a page-turning gesture."

Ah, must be a WANG application..........

PCI approval yanked from PIN entry kit

TeeCee Gold badge

What "change of strategy"?

The key word in there for a retailer is "maintain", which implies that occasionally he might have to do something other than sit on his arse and carry on as he is. Visa have withdrawn PCI certification from these devices, if a retailer continues to use one, he has not not maintained PCI compliance and is no longer protected.

Simples.

SCO rises from the dead (again)

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

Christ on a crutch!

Since when did repeating an EPIC FAIL ad nauseum become a business model?

Confusion over 'secret code' in US military Cyberforce crest

TeeCee Gold badge
Alert

A helpful note for any foreign spies.

Picture the scenario, a junior shit in the US cyber-military sat at a PC:

"I have to choose a password for this ultra-secure, triple bum cover system that's more than 30 characters with a mix of letters and numbers and contains no dictionary words? Where the hell am I supposed to find one of those I can remember when I need it?"

You just *know* they will.

Academics challenge moral consensus on sex and the net

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Not seen it.

...but it sounds cool.

iPhone 4G blingmobe: Yours for £13k

TeeCee Gold badge
Paris Hilton

Ostrich.

Is Ostrich foot proven to be a better antenna insulator than the standard Apple case offering?

I've no idea what the global population of Ostriches is, but if that multiplied by two is exceeded by the number of fanbois, the bloody things could be endangered.

Or in wheelchairs at least.

Paris, that other well-known flightless bird.

Microsoft inks patent deal with yet another car tech firm

TeeCee Gold badge
Grenade

"....another file system like ZFS..."

Yes, 'cos being sued by NetApp rather than MS is infinitely preferable.....

All gov jobs to go online

TeeCee Gold badge
Grenade

Re: Audience Development Officer.

I'm sure that *you* will find that an Audience Development Officer's job is to channel the spirit of incense and whalesong to ensure that the "message" is being outreachized in a positivated manner to a diverse societal makeup in accordance with policy. Or in other words, what used to be a PR assistant before the Civil Service decided that Wankword Bingo was a lifestyle choice rather than a game.

Or something like that. Your explanation is far too bleedin' sensible to be anwhere near the truth.

I'll just check: [bangs "audience development officer" into Grauniad job search]. I get three right to your one it appears.

TeeCee Gold badge
Joke

"...transformation officers..."

Note to council HR departments:

When hiring, go for one of the cars or trucks that apply. The aeroplanes, helicopters 'n such are all evil.

Google preps tablet-friendly Chrome that knows 'what's up'

TeeCee Gold badge

Yes, but.

It's the bit about expecting the OS to do the tricky bit. When the browser effectively is the OS*, there's a slight problem with that approach.

*Bar the kernel. I'm sure the kernel devs would have been only too delighted to implement all the (redundant on 99% of machines) accelerometer event / device orientation processing there so Googly tablets worked right.....

Android spanks Apple’s iOS 4 in JavaScript race

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Re: Snigger

Are you suggesting that FF is getting a bum rap?

The cheek of it all......

Apple ads to target your iTunes history

TeeCee Gold badge
Happy

Ad placement.

"All you have to do is tell us where to put them....."

Steve's asking for an opinion on where he should stick his adverts? Gosh, that's a difficult one to answer............

Blizzard exposes real names on WoW forums

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Re: Anomalous

Wow! Are you related to Noel Coward?

Renault DeZir: 'leccy sex machine

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

"provides cocoon-like comfort."

That'll be a refreshing change from the numb-arse-and-sciatica comfort that Renault seats are more usually associated with.

Then again, the longer quote following that would seem to suggest that they wrote the PR while smoking something seriously illegal anyway, so it's probably bollocks.

PARIS in hot glue gun action

TeeCee Gold badge
Happy

Good point!

Stick a sub-assembly in the freezer overnight and see how it holds up.

I was thinking of suggesting silicone "instant gasket" as an alternative with a wide temperature range, some of those products are quite sticky too. Then I remembered what SRB "O" rings are made of and how they held up when it got a bit chilly.........riiiight.

Any idea what they stick tiles onto Space Shuttles with*?

* @ Anyone saying "chewing gum and spit", yes, very funny, but most of them actually *don't* fall off.

TeeCee Gold badge
Pint

@Annihilator

Yup, I had a bit of a funny turn at seeing a whole article based around getting ones hot, sticky fingers on PARIS's bits.

I look forward to the future article alluded to, detailing the careful application of exotic substances to PARIS's skin. After that I may need a lie down.

BBC chief acknowledges DAB flop & internet radio

TeeCee Gold badge
Stop

Re: Radio on iPlayer

Made perfect sense to me. Watching telly, just about every Beeb program has a continuity annoucement telling you you can catch up with <whatever> on iPlayer. Also, everything I've ever heard about the sodding thing 'til today mentioned it in connection with telly.

As a result I'd thought it was video only until I read this. I have actually listened to their streaming services from their website for some years now (Test Match Special mostly - FWIW) but I'd never made the connection to the "iPlayer" for some reason*. A quick check shows that the window generated does say this these days - I'd just never noticed.

I think what's being pointed out is that they're not exactly going out of their way to advertise this. You know, like actually telling anybody.....

*Probably the reason that they've actually been streaming stuff online since quite some time before there was an "iPlayer" and I've missed the cuddly, corporate rebranding exercise.

IK Multimedia iRig and AmpliTube iPhone app

TeeCee Gold badge
Happy

I heard that as:

What do you call a van driver that hangs around with musicians?

A drummer.

--

A budding young drummer goes into a music store:

" I'm a drummer and I wanna join a Heavy Metal band. What do you recommend so that the lads take me seriously?"

"Well, the old Bedford CF is a perennial favourite, but to really make 'em take notice you want a Transit."

YouTube vuln pwns Justin Bieber fans

TeeCee Gold badge
Thumb Down

Pwning Justin Bieber fans.

So the s'kiddies have given up on trying for the low-hanging fruit and resorted to picking up windfalls?

It's all very sad.

ISS crew capture robotic spacecraft

TeeCee Gold badge
Coat

Re: Holiday

I suppose a game of darts is out of the question?

'Huge airships to carry freight starting 10 years from now'

TeeCee Gold badge
Grenade

Aid Agencies

"Using airships they can bypass bottlenecks like airports and sea ports that are often controlled by corrupt governments and airdrop stuff directly to those people who need the stuff."

Always assuming that said corrupt government doesn't have something that passes for an air force or, failing that, a couple of lads with shoulder launched AA missiles (or even el cheapo RPGs - airships are big and don't move fast) to piss on their picnic. In other words, exactly what stops them doing this sort of thing now with helicopters....

Apple's iPhone 4 denial: insulting or ignorant?

TeeCee Gold badge
Jobs Horns

Calculation

Well, quite obviously RIM have an error in their bar calculation algorithm. Once Apple's new, more-accurate-than-any-other, bar calculation algorithm ships you'll be able to see exactly how shit your Blackberry *really* is!

It has to be that, it's the only explanation that fits with The Truth According To Apple.

Microsoft goes AC/DC with Instaload battery tech

TeeCee Gold badge
Gates Halo

Series?

Actually I reckon that's the one where it's probably going to be a big win.

I've puzzled a few times over the "which ones go up and which go down" bit badly stamped in a miniscule pictograph on the inside of a battery cover. The ability to shove 'em in any which way is a good thing.

That's also why it ain't "just four diodes". That method would still require you to get 'em in consistantly in one configuration or the other.

I reckon I might know why this has come from MS though. I bought a Wireless Desktop 7000 set on FleaBay a while back dirt cheap. Obviously new, obviously opened and fairly obviously a returned product. When I installed it, the mouse didn't work. The *reason* the mouse didn't work was that the rechargeable NiMh "AAA" was in the wrong way round. The vendor had umpty-something similar units for sale and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they all had the same "fault"....

Paraguayan model to strip if team wins World Cup

TeeCee Gold badge
Happy

"Larissa Riquelme"

Anyone else read that surname as "Risquélme" first time round?

World Cup meltdown fails to materialise

TeeCee Gold badge
Alert

"....record numbers topping 800,000 concurrent connections."

That's a 30% total traffic increase?

Let's just pray that this online streaming video thingy doesn't become popular then. This is a drop in the ocean when you look at the global viewing figures for World Cup matches.

It could all get very interesting in four years' time when we've got another four years' sales of teh new hawtness streaming meejah devices behind us.

Seoul police crack down on Holy Water filter prof

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

Hmmm.....

Trying to prove in court that some voodoo bullshit selection of filters and cards is somehow making water less "holy" than some voodoo bullshit hand waving and chanting.

That should be interesting.

As for those who weren't cured, they obviously didn't *believe* in the power of the filter..........unless that excuse is somehow copyright to the waving 'n chanting types.

Naomi Campbell to appear in war crimes trial

TeeCee Gold badge

'..."huge" uncut sparkler....'

Not surprised she's denying all knowledge then.

Presumably if it becomes apparent that this is true, the current Sierra Leonian government are going to ask for it back since it was half-inched from them in the first place. They'll probably be a little miffed when they find it's been chopped into little pieces, glued to an iSomethingorother and subsequently embedded piecemeal in the crania of various migrant workers.

Russian spy ring bust uncovers tech toolkit

TeeCee Gold badge

RE: Bail?

It seems that today he "failed to attend a scheduled meeting with police".

You are Mystic Meg and ICMFP!

Dutch send submarine to fight Somali pirates

TeeCee Gold badge

Quiet subs.

While it's true the Diesel / Electric are quiet on electrics, Nuclear ones are as quiet and also don't suffer from being god-awfully noisy for long, enforced periods.

There are only three reasons for using D/E boats as opposed to nuclear:

1) You can't afford SSNs.

2) You've got your head up your arse when it comes to all fings wot are noocooluh.

3) You're the sort of unreliable craphole that would get the living shite kicked out of it if anyone else though it stood an outside chance of getting its paws on nuclear tech.

In this case we can rule out 3, so which of 1 or 2 is it?

German arrested for Adolf Hitler ringtone

TeeCee Gold badge
Grenade

Re: What Telegraph?

Er, the Daily Telegraph.

I take it from context that Bildzeitung is the DE equivalent of the Sport? Anyhow, there are two possibilities here:

1) It's out of the "WWII Bomber on Moon" stable, the Telegraph did the difficult bit in translating it when they copied it and El Reg scraped it from them, changing enough words to avoid a copyright lawsuit.

2) It's true, but it's not on Google News for the simple reason that Google News is a US-centered, Anglophone-fixated, incomplete and largely apocryphal piece of shit.

Apple support-drone scripts leaked

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: Not a big deal

Ah, the iPhone. Channelling the design spirit of the Austin Allegro.

TeeCee Gold badge

minefield?

Hardly, my non-Apple device does it too. The thing is, it only does it if I hold it upside-down, 'cos the antenna's at the top!

Putting the antenna in a place where the user's hand covers it when it's being used normally? You're right, you probably can't call that a "design flaw", as a "legendarily fuckwitted piece of monumental incompetance" is far more appropriate.

Secret ancient code, basis of all modern civilisation, cracked

TeeCee Gold badge

Re: So how long will it be...

It'll probably happen about 6 hours before U2 sue Plato and the entire Internets for piracy.