Posts by TeeCee

Am I the only one then?

I've not had problems with bacteria breeding on my keyboards to date.

Is that whalesong I can hear?

There's a flaw in this plan....

".....it is likely that the downweighting applied to new addresses will become even more negative."

So, by trolling and flaming like right bastards from as many one shot email addy's as possible we can get this thing to a level where n00bs are automagically banned?

That'll be fun. Is there a list of places using this that we can get started on?

This "Happy Egg" mob.

Is that a shell company?

Prior art.

I'd have thought that the most bleedin' obvious evidence of this would be the NatWest online banking system which I've been personally using since some considerable time before 2005 and which uses that self-same system of authentication!

I think that they even sent me the original password (like wot HSBC proposed) and I changed it meself to something less memory-hostile. I can't be sure, like I said it was a while back.

Failing that, I think Mastercard's SecureCode online transaction authentication system may be of earlier provenance too. Guess how that one works?

@John Dee

A quick trawl shows that the iPod had somewhere north of 80% of the MP3 player market in the US in 2007.

I'd say that "arguable monopoly" is an accurate description myself. Particularly as they then use this to leverage the iTunes business via the iPod / iTunes lock in, which is fairly strong evidence of classic monopolistic practice.

I guess you had to be there.

There's nothing in that pic that looks remotely human to me..........oh, wait.........no, even Jackson looked a bit human if you turn a pic of him sideways and squint at it for a while.

@Jamie 19

<--- You need this.

Like most newly installed pieces of software which have a variety of configuration options, IE8 offers to lead you through a few on first use (including some rather un-Microsofty options like making Google the default for search, maps 'n webmail).

If you'd bothered to scroll down you'd have found the "sod off and don't annoy me with this shit again" button so you could either stay in happy MS-luser land or wade through the config yourself.

If you're going to diss MS, try to pick something they're actually guilty of to criticise, it's not like there isn't enough of a choice here.

Except you can't do this.

"....agreed to pay the Revenue £13,000 to cover her missing tax payment...."

Private Eye pointed out how this works some time ago. She could apply to resubmit her tax return for the year in question and then pay the 13,000 quid bill resulting or, more likely, 13,000 quid plus interest and a big fat fine for tax evasion.

Just sending them a cheque will result in the cheque being taken as an advance payment against this years tax and in its eventual refund when its found not to be required (and rather conveniently after the heat's off).

But this is being seen to be doing the right thing, so that's all ok then.

When I originally saw this, I suddenly understood why the thieving bastards were falling over each other to "refund" any tax underpaid.....

Oh dear!

"....another relative pictured on holiday...."

Associating with known tourists? That won't go down well at all......

Re: But But But

You can have your Time Machine.

I'll take Immortality and have a bit of fun while I wait for you to turn up. Ok?

Yes, the leather jacket. Crumbled to dust you say? I must have lost track of the time again....

Re: all those court gags.

Read the article. It says that the Plod are to use the wiki for court preparation. So, something more like:

"That's odd M'lud. According to this brief I've been given, the defendant was detected as doing 48mph in a 30mph zone in Chipping Norton, which is apparently a military/industrial complex situated on the Klingon homeworld. May I have an ajournment while I verify the facts in the case?"

Serendipity at work.

"... integrated social networking system....."

So a sort of FaceBook lard chariot then. They'll sell like hot cakes.

Roundhead, or......

"....such a cavalier fashion....."

I can see what you did there.

Mine doublet and buffe coate if ye pleaseth.

@George Schultz

Not if you shoot it with silver bullets it doesn't.....

Re: Fakes.

I remember seeing an interview with a special effects bod who was working back then. They asked him how he'd have done it, if he'd been given the job and had to use the technology available at the time.

The answer given was something like:

"Well, if we were given an unlimited budget to get it to look right, the easiest way would have been to build a really big rocket and then hire three stuntmen to take it to the moon......."

Or, put another way, whoever just invoked Occam's razor had it right.

Posts indicate that Good Charlotte said it all then.

Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money!

Re: Ground Control to Major Gordon.

You Swine!

You just marooned Gordon Brown and Paris Hilton together on Mars.

I'm going to be in therapy for weeks getting rid of the issues associated with the mental pictures from that one.

That thar dog.

Now, the smell of a wet dog is a pretty ripe odour under normal circumstances.

I'm forced to wonder in mixed awe and horror at the level of pong created by a dog that's been recently immersed in concentrated sewage.

I'm also drawn to speculate on the repellant power of a shit-soaked dog that has yet to shake itself. I reckon that if we could harness and focus that effect we could build a pressor beam capable of moving planets around.

Only one question really.

If somebody makes one, how long before somebody else buys a roomful and builds a DBHPC* cluster of 'em, chewing megawatts of power and producing oodleflops of grunt?

Alright, two questions. How long after it's done before DARPA tout for *that* in a 19" cabinet......

*Dog's Bollocks High Performance Computer.

Re: Evolution must be halted at once!

Great idea, but with a slight snag.

Anyone who actually has the ear of God* is going to be convinced that any mention of the e-word in conversation is going to be a lightning bolt** moment.

*or who's deluded enough to think they have anyway.

**plague of boils / swine flu / mutant sea bass attack / casting into abyss / whatever....

@David Swales

Old, old news. Websense fixed that in an update about five minutes after the original Bing launch.

I think your users might thank you more for keeping their protective systems at least vaguely up to date. Less liable to pwnage, you know......

"making the world your hotspot"

Nope, I don't get it. Why would I want to take my nice, solid 8meg connection and then plug a box into it so I could connect to it using something that can currently get to somewhere a shade over 7meg, assuming the wind's in the right direction and the portents auger well?

Oh, and that 8meg connection has unlimited data use rather than "unlimited" data use.

Never mind that I might want to talk to something else on my own network, which runs at speeds somewhere considerably north of the wildest dreams of 3G.

I'm sure that some of these will get installed, in exactly the same way that I'm sure that there are sad beggars out there who reckon that the line "I've got a femtocell" is so likely to snap knicker elastic that it's worth 160 quid.

Re: @adnim

More to that.

The original monolith site was Iapetus, which has the "cosmic beacon" effect of having a higher albedo on one side than the other while also being tidelocked to Saturn. The effect here is that it appears to blink, brightening and darkening as it orbits.

When they got their first pictures back from one of the probes, there was a suspicous black spot right smack in the centre of the bright side. This was ringed on the first print and had the words "Arthur was right!" written next to it.

Oh really?

What they said:

"The key point here is that counterfeiters, when told that goods have been detained, will be able to tell rights holders to sue them or they'll be getting their goods back,"

What will actually happen:

"The key point here is that counterfeiters, when told that goods have been detained, will need to keep quiet and not make a fuss for ten days and then they'll get their goods back,"

Or am I missing something here?

"...why this obsession with laptop stickers, guys?"

It's not them, per se, it's the marketing whores.

25 of 'em.

In the room next door.

Mine's the one with the original Doktor Avalanche in the pocket.

@Anthony 13

No, it's entirely different.

Metatags were an old-skool FAIL. This is FAIL 2.0 replete with user-generated FAIL.

Songs?

Can somebody please explain this obsession with using the word "song" to describe a track or piece of music?

I know that in the mind of yer average chav teen if it ain't got some talentless plastic git warbling away in the foreground it ain't music, but could we at least try to rise a shade above that level of intelligence round here?

Oleophobic screens.

So the price for not having fingerprints on your screen is not covering the oleophobic surface with a screen protector and accepting that it'll get scratched.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think I'll stick to wiping the screen on my shirt when it get too smeared thanks.

@Charles 9

"GPS doesn't work indoors."

True. But I'm desperately trying to think of a reason why you'd need bloody GPS or accurate location reporting indoors. I guess Google need "HouseView" so you can find your way to the bog in your mate's new house without having to ask.

Let's face it. Unless they live in a feckin' palace, the last known position of a device whose owner has gone indoors is still accurate to somewhere around the precision of GPS anyway.

@Lewis Mettler 1

Then they'd also have to sue Symantec, Trend, etc. etc. etc.

All of who do free "scan and clean" tools like this. It doesn't matter whether the free download is a java / activex running in a browser or a set of executables you install yourself, the principle's the same.

Or, in shorter terms, here's an icon for you.

Oh, I dunno.

All the Disney films I've seen, the baddie always ends up buggered.

Where's the bloody Playmobil?

I'd have thought this one was gagging for it.

Come to think of it, where's the bloody where's the bloody Playmobil icon?

Damn. Now I need a where's the bloody where's the bloody where's the bloody Playmobil icon icon and there isn't one.

@Aristotle's....etc.

Try hovering your mouse pointer over each of the icons. Each one gives a little popup box, telling you what it is, and it clearly says "badgers" in there. I won't go into why Web 2.0 is made of Badgers' paws, suffice it to say that it is.

The ? goes outside the "", cos the quoted "Badgers" isn't a question in itself.

Your "<<<<----" needs to go in the text 'cos the icon's next to this, not next to the title.

I get to use the pedant icon for that last.

@Ryan 7

Ah yes, but for some reason there isn't a plague of electrocution-related carnage in the rest of the civilised world. Could this be due to the use of proper circuit breakers or spring-loaded, quick blow fuses with multiple redundant levels of protection at the source in the more sensible parts of the planet? Why yes, it could!

Actually British plugs are regarded as the laughing stock of the world if you're sat in any part of it other than Britain. Elsewhere they like to fix the problem at source rather than slapping a patch over it.

Re: I hear...

Could have been worse. If he worked for Nintendo, they'd have had to keep him open while they sent someone off to look for a tri-wing screwdriver.

BA in Performing Art

<Operatic singing>

Would you like fries with thaaaaaat?

</Operatic singing>

@Paul Smith

"That Kilo is (by definition) the mass of one litre of water...."

You forgot "at its temperature of maximum density", a rather important part of the definition.

In fact, these days the kilogramme is, by definition, the mass of the International Prototype Kilogramme and differs very slightly from the mass of a litre of water, due to almost (but not quite) insignificant errors in measurement when the original definition was refined in 1799.

This is the sort of thing that the Wibbly-wobbly-pedia is quite good for, although I saw Motorhead in 1984 and I'm pretty sure that Filthy Phil was on drums and not the International Prototype Kilogramme.

(I've had to go with "pedantic grammar nazi" here, as we don't seem to have "pedantic nazi" in the new set.)

Translation service:

The TeeCee Boeing PR translation service thunders into life and renders:

"Consideration was given to a temporary solution that would allow us to fly as scheduled, but we ultimately concluded that the right thing was to develop, design, test and incorporate a permanent modification to the localized area requiring reinforcement."

as:

"We were going to slap some gaffer tape over it and hope it held, but we couldn't get it to stick so we're having to pop-rivet on a patch and cover it with filler."

@Gareth

Sssshhhh! You'll give the game away.

The good Doctor's been getting away with walking into a situation and taking control through the simple expedient of baffling all those present with bullshit for several hundred years now.

In your world: "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Looks like a shift in the time-space continuum to me.", would result in: "You bullshitting little wanker. Who let you in here? SECURITY!!!!!!" <keeerrrrrzap> and very short episodes, each ending in a regeneration.