* Posts by Christoph

3313 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2007

Incoming comet will probably miss Mars, says NASA

Christoph
Alien

No Kaboom?

There was supposed to be a Mars-shattering kaboom!

Architect pitches builder-bothering 'Print your own house' plan

Christoph

I gather part of the idea is for these to be usable in places like Favelas and shanty towns where there aren't any building inspectors or engineers.

But then there's not likely to be many CNC machines around either, so I don't see how they will get the parts made!

Brit firm PinPlus flogs another password 'n' PIN killer

Christoph

Re: Possible attack?

They wouldn't need to display their own grid. If you can shoulder surf the grid and the input digits, you'd only need to capture a person's login a few times (maybe 3 or 4 at a guess) to deduce the pattern

Yet more world+dog patent suits, this time over encryption

Christoph

Re: Tabasco?

"Something lingering, with boiling oil in it, I fancy. Something of that sort.

I think boiling oil occurs in it, but I'm not sure.

I know it's something humorous, but lingering, with either boiling oil or melted lead."

-- The Mikado

Drone quadracopters throw and catch inverted pendulum

Christoph
Alert

Gorgon Stare

Just the Gorgon Stare isn't all that bad, as long as they don't start fitting them with SCORPION STARE.

Google reveals Glass details in patent application

Christoph
Alien

How many eyes?

"the retina of one or more of the user's eyes."

I like the way they leave it open in case Zaphod Beeblebrox gets some of these. But are they peril sensitive?

Meet the stealthiest UK startup's app Swiftkey - and its psychic* keyboard

Christoph

They should use the Microwriter chorded keyboard.

Chinese PLA soldiers 'mastermind cyber-espionage Cold War'

Christoph

Re: China

I can't find the article now - apparently the US security agencies have been building some ridiculously high number of offices all over the USA over the last few years.

Earth escapes asteroid flyby, boffins want lasers aimed at next one

Christoph

"could send 1.4 megatons of energy per day"

Megatons of energy? If that's megatons times c squared you'd do a lot more than just melt the asteroid.

But isn't it fortunate that this giant space-based laser will be run by those nice americans, who can be trusted not to use it for anything nasty like blowing away third-world countries that don't grovel enough?

Firm moves to trademark 'Python' name out from under the language

Christoph

And next we have "Being Hit On The Head lessons".

Christoph
WTF?

Bad idea

They seem to be in the business of selling servers and hosting. They have just badly annoyed a large proportion of the kind of people who specify servers and hosting. They may not have thought this through.

Satanic Renault takes hapless French bloke on 200km/h joyride

Christoph

Re: Why get back in the car?

If he's disabled he might have had no other usable means of transport.

HYPERSONIC METEOR smashes into Russia, injuring hundreds

Christoph

Re: More videos

Another collection here:

http://www.szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu/meteoritdarabok-becsapodasa/

It's amazing how many videos there are of something that happened very fast and was completely unexpected. Most seem to be security cameras and in-car recorders.

$195 BEEELLION asteroid approaching Earth

Christoph
Headmaster

Theoretical value

The values given are for the refined material available in orbit.

But that assumes (1) There are enough customers for that much material at that price, and (2) That the price they are willing to pay will stay the same.

But how do they calculate those prices? Are they the current prices, when it's incredibly expensive to get stuff into orbit and there's hardly any stuff available in orbit?

If so then they're just chucking huge numbers around for publicity. They wouldn't get anything near that in practice.

People used to make jewellery out of aluminium because it was so valuable, being so hard to extract.

NASA melts mysterious 'metal Martian flower' myth

Christoph

Re: Ummmm....why not just drive over an analyse it?

It was found on an old photo, so they may be some distance away by now. They reckon they know what caused it, so it's not particularly interesting or unusual. They may have decided that it's not worth spending limited rover lifespan in going back to look at it.

Montana TV warns of ZOMBIE ATTACK in epic prank hack

Christoph
Thumb Down

NOT a joke

Sabotaging safety equipment is not funny. No matter how 'clever' you are.

British games company says it owns the idea of space marines

Christoph

Re: Temporal crime

Or maybe they were watching Blazing Saddles - the bit where Hedley Lamarr is told "What the hell are you worried about? This is 1874, you'll be able to sue her!"

Christoph

Re: Space Marines

The second is the one I was thinking of. The Ecklar tape is dated 1983 -.the song "Space Hero" is credited to 'Fish', though I can't track down when she wrote it.

Christoph

More prior art

I have a tape recorded in 1982 containing a song "Outerspace Marines"

Christoph

Another bit that isn't original

"many distinctive features which Games Workshop might justifiably claim as their own ... they are routinely surgically modified "

Were they routinely surgically modified before 1986, when Timothy Zahn's first "Cobra" book was published?

So when are they going to stop anyone writing about games or workshops?

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

Christoph

Re: new god required

"To report a suspected bug, please adopt a kneeling position"

In front of the Big White Telephone

Christoph

Re: FFS

No, they're actually on the 12th floor :)

(US floor numbering doesn't have a ground floor, they start at 1)

Don't Menshn the snore: Chick-lit queen's jabber site killed in its sleep

Christoph

Re: Been done

It's improved a lot since the ICUK takeover.

Christoph

Been done

If they wanted a site that worked like that they could have just joined Cix

Bipartisan Senate group proposes green cards for tech grads

Christoph
Black Helicopters

Faux News

"It's up to me and Fox News"

Nice to have firm confirmation that Faux News is in no way a neutral news reporting organisation, but a clear and deliberate propaganda machine. Not that this will surprise anyone of course.

Spammers joyride Doctor Who's Twitter TARDIS, turn man into Shirley Temple

Christoph
Pirate

Weight loss berries

"Pills derived from acai berries supposedly allow people to shed weight without dieting or exercise"

But there is a berry which will allow people to shed weight without dieting or exercise. It's called Belladonna!

[And anyone stupid enough to buy medicines from spammers might well be stupid enough to eat that :( ]

Pop tix touts slung in the cooler for 4 years after £3m web scam

Christoph

And how come they didn't get their account cancelled after the first time they pulled this trick? The banks can't have missed that many chargebacks, so why did they let them keep doing it?

Alien space rocks EXPLODE in fireball over Japan

Christoph

Re: We're damn lucky!

No, it was obviously Fireball XL5

NASA joins ESA dark stuff hunt

Christoph
Boffin

Which L2?

"NASA has also suggested stationing a manned craft at L2 to control a robotic moon mission"

Isn't that the Earth-Moon L2 position, not the Earth-Sun one?

Pope: Catholics, go forth and multiply... your Twitter followers

Christoph
Mushroom

Voice of reason?

I might consider it more likely that the catholic church has some vague link with "gentle voices of reason" if the request to do so came directly from the pope herself.

Raytheon to build low-orbit, disposable satellites for DARPA

Christoph

Re: Where will they be tested?

"Florin? Guilder?"

Inconceivable!

Christoph

Re: 90 minutes?

It doesn't repeat the same ground track, as the planet has turned.

Christoph
Black Helicopters

Where will they be tested?

The current wars are winding down. Have they decided yet where they are going to invade next so that they have a war to test the system with?

Red supergiant Betelgeuse heads for SMACKDOWN with 'dust bar'

Christoph
Boffin

What has this got to do with a Supernova?

Why should passing through a gas cloud trigger a Supernova?

It's probably so thin it will have no particular effect anyway, but it would take a LOT more to affect the activity in the star's core.

Google files patent for eyewear that SHOOTS LASERS

Christoph
Boffin

Sounds tricky

It sounds like you have to touch a particular point on the opposite hand while that point is jumping around every time you move your head or that hand, and while the touching hand is blocking the beam.

I think they are going to have to improve on that somehow before it becomes useable!

PR people 'put duty to the public ahead of employers' interests'

Christoph

Odd that

I wonder then who does write the reams of meaningless management-speak babble that appears every time some company gets caught out, explaining how lessons have been learned and anyway it was all a long time ago (because the company has been delaying the enquiry until everyone has forgotten about it).

Bloke blasts Sprint for fingering his home as phone thieves' den

Christoph

It could be worse

Just hope the next visitor isn't a lorry driver following a sat-nav that uses phone-based location to improve GPS accuracy.

France stalls plan to make Google and pals foot broadband rollout

Christoph

"France's government wants big web firms with high volume traffic to contribute to investment in high-speed internet, which is currently funded by telcos."

So presumably those internet firms will then receive a hefty portion of the profit that the telcos make by selling access to that high-speed internet?

Oh look, un cochon volant.

Wanna really insult someone? Log off and yell it in the street - gov

Christoph

Re: Being "insulting" should not be illegal in its own right

It's easy to have different interpretations.

For instance someone might think they were being politically correct in referring to another person as an "African American". And the other person might feel grievously insulted at being called a Septic.

Patent trolling surges, but righteous cavalry on the way

Christoph

If you pay protection money they come back for more

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we've proved it again and again,

That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

You never get rid of the Dane.

Dane-geld

Singapore allows pre-crime strikes against online crooks

Christoph
Facepalm

Single point of failure

"supplying technical information including network design architecture, firewall rules, and software algorithms"

So they will maintain a central database of all the vulnerabilities in all the vital infrastructure?

What could possibly go wrong?

Unbelievably vast quasar cluster forces universe-sized rethink

Christoph

Re: Buses, huh?

You wait ages for one bus, and then ...

Facebook testing $100 fee to mail Mark Zuckerberg

Christoph
Pirate

What other official Facebook addresses charge?

How much will they be charging to email their help desk?

How many messages at what fee will you have to send every time you want to opt out of their latest trick to sell off all your private information?

Latest exoplanet discovery is a virtual CLONE of Earth

Christoph
Boffin

How old is the star?

Is the star old enough for life to have evolved on the planet? I can't see any information on that

And is it anywhere near the 4.5 billion years that Earth needed to have a technology using species?

Minicam movie pirate gets record-breaking five years in prison

Christoph
Devil

Don't be silly, everyone knows that every time a little old lady watches a pirate movie the entertainment industry loses BILLIONS and BILLIONS! It must be true, they've said so themselves, and after all they would know.

Brit boffins build projectile-vomiting robot to kill norovirus

Christoph

Re: It's but one more facet of the British stiff upper lip

"Praying to god on the big white telephone"

Polaroid plans retail Fotobars to print out your pics

Christoph
WTF?

Management speak

"the opportunities they will create for millions of consumers to have classic Polaroid experiences."

Is he trying to impress other management types with this gobbledygook? Nobody else is going to have any interest in whatever a "classic Polaroid experience" is supposed to be.

The classic use for those instant photos was for pictures of an 'intimate' nature that you do NOT want to be seen by the local print shop

Ubuntu for smartphones aims to replace today's mobes, laptops

Christoph
FAIL

Great idea!

Just think - every time you send or receive a text message, you can get pop-up ads from Amazon based on its content!

The year GNOMES, Ubuntu sufferers forked off to Mint Linux

Christoph

Re: On the off-chance any of you missed it ...

Simple - if something's posted in the monastery it's very black humour.

And if it's serious it's banned by the monastery's posting guidelines.

Senate votes to continue FISA domestic spying through 2017

Christoph

Re: It figures...

I suggest renaming it to the USL. The United Sates of Lemmings.