Posts by James Pickett

Back to the future

So much for progress. The Enfield electric car had a 40-mile range in 1974 and was surprisingly nippy. Better looking too...

http://www.batteryvehiclesociety.org.uk/wordpress/?page_id=148

Job$

1 in 3 dollars = 1 in 5 laptops? They're still overpriced, I see...

Er...

"There is no indication that the theft was motivated by a desire to obtain the data, nor that the data has been exploited maliciously in any way"

In a separate incident, involving the theft of money, a spokesman said that there was no indication that it would be exploited or used to buy things...

Real scareware

I shall sit up and take notice after they've nailed the guys responsible for XP Antivirus...

Help!

As if being reminded of Blaine wasn't bad enough, I've now got the phrase 'twatdangling away' in my head, to the tune of Paul Simon's 'Slipsliding away'. Have mercy and send me a shirt...

Ego trip

"based in California"

Nuff said.

Gordon Brown's fault

IIRC, he withheld part (or possibly all) of the UK's contribution, which was earmarked for testing. Oops!

Sniff...

""because it was likely to encourage irresponsible drinking"

So drinking is only responsible if you've got your underwear in place?

I wonder what Sir Les Patterson would say? :-)

That's all right, then

"statement about the product"

which will tell us exactly what it's for, naturally.

Pigs all lined up and ready for take-off...

Progress?

Not unlike the Honda Insight, which manages a mere 84mpg, but is faster and rather better looking (and has been around for 8 years)...

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

Making a tubular frame from carbon fibre is a solution no-one asked for, IMHO. Aluminium tubing is easy to form, easy to mend, easy to recycle and not much heavier.

I have a nice, lively 500cc engine in my motorbike, but it would be slug in a car...

Oh yeah?

"the world's most resilient economy"

Snigger... (in the style of Muttley)

I'd use a smiley icon, but I realise we'll end up picking up the same pieces. So good to have a special relationship...

Curate's egg

Well, it's your site...

I quite like being able to hide the ads, but where *did* those new icons come from?! We still need Ballmer, IMO, but perhaps he's just not important enough...

Improvement

"fetchingly encased"

Thankfully. The previous ones were hideous, especially the freestanding upright desktop version. American styling is weird.

Longevity

Kodak produced a camera with an OLED screen in 2003, but although the screen was well received (much better viewing angle than LCD, for instance) nobody else copied it, AFAIK, which leads me to wonder what the life is like. Not sure I'd want to spend £500 to find out...

Dear God

"Reiss will return to his regular job as Professor of Science Education"

You couldn't make it up! It's like something from the Middle Ages...

Still, I'm glad the Royal Society has finally seen sense, although why they gave the job to a priest in the first place remains a mystery.

Gander sauce

"it did not want staff to be hindered in any way"

And how does taking a photograph do that? Or were they posing..?

@ElFatBob

"constant repetition of these random events .. only compounded the impossibility"

Not sure I follow. Repeating something doesn't normally reduce the chances of an event, however improbable. Also, the Universe is a big place, and it's not a zillion-to-one chance that you ended up in one of those corners where life evolved, because if it hadn't, nobody would.

Boffins

(Who've never run further than the car-park in the rain) seem to have overlooked the thought that he might just have run out of puff, so extrapolating for the last 20m might be a tad hypothetical...

FUD

"operation at low inlet pressure"

Which also commonly occurs when they fuel begins to run out! Seems more likely to me, especially as:

a) it gets warmer near the ground, and

b) what are the chances of the pumps on both sides of the plane having the same problem at the same moment?

I still think Gordon Brown's posse brought it down with their mobile phone jammers...

Bogus

"L Ron Hubbard"

That'll be the old fraud who once stated that a good way to make a fortune would be to start a religion. Seems he was right, although I'm sure that never features in the Scientology literature...

Reliable

Back to paper and pencil, then. I've never understood why that was so difficult - you can still use electro-mechanical counting to speed things up. ATM's seem to have that technology cracked - they've certainly never given me too many notes...

Downloads

“penalise the good guys, not the bad guys”

Sound very plausible, especially where the US Ass.es are concerned. Mind you, I can't see the ISP's doing this for free, and eMusic is very good value.

Anyway, aren't these the same ISP's who were complaining about the BBC's iPlayer eating all their bandwidth?

It's about time..

..we had the option of voting for a party that promised (is that the word I want?) to have nothing to do with 'consultants' or any other self-proclaimed experts without publishing tender details both before and after the award of any job. As Chris Miller says, this is public money and contract details should be transparent. Those who don't like it need not apply.