* Posts by Swarthy

2412 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

Hey, non-US websites – FBI don't have to show you any stinkin' warrant

Swarthy
Angel

Re: Oh noes

I am an animal. Hamsters are animals. Therefore I am a hamster.

God is Love. Love is Blind. Therefore Ray Charles is God.

Twitter sues US government for right to disclose NOTHING

Swarthy

Re: Simple solution @Psyx

I believe the previous poster was referring to the so-called "Super Injunctions" Wherein the Press was issued a notice of "Do not publish stories about X, and do not publish stories about not being able to publish stories about X."

Strange tale of an angry bean counter, Comcast and a shock 'firing'

Swarthy
Big Brother

Re: all you whiners

They can just track your IP address. You are posting from work, like everyone else, yes?

Siri ... why is this semi headed RIGHT AT ME? Phone apps distracting as ever – new study

Swarthy
WTF?

Shirley....

"We already know that drivers can miss stop signs, pedestrians and other cars while using voice technologies because their minds are not fully focused on the road ahead," said AAA CEO Bob Darbelnet.

Surely the problem is when they don't miss pedestrians and other cars.

Is Apple incubating a Macbook, iPad bastard child?

Swarthy
Unhappy

"What do you think would happen if an iPad made sweet, sweet love to a Macbook? "

I suddenly have a dubstep/chiptunes hybrid version of Marvin Gaye stuck in my head. Damn you.

Oi, lobbyists. Cough up your details – EU's new first vice-president

Swarthy

Can the EU export this?

I would love to see this implemented in the US.

In fact, this kind of mandatory Registration for Lobbying sounds like an excellent idea, verging on a requirement, for any republic to work properly.

ESA's comet-chasing Rosetta eyes up 67P's vital statistics

Swarthy

How hard would it be to put a kerbal on this comet?

Be nice to the public, PC Plod. Especially if you're trying to stop terrorists

Swarthy

Re: offense at the lower end of the scale

Given that the OP said that "Admittedly, [someone who drives drunk] may not be the most suitable, responsible candidate to hold a firearms licence." Then goes on to say that a vague acquaintance got grief for "an offense at the lower end of the scale" that leads me to think it was not a drink driving related offence. but rather more along the lines of a TV licence violation or jay walking.

Worst. Comic. Book. Ever. Marvell's Chipman defeated by France in another patent battle

Swarthy

Re: CHIPMAN

Still the French.

Hipster chimps are SLAVES to the latest social trends

Swarthy

Hipster Peer Pressure

"Come on, no-one else is doing it!"

Cable guy, Games of Thrones chap team up to make Reg 'best sci-fi film never made' reject

Swarthy
Stop

If The GAP series is Donaldson's best work by Far (and I don't doubt it, it was less traumatic than the Thomas Covenant) than that man should be forcefully restrained from ever touching a keyboard, pen, pencil, or any other writing utensil.

I have disliked many characters in many books, but to get me to hate everyone in a book to the point that the hatred starts to bleed over to the writer.. that takes a special talent - one that should never be used.

Icahn and I DID: eBay volte-faces, spins PayPal into separate biz

Swarthy

Re: Icahn dissasemble #5

""Hey, laser lips, your mama was a snow blower."

TEEN RAMPAGE: Kids in iPhone 6 'Will it bend' YouTube 'prank'

Swarthy
Headmaster

Re: Many years ago ... (1970s)

My definition of 'unbreakable' is that it will last >30 seconds in the hands (mouth) of a toddler/small child. Although, even by that loose definition, those doohickeys were not unbreakable.

Spammer uses innocent hacked blogs to punt NAKED PICS of JLaw, McKayla Maroney

Swarthy

Whatever next!? Priests too catholic for the Pope?

Those have been around some time - most of them are Irish.

Fraud shop OVERSTOCKED with stolen credit cards

Swarthy

Re: Odd strategy

Alternatively, it is only worth it to steal 'em in large batches.

Pizza stores popped, sandwich stores sacked in PoS plunder

Swarthy
Pirate

Cause & effect?

Fraud shop OVERSTOCKED with stolen credit cards

Causation, or correlation?

Microsoft on the Threshold of a new name for Windows next week

Swarthy

Re: Is Linux a trademark?

Something tells me that would go all pear-shaped.

Swarthy
Joke

MS will take the acronyms of the "Best" versions of windows to remind all customers about their past successes. CE to invoke the mobile paradigm; ME to remind people that they have a long history; NT to remind techies about the power of windows servers.

I present: Windows CEMENT.

Yahoo! dumps! thing! that! made! it! Yahoo! and! told! to! bed! AOL!

Swarthy

odd investment strategy?

I find myself wondering if their investment portfolio includes shorts on Yahoo!, I can see no other way that Yahoo! changing their name to AOL could be good for shareholders.

BlackBerry slowly pulls out of power dive into toilet

Swarthy

I like "What-The-Phone?!", which is how I read WTPh.

Man's future in space ... Barack Obama: Mars. Narendra Modi: Mars. Vladimir Putin: Er, Moon

Swarthy

Re: Call me paranoid

In short: No.

Swarthy

Re: In Russia rockets land on you!

If there had been an indigenous population, we wouldn't have had to wait for materials and engineering to develop for decades before it became possible (-ish?) to build a habitat.

Apple 'Genius': iPhone 6? We've had NO COMPLAINTS about our BENDY iThing

Swarthy

Re: are surprised it bends / cracks - really.

I'm sure such pedantry will be a relief to people with a nut allergy busy fighting off an anaphylactic shock.

It should. If you go into anaphylactic shock from peanuts, that means you have a legume allergy and should be careful when consuming peas and beans (including soy).

'In... 15 feet... you will be HIT BY A TRAIN' Google patents the SPLAT-NAV

Swarthy

Re: On the other hand,

That depends on the purity of the ammonia used to make the stuff as well as the firing mechanism used to launch it. A paintball gun uses compressed CO2, so I would imagine a sufficiently impure ammonia (house-hold cleaning type) should render it insensitive enough to not go pop on firing. A spring based firing mechanism might be less gentle and more prone to "barrel burst".

Swarthy
Boffin

Re: On the other hand,

I would suggest for your 'paintball gun' to use pellets of ammonium triiodide. It 'detonates' on impact, releasing the iodine in the molecule as iodine gas, which leaves an indelible purple stain. The detonation is not forceful (thus not dispersing the gas, or causing grievous bodily harm), but would be startling, and may sting a bit.

Comcast: Help, help, FCC. Netflix and pals are EXTORTIONISTS

Swarthy

Douchebaggery?

Home Depot ignored staff warnings of security fail laundry list

Swarthy
Thumb Up

Did anyone else notice that the comments to the article may contain more actual information about the incident than either the Reg. or NYT articles?

That's the main reason I read the Reg, the articles are usually good, better than most, but the Commentariat is what makes this red-top one of the best sources of information on t'interwebs.

Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland 2 reviews: Turn-based gaming's not dead yet!

Swarthy

Re: It died?

It hasn't died. That's the point of the article.

However, Turn-based games have seemed to be getting scarce, "as the big game developers trip over each other to mishmash genres into huge titles like Destiny, so that everything seems have been turned into a shitty FPS."

Your chance to win the world's only handheld ZX Spectrum

Swarthy
Paris Hilton

In order to stand a chance at winning

Do we have to get the questions right?

Stray positrons caught on ISS hint at DARK MATTER source

Swarthy
Boffin

Re: Desperate

Using positrons (being anti-electrons) as evidence for anti-matter is a bit like using photons as evidence for light.

Or The Reg comments as evidence for the existence of pedantry.

Swarthy

Re: Snappy title

You can't do any serious science without a bloated title - "Positron Fluxes in Space" is too short.

I agree wholeheartedly! It should be "Positron Fluxes IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE"

Oracle's Larry Ellison quits as CEO – new bosses are Hurd'n'Catz

Swarthy

So Elison no longer IS Oracle. I never thought it'd happen.

Side note: That headline is awesome, especially considering that Larry will be one of the cats that the two will be herding.

Early result from Scots indyref vote? NAW, Jimmy - it's a SCAM

Swarthy
Big Brother

Re: What are your predictions?

The People will vote 100% for an independent Scotland. All those who vote against are Enemies Of The People.

If the tally of the vote is 60% "No" it means that The Enemies Of The People are pervasive and have corrupted 60% of the population, so their votes should not be counted.

Edge Research Lab to tackle chilly LOHAN's final test flight

Swarthy
WTF?

Re: Mumble

One of us needs more coffee for that to make sense.

'Windows 9' LEAK: Microsoft's playing catchup with Linux

Swarthy
Thumb Up

Re: Meeeh

Also a function in LightStep since Win9x.

(Which seems to still be in development-ish)

Europe prepares to INVADE comet: Rosetta landing site chosen

Swarthy

It'd be better if they could aim it at Venus. I bet a nice 10 Gigatonnes of water/ice would dilute the acid in the atmosphere, and maybe do something with all that CO2, and perhaps drop the temperature a degree, or two.

Swarthy

Re: The region lies at the top of the comet

The top is the part with the ducky head. The bottom is the part with the squeaker.

Archaeologists and robots on hunt for more Antikythera pieces

Swarthy

Re: Site disturbances

We can hope.

Sun's MASSIVE solar storm belch to light up Earth's skies

Swarthy

Re: theregister.co.UK

Well, When the ESA is monitoring these things and releasing press releases, they can (and presumably will be) Eurocentric. When JAXA does them, the maps will likely be centered on Asia. The article info did come from NASA, which has an understandable US bias.

I am certain our beloved Vulture would prefer to present data from ESA, but.. they don't have the equipment for this.

This flashlight app requires: Your contacts list, identity, access to your camera...

Swarthy
Alert

An idea for an App strore

Either a full-on App store a la Amazon, or a value-added front-end like AppBrain: taking the results of these security/permissions surveys and using them to rank the apps, rather than(or in addition to) fickle popularity.

Currently, there is no benefit to the app developer to moderate their permissions, and collection of personal data is encouraged monetarily. Perhaps if the over-reaching permissions and hemorrhaging of data caused them to be at the bottom of the list, the developers might be persuaded to develop better behaving apps.

End of buttons? Apple looks to patent animating iPhone sidewalls

Swarthy
Happy

This could be a good thing

If they start putting displays on the side of the phone, this will remove, or at least mitigate, the "requirement" of ever-thinner phones. Maybe Apple will put in a real, beefy, battery to use some of the space, and actually have a decent span between charging.

Oz fed police in PDF redaction SNAFU

Swarthy
Devil

PDFs are believed to be non-modifiable.

According to many managerial/HR types PDFs are not modifiable. You can change the data in a form, but the text and images of a PDF are inviolate.

When I get a new employment contract I have to resist the temptation to abuse this belief, and alter the contract (add an extra 0 to the salary, remove the clauses for termination with cause, etc.)

Today's Facebook fury: Coppertone-like baby pic ban baffles US mom

Swarthy

Mine do.

NYC, LA mayors hammer Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger

Swarthy

Just Say No

This merger seems to have absolutely nothing good for anyone, except TWC and Comcast (and whoever is on the receiving end of fat brown envelopes).

Boffins attempt to prove the universe is just a hologram

Swarthy

I seem to recall reading this experimental procedure before

Wasn't this process the core of the Michelson-Morely experiment?

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

Swarthy

A close second to the quality of the coffee is the cleanliness of the equipment. I have gotten positive, surprised comments from co-workers about the quality of the coffee I brew for the communal pot, simply because I take the time to scrub off the brown gunk that had accumulated in the pot and grinder.

Swarthy

Re: Acidity ...

If you are drinking cheap coffee, you may be getting a robusta blend (higher caffeine than arabica, grows in more places, but is bland and bitter. If you need coffee in the worst possible way, this is coffee - in the worst possible way).

A dark roast Arabica (probably a Costa Rican) should reduce the distress from overly cheap coffee.

Swarthy
Angel

Re: Moka

The moka pot is also great for making cuban coffee, as it is easier to clean out the re-crystallized sugar.

LOHAN Kickstarter bid IS GO: Back our Vulture 2 spaceplane launch

Swarthy
Unhappy

I want the glass!

But I think I'll have to settle for a mug. It would be ...difficult to explain to SWMBO that I drpped ~$74 for a pint glass (and a good cause). ~$35 on a coffee mug (and good cause), she may be more forgiving of.