* Posts by Mako

223 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2009

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Puny US particle punisher finds strong evidence for God particle

Mako

Re: why I read the Reg

Looks like you forgot to log out and log back in again as BIGDUMBGUY555...

Android Jelly Bean won't get Flash Player

Mako
Thumb Up

Re: Kulfi

I knew you guys wouldn't let me down.

Mako

The thing that worries me most about the release of Jelly Bean isn't the lack of Flash.

It's the fact that Google et al are going to be starting work on the next version of the OS now, and I can't think of a dessert/sweet that starts with a K.

Microsoft's offices gutted in Athens arson attack

Mako

Years ago, I did some contract IT work for a certain large construction company. At the same time, they were having their head office refurbed.

Some surly git of a builder went into the boardroom and dragged a screwdriver down the 20-odd foot length of the solid oak boardroom table. He was caught on CCTV.

Just before they sacked him and pushed him down 15 flights of stairs, they asked him why. His answer was along the lines of, "Well if I can't have something like that, why should they?"

Not sure whether the motivation here is similar, mind you.

Girl Geek Dinner lady: The IT Crowd is putting schoolgirls off tech

Mako

My biggest problem with Jen is the way she goes home and emasculates her boyfriend while eating Malteasers.

Money men want bombproof data centre on satellite site

Mako

They could use the big dish to beam the internet into space. It's high time that our neighbours at Zeta Reticulii were introduced to lolcats and what humans look like when they have no clothes on.

Online bookie can't scoop £50k losses made by 5-year-old

Mako

Apropos the name of the company...

...every single instance of "Spreadex" that I have seen in this article and its comments has been interpreted by my poor, tired brain as "Spandex".

SpaceX signs deal to put its giant rocket to good use

Mako

ISS

I wonder if SpaceX can make enough money by the time that the ISS is due to be retired that they can say, "Wait - don't de-orbit that. We may have a use for it..."

London picked as test bed for Skynet-like Intel tech

Mako

Is it just me...

...or does anyone else get the impression that there are unnamed corpses out there in the woods, whose last view of this world was the cold depths of George Osborne's soulless eyes?

Sunshine nudges asteroid into odd orbit

Mako

Re: Sour grapes?

Hah! Let's see Alanis Morrisette get a rhyme out of, "Accidental perturbation of an asteroid's orbit, causing it to collide with our planet when it wouldn't have done had we not landed on it in the first place."

Queen unveils draft internet super-snoop bill - with clauses

Mako

Re: "Oh... email..."

The Queen sent her first email in 1976.

Cisco hits the roof in Olympics marketing dash

Mako

Re: Amount of data in the world doubling every 15 minutes

It's okay - he's got an old copy of Stacker to compress it all with. Trouble is, he neeeds a 5.25" floppy drive to install it from.

Black hole swallows star in GALACTIC SUPER-GUZZLE!

Mako

Re: So how rare is this?

Well, 9 times out of 10 at least...

Moon at annual perigee this weekend

Mako

Re: 10-1 on that

I think it might be my fault.

I bought a telescope the other week and I haven't seen clear sky since.

Gaia scientist Lovelock: 'I was wrong and alarmist on climate'

Mako
Happy

You beat me to it. I was going for Gaia Strikes Back and Return of the Gaia.

Stray SMS leads to aborted landing

Mako
Happy

Re: Misconceptions

I have "WHOOP-WHOOP! TERRAIN! WHOOP-WHOOP! TERRAIN! PULL UP! PULL UP!" as mine, cobbled together from .mp3s of the real thing.

But then, I'm not a commercial pilot, so when my colleagues hear it there's no risk of them hitting the TO/GA button and pulling back on the yoke, etc.

Microsoft to bake Windows 8 in three flavours

Mako

Re: Let's go:

Rectal Thermometer.

LOHAN lifts lid on revised mission summary

Mako

Re: Drooping Rod

+1

Well played, sir.

Busted in the US? 'Drop your trousers, sir'

Mako

Re: Hmmm.

Meh. I'm not sure, but I don't think they've actually criminalised tattos just yet.

Especially since the gang in question is Our Gang from the Lil Rascals. I've got Alfalfa's head on one side, and Buckwheat's on the other.

Mako
Joke

I'm due to go to the States later this year. Now I'm starting to regret getting this gang tattoo on the back of my balls.

TONIGHT, Let's ALL MAKE LOVE in SHOREDITCH

Mako

I have no idea what I just read...

...but it has left me frightened and confused and hugging my knees in the corner.

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

Mako

Re: Poll isn't showing for me

Same here. I had to look at the source to make sure I really was missing something and that it wasn't a "It's Friday and we're rushing to get to the pub" El Reg error.

Will have to visit from home later, (which almost seems like sacrilege).

TSA bars security guru from perv scanner testimony

Mako

Re: I opt for pat down every time

Upvoted for this...

"I feel the security guard and I should light post-pat cigarettes and do some sleepy love-chat"

...because it made Fanta come out of my nose.

'Now we understand what's required to explode a supernova' - NASA

Mako

"Does exploding an explosion make it more sexy?"

Allow me to introduce you to Michael Bay's back catalogue...

Samsung backside-bitten by emoticon patent trollery

Mako

Re: Sounds like Despair

You (and a few others above) are missing what the patent actually covers. It's not the smileys/emoticons themselves, it's the *input method* that this particular patent war is about.

LOHAN's fantastical flying truss menaces kiddies

Mako

YouTube Comment Snob

I don't read YouTube comments at all as a rule, but this looks ace.

If there was some way of making it generic - so you could apply it to your view of the internet as a whole - that would be fantastic.

Cash-strapped graduates sell their own faces

Mako

I know that most modern universities have a very loose standard of dress, but I'm kind of surprised this doesn't violate some sort of code.

If nothing else, it must have been very distracting in class the first few times they turned up like that.

Asteroid could SMASH INTO EARTH in 2040

Mako

Re: Hypothetically speaking...

Depends on what it's made of, how fast it's going and what angle it hits at. But to give you some perspective, here's what happens when a 50-metre nickel-iron meteor hits:

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

Not so bad if it touches down in the middle of nowhere, not so great if it happens in the middle of your road.

Windows 8: Sugar coating on Microsoft's hard-to-swallow tablet

Mako

Re: Oops!

Same here - it took me a few minutes to find it, and even then it was by accident. I was about to resort to "shutdown -s -t:1".

I'm assuming it's because it's geared more towards tablets and phones, which typically spend their lives switched on and locked/in standby, (or switched off with a hardware power button).

Seems to me another example - as the article seemingly suggests - that "one size fits all" is a difficult thing to get right, and may not even be possible to get right at all.

China churns out homemade aircraft for global travel DOMINATION

Mako

Re: Re: Just one more letter in the alphabet..

E = Embraer.

A highly successful Brazilian manufacturer of short-medium range jets.

Banking Trojan hijacks live chat to run real-time fraud

Mako

Maybe I'm reading this wrong...

...but are we saying that these are *genuine* live chat sessions that are being hijacked?

If so, presumably the person at the bank's end of the conversation finds themselves abruptly cut off mid-chat, right? I accept the fact that it's not the bank's responsibility to ensure your machine is malware-free, but why not hand the case over to someone in the outbound call centre to give the customer a ring;

"Hi, you were just in the middle of a live chat with a rep and it seems you got cut off. You okay there?"

"But...I'm still talking to you. I was just about to authorise XYZ."

"Okay, you might not want to do that..."

Or are these disconnects so common that it would be impossible to detect the signal from the noise?

Global warming COULD SHRINK THE HUMAN RACE

Mako

"Here's some Benylin."

"Thanks but...I didn't ask for any cough mixture."

"I thought you said you w..."

"No, I said I was feeling a little horse!"

I thank yow.

FTC urged to probe Google's Safari-tracking gaffe

Mako
Headmaster

"mischaraterised"

If that's how they typed it, you might want to put [sic] after it. If that's *not* how they typed it, you might want to remove the quotes.

Indian ministers quit in parliament smut flick scandal

Mako

You're right. Even the mere suggestion of impropriety on the part of a government minister should be grounds for capital punishment, (or at the very least, torture through genital trauma).

I just can't understand why more citizens aren't pounding their spittle-flecked keybards in rabid fury in support of your proposal.

I really shouldn't need to use the sarcasm tag here but just in case... [/Sarcasm]

IT crowd sorts out the Mars Science Lab

Mako

"...in the memory banks..."

D'awww, cute! It's like it's 1965 all over again!

Seriously though, well done chaps. That's one *hell* of a long-distance VNC session.

Google goggles with Terminator HUD 'coming soon'

Mako

Awesome. My Google sunglasses can have arguments with my Apple shoes about what advertising I get exposed to. Now *that's* the way I always envisaged the future to be!

I'm positively quivering with anticipation for the day someone develops open-source knickers.

Serial killer PYTHONS stalk Florida's Everglades

Mako

"Nobody is sure exactly how the snakes were introduced to American ecosystems, although it's likely that many of the species arrived as pets and then escaped or were released into the wild."

Both are perfectly plausible, though the latter is more likely. It's the same reason why Ft. Lauderdale is over-run with iguanas. Pet's size becomes impractical, pet gets dumped into the intracoastal, pet breeds like crazy in the favourable environment.

Interesting to see that there's an active programme of spaying and neutering of them going on at the moment , (instead of extermination). Wonder if they could do the same for the snakes?

NASA: Solar system may have alien origin

Mako

I would like to know why those interstellar Pac-mans are eating all the Neon.

Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music

Mako

"...at the “Dive Into Media” conference* "

Is that asterisk part of the conference's name, or have you guys forgotten to add your footnote?

Newzbin barrister struck off for owning site he represented

Mako

I've got this silly picture in my head of a barrister cross-examining himself, sprinting back and forth between the witness box and the defence table. Alternately whipping off his wig and then plonking it back on again as the location merits.

US Senator: 'Retest airport scanner safety'

Mako

Cool!

What's your superpower? The ability to get free upgrades at will?

Apple wants to OWN YOUR VERY SOLE

Mako

Not only that...

...but they remind you when you "need" to buy new ones? The need according to whom? And how often is the message repeated?

I wear old trainers while gardening or working on the car. I really don't want them texting me every five minutes to tell me that I should replace them.

No, I think this is one innovation I'll pass up.

Japanese boffins fear virus nicked spacecraft blueprints

Mako

...removed from the agency's network as soon as a *red flag* was raised over its erratic behaviour

Heh-heh.

GAME: Our website wasn't hacked!

Mako

Hmm.

1) Release bogus user credentials.

2) Wait for company to release statement that "The credentials are false, and you know why? Because we take security seriously. Don't worry, you're all safe."

3) Wait for dust to settle.

4) Hack company for real and post customer data on Pastebin.

5) Point and laugh.

Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

Mako

I wonder how the blackout will be achieved?

By which I mean, are they doing it by disabling/altering their DNS record(s)? Or are they putting something in place that redirects all en.wikipedia.org page requests to a single banner page? Or something else entirely?

NHS fined £375k after stolen patient data flogged on eBay

Mako
WTF?

Wait...what?

If the 3rd Party was contracted to securely destroy the data, then surely *he* should be in the frame for any penalties under the DPA...shouldn't he? Wouldn't that be part of any contract between the NHS and their contractors?

But even if my assumption above is wrong and the NHS *does* have ultimate responsibility, the only people punished by this fine would be the patients whose care would suffer for want of those funds. No one learns anything, the cash re-enters the governmental money-go-round and some treatments are cancelled. Where's the point?

HP sneaks out printer firebomb firmware security fix

Mako

Anyone else reminded of this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire

Former coder, NASA 'naut to lead DARPA starship dream

Mako

ISTR the problem with this, is that any corporation using that approach would have to become at least as large as the government of a large nation in terms of power and wealth.

At which point, they might as well actually *be* that government. They probably own most of the large-scale industries in the country, are *the* major employers, and have vast influence over the populace. And since any empire must either grow or wither, they straight-up get their fingers into every pie they can. 7-11s and Wal*marts start to disappear, replaced by a single, banal brand.

Either the traditional government all become corporate puppets (moreso than some already are) or they're replaced entirely with compliant board members of our huge fictional corporation.

But either way the corproration gets saddled with all the negative effects (on a space program) that go along with the role of governing. Such as developmental drag on the starship caused by their day-to-day running of everything else... like the prison system that 27.5% of the population find themselves in for violating the laws which were put in place to protect the corporation's profitability.

Since any mention of money being "thrown away" into space causes the stock price to dip, the generations of stockholders who have become wealthy on the corporation's coat-tails refuse to accept the risk exposure.

All you can hope then is that one day the requirement for interstellar travel becomes itself either profitable or desparately urgent.

Or...have I just written an even more cynical back-story to Wall-E?

Anyway: "Good morning and welcome aboard this flight to Proxima Centauri, brought to you by the good folks at the Motion Picture Association of America."

Microsoft revives flight sim by giving it away free

Mako

I agree with you...

...but from what I've heard about it so far, I doubt it counts as a pure sim and so I probably wouldn't consider it an FS replacement. I know the lines are very grey, but to me it just sounds like a game, and a very limited one at that.

Worse, the Reg implies that it'll be a limited environment with a single plane, that you can pay to expand later. If that's the case, MS will have to lock it down to prevent a 3rd-party market from springing up and slurping their revenue. I can see that leading to lack of choice, if nothing else. Cynically, it's like the IBM PS/2 all over again - slamming the gate after the horse is long gone.

I might download it to give it a go. But I doubt it'll ever be a viable replacement for what we already have. Shame really - can you imagine FS with Crysis2-level graphics...?

Mako

Not that I'm aware of, in either FS9 SP1 or FSX - you can happily collide with buildings, antennae, the scenery and other planes if that's your thing.

What they *did* do was disable "visible damage" by default, so if you crashed your aircraft it'd just come to a stop and the flight would reset.

However, they left the breakage models intact, so it can be switched on again by adding a line to the aircraft.ini of whatever plane it is that you want to see going to pieces.

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