In contemporary language the word "chintz" and "chintzy" can be used to refer to clothing or furnishings which are vulgar or florid in appearance, and commonly in informal speech, to refer to cheap, low quality, or gaudy things.
Posts by Alister
4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010
Page:
You live where you live ... and ex-SAP boss Bill McDermott lives in a house like this
Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues
Chancers keep buying up dot-UK company name domains: Got a problem? That'll be £750 for Nominet to rule on it
After 10 years, Google Cloud Print will finally be out of beta... straight into ad giant's graveyard
Close the windows, it's coming through the walls: Copper Cthulu invades Dabbsy's living room
A short note to say I'm off: Vulture taps claws on Reg keyboard for last time
Video-editing upstart bares users' raunchy flicks to world+dog via leaky AWS bucket
UK public sector IT chiefs shrug off breach threats: The data we hold isn't that important
Second time lucky: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation
Email! HUH! Yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...
NASA spanks $34bn on a disposable rocket – likely to top $50bn by 2024 moon landing
Re: Bah!
The US will go back to space in a big way the moment it looks like the other contenders look likely to become the primary presence. China would be my guess. No American president will want to be the one who "Lost Space to the <insert other nation>".
I would be curious to know if there would be the same urge if the other contenders are private corporations, and whether the US would be happy to let that happen.
Use the courts, Jeff: Amazon to contest Microsoft scooping $10bn JEDI contract
High Court dismisses nameless Google Right To Be Forgotten sueball man... yes, again
Boffins harnessed the brain power of mice to build AI models that can't be fooled
50 years ago, someone decided it would be OK to fire Apollo 12 through a rain cloud. Awks, or just 'SCE to Aux'?
Weird flex but OK... Motorola's comeback is a $1,500 Razr flip-phone with folding 6.2" screen
@xpz393
The Reg's domain suffix dictates that it's actually spelt "laser"
Irrespective of where you are in the world, laser is the only correct spelling.
It is an acronym of the following phrase:
Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation
There is nowhere in the world where stimulation is spelled with a Z
Complete with keyboard and actual, literal, 'physical' escape key: Apple emits new 16" $2.4k+ MacBook Pro
Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink
'That roar is terrific... look at that rocket go!' It's been 52 years since first Saturn V left the pad
Ex from Hell gets six years for online stalking, revenge pics campaign against two women
Re: Why should sex or nudity be shameful?
Jesus got on fairly well with prostitutes but those parts of the gospels were never very popular in english churches
The idea that Mary Magdelene was a prostitute was an invention of Pope Gregory, and has no basis in the original gospels. Western Christianity has taken this on board, but Eastern Orthodoxy has no comparable belief.
Congress to FCC: Where’s the damn report on mobile companies selling location data?
They say lightning never strikes twice, but boffins have built an AI to show where it'll come next
UK Home Office: We will register thousands of deactivated firearms with no database
Re: "no requirement of 'registration' for deactivated firearms"
Probably because 'deactivated' is potentially reversible.
If you read TFA it does say that if a firearm is deactivated to meet UK requirements it involves welding solid the barrel and chamber, and cutting away sections of the action, so reactivation is unlikely or improbable.
Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it?
Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now
Scam callers
I was rung by Mike, who wanted to talk to me about the recent road accident I was involved in.
So not to disappoint him, I said "Oh yes, it was about a month ago, a fatal accident, nobody survived".
That didn't seem to put him off his script, so we carried on for a minute or two until it had sunk in, then he said "You bastard" and hung up.
Enjoy a tipple or five? You might need this AI system to tell you when it's time for a new liver
What is this, 1989? Laplink is still a thing and wants to help with Windows 7 migrations
We're almost into the third decade of the 21st century and we're still grading security bugs out of 10 like kids. Why?
NSA to Congress: Our spy programs don’t work, aren’t used, or have gone wrong – now can you permanently reauthorize them?
Re: Although I agree the NSA have not really provided a blazing list of sucesses
I also have some sympathy with the idea that spilling details of operational capabilities in public forum is also probably a very bad idea too
But that's not what was asked for. Congress simply asked for a measure of how successful the programs have been, and they refused even to answer that.
Controversies aren't Boeing away for aircraft maker amid claims of faulty oxygen systems and wobbling wings
"Every passenger oxygen system installed on our airplanes is tested multiple times before delivery to ensure it is functioning properly, and must pass those tests to remain on the airplane."
This is bullshit. The part that is found to be failing is the release mechanism on the oxygen cylinders. These are a one-time-use pyrotechnic device which, by its design, cannot be tested once installed. So those particular items installed on the aircraft have never been tested. They may have tested others of the same batch, but even that is doubtful.
Leeds IT bloke pleads guilty to hacking Jet2 CEO's email account
Oh chute. Two out of three ain't bad, right? asks Boeing after soft-ish crew module landing
Comcast-owned Brit telco Sky to hire 1,000 new staffers, half of them engineers
Re: They are not engineers
This is a very recent elitism. You don't have to have a university degree to be called an engineer.
Telephone installers in the UK have been called engineers for over a century, indeed the whole telephone side of the Post Office in the UK was called the engineering division at one time.
And locomotive drivers in the US have also been known as engineers for over a century.
There are many other trades requiring hands on work with tools to which the term engineer could be applied.
The term software engineer needs to die though.