* Posts by Scroticus Canis

855 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Aug 2012

New iPhone details leak: Yes, Apple is still chasing Samsung

Scroticus Canis
Headmaster

Re: Typo - FTFY

"... then push and quickly suck back in a small sample of 'internal matter'" - Que?

"... then prairie-dog a turd" - is much shorter.

Sun of a b... Rising solar temp wrecks chances of finding ET in our system

Scroticus Canis
Paris Hilton

Why was water left out of the list of green house gases?

It's the main one on Earth isn't it?

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Re: NO gas molecule can capture, store, redirect or amplify radiant energy photons....

So gas lasers are a myth then?

Scroticus Canis
Alien

Re: 500m years is not a lot of time to develop intelligent life anyway

Still waiting around here.

Beam me up Slartibartfast, we may have to start over with this one.

Look out Silicon Valley, here comes Brit bruiser Amber Rudd to lay down the (cyber) law

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

"carefully thought-through, legally covered arrangements"

If the quote is correct then she is lying about the first half. Dim as an epithet does not really do her justice.

Scroticus Canis
Trollface

Re: Why doesn't she talk to Trump?

Probably has an aversion to being grabbed by the muff by the White House Apprentice.

Scroticus Canis

Boris Johnson is American already

Ooh! Hasn't he given up his USA citizenship or does he pay the annual Federal taxes on what he earns here and else where?

The people need to know!

Apple exits music player biz by killing iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle

Scroticus Canis
Headmaster

Re: British pronunciation of "Jag-you-er" sounds equally silly to we across the Pond

Not as silly as the Americanian pronunciation of Arkansas when compared to Kansas. Or the pronunciation of buoy (in English sounds like boy) as boo-ee (sounding like Casper's camp friend trying to give you a fright).

Anyhow we pronounce it "Jag-you-are".

Everything you never knew about mail: The Postal Museum opens

Scroticus Canis

So do they have a few examples of the clacks as a working exhibit?

What even happened to two deliveries a day or in the box by 3 pm deliver by 9 am? Used to work when we had steam trains and then slowly didn't.

@Stevie - I used to have one of those mail coaches looooong ago. Would be worth a fortune now I expect.

China crams spyware on phones in Muslim-majority province

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Re: Obvious Comment - "China ... is clearly overdue for regime change.

Well the last one worked well didn't it.

Kill something, then hire cleaners to mop up the blood if you want to build a digital business

Scroticus Canis
Alert

Mr Kyte should go fly himself

Explains why Gartner is ... well, Gartner.

Sounds very similar to the '90s when RAD was the merde-du-jour.

Fake Newspaper steals Reg design to spruik storage upstart

Scroticus Canis

The Register is sometimes considered a significant chronicler of the storage industry

What? Simon's soundproofed basement and off-site lock-ups are hardly an industry or has he been busier than El Reg has let on?

'Help! I'm stuck in this ATM,' writes poor bloke on a scribbled note

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

And nobody pushed a note back in saying OK but $10,000 out the slot first?

Missed opportunity there.

User left unable to type passwords after 'tropical island stress therapy'

Scroticus Canis

"snorkeled on a tropical island"

I normally only snorkel in the sea off a tropical coast. Haven't done that in the bath or swimming pool since childhood, even in the tropics.

However it is never too late to have a happy childhood :)

Slower US F-35A purchases piles $27bn onto total fighter jet bill

Scroticus Canis

Russia doesn't have a Gibraltar dispute.

If it were as big as Crimea maybe they would have.

For arguments sake say the Russians had Gibraltar, I bet Spain wouldn't be pissing about in its territorial waters playing stupid games. One thing torturing and killing a trapped bull another getting into a real fight. The hypocrites still have two enclaves in Morocco which they haven't give back.

Virgin Trains dodges smack from ICO: CCTV pics of Corbyn were OK

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: Pixielaté - @Alister

Don't worry, even the OED can't make up its mind, vis: pixelate - verb (also pixellate or pixilate)

Prefer the title version which refers to the Wee Small Men's morning brew.

Astroboffins spot tiniest star yet – we guess you could call it... small fry

Scroticus Canis
Angel

Re: "density 144 times that of the Sun" - It's gravity not rocket science!

The average density of the whole Sun is about 1.4 g/cc but the core's density is about 162 g/cc. The temperature of the core (and radiation pressure) is what keeps the outer layers inflated; without this effect the Sun would collapse to about the same radius as the Earth but a lot denser.

This borderline red dwarf would have started out much bigger than Saturn while collapsing under gravity to the point where ignition started. It would have been smaller at that point until the temperature expanded it a bit up to Saturn's size.

Gravity's attraction falls off as the inverse square so given the right starting mass it will compress gas into a higher density than say Jupiter and thus a smaller relative volume.

Hackers able to turbo-charge DJI drones way beyond what's legal

Scroticus Canis

Re: Beware of cats - Be afraid of Horse!

Who remembers Wal's cat Horse catching a hang-glider and dragging it back to the farm with his teeth in the pilot's left leg?

(NZ's Foot Rot Flats by Murry Ball. One of the best cartoon strips ever)

OMG, dad, you're so embarrassing! Are you P2P file sharing again?

Scroticus Canis
Trollface

Re: ...list of things they do to embarrass their teenage children

Avenge yourself - live long enough to be a burden to your children.

Judge used personal email to send out details of sensitive case

Scroticus Canis
Childcatcher

"judgement is a matter of public record"

It used to be before all the secret courts were introduced here in the UK and the guilty but "under age" murderers, rapists, serial offenders, etc... were given anonymity by law*.

(* psychopaths and sociopaths obviously grow out of it - well according to the PC crowd of idiots)

Scroticus Canis
Devil

Re: inappropriate gavels

Percussive maintenance of the keyboard? "Send you bugger send".

Use of "appropriate force" as a 4lb club hammer leaves nasty dents in the desk.

Trump backs off idea for joint US/Russian 'impenetrable Cyber Security unit'

Scroticus Canis
Stop

Re: WTF - @Bombastic Bob - How can you be so wrong?

Bonobos are not monkeys, they are great apes!

(mutters under breath "just like your troglodyte president")

Zero accidents, all of your data – what The Reg learnt at Bosch's autonomous car bash

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Re: Nut Bush City Limits. - "you never "drop it on purpose""

I would certainly prefer to slide under the railings/stationary truck than meet them face-on upright.

Payroll glitch at DXC leaves former staff in employment limbo

Scroticus Canis

Re: Correct image for this story @ Thtevie

Ith that you Igor?

Boffins with frickin' laser beams chase universe's mysterious trihydrogen

Scroticus Canis
Boffin

Re: dilithium - in crystalline form

Take a carbon atom and cut it exactly in two with Occam's razor - voilà dilithium! Now the crystalline bit is more difficult ....

Civil rights warriors file US lawsuit: Let us see Five Eyes agreement

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Re: I can't see many sitting back and allowing that to carry on.

Just about the entire combined populations of the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have done and sadly will continue to do so. They just don't care or give a damn.

Never underestimate the level of humanity's collective apathy! Homo sapiens indeed!

'Vicious' neutron star caught collecting dustbunnies

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: Three degrees - Kelvin scale

Also, Kelvin uses the centigrade scale formulated by Anders Celsius; it has no scale of its own.

The Philadelphia sound - no one can hear you eat cream cheese in space!

Happy 4th of July: Norks tests another missile

Scroticus Canis
Headmaster

Re: Preemptive strike - Do you mean "Pre-emtive"?

Just saying.

China pollutes ocean with bloody big rocket

Scroticus Canis
Trollface

Re: Long March - you read it some poetry didn't you?

No wonder why its AI decided to initiate self-destruct!

Talk about cutting-edge technology! Boffins fire world's sharpest laser

Scroticus Canis
Meh

No coherence! Please try harder.

I think the author is actually talking about the monochromatic photons being coherent* in a laser beam and how the coherence has been improved. However the article fails to mention this or make too much sense without it. Needs to try harder is my rating.

* Given that by its nature a laser beam is monochromatic (all photons of the same frequency or wavelength, if you prefer), what makes a it a laser is that the photons are coherent (in step or in-phase with each other) and it is this that makes the beam more powerful than say a monochromatic sodium vapour bulb in front of a parabolic mirror.

Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes

Scroticus Canis
Coat

Re: Ok, so do we say one Nylon Bloomer (Nb) = 85 kv ?

So a pair would be 170kv?

Only physically half-arsed people can get away with half a pair of bloomers/pants/knickers or even trousers.

Ever wondered why the universe only has black holes in S or XXXL? No? Boffins have an answer

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Re: It's "Dwarfs", not "Dwarves", unless you're Tolkien.

Or the OED*.

*Dwarf: noun (plural dwarfs or dwarves)

HMS Windows XP: Britain's newest warship running Swiss Cheese OS

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: So the aircraft carrier without aircraft runs on XP

Look on the bright side: 1 It hasn't sunk yet. 2 Without aircraft it doesn't matter what shit you use for flight-ops.

UK Parliament hack: Really, a brute-force attack? Really?

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

And these "wise" people run the country and make laws?

Oy shit!

Microsoft recommends you ignore Microsoft-recommended update

Scroticus Canis
Headmaster

"and a security improvements"

"and security improvements" or "and a security improvement" - was it several or just one?

UK and Ecuador working on Assange escape mechanism

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: A box without airholes is better known as a casket.

And your point being?

Yeah, if you could just stop writing those Y2K compliance reports, that would be great

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Re: Cobol a fossil? Bet it's around longer than Cher or the cockroaches

I was still teaching COBOL in the '90s, OK mostly to big corporation staff, but I bet much of that code is still running in a lot of Unix VMs emulating an old IBM or ICL mainframe runtime environment.

BOFH: Halon is not a rad new vape flavour

Scroticus Canis

Re: Halon?

Did a site risk assessment a couple of decades back in SA. The old mainframe machine room was being used for the ops/dev cube farm with an intact and active Halon system still in place; service inspection tickets three years out of date!

The "new" server room had no fire protection except for extinguishers (same for rest of building) but they had placed the servers underneath the air-con cassettes which had no drip trays.

To cap it all the whole lot was on the floor above the unsecured car park with no sprinkler system. Did I mention they had placed the power supply substation in the car park as it was shaded?

Oi.

Oh the irony: Government Digital Services can't pay staff because of tech problems

Scroticus Canis
Unhappy

Re: "Last month GDS switched over to a new payroll system"

One would have hoped that the systems would have been run in parallel for a few months before totalling the old one.

Sigh! Tried and trusted methods are just not fashionable any more.

It came from space! Two-headed flatworm stuns scientists

Scroticus Canis
Big Brother

Re: I suspect that they're still using the very same textbooks that you used.

Yes, but with half the pages ripped out.

Pretty sure my old A Level Chemistry books would now constitute literature "liable to be of aid to terrorists" as would the history books as they chronicle military methods and tactics.

Meteor swarm spawns new and dangerous branch

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: Interesting use of statistics... "lies, damned lies and statistics"

Yup, that's what the dinosaurs thought too.

US laptops-on-planes ban may extend to flights from ALL nations

Scroticus Canis
Big Brother

Re: South African Airlines flight 295

The Helderberg was carrying solid rocket fuel brought from Taiwan by the SA Government's Armscorp. The crew had no chance of extinguishing that once it started to react (reason unknown). That sort of stuff is so unstable it should never be transported on a passenger carrying flight and has little to do with laptops and Li-ion batteries.

The laptop bomb on the Air Somalia flight would have worked all too well if the terrorist had the smarts to wait until the plane was at cruising altitude. Reportedly the laptop had been x-ray examined during check-in.

The current flap is presumably because the terrorists have found a better way to make the explosives and detonator inconspicuous on x-rays.

'Major incident' at Capita data centre: Multiple services still knackered

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Customer service and data are not Mission Critical

The new Crapita motto.

Scroticus Canis
Happy

Re: The Revolution will be Virtualised

I almost understood that. Damn this spliff must be good or Are you back on the meds again?

Blighty's buying another 17 F-35s, confirms the American government

Scroticus Canis

Re: F-35A - the Widowmaker

Ah, yes I remember the Star fighters used by Germany. Special air into ground design.

Julian Assange wins at hide-and-seek game against Sweden

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

@ PatientOne - It's only the EU arrest warrant they're dropping

True, but why not let it run until 2020 after which it would fall away as would any potential charge under Swedish law? Does it cost money to have an open warrant?

I hope the Met don't screw up the skipping bail charges as this he is demonstrably guilty of. Nice bit of real bird and then an Australian Gov. paid ticket back to Oz as PNG*

* persona non grata not Papua New Guinea though I can think of a place there for him.

Mi casa es su casa: Ubuntu bug makes 'guests' anything but

Scroticus Canis
Facepalm

Re: "We can only imagine the pointing and laughing"

Artful Aardvark or Abject Aardvark? ROFL.

What augmented reality was created for: An ugly drink with a balloon

Scroticus Canis
Trollface

Re: "With a short, sharpened iron bar "

Bugger the screwdriver; a short crowbar works much better as a shin cracker.

We are 'heroes,' says police chief whose force frisked a photographer

Scroticus Canis
Holmes

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

It has been apparent for some time that police recruitment has been scraping the bottom of the barrel; now Sussex Police seem to be digging underneath it and not just for the newbies.

Fire fighters get grinding on London man’s trapped genitalia

Scroticus Canis
Gimp

Re: Engineering fail

A committee designing a cock ring would end up producing a butt plug.