* Posts by DropBear

4733 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013

Revealed: How a weather forecast in 1967 stopped nuclear war

DropBear
Mushroom

Re: But, the question everyone want answering

"would be..... could you still play Pokemon Go?"

I feel dirty joking about this, but... well, what you need to play aside your smartphone is the cloud, no? Well, availability of clouds on a such event would be guaranteed --->

Italian MP threatens parents forcing veggie diets on kids with jail

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Mussolini's diet

Bah! What utter rubbish! What traditional Italian food (or any food for that matter, in sufficient quantity) does do is demonstrably increase gravity locally. It's noticeably harder to fight it after a good meal...

DropBear
Trollface

Vegan murderers! How dare you! Carrots and parsnips are alive too! You're all chewing on the bones of our mother Gaia!!!

NASA test foiled by rocket shaking power cord loose from camera

DropBear

I swear I saw some of the patterns in that plume in the first version of Dune...

Billion-tonne IceCube: Sterile neutrino does not exist

DropBear
Trollface

Re: So what's the latest explanation for the bumps in the data...

That they were certainly around at the time the first experiment was done but with being sterile and all that they died out of natural causes by the time of the second...

'Alien megastructure' Tabby's Star: Light is definitely dimming

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Photino birds

...but... but... but... it's already full of vacuum!

'Nigerian scammer' busted after he infected himself with malware

DropBear

Re: Amazingly

I get at least one of those a week (oh and lieutenant Ferrara is still alive and well), but I only see them if I hit up the spam folder on my gmail looking for a lost _real_ receipt or something - Google invariably intercepts them as they come...

EDIT: derp, just noticed the _SNAIL_ part - oops! That's indeed something... :)

Your 'intimate personal massager' – cough – is spying on you

DropBear
Trollface

"When arrested, did the perpetrators come quietly?"

Stop saying that...!"

Perlan 2: The glider that will slip the surly bonds of Earth – and touch the edge of space

DropBear
Facepalm

Re: This makes me wonder . .

"You're very confused about the altitude of geostationary orbit."

...they say the first rule of finding yourself in a hole is to stop digging. But it's not like you have to.

DropBear

Re: This makes me wonder . .

" if you go high enough, that _will_ be enough to stay in orbit"

Well, much higher is one way to put it, but basically yes. According to the first online orbital calculator I could find, approximately two million kilometers up the orbital speed happens to be almost exactly the 1600 km/h we have standing on the equator. That of course means pretending the Sun or the Moon have nothing to say about the issue (I'm sure they both do), but, basically, two million kilometers straight up you can apparently indeed stay up indefinitely...

Microsoft: You liked Windows 10 so much, you'll get 2 more in 2017

DropBear

"So I do understand why M$ is using that error obfuscation policy"

Sorry mate, NAVE (Not A Valid Excuse). They still could have started with an error number THEN the wall'o'text, so those that prefer to quote a number over the phone to the tech support guy would be just as happy as those preferring to see instructions to fix the issue themselves.

Classic Shell hackers: We infected FossHub so ransomware couldn't (and yeah, also for fun)

DropBear

Re: Fosshub

Okay, be honest - prior to all this did you really _know_ that Classic Shell is _supposed to be_ signed? If not, do you always research beforehand whether something you want to install is supposed to be signed or not, even when downloading from a source generally perceived as legit? If yes, do you have more than ten pieces of software installed? Because I have many hundreds, and occasionally use them all...

West country cops ponder appearance of 40 dead pigeons on A35

DropBear

Re: Oi've got a brand new pigeon harvester

"the birds were trapped/roosting in some farm machinery"

Like, all 40 of them...? Seriously?

Jeep hackers: How we swerved past Chrysler's car security patches

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Mine uses...

...430THz? That's so last year's tech. Mine works on minus 27MHz...

Users of secure chat app Telegram popped after possible nation-state attack

DropBear

Re: Your html for a link to a Reuters article is broken

"tips and corrections link"

You will have a point when that goes to an online form instead of expecting one to send a mail one might not even be able to access from the location one reads the article from. Not until then. Considering the El Reg site seems to be running from a one-time programmable ROM chip (see also https) I fully expect the heat death of the universe to occur first.

Cray profits literally go up in smoke after electrical incident

DropBear

I'm left wondering exactly how thick a smoke needs to be to actually _damage_ something other than it's own source - and my guess is they're not talking about ruining the paintjob, they should be able to swap out a case quickish-like... unless the issue is that then they need to redo all the acceptance testing they might have done already.

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

DropBear

Re: I am getting old.

"How doesn't know about it?"

Who is this How fellow? Some millennial whipper-snapper perhaps?

DropBear
Devil

Re: At last, a candidate with some integrity!

It's never too late to let Sithrak into your heart...

Crocodile well-done-dee: Downed Down Under chap roasted by exploding iPhone

DropBear
Childcatcher

Re: Phlogisticated phone phries pedalist

As a phull phellow of the phederation of phormer phone phreaks I phind this phiendish pharce prophoundly ophphensive and I... oh, phorget it.

Virgin Galactic wins US operator's licence for SpaceShipTwo

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Space travel—for those who don't know what that is

Right. I hereby propose that any further references to this and other similar vehicles be made henceforth as the more appropriate "cosmic roller-coaster"...!

Black Hats control Jeep's steering, kill brakes

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Why? @chris miller

"Sadly you would have to get an old car"

I take issue with your calling my car "old" - it barely reached adult age!

Boffins shrink light-twister to silicon scale, multiply bandwidth 10x

DropBear

Re: Light is the exact same thing as radio waves (just shorter)

Apparently, yes, they did try. The whole concept is flying way over my head, but I do get the very distinct impression that our significantly spirited friend a bit higher up is in that exact same boat.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update: This design needs a dictator

DropBear
Flame

"Win … Win-anne … Wau…Wau-ten. No. It can’t be that."

Actually, the way "Dubiya-ten-au" sounds has a rather sinister WWII resonance...

'The box' Bones uses to fix any ailment on the Enterprise? Yup, it's real

DropBear

Re: Star Trek is not responsible for everything futuristic

...or, like the few hundred years further evolved "ring".

Chinese Android smartphone firm: It packs a dedicated crypto chip

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Cool

"Equivalent to a black box"

GADZOOKS! IT HAS THE WHOLE INTERNET BUILT-IN?!?

Fun fact of the day: Network routers are illegal in Japan

DropBear

" under both the Japanese Constitution and its relevant telecoms law, it is now allowed to snoop on communications"

Is that legit? I thought the idea was that the law was the one saying "thou shalt not snoop" otherwise what's the problem with routers...?

Jovian moon Io loses its atmosphere every day

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Sulfur

"Well, that's just like, your opinion, man..." - Sulphur FTW, and Pluto is a planet!

Giant Musk-stick test-firing proves a rocket can rise twice

DropBear
Facepalm

Re: Seriously impressive.

"Do we have longer or shorter days now?"

That's an accurate portrait of J.T. Maston of the Baltimore Gun Club --->

DropBear
Trollface

Re: All nice and well, but

can the rocket also start and land from... say... inside an old volcano?"

Sorry, no. This one's only certified for launch from under swimming pools...

Flight sim records show MH370 captain practiced 'flight' near search area

DropBear
WTF?

Re: Debris field

"taking airliners under bridges. It doesn't mean I'm intending on doing it."

Unless you were piloting an aircraft that went missing and was last spotted heading straight for a bridge which happens to have paint marks consistent with the paint on your plane's tail. In which case you clearly and obviously DID intend to.

Reg readers head to pub to hear about the digital home

DropBear

Not sure what happened there but I couldn't understand a single word even with every volume slider and knob cranked to eleven. A pity, I was really interested in this one...

NASA puts lenses through a different drill to stare at the Sun

DropBear

Quite. I was looking at the image going "what has this got to do with a Fresnel lens?!?"

Captain Piccard's planet-orbiting solar aircraft in warped drive drama

DropBear

Re: A Great Thing Was Achieved....

Wrong. What can be achieved by combining wings with an engine and a propeller was unknown at the time of the Wright brothers. What can be achieved today with combining solar cells, batteries, and engines with wings is exceedingly well known today, which is coincidentally why nobody in their right mind bothers anymore.

DropBear
Facepalm

Re: "I'm sure that within 10 years we'll see electric airplanes transporting 50 passengers"

These sort of predictions tend to extrapolate revolutionary advances in the next <insert convenient timespan> based on the Moore's law-like rapid advance we can plainly see today in aerodynamics, electric turbines, solar cells and battery technology. Commencing any second now, honest, guv. Any second...

Microsoft to rip up P2P Skype, killing native Mac, Linux apps

DropBear
Facepalm

Re: All you conversations

Unfortunately, any "replacement" needs to be free and easily installable. It's not that I might not be willing to pay a modest fee for proper peace of mind, but one needs to be able to convince everybody else currently using Skype to convert to the replacement too, and that definitely won't fly if I need to tell them "well, if you want to keep talking to me just delete Skype and get a monthly SIP subscription then please follow this easy not-at-all technical 101-step tutorial on how to set up your phone to use it, I have another slightly longer one for your laptop..."

DropBear

Possibly because they don't give a f### about any of the technology they "buy" - they are buying user bases to hopefully monetise, not the tech they eventually just discard.

Fear not, humanity – Saint Elon has finished part two of his world-saving 'master plan'

DropBear

I'm afraid the cat's out of the bag there. Trucks take your stuff from point A to point B, trains take your stuff from point X to point Y none of which is where your stuff is or wants to get to. It's certainly not _impossible_ to transfer cargo twice, it's just that nobody seems to be willing to take such pains unless faced with the barrel of a shotgun, at the very least, as long as they can just use a truck (and that's assuming that there even IS an X somewhere near to A and a Y right next to B...).

Star Trek Beyond: An unwatchable steaming pile of tribble dung

DropBear

Maybe I should dust off "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning" and watch good old CPP Kickstart again instead...

DropBear

Re: ...and get the hell off my lawn!

You may not mind living Hollywood's equivalent of Groundhog Day all the time, but some of us really, really do especially when reboots all but rape the essence of the originals. Not that I'm not a grumpy git - I totally am - but this has nothing to do with that.

DropBear

Re: I was counting on the *odd*-numbered ones this time round ...

"I was counting on the *odd*-numbered ones this time round"

Sorry, Microsoft failed so hard with its "this should be the good one" Windows 910 that they broke the underlying quantum mechanism of reality, so now it doesn't work for Trek movies or anything else "one good / one bad" either anymore... :(

Google tests its own quantum computer – both qubits of it

DropBear

Re: " am I at my desk working or am I drinking cocktails on the Riviera"

"Neither, you're shut in a box with a cat and some other stuff."

...actually, that sound like it might make a fairly interesting premise for a "escape the room" game...

Firefox to banish hidden Flash files – and kill off sneaky ad snoopers

DropBear

Re: That graph is seriously dodgy

"lies / damned lies / statistics"...

Schrödinger's cat explained with neutrinos

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Schrödinger's glowing cat?

"50/50 chance that the cat is dead"

Oh, it's much worse than that actually - even AFTER you open the box to find a motionless cat: is it dead or only pining for the fjords?!?

DropBear

Re: Quantum theory and spatial dilution.

"Isn't Michael H.F. Wilkinson a commentard on here, too?"

Possibly, but only after he's observed...

Hacker shows Reg how one leaked home address can lead to ruin

DropBear

Re: This is data that should not be sensitive

...well, I'd hate to burst your precious bubble, but strictly speaking pretty much all typical non-security-reinforced doors are essentially cardboard-level resistant against anyone actually prepared to hack at them with any sort of hefty sharp instrument.

DropBear
Mushroom

Re: I am too smart for my information to get out

"a sickness that needs to be cured"

While I insist to have nothing to do with Facebook, ever, I also have deep, deep allergies to any "sickness" that "needs to be cured". Like being gay. Or a jew. Do I really need to Godwin this thread explicitly or is the point clear enough?!?

What keeps former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani awake at night?

DropBear

"You know what saved us [on 9/11]?"

Nothing did, you idiot. You've been on a slow slide to nowhere ever since... :(

Maxthon web browser blabs about your PC all the way back to Beijing

DropBear
Facepalm

A few days ago I tried looking for an Android browser that can do page reflow - guess what, there are a few free (and wildly popular) ones, and every single one of them has been caught leaking URLs (!) back home at some point in time - so I installed absolutely none of them. Which left only Opera.

...oh wait...

McCain: Come to my encryption hearing. Tim Cook: No, I'm good. McCain: I hate you, I hate you, I hate you

DropBear

Re: Coronary Heart Disease...

"Faster! Faster would be better!" - Firefly

DropBear
Mushroom

Re: Banning encryption won't stop an attack like the one in NIce @AC

"France has been policing more and more lately. Didn't help with a crazy individual" THAT THEY ALREADY KNEW OF. Just like of every single one of the others who ended up stirring shit up. Perhaps they should rethink how security is supposed to be done - maybe a bit of proffesional focus instead of grabbing more arbitrary blanket "powers" the idiots seemingly have no clue how to use effectively. Waiting for them to march into the closest Géndarmerie and give themselves up voluntariliy doesn't seem to work so well - I wonder did they notice that yet?!?