* Posts by Rob

109 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007

Shell waves goodbye to 3,000 IT staffers in $4bn outsourcing gig

Rob
Paris Hilton

shock and surprise

Whilst i am amazed that companies still seem to think outsourcing is a good idea, -b shubin has it dead on there from what I've seen, I'm even more amazed that mars man has made a vaguely coherent post.

(i only read it accidentally, honest, my eyes just slide right over them usually)

well done whoever wrote that bot, it's getting slightly better.

Paris, as she'd welcome all 3000 ex-shell people with open appendages

Blighty's Museum of Computing forced to go mobile

Rob
Paris Hilton

no no, don't do it

well as someone unfortunate enough to actually live in swindon (for now) i would strongly recommend you look elsewhere, anywhere other than swindon tbh, i used to think plymouth was the arse end of england, now i know better.

i went to milton keynes the other day and it seemed really nice, in fact everywhere i have been since moving to swindon has seemed really nice now i think about it.

If anyone knows of any redeeming features in the area i'd love to hear about it. I drive past the 'magic roundabout' regularly, and i don't count the railway museum as much of a draw, those are the 2 highlights i'm aware of so far..

Paris, as she is way classier than the chav slappers congregating in swindon.

Asus releases application kit for Eee PC coders

Rob
Paris Hilton

Heresy

Does anyone live near Mr Russell? -if so could they pop round and see if he weighs the same as a duck please..

Paris, as she'd probably also do the eee bikini girl.

IT industry needs more women

Rob
Paris Hilton

yes to women

I agree, there are far too few women working in IT, i've not had a girlfriend for over 5 years now and i'm only 30, so I'm thinking the odds would be better if there were any women at all around really.

Paris, 'cause I'd be at work on time every day if she were in my cubicle & it would be funny watching her try to troubleshoot a linux box or a network -oh and maybe the air con would have broken, and it would be getting really really hot in there..

i'll just go lie down for few minutes now.

Florida cops taser naked old timer

Rob
Paris Hilton

nudity vs violence

oh come on people, everyone knows that in merkland nudity is equivalent to waving around an ak47 elsewhere in the world, and vice-versa.

Paris, as she'd look good either way.

HP's Linux sub-notebook spied on web

Rob
Paris Hilton

loks nice, but what price

it does indeed look interesting, especially the bigger screen, but one of the main appeals of the eee is it's price, so how much is this one going to be?

Paris, as she probably also likes funky electric toys

Elonex punts £99 Linux laptop

Rob
Paris Hilton

lid size = screen size

this looks even worse than the eee to be honest, if screens are so expensive they have to use these piddly little ones that mean you get huge ugly bezels wasting space around the edges, surely it would make sense to offer one with a proper lid sized screen? -same with the eee really. yes it would cost more, but surely not that much?

(& yes, i have absolutely no idea how much differing screen sizes would affect the bill of materials)

Paris, as she would also like to see the big picture.

Human rights group pleads for condemned Saudi 'witch'

Rob
Paris Hilton

laugh or cry?

I can only hope this is a joke/misunderstanding of some sort, i mean convicted of witchcraft in this day & age?? or do they have proof of 'witchery' that we don't know of?

on the other hand, I'd accept a broomstick as a substitute for my flying car, just show me a real witch & i'm there, I'm sure we could solve many problems with a judicious application of magic.

Do those dumb ass saudis still get pissed off if people go around saying the world orbits the sun, not vice-versa, or that it's is not actually flat?

Paris, 'cause even she wouldn't believe in witches any more.

AMD ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 dual-GPU graphics card

Rob
Boffin

X2 in cross fire?

So can you put 2 X2's together, in crossfire, for a 4 GPU pixelfest?

(not that i have 2 of them, just curious..)

Straw launches inquiry into Muslim MP bugging case

Rob
Paris Hilton

why a ban on bugging politicians?

I keep hearing on the news that bugging politicians has been banned for the last 40 years, does anyone know the thinking, if any, behind that rule?

Putting aside the fact that politicians seem to think they can bug anyone they want whenever they want, surely politicians themselves are the most deserving of scrutiny, they keep saying they are not lying, and prove repeatedly that they do lie and cheat, so I propose that all politicians be bugged all day, every day, so long as they are in a position of power.

To further their accountability, you could have a webcast from their transmitters, sort of like big brother, where the general public could listen in and see what their tax money was being spent on.

It seems like a win-win situation for everyone really, i mean who in govt. could reasonably object to a massive invasion of privacy with a fuzzy scope & dubious benefits..

-Paris, as she also likes the world to know what she's up to

Sun open sources doohickeys

Rob
Thumb Up

for robotics

i think this could be pretty neat for hobby robotics, depending on size and power consumption etc.. not sure how it's going to measure up against the gumstix boards though.

http://gumstix.com/

Critics split over DDoS attacks on Scientology

Rob
Paris Hilton

B rate sci-fi author

LRH may have been a bit B rate, but he was still pretty good on occasion, and I seem to recall reading somewhere that he not only had a good sense of humour, but originally set up CoS as a bit of a joke.

With a sci-fi writers long term vision, i was thinking how much more interesting it would be if he did it all deliberately to destroy organised religion, as other posters have pointed out, the difference between one fictional entity and another may be hard to define, so if he made CoS obnoxious enough to to come to official attention, under the right circumstances it just might be enough to bring it all down..

unlikely i know, but it's friday afternoon and i like to day dream the world isn't all bad.

I choose Paris, because she'd never get the joke

Pantone cranks up the whalesong

Rob
Paris Hilton

hmm, blue..

so does that mean blue is now the new black?

Paris Hilton cavorts naked in middle of desert

Rob
Pirate

@brilliant, ham in a can

that would be spam wouldn't it?

I always rated that at the about the same culinary level as dog food.

Rob
Paris Hilton

bigger pic please

have you got a higher res version of that goldfinger pic so i can have my own personal paris on my desktop?

-I'm sure i'm not the only one keen to have something larger.. (fnar)

Lily Allen to judge Orange women's fiction award

Rob
Stop

the women-only £30k award

I thought we were meant to be big on sexual equality these days? :(

yes, i am not a woman, I feel discriminated against, & how do you know i have not written a book.

England flops shafted by enormous todger

Rob
Mars

football?

there was a football match on was there? -and we lost you say?

"tries to give a damn and fails"

(i choose the icon that looks a bit like a football/tit)

Iowa house swallowed in grain bin collapse

Rob
Paris Hilton

Daughter's name?

We have Jesse, Jennifer & Jordan, yet you didn't mention the daughter's name, i need to know if it begins with a J as well.

-Where's the Paris angle on this?

Americans clueless on NASA budgets

Rob
Flame

Shorter headline

seeing as you asked for it, you could have gone for a shorter headline:

"Americans Clueless"

Orbital tourism industry holds spacewear fashion show

Rob
Paris Hilton

Nice Bonus

I've always wanted to go into space, and I've always wanted to see girls, preferably wearing as little as possible, as i have thus far failed on both counts, this is definitely good news.

mm, mini skirts in 0-G, great idea. (very practical you see, wouldn't hinder movement)

Camelot pulls scratchcard amid numerical anarchy

Rob
Paris Hilton

flabergasted

I am quite frankly shocked that someone would get confused over this, maybe we could use it as a marker for compulsory sterilisation?

Virgin Media stops the rot

Rob
Thumb Down

they can't even do 20meg

I called virgin last night (reluctantly) and asked to upgrade my broadband connection, as it is slow, they reluctantly agreed before saying they couldn't do it as i already had the max.

So i have a 20meg line, and can download at about 100 to 150k /sec, woohoo.

i'm moving my internet over to sky adsl, it says a lot about virgin's service that having to get a bt (/spit) line put back in is now the better option.

BT and sky were both quick to pick up the phone & fairly helpfull as well, whereas virgin was neither.

(to cap it off, the tv menu & settop box is really quite bad imo, especially compared to sky+)

EU unveils air passenger 'risk profiling' plan

Rob
Pirate

oo, oo, don't forget boats

we should definately have these systems for all public transport, i saw a film once where this ferry crashed into a beach & caused loads of damage, the binary liquid explosives were on a film too, so it must be a valid threat, right?

-and full body cavity searches before allowing anyone on trains either, you can't be too carefull.

Petty crimes, 150,000 kids and a million new records

Rob
Paris Hilton

Yes we should stop them, but..

Seeing as they are the ones who make the rules, how exactly can we stop them from doing anything they want to?

If that involves taking your DNA for swearing at a badger, you might disaprove, but really, what can you do?

-and don't tell me to vote for someone else next time, because that won't affect DNA being put in the database NOW, and once it's in there, what's the chances no-one. anyone, anywhere, has made a 'backup'?

Plus, voting for just a different bunch of identikit morons to be in power isn't going to change anything, i say we all vote green next time, they can't make it much worse, ad at least they'd have good intentions.

X-Factor singer withdraws over 'happy slapping' vid

Rob
Paris Hilton

oddness

Whilst i despise x-factor and it's inbred televisual relations, what does this girl's being a psycho bitch have to do with her singing ability?

Demon satnav imprisons plucky trucky in pasty hell

Rob
Happy

Brilliant article

"managed to struggle free of the cab and evade any banjo-playing inbred cannibal psychotics who may have been lurking in the surrounding thickets"

Ah, good old Devon, i remember it well, never been back though.

Cops expose cross-dressing Catholic school principal

Rob
Paris Hilton

hmm, maybe i was wrong

Good to see organised religion expanding it's horizons a little bit in it's quest for money, I think this is a much better approach than asking for donations, a good hard days work never hurt anyone.

-although if your chosen line of work is to be a transvestite gimp prostitute you might be limiting your potential clientele, i suppose you could charge more though.

where's the P/H angle?

Police aim to stamp out virtual child abuse

Rob
Dead Vulture

Bunch O' retards

"Ceop's primary concern is the possibility that Second Life, or other virtual environments, might be misused to groom youngsters for abuse"

OMG!! we must bad air asap, people might misuse it as a medium to do bad things, won't someone think of the children!!!

and while we are at it, all the crimes i hear of seem to have been commited under the influence of both gravity and bread, ban em both!!

Grass up romantic sadsacks for only $4.99 a month

Rob
Coat

they havn't really thought that one out i think

So, you go on a blind date, get on really well, and as the reg says, you're not going to post a glowing report to attract competitors.

On the other hand, you go on a blind date, don't get on at all, and you are likely to post a crappy report about them.

So where, how, when & why would anyone ever post a good report about someone? -unless it's more about serial dating, or swinging or something, maybe i'm missing something and that's why i'm single...

Of opposable thumbs and software engineering

Rob
Boffin

adverts, really..

if you are reading el reg, it's surely not beyond your abilities to get adblock installed into firefox, set up a few basic filters like " *doubleclick* " and you'll pretty much never see another ad.

-also with adblock, ctrl-shift F will overlay annoying flash you missed with a blank image.

Erratic fleshies sabotage, wreck innocent flying robot

Rob
Boffin

WTF kind of setup is that?

To be honest, i feel that the pilot really should/could have done a bit better, all things considered, but does this not strike people as just a little odd:

"a certain lever changes its function from control of the camera iris to control of the fuel feed to the aircraft's engine"

I mean really, surely thats totally idiotic to change a function from something relatively trivial like a camera, to engine on/off??

Wouldnt you be a bit peeved if when you booted windows in safe mode (or whatever OS you are using), the "start" button changed it's function to format your hard drive or something?

It's probably just another coverup for an alien crash site, they'll turn round and say "it might sound stupid, but that's why it must be true" or somesuch nonsense

Nokia slides latest Linux tablet onto market

Rob
Happy

@Long Live PDAs

without having to replace my precious "portable brain."

I'm quite intrigued about the implication that your other, non-replacable brain, is not portable

Nokia wants to reach out and Touch

Rob
IT Angle

hmm

I love gadgets and stuff as next as the next person, but this isn't going to increase the battery life any is it? -and that's pretty much the most important feature of a phone, besides it's ability to make calls of course..

Student suspended in gun rights email row

Rob
Mars

Crazy Merkins

I always thought it would just be boring if we all thought the same thing, but man there's some really crazy people pretending to be sane out there in merkland..

Computer glitch nixes death row appeal in Texas

Rob

late??

They stayed "very late" and i quote here, bearing mind that a man's life is on the line:

Judge Paul Womack was one of those who stayed in the office, waiting for the appeal. "All I can tell you is that night I stayed at the court until seven o'clock in case some late filing came in,"

7pm is late these days?? i don't know about you, but i've stayed a lot later than that for something less important than someones life.

Police cuff 77 in fake cheque crackdown

Rob

@Blame the victims

Surely it's possible to be greedy and honest?

-stupid is something else again..

Science and religion collide for galactic conference

Rob

Solid Science

Yes, because i really want to rely on the wisdom of people who hear voices in their heads and feel proof is an optional extra, what a curious way of being scientific..

Maybe we could also try to extend this interesting idea and use the wisdom of crowds effect to solve problems by building a beowulf cluster out of all the asylum inmates we have.

We'll have quantum mechanics sussed in no time.

Apple iPod Nano third-generation

Rob

Bloody Ipods

Yes they look nice and are shiny, but why the fuck do i have to use bloody itunes just to get the damn thing to do anything other than play tunes?

The day i can drag and drop mp3 files into folders, and use the spare space on an ipod as storage, for whatever i feel like is the day i might stop disliking apple so much, Sony wanabe scum

-or am i wrong?

New York Times and Murdoch gunning for more clicks

Rob

@annoying adds

go here and install it into firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10

then you can stop anything that has, for example, "doubleclick" in it's path from ever being displayed. -it makes the internet a pleasure rather than a pain once more.

(my favorite shortcut is: ctrl-shift f; it overlays all flash with a static image which can be either used to block the annoyance permanently, or give flashy ads a 3 fingered salute)

I really really hate all advertising, i think it should be banned preferably, but until then, sky+ and adblock make it bearable.

World of Warcraft smites den of orc and elf sexual delinquency

Rob

@Scott

You're right, but america is allways coming across that way, GTA is a great example, it got in trouble for that hot-choc mod, which as far as i could see was a couple of blurry pixels, whereas no-one batted an eyelid at killing random pedestrians.

It's like the age of consent over there, you can go to war/drive/own guns, before you are allowed to have sex legally, and as far as i know, safe sex between 2 consenting people is highly unlikely to hurt anyone.

Must be some religious thing.. i hope it makes sense to someone, i think it should be the exact opposite way round myself, sex = good, violence = bad, but not in yank-land.

Zombies flood broadband networks

Rob

@Noisy Adverts

Is your ad-block broken? -maybe try rebooting your windows..

USAF flying deathbot power-grab rebuffed

Rob

All the gear and..

"Note to non-US readers: the US Marines normally count as a separate service. Probably fair enough, as they are about the size of two British services combined."

quality rather than quantity i say, unless your talking about cannon fodder, in which case it's the other way round.

Innocent 'terror techie' purges DNA records

Rob

slackers, put some effort into your lies

so they are basically saying that out of 667,737 people sampled, in one year, they only made 115 mistakes? surely that's an absurd claim to make, unless they only arrest people they are absolutely sure are guilty.

That and a supposedly intelligent person saying "data might make it's own way onto the net"

-by becoming self aware and replicating itself do you mean? that would definately be a concern if my personal information started doing that, the implication would be enough to make you dizzy, or schizophrenic, good job there is no-one to blame if it leaked itself.

The whole thing just sounds like they are getting to the point where they can't really be bothered to try decieving us any more..

Canada develops motorised parachute delivery bot

Rob

yes, but what's all the batteries for?

I think the goose is pretty cool, but the main point of the article surely is that spec ops forces are willing to give away their position for something that is more essential to them than food or water:

"Maybe some food and water, too, but mainly batteries. God knows what those guys have out there, but it's power hungry."

And the main one of course is ammo, but that is not even mentioned, which suggests that they are using energy weapons of some sort, or maybe invisibility cloaks.

Sony loses privacy complaint over Unfit Kids

Rob

once again: corporations are not people

This really winds me up, companies, such as Sony, are not people, they should not have the same rights as people, nor a legal position as being a person, or any other such nonsense.

There are actual people in charge of these organisations, and they should be held accountable for their actions, and those of their employees, that's what is supposed to justify their monstrous salaries, not palming off their responsibility to some faceless entity.

"Sony" should never be able to appear in court as it is not a person, for the root-kit debacle, it should have been the person who thought it was a good idea... etc etc, you get my drift..

HP inks deal for micro-needle skin patch

Rob

Excellent News

I've got a diabetic friend who will be more than glad to say good bye to needles, great devellopment if they can use it for insulin.

41% of Londoners don't care about their pets

Rob

phone/contact list vs pet/looking after it

Tricky one that, i think it all depends on how the question was asked, I mean i would be a bit annoyed to loose all the contacts stored in my phone, the phone itself i couldn't care less about, and i doubt many people really have an emotional attachement to a lump of metal & plastic.

on the other hand a pet is unique and irreplacable, but most cat owners will be aware that their kitty could take it into their heads to run away or move in over the road at any time.

on the other other hand, my phone has never used my bed as a toilet.

Kung-fu monks can kick ass, but they can't reincarnate

Rob

The A-Team

The A-Team man, they're always defending people's honour, they really didn't commit that crime you know?

Nuke-frying raygun 747 all ready bar the raygun

Rob

aerogel in the news by coincidence?

How about putting a layer of this aerogel stuff under a mirror?:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2284349.ece

it looks like the 2 combined, plus maybe the spinning idea might have a good chance of at least holding off the laser long enough for the missile to get away or the laser to run out of juice.

although, i would have thought they would use it for the heat shielding on the shuttle as well, so maybe there's a good reason not to use it for either.

Pirated Simpsons movie traced to phone

Rob

@RE: If they'd have any sense

I think it is more a case of demanding to have it made available at all, than demanding to have it free.

If they released films on DVD the same day it was out in the cinema, i reckon piracy would plummet to almost nothing. (yes, i am a professional reckoner)