Two jets vs. Average Hurricane

Your average hurricane generates vast amounts of energy, the wind energy alone could be as much as half of the electrical generating capacity of the planet (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html).

Even if this system is in some kind of dynamic equilibrium it seems inconcievable that the energy generated by two supersonic jets could destabilise it to the point that it dissipates. A useful analogy might be a 1000 ton boulder sitting at the top of a hill that would need to rocked by a few degrees to make it roll down the hill and then suggesting that one person (sans lever, bulldozer, explosives, etc.) could achieve this. Total bollocks!

As said above: cod science for a bit of cheap publicity and possibly a night on whatever the local moonshine is in Ohio.

Going forward with out of the box blue skies leveraging of envelope pushing...

"As we move into the next phase of our development, the priority will be to build momentum in the rollout of our strategy."

Hehe.

Hahahahaha!

Ahhhh-hahahaha-hehe-haa!

That would still be the strategy to provide a "service" that no-one wants and is still possibly illegal and even so is never likely to make any money. I'd wish you good luck Mr Ertugrul but neither sarcasm nor blind optimism are my strong suits.

TROLL ALERT!!!

So that's why Windoze and other legacy OSs are so rubbish - because they spend comparatively little developing them? :)

Interblog Two-point-oh Carbon Manolo-Blahnik-Sandalprint Outrage

And another thing: have any of these eco-Twitterers bothered to calculate the extra carbon generated by all the hits and blog whines and sanctimoniously smug e-mails generated by this pointless little escapade? You can bet your organic carrots they haven't! How many minutes it that power station going to have to be turned back on for? And then there's the bloke who has to keep switching it on and off - how does he get there to do that? On his bike? Don't make me laugh! He goes in his 4x4 I bet! Where's your 53 tons of carbon saved now??

Oooh...I'm so mad (no, really...) I could write to the Daliy Mail about it or maybe start a website or a blog. We should get a Farcebollox group together to stop this kind of thing! Careful now! That would show them! That would change things...oh...ahh...what? I've contradicted myself there? Right...ttfn :)

Let me be the first smug git to ask...

...will this compromise a Linux machine? Thought not :)

/pub

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

...and I'll lock them up for you. Now if they've got a few bob that's another matter...might even chuck in a peerage if they're photogenic and agree to vote New Labour (tm)"

Jacqui "Clink" Smith

Oohhhh....so that's her name!

Sandy Crack! So cute, I think I'm in love....oops...now where are those screen wipes...??

Absolutely Fabulous

I bow to the superior knowledge of those who point out that this has been done before and that it is small beer, however there is something that is truly wonderful about this device: it's a new mobile gizmo that the Web two-point-oh-pians won't want to or be able to hype because it's a competent bit of engineering that fulfils a useful if mundane role. Twitter that! :p~

@SpitefulTROLL

Pierre explained this rather well and was very amusing at the same time, but perhaps his style was a little too subtle for a legacy OS luser like yourself.

(1) OS code is imperfect (like any bit of code, with the possible exception of Doom 3 - peace be upon it - which is a g(l)ory unto itself, amen) and that goes for MegaloCorp monopoly-capitalist M$ OS code as much as for free-range organic fairtrade hand-woven FOSS OS code like Ubuntu.

(2) When these imperfections are discovered they need to be fixed.

(3) Getting the fix once the new code is deemed stable is better than waiting until a particular day each month deemed astrologically most profitable by said MegaloCorp M$.

(4) Kiss my penguin's butt :p~

M$ 100% Windoze Update server uptime...

...and the patches only come once a month. If M$ deem the bug/vulnerability worthy of a fix. Maybe.

The points are well made about Ubuntu update servers being mirrored all around the world, but we also get updates much more promptly and much more frequently, we don't have to work on a system that remains vulnerable until "Patch Tuesday".

All your RAM are belong to us!!

Geez...gotta hate these patent-squatting losers who chuck their lawyers out of the pram when everyone says to them: "Actually we don't want to buy your products because they suck!"

Not just games

As an everyday Linux lu$3r, wannabe Linux geek and casual PC gamer it's quite obvious that gaming under Linux is not the most important factor for Linux to breakthrough in the consumer market. Gaming is a minority of the consumer market and is actually quite well catered for under Linux these days (Ubuntu auto-installing nVidia and ATI drivers, Wine+Cedega allowing many Windoze games to be played, more native Linux versions becoming available, etc.).

To overcome the massive inertia of Windoze (installed base, ready availability of tech support, third party hardware support, etc.) Linux would have to do everything better than Windoze, every time, right out of the box, i.e. a very tall order. What most people want is their printer to work, to sync their phone, dabble with their music and photos, surf their favourite social networking sites, etc.. While most of these work as well under Linux without much geekery (though not printing), and while almost everything is a whole lot better under Linux once tweaked by a nerd, that's not good enough for Joe Schmo and Plain Jane to consider changing yet. Perhaps more to the point it's not enough for the big consumer box shifters to risk plonking Linux on their boxes so that it arrives in front of Joe's & Jane's faces in PC TurdWorld.

That said it's good to see that the likes of the Gnome Foundation, Novell, Canonical, etc. are taking this as a serious problem that needs some serious work to address rather than going crying to mom that that bully Steve Ballmer won't let them play with his football.

Deploy the Twat-O-Tron!

I read about this in the Daily Mail! everyone knows This country is overflowing with illegal immigrants, even the local chippy is run by poles. They are interfering in our lives again. A wise man once said riot in the streets.

[UnionJackForever] Uk, United Kingdom

ROTM

This is clearly another sign that the Cylons are preparing their attack on humanity: Roper, and before him Sclavos, discovered that the Cylons are in control of everything that secures the internet. Therefore they had to be disposed of. They now have the means to control the whole human race: (i) online shopping (all females); (ii) net pR0n (all males). It's all in the tea leaves, just stop using the evil monstrosity that are tea bags!

Incidentally amanfromMars has known about this all along but is he our Dalek Caan or Gaius Baltar...

Holy turdspurt Batman...

...this looks like a job for the Freetard-O-Tron!

"wft!!!!! facsist bPI pWn3d my ISP an i got tihs leta mannn it sux bigt ime!!!!!!!!"

Dear freetards,

There are at least three different issues going on here, mixing them all together and then ranting about the unholy mess just makes you look dim. Let's try to unravel them...

(1) lots of people have been stealing copyrighted material on-line for quite a while now, to the point that some people now feel that it is their god(TM)-given right to do so. Wrong. We just happen to be around at one of those junctures in history where the new medium is taking over from the old and this new Wild West Frontier will be tamed at some point and it will become difficult/pointless/socially unacceptable for large numbers of people to continue to steal copyrighted digital media;

(2) the BPI are a bunch of shites represtenting the old attitudes of the media megalo-corps that our money belongs to them and that they should have to provide us with as little quality product as possible in exchange. Wrong. As the ongoing demise of DRM in music shows, media companies will eventually (slowly and kicking and screaming in most cases) have to provide quality usable product at a reasonable price as a more effective strategy to combat piracy;

(3) spineless shortsighted ISPs like VM think they can continue milk their customers like cash cows providing the bare minimum of service and not looking beyond the antiquated all-you-can-eat fixed price broadband model that is slowly failing as the sums don't add up any more. Again wrong. As with (1) and (2) the ISP business model will have to evolve (whether that means music ISPs, metered broadband or whatever) and the dinosaurs like VM will become extinct.

To all those comments about how wonderful Typhoon, Churchill, Blighty, etc. ad nauseam are...

...you're missing the bleedin' point. All these extortionate willy-waggling big boys toys (like Typhoon, the Trident replacement, etc.) offer are bragging rights/junkets/backhanders for politicians and top brass while the execs and shareholders of arms companies laugh all the way to the bank. The same execs and shareholders of the 'British' arms industry are the same people who are bellyaching about paying British taxes when they already pay less pro rata that a cleaner on minimum wage.

And if we don't have platinum plated fighters or bigger glow-in-the-dark nukes we're going to be vulnerable to the Russians and the Chinese? I'm sorry but watching a bunch of 007 movies hasn't raised your grasp of geo-politics and economics above the infantile.

And even if we make these fabulously futile weapons ourselves do you think that the USA would allow us to use them *even* if our spineless politicians decided to stand on their own two feet and take a different line from the yanks? More likely we will just be acting out our usual role as the convenient junior arm of US foreign policy and paying through the nose for the pleasure.

And as for all that bollocks about British jobs in the arms industry: those are some of the most expensive jobs in the British economy (with the possible exceptions of the royal family and those chaps who hand-make wallpaper for the Lord Chancellor's office) and if the money were invested in public services and manufacturing unemployment would be slashed and we might see the beginnings of a country we could be proud of.

Hmmm....£25+bn....

....wtf are we spending all that money on these flying phallic extensions for? With all that money we could buy enough friends around the world to avoid having any stupid wars and still have change left over for a teaching hospital in every large city, more pies than Prescott can regurgitate in a year and a taxi ride home.

Oh...forget the taxi home...bloody price of fuel...*mutter*....stupid invading large oil-producing country...*grumble*...damned medieval Saudis we've been backing for decades...*whinge*...

Subtilior: Canada awaits, bye! :)

But on a more serious note the Torygraph article states that Canada wants our management consultants! As the saying goes: every proto-racist ignorant nostalgic diatribe has a silver lining. Or sumfin like dat, innit...

A yard of flying boob?

Dearest Lester

Did you not challenge Prof Lawson re. the assertion that "a D-cup in a low-support bra can travel as much as 35 inches up and down during exercise"? If this were so such jubs could potentially become deadly weapons and ought to be banned from our streets along with other jihadi-paedo-terror activities like taking photos and walking the streets with your eyes open in the presence of minors.

Kindest regards,

Ian

But does it play...

...Jump In My Car when you cruise past attractive young women in your chavved-up Vauxhall Nova?

Hilarious!

Robert Scott wrote:

"Blah-blah <insert conservative myth> blah-bollox <insert blinkered patriotic baloney> bullshit-blah"

Hahaha-hooo-hohohohoh-hahaha-aahhh-hehehehe!

Mark S Deal wrote:

"Whine-whine <insert bizarre hyberbole> whinge-whine <insert ridiculous juxtaposition> moan-whinge"

So a little bit of satire at Bush's expense is comparable with Bush's crimes against humanity? Ask the relatives of those who have died in Abu Ghraib or those 'extraordinarily rendered' to be tortured in third countries or the parents of sick and dying Iraqi children living in streets running with raw sewage and no access to medical services. Personally I think Dubya (and Blair, Rumsfeld, etc.) should be locked up - but only after due process and a fair trial, a right that they have taken away from so many others.

E Pluribus Anus

Excellent! Nice to have our prejudices about yanks not having a decent sense of humour challenged. Then I guess if you have Dubya as your president you seriously need a sense of humour.

Of course they still can't spell humo(u)r...

Careful John - The Grauniad bekons!

Excellent and concise bit of analysis, thank you John. Oh and if you do land a plum job on an elusive liberal broadsheet don't forget about us back here in El Reg land!

@Paul Stephenson

Being a long-standing VM customer I can reassure you that they have not been head-hunting government dorks, lusers and arrogant incompetent gimps: VM seem to have an endless supply of these. Something to do with their 'pay them peanuts' remuneration package and 'mushrooms' HR policy (keep them in the dark and feed them sh*t) for their staff.

The only area they seem to spend money on real talent seems to be in their ad campaings. Unfortunately I never seem to get replies from either Uma Thurman or Samuel L Jackson to my complaints about their antiquated e-mail/webmail system and dreadful tech support.

Bah-humbug.

Not an Eee PC 901-beater

So it has substantially less battery life, is bulkier, noisier (2.5" HD vs. SSD), can't read SDHC cards (this is about downloading your snaps not about expanding your storage space - duh!), only has a single mic, won't do 802.11n and the Linux version isn't available for another month and is the same price as the Windoze version. Am I missing something?

Oh and how about some benchmarks compared to the 901? All things being equal with the 901 having an SSD and overclocking the Atom to 1.8GHz I know where my money is.

C'mon Andrew - must try harder!

Spot the difference:

Civil servant breaks procedure by removing sensitive docs, leaves them on a train and gets suspended subsequent to probable sacking or demotion.

Minister breaks procedure by downloading sensitive docs, PC is pinched and the No. 10 spin machine whirs into action declaring that the free world is safe as the machine was password protected.

Now where's that Linux live CD that edits the Windoze SAM file...

I must be missing something...

...but surely it would be cheaper and less tricky to simply make robo-blob a bit smaller than to give it the complex mechanics and spatial brains/awareness to allow it to squeeze through holes smaller than itself.

By the way: 'It would probably be within the rules of the game for the robot to...release a gas in order to "perform a function".' Cunning! A farting robo-blob! I suppose while <Insert emeny/name of current Islamo-terror-jihadi-bod here> is having a good laugh about said flatulent fleshy droid, GI Jane nips round the back and melts him with her new electro-plasmatron gun fresh from the particle accelerator firing ranges at DARPA...

Big Apple Pooch Hoover

No description of the alleged "street-cleaning truck" was given here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/16/mutt_suck_truck/ other than to say "the truck was speeding". Perhaps this was in fact a low-level urban test flight for this new robo-wombat-suck-blow-a-tron.

And what a success: the stealth capabilities made everyone think it was a municipal garbage truck and four-legged-fleshy death was dealt out in double-quick time.

P.S. Thunderbird 2-point-oh-one?

Non-military applications

Impressive. But has anyone got a mod for this so it will drive my car home when I'm tired and emotional after seven or eight pints?

I'm so glad the Home Office takes IT security so seriously...

Quote: 'The Home Office bods “take information very seriously”. This incident will now be included in a review of the security of its websites, undertaken by the Independent Reviewer of Information Assurance, and due to report back in Spring 2009.'

Must be a very thorough review, already in progress and continuing until Spring 2009. And after it reports it will take no more than (lets be optimistic) three months to fully implement all of the excellent security recommendations. I'm so relieved that leaves such a tiny window of opportunity of about ***ONE WHOLE F*CKING YEAR*** for assorted miscreants to hack the Home Office and pinch our personal data, etc.!

Yep, I'd give up all my personal biometric data to these people. And I'd trust them to not abuse detention without trial. And I'm sure they wouldn't dream of using evidence obtained by torture from people kidnapped by the CIA and taken to Aghanistan, Morocco, <insert name of country lacking in human rights here>.

/end rant

Another (smug) wanker writes

Andrew wrote: "That wanker has a right old problem on his hands if he downloads a dodgie Java object or Firefox plugin. Easily coded to fuck windows, linux and mac to be fair. Linux/Mac have a console that support unix commands. simple "rm -rfv /" initiated by a bad plugin or java object would nuke the machine."

Care to show me an AV product that procects a PC from the luser clicking before engaing their brain? Care to show me an AV product that is of any genuine security benefit to us Linux lusers/wankers? The only benefit is that it allows us to check that the contents of a CD/memory stick/hard drive/whatever is safe to insert in a PC running a legacy OS from M$.

All flavours of Linux come with a proper firewall and none need AV software. Add NoScript and a bit of common sense with your mouse finger and your chances of being pWn3d are about the same as finding rocking-horse shit on your hand-woven FairTrade Andean mountain goat hair rug or a secure installation of Windoze.

Regards,

A. Wanker

Christpher Emerson: FUD or Troll - you decide! I mean we live in a democracy still, right?

Dearest Chris

Do you really think that Nottingham University has no means of regulating the conduct of its employees and students other than calling in Special Branch? So if Yusuf bin Walahi, mythical employee of a suspiciously dark complexion who has a distinctly sinister foreign accent, turns up late for a work a few times (in his role as Bolt Twiddler Third Class at Nottingham University's School of Advanced Psychoplastic Post-Modern Engineering) then his boss, the Bolt Twiddler General, will get on the blower to the Grand Wizard Witchfinder at MI6 to fit up poor Yusuf and failing that get him deported?

And now for news back in the real world...UK Universities have disciplinary procedures, bye-laws, codes of conduct, etc. coming out of their highly educated butts. Apparently though even the Vice Chancellor at Nottingham University (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vice-chancellor/vc.html) with his his fat >£100k salary does not have the common sense to say: "Has anyone actually asked this chap why he had this document and checked if his story stands up?" He was obviously too busy screaming and drooling in a mad panic when he heard someone say: "al Qa'eda".

Of course this isn't his field, Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Colin Campbell, he's...ermm...oh...a lawyer! Right...well I guess this isn't his area of expertise in the law, I doubt he's served on any bodies that would give him any insights into this kind of matter...ahhh....*ahem*...like the Standing Advisory Committee for Human Rights on Northern Ireland...oh...I see. Of course, he must be new in his job and still finding his feet, that'll be it...ummm...you say he's been the Vice Chancellor at Nottingham University since 1988...well...indeed.

So Mr Emerson: FUD or Troll? :)

Dear Nick Ryan

Actually Nick I credited other readers here with the intelligence to spot that my point was that:

(i) in spite of having a battery with a lower capacity than the same model available in the US and elsewhere it still has a very usable battery life;

(ii) there are more significant things to get upset about.

I'll be happy to supply you with the Fisher-Price explanation of El Reg article comments in future :)

SHOCK-HORROR! Asus offer less RIP-OFF in Rip-Off Britain than other IT companies...

Is this The Daily Wail? Let me see...so the more powerful and higher spec 900 offers almost as much battery life as the old 701 - I can see plucky British punters shaking their cloth caps in outrage in the streets and kicking their whippets in frustration.

*yawn*

Really, get over it, what a non-story! Tell me something significant and I my might raise an eyebrow at it. For example: what's the price comparison between an Eee PC 900 in the UK/USA/HK once taxes etc. are taken into account? If the disparity is less than for M$ Fistula or a Sony PS3 then I will remain underwhelmed. If not then I might become outraged about how much we have to pay for this very desirable bit of kit.

Please find something for us to be genuinely outraged about, I for one am not a Daily Wail reader and do not have a big red button on my back labelled "PRESS HERE FOR APOPLEXY"

Re: Not sensational....

Umm...I use Umbongo...so I don't have several million best friends. At least they don't e-mail me much. Can you tell me where I can get so many best friends?

But on a more serious note, not being as much of a Linux geek as I'd like to be, what are the implications for desktop flavours of Debian/Ubuntu? I mean we're all using OpenSSL when we're ordering our pr0n and v!@gR4 are we not?

@Joe Cooper

Are you sure Daniel was joking? Surely upscaling from one pixel to a whole movie is the basis of Jean-Claude van Damme's cinematic acting career? Taking that to it's logical conclusion you could probably upscale a sub-pixel to encompass the multi-layered and complex thespian talents displayed in Ms Hilton's screen appearances.

You know what? I think I'd rather just sit here watching the sub-pixel for an hour and a half. Or maybe something less painful still like stapling my feet to the floor with a nail gun.

Never mind comparison with the poxy Mac Plook Spare...

...how about comparing it with a *genuine* alternative like the Toshiba R500. As I recall the R500 comes with the usual C2D goodness, an optical drive as standard, floataway lightness of a mere 1kg and a substantially smaller price tag than this fancy ThinkPad.

Oh and try some real-world benchmarks (if that's not a complete oxymoron) rather than the spurious PCMark05 which is clearly easily skewed by the SSD in the X300.

re: Pity...

Yep we could have been smug about getting the first patch for our machines that don't require terabytes of RAM or dim the lights as the monster graphics card powers-up...

/gloat

...but then we can be so much MORE smug that we probably don't need a patch in the first place - Umbongo rocks! :)

/ungloat

All very simple really

Yes we get ripped-off by arms contractors because of MoD incompetence/infighting/whatever. The plain fact is that we still spend far too much on "defense". Firstly we spend substantially more than the European average as a percentage of GDP. Secondly (and this is the main reason for the first) our politicians still bear the imperialist delusion that we are some kind of great power that has an inalienable right to use our "defences" to illegally invade (i.e. attack, not defend) foreign countries.

Cut the budget to the European average or less and each time the MoD oversees an overspend take that off of next year's budget. Then we might end up with armed forces that reflect our true position in the world - a fairly average European nation that should neither want nor be able to do anything other than defend itself or make a proportionate contribution to legally sanctioned UN interventions.

First against the wall come the revolution

Oh please! This self-deluding flunkey, his deceased aristocratic (people's princess my arse!) former boss and the losers who follow the stories of these parasites on society as if they actually matter in any meaningful way should all be first against the wall come the revolution. Yes! Dig up her corpse and shoot her again!

Why have royal stories in El Reg anyway? So one loser got flamed by a bunch of other losers? Not an IT story. If his site had been pWn3d by the Hackney Marxist-Leninist Popular Front and replaced with bolshevik propaganda *that* would have been an IT story, just desserts and bloody funny all at the same time.

Comrade McNee

Makhno Ukrainian Anarchist Army (Wolverhampton Branch)

The Pompous Git replies from The Moral High Ground (tm)...

/set ground(moral) = high

/git:pompous

Graham Dawson: in exactly what sense do you *have* to buy your music from organisations who essentially fund child pornographers (and just to be clear, that means more children being violently sexually abused the more money they get)? Do you have a phobia that prevents you from entering a music shop and opening your wallet to buy a CD? Or of buying said CD for a reasonable price from CD-WOW? Or as others have mentioned downloading from one of the many legitimate non-DRM crippled sources?

Matt: actually if you read the article you will see that AllofMP3 (the old front for Media Services who are behind MP3sparks) was closed down by legal action. And yes you're right that these slimebags and their even slimier-bag ISP AbdAllah should not be fined/closed down/locked up without due process but that doesn't stop an intelligent person like yourself from making an informed decision (Spamhaus, etc.) that in the meantime one ought not to fund these scumbags.

Steve: yep, and in your tee-pee in North Wales listening to your freetard music on an organic hand-woven fairtrade MP3 player made by Andean peasant farmers you will, by toking on that huge spliff, be able to astrally project to the board rooms of Music Megalo Corp Inc to hear their share price crashing and execs throwing themselves from windows on the 50th floor, because you and your freetard buddies spent your giros funding child pornographers rather than multinational capitalists. And then you woke up....ah bless!

/end git

And who said El Reg readers were amoral brainless freetards?

Nice to see so many commentators really getting to grips with the issues raised by this article: WHERE CAN I GET MY MOOZIC DED CHEEP AN IT DOWNLOADS REEL FASSSST WIV HI BITRATZ??

FFS! Never mind that the people that created the music you purport to love so much don't get a brass washer from the likes of MP3sparks.com, what about a slice of their profits going to those peddling child pornography and selling fake pharmaceuticals?

No, the likes of the Recording Industry Ass. of America and their multinational media corp. backers are not the good guys. But giving money to a bunch of low-life Eastern European criminals is neither the moral alternative nor a strategy to force Sony BMG et al to change their ways.

Weaker consumer environments?

As always the exec tries to spin bad results. However John Lewis are reporting an overall improvement of over 7% on this time last year led by sales of personal technology and electronics...erm...DSG's core market?

Couldn't possibly be anything to do with DSG's 'box shifter sans customer service' attitude? It's about time Britain's premier employer of clueless spotty teenagers got a kicking.

Absolutely Fabulous!

I heard En(ema)damol filmed this event and it's going to be screened as: 'Britain's Next Top Nathan Barley' - I'm so excited I could wipe my arse with Hello!...and I'm so glad that my £120-odd quid license fee is being spent so productively!

One-handed Reg stories...

...I would suggest explains most of the poor typnig, speeling adn garmmer, and this is a classic example of the genre, long may it conintue, longer even than a greasy mouse-jockey with a stash of cut-price spam viagara, a large tub of Flora and a firm grip on the non-mousing side.

As for the comments about Senorita Carolina's sex/gender perhaps these say more about what excites the posters: you protesteth too much? Bless! :)

Absolutely shocking!

This is awful! I mean what next? Some dark-skinned guy with a rucsack mistaken for a terror suspect gunned down by armed police in the street (or on a popular form of public transport)?

What is Oz coming to?!? We should be thankful that that kind of paranoid abomination couldn't happen here in good old blighty!

Time for El Reg Standard Measures Dept. to step in

Clearly Vulture Central is lacking a critical unit of measurement, exposed by this take-down of the much loved and highly esteemed B3ta site. We need an accurate description of the size of an ego.

My opening suggestions are the Prince (Pr) as the standard unit of ego and the pompous (or petulant) Prince (pPr) to signify the more highly-developed and esoteric celebrity-related property: the super-ego.

Rough translation...

William Holt: "All your silicon wafer are belong to us....ha ha ha!!!"