Posts by Mike Flugennock

Besides Seinfeld not having been funny since forever...

...you're right about him and the Mac.

If you should find yourself near a TV that's showing episodes from the first few seasons of "Seinfeld", pay attention during the scenes that take place in Jerry's apartment, in the living room; there, on the desk, making regular appearances, is a Mac SE (2nd-gen "toaster" Mac).

Still, he hasn't done a damn' thing since his sitcom went off the air*, so I suppose he probably could stand to pick up an extra mil or two.

*unlike Michael "Kramer" Richards

Damn! Every decent titty joke I can think of...

...has been done already by Benny Hill.

Too bad he and Graham Chapman aren't around to see this.

"...now, you see those two trophies there? Yes, zoom in on the two trophies!"

Couldn't replicate this...

...on a G4 with OSX "Leopard" and Firefox running "naked". No luck replicating the clipboard attack. Still, I can't see how this could be a threat to my system if I go to use my Clipboard and see some skanky URL that I never copied into it and think, "huh, that looks skanky, lemme just quit Firefox and force it to flush my cookies and my cache and see if that works" -- instead of being one of those kids who had to wear a helmet in school, and just pasting away with it.

I did, however, out of sheer curiosity, try the link in this article and oh, the hilarity that ensued. It was pure cheap laffs gold, watching the site I was redirected to run its fake Flash cartoon pretending to be a Windows virus scanner, scanning files which were obviously DOS/Win files and not living on my hard disk at all, and then presenting me with a Windows dialog -- also obviously fake -- screaming that my system -- a Mac, mind you -- was infected and that I had to buy their fake AV product lickety-quick, to avoid certain disaster.

Wiping the tears of hysteria from my eyes, I "flushed" Firefox, turned NoScript and AdBlock back on, restarted Firefox, and went back to the Finder to trash the totally impotent .exe files which hit my desktop. Then I realized that the one possible threat this "virus" could pose to my Mac was perhaps accidental hardware damage, from inadvertantly knocking my G4 over in a fit of uncontrollable laughter watching this retarded malware site try to scare me by pretending to run a goddamn' fake Windows virus scanner on my Mac.

(Steve Jobs with a halo, only because I've been a Mac OS fan since 1985, and you have no replica of the old little "smiling Mac" MacOS bootup icon, and despite the fact that Jobs has been a real friggin' prick recently.)

Re: Former Astronaut As US Prez

Hate to break your hearts over there at El Reg, but I don't think that'd guarantee any positive change in space policy or any big-time revival of a US push to the Moon and/or Mars.

We've already had a couple of former astronauts in Congress: in the House Of Representatives, from Arizona, Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, Apollo 17 LMP; and in the Senate, from Ohio, John Glenn, Friendship 7 pilot and STS-95 Payload Specialist (or, some would say, simply "payload").

Hoorah! But, still, phishing at AOL...

...is kinda' like -- well, shooting phish in a barrel, isn't it?

I was never a big fan of the old Soviet Bloc states, but...

...at least they tried to do one decent thing, and that was to stomp out religion.

I've always loved Bob Jones, though; the guy's name sounds like it should have the words "Texaco Station" after it instead of "University".

@ David Barr, re: El Reg's name for Google Phone

Given the way Gmail handles peoples' supposedly private email, might I suggest: the Judas Phone?

@AC re: pros'n'cons

Right on there, bud.

Let's not also forget:

-I can't take it to the beach: water, sun, sand.

-I can't take it on the train: muggers.

-I can't trade it in at the used book shop when I'm done.

-It really is butt-ugly.

-It's only a matter of time before we see "targeted" advertising on the goddamn' thing. Didn't El Reg report recently on "targeted" advertising via Acrobat?

Kindle? Hell, I couldn't kindle our fireplace with that friggin' tank. I'd end up poisoning everybody in the house -- and our cat -- with all the melting plastic fumes.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'll stick with paper. I never have been very good at reading off a goddamned screen for any length of time. I can read news items on El Reg off a monitor, but there's no way in hell I could read, say, ACClarke's "Sands Of Mars".

Waiting until I can buy a "Newspad" a la Kubrick's "2001",

Walter Wagner...? Oh, yeah; I remember him...

...I first read about him in El Reg, in fact. Wasn't he supposed to be "certifiable" or something?

Yeah, he thinks a particle accelerator is going to rip the fabric of space-time, or some shit, and throw us back into some kind of parallel-universe Stone Age, directed by Spielberg, where we're all eaten by dinosaurs or something. Dumbass.

Is there any way we can accelerate Walter Wagner to near-lightspeed and see what kind of particles are busted loose when he slams into something? No?

D'ahh, too bad. I'd have paid actual money to see that.

Y'mean, it's NOT...?

Hell, I was long going under the assumption that pretty much _everything_ MS put out was a virus/trojan of some kind...

Y'mean...people are actually _using_ Safari?

When I first got my G4 home and fired up OSX, the first thing I did was install Mozilla, Firefox -- and a copy of IE for those knuckle-dragging old sites that still demand it -- and trashed Safari after discovering it wouldn't import any of my bookmark lists. That was enough for me; that was weak as shit, so into the Trash went Safari.

I gave Opera a shot, but it was way too slow on my system, and had a bad habit of blowing up in my face.

MacOS user since 1985, first and only computers I've ever owned, and I _like_ it that way.

Bad German, Bulletproof Sports Bras, Kink Prevention, etc.

It's really friggin' hilarious that they think that printing the word "POLIZEI" across the front of a bulletproof sports bra is going to _prevent_ its use in kinky sex...Shirley, any mature person must realize how many people are actually _turned_on_ by that whole uniform/badge/gun thing -- even though this whole story _does_ somehow sound like the premise for an old Benny Hill sketch.

As far as various Reg hacks' proficiency in German: I myself am American, third-generation German immigrant descended, and when attempting to re-learn my grandfather's language back in high school, was amazed by the number of German words which are basically short descriptive sentences without spaces between the words -- such as the original German model name for the famous '70s Volkswagen "Thing": "Panzerkampfwagen". I must admit with embarassment, though, that I learned the German word for "brassiere" from -- that's right -- an old Benny Hill sketch.

PS@Sarah: No need to apologize, imho; I thought that was quite a clever quip, and not at all offensive, considering that John Cleese blazed that trail long ago in his famous Fawlty Towers' "Whatever you do, don't mention the war" episode.

How can anything on YouTube...

...be a _threat_, f'crissake? We're talking about the home of cats falling off of tables, crappily-shot pitches for MLM and time-share schemes, corporate "viral marketing" pieces masquerading as home videos of unsigned bands.

(Speaking of phony threats, whatever happened with those Aqua Teen Hunger Force guys?)

@ Stu Reeves re: Dear Reg

Stu writes: "please remove any mention to any machine that we may or may not be making. Otherwise we'll sue yo ass, nail your tongues to the desk, superglue your fridge shut and shut you down you mo fo's.

kind regards,

Apple Legal Department"

Whoa. Dude!

I didn't know the Piranha Brothers were running the Apple Legal Department now...though their threat list seems to have omitted Nailing Their Head To The Floor.

re: your Bootnote

Either that, or the cosmic ray storm will rip a hole in the fabric of space-time and fling them down onto a parallel of Earth where everything is really really huge.

Hot damn! The Next-Gen Bondmobile, at last!

Sweet. Sleek. Silver, and everything! Hot damn!

Dum duh-duh dum dumm, duh duh duh

dum duh-duh dum dumm, duh duh duh

Bwahhh-dah, dah-daaaa-aahhh, BAH-DAHHHH, etc.

Makemake, silly?

Hey, c'mon, it's just someone else's language, it's not "silly", even though it _does_ translate to "Easter Bunny" ...and, I _could_ see how someone might mistake it for a fish.

Oh, and does anyone else here think "The Plutoids" would be a really good name for a band? Perhaps, second-billed at the Echo & The Bunnymen reunion gig?

Alright alright alright already...

@RMartin re:foamy ideas

You're likely thinking of the MOOSE orbital bailout system discussed at:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/moose.htm (see BlueGreen's post above)

...which was something an astronaut would strap himself to and, once clear of the spacecraft, pull a ripcord to inflate a form-fitting heatshield.

Orbital steering was to be provided by a handheld cold-gas "gun" thruster array much like the one that worked quite well for Ed White on Gemini IV:

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/lores/S65-05112.jpg

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/lores/S65-27331.jpg

...and, my all-time fave:

http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/lores/S65-30427.jpg

Oh, and I would insert an obligatory Bulgarian Heatshield Joke here, but I'm supposed to be working.

Mmm. Sighh. Ahhh.

I love the smell of astroturf in the morning.

@Tom, re: tunneling

Tunneling? Yeah, I've heard of it. The goddamn' airlines have been doing that to us for _years_.

"Hasta la VISTA??"

For shame. Get your coat.

"Counter-Spy Act"??

Ugh. I can tell you all right now, this law's going to suck. I mean, check out the name of it...it's another one of those laws where they spent more time coming up with a cool name or acronym – USA PATRIOT, CAN-SPAM, etc – than they did actually considering the actual law.

uhmmm..."slamming", anyone?

Just noticing, this sounds like a rather quaint old sham pulled by ISPs, domain registrars, telcos and the like, waaaa-aaay back in the early '00s – looks like good old-fashioned "slamming" to me.

'eBay and other pirates'...?

Is it just me, or am I really the only one here who read the beginning of the eighth paragraph:

"eBay and other parties..."

...and parsed it to read:

"eBay and other _pirates_ ..."

Just wondering.

Not a sledgehammer or an axe...

...but more likely a floor-lamp stand. It's too rounded and symmetrical at the base.

Still, certainly enough mass moving at the end to do some damage. (;^>

space elevator?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm absolutely shit-scared of the prospect of being stuck between floors on the Space Elevator...especially if I'm stuck all that time having to listen to Space Elevator Music.

So, out with it, Gabriel...

...how much information do you plan to collect from users, how much do you plan to save, and how much do you plan to sell to anyone who wants it, and for how much?

Oh, and am I the only one here who's always thought that half the fun of the Web was pointing and laughing at all the crap? I've always loved it, since Dotcom Bubble 1.0; in fact, much of my pointing and laughing was done at sites which promised to change the way the world buys its widgets, or something.

Also gotta love this man-and-machine-merging rap. Jeezus, Gabriel; 1998 called, they want their tired-assed old Internet hype jargon back.

D'ahh, well. I, for one, welcome our round-cornered-rectangular overlords.

-----------------

ps: y'mean, spam from spAmazon still gets through to your box? Jeez, I haven't seen anything from them in over a decade, once their domain hit my procmail list after I got slimed by them -- even though I never had an account with them, nor bought anything from there.

Paging Dr. Sänger...

...so, we're coming back around to that good old time boost-glide space bomber, huh?

http://www.luft46.com/misc/sanger.html

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saenger.htm

http://www.luft46.com/jhart/jhsang.html

http://www.luft46.com/jhart/jhsang-4a.jpg

http://www.luft46.com/jhart/jhsang-5a.jpg

http://www.luft46.com/jhart/jhsang-6a.jpg

and, lest we forget:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm

http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/x/x20good.jpg

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mol.htm

http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/m/molnew.jpg

http://www.astronautix.com/graphics/m/molin.jpg

It's like the whole skunk works/space wing of the USAF has been passed down from a generation that's read too many Hugo Gernsback magazines, to a generation that's seen too many "Star Wars" movies, to a generation that's seen too many episodes of SG-1. They've never proven its practicality, but the USAF is still as horny for manned space capability as ever.

Shades of Mercury > "Mercury Mark I/II" > Gemini?

From Mark Wade's Encyclopaedia Astronautica:

Mercury Mark I,

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mermarki.htm

Gemini, the project:

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/gemini.htm

Gemini, the spacecraft (and proposed variants):

http://www.astronautix.com/craftfam/gemini.htm

Just thinking about this whole repurposing-JV-for-manned-ops issue here, and it got me thinking of the whole repurposing-Mercury-for-two-man-ops idea from back in the day...once ESA's engineers are done retrofitting the interior for life support, seats for the crew, RCS/engine throttling controls, instrument panels, viewports/rendezvous windows -- not to mention the all-important parachute deployment apparatus and heat shielding -- wouldn't they have better spent the cash designing a CTV new, from zero? True, they've proven the basic JV autonomous robotic design, and manuvering systems, and pressure vessel, but still...building that design out for manned flight is certainly a bigger PIA than going the opposite direction, as the Russians did with Soyuz > Progress.

This is pretty much the conclusion NASA came to after all the Project Mercury followup "Mark i/II" proposals to repurpose Mercury for two-man crews, orbital-change manuverability, etc.; if we're going to go this far, why not just design a whole new spacecraft from the ground up? About the only similarity Gemini ended up having was in the command module -- black iconel corrugated hull, cone-joined-to-cylinder shape -- and some of the environmental controls, iirc.

PS @ stizzleswick: I think ESA would do better to try and sell it -- or, more accurately, rides aboard it -- to countries who have astronauts in training but no craft of their own. I'm afraid NASA would still rather be Earthbound than stoop to using something Not Invented Here.

This "PH" bidness

OK, in the beginning, it was cute, it was clever, it was sarcastic. Now it's spent, beat, wiped, played. Jumped the shark, already.

Still, where does that leave that old 18th Century English scientist who, iirc, discovered oxygen as a combustible gas in action but, not knowing what he'd discovered, named it "phlogiston"?

"Humanzees"?

If you ask me, it's already happened.

So, will they sue all of us old-school radio mix-tapers, too?

Looks like this little bad boy isn't doing anything different from what I and my pals were doing with our old analog Hi-Fi tuners and dual decks back in the late Pleistocene, except it's a digital recording with the dross already trimmed out, and mp3s ready to be set up in whatever track order we want for our mix discs (I know they don't mention CD as a media option here, but it _does_ give you mp3s)

Back in my college days, shortly after the Earth cooled to a temperature conducive to life (that is, the 1970s), there were a couple of really good "alternative" stations in DC -- a university station and a local indie commercial outfit -- that were playing stuff that was from imports, local pressings, local demo tapes, live bootlegs, out-of-print, basically damn' near impossible to get hold of except by dialing in the old Kenwood and keeping a few hours of blank cassettes handy. Then, of course, came the gruntwork of playing it through and dubbing off the good stuff minus DJ blather, commercials, PSAs, etc. I've done this as recently as eight or ten years ago; we have one surviving serious jazz station in DC now -- real jazz, not "lite" jazz -- and there's two shows that I taped every week because these guys were playing so much stuff from odd sources, or out-of-print vinyl. (I still record those shows now and then, although now I just sample it straight to a hard disk and chop it up with Final Cut Pro)

...and I don't see what the difference is with this hardware, here. Those RIAA doorknobs would have to sue every goddamn' old FM cassette mixtaper who ever lived for doing the same goddamn' thing.

So, look, is this thing available in the Colonies? I noticed the price was listed only in pounds.

It's not that those 'events' (human EVA) are mundane...

...it's that they've only become mundane because all you ever see in the background these days is the friggin' Earth. I mean, Dog bless her, I live on her and all, but I'm hoping I might still be alive when there's a chance to see people in suits with something besides the Earth in the background. It was so much more interesting, I remember, with, say, the Apennine Mountains in the background and the Earth about _yea_big_ hanging in a deep black sky.

Not that I'm a Peak Oil cultist or anything, but being able to migrate out from your home planet sounds to me like a very handy skill to have...and besides, why should these goddamn' robots have all the fun?

Proof-of-concept for Adobe?

Didn't El Reg run a story a couple of months back about Adobe and Yahoo!(?) entering into a deal to _deliberately_ infect .pdf documents with adware?

I know, these types will always _claim_ it's "accidental", but somehow it sounds like a proof-of-concept of some sort, to me.

Euphemism prize

"Teething problems"?

"Staff familiarity"?

"Provisioning problems"?

And here, I thought our own Pentagon and K Street were the champs at intelligence-insulting euphemisms and doubletalk...turns out YOU, England, take the prize...er, the gong...er, the piss...or whatever it is you call it over there.

Now, what is it you say..."I'll get me... uhhh..."

Photoshop over the NET?

D'ahh ha ha ha hah.

I've been using and loving Photoshop ever since it came out, nearly 20 years ago (eeyoiks, that long?), but the one problem its always had -- along with being expensive as shit -- is that it can be more than a bit slow at times.

So, now, they want to offer it over the NET? D'ahh ha ha ha hah. This, on top of their demand that you sign over the rights to your work to Adobe (in their friggin' DREAMS), has me doing what I'm doing right this moment -- downloading a trial copy of Pixelmator, from http://www.pixelmator.com.

And, so, it begins...

...anyone want to start a pool on when the first in-flight riot breaks out because of some rude-assed doorknob yakking on a mobile phone _all_the_way_through_the_whole_friggin'_flight_?

You think "air rage" is a problem _now_... Y'know, I'm not normally a violent guy -- in fact, I'm a long-haired, spliff-smoking, tie-dyed-in-the-wool Deadhead -- but I'm actually looking forward to the day when I can introduce some nap-disrupting mobile-phone yakker to my good buddy, Mr. Knuckles.

Cripes.

I got yer friggin' gas lamps, right HERE...

I live in the "historic" (spit) Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, DC, full of houses a century-plus old, and there are more than a few of them that are restored to the "official" Historic Preservation Trust "standards" -- including gas lamps at the front doors where most of our houses here (even those extensively "fixed up") have long since replaced them with nice, clean, efficient, non-smelly electric front-door lamps.

Well, hell; of COURSE the ad was fake...

How could these people NOT have known the ad was fake? After all, it didn't include a photo of the guy's penis!

Oh, hot damn' diggety...

...streaming worthless banal shit with equally banal advertising from NBC, now on the Web. Almost as great as worthless banal shit in stereo digital 16:9 HDTV.

Be still, my heart.

I'll take cats sliding off of tabletops any damn' day, as far as _that_ goes.

I've got just two words for you guys:

Little. Snitch.

Something like twenty-five bucks -- I bought a copy as soon as I got a G4 and moved up to OSX -- and a bargain at twice the price.

One of my first invocations of what would become one of my favorite phrases in the English language -- "Deny Forever" -- was against Adobe.com, when my Acrobat editor and reader attempted to connect to Adobe and auto-update themselves when I was installing them, and every time I started them after that. P'whah. Shortly after that followed Macromedia, TroubleClick, et. al. Mwoooaaa ha ha ha haah.

Generally, one rule of thumb I've found useful in _most_ cases was the out-of-hand Denial Forever of "dotted quad" numeric IP addresses.