Posts by Dr Patrick J R Harkin

I did not know that.

"Texas Instruments has also been known to take action against customers who reverse engineer calculators."

Thoses would be Polish notators I assume?

I'm amazed it's only 50%

Just about everything I watch is repeated within a week (on the smae channel) and/or an hour later on SquareEyes Plus 1. Even Dave, a channel founded on repeats, has Daveja Vu.

As in the seasonable joke

I got a sweater for Xmas.

I would have preferred a screamer or a moaner.

Must get new glasses

I read the first line as "Unused landmines will be taxed". It's what the People's Princess would have wanted.

It was terrible.

For nearly an hour the internet was cut off from me.

You just wait until the junior techies get bored...

Boxing Day. 2:37pm

"Jeff? What do you think would happen if we sent a sprout round one way, and a Terry's Chocolate Orange round the other?"

The old techniques are the best

http://xkcd.com/327/

My password is very secure

It's "mickeydonaldgoofyplutoheweydeweylouieminnielondonmammamia" It said in the book that a secure poassword has at least seven characters, a capital and a memorable number.

It'll open a portal, I tell you, a portal!

But to where? Well, Google have announced their public DNS at 8.8.8.8 and the LHC is on the interweb, so they're connected - it's Dungeon Dimensions time, I tell you!

Flying in zero g must be confusing

All your effort gives accelleration, instead of just cancelling your natural tendency to plummet.

We all think these scams are obvious

because we've seen them before. But there are new users starting on the internet every day, so there's always a fresh, naive target audience .

Surely that's a live razorclam in the video

But I still want to see a Playmobil reconstruction

Mommy, was Daddy there when I was borned?

"No dear, daddy had to go to work."

Now, if only he'd had access to an LHC Portal, he could have popped down to hold her hand.

Something might come through" says Bertolucci,

"or alternatively we might sent something through to the other side."

Can it be the entire cast of I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here? Pretty please?

May I be the first...

...to welcome our 50-ft tall moon-walking overlord?

I never end SMS with x

Though I do use

.

#send

#save

^v

^k

^q

I wonder what you get...

...if you type "GOOD TURKISH TAX LAWYER" into Google.

Or Bing. (which goes the internet, apparently)

Non-Latin?

OK, but what about Braille?

I wonder if there's an app...

...which catalogues his other apps.

Yes, but...

Can you cut and paste from one screen to the other?

@TeeCee

"At the rate they're discovering exo-solar planets at the moment, we're going to need to get the Greeks and Romans to invent some more low-order deities. Lots of 'em and quickly too."

Hence the opening paragraph of "Rendevous with Rama", IIRC.

From the full report

"If the estimated life threat risk was higher than 10%, the triage form categorized patients

into A+ (the probability that the patient faced a risk of dying was very high), and an

ambulance, a fast response car, and a fire engine were dispatched."

And yet none of the questions they asked was "Are you on fire?"

Is that actually prime?

I think they forgot to carry the 7.

Truthiness?

You can't handle the truthiness!

"What are the mysterious canisters?"

That'll be the last of the Daleks. Again.

Nope

Didn't understand a word.

Want a calculator which knows which way up it is?

There's some crap for that.

Only on iPhone. Well, and other phones which support installable programs, Which, now I come to think of it is quite a lot of them. And it doesn't load this quick in real life. Hmm. Anyone got the phone number for the Advertising Standards Authority? Oh, hang on, I can look it up in my 118 app! Oh that's odd - they seem to be ex-directory.

I like the beer bottle one.

It does actually seem to have some real-world forensic relevance. Although an eveningin one or two pubs round here would probably give them enough data to last a lifetime of analysis.

Manned unmanned planes. Unmanned manned planes.

Is airforce HR playing the shell game with pilots? "Come along now! Three planes, one pilot, we put the pilot in here, we move 'em around and now all you gotta do is guess with your SAM which ones he's in! This one? Oh unlucky, you've shot down a drone - now come on, I'll tell you what I'll do - double or quits!"

Two useful categories

1. Stuff worth reading

2. All the rest

Anyone think of any others?

You know ammo's getting scarce...

...when the mugger shoots you, and then takes the slug back.

How do I lose my virginity?

Virginities are like expensive laptops. All the freshers have got one, all the local scrotes are after them and so those who get wasted in the bar and don't lock their dorm doors find they're gone in the morning. So get one of those Kensington security cables, and don't forget to write your postcode on it in UV marker.

How about this?

1. Monitor lines for sound?

2. Silence threshold exceeded?

3. If yes, play pre-recorded mesaage "Get back to work you idle slobs!" and hang up all lines.

@MinionZero

Delivering to two different houses in a street doesn't represent two offences; printing the same article in two different issues of the paper does.

It is tempting to regard an on-line archive as the same as a paper archive, but it is not. If I go to my local library and get a copy of The Times from January, it is obvious that I hold in my hand (on on microfiche) an old publication. If I retrieve an article from the web, it is not obvious whether I have today's hot gossip or last years tired hackery. Attempts to argue by analogy are therefore likely to run into problems.

My feeling is that the first web hit counts as a "publication" and all subsequent hits count as additions to the size of publication (just as a libel in a national broadsheet with a readership of millions might be regarded as more serious than a libel in a local newsletter, a publicationin The Register would be more serious than a publication in The Islington Parking Meter Spotters Association homepage). Publishing another web page with the same information, however, would be a second offence.

However, I suspect this might be regarded as a sensible approach, and hence inevitably will be rejected out of hand by a legal tribunal.

@AC

"In the US, they only have 3 different molds for your teeth."

What does that even mean?

Impressive...

but why display the Braille?

We've all seen where he ended up

I'd like to see the turn *into* that road - which he took after dark in an area which probably doesn't have streetlights. Once he'd turned in, he was committed and probably spent a mile going "Surely this isn't right? It's a bloody farm track. Damn councils just don't maintain these minor roads." until the horrible truth dawned.

Incidentally, did he "hit a fence" as in "crashed into a fence" (not an indication of good driving) or as in "go straight on until you hit Sheffield" (which is conceptually quite a nice idea, and doesn't imply careless driving)

Torture videos

My local video store has a DVD which prodly describes itself as "Saw - Uncut". Would that be more extreme than the cinema version - or much, much less?

@Doug Is SysConst.pas normally required to be writable by

Don't use Delphi, but as SysConst.pas is a source code file on a development machine, I'd expect the logged in user to be able to edit it regardless of whether they have admin rights or not.

"Sex is deeply rooted in the lives of all Australians"

From the very beginning, I'd say.

As the typical Twitter user would think of it:

"It was terrible. For nearly two hours, the internet was cut off from me."

he only sensible comment I can think of is...

Pee, po, belly, bum, drawers!

Looks like the morning after a Stormtrooper stag night

Man, where's my helmet? Vader's gonna kill me!

Helmet - dude you're down six sections of armour; you look like a "protocol droid" know what I'm saying?

I've made that mistake when coding.

Can I now claim to be working to the MS standards?

I am reliably informed by my grammar coach...

...a Mr David Lister, that the word "twat" is a verb. One exmple of its use, with which he has kindly provided me, is "Let's get out there and twat it!"

Does Google index Twitter?

If so, then the 20 followers is a red herring - it'd be found by anyone who type the company name into Google.

@Dale Richards

If it was emailed, it *should* have gone over NHSNet (which has been renamed, but I can't remember what to, N3 I think) which has a separate encrypted backbone and shouldn't end up going through any unapproved ISP's.