* Posts by bothwell

93 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jan 2008

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Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

bothwell

@council tax

If I were able to 'use the facilities for free' then I would expect a sizable discount on my council tax.

The local council, however, is unlikely to agree.

Mozilla man accuses Jobs of 'bypass the web' scheme

bothwell
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does what it's supposed to do

"The users were holding it wrong"

'Larry and Sergey's HTML5 balls drained my resources'

bothwell

@Look at teh shinies

The really great thing is that this Google doodle isn't even using the canvas element, it's just a normal div with some normal JS applied. Ho hum.

Bouncy though, I do like it.

Scottish iSchool goes 100% iPad

bothwell
Happy

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"but then you don't write in textbooks either."

Speak for yourself. There wasn't a single textbook in my old school that hadn't been thoroughly defaced on every page.

Still the plus side of kids not being able to write is that they won't be capable of putting graffiti anywhere

bothwell

@ac complaining about the independence or not

The school's independence doesn't really have much bearing on value-for-money, surely?

I mean it might not be *your* money they're spending, but surely those kids would still be better off if they spent that money on proper learning materials, regardless of its provenance, no?

bothwell
Unhappy

"sanitised, dull science lessons"

I went to a scottish state school 15 years ago and I never once saw a sodium-in-water experiment or was let anywhere near thermite :/ I feel like I've been cheated out of an education and can't even blame it on the nanny state.

If my experience is in any way indicative of the state of Pictish schooling then those kids would have been getting crap science lessons to start off with.

bothwell

trusting stuff to the hands of 5 year olds

When I was a nipper I would lose all my things on a weekly basis. My mum had to resort to actually tying my lunch money to a little bag on a string around my neck because I'd keep losing my lunchbox along with my bag and everything else. I was told off regularly for losing the various books I had to read at home as homework.

Hopefully for this particular school I was just a particularly absent-minded and hopeless child and in no way representative of the nation's yoof of today.

Danish rocketeers poised to reach for the skies

bothwell
Coat

speeling fail

'titatinium' is of course a new heavy element whose discovery was so recent it hasn't even been added to the periodic table yet.

bothwell
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The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

There is indeed a parachute. I can recommend looking at the pictures at end of the spacecraft spec link. Looks terrifying, the pilot of that thing must have bollocks made of titatinium.

Royal Society opens inquiry into why kids hate tech

bothwell
Happy

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

It's worse than that - computing itself isn't the same as it used to be. Back in the day anybody could knock out a few lines of code and have a program that was as good as any pick of commercial software right in front of you. You can't really do that these days, and 'computing' is now such a hilariously broad subject that if you ask 3 people in IT what kids should be learning in 'computing classes' you'll get about 20 different answers.

I expect the main reason that kids find computing boring is because it's in school, and school is generally boring. We can have these surveys every year and they'll all end up with exactly the same findings.

Mozilla man: Firefox 4 will leapfrog JavaScript rivals

bothwell

downvotes

You had the temerity to make the suggestion that IE was anything other than an abomination that exists solely for the detriment of mankind.

Honestly, you ought to have known better.

Facebook broadcasts your location in meat space

bothwell

surely not

"http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/pint_32.png" isn't nearly as catchy as 'meatspace' is.

Dell outsourcer lifts US woman's saucy pix from PC

bothwell
WTF?

I believe I can speak for us all when I say

What the hell?

Disney throws $763m at social gaming

bothwell

@Nothing Says Stickiness...

Not really sure why this comment was downvoted, seems a worthwhile precis :/ I think one of the issues Disney (and Playdom) is going to have is that people are likely to perceive their games as advertising for their products, particularly in the online social world where everything is 'free'. It'll be interesting to see what happens next, but I'm not sure how well Playdom will be able to fend off lameness from its new parent company.

London bike hire scheme suffers pre-launch wobbles

bothwell

"falls apart in this country"

Oh come on, it's surely a bit early to start giving it the "ALL UK SCHEMES == EPIC FAILURES, ALWAYS, WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS" before the thing's even launched. At least wait until there's an actual disaster after the launch date before writing it off as a waste of time.

Android PHP option planned for Javaphobes

bothwell

@haters gon' hate

I'm a PHP developer too and I do like it but the idea of using it to write mobile apps still seems a little strange. Having real trouble understanding what the nub of the implementation's purpose is, other than saying "PHP devs are too thick to learn a new language".

Secret ancient code, basis of all modern civilisation, cracked

bothwell

@TFA

"For Plato, the beauty and order inherent in mathematical law meant its source was divine (a Pythagorean version of modern deism). Plato may light a middle way through today's culture wars."

This is hardly new. Just off the top of my head Descartes said the same thing, clearly, without relying on obfuscation. Descartes is commonly recognised as one of the granddaddies of modern science, but I'm not really seeing people rushing to accept the Clockmaker Hypothesis on that basis either.

More iPhone 4 angst: fanbois howl over head sensor

bothwell
Unhappy

@TFA

"One fanboi has purchased, um, three iPhone 4s, and the problem occurs with each one."

Are you even allowed to buy three of them? How come he gets to circumvent the rules that us lesser mortals are apparently subject to?

'Toothed' condom hits rapists where it hurts

bothwell
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"Offhand, I can see a couple of ways to counter rape."

Very poor. How about encouraging men (including, apparently, men like yourself) to comprehend that women are humans, not animals or material possessions, and they shouldn't be treated or thought of as the latter in any form of civilised society.

I'd hazard a guess that actually it's your shitty attitude that puts women off you far more than your height or looks do. You might want to ruminate on that instead of blaming women for your own failures.

Firefox's oldest friend dumps it for Google Chromium

bothwell

Who uses it

I suppose it's used by marketers and the like who work in social media (as well as normal people who do a lot of social media stuff). I've heard of it but it's not something I'd consider to be a major player in the field like TFA says. I've certainly never seen its user agent string being used on any of the websites I administer / run. It is a bit niche, tbh.

'Draw Mohammed' page removed from Facebook

bothwell
Paris Hilton

this really can't end well

It's obviously a major issue for Islamic countries, but the western mentality is very much "things are even *lolzier* when people get upset about them".

These two cultural viewpoints are quite, quite incompatible with each other. Whatever are we to do?

Flaw lets hackers delete Facebook friends

bothwell

heh

"Nooooooooooooooooooo my friends!!"

hehe, between this and the Twitter 'no followers for you!' thing there must be an awful lot of sad people on the internets feeling friendless D:

Mucky private chat could be illegal soon

bothwell

not just dacre

More worryingly if "annoying" is a jailable offence then why is anybody still allowed to even use Twitter at all? They're _all_ annoying!

World+bitch flocking to expose self on Facebook

bothwell

this again

Why are you so obsessed with "histrionic" and "narcissistic" personalities using Facebook, and why do you keep posting these enormous comments ranting - hysterically - about them? Is there something about yourself that you'd like to share with the group, perhaps?

Ukrainian TJX hacking suspect arrested in India

bothwell

TJX and its subsidiary brands retained card numbers and PINs

PINS?!!? What possible reason would an online retailer have for collecting *_PINS_*?

80% of devs chafe at Apple's App Store cash split

bothwell
Grenade

new market

Yers, I think iStockphoto does more of less what you're thinking of.

Apocalyptic infection purged from PHP-Nuke.org

bothwell
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yeah mang

We should all just email our comments to the Reg and then somebody can copy and paste them into HTML files for us.

Isaac Newton's apple tree off to spaaaace

bothwell

pedants corner

It will only lead to arguments about whether it needs an apostrophe or not, and if yes, then where to put it.

Followers vanish as Twitter tw*ts tweet bug

bothwell

know where your money goes

If a company is spending money on using a free service tehn something, somewhere, has gone badly wrong, non?

Jimbo Wales exiles 'porn' from Wikiland

bothwell
Unhappy

title

I've been using wikipedia for years and I haven't *once* seen *any* porn on it at all. I'm actually very disappointed now.

Google promises what Jobs hates in next Android

bothwell

against flash?

Does anybody even still use Flash for that? Every time I see one of those things it's written with jQuery.

Angry Romanian hackers deface Telegraph for Top Gear toss

bothwell

title

But where do the Romulans fit into this, that's what I want to know.

Pinhead Mac Trojan sticks it to fanbois

bothwell

no viruses != no malware

Nice goalpost shift there, mate.

KIN'ell, Microsoft! Is that a breasticle I see before me?

bothwell

consumer reports

What a strange blog post.

I wonder what they would have made of that Aussie domain hosting ad with Pam Anderson and her foxy friend. Probably it would have made their heads explode :(

Facebook starts random application shutdown

bothwell
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lolz

This is actually quite amusing. I look forward to Orange suing any companies that use the colour orange or a depiction of an actual orange anywhere on their promotional materials, and for Tesco to start waving the law around at anybody who uses an asterisk anywhere thus breaching the copyright of their Finest* brand

Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot

bothwell

deliberately non standards compliant

Actually IE6 was the first deliberately _standards_-compliant rendering engine, which is precisely why it crushed shitty netscape so completely 10 years ago. It just wasn't really up to the job of still being in use after a decade when competing against other software with regular update cycles. Would you expect an unserviced banger with thousands of miles to be running like new after 10 years? I think not. IE8 does a much better job of compliancy but still isn't perfect - no current browser is perfect.

A company promoting their own product on their own platform shouldn't really come as a surprise to anybody. Opera are being really douchey about this.

Mozilla: 'no plans' to bundle Flash with Firefox

bothwell
Happy

Not just you

It's never worked for me either, for as long as I can remember. Always got to go to Adobe and install it manually.

TBH that suits me even better than "add me magically from somewhere!"

El Reg April Fools 2010

bothwell
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Wait

You mean you guys were posting silly articles masquerading as news? I didn't even notice a difference.

Software engineer demands source of his speeding collar

bothwell
Unhappy

wait

Michael "Felch"?

One in four UK schoolkids admits hacking

bothwell
Thumb Up

hacking lol

If that's the extent of the 'hacking' abilities of today's 'hackers' then the future of information security is, er, a secure one

Twitter 'airport bomb hoax twit' charged

bothwell

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"would I be charged for making the same joke in the pub?"

Depends. How much CCTV and audio recording equipment is in there?

Buffy's heart gets wrong kind of flutter from Google Buzz

bothwell
Paris Hilton

social cross-section

Young Felicia appears to mainly be Buzz-friends with male software developers, web developers, and programmers.

I wonder if there's anything to that.

Browsers could host a (simple) database

bothwell
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@Which geniarse came up with this?

"Wow a totally standardised way of storing data from a webapp on the local machine...Not heard something so useful since XML came along...oh wait..."

Except that traversing XML looking for individual datasets is a particularly poor and inefficient method of targeted data retrieval, great point!

For that matter, why use databases on servers either? Why not just do everything with XML and XSLT? You're not a real programmer unless you're using hundreds of lines of code that one of those toy database n00bs would knock out in 30, after all.

Dadaist user manuals - a call for submissions

bothwell
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more popular languages

Actually, dude, the most "popular" language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. Sorry to burst the old Western dominance bubble there.

TomTom goes Jock to abuse English 'bas'

bothwell
Grenade

@saucerhead tharpe

No, no, it's still used widely in the more scummy estates in Pictland, in exactly the same way for exactly the same reason. I'm from Livingston, lower east side, if you will. Our local lot were "CYT, YA BASS". Of course they were all about 12. Who trains these people?

Poor old Bas Komen, though, lolz.

Bill Gates: Tough US immigration stance a 'huge mistake'

bothwell
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the computer?

"It has always come back to the idea that 'the computer knows too much about you.'" Gates said.

Surely, 'lack of data control means that the government, commercial agencies, and who-knows-who-else will be able to learn too much about you'? Seeing him palming the issues off onto people's fear of 'the computer' doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm. :/

People don't object to a lack of privacy because they don't understand the issues, they object to it precisely because they _do_ understand them.

iPod saves lightning-strike teen

bothwell

@Sarah Davis

Seriously, it's just an MP3 player. iPods are popular because they're stylish and they work well. If you're happy with your Samsung then that's aces to you, but that doesn't mean there's anything mentally wrong with people who make choices differently to you.

I use a Creative Zen, myself, btw, just before the inevitable "OMG APPLE FANBOI" comments arrive.

Tiny-traffic DoS attack spotlights Apache flaw

bothwell

A 'fraction'?

"We're really only talking about a fraction of the Apache sites out there," he says.

Apache 2x is quite common, no? And the web is mostly comprised of sites that aren't big news and retail sites. Seems like quite a big fraction to me.

Here's hoping most of the web's sysadmins are using workarounds for it, really.

Fable creator: How DLC ruined my summer vacation

bothwell
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I can see the GIMP 2 icon on there as well

Good for you, Molyneux!

Google debuts JavaScript playground

bothwell
Unhappy

man

"the cat's meow - which is an American expression meaning AWESOME"

They've taken the already awesome phrase "the dog's bollocks" and made it suck.

:(

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