Posts by Cliff

Robert Carlyle

I mean, c'mon, how awesome would he be?

It's an open secret that blueprints are logged by the state

Want to make a new car part? The official 'liaison' will make sure all your plans get copied for party files. Manufacturers expect it because that's the option. You get cheap Labour and the global market, China knocks off what they like for the domestic market, and screw you very much.

And they're clearly not going to say 'yes, it was us', now, are they?

Chat roulette just got scarier!

Then again, if someone wants to take the power of a phone (best of breed currently have quad core 1.6GHz or so) and make an augmented reality nudifier, I could see there being a market for that...

The real problem is volatility

$13000 one day could be $6000 or $20000 by the end of the week, depending on how many articles the press have done about bitcoin on slow news days.

The second real problem is spending them - nobody accepts them in any useful sense - again thanks to that volatility. If my printing supplies cost $, I need to cover their cost in $, not magic beans.

Good luck to them and all - wikileaks has lost so much credibility by not dumping Assange the moment he jumped bail and started slinging faeces at the very courts that had spent time and money hearing him. A wikileaks party has to pedal furiously just to stand still the more they tie personality in with service.

I hope nobody got a free PhD for this

I mean, 20-something years ago I had a crude proof of concept for this. Guess it's been a quiet news weekend with the UK bank holiday and all

Facebook deleted

Hurrah - this article reminded me to permanently delete my fb account, something I'd meant to do for ages

How will I keep in touch with those 384 'friends' I didn't give a crap about now?

Never thought of vi as an easy to use text editor myself... but vi on pi, you must, really.

Is it like our Silicon Roundabout?

Long on cropped beards, rounded corners, marketing speak, and short on actual technologists?

With facebook's cavalier attitude to IP, hardly shocking.

What do you mean, 'your' photos?

It's a trick!

It's not really a barbecue cold fusion device, if you x-Ray it you'll see it contains a Steorn Orbo and a dynamo!

'My fucking screen is blank!'

'...I am sorry to hear you are having problems with your fucking screen, allow me to assist you. Searching for fixes for 'fucking screen'. Have you confirmed your fucking screen is plugged in correctly?' etc.

1TB is a lot of data

I remember back in the late 1990's or so when Microsoft were showing off MS SQL Server's scalability with their terraserver - satellite imagery adding up to 8TB as I recall. That seemed so massive back then! Now it's a flickr account each for a large family.

Subliminals - brilliant

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/05/17/eurovision_2013_bonnie_tyler_will_definitely_win/

This could work, scope is sane

It isn't your usual world domination sprawling IT metasystem, it is a really easily defined scope, easily implemented and tested. This is exactly the kind of scope that can be delivered effectively and solve an actual specific problem. If whoever manages it rejects all scope-creep and rides the schedule and budget, this is a sensible project.

The augmented reality display could be fun and even useful

But the privacy side is alarming when you deal on it.

Watching a pirate movie? The glasses know when and where you did that.

Watching a jazz movie? They were watching it too, and gave next years Prenda-like lawyers a call.

Discussing your love life? The glasses know you might need cock pills.

Want to find Lord Lucan? Crowdsource the hunt.

It all starts getting creepier the more I think about it

Infrastructure and dick-swinging

Politicians generally think in 5-year windows, so considering the deep future is a bit alien for them

Big infrastructure projects like this have a few benefits *if done properly*

1) They create a shitload of jobs (right when we need them)

2) They show our trading partners that we're thinking of the future and aren't tied to 1900's legacy

3) They mean we can then sell expertise to Asia and the Middle East

4) They provide a bit of immortality for the governments of the day

If you can get beyond the immediate short-term objections and see the long-long-term benefits, the picture can sometimes change somewhat

They tweak the PM's search results

'conservatives popular voters 2013' just produces a single result link.

Plus, of course, google know what he searches for in those long, large evenings in the house...

Geeks act like kids...

... In other news...

OK that's unfair, but it doesn't do the Sci-fi community any favours when fringe radicals start holy wars.

Desire for a brand new combine harvester

Must admit, I hadn't considered the aspirational interpretation before, I always considered it a yearning love song.

There is more to this story?

So far it sounds like Clouseau's spy kit, and whilst I'm prepared to believe there's a lot of value in old-school tradecraft, this just seems silly.

Did the 'merkins recently exposed/expel any Russian spies? This looks more like public tit-for-tat posturing than anything remotely real. It may as well have a codebook with 'TOP SECRET - CIA ONLY' on the cover, and maybe a newspaper with eyeholes cut in it.

Hopefully the judge will see sense...

...and tell them to fuck off and only come back when they can behave like grown ups.