Posts by James Pickett

Great

"a simple crash of the machine"

So that's OK then.

Splash

"under-liquid"

What liquids are they planning to operate in, other than water? Is one of these things going to appear in my tea..?

Really?

"colour cartridges should yield 700 ISO pages"

Should? Nobody believes printing speeds, so might not the same hyperbole apply to ink life? I'd be a lot happier if you'd actually tested it...

Desperate PR

Microsoft+party = oxymoron. In much the same way as Vista and Fun.

APK:

"Physics are physics" . It's singular, I'm afraid. And don't you dare accuse me of pedantry...

Hmmm

"no one has been referring to Megrahi as an 'alleged bomber'"

Perhaps they should:

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/09/megrahi-was-framed.html

Another example of 'might is right'...

Pot/kettle interface

>the BBC tells us that "it produces 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year"

Perhaps the Beeb would like to reveal what its webservers produce (not to mention the computers of all the users)?

Screen life

I know this doesn't affect people who upgrade their phone/car/partner/life every year, but my experience of two small OLED displays is that they deteriorate quite quickly. I think it is significant that Kodak had a camera with one a year or two back, and now they don't...

Longevity

Curious, then, that I have a ten-year old cordless drill and an old mobile phone only two years younger, both with batteries that still hold a reasonable charge. Our three laptops have done less well, suggesting that the charging circuits are perhaps more to blame than the batteries...

Rephorm

Has Kent Ertugrul got a job with VM now, then? I imagine he's been looking for work...

Enough

"SCO's sole business would be litigation"

Would..?

Permutations

I'm surprised not to see more name combinations being mooted here. Binghoo, Bungho, Yahbong, that sort of thing.

Big corporations are spendidly inept at catchy names - Zune and Bing are just the sort of duff names that a PR suit would think was cool, and none of his underlings would be brave enough to tell him it wasn't.

Size

"the size of several football fields"

Those will be Jovian football fields, presumably? I bet they have bigger balls, too...

Quid pro quo

"Ship him over here and lets be done with it..."

Assuming you're a stranger to irony and actually mean that, I wonder why you're so brave you have to remain anonymous? Send us the 'friendly fire' airmen we requested attend as witnesses during the enquiry into our soldiers' deaths and your argument might have some merit...

Run and hide

"designed to scare Americans"

That's too easy to be fun any more...

Revival

Reminds me of the pub stripper who resisted being 'rescued' by a band of feminists. "But you're being exploited!" they cried, to which she replied, "at £200 a night, I'm the one doing the exploiting, thank you".

Sound like it's time for Private Eye to revive its 'Wimmin' section...

Deep joy

Nice to see the hacks at each others' throats after the MP's expenses row. The latest Private Eye has some interesting stuff on the details - apparently Rebekah Wade (the dirty digger's darling) requested some skulduggery from a PI when she was editor of the NotW, but the Grauniad backed off mentioning this to the committee, to avert all-out war. Shame we have to rely on satirical magazines (and El Reg) for the important bits...

Rave

"wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats,"

It's the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for my next bash, then...

@ No, I will not fix your computer

"I wouldn't want the US saying that we couldn't try him (for whatever reason)"

But they would, though, wouldn't they? They wouldn't even send their pilots over here to give evidence (simply as witnesses) in a 'friendly fire' incident. So much for reciprocity.

UBO

How to I apply to be a researcher at the University of the Bleeding Obvious, then?

I hope they remembered to ask the bloke who recently sawed his own dick off.

Perhaps it could also help maternity units save on epidurals, although I can see it might leave an indelible imprint on a few newborn minds...

Still cold though

Sadly, NASA/GISS seems to be on a mission (as does the BBC) to prove that the Ice is Melting, and having been thwarted by the cold spring and ice extent, they are now trying the harder-to-disprove idea that it's all getting thinner. There still seems to be some left however, even at the North Pole...

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/latest/noaa1.jpg

OLED life

OLEDs are lovely until they wear out. I daresay they're better now than a few years ago, but I have 3-year old Tatung MP3 player with one and it has become very dim. Still, I suppose that would be quite old for a phone...

@Scott McKenzie (again)

"The Sky IS blue... it's just showing a reflection of the sea"

That'll be why it's green over land, then. Who knew?

Back to the future

"EMALS offers massive weight and maintenance savings"

R i g h t . Or they may do after another $500m worth of development. Alternative, we have tried and trusted steam catapults, that have worked for decades and simply need an oversized kettle to operate. Since when was weight a problem on an aircraft carrier..?!

Military intelligence

I'm not in the habit of siding with the DM, but this time, I'll make an exception. If the Pentagon had any brains, it would offer him a job, but apparently it hasn't. Quelle surprise.

(Nor, of course, does our Home Office. But we knew that.)

@AC

Exactly. That sentence makes no sense whatever, although one can almost grasp what they are trying to say. Perhaps they should look up 'metaphor'.

Wow!

The mayor of Aberystwyth has certainly gone up in my estimation...

Alternatively...

Download Google's Picasa, allow it to find all your pictures, then select 'Backup Pictures'.

Karen Kenworthy's 'replicator' program is also good and free:

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

And to think I used to use Xcopy...

Forecast

Where's the new Met Office computer in all this? It uses enough power (1.2MW, allegedly) and taxpayers money...

Spin

"get the facts"

You just know that anyone using that phrase means the precise opposite (and if uttered by Steve Ballmer, it also means 'hide the chairs')