* Posts by proto-robbie

338 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

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Five years in the clink for super-crook who scammed Google, Facebook out of $120m with fake tech invoices

proto-robbie
Joke

Just by coincidence ...

My Nigerian Bank Official friend has access to the remaining $94M but cannot remove it from his country without your help. If you would care to send him your bank details with a small admin. fee of, say, £1,000 just to check everything works, he would be very grateful.

Bit nippy, is it? Hive smart home users find themselves tweaking thermostat BY HAND

proto-robbie
Boffin

Re: But if its a smart meter

Minute by minute billing isn't going to happen. Half-hourly is the highest frequency, and currently only for high rollers.

RIP 2019-2019: The first plant to grow on the Moon? Yeah, it's dead already, Chinese admit

proto-robbie

Unfortunately for the plant ...

... it wasn't rocket science.

Scottish govt mulled scrapping £178m car-crash IT system

proto-robbie
Boffin

Is the Functional Spec. no more?

Solves this sort of problem every time. Should be virtually the same as the Tender Doc. Sign it off, and build it to an agreed budget. Don't change anything thereafter. It's this last bit that people have trouble with.

Your anonymous code contributions probably aren't: boffins

proto-robbie
Facepalm

Re: "Programmers with a larger skill set can be identified more easily and with higher confidence. "

You're not, unless you're the bloke whose dross I inherited (brain the size of a planet, etc...).

MOULDY DICK: France aims to snatch EXPLODING WHALE crown from U.S.

proto-robbie
Paris Hilton

Sounds like a job

for a knight, a suit of armour, and a very long pointy lance.

Paris, 'cos it's in France too.

TROUT and EELS in SINISTER PACT to RULE the oceans

proto-robbie
Coat

Re: ETA

l33t rout.

SAN-free, NAS-free? Scottish PHDs lift kilt on how they'll pull storage out of the aether

proto-robbie
Unhappy

Re: Anonymous Celt

So Wee Eck gets to pay many aging Scots' public sector pensions too, as well as their health care and prescriptions as they get older?!

BBC Trust candidate defends licence fee, says evaders are CRIMINALS

proto-robbie
Big Brother

Re: Harassment

Irrespective of the need for a state funded TV channel, I can't see why this could not be dealt with by the usual tax system, rather than a separate TV Licensing organisation, which last year guzzled £100M collecting the Beeb's £3.7 billion. Much simpler, cheaper and nicer for the Chancellor to pay the Beeb directly (less the £100M of course).

China: You, Microsoft. Office-Windows 'compatibility'. You have 20 days to explain

proto-robbie
Pirate

Re: Get your shit together Microsoft...

Some sort of revenge for all those BSODs over the years, usually at the most inconvenient moments.

Stanford boffin is first woman to bag 'math Nobel Prize'

proto-robbie
Holmes

Re: hmm

Awesome, dude!

proto-robbie
Holmes

Re: Really? You're calling it a doughnut?

We certainly wouldn't call them "donuts" - unknown at this address. On the other hand, a multi-holed doughnut is, at first appraisal, a crumpet.

When PR backfires: Google 'forgets' BBC TV man's banker blog post

proto-robbie
Terminator

I don't suppose...

...there's any chance of getting Google to forget about Robert Peston?

Measure for measure: We visit the most applied-physicist-rich building in the UK

proto-robbie
Headmaster

Sorry, you're on the mark with your post, but need a downvote for repeated misspelling of the word "caesium". This is of course the British spelling, but it is after all an article about a British institution. Living in a different continent is no excuse.

The gift of Grace: COBOL's odyssey from Vietnam to the Square Mile

proto-robbie
Pirate

Happy Birthday System/360 and COBOL ...

... and hats off to Grace Hopper, despite your misgivings - "Widely regarded as the worst mistake in computing history"? That'll be a hundred thousand rock-solid disasters then?

Apart from RBS of course.

Dutch doctors replace woman's skull with 3D-printed plastic copy

proto-robbie
Terminator

Is this available for faces?

How to Poo on a Date wins odd book title of the year

proto-robbie
Holmes

if you really must defecate on fruit...

...you'd have a better chance of making out with a pineapple or grapefruit.

NASA: Earth JUST dodged comms-killing SOLAR BLAST in 2012

proto-robbie
Black Helicopters

Re: Remember it's a low probability event *until* it's actually happening

I'm actually off to the bunker, complete with tinfoil hat of course.

X marks the... They SAID there was a mystery planet there – NASA

proto-robbie
Headmaster

Re: 1.49597871 × 10^15m, @Martin Budden

In pursuit of true pedantry, let me assert that your corrigendum should have contained "grocers' apostrophes" rather than "grocer's", since there is definitely more than one of them at it.

CIA hacked Senate PCs to delete torture reports. And Senator Feinstein is outraged

proto-robbie
Big Brother

Re: Schadenfreude

I'd like to comment on this topic, but I'm not sure of the wisdom of so doing.

Euro cops on free Wi-Fi not-so-hotspots: For pity's sake, don't use them for email

proto-robbie
Childcatcher

Re: But but but

Agree absolutely.

Networking is ubiquitous and crucial, so why isn't it secure? Joe Public doesn't need qualifications in aircraft maintenance to get to New York, so why can't our profession just make things safe for the users, rather than looking down our noses at them?

Florida bloke cuffed for pit bull shag outrage

proto-robbie
Holmes

There's a perfectly innocent explanation ...

... Bernard, Bernard? Could you give the dog a bone?

Just as well he picked the right end though.

UK spies on MILLIONS of Yahoo! webcams, ogles sex vids - report

proto-robbie
Terminator

Re: How safe are Jonny Foreigners?

Spying on the citizens hasn't been outsourced yet. It's sure to go soon though, along with the police, armed forces and the ambulance service.

Your personal data is worth a measly eight bucks a month

proto-robbie
Big Brother

An interesting model...

...and perhaps one the NSA should consider, preferably nett of tax.

DataDirect Networks is in a hole. Can its founders pull it out?

proto-robbie
Pirate

Oooh-er missus

Miss Whiplash, Cynthia Payne and now Molly Rector, all names to stiffen the corporate resolve.

Apple plans to waggle iNormous 4½-incher in fanbois' faces

proto-robbie
Linux

Re: Sooooo....

It's not the quantity, it's whether Richard Stallman likes it...

'I don't understand why they feel like they own the word CANDY'

proto-robbie
Trollface

iCandy

I would like to announce my new trademark, as above, just to annoy two sets of over-litigious twonks.

Boffins claim battery BREAKTHROUGH – with rhubarb-like molecule

proto-robbie
Mushroom

Re: Woah

...and that's why the rhubarb patch is always down at the bottom of the garden...

Britain's costliest mistake? Lord Stern defends his climate maths

proto-robbie
Pirate

@Mike Street: No, don't agree

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "growth" dependent on using the planet's resources faster than they can recover (otherwise it wouldn't be growth) and/or making a profit by plundering or underpaying for other materials, from the nations you want to help?

NomNomNom's point is well made: Indefinite growth is not sustainable, and the current high growth rate of China in particular is coming at great cost to Africa and South America.

Gay hero super-boffin Turing 'may have been murdered by MI5'

proto-robbie
Pirate

Re: @ NomNomNom: I'll buy a vowel for...

LeG Before Tit, in lieu of a good stumping.

Kiwi inventor's court win rains on Apple's parade

proto-robbie
Coat

I'm told there wasn't a dri-i in the courthouse.

Google coughs up $17m to end Safari STALKER COOKIE brouhaha

proto-robbie
Big Brother

Don't worry about these cookie things, they're just like Big Brother used to bake them.

Facebook fans fuel faggots firestorm

proto-robbie
Paris Hilton

Re: Faggotts?

I have eaten brain (animal, before anyone starts) - and it tasted better than faggots. Never again, in either case.

I should add: the word "girls" is extremely contentious State-side too. An English friend started his speech to a large conference with "Hello boys and girls", and wondered why the atmosphere turned Baltic. "Girls" all "work" for a living over there, apparently.

Paris, well ...

Coding: 'suitable for exceptionally dull weirdos'

proto-robbie
Pint

Re: Sounds like sour grapes to me

I have three words for you:-

Eructation, eructation, eructation.

Pop OS X Mavericks on your Mac for FREE while you have LUNCH

proto-robbie
Facepalm

Re: Just Gonna Dance The Night Away

If only - I have a 2006 iMac which won't run Mavericks, and in the UK App Store the iWorks and iLife components still cost money.

Meh.

HUMANS all come FROM AFRICA: HERPES does not lie

proto-robbie
Paris Hilton

Re: Dear Mr Mammoth

Overpaid, over-sexed and over here.

Master Don

Microsoft pulls Win 8.1 RT code which upgraded Surface 'slabs into BRICKS

proto-robbie
Linux

Re: The - missing

Or "numbers of limited users" even? Getting the coat...

Forget Wi-Fi, boffins get 150Mbps Li-Fi connection from a lightbulb

proto-robbie
Childcatcher

Re: AN LED?

Talking of SCUBA, wouldn't this be a lot kinder to the whales (q.v. sonic Buffalo subsea internet from Thursday)? Might upset the angler fish though.

Apple's top bean counter: New spaceship HQ won't emit 'one atom of carbon'

proto-robbie
Pirate

Re: People forget...

Regrettably, "Spaceship Steve" is letting the side down, taphonomically speaking.

Screw Internet-of-Things: Boffins build Internet-of-Sound UNDERWATER

proto-robbie
Megaphone

Re: Biologically compatible?

Not a jot, I suspect - these guys are techies. This should be mandated to have a range of no more than say a mile per link, otherwise having to relay at the surface.

These are intelligent creatures down there, and we're going to give them non-stop tinnitus? Surely not? Surely??

Island-hopping Beardy Branson: I'm dodging rain, not taxes

proto-robbie
Facepalm

Re: Course he's not dodging taxes

Um, British Virgin Islands, perhaps?

Rubbish broadband drives Scottish people out of the Highlands

proto-robbie
Headmaster

I fear your points, such as they were, crashed and burned in the spelling and punctuation carnage.

Are you the foreign wireless planing expert we need? God help us poor Scots.

NASA's Jupiter probe wakes up after unexpected snooze

proto-robbie
Coat

Oh my God, it's full of stars

BAN THIS SICK FILCH: Which? demands end to £1.50-per-min 'help' lines

proto-robbie
Holmes

£1.50 for an 0845 number? Surely not. On the other hand, dial 0900 from my phone and I'll shoot you. And then there's saynoto0870, my favourite!

Put down the (cod)piece and step away: Artist cuffed after sculpture cockup

proto-robbie
Facepalm

I really must get my eyes tested

It looked like a souffle broke out there for a moment. Isn't old age wonderful?

Forget Mars: Let's get someone on the Moon – NASA veteran

proto-robbie
Boffin

So, how does that work then?

How do we pipe in the wigglies? Without cooking things, that is?

NAO: UK border bods not up to scratch, despite billion-pound facial recog tech

proto-robbie
Pirate

They just...

...need to visit the Barras in Glasgow to meet all their targets.

Boffins lay bare exotic Lara Croft meteorite element ununpentium

proto-robbie
Coat

Handy for fly fishing too.

Google goes dark for 2 minutes, kills 40% of world's net traffic

proto-robbie
Gimp

Probably...

... A botnet auto-clicking on NSA job adverts.

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