Posts by Thecowking
218 posts • joined Tuesday 23rd June 2009 07:50 GMT
Language is everything
I've been swearing in German for when I stub my toe and the like for fifteen years now, normally I just swear in English.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter what the meaning of the word is as much as the sound of it. Which is why "Oh fornication!" isn't a phrase you'll hear every day. By adopting this bi-lingual strategy you can have your kuchen and eat it.
I am technically a scientist, so I'm calling this one science!
That was "I, robot", god that book was so much better than the awful film.
The Zarbi!
Dr Who and the Zarbi was my very first Dr Who paperback. PIcked it up for five pee in a charity store.
I should read that again.
Posted in Go back to the future with Red Dwarf
Hur hur hur, you said "hard on gags".
Sadly that was funnier than season 7&8 combined. ( I actually enjoyed the three parter, mainly because I called the despair/hope squid thing after five minutes and then had smug mode after I was proven right. And I like Blade Runner homages)
I believe they're offering to send a developer to Hull. (I am not joking www.developerinhull.com/ )
But nothing for sysadmins yet.
Little slow off the mark here?
I mean it's the last question tomorrow and they've been advertising on this very site for at least a week.
Science.
Not just technology. This is clearly science, biology probably, might be some sub-genre of the smellier sciences. (What do I know about squishy things? I'm a physicist.)
So while this might be short on microprocessors and the like, it's still well within the remit of the site, even without Bootnotes.
Clearly it's an Optimus.
Transformer, Prime.
It better come in red and blue with flame decals!
Starship Troopers far predates any and all modern anime.
It's not my favourite book, being rather heavy on the military procedure and light on the story, but it's definitely worth a read.
No sign of it on Amazon.co.uk
When you used £s in the article you made me believe I could actually get one of the nicer services on my Kindle here in Blighty.
Is it US only then?
I actually do get Lovefilm to post me DVDs now and then, but by and large it's far too slow and cumbersome for me. Requiring a detour on my way to work to return the films is more effort than I want to give, especially when watching TV series where you're lucky to get 5 episodes on one disk.
A streaming only service with a wider selection would definitely make me sit up and take notice. If netflix had a PS3 service and a wider range than Lovefilm, I'd switch quite happily.
It's never lupus!
Posted in BioWare Baldur's Gate
Best RPG ever?
It's bloody close if it's not the one.
This and the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion cost me a lot of hours of my life, I played it through so many times I am trained to rage at the sound of "Heya, it's me! Imoen!".
I still remember when I found out you could unparty 4 people surrounding Drizzt and then stand back and shoot him until he died and loot his corpse for frankly amazing items.
Silly Drow, your place is in the underdark!
Posted in Stanford boffins create skinnier ‘skin’
Like a meadow of tulips that tell you how pretty you are?
Yup, it's a royal decree or somesuch.
Deep fried pizza is OK, but you need to make it a donner meat pizza and dip it in curry sauce for the true post pub snack of the gods.
Posted in October 14 declared 'Steve Jobs Day'
I have to say 1066 was the first thing that sprung to my mind.
I assume Jobs will be invading through Normandy?
Imagine if you will that it's late August, you pile a million laptops (number used as an illustration only) on a boat and send them on their 40 day journey to Europe. You send them at the end of August so they're in stock for the start of the Christmas buying season and distributed within each country in plenty of time.
Suddenly the economy collapses! Your laptops are still on the boats, but now they will have no one to buy them. You've committed too many resources to this year's sales and you're going to face a profit reduction. All over Europe piles of your laptops will linger in shop inventories, unsold and unloved.
If only you'd had another 3 weeks in which to gauge the state of the market! You could have shipped only half as many and kept the rest as parts which you sold on or used in next year's bargain models!
And that's why it's a glut and not a dearth.
Yes, it does. I just checked.
Still has trouble with "Thruppence Ha'penny" though. I assume that'll be added later.
Neo-Genesis Evangelism?
@the BBC comment
The British Broadcasting Corporation using a .co.uk address?
What next, other corporations doing the same? Barbarians at the gates I say!
On the other hand
It could have been Nobbs.
It's in pencils
If I recall correctly, it was discovered using a pencil and some scotch tape.
If they'd used duct tape instead we'd have a space elevator by now I'm sure.
I have to agree with the consensus
Knowing what they did is mildly interesting, knowing how they did it would be fascinating.
I want one!
When I can stamp a microprocessor at appropriate parts of the paper too I'll be even happier.
This is the second step towards buying a touch sensitive sheet of e-ink paper and making it into a paper thin computer!
Step one was those printable batteries http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/08/paintable_batteries/
I meander through
One of the best things about the Kindle for me is that it's opened up a lot of new, pretty decent authors to me. Randolph Lalonde, Amanda Hocking, David Dalglish, the fantastically named David Lister and so on. All of these authors I discovered by opening up a section of the kindle store and having a wander through looking for something cheap and new.
If you stick to the samples first and then move on from there, you can actually find some very good authors out there.
I can't say I've noticed the autogenerated chaff yet either.
Posted in Nintendo: no DVD, BD playback for Wii U
Lovefilm also streams
I'm watching one right now, 3:10 to Yuma as it happens.
So the UK's not without movie streaming by any means.
You had a spoon?
We 'ad te coax passing squirrels to gnaw through the card at the right place! And that were 'ard right, cos we didn't have cards and we couldn't afford squirrels.
Finally!
Laser Eye surgery that can do what it says on the tin!
The same thing...
... That happened to the first nine Bens.
Eaten by pygmies.
If you're dense
then so am I, I have no clue.
Of course it's not beyond the realms of possibility that I'm being dense, quite the opposite in fact.
Posted in Verity Stob and the super subjunction
I can see a use for it
You'd use it when putting forth statements you weren't sure were true or not and seeking verification.
"Today is the deadline for that report?,"
I mean yes you could just use the normal question mark and everyone would know what you meant, but where's the fun in that?
But what to you might be the change from one energy level to the next
to someone else might represent the chance to put right what once went wrong.
Personally
I'm very glad about this.
If you get the chance
Go for Tsingtao black, I could only get that in Jiangguomenwai but it's a bloody lovely beer.
Bah, I miss China.
Funny you should say that
I started them at the weekend, on #4 at the moment and yes, he definitely needs a better proof reader and a quick primer in physics, but the story, characters and dialogue are spot on.
And with the first book being free, the second being only £0.69 and the rest at very reasonable (sub fiver) prices, how could I say no?
Tianan
Men means gate.
So Tian'an would be the correct name.
Personally I'd go with tian shang (above heaven) for the symmetry with tian xia (Below heaven, often used to mean the world or China.)
I don't care about the cross platform malarkey
And none of my kindle owning friends or family bother with it either. I realise this is purely anecdotal, but the reason I use my kindle to buy and read books is because it's perfect for that role. It's 3rd gen and I honestly can't see many ways they could improve it for the role of displaying and purchasing ebooks and newspapers.
I'm a little confused by the DRM "lock in" and encumbering comments though, it's not like you can only read DRMed books on the kindle, it reads open MOBI format files happily as my mass plunder of Gutenberg shows.
Posted in The Bayeux Tapestry archiving model
Etch it into metal
and then strap said metal to a space ship and blast it off out of the solar system.
Voyager will most likely still be whizzing through the stars when the Earth is a blackened cinder. Of course it's mainly a write once read never mechanic, so you can achieve the same end by just melting the metal after you've written to it.
I think it's beta.
Technically "wrong"
But let's face it, an error of a few days out of 3652 or so really isn't going to massively impact the data is it?
Unless of course everyone changes their circumstances massively over this weekend, it'll still be pretty valid data. A few people dying, a few more being born, out of a population of millions it's not really going to change the actual results drawn from the data.
Posted in Apple bashes 'gay cure' app
Nor did it work
For Freddie Mercury.
Nor even Butters' dad in South Park.
Posted in Paramount buries Dune remake
The Lynch film is a classic
I love it, it's always been a favourite of mine and while the whole weirding way bit was squiffily done, Sting, Patrick Stewart with hair and flying fat men make it a greta film.
In fact I shall watch it again tonight. The spice must flow!
Posted in WTF is... cloud gaming?
It is available on PC
So you can use your own keyboard and mouse.
I wouldn't, but hey, you could.
Rouges are overpowdered.
I saw a rouge walk into an alliance camp once, it was a mascara.
And so on.
Kotor does rule though, Bioware make a damn fine RPG
Posted in EC parades common phone charger
My Kindle charger
Will charge my Nokia N97 and the Nokia charger works on the Kindle. So as far as those two are concerned, they definitely do work together.
Posted in Big stink over Malawi farting ban
You surely jest?
Everyone knows that beans, means Heinz.
It's El Reg code
Boffin = proper scientist who does important things like explode stuff or look at stars.
Trick-cyclist = The kind of person who calls themselves a scientist and then produces reports like this one.
The sun's only in the way...
...If you're on or near the ecliptic.
Presumably this will be a bit above or below the plane of the ecliptic and so we can get a signal from it.
Give them some credit
They've learnt new skills in prison. That's a pretty rough hack, but clearly it works. That's the kind of skill which is transferable when they get back out.
On the one hand it's bad because they've broken the rules and they're meant to be being rehabilitated, on the other hand MacGuyver would be proud of them.
