'Flaptop' surely.

Nobody is ever going to say 'fondleslab' out loud, but 'flaptop' - that works.

Crack - craic

Both correct, but 'crack' is more so. People have been using the word in that context for a lot longer in the North of England than they have in Ireland, and longer in Northern Ireland than elsewhere there - 'craic' is just a fakey back translation for people who think it's only an Irish idiom.

Units

Indeed, and in horse racing 'to win by a GH' would be needed when 'a nose' wouldn't be fine enough.

Deprecated

It's a fairly old word, perhaps not used so much when there are so many newer alternatives. Common enough where I was from.

Re: Must be a West-Brit Dub thing

You couldn't be more wrong.

Re: Great!

We sniggered in school at Guy de Maupassant, and it's making me laugh even now. Can't watch 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' without a grin every time she says the blokes name.

Come to think of it, the way we pronounce the word 'can't' often raises an eyebrow in the UK...

...open up a decent Unix command line without having to install cygwin?

Telnet?

Re: Sci-fi 'tech'

The most glaring examples tended to be where the hero would take out his slide rule and star charts, labouriously/skillfully plot a course and *then* feed it into the computer...

Re: CO2 likely lagged the increase in regional Antarctic temperature

"In nature, CO2 increases always come after warming..."

Indeed it does, but this isn't a natural increase in CO2.

Re: Hang on a second... @ AC

"Solar activity is at its highest for 1,000 years" sez he. Well stop the lights, alert the IPCC.

How many times do I have to say this - "We have not seen *corresponding* changes in solar activity in the same period **that could account for current temperature changes**, nor have we found any other cause that could account for this rise in temperatures."

Re: Hang on a second...

We have not seen corresponding changes in solar activity in the same period *that could account for current temperature changes*, nor have we found any other cause that could account for this rise in temperatures.

Yes, really Armando.

All that money spent on all that disinformation. Worth every cent - and the best bit is that the dupes think that they are the skeptics.

Re: Hang on a second...

Climate change happens, but it doesn't just happen, it always has to have a cause. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, its effects are measurable and predictable in terms of solar radiation received and absorbed versus reflected out again.

In the distant past, we have seen how rising temperatures due to natural causes have themselves caused a corresponding rise in CO2. That's the natural way it seems.

In the present however, we have seen a rise in CO2. We have also seen a corresponding rise in temperatures that closely parallels this rise in CO2. We have not seen a change in solar radiation in the same period, nor have we found any other reason for this rise in temperatures. The rise in CO2 is not natural either, being caused by human activities, the normal processes of climate change are not responsible.

Ice core records show how climate changed in the past, when natural forces alone held sway.

Things are different now.

In the very recent past it was actual US government policy to discredit findings on climate change due to human activities and large energy corporations have spent untold billions on enforcing that policy. It has to be said that they got their money's worth.

"In over 15 years, I haven't had a virus and I don't run antivirus"

Me too, me neither, and it's now over 19 years, and for the same reasons.

Re: Plants can talk actual words

Well that's a turnip for the books...

Re: No need for a union if peole recognize a few facts:

In other words, take what you're given?

"...why a monopoly is bad unless it's a union"?

El Reg does not have to explain - you only have to ask an employer whether they would like to deal with a plethora of unions or just one.

By all means start up your own union if you aren't happy with the one you have - but it won't be the trades union movement that you will have to convince to have it recognised.

Odd numbered releases were always the ones

Compare DOS 3 and 5 to 4 and 6 - twas ever so.

'Kiosk mode ... doesn't give you this freedom.'

The clue is in the name.

Did you not know...

That Internet Explorer has always had a 'kiosk' mode and that the easiest way to try it is to press F11?

Probably not actually ironic

@jake - Had I been quoting from Hamlet you might have been right, but I wasn't. By the same token, if that's what you are referencing, then you might need to look it up yourself.

Mine's a pint of water with a dash of blackcurrant, thanks.

Doh!

Hoisted by my own petard, guilty as charged. Sorry stu!

so much for 'smart' people

From naval slang to rhyming slang might be a bit too much of a jump for some!

Anyway - there is CANOE - the Campaign to Attribute Nautical Origins to Everything...

So one bloke, allegedly, didn't do his job and the whole organisation and concept is condemned? There were reasons why workers organised unions in the first place, and the more people who leave the more likely we are to find out those reasons...

So you ignore unions for years, then turn up when you're in trouble, signing up for a month expecting the union to sort you out? Not a bit surprised they didn't help you.

Also fixed car stereos, good and proper.

Also fixed the massive inconvenience of bunging any old mp3 player, USB key, mobile phone you want straight into your car stereo USB slot with, oh, what was that super convenient chain of AUX cables, FM transmitters, chargers and batteries for the transmitter, connecting to the cigarette lighter, tuning radio to transmitter, charging ipod, ipod holders and the downright not dangerous in any way handiness of no display or control from the head unit?

Indeed.

I had my doubts about Vista until I saw its recovery process in action and it stayed my hand. The sort of tiny boot file corruption that would kill XP stone dead was detected and repaired with no intervention required.

Admittedly you had to slap it around a bit when you got it first to make it behave itself but who doesn't like doing that to computers?

Let's not pretend

The old pretence of Windows complexity to justify the cost of Apple products is alive and well.

Of course Windows Explorer is hideously difficult to use, and it's absolutely criminal the way that it doesn't allow you to group your Country Funk seperately from your Disco Folk, but good grief - Right-click, Send To, end of. No drivers required.

The reason that PCs sell even better?

Is what?

Same here, only no supercars...

Same long slide, but in a 1985 Corolla hatchback, same very low speed impact, though out of the corner of my eye I could see herself bouncing forward in the seatbelt and the kids in the back doing the same. Anyway, the bonnet crumpled up as it should do, in overly dramatic fashion, wing and headlight went in too, and it was the Garda that 'helped' bend things back that did for the radiator with a crowbar.

The car in front seemed to have little other than a kink where I had hit it.

I cobbled mine back for 250 quid, bonnet, lights, washer bottle, radiator, wing while the other one claimed off her insurance and charged 2,500 to my insurance company.

Boys will be boys though - when I was in school a friend 'borrowed' his brother's Fiat 500 and it was only when I questioned his driving ability that he admitted he had never driven before. I let myself out at that point - once he managed to stop. I heard later he drove it into his front door trying to park it - those brake and gas pedals are so close together on a tiny Fiat and when you combine that with big wide 70s brogues...

While we still don't know what befell the German kid, your man's brother kicked the living shit out of him.

You never really could see them, but -

...they haven't gone away you know.

Easy...

They just travel back in time and stop your man from going out the night before - no drink, no hangover, no shakes.

Easy.

Off up to Dublin meself this evening.

Just one thing though...

While it's unlikely that we are alone in this universe, the sad fact is that somebody or something has to be the very first to arise - and what if it's us?

Here's a clue

Seeing as you haven't got one.

"Such a regional dust-up, the scientists determined, would cause conflagrations sufficient to loft about five million metric tons of black carbon into the lower atmosphere..."