Just think...

They could imitate beer goggles, without the need for beer...

Then again, the beer is half the fun...

"five rockets in five minutes" ... "scheduled for sometime between midnight and 1.30am EST" ... "all five dumping their tracer trails at altitudes of between 53 and 84 miles (85 and 130km), leaving milky-white clouds that should allow the cameras on the ground and the public to "see" the winds for up to 20 minutes"

Won't it be dark out?? Just saying...

slight correction...

"exterminating the locals who were living there at the time"

There, fixed that for you

Idiot kids...

"I've worked with kids who will urinate in a bottle in their room, rather than leave the screen."

WTF? Wouldn't diapers be both easier (hands-free, eyes can stay on the screen), more risk-free (no bottle to knock over or fill up), and solve more problems (can handle a bowel movement).

doublespeak

"We have firmly scotched rumours of the smartphone division being sold to Microsoft," he said. "We have knocked them on the head time and time again."

Nothing in that statement says that there are no plans for the division to be sold. All he said was that they tried to quash rumours about it being sold - which they would do if they wanted the share price to be lower.

And I agree with Alex that the name needs to be changed. Preferably to something without the words "Windows" and "Microsoft". I wouldn't buy it anyway...

RIP Nokia. You can always go back to wellies...

Chrome popularity irrelevant

The popularity of Chrome makes no difference to this deal, only the popularity of Firefox has some bearing on it (i.e. how many browsers / eyes have Google as their default search engine).

Friday!!

"..ball-handling skills, as well as both shooting and dribbling.. "

I suspect some of the audience will also be dribbling at some point, if not downright drooling. A 'select' few may even be ball-handling and shooting. Make sure you get a top-row seat...

Yeah, the mac..

Wrong group

I have nothing against attractive young women working while wearing bikinis, in fact I am all for this practice becoming as mainstream as them wearing sandals. However, I can't help but think that this project is putting those few who are already genetically pre-disposed to working in bikinis at some risk, thus reducing the likelyhood of them passing down their genes to future generations.

Wouldn't it be better to safeguard them? I would prefer, say, to find these young ladies work wearing a biniki in an office downtown somewhere, perhaps in or next to an IT department.

And let a group of young, male, attractive bodybuilders work with the Great Whites, thus raising MY odds of passing my genes along - perhaps with one of the aforementioned bikini-clad beauties...

P.S. is it Friday already??

Why didn't he just

have an accident in the workplace? Probably less painful than eternal damnation (though there is some doubt, I guess).

tailgaters

beware :-)

Basic maths

If there is one "advanced" civilization per 100 solar systems, and each of these civilizations puts out 10 000 interstellar probes over it's lifetime, and 1% of these probes happen to find a useful resting place (i.e. not a star) in another solar system, that means on average that there is one extraterrestrial probe somewhere in each solar system. Fancy searching the surface of Jupiter or Saturn? Those are the most likely resting places..

And IMHO, my assumptions are wildly optimistic - assuming 1 civ per 10 000 systems, 1000 interstellar probes, and a 0.1% chance of finding a useful resting place, you get a 0.01% chance of a probe in any one solar system.

And we haven't begun talking about the fact that a probe landing on earth even just a few million years ago would be buried, just like a fossil.

SETI has a much better chance of finding anything IMO... If a civ wanted to show it existed and find other civs, and had the capability, why wouldn't it send out vast numbers of probes, each with a radio sending out messages and some kind of atomic battery to ensure long life.

That's no asteroid!*

It's a space station!

*Yeah, moon, I know, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

Mistake

I didn't get it - could you please resend.

Thanks

just four words: RoTM

No title is needed...

"We can only hope that 419 scammers will be among them" - you mean among the gullible people who believe the rumour? Or among the people who died when receiving a call from 09141?? I know which I hope for (happy icon)

Perhaps this would be a good telephone number for a 419 baiter to give to a scammer.

Huh??

I'm all for non-IT stories - Paris, size 72 airbags, drunk moose in trees, Mr Bean prangs McLaren, etc.. This story was probably meant to fit in with the above mentioned and others in the same vein.

But this just isn't news. It isn't interesting, it isn't funny, it isn't memorable, and although it does involve 'naughty bits', the use of them is mundane and standard, and the visualization (in the absence of a decent picture) downright unpleasant.

Speakin of picture, itwas, IMHO, seriously subpar even for this below par story. No frogmen, playmobile people, cheeks, or silicon(e) anywhere. Can we please pick up the pace a bit, it can't be THAT slow a news day....

Oh, and I probably need to add a gratuitous FUCK YOU IDIOTS or similar for FOTW purposes (yes, I agree, a seriously sub-par attempt but the story deserves it...).

Next time...

she should just have asked to be searched where she was standing, rather than going to some other room. Surely that is within her rights. Wait to strip off until they ask, and it then becomes the problem of the searchers to make sure that she is not seen by small children. After all, small children are deeply affected by nakedness...

Or else, wear a tiny bikini under her clothes on the plane, she could immediately strip down to that in public without a problem. She could even strip down to it before entering customs...

You can call me Sir...

Someone here is being pretty lazy, or they never got through decimals. I refuse to believe that the ratios of drink types in the UK just happens to be all nice whole numbers:

1 glass of bubbly

1 glass of liquor

1 cocktail

2 bottles of cider

4 pints

4 shots of spirits

6 glasses of wine

It looks to me like someone rounded a lot of this off, saying "instead of 1.2:0.9:1.1:1.8:4.3:3.8:5.7, we'll make the numbers nice..." Alternatively, they took a small sample size and ramped it up to get the "whole picture" Either way, the numbers are difficult to swallow (pun intended).

But I'm glad that somewhere, someone is picking up my slack on the bubbly & spirits side and leaving me their unwanted pints...

Misplaced priorities

Fine, displacing food production for ethanol is a problem. But there is no mention of the fact that agave-based ethanol production would displace tequila production...

Can we get a Friday icon please??

What about his eligibility

for a Darwin award? Two questions arise: was it his fault, and can he reproduce..

At some level, it was his at least partially his fault - his wife was upset enough to plan and carry this out, and after 11 years of marriage he should have been aware of what she was capable of. Also, he ate the dinner she gave him even though he felt it tasted strange (from a BBC article).

Problem is, he still should be able to reproduce through sperm extraction, if not by orgasm.

So, IMHO, no award for him. Better luck next time, buddy...

"Won't someone think of the children" icon, of course...

Can I..

have your icon, if you're not going to be using it? :-)

Although your comments were always a pleasure for us to read, I somehow doubt you would be able say the same about ours..

Take care, good luck, don't drink anything I wouldn't drink, keep the wit flowing..