I'd make a comment

But the Moderatix might take my words out of context. . .

Re: Re: The Age of Spiritual Machines

I remember an STTNG episode in which Wesley does something naughty with nanobots or nanites as they were called, which pushes it back well into the eighties (especially since for an idea to appear in Star Trek it has to be reasonably familiar, at least in the SF world). So unless the the Intel researchers have made actual progress towards realising the idea, the whole thing's pretty ho hum.

executive upper-class

'Lian-Li Industrial, a self-styled “executive upper-class aluminium PC chassis manufacturer” '

They have a good reputation for their cases - it must be because they make good cases - it certainly isn't down to their marketing department.

Yes, I know it's chinglish, but 'executive upper-class' doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

In other news

Dubya announces Bruce Willis to head first Nasa mission to Saturn complete with hand-picked team of drillers, erm, astronauts.

Hardly a technicality

Since it's notoriously difficult to prove in a court of law that a gift is a bribe most jurisdictions simply require taht public officials declare gifts over a certain value and leave it to the court of public opinion. The corollary, of course, is that if you don't declare a gift the presumption is that it is a bribe and you've got a lot of explaining to do.

PS, if you think that "the internet is a series of tubes" makes sense, read the transcript. This guy make Dubya look like JFK.

It's a source of electric power

the actual technology in the box shouldn't matter - Li-ion, fuels cells, stirling cyle engines, fried mushroom based diesel generators. Well maybe not the mushrooms, but you get the idea.

Standards are to be welcomed, but if they are too narrow and you end up with a format war we're better off without them.

re: DARPA are slipping

So I suppose you'd file the internet under "so crazy that it just might work".

re: There's a lot of it about

Given the amount of erm, ejaculation, going on on the first page I can't help thinking that the logo is 100% deliberate. And that both figures are male.

re: Getac girl

Nah, the full body armour'd get in the way of the jumpsuit seductively unzipped to the navel - you've gotta get your media cliche straight.

Screw rollup displays

I just want and OLED monitor.

Oh the irony

Nice to see you around here, Mr Ballmer.

OK

All together now.

"Maybe they could use traceroute"

re: Flash player required

It worked for me and I got a little brown penis sitting on a leaf.* Not ironic. Just appropriate.

* Before you ask: being Australian, I've never had reason to use street view before now.

re: Why the constant bashing?

Because this time it's personal. Data, that is. When my video card dies I go out and get a better one. When my hard drive goes, I lose stuff, backups notwithstanding. Consigning people's personal stuff to the great bit bucket in the sky is a good way to generate long standing grievances.

You forgot

the mountain bike bog snorkelling! Who wants to walk when you can ride?

I vote

we kidnap Jamie Hyneman and dump him on the streets of Atlanta with nothing but one of his robots for company.

He'd make short work of this nutter.

What's right with paper ballots

* Ballot boxes go "missing" (If people care enough about democracy they will volunteer as scrutineers so this doesn't happen.)

* Ballot boxes get "stuffed" out of sight (ditto)

* Counting is slow / error-prone (Not in Australia it isn't. Last Federal election, polls closed at six, the result was known by around eight. If the result's close enough that the error rate matters, just do a recount. Did I mention scrutineers whose job is to ensure that there aren't errors? )

* A significant proportion of paper ballots are 'spoiled' (If you spoil a paper, just ask for another one.)

* Electronic machines can be made more accessible to the disabled (supposedly) (very supposedly - How hard is it to make a mark with a big thick pencil?)

Nah. . .

No true rubber fetishist would go with that colour.

Or so I've heard.

Count me odd too

The last thing I want on a machine of this class is a hard drive.

here's why:

http://eeesite.net/2008/02/eee-pc-takes-licking-keeps-on-you-know.html

Warning: not safe for squeamish geeks.

If I wanted to watch TV on the train

I'd pull out my eee. . .

320x240 - you've got to be kidding.

Whatever happened to widescreen?

re: what did Fleming know?

Didn't Fleming come up with an elaborate plan to capture an enigma machine that had to be cancelled on orfers from above?

Rather pointless if he had been in on Ultra.

Of course, the higher ups may have let him in on the secret just to prevent anymore crazy Bond style schemes.

Re: I doubt the DRM is out of 2008....

I this takes a bit of imagination, but maybe the engineers at MS are smart enough to write DRM code that can de simply disabled in builds where it's not deemed to be needed. Drivers are hardly an issue - who puts an "XFi Xtreme Audio" card or a TV card in a server and, yes, without DRM, maybe even Creative could come up with half decent drivers. As for "asshole" pirates They'll continue to use XP or switch to Linux. The DRM in Vista isn't there to stop pirates. How much torrented copyrighted material has the DRM left in? Exactly none, I'll bet. It's there to stop casual copying which it does very effectively. That this is a solution to an issue that has long since passed into history is, well, typical of MS.

I'm with Matt and Mectron on this - cherchez la DRM.

re: Brit accent

How would that work considering that anyone in a Hollywood film "of middle eastern appearence" or having a British accent is by default the villian?

Put the two together and it's a case of "the queue for Guantamo Bay's on the left"

terroristic

I prefer terroresque - same lack of actual content plus it would make a great name for a band.

re: They should dump ATI

Given that the days of neatly separated cpus and cpus are pretty obviously numbered, AMD had little choice to acquire a graphics division, as painful as the process has been, while Intel with it's much greater resources had the luxury of building one from scratch. But now it's done, AMD are arguably in the better position strategically. Unless Intel are simply very good at playing their cards close to their chest, AMD's Fusion is much further advanced than the Intel equivalent.

in the mid-term it's actual Nvidia that I'd be concerned about.

The Japanese crucified Santa Claus

and it seems that they haven't quite got the hang of April fool's day either.

re: and yet

Google has: try googling the first sentence of the story.

If they give me one for my shed

I'll happily display the maple leaf.

Bruce is right

It is (was) a cg teapot - I can see the individual polys.

I feel bad about being flippant about what is at heart a serious issue but sometimes it's the only alternative to despair.

re: Single point of failure

Probably depends on whether your pub's running Windows for Watering Holes (tm) or not.

I can answer the board member's question in three letters

Starts with D ends with M

I was going to say something apposite

But after the blowjob piece I find I've exceeded my daily quota for innuendo.

If you don't understand the role of the assistant

you obviously haven't been watching the right training videos.

No Paris, because all her videos are in the basic category and you want advanced.

This movie must be made

just for the scene where the Terminator wastes a little girl who offers it an icecream.

re Over-fishing ??

Why do the salmon buyers get hanged while Rick Stein merely gets banned. Come down hard on the pushers I say!

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39473

Says it all really.

Octopussy in the lead

You people just aren't getting enough. . .

BTW

It's clearly Sil, the evil little slug creature from 'Vengeance on Varos'. And you people call yourself Doctor Who fans. (Though you'lll be forgiven if it turns out that el Reg has invented a brain wipe technique to remove all memories of everything relating to Colin Baker. If so make an exception to 'Vengeance' - it was decent little satire.)

PS: nice to see that The Register's cookies now work with Opera.

According to the Google Ads

It's an angel guide. Just about says it all really.

Is the 'hot rod' joke banned as well?

If not I'll be right on it.

I'm looking forward to . .

Zeus played by a cgi Laurence Olivier with the ham setting turned up to 11.

Has to be said

Which year? 1997? 1987?

re:to operationalize open access?

"Someone please smack them with a copy of the complete Oxford Dictionary".

Seconded.

It seems our martian friend has found a job.

Oh the irony

of having to side with either "M$" or a patent troll

They made the word famous?

Maybe, but only among people whose vocabularies don't usually run to words of more than two syllables.

Urbandictionary.com lists a least three distinct meanings not including my favourite - starting a cult in order to have your way with your most attractive followers.

Always meant to try that sometime.