* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10123 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

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Re: Instant justice

If Twitter implemented a "punch in the face" button - which pushed a boxing glove out of your screen and into your face when anyone pressed the punch in face button - this would be a fine idea.

People like Piers Morgan would have to abandon Twitter - or risk death. Which is no bad thing I suspect.

Wlould the Secret Service have to leap between Trump and his screen ever second or so? They've had to fit crash mats in the Oval Office and maybe a trampoline for take-offs...

I'm liking this idea. Although I got downvoted over 40 times on a post last week - so here's hoping El Reg don't get any ideas...

China fires up 'Great Cannon' denial-of-service blaster, points it toward Hong Kong

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Re: Fuck China

What CAN be done

Charles 9,

Well one policy that will have some effect but not really give an excuse to get all warlike is targetted sanctions. They aren't fast - sanctions never are. But the elites in places like Russia and China are absolutely desperated to get their ill-gotten money out of the country. As with no rule of law, they know that they might have to make a run for it someday. And leaving it there means they're vulnerable to their successors. So stopping them from doing that is a good way of making certain policies unpopular with the political leadership.

The New York Times had a series of articles claiming that Wen Jiabao's family amassed $4bn while he was premier of China. Which got the NYT banned by the Great Firewall and lots of complaints. But when you've nicked that kind of cash - you don't exactly want to leave it lying around.

Trump's tarriffs aren't exactly helping the Chinese economy either. Not they're anything to do with Hong Kong and won't bring much manufacturing back to the US. But they might move some of it to Vietnam or Indonesia.

Broader economic sanctions might happen if they send the troops in though.

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Re: That reminds me...

Anon,

The same guy who built HAARP got sad because nobody would fund his giant gun for firing stuff into space and so designed the Supergun for Iraq. They got as far as ordering parts - but didn't have the ability to manufacture in-country so it got stopped. Whether it would have worked is another matter.

Their chemical weapons programs were all home-grown, because the technology is easier and they had lots of oil. Although their nerve agents were a bit rubbish due to poor chemical purity (so had short shelf lives) and their biological programs never really got going. Their other problem was crap delivery tech - which they couldn't get from foreign sources as there's no dual-use stuff there - so they mostly used mustard gas delivered by artillery - which is nice and easy WWI technology.

See all the UN weapons inspectors reports from the 1990s for details. Those reports also say what they had found the paperwork for but not yet destroyed - which was the basis for assuming Iraq still had stocks of weapons in 2002.

Doogee Wowser: The S40's a terrible smartphone, but a passable projectile

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Happy

Re: Throwing phones at school

My teacher when I was ten was so accurate with chalk that he could aim for and hit ears well over 90% of the time. I think he threw the blackboard rubber for effect only - but the chalk was hurled at viciously high speeds.

The only funny line I can remember from the Police Academy films is someone asking what the worst thing about being a teacher was. And the answer was, "not being able to carry hand grenades." Much more effective than a detention.

As the saying goes, "if you can't beat 'em - what's the point of teaching."

Silicon Valley Scrooges sidestep debt to society through tax avoidance to the tune of $100bn

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Re: @Chris Miller

The reg really lost out when they lost Tim

They did. I still read his blog, but it's all gone a bit culture-wars-y. He's a much better writer on economics than all that other stuff. In his Register pieces Tim was usually very good at separating the economics from his opinion, telling you which was which and also saying which bits of economics were more mainstream and which were controversial.

Actually the same has happened to Paul Krugman. His blog on the New York Times used to be an interesting read of an economist's take on politics and news. But now it's 20 articles on how all Republicans are evil liars and the odd one where he actually talks about economics. Which is a real shame.

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Replying to myself now the report's come out. They list Amazon as the worst tax avoider because it's paid the least tax over the years on very high turnover. Ignoring the fact that only started making profits a couple of years ago. For twenty years Amazon has made tens of millions (with the odd loss) because it's been re-investing almost all of its profits. It's only in the last couple of years that it's started to make billions - as the AWS money firehose has kicked into full flow.

However, the degree of irresponsibility and the relative tax contribution made does vary. Amazon has paid just $3.4bn in income taxes this decade, whilst Apple has paid $93.8bn and Microsoft has paid $46.9bn. This is a staggering variance, especially as Amazon’s revenue over this period exceeded that of Microsoft’s by almost $80bn.

from pg 4 of their report here

So they've quoted Amazon's income tax (US speak for Corporation tax) against their revenue (turnover) and not earnings (profits) - even though corporation tax is levied on profits and not turnover.

How can anyone be this ignorant?

I contend that they aren't - which leaves that they're lying. That staggering level of ignorance means I won't bother taking their report seriously though.

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Michael Wojcik,

My comment about under-taxed was more as a comparison to other companies. I think that the way things are going, reducing corporation taxes and collecting revenues directly from dividends and capital gains tax may be the way to go. But it's important that companies face as much of a level playing field as possible - or you get monopolies. And at the moment, multi-nationals get an advantage over companies that only operate in one country, and so don't have access to such tax minimisation shennanigans.

Also, taxes are easier to collect at lower rates, as it's not worth the effort to evade them.

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Re: Ok but how much tax is fair?

DavCrav,

Some of this has already been done. Transfer pricing is more scrutinised and HMRC can challenge vehicles that are purely designed for tax planning that don't have any obvious economic benefit.

But equally some of it can't be done. Companies are supposed to pay tax where their economic activities take place. But that's not always clear. You could argue that all of Facebook's revenue derives from their USA headquarters. The company is the website and all the data they've hoovered up.

Even if you don't accept that extreme view of things, not all advertising (their source of revenue) is done at a national level. And a lot of their costs are at a global level, not a national one. So there's got to be some sort of transfer pricing to account for this, or we're stealing taxes that belong in the US.

There'll never be a perfect answer to this question. And I suspect that international cooperation on it will be very slow indeed.

Thus slowly moving Corporation tax levels lower, and putting it on dividends/capital gains instead seems the pragmatic and achievable thing to do. The lower corp tax rates are, the less incentive to play silly buggers as well.

As for people moving their wealth off-shore to avoid taxes, that's down to what you allow. If someone is solely resident in your country, you can tax them on that overseas income anyway. Or they can subtract the taxes they pay on it abroad from their domestic tax - as now. Hiding assets abroad has beeen getting harder in recent years, even the Swiss banks are less secret than they used to be.

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Worth the licence fee on it's own.

What's that, Radio 4 or just More or Less?

It is an excellent station. Although Today has been rubbish for at least 25 years now and Just a Minute similarly. I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has however gone from strength-to-strength. And John Finnemore is a comedy God.

But it's the stuff that takes a looser look at current affairs that's greatest. More or Less of course, but the Briefing Room is good for taking a longer look at issues. The Media Show is vital if you want to understand the successes and failings of the modern media. I've learnt a lot about the history and recent changes to the legal system from Unreliable Evidence and Peter Hennessey's interviews with retired politicians or programmes about the constitution are always enlightening. This also prepares you much better to understant politics, if you've got some historical perspective, understanding of how things get reported and how the legal system works (and interacts with politics). Plus there's science coverage, comedy and a surprising amount of content on music.

I'd love to see something like More or Less used in schools though. So many stats you're shown are just obvious bollocks with even the most basic look at them - but people aren't comfortable with doing the kind of basic mental arithmatic in their heads to notice. I remember an interview with the awesome Hans Rosling where he was doing his Gap-Minder Powerpoint to a bunch of politicians and NGOs at a global development conference. And how ignorant a bunch of them were about how much has improved for the poorest people in the world in the last 2 decades. People have a tendency to just repeat a shocking number, if it aligns with their political outlook, rather than doing a double-take and saying, that's way too unlikely to be true.

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Devil

I want mass re-education camps with giant speakers playing nothing but re-runs of More or Less, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, The Briefing Room and any programs with Peter Hennessey in them. Clive Anderson's legal discussion show (Unreliable Evidence) is also pretty much universally excellent. Some In Our Time to lull them to sleep in the dormitories would be good too.

The Archers could be used in the interrogation block. It's cheaper than waterboarding.

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The problem with a lot of these campaign groups is that they need headlines - and so they reach for the big numbers and simplistic slogans to get journalistic attention. And they're often not too honest about how they do it.

It's depressing, but also depressingly successful. The stories write themselves, so it's easy cheap copy for the media - who rarely seem to concern themselves with anything like checking if ti's bollocks. Not helped by so many journalists being utterly crap at numbers.

Everyone should be forced to listen to Radio 4's More or Less.

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Re: Ok but how much tax is fair?

Steve Davies 3,

One answer is to abolish corporation tax altogether. It's getting harder to collect in a more globalised world - and it's also hard to judge where it should be collected. So tax dividends and capital gains more instead - and capture that money somewhere where it's much easier to define what's owed.

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LDS,

He can be wrong. But this group have a history of talking bollocks on tax. And also love their 100bn tax gaps, as that was the amount of the tax gap in the UK when they did a big report about it 3 or 4 years ago. And it turns out that they included things like companies investing in machinery and knocking it off their tax as part of the "tax gap".

In general whenever someone comes up with a report that talks about huge massive headline figures - it's bollocks done for campaigning purposes and to get shock headlines. When you look closer you find that it's all dodgy adding up and/or dodgy selective use of statistics.

We all know that these companies are under-taxed - and over-use loopholes. So it's not that I disagree that they're a legitimate target. But there's often this pretence of something-for-nothing, that we can spend loads more on services without paying any more tax. And Tax Justice have been guilty fo that. This idea that we can have £100bn extra of spending, and someone else will pay. And that's just not true. People pay taxes, not companies.

BOFH: I'd like introduce you to a groovy little web log I call 'That's Boss'

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How about commentardery? As in:

"I just wasted spend the last half hour in top-quality commentardery on El Reg."

Escobar Fold 1 snort all it's cracked up to be: Readers finger similarity to slated Chinese mobe

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Flame

Other products you missed

July 11 2019 (company history page):

Escobar Inc launches the original, official and proprietary Escobar Inc Flamethrower, a $500 flamethrower, reduced to $249 tactical toy with a 20,000 unit production run produced by Flameshooter Ltd in London, UK. Currently in a dispute with Elon Musk over our proprietary technology.

I'm surprised there isn't also a line of chainsaws as well. You couldn't make this up. It's a funny old world...

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Re: That is some website

Also, in the company history page (which I recommnend heartily) they say that someone squatted on their web domain, and demanded $3 million to give it back to them. They won it at an international domain dispute panel.

That is one brave cyber-squatter! / That was one stupid cyber squatter! [delete as appropriate]

They also set up a GoFundMe to impeach Trump while doing all their other stuff.

Vote rigging, election fixing, ballot stuffing: Just another day in the life of a Register reader

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Re: Have you ever eaten green crisps?

Aren't blueberries sort of purple?

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Re: Have you ever eaten green crisps?

Stoneshop,

I didn't actually mind my green scrambled eggs (others couldn't understand how I could eat them). Some friends in the kitchen were playing silly buggers - so someone else's came out blue. Which reminded me of Ford Prefect eating the food on the Vogon ship.

You can change the tastes that we notice in foods by playing with colour though.

But obviously not all green things are bad. Salads can be lovely - I like brocoli (especially served with toasted almonds and sea salt). I'm not sure nori is actually nice though - so much as wrapped round things that are. It's not hugely tasty. Wasabi is also delicious. Key lime pie. Nice blue foods are rarer.

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Happy

Re: side issue of green beer

On a more seasonal theme a friend (since purged from my life for obvious reasons) came over for dinner last Christmas. Bringing some pre-dinner snacks. Namely Walkers Brussel Sprout flavoured crisps.

Have you ever eaten green crisps? Well don't. Not that I objected to the colour, just the taste. I like sprouts, but these things tasted of something that's been boiled in Satan's used sock for three weeks.

Being served green scrambled eggs is pretty off-putting too. Some people think they already look a bit vomit-y, but it's much worse when they're bright green.

UK parcel firm Yodel plugs tracking app's random yaps about where on map to snap up strangers' tat

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Re: 25%

Lazlo Woodbine,

that's the problem. £300 is way too much difference. I hope you gave the shop a chance to give you a discount though - and get closer to the web price.

But I think it is a problem that many shops are selling at RRP - when there's enough margin in it for some websites to really discount. And with manufacturers much less in control of pricing than they used to be - that's pretty hard to get away with.

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Re: A moral obligation

Loyal Commenter,

I bought both my digital cameras (a bridge camera then upgraded to an SLR) on the high street. One from Jessops, one from an independent.

Even for Jessops though, they spent a long time showing me the different ones I wanted to look at - and I said that I'd found the one I settled on for nearly £200 less online. I didn't expect them to match that price (the cheapest I found wasn't a UK site and didn't look all that trustworthy anyway), but that I'd buy from them if they could get close. I think I ended up paying £30 more than the UK site - which is a reasonable amount for half an hour of playing with a handful of models I was interested in trying.

I actually spent less time choosing which SLR to go with. At the time all the Canon's below pro level had such small controls that my sausage fingers could barely use them. I'm not sure I even bothered to turn the thing on I found it so uncomfortable to hold.

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Re: I found out I had a receptionist too

Is Wheelie-Bin not a hyphenated name? It's important to get these things right, dontcherknow. Otherwise your newfound domestic staff might leave in high dudgeon.

My friend's receptionist is Miss Flower Bed. The Amazon delivery people tend to just fling stuff over the garden gate.

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then bought it online because it was about 25% cheaper than anywhere on the high street...

And now you know why.

Plus the next time you want to try before you buy, there might not be any shops there to do it - because if everyone does this they'll all go bust. For stuff where I have to try it in person, I'll buy from the shop so long as they're within reasonable distance of online prices - or will give me a discount to get there. Expecting them to price-match is unfair.

On the other hand, with no delivery signed for you could have been really evil and complained that no delivery had taken place - and please could you have the record player you'd ordered or your money back.

Friends of mine did that with a coffee table, because they were so annoyed that it had been left in the carpark outside their flat in the pissing rain. As it was a resin polar bear supporting a glass table on its feet (cheesy but fun) it wasn't damaged in the way a wooden one would have been.

We strained our eyes with Lenovo's monster monitor: 43.4 inches for price of five 24" screens

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Happy

Re: No 4DoF??

To be fair, the monitor is only about £1,500. That money doesn't even buy you 2 Apple monitor stands - so you wouldn't expect the built-in stand to be as good...

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

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So I went and looked up Question Time online - and the mighty Wikipedia came up. As all the rest of the first page of searches were to articles complaining about him getting so much airtime, I took it.

According to their list of episodes Farage has the 11th most appearances on the show (34). Which he's managed over 19 years (from first appearance in 2000) at an average of 1.7 appearances a year.

Which is not unreasonable for the leader of 2 parties that have consistently been able to poll between 5-15% for the last 10 years - and done considerably better in European elections.

Although that 1.7 a year is higher than anyone else the top 10 - with the top 3 all managing 1.6 a year.

Above him on that list are 2 Tories (Ken Clark and Michael Heseltine), 2 Labour (Roy Hattersley and Harriet Harman), 4 Lib Dems and Shirley Williams (who appeared as Labour a couple of times then became SDP then Lib Dem).

The preponderence of Lib Dems is a similar reason to Farage being on a lot, there are fewer of them, though they've been invited to most episodes since the 80s. Hence all the senior ones with long careers being at the top. UKIP had few other senior people, so we got lots of Farage. The Brexit Party is even more of a one-man band.

Then the 4 Labour and Conservatives were all senior ministers / shadow ministers with long careers - the two Labour ones having been deputy leaders of the party.

So Farage's appearance rate really isn't unusual. He became a European MP in 99 and has been on QT from 2000-2019 less than twice a year since - while he's been UKIP leader since 2009 - and is now Brexit Party leader.

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I wouldn't normally complain, but 8 downvotes so far and yet not a single one of you able to summon an argument for why my post is wrong.

You might not like Farage, I certainly don't, but if you believe in democracy then there can be no argument. He has a right to speak, and has got enough people to vote for him repeatedly over the years that should guarantee his party, and him, a platform on our national broadcaster. Anything else would be blatant censorship.

Both his parties being effectively one man bands, does mean we end up with just him and nobody else for variety though. Which is admittedly annoying.

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MOV r0,r0,

The BBC used to have something like 450 foreign correspondents - which was more than any other broadcast news organisation in the world. AP and Reuters may have had more I don't know... That's probably dropped with recent cuts - but nonetheless it's a massive global news organisation that broadcasts in something like 60 languages.

And globally has one of the highest reputations as well. You may not listen to the BBC World Service, but an awful lot of people do.

CNN captured the headlines by being new and the first to do 24 hour TV news. But even now I bet more people globally get their news from radio than telly.

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John Robson,

Farage gets invites because his party won the last UK nationwide election. By more than 10% too - although came top in would be a better way of expressing it. You might not like it, but nonetheless for the BBC to be impartial they do need to represent that 30% of the people who voted in the European Parliamentary elections.

Admittedly turnout is pretty low in those, and the Brexit Party aren't looking to do too well in the currrent general election - at which point his coverage will drop. According to a Question Time producer I heard on Radio 4's Media Show most of his QT appearances were after UKIP did well in previous European elections.

Obviously it's a judgement call, because the Brexit Party are now down to 3-4% in the polls - but Nicola Sturgeon has taken part in national leaders debates and she's also not standing to be an MP - and her party don't even stand in most constituencies. Admittedly Brexit are only in about half now - but that's stiill more than the SNP. To ignore Farage him would be a gross display of bias I'm afraid, and that's why the Beeb don't do it.

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

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Re: Glasses

Part of the biometric spec is the distance between your eye.

I don't trust him, his eyes are too close together. Don't let him in the country!

Go champion retires after losing to AI, Richard Nixon deepfake gives a different kind of Moon-landing speech...

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Re: glitchy

The voice sounds awful though. And Nixon had a really distinctive voice. Deep with odd over-emphasis on certain syllables. Hence the famous quote, "there'll be no whhhitewhhashh at the Whhitehouse."

But some of that poor quality might be put down to rubbishy microphones and recordings.

In Rust We Trust: Stob gets behind the latest language craze

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Happy

Re: hang on - comic sans for money??

No, you've got that wrong. That's the money they pay you, if you choose to use it...

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

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Re: 3.1 metres in height

A survey would have been a wise, make that a very wise move, before the order was inked.

Especially in a listed building - or whatever the Irish equivalent of that is.

I've been involved in building services works in the UK Parliament (which is a services nightmare and needs urgent and seriously expensive maintenance doing to it sharpish) - and on other difficult sites. And you have issues like not being able to remove rusty galvanised steel water tanks because they're in a wooden roof structure (see Notre Dame for details of why you aren't allowed to play with cutting gear) - but anyway the replacements won't fit through any of the accesses. In that case we used the dead steel tanks as a mold to shape a GRP tank - which we literally formed inside it - then re-did the horrible pipework (that we could get to). Except that we couldn't even cut holes in the partitions to put the pipes through - which made that a nightmare as well.

I have conversations about access a lot. But even then there are mistakes, assumptions and just plain forgetfulness.

Like the time I sold someone a 2.8m tall water softener to fit in a 2.5m tall plantroom. To be fair, the plantroom was 3m tall when I sold it to them, they just hadn't consulted a structural engineer about the 10 tonne of plant they were planning to put in there - and he made them raise the floor by half a metre in order to fit the strengthening in. Apparently they took the 3m long box with the softener tank out of the room - raised the floor - and then carried it back in and put it on its side. Only noticing a couple of months later when they came to finally install it. Then they blamed me...

Googlers fired after tracking colleagues working on US border cop projects. Now, if they had monetized that stalking...

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Happy

Re: Culture at Google.

Fake news! I think you made this story up! It's clear that it actually happened in Soft Play Area 2, next to the rootop Bonsai Tree Cafe - and that the boss actually didn't flip the table but left on the slide towards Executive Massage Suite 1.

As pressure builds over .org sell-off, internet governance bodies fall back into familiar pattern: Silence

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As far as I can see, we're basically stuck with ICANN now. They got the IANA contract while managing to create a circular oversight process - where their board are only overseen by smaller committees made up of members of their board - and when they can't cover up the stink, they commission and independent report which they then submit to another sub-committee of their board and ignore it. See the .amazon or .aftica sagas for details and repeats of the process.

So they'll happily sit there and milk the bonuses and 5 star travel - and as long as they don't so totally fuck up that it's worth the effort of completely ripping up internet governance, we're stuck with them. Finding something better risks putting Russia and China in charge of global internet governance instead.

Taxi for Uber: Ride-hailing app giant stripped of licence to operate in London

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Re: How times change

To be fair to Uber, they were very popular early on, as their app was easy to use and there are so many artificial restrictions on city taxi schemes that they're alwways either expensive or there aren't enough of them. Or often both. So a bit of competition cutting through the regulatory capture might improve things. Whereas minicab firms were too small and under-funded to have fancy apps - and even ones that did aren't going to be universal.

However, since then, more news has come out about what Uber get up to. And they're basically indefensible.

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Unterground Uberground wombling free

Ze Wombles von Wimbledon Common are we.

[with suitable apologies to any German readers

We don't usually sugar-coat the news but... Alien sugars found in Earth-bound meteorites

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Devil

Re: Best petri dish

PPE hat. Hat? Hat?

A hat's not going to cut it! You need a gas mask at least, possibly with full body covering rubber NBC suit. Or a remote controlled decontamination robot. Or just take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

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Re: Best petri dish

Schrödinger's Cat has both vomited and shat on Occam's Duvet. You only find out which will happen in your universe once you open the bedroom door.

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Happy

Re: Best petri dish

Occam's Duvet suggests that things will become clearer after a nice long nap...

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

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Re: If DAB is faster than FM

Symon,

Sadly not a capacitor problem I don't think. It was suffering from random reboots - which sometimes needed a hard power cycle to fix. Not awful when listening to the radio, just mildly annoying, but made it a completely hopeless alarm clock.

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Happy

Re: Speed of light

Surely audophile sound travels at the Speed of Money...

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Re: Speed of light

FlossyThePig,

Beer is all very well during the match - but if you go to Lords you're still allowed to take in 4 cans, or one bottle of wine per person. No other Test grounds let you - due to ICC awfulness, but Lords told them to get stuffed.

A buttered baguette, a bottle of bubbles a load of smoked salmon should sort you out for lunch. Then pork pies, various cakes and crisps will do for tea. And snacks during - sport can be very tiring... All of which goes nicely with some beer from the bar. Or, if you pack your picnic carefully - security don't tend to want to interfere with your sarnies - you can easily hide a flask of gin and some tonic in there. Which is perfect - you need lemon/lime to go with the salmon, and the rest can go in your teatime G&Ts.

Add a radio for TMS and some waterproof clothing, and you're sorted.

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Thumb Up

That is the quote of the day, week or even month! I salute you!

Although all the good programmes were on the Home Service... Picture of Queen Victoria?

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Re: Radio, not just FM, is outdated

As I understand it, radio listening in the UK is still going up. Which suggests that it ain't dead - even with podcasting listening also zooming up.

Although saying that, podcasting gets lots of media attention, but I only know about 4 people who listen to them. Whenever I recommend a good one to someone, I'm still sort of surprised by the fact that they say they don't bother.

Given that almost everyone has a phone that can handle a podcast app, so it's as easy as tapping your finger about 4 times - then they just magically turn up when you've got WiFi.

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Re: Bitrates and broadcast media.

Although if anybody can recommend a decent Rugby Union podcast, it would be appreciated

Brian Moore does one (sponsored by the Torygraph). It's a bit short, given how much there is to cover - and it's got Brian Moore in it - and I get the impression some people don't like him. Whereas I do. And it mostly covers international, European level and English Premier rugby. But it's worth a listen - and he often has good guests.

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Re: Definition

Because!

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Boffin

Re: Speed of light

Surely radio waves travel at the speed of sound? Whereas the magical digital DAB stuff is doing light. But like the tortoise and the hare - it's showing off by running in circles round the chips. Plus it's got to go off to somewhere to find that weird underwater popping noise that only DAB makes - I reckon there are giant bubblewrap farms in the arctic - and it's going there that takes all the extra time and so is why analogue signals are quicker.

The advantage of the DAB delay is that it often matches the TV delay - so you can have the radio commentary when watching sport. Not possible with analogue, as that tells you what happens beforehand.

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Re: If DAB is faster than FM

Rock Burner,

I hate you! My Bug died this year, after nearly 20 years of long and happy service. It winked at me every night when I went to bed, and then opened it's eyes every morning (well every time I turned it on actually).

I now have to pick up my stupid bedside radio to work out what the fuck is happening when I try to tune it. Why do all DAB radios have such pisspoor user interfaces? And such tiny screens. They only seem to give you 2 buttons, with each doing 20 different roles, depending on how they feel, or how hard you press them, or whether you're looking at the screen or not when you press it - and if not they'll sneakily come up with a 21st function, to do a complete re-scan of all stations and re-set.

Whereas the Bug has that nice big screen on a flexible metal stand, that you can pull towards you in bed, and lots of buttons so it's not horrible to use. Admittedly I paid about £90 for mine, and the modern ones are more like £20-£30. But that and my Motorola RAZR (also from about 2003) are 2 of the best tech purchases I ever made.

BOFH: Trying to go after IT's budget again?

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Happy

Re: I dunno...

"Buying carbon credits is a bit like a serial killer paying someone else to have kids to make his activity cost neutral."

That was worth the entry price alone. In fact I stopped reading the piece to steal it, and text it to a friend. Thus having offset my use of the Earth's finite resources of humour, I continued reading.

Given his regular penchant for pushing people out of windows, do you think the BOfH has the same health & safety inspector as the town of Midsomer? Which also has an appallingly high death rate for such a small place.

Iran kills the internet for its people's own good as riots grip the Middle Eastern nation

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Re: but the decision to raise the price was just one more sign of Iran’s faltering economy

It wasn't the US that encouraged Iran to expand into Yemen. They did that on their own. It was their work in Yemen and Syria that encouraged Trump to break the nuclear deal - although as it was one of Obama's successes, he was bound to not like it anyway.

It is pretty pathetic that the Europeans have failed to even get their "special purpose vehicle" to protect investment into Iran up and running by now. When did Trump pull out of the agreement? 2 years ago?

I suspect their heart isn't really in it, because the Iranians aren't exactly easy to work with. But it's a pretty massive failure of diplomacy - that's going to make future deals harder to agree.