* Posts by Wombling_Free

468 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2011

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Got a few minutes to help LOHAN suck?

Wombling_Free
Paris Hilton

Just a thought...

Connect REHAB to the NSW government transport planning department - it really sucks.

PARIS, because I've heard she can create a strong vacuum....

HELL ON EARTH: The Great Dying

Wombling_Free
Boffin

Personally my favourite disaster is quite minor...

something along the lines of a few scenarios that Stephen Baxter has thought up: acidification of the oceans.

So what?

well, if its too rapid it will kill off all the foraminifera.

So what?

thats the plankton - the bottom row of bricks in the food pyramid. Thanks for playing, goodbye!

On the bright side - I subscribe to the 'Edge of Darkness' Gaia theory: Earth would do rather well without us, thank you very much.

I just hope the meercats scrape through, those guys really deserve a go.

DARPA boffins develop unfeasibly light metal fluff-structure

Wombling_Free
Black Helicopters

C'mon, DARPA made it....

So it only exists to make killing people quicker and easier (picking the two favourites of the three: quicker, easier, cheaper)

Obama security in Oz lost booklet FAIL

Wombling_Free
FAIL

Austfailia

You're standing in it.

Water utility hackers destroy pump, expert says

Wombling_Free
Devil

Yes, but...

"Even people with tiny recording studios know not to put their critical machines on the net."

Yes. WE know that.

Unfortunately the 1% 36sqm walk-in-robe owning senior management haven't got a clue beyond what wine they will drink for dinner tonight. They expect the untermenschen lot will take care of this, and correspondingly cut the middle-mungers budgets, who then immediately outsource to China, India or Smellistanumboto.

Then everyone wonders why their city water supply is run by a PIC16F84A with a USB interface nailed to a Nokia 8210.

Swearing doesn’t help pain if you do it too much

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

Which is why I say 'fiddlesticks'!

Work it out.

Amazon's new Kindle Fire stripped naked

Wombling_Free
Trollface

"easy to reassemble"

Unless you took that ram chip out...

Oh, sorry I forgot, everyone DOES have a solder reflow station and clean room at home!

LHC results may solve riddle of how universe can exist

Wombling_Free
Coat

Is that a...

...metric or imperial gnat's chuff?

For that matter was it an African or European gnat?

OK, I going, you don't have to shove!

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition

Wombling_Free
Unhappy

Available on Xbox 360 only.

.....aaaaaand we're done here.

I guess it won't be played by my medium-spec PC that plays Skyrim faster and prettier than the Xbox360 or PS3.

Oh, and I can mod my games.

Oh, and I can do real work on it too.

Voyager 2 finally agrees to a long hard thrust

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

Go Voyager!

Brings a tear to my eye to hear about that old hardware still voyaging. What utterly brilliant engineering!

Harry Potter director takes on Doctor Who movie

Wombling_Free
Megaphone

Paul Darrow FTW

Oh, sorry, I was daydreaming there.

I thought they might want someone good. Carry on.

actually..... JULIAN CLARY!

SORTED.

The new touchy-feely Doctor Who trend: Worrying

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

Good old days indeed...

IRRC the Brigadier also called for 'five rounds rapid' from a tank at the Robot in 'Robot'. Though seeing as it was TV history's most unconvincing model tank ever, it probably wouldn't have worked.

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

You always remember your first Doctor...

...mine played the recorder - still my instrument of choice!

I think the current series is brilliant. Ecclestone-Tennant-Smith have played the Doctor brilliantly - Smith in particular is heading towards bestest evar! The companions are also brilliant - Rory is great, Amy is ok, but my goodness River! Oh yes baby, you can kiss me anytime! Plus she's good with a Nerf gun (why yes, I am converting a Nerf pistol to River's gun for my wife, why do you ask?).

Our Local cable network has been replaying the Tom Baker seasons - most of which I haven't seen for more than 25 years, and it's funny how all the brilliant episodes I remember... weren't. Let's see:

1. "the Horror of X" "The X of Evil!" "The X of Death!" um, maybe some originality might have been good.

2. Sarah Jane - run run run trip scream! walk around corner SCREAM! SCREAM SCREAM! No. just... no. She was crap.

3. Leela - unfairly maligned. Claims of being there only for eye-candy are just silly - she was smart, alert, didn't scream, could punch a bloke, (TBH wasn't much eye candy anyway) and was acted very well by Louise Jameson.

4. Tom Baker - far more violent than I remembered! Well described as cat-like though, for large hairy manic values of cat.

5. Cybermen - the modern ones kick arse. The old ones... didn't.

6. Amazing to see how much a certain famous author ripped off from other writers - even verbatim!

7. The Wirrn - would love to see them return, they were pretty creepy.

8. Were the Robots of DEATH! the same mob who crewed the Titanic II? Very similar. (Also the adventure that links to B7 with mention of Kaldor City!)

9. Four (or six!) parters - Genesis of the Daleks - Brilliant. Talons of Weng Chaing - I fell asleep. Yes, asleep. During Dr.Who. Asleep. Also the Horror of Fang Rock - the horror was it was so bad, and seemed to have been scripted by a 10-yr old. Yes, RTD did go the gay angle, but at least he can write!

I'm hoping the network shows the Peter Davison series, in fact I'd love to see the others too. Especially Peri!

Thumbs up, because ANY Dr.Who, even 8, is infinitely better than NO Dr.Who!

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

And just noticing somebody mentioned The Culture....

...and as I have just finished Iain M. Banks brilliant books, it seems that whoever wrote River had a bit of the Culture's impishness in mind when they wrote her. She's an SC operative if ever I saw one!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

Having a lot of fun

I'm loving Skyrim, and for a brand new release it is remarkably good on my now-aging hardware.

How old? Q6600, Nvidia 8800 GTS old! Still playing at Very High settings with reasonable frame rates - nothing slow enough to make me turn anything down yet, even the graphically mind-blowing dragon-death cutscenes. Best weather effects I have ever seen in a game - rain falling down cavern shafts glittering in the torchlight - it's just gorgeous!

Slapped: Oz TV show spikes Dutch torrent site

Wombling_Free
Unhappy

AFACT = AFAIL

Um.... does AFACT not release you CAN get it online for free? From the ABC itself?

Austfailia - Making Americans Look Clever since 1788™℗©®☠☢☣

Go back to the future with Red Dwarf

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

FISH!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

FISH!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

FISH!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

FISH!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

...FISH!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

.....FISH!

Today's fish is trout a'la creme. Enjoy your meal.

I will!

Like I will enjoy more Red Dwarf!

Now, about this script and cast recommendations I have for Blake's 7....

Now Russians can't even contact their busted Mars probe

Wombling_Free
Unhappy

The Curse of Mars strikes again.

There's probably a cracking Dr.Who story about why single probes sent to Mars have a nasty habit of vanishing, blowing up, failing to get there, being programmed incorrectly...

I thought we had learned this already - you have to send TWO probes to Mars for success, never ONE.

Hmmm, I really think the IS a good Dr.Who plot lurking in here.

Sad, because of the effort that went into it.

BOFH: Licence to grill ... stupid users

Wombling_Free
Pint

OpenWater

ohh, yes, it was worth it for that single sentence alone!

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

Wombling_Free

Hey, you forgot....

Young Einstein - starring the brilliant Yahoo Serious, the film covers the little know Australian years of Albert Einstein, from his youth in rural Tasmania to his invention of Rock'n'Roll. He also saves kittens along the way, and gives the best explanations of both the music theory of rock'n'roll and relativity you will ever see.

and...

Starstruck - a time capsule for Sydney's once vibrant pub rock scene, circa 1982. Brilliant music written by Tim Finn and performed by the absolutely delicious Jo Kennedy.

icon? none. none more icon.

Mm, Silverlight, what's that smell? Yes, it's death

Wombling_Free
Coffee/keyboard

What's that smell?

it's coffee - on my keyboard.

Great headline!

'Puzzling structures on surface' of YU55 spaceball

Wombling_Free
Alien

Ditches?

Oh, they're just ditches.

In neat, rectangular rows....

Adobe confirms mobile Flash Player's race is run

Wombling_Free
Mushroom

Mobile Flash dead. Now for the desktop.

One down, one to go.

Russian Mars mission launches after multi-year delays

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

Love the Soviet design!

You have to hand it to the Russians - they know how to design spacecraft that LOOK like spacecraft!

I always get the feeling that US spacecraft (Orion, stop sniggering up the back!) are designed with marketing brochures in mind, whereas Russian spacecraft look like they are designed to DO STUFF.

If thine brown eye offend thee, blast it with a laser

Wombling_Free
Headmaster

Why would someone want blue eyes?

I though all blue-eyed people were valley-girl yokels.

They certainly lower property values!

Crime-fighting Seattle superhero unmasked, fired

Wombling_Free
FAIL

Sad really.

You can imagine that the two oxygen thieves he tried to sort out simply had better lawyers. - "Your honor, he looked at me funny, that is ASSAULT!"

Mind you, the cops tend to really dislike vigilantes - demarcation dispute, innit? Next thing you know the vigilantes will be taking graft and turning a blind eye to the 1% just like the cops....

Fail, because it seems like that is what western civilization is becoming.

India uncloaks new thorium nuke plants

Wombling_Free
FAIL

It's the Austfailian way!

gun->foot, it's 'ow we do it down 'ere, Mate!

CSIRO in the 50's... what shall we spend our research money on? Digital computers? NO, what possible use could starting up a computer industry be? Let's focus on silver iodide rainmaking! Maybe advanced sheep dip!

And my, didn't that work out a treat! Look at the wealth that has created for.. oh. hang on.

I seem to recall the nasty little Howard runt once proclaiming that Australia is unsuitable for solar power development - yeah, all those vast unused desert spaces with long sunlight hours, all those rare earth minerals, all the UNSW research into efficient solar cells and energy storage, NOPE, no use at all. Unfeasable. Too hard. Why bother, when we can create wealth by digging up dirt, shipping it overseas and creating our very own home-grown housing and income gap crisis?

Could someone please invade (or just buy us out, it wouldn't take much!) us? We deserve it, really.

Wombling_Free
Mushroom

Run for your life!

Radioactive liquid fluoride! For FSMs sake! What could possibly go wrong?

Record flight is step toward HYPERSONIC SPACE AIRSHIP

Wombling_Free
Thumb Up

It's Incredible Eric & His Brother Luigi!

"LIKE A ROCKETING BLIMP FROM OUT OF THE SKY!"

Aunty Jack was prescient!

For those Austfailians of a certain age, you may remember the crime-fighting siamese-twins duo of Incredible Eric & His Brother Luigi!

At last, their time has come!

iPad 2 made from T-Rex fossils costs £5m

Wombling_Free
Mushroom

Why T-Rex?

If I was paying $5 x 10^6 I would want it made from the ground bones of Pope John Paul II (I'm sure that is probably an option)

A 2.9kg iPad seems somewhat unusable, too.

The fact there there is 1. a market for shit like this, and 2. the kind of oxygen thief willing to make it is truly frightening.

First against the wall when the revolution comes! Mind you, my list is getting long, so they might get to be 5th in the queue. For $1,500,000 I can offer them my special, exclusive gold-class executive CEO-tailored luxury cart to the head of the queue, where they will be slowly eviscerated by platinum-tipped cast gold T-Rex claws.

Dick Smith faces tricky times

Wombling_Free
FAIL

Foolworths.

And they wonder why we are shopping elsewhere (Jaycar or Interwebs)? Maybe if they didn't gouge so much....

Aussie scientists develop radioactivity-trapping nanofibers

Wombling_Free
Unhappy

"we have the technology to do the cleaning up for the world."

Which our glorious pinheaded government and industry experts will ignore, and once again the technology we (the tax payers) funded the development of will be sold and/or ripped off overseas.

It happens EVERY FUCKING TIME.

Austfailia - you're standing in it.

Mars probe crippled by buggy SSD successfully jury-rigged

Wombling_Free
Pint

Beers.

Or whatever you favourite refreshment / stimulant is.

Have some.

I love hearing about epic spacecraft-recovery wins!

Yay for boffins!

Official: Kindles get heavier as you add e-books

Wombling_Free
Boffin

No. um, maybe. er, um... whoa.....

So does a stretched rubber band weigh more than an unstretched one?

Potential energy /= mass, I thought. A bucket of water at the top of a mountain is the same mass as at the bottom, but has potential energy, right?

BUT a stretched rubber band is storing energy in Van Der Waals forces & latent heat, so E=mc^2 yes, that increases the mass, right? just by not a measurable amount.

So... a battery - they are like a rubber band, potential energy using a chemical-electric energy gradient. Electrons really want to get from - to +, but the overall number of electrons doesn't change. ie. the Battery (or cell) DOESN'T have an overall 'charge' in the classical physics sense. Am I right?

Ok, um, I choose NO - the Kindle does not weigh more, as that would imply direct mass -> energy -> mass conversion, and stuff like that ALWAYS kicks out a few alphas, betas, gammas and probably a plethora of neutrinos.

US decommissions massive Cold War nuke

Wombling_Free
Mushroom

eh?

I thought it was 'critical', as in "at the point the weapon goes critical..."

Hmmm, that B53 looks like a classic Teller-Ulam - so there will be a couple of pounds of plutonium (yukky stuff to get on your pants), a good smatter of beryllium, a fair bit of lithium, a whole lot of styrofoam (it was invented for this you know - and comprises a good proportion of the plasma fireball) and a 'sparkplug' of uranium. Oh, don't forget a tiny bit of tritium in the core, too, which is why old bombs don't work so well - it decays too quickly. You know a weapon is a bit mental when it uses enriched U235 pretty much as a fuse; it is 'only' there to generate a massive gamma & xray pulse! Actually its fascinating how thermonukes work - they do real alchemy on the fly - transmuting Li into deuterium in a buggeringly short time (1/1,000,000th of a second or something)

Not a whole lot of radiation danger in dismantling it - the Pu will get reused (which is why they are dismantling it, methinks!) - the really big danger is the 500kg or so 50-year-old Torpex lenses surrounding the Pu core and Be pit. Care to point a power drill at possibly unstable old high-explosive?

Why, yes, Mr.FBI man, I do know a good deal about how to build a nuculumular barm... I learned most of it in High School I'll have you know... we even theorised how we could build a small dirty nuke from stuff we had lying around at school (this is in the mid 80's - our intended target was the Catholic school down the road)

Bill Gates strangled Microsoft's 'tablet for creatives'

Wombling_Free
FAIL

As a 'creative' myself....

... I thought the Courier concept looked fantastic.

When I first saw the promo clip I thought "YES! Someone has actually worked out how visual design is done!" as a tool the courier looked perfect for the kind of 7 different ideas before breakfast kind of wok we do.

It was also heartening to see someone other than Apple getting it right.

What kind of creative, by the way? Architect - a REAL one.

Now, I have an iPad 2. I wish I had what the Courier might have become. You hear that Bill? You lost a sale there! You probably lost a LOT....

Oh, and the person who said 'they killed off WordPerfect' - c'mon, that was a mercy killing!

Activision banned me from Call of Duty gig, says exotic performer

Wombling_Free
Pint

How times have changed...

IRRC way back in the mists of ancient time (1994) Ginger Lyn Allen played 'Rachel Coriolis' in Wing Commander 3. Ginger was at the time somewhat well known for her... ahem... alternative film roles. She'd be about 50 by now...

So a pr0n star actually starred as a character in a game, ok, as a mechanic admittedly.

For memory the outakes included with game showed that her acting skills made Mark Hamill look like Sir Alex Guiness. The highlight of the cast was Tom Wilson, along with Tim Curry & Malcolm McDowell - blimey, when you look at it again its a bit of a stellar cast!

No idea what icon to use, so I'll have a pint, thanks.

Zimbabwean claims prostitute turned into donkey

Wombling_Free
Paris Hilton

I just love the tag line - sure, why not? Beats work!

READ MORE Bestiality Zimbabwe Donkey Prostitute Sex

Cops find hackers' phone in NOTW office

Wombling_Free
Mushroom

We want arrests!

We want to see fat-arsed rich bastards doing porridge!

Starting with the editor of NOTW and ending with Mr.Ugly himself, Roopert! and his horrid spawn too, while we're at it.

The phrase 'first against the wall when the revolution comes' springs to mind.

Urban legend nips iiNet 'subliminal' campaign

Wombling_Free

It makes sense

as long as you base it on shonky pseudo-science, so I'd say it's pretty normal for a law in Austfailia.

If the advertising industry really was constrained from not using consciousness-bypassing techniques, there would be NO advertising whatsoever! So again the law is an enormous fail, as I still see advertising everywhere.

I just sat for 40 mins in a doctor's waiting room being visually & audibly insulted by Ch.9 on the television (I still don't have a TV-B-Gone - is there an iPhone app for it?) - pretty much everything on screen at all times was either an ad, a morning 'variety' show segment which was actually an ad (the voices even still in Merkin accents!) or corporate propaganda about how wonderful horseracing is and how I should aspire to be a hat-wearing plonker at the Melbourne Cup (that segment was jokingly called 'news').

So Steve, the law fails, badly, but that is typical of Austfailia, or Murdochia or Packeria or whoever owns our Guvmint this week.

PS. This rant comes to you courtesy of my ISP.... iiNet!

PPS. If you are from overseas, don't come here. Austfailia sucks.

Last mystery of first recorded supernova laid to rest

Wombling_Free
Coat

I've always thought dwarfs suck.

Horrid little things with their beards and axes.

Why, yes, that is my hooded cloak with the AD&D Players Manual in the pocket.

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

Wombling_Free
Boffin

Just looking at the data point map...

...tells me that we haven't got a fucking clue about what's happening in the tropics.

Wombling_Free
Boffin

I also note...

...the severe lack of medieval jousting tournaments in those years?

Again, MAYBE a coincidence, but it looks like a close correlation to me.

Nipples and teen lesbians sexy even when ironic, ASA rules

Wombling_Free
Devil

Just like the bible then, eh?

Sex = BAD, GO TO HELL BURN FOREVER!

Violence = BIG thumbs up, great, kill people, stone them, dismember, sacrifice your own children to evil gods.

iPhone 4S: Our *hit list

Wombling_Free
Holmes

security by stupidity

"files that applications leave lying around in the cache" can expect to be deleted?

No shit, Sherlock, this is the equivalent of a PC application storing it's main data files in \Users\AdolphusSpriggs\AppData\Local\Temp

What do you call that practice; 'security by stupidity'? 'backup to volatile storage'? 'data in the fog'?

How could deleting the cache be in any way a 'problem' caused by Apple?

A problem caused by lazy developers relying on slapdash techniques - definitely!

Not fanboi, just not surprised Apple never invites el Reg to gigs - if you keep peddling crap like that!

Team Philippines solar car in self-combustion drama

Wombling_Free
Coat

Damage to comedy....

I thought the photos were shocking!

I found the article electrifying, too, it's great to read about all the current events.

I hope the fireys don't charge them for the callout...

OK! ok! I'm going, you don't have to shove...

Solarcars: meet road trains

Wombling_Free
Coat

I didn't see the punctuation....

I read that as 'Solarcars meet road trains'

and immediately imagined the following:

faint "aaiieeee!" CRUNCH-KERTHUMP-KERTHUMP-kerthump-kerthump-kpt-kpt

yeah, mayte, mynes the drizabone

BOFH: Where's my free fondleslab?

Wombling_Free
Trollface

Is it just me....

Or have the screen names of every journo at elReg now got a qualifier that reads "total knob-head"? Looks like someone has been fooling with your servers, guys

Pampernaut love-rat space shuttle pilot prangs plane

Wombling_Free
Boffin

IRRC....

In a slightly obtuse aside: Delta-winged aircraft such as the Concorde or the Shuttle are very difficult stall; that's the whole point of the delta wing!

They can get to very high AoAs without loss of lift or control. It may look like a stall to the untrained as their sink rate rises dramatically at such an attitude, however they are still easily controllable (for high-trained definitions of 'easy').

Also IRRC the 'correct' method for landing most aircraft is to be at the point of a stall at the moment the wheels contact the ground, otherwise you risk bouncing back into the air or skidding (and blowing tyres) when you apply the wheel brakes. (NOT true for carrier ops though!)

"aircraft tumbling out of the sky like a clothes horse" - ah, that would be a "Lomcovák" - rather spectacular and frightening-looking manoeuvre, but easily recoverable and not fatal (unless performed at 500' AGL!)

I think you may have been watching too much of the 'flat spin!' bit of Top Gun - to achieve complete loss of lift or control requires some horribly drastic mismanagement of the aircraft (*cough* Air France *cough*)

PS, did anyone else notice that in the final battle of 'Top Gun' Iceman was 'hundreds' of miles away and 'Maverick' got there in 30 seconds? I did not know F14s could do about Mach15...

Hubble snaps dark matter warping spacetime

Wombling_Free
Boffin

"which would make it 4.5 billion light years plus 600 kilometers away from us earthlings"

I heartily commend your accuracy.

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