Quite right too, especially if the reboot sequence takes 5+ minutes....
IGMC
93 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2011
"Erm, murder. Cold blooded multiple murder is not the worst crime anymore?"
Perhaps I was wrong to try to compare different crimes, and apologise if that's the way my previous response read.
I don't think I share your thoughts that cold blooded multiple murder is worse than kiddy fiddling though. Completely different crimes which I don't think compare on any scale. With a murder the victim has closure - they won't have to live with the experience, whereas with kiddly fiddling there is potential for it having lifelong consequences for the victim.
To be clear, I'd shoot both the murderers and the kiddy fiddlers. Don't waste time on the trials, and shoot the human rights activists who stand in the way too. Also add anyone who doesn't subscribe to El Reg on a regular basis, they obviously aren't in touch with the real world.
I find it hard to imagine a more henious crime than kiddy fiddling, though I suppose there might be some.
For me there can be no penalty severe enough for someone caught in the act - which even includes having materials depicting such acts. Putting a tattoo on their forehead describing kiddy fiddler would do as a minimum - let them then try to live their live without getting the message that people don't like such people.
On another level, I can't actually fathom what pleasure someone could ever get from sexual exploits involving children. Something to do with being in control I suppose. In which case I hope they get locked up with Big Bertha in prison so that they can take some lessons about what being in control is about.
Well done to the police for having nicked this lot.
Actuallly I'm not sure that's a true statement. My knowledge of government contracts is very limited, but the impression I have formed over a period of time is that these gaping "holes" in government contracts are deliberate, probably on both sides.
On the supplier side it provides a future opportunity to grab some more money on a new contract. And on the government side one mustn't underestimate the jobsworth's who see their future being secure in overseeing future contractual negotiations which the government has to undertake.
There's nothing simple about government contracts, beyond making sure that both sides have a future to look forward to.
It seems kinda strange to me that the US could be stupid enough to allow one of their drones to fall into enemy hands. Yes, I know there are no limits on stupidity, but bear with me....
I've been wondering whether the US allowed this drone to be captured "alive". Reason might be that if Iran thought they had something really good then they'd take it to wherever they had the facilities to decode it. And if the drone had been smart-programmed it could phone home to give its coordinates, and that could bring in an armageddon strike.
We shouldna forgit that the US are now out of Iraq and so might be looking for their next world's policeman event.
I don't claim to be an expert with this stuff (Prof Hawking won't move over....), but I read someplace that on the event horizon time stops. So that cloud might have a while to go before it no longer exists.
My theory is that the universe is an everlasting black hole, where we are sitting on the edge of an event horizon where time has stopped. However I haven't been able to secure funding for providing my theory of everything so I will stick to my other theory involving Paris and black holes.
Clearly if you are referring to this guy handling bank notes/coinage which could be smeared with DNA output from his nether regions then I think you would have to take into consideration that shaking hands with anyone, or getting change for your cup of tea, would offer the transfer of chemical materials which you hadn't intended.
I don't bother trying to count the number of blokes who use the loo and don't bother washing hands afterwards, but it seems to be a disease that is very widespread. In fact even washing hands can lead to chemical transfer due to taps being turned on and off - if only loo's had those elbow-operated taps used in hospital surgeries!
I went into the company's loo a while back to find a guy using the urinal whilst having a conversation with his customer on his mobile phone. I assume he wasn't using a camera phone....
I hope that they remember which units they are working with - at least one previous mission has failed to arrive due to a mix-up between metric and imperial units. And the last thing we want is for this nuclear bomb to come back home in the future and then burn up in the earth's atmosphere and spray radioactivity everywhere.
Hopefully the half-life of the nuclear materials used will be of a relatively short duration so that by the time Buck Rogers arrives it will have safely decayed to a level where humanoids won't be at risk.
Well I personally hope that there is life found on other planetary systems (not just Mars), and that we are never able to get at it. We can't even get on with each other without blowing each other up, so heaven help any other civilisation which gets in our way.
Even in this case there's no danger of us actually meeting the alien life form, but we've sent our "we come in peace" message in the shape of a nuclear weapon which could wipe out other life forms.
The human race is in a very difficult position of evolution currently where we see rewards as being in the shape of shiny objects where the game plan is to get as many shiny objects into your personal bank account as possible whilst anhiliating the opposition (monopoly anyone?). I hope other civilisations which might cross our paths in the future haven't got the same outlook, and that they do truly come in peace.
Where's Gort when you need him?
The UK mission to land a craft on Mars a few years back must have been targeted on a race of aliens, and they saw it coming in and took it out before the beadyscope could show life.
Spirit and Opportunity have been left to get on with it because they have been wandering around in a desert region where no life exists.
I would be rubbing my hands with glee in respect of the UK government dissolving the UK's ability to ward off invaders from the Falkland Islands.
Back in 1982 there was a big defence review taking place and we were damn lucky to have enough resources to take the job on, but now I reckon the UK would be hard pushed to man a rowing boat armed with a couple of peashooters.
I believe our aircraft carrier requirements are going to be met by France lending us one as the need arises. And I can just see how friendly the French are going to be given our position with the ongoing Euro crisis.
It's a damn pity we didn't put orders into the UK shipyards for new battleships etc, because that would have kept lots of people employed. Instead of which we are hacking away the UK's defences and having to pay a social security budget which keeps these people off the streets.
We might as well put the Falkland Islands on ebay and see what we can get in a firesale. If the argies flex their muscles again they can just walk right in, and we'll be left whingeing to the UN about loss of sovereign territory.
The question I always ask myself when presented with evidence which has been derived by brainpower alone is - what planet are they from to figure this stuff out?
Us mere mortals aren't able to fathom out these arguments, so it can only be down to some higher level of intelligence which we know nothing about.
Or, perhaps Baldrick was the star player and it isn't the overwhelming intelligence angle which solves the problem - but the lack of intelligence which allows them to see the bleeding obvious that escapes the gaze of the rest of us.
Paris and lack of intelligence go together.
I have to admit that I wasn't fired up about the current version of Kindle Fire, primarily because of its screen size. So if the 2nd version is going to be bigger then that might placate my concerns enough to consider one.
However I still have a concern about being forced to use Amazon's proxy servers to connect to the Internet. It's not so much my objecting to records being kept of my online activity (who would be interested in me visiting the fatslags.com and plumpywhores.biz web site anyway?), it's more to do with concerns about my password activity to log into secure sites being channelled thru one portal.
Paris because I mentioned being channelled thru one portal.
If you think about it, if the hypersonic missile is aimed at you then it would potentially wipe out your installation before you even knew it was coming.
Now all they need to do is build one of these hypersonic missiles of neutrinos and it will have destroyed you before it has even taken off.
The nutter from Slade originally had registration plate YOB1 - and I know that plate must live somewhere around the Berkshire area where I've seen it a couple of times, last time about 3 weeks ago on the Ascot road.
I saw L1NUX being sported on a BMW round there a while back too. That must've been the Microsoft UK head honcho then.
A local favourite a few years back was D3lBOY (Del Boy). Might still be around, but the rozzers must have had a word because the letters had previously been physically arranged to make sure the meaning was spelt out, more recently they've been changed to fit in with government policy. Which is just plain daft in my book - if someone saw "DEL BOY" accelerating away from a crime scene they'd remember that plate much more easily than "D31 BOY".
Iran will be looking for a supply of new tin hats to protect against these bunker busters, so here's our chance to get a few bob out of Iran.
Paris because it might be sensible to wear a certain type of hat when trying to damage her bunker, though tin might not be the best material for that job.
....that reporting into A&E in Southampton Hospital could have been an embarassing experience for the guy.
Receptionist: What is the problem?
Patient: I've got my todger stuck in a ring.
Other Waiting Patients : Fall about laughing.
Paris because if he'd have been thinking about her then there never would have been any danger of getting it in the ring in the first place.
I don't think it fair to try and limit the equation to be based upon some point in time, like the instant the big bang occurred, and assume that civilisations have to be more or less equal in terms of time to become conversant with each other.
Reason being that the other civilisation could potentially be significantly more advanced than we are, and have the benefit of time travel - which we do not.
Furthermore, I imagine that most people think in terms of the two civilisations being more or less equal in terms of their intelligence. Remember the film Forbidden Planet and the Krell civilisation which had ceased to exist? A super-intelligent race which put mankind into the Mickey Mouse brigade.
Yes I know Forbidden Planet was a film made up by a man. But the fact is that other civilisations do not have to be at the same intelligence level that mankind is at. Maybe those civilisations are out there sending broadcasts across the cosmos but using a medium which we have no idea about.
You talk about one month notice periods. In fact, notice periods can and do vary considerably between nothing and (extraordinarily in my experience) a month.
However, regardless of the length of the notice period on an individuals contract, as a contractor you want to be walking away from there with a half-decent reference. Would you really want to tug the tigers tail on the way out?
Remember that the chief police guy from the met resigned shortly after the riots, after this wonderful home secretary failed to come out and support the police.
And she's got form for standing up at the Tory conference and making absurd comments about someone not being deported because he had a pet pussy.
However, the thing which I am most concerned about is how on earth someone who is so clearly incompetent to deal with high office could ever get to that position in the first place! Could there be an Edwina Curry/John Major thing going on here?
When these voyagers were sent on their way in 1977 the 14k4 modem hadn't been born. Even a 300 baud modem was rocket science (hmm, pun intended I think...) back in those days. But what I'm surprised about is that they found room for an old GPO telephone handset so that they could attach the suckers.
Sorry, I'm getting old. Way to go Voyagers!
Paris, because I mentioned suckers and I think I'd be happy if she were a sucker.
Although we pride ourselves on being whiter than white there is always going to be an element of trusting people/organisations that you assume to be completely legit. It only takes one snake in the process to open pandora's box.
However, thank goodness we can rely upon El Reg to look after our interests.
So right. My very ill mother was pumped full of morphine for the last few months of her life to control pain, and whilst it could be entertaining listening to her having babysat the neighbours kids the night before, the induced hallucination was not very pleasant to behold in someone who was so dearly loved.
A joke is okay, but there are some areas which should be treated as completely out of bounds.
Reading all the responses relating to these naughty neutrinos which won't be guided by a fibre optic cable and I realise that I've obviously entered the wrong club. I didn't see a sign indicating that only Albert Einstein's could enter. Very sorry, will exit and see if I can find the room I want.
Paris because I hope she'll be in the room I'm looking for, as I want to practice being a neutrino.