Obviously fake

A glass car in China with no bumpers or fenders? That'll last.

Peter Boyle!

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=peter+boyle+frankenstein&gbv=2&oq=peter+boyle+frank

Pity he's passed on.

Seriously...

This is his plan for smaller government and reducing the debt?

@Soyuz being proven technology

[[Best of all, there's Soyuz, a proven system.]]

Didn't a Soyuz crash on launch less than a month ago? And this is the same Soyuz system that within the last few years had two ballistic reentries, at least one of them traced to a failed section-separation explosive bolt*?

IMO, the Soyuz has been proven Russian. We can absolutely learn from it, but I don't know if I'd want to depend on it much.

(* Some of the Russians said there were too many women on board. More evidence the system needs work - we need spacecraft that are women-capable because... Mars Needs Women!)

Strong passwords

After that missive, I finally understand why security experts exhort us to use punctuation characters in our passwords to make them harder for hackers to crack. ;)

Inconsistent speed?

[[ identified over 60 major threats at an altitude of roughly 850km, the BBC explains. Two-thirds of these weigh in at over three tonnes apiece, and many are whizzing along at up to 27,000 km/h (16,800 mph).]]

Shouldn't all the various things orbiting at a given approximate altitude be whizzing along at about the same speed, as long as gravity and the dimensions of the Earth are relatively constant for all the various things doing the whizzing?

I applaud Google's commitment to the safety benefits of self-driving cars.

They've gone so far as to have a real accident while a human was driving to highlight the improvement we're looking forward to.

Paris, because from what I hear about her videos, when she's in for a penny she's in for a pound as well.

@"dark side of the moon"

[['There is no all-you-can-eat-Burger-King on the dark side of the moon.']]

Technically, there's no dark side of the moon. The moon gets lit pretty much everywhere over the course of a month. You mean the backside of the moon.

Paris, natch.

Confused...

Do the culinary boffins intend to enhance this gut bacteria among cows, or switch us all to eating travel-size kangaroos?

I'm fine with either, btw.

Paris, because she is also flexible.

At some point the creators need to bear responsibility.

I think eventually this will/should change to being an "attractive nuisance" type issue.

Paris, for obvious reasons.

Limited time, money

Nintendo knows they can take the console price and development time and apply it all to making the best game-player possible, or split some of those resources off to making it play discs - that other devices already do.

I think Nintendo thinks their best shot at doing well with the "U" is to make it the best game-player-per-dollar it can be.

Whose pockets?

[[>>Capital was undoubtedly wasted. If it had all been spent sensibly we probably would now be better off.

Maybe it was. Money lost isn't destroyed, you know. It just ends up in someone else's pocket.]]

Exactly - and typically it's the "smart" pockets that gain this "lost" money. They've no interest in stopping this system.

Facebook may be worthless a couple years after it IPOs. Will the underwriters likely lament this? Or the existing Facebook investors, including the employees?

Paris - because she knows when a morning-after was totally worth it.

@If one of those theoretical £32k jobs for doing nothing for 5 years #

Also to whoever would be looking to staff for these jobs, should they come up: I live in America and I can do that job for 32,000 USD per year. I already have my own sailboat for it (can send pictures).

Paris, obviously.

Makes me want to move to England...

... because obviously everything else in the country is so great, these pictures are the level of dangerous threat the police are working to protect you from.

Sub-head

"Uncovered undercover chic chick offers self to cosmonauts"

Shouldn't that be "Uncovered undercover chic chick covets career creating cosmonaut clothing"?

Or "... career covering cosmonauts" or "... career keeping cosmonauts warm".

Paris, because when the couture is haute, she's all over it.

Waiting for the swallow...

... because I want to see an ornithopter with a fair load-carrying capacity, e.g. a coconut.

Paris, because of the foregoing.

Lewis is the best poster ever

He's like a shark who won't even come shallow until there's twenty swimmers on holiday and one of them cuts a foot on a bit of glass.

Can I be automatically notified of Lewis Page's future comments, please?

Paris, because since the inclusion of her icon here I've generally found nothing else satisfies.

Funeral director's point of view

"... I think trying to save money due to the death of someone's family member or friend is a bit sick."

Yeah, folk selling $4,500 coffins do tend to think that way...

Afghani Ballast

When offloading in Afghanistan, could one of these ships fitted with some oversized shopvacs simply slurp up some sand and rock? You'd only be able to unload where the ground is sandy, but that might be plenty of places over there...

Paris, because she'd suffer no such restrictions...

@"Hammer and anvil"

Is this comment title also a reference to the Harry Turtledove novel of that name (0-345-38048-7) in which the main character has intimate relations with his cousin? Or is that a coincidence?

Paris, because I'd sure like to see her try to put on those red boots...

And thanks to my father for giving me this book in the first place. I suppose he had to thin the library and (oblig.) he at least kept the book in the family.

dies or dice?

[[... the NAND dies below ...]]

Should this be "NAND dice" instead of "NAND dies"? Just wondering - this is not a pluralization question which comes up very often for me. :)

(Paris, because she rather _is_ a pluralization problem which comes up very often for me...)

@@Rush

"I wonder how long the reg will persist with the reprisals aimed at Rush... it is most amusing."

I imagine for as long as he'll keep asking for it. If I know one thing about the hacks at El Reg (and I probably don't), it's that they'll write whatever they can at least tenuously link to IT for as long as it keeps paying. (I believe the insider quote I'm looking for here is "We'd cover your mum for a fiver.")

Tubular Bells? A Passion Play? Thick as a Brick?

I like my 35 minute Prog-Rock fretboard-wankfests...

Wedge

[[I don't see the problem with the scanners. I would rather that that being blown to smithereens at 35000 ft]]

Wait until they get to addressing the problem that these scanners can't see inside body cavities.

I demand El Reg follow up with the police!

Dear Reg: please inquire of the appropriate police personnel how they recommend one proves half a million in carry-on luggage was legitimately-gotten when traveling. Don't forget to include in your followup article some special cases, e.g. whether being an MP automatically proves it was criminally obtained, and how best to document the money simply being carrying-around cash for a famous heiress.

How do we avoid using trademarks?

These trademarks are plain English, and there's no telling how many there are, and are being added every week. We need some way to search an online always-updated database. If only there were an app for that...

The Reg needs to make a poll.

The poll would check how badly the term "Boffin" makes readers feel. Options should be colorful.

Nice sentence

Six minutes' community service for each home he connected up fraudulently? Sounds like he spent more time committing the crime.

Word meaning

[[ "non-personal information - data in a form that does not permit direct association with any specific individual," ]]

It all depends on what one means by "direct association." Surely, pulling data multiple times and generating a mode of some values then fetching data from another site mustn't be "direct" to the querying audience member in the story. Perhaps because he doesn't have the app for that.

Where's the right to speedy trial here?

A year, on these charges and with that evidence research needed? How does that satisfy the sixth amendment to the Constitu... oh, right.

Reasons

It's funny that the author can't think of a reason for regular folk to have tasers / stun guns, but the Ads by Google apparently can.

Might be eternal yet, actually.

It might not be able to fly eternally everywhere (it would probably have a hard time making it through a single winter's night over the North or South Pole, for example) but it might still stay aloft indefinitely if it traveled North and South as the seasons change, so it was always flying in local summer. As it's an airplane and it takes months for the seasons to switch hemispheres, it might be able to make the trip.

I suppose that would also give it the record for annual robot migration distance.

Russian Quality Control?

Perhaps one of the tubes burned out?

Do they make expensive toys for poor people?

"... an expensive toy for rich people ..."