* Posts by Spider

187 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007

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Let 15 July forever be known as P-Day: When UK's smut fans started being asked for their age

Spider

The State. Screwing up since day one.

It appears to compound the monumental levels of idiocy DCMS emailed every tech journo in the land to inform them of the impending day. Promptly CCing everyone in the email and revealing their contacts to everyone else.

Guess which dept is responsible for GDPR...

What happens when a Royal Navy warship sees a NATO task force headed straight for it? A crash course in Morse

Spider

Re: Vomit inducing

was OOW on a RN vessel in F10+ and it was scary as f*** at the time. Took her over to 27 degrees and can safely say it is not an event I'd care to repeat... didn't eat for days.

Although first casualty was the ships safety officer (navs) getting laid out cold by the rack of safety manuals coming adrift on the bridge... i'm sure he can see the funny side by now...

Spider

interesting stuff

good to see the old girl going - crying shame the destruction that has been wrought on the hydrographic fleet in the last 20 years though. Funny to see officers on droggy ships wanting to go subs, at one point in early 00's junior HM officers were more gapped than subs. Capable ship with a rightly proud professional crew and heritage now sadly mostly deployed on filling operations that should be ASW or AAW frigates...

a day without a line run is a day wasted...

UK's Royal Navy buys £13m mine-blasting robot boat

Spider

Colregs

as well as rules 5, 7(c), 18 just from memory...

HMS Queen Lizzie impugned by cheeky Scot's drone landing

Spider

next up

The ineffectiveness of the RN's response aside, next up FPV RC owners complaining of draconian knee jerk registrations laws and over bearing restrictions on use.

At least they know one of those to blame

Universal Service Oh... forget the Obligation. BT offers to stump up £600m for 10Mbps

Spider

Re: Simply...

In principle yes.

However, since BT are slurping up taxpayer cash that us rural yokels are forced to fork over as well then yes we'd like the USO met.

Although if we're all only paying for those things we have access to then city dwellers will of course be happy to shoulder the disproportionate amount of tax cash that gets funnelled to city based public transport, roads, arts, hospitals, schools.......?

or we could just demand that those corps that take public money paid by all of us live up to their obligations they agreed to to get it?

America's mystery X-37B space drone lands after two years in orbit

Spider

Proper standards of weights and measures

All the discussion of KE needs some standardising with an appropriate El Reg approved unit of measurement.....

New Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters can't transmit vital data

Spider

Re: make the whole MoD military personnel

Harrier, MPA and numerous other Naval capabilities (hydrography was dear to my heart hence a resigned commission) where killed or hamstrung under the disastrous leadership of ex 1SL West. He happily sold his service for a peerage and a seat on the gravy train under Labour.

Not that the civvies in procurement didn't do their bit, but he encouraged and signed off on it.

As an aside - spent a evening exercising will power at a dinner that included a married couple who both worked in procurement. 1 was designing work station layouts for T45 ops room despite never having been on ore than a ferry, and the other Longbow comms (he learnt all about comms from clansman). It nearly soured my port I don't mind telling you.

Height of stupidity: Heathrow airliner buzzed by drone at 7,000ft

Spider

as usual

Issue being irresponsible and dangerous idiots.

An incident will lead to nigh unworkable, badly written and widespread draconian law.

Which will then be ignored by irresponsible and dangerous idiots leading to only responsible owners having perfectly legitimate hobby taken away..

...and the issue will remain.

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

Spider

just get rid of it.

stop arsing about an bung it on fuel.

harder to avoid, easier to collect.

drive more miles pay more duty

drive a big gas guzzler pay more duty

little old dear does a once a week shop pays virtually nothing.

I don't like Mondays, Pokemon, Twitter or Facebook – Sir Bob Geldof

Spider

Bob promoting Bob shocker

It seems the extension to his career he managed due to channelling funds to 3rd world dictators has worn off. Having tried screaming obscenities at working fisherman whilst claiming to be a "normal person" swigging champagne with his millionaire buddies on a floating gin palace didn't seem to work. So now he's trying hectoring on how tech he clearly has no idea about should progress.

With interpersonal skills, tact and self-awareness like this no wonder he was such a success at marriage and parenting.

Bomb-disposal robot violently disposes of Dallas cop-killer gunman

Spider

Armchair quarterbacks

wow, everyone blessed with hindsight today.

Of course we should feel uncomfortable at this, that doesn't necessarily make it a bad call. Faced with so many dead already, an active shooter willing to keep going and the potential for explosive devices at unknown locations that he may have had the capability to detonate if not dealt with instantaneously?

maybe not a perfect solution, but in the midst of the chaos an understandable one.

Plus, next one who says "come and get me"? wait till they here the trundling metallic chassis....

(and not one ROTM comment?)

At Microsoft 'unlimited cloud storage' really means one terabyte

Spider

too unlimited?

Want to avoid the inevitable bad PR? Stop describing things as unlimited that aren't.

Goes for cloud storage, ISPs, or buffets.

If you offer it as such people will use it as such.

Attack of the drones: ‘Nefarious’ private use rising, says top Blighty copper

Spider

Just a little more law...

All we need to combat this new threat to your freedom and safety is a few more little teeny tiny laws that infringe liberty. What? Existing laws? no siree, we've not got any of them that we could be using... besides that would be horribly complex. Just bung us a few more laws we can use for blanketing anything we don't approve of.

Unsupervised Brit kids are meeting STRANGERS from the INTERNET

Spider

If parents are willing to abdicate responsibility for their children's safety to the clutches of the ever grasping state then they lose the right to complain when it brings up their children in a manner they objectt to.

Screw you, Brits, says Google: We are ABOVE UK privacy law

Spider

We're missing a trick

Surely if they are effectively immune from prosecution in Blighty, then they have also given up the right to legal protection here as well?

Pirates ahoy! run out the torrents and prepare to be pwned!

[pedant] and yeah I know it doesn't necessarily work that way but I can wish...[/pedant]

MPs demand UK rates revamp after Google's 'extraordinary tax mismatch'

Spider
Unhappy

it makes little difference in the long run

no company ultimately actually pays any tax.

it's customers do.

Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming

Spider
Facepalm

alienate your customers.

whilst not a huge percentage by any means, needing a connection of any sort will stop anyone in the forces or offshore industries from buying.

I passed the time on many deployments and subsequent offshore jobs with networked games of footy or shooting each other. Maybe a small demographic, but they tend to spend large on these items. MS just lost them.

Cameron eyes 'non legislative options' for more spook snoop powers

Spider
Facepalm

stand firm!

We will not give in terrorists who hate the freedoms of western society - by slowly taking away all the freedoms of western society.

Moss reanimates after 400 years in DEEP FREEZE

Spider
Alert

Really? A good idea?

because thawing out stuff found in ice & letting them loose works so well.

..MacReady fire up the helo, and watch out for those crazy norwegians.

The Tomorrow People jaunt back to the airwaves

Spider

that's that f***ed then.

is there a single original thought left in media? anywhere?...

mind you, looking forward to them trying to make ain't 'alf hot mum politically correct...

Schmidt: Don't like our tiny tax bills? Google this... 'Change the law'

Spider

technically legal

govts spent a shedload of cash trying to prove that invading a foreign country was technically legal and therefore not a warcrime, even if morally dubious.

same here. you either break the law, in which case prosecute them, or they didn't. No "well it feels bad" or "i think it's eeeeeevil". I reserve particular contempt for Hodge the dodge who spirits away millions in trusts and inheritance tax evasion accounts for Stemcor that pay less than 0.01% tax and then wheels in her moral high horse, when all along she is part of the body that makes the law!

Microsoft Xbox gaffe reveals cloudy arrogance

Spider
Stop

why? just because that's why.

I could go on about how xbox provided entertainment in otherwise dull places that had no chance of a connection bobbing about on the high seas defending the realm (at the risk of sounding like Lewis), or how I get together twice a year with good friends for a weekends xbox fest with as many xbox's as we can cram into chosen venue that it would cripple the net connection.

But ultimately it's because i don't want to connect all the time to play a campaign or single player game. it's not necessary and it adds nothing to a system I would have already paid for a console and a game in. In fact I am worse off in not being able to borrow/lend games between friends.

I know it's a luxury. I can choose not to buy. I just find it hard to believe they're willing to hand such a big win to Sony this early in the game. That's probably how I'll deal with it.

Furious Stephen Fry blasts 'evil' Reg and 'TW*T' Orlowski

Spider

Telly tax sink...

Heard Fry described as "the type of person thick people think of as clever". The more I inevitably see of him, the more it seems apt.

Victoria and Albert museum in narrow escape from Napalm Death

Spider

Re: Eh?

Manowar.

left my ears in tatters.

Wikipedia's Gibraltar 'moratorium' - how's it going?

Spider
FAIL

Re: Not actually fussed about Gib either way but...

FFS you'd think you were to forced to use it or contribute to it under pain of death, as for a source, if tt's important wikipedia? really? maybe a starting point at best. But if that's your level of research you deserve what you get or indeed pay for. There is a wealth of genuine info out there., if you are too lazy to go look and rely on the public to source it for you what do you seriously expect?

..and if that's your level of effort I'll help out. the red arrow is just down there on the right...

Spider
Stop

Not actually fussed about Gib either way but...

If you or anyone objects so strongly then you could ask for a refund?

Spanish boffins increase GPS accuracy by 90%

Spider

Re: GPS for Dummies

direction of travel usually. calculated by sampling a preset duration of position previous to determine velocity

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster remembered 10 years on

Spider
Go

so easy sat in an armchair

Поехали!

Senator threatens FAA with legislation over in-flight fondleslabbing

Spider
Stop

Re: One experience

whether the pilot believes it or not, it's crap.

I set up and use all manner of positioning systems GPS, DGPS, RTK, utilising GPS and GLONASS and getting geared up with the pale pachyderm Galileo, and if mobes ruined them most would not work, not to mention the EM fields generated by kit such as say, a hulking great radar , VHF, and satcomm systems.

Receiving a worthwhile constellation to generate a position solution sounds far more likely an issue on the ground, with buildings and vehicles nearby top generate masking and multipathing.

Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism'

Spider
Stop

so who next?

Once our "betters" get their morality tax from google who next? Do you use an ISA? if so, why? I'm guessing because it avoids tax. Then you are immoral for hiding the governments money and must be punished.

Spider
Unhappy

Re: VAT

all tax is paid by the end consumer one way or another...

Top-secret US spaceplane sets off on another classified mission

Spider
Unhappy

Re: space budget

yes.

Patrick Moore: Lived with cats, accompanied Einstein on the piano

Spider
Unhappy

Saddened

Not just at the loss of a national treasure that I never tired of listening to, but at so many comments so eager to try and paint his understandable loathing of Germany or his politics as reasons to belittle this intellectual colossus.

Possibly the only man to meet first man to fly, first man in space and first man on the moon, xylophonist , composer, lunar cartographer, author, presenter, animal rights campaigner... and the first thing some people can comment on is he was not PC enough.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

British judge: Say you're sorry Apple... this time like you MEAN it

Spider
Thumb Up

you really don't understand why?

Because we all enjoy a healthy dose of schadenfreude since Apple kicked off the business war by litigation process.

I don't have a particular fave OS or product, but sick of hearing how I cannot buy something because Apple have patented a rectangle or the colour white or the letter i.

So yes, we're enjoying them get a kicking for once. They started it and now they're whining like a bitch when they don't get their own way. Beautiful.

Virgin Media spanked for 'we've already cabled up your house' mailshot

Spider

adverts aside

I kind of feel obliged to put the other side of the coin. was on plusnet but cooper cable was never going to give more than 4meg so actually went into VM store locally. young girl sorted the package out, did a good deal (beat their online offer), then let me listen as she bollocked the engineers who reckoned street wasn't cabled, I particularly remember "if his 2 neighbours are already on it what makes you think he can't you f**kwit". install was done on the day they said and apart from 2 outages of a hour or so in the first 3 months been good for last year since.

last speed test was 48.5 on a 50meg connection.

i know that's not everyone's experience, and used to be happy with plusnet. just wanted more speed...(who doesn't?)

APPLE: SCREW YOU, BRITS, everyone else says Samsung copied us

Spider
Stop

you know who really lost?

It makes no real difference the arguments and counter arguments on minutiae of legal bullshit. You know who really loses here?

Not Apple.

Not Samsung, Even in Germany,

It was you and me. We pay the lawyers and the legal fees in higher prices and reduced choice.

F**k it's not even funny anymore.

Ice sheets may stabilise for centuries, regardless of warming

Spider
Unhappy

let's face it, we're screwed.

It is already too late. Despite the naysayers and exxon funded "scientists" global warming is occurring and will continue to do so at variable rates.

The best evidence I have yet to see, both as part of research and in person, is the effects on corals globally. They act as a planetary scale thermometer. Extremely temperature intolerant they have evolved to a narrow and steady temperature bandwidth which we are pushing them beyond. The frequency of mass bleachings as a direct result of high temperatures is increasing and they can no longer cope. I fully expect most coral reefs to be gone in my lifetime.

Why should we care? Because ecosystems are intrinsically interlinked, and we have the merest fraction of an inkling how it all connects. Corals provide nurseries for fish, the basic source of protein most of the planet. The large fish have already gone. We have started eating smaller fish, and other species. Where do we go when they are gone?

Don't get me wrong I'm no rabid ecoloon. But I see no way out. Simply too many people. Enjoy it while you can.

Protestors target Google over that video

Spider

Re: As a Muslim, a lot of comments here and elsewhere on the Internet...

you do not get to pick and choose.

The support of the moderates is the powerbase upon which the fanatics act. Your funds, your buildings, your organisations and your ideologies provide them with personnel, logistics and finances. You are culpable.

Like the pensioner in church who donates money in turn financed the catholic cover-ups, you share a degree of the blame.

All of it based on fairy tales with no evidence.

Boffins baffled: HUGE EYEBALL washes up on Florida beach

Spider

F'thagn

As if Great Cthulhu would lose an eye to anyone!

however.

startling resemblance

http://news.discovery.com/earth/squid-eye-on-the-lookout-120316.html

Edge-of-space skydiver grounded by ANOTHER bout of bad wind

Spider
Pirate

Re: Evidently

No such thing as gravity, just the loving pressure pushing down from his noodly appendage

(jolly roger for the pirates obviously!)

Brighton marathon munchers banned from all-you-can-eat diner

Spider

He screwed up

Advertised "all you can eat" and didn't want to provide that service. Simple really.

There was no small print stating drinks are mandatory or service charge will be applied. Just a big advert that someone took advantage of.

No different to any other special offer that turns out not to be to a companies advantage.

Stop whining and stop advertising services you are not willing to provide.

AI game bot HUNTS DOWN ENEMIES, passes Turing Test

Spider
Alert

NRA to DEFCON wolfenstein

another step in killbots mission objectives to pass for fleshy meatsacks.

you cannot say we weren't warned.

Work for beer, Neil Gaiman's wife tells musicians

Spider

$1.2 million crowdsourced and now she tells people that she won't put less that 3% of that towards paying musicians?

Bet she never mentioned it when trying to attract the funding?... moreover where exactly did the money all go?

Now Apple wants Samsung S III, Galaxy Notes off the shelves too

Spider
Unhappy

Re: Shocker

Whilst I manage to grasp the fundamentals of "a hoard of lawyers can persuade a jury that it has broken some highly technical law", and I actually agree with the basis of IP, (otherwise why innovate? blah blah..), and truth be told I'm not pro or anti apple on the whole, this is just taking the p1ss now.

The law was never made to deal with these highly pedantic issues. It needs changing and fast. Whilst it may be legal etc so was a whole host of very wrong legislation which was eventually and thankfully consigned to the recycle bin of history. Sooner this joins them the better...

Spider
Unhappy

Shocker

Apple demand anything not made by Apple be banned, burnt and buried at a crossroads as unholy.

...give it a feckin rest ffs.

Jury awards Apple $1bn damages in Samsung patent case

Spider
Unhappy

Want to guess who pays?

Fans of either side can gloat/heckle all they want.

The crying shame is the we pay in the end. We pay for the lawyers, we pay the fines, we pay higher prices for monopolistic market shares and we pay in stifled range of tech available.

Main people who lose in these corporate wars is us.

Reg readers scrap over ultimate bacon sandwich

Spider
Happy

Sauces and venues...

Got to go with brown sauce... almost any, but also partial to OK sauce... or home brew "Firestarter" from my local mexican Mohujos. http://www.mohujos.co.uk/

...now for vending establishments, I have a soft spot for Capn Jaspers on the quayside in Plymouth. All manner of bacon and it's accompanying food groups the sausage and egg. Used to be perfect hangover treatment venue.

Curiosity success 'paves way for Man on Mars by 2030s'

Spider
Unhappy

Re: US leadership in space

some of the replies are disappointing. With the US having to use Soyuz to get to LEO and co-operating on the ISS there was that small chance we might not carry our petty nationalistic rivalries to the stars. Idealistic I know, but we could but hope.... shame to marr such a great achievement.

LOHAN breathes fire in REHAB

Spider
Happy

Re: It's great to see this project taking shape

I should hope planning is already underway... acronyms at the standby!

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