Posts by Andy Bright

I don't understand

I don't get why IE 8 being incompatible with most websites is a problem. Surely that's a good thing, as it will move people off the most reliable malware delivery system currently available and onto something that works.

"Judging by types of companies on the 2,400-strong list of sites that currently do not work, it seems the pain is just beginning for Microsoft and for web surfers."

Well web surfers still stupid enough to use Internet Explorer perhaps, but people with enough savvy to understand the risks involved with using IE will be just fine. You don't even need to use it to deliver automatic updates, as these days it seems the thing to do is to install them without your knowledge and reboot your computer.. even if you switched off automatic updates.

But even for IE users, is this really a problem or is it just the case that a piece of software still under development hasn't been finished yet? From what I understand this is like the issue with Vista.

Eventually Vista will be finished and will be ready for everyday people to use, but until that day happens don't spend money on something that is clearly a beta. Oh it isn't? Well can you explain why a PC running Vista on a quad core processor and with a serial ATA hard disk copies and deletes files more slowly than an old 8Mhz, 16-bit, floppy disk based Amiga used to? Bit of a downer that an old-fashioned operating system from the 1980s is more proficient at the basic tasks every operating system should perform than something supposedly developed for the current millennium.

Err good I think?

Nothing good could have come of this anyway. I have no faith whatsoever in this bunch coming up with anything remotely funny on the spur of the moment. At best it would probably feature some crude attempt at slapstick and a bunch of shit jokes about body parts or smells.

Seems all TV is on the cheap these days, and if they can't even be bothered to get some decent script writers and involve a bit of technology then don't waste the airtime. Although I suppose when you compare it to most of the drivel the networks shove out, even an unscripted and unplugged version of Red Dwarf would look good.

Cowards

I've always had the opinion that anyone who suggests we should be happy to give up civil liberties in order to stop terrorism is just a coward looking to save his or her own skin.

Trouble is for some reason voters never seem to want to make these idiots pay for their cowardice. If nothing else it confuses me that people are okay with the cost of all this pointless technology. You guys do understand that the money government uses to buy all this useless shite comes from your own paychecks right?

My argument will always be that literally anyone with the ability to crayon could make more competent decisions than the spineless twat that believes id cards and biometrics will in some way prevent terrorists from killing people. So next time vote for anyone but the person currently holding office and I guarantee you pretty much can't go wrong. It might take a few elections before they get it, but eventually politicians will understand that if they want to hold office they need to grow a backbone and learn how to spend our money on things we actually need. Just keep voting them out of office until they do.

Firefox FTW

Embarrassment, no problem, been corrected so many times by Firefox that I actually know how to spell this now. Accommodation (spelled wrong, right click, Firefox to the rescue). Accessories, hmm am I seeing a pattern here.

It seems we do know what letters to stick in a word, just not how many we should use.

I bet 99.99% of the spelling errors you're talking about come from not putting in double letters where they're needed. Unfortunately even the usually wrong "i before e but not after c and except where we decided to do things differently" bullshit rule won't help there.

Err I thought this was a book reader?

Why are people talking about web browsing, applications and other things that have nothing to do with reading books?

Yes it has a dumbed down browser, so you can purchase ebooks.

The keyboard is for the browser, as well as bookmarks with notes probably.

It doesn't need Flash, OS X, Windows Vista or World of Warcraft.

However the people complaining about DRM and not conforming to a standard publishers are moving to are bang on the money. The Microsoft music site debacle is evidence enough that DRM is for suckers.

No form of magnetic media (which includes CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, Hard Disks and Flash Memory) can retain its data for as long as a book can last with reasonable care. Even books produced in the days of acidic paper have longer lifespans than 99% of media.

Which means that eventually you will be forced to move it to a new device or pay for it again. As DRM, media and devices will undoubtedly change over the years at a fast pace, the chances of only paying once for a copy of a book seem small.

Meanwhile the guy that bought the paperback for $5-7 and didn't break the spine will be able to re-read his book until his eyes fail him.

@Money

I've witnessed 4 recessions, including this one. The only one that wasn't linked to housing or finance or both was the one you were talking about, and that was certainly not as bad as what is going on now.

This one has it's own distinct flavour, but ultimately it's just a variant on the normal housing and financial meltdown recession. IT recessions are a fairly new invention, and they take a pretty stupid class of person to instigate.

How stupid? What about investing all of your pension funds assets into a company with a really neat website and a promise to make something cool one day. Obviously that makes them the same as Microsoft. Well apparently it does to people with absolutely no clue about IT. Like people who work in the financial sector for example. You'd think with all the technology they use they'd understand it a bit more. But apparently not, because to them a really neat website is the same thing as a business that produces 90% of the software installed on computers world wide and a fair amount of hardware too. You can argue over the quality of that software, but it doesn't change the fact it actually exists and it's actually being bought. Unlike most of the so-called dot com businesses they thought would turn into Microsoft.

The truly stunning thing is when these people did finally figure out what they'd done (invest all their money into a kid with a pirated copy of dreamweaver, who then did the predictable thing and used it to buy a Ferrari) they then decided to use their expert knowledge of IT and go one step further. Yes, they decided to lump in real businesses with the kids and companies like Cisco, Oracle, Intel and so on had their stock price slashed to unrealistically low levels.

Therefore although the words 'dot com' do conjure a fair description of the most stupid people in the history of the stock market (because what could be more apt than actually spelling a full stop/period with the words d-o-t), it really wasn't as bad as the one we're having now.

Giving $500,000 to homeless people has surely taken stupidity to a whole new level. I can't wait to see what they do next time.

Finally

A cure for depression Tom Cruise can believe in.. I'm sure he'll be calling Brook Shields right away to let her know, stop the pills and watch more Top Gun.

Fking Internet

I couldn't care less if people misspell words. If they write consistantly instead of consistently, really who gives a toss? I certainly don't give a fuck if someone uses it's instead of its.

But mobile phones have a lot to answer for. Those fuckers need to be stamped on.

Can anyone honestly tell me they don't get annoyed with some clever dick thinks he's being oh-so-cool writing texting-speek in an email. I've even had some right divs use leet speek in cover letters for jobs and all through their CVs.

If you're so lazy you can't be bothered to write words with all the letters in them, you won't mind if I'm too lazy to try to interpret your poor attempt at communication and just delete it. That especially applies to job applications. In your language.. you fail.

So obvious

Only a fool would believe the DL has a twitter account. When would he have the time for that? He raids 5 nights a week in World of Warcraft and that only leaves 2 days to update his Myspace.

Yeah right

All I see in this is a plea to let them stimulate the job markets in India and other parts of Asia. Being forced to pay decent wages isn't part of the deal for them.

But fortunately stimulating the economies of foreign countries is not what this bill is about, nor is it about stimulating the pay checks of IT CEOs.

What they seem to want to ignore is that we have a tiny little problem of unemployment in the US, and a lot of that has to do with greed. Greed that rewarded quantity of transactions over quality of transaction in investment banks being a prime example. Greed that saw jobs shipped overseas is another. Cheap shite from China being sold in Walmart and Best Buy are examples of why so many manufacturing and IT jobs have disappeared.

Yes it means the cost of things goes up if we buy American. But that also means more people are paid US wages, which means that perhaps they can afford to pay a bit more for the shite they sell in Walmart and Best Buy.

A worry statistic if you like. Small businesses, usually the last to lay off workers and the first to employ them, let over 140,000 jobs go this month. That means there are not very many ways left for businesses to cut costs before they go bankrupt. Somehow I doubt this recession is drawing to a close any time soon, which means without some sort of stimulus, and this time a real stimulus and not just a multi billion dollar pay out to the pricks that created this mess, this country is going to go well and truly into the crapper.

Privacy

It's not about kids, nonces or porn. It's about the world's esteemed leadership not liking the fact you can get on the internet and with the right tools surf and chat anonymously.

Obviously people shouldn't have the right to privacy from the government, that would mean they can't check on what we're all doing. And isn't checking on what we're doing the reason we pay them so much? Next you'll be telling me that these politicians are supposed to give us some sort of service, represent our wishes if you will, and focus their efforts on things that matter to the electorate rather than the lobbyists and contributors. That's as ridiculous as suggesting taxes taken from the public shouldn't be paid to investment bank CEOs in the form of multi-million dollar bonuses for all the crackerjack work they've done over the last few years.

Cost is too prohibitive

The reason for the lack of Vista installs is simple. It'd cost too much money for zero gain.

Although the state I work for isn't in the same mess as California, the cost of upgrading potentially 1000s of computers for no good reason whatsoever isn't something even we can afford to do.

The only thing Vista has going for it is flashy graphics. However the OS is cluttered, standard hardware and peripherals STILL have driver problems and it's no more secure than any other version of Windows. All versions of Windows (including the 32bit version of Win XP Pro) have support for the security offered by 64-bit processors, which means they all protect you from buffer overflow and buffer underrun conditions.

Vista is just the Windows Millennium of our time. We'd all be far better off waiting for the next version, which should arrive well before they stop giving out free patches for XP. And if that turns out to be even worse than Vista, well I've heard there are actually other operating systems so perhaps it's time to think about picking a new standard OS for the business world.

Right tires

Before I moved to Alaska I was always irritated by the surprised look on public transport's face that it snowed in winter. "It was unexpected" "It took us by surprise" "We aren't used to this".

Yes the unexpected took them by surprise and despite the same white stuff falling every year without fail in January and February, they aren't used to it.

Then you have the complete pricks that think 4X4 means their cars have the power to defeat the laws of physics. All 4 wheel drive does is provide additional traction, allowing you to pull away and keep moving in conditions that leave 2 wheel drive vehicles stuck.

An SUV or truck's greater clearance continues to allow you to keep moving when a six or more inches of snow would snag a smaller vehicle, and an altogether different technology prevents skidding. It's called electronic or automatic stabilization, telling your modern day ALL wheel drive vehicles what power to assign to each axle or even an individual wheel. However this doesn't mean you can drive 60 MPH in a foot of snow and expect to stop in the space of 20 meters when you catch up with the predictable 20 car pile up.

Ever been in a 4 wheel drive vehicle when it loses it in snow or ice? Not pretty. No amount of of corrective steering is going to get you out of that one and the top heavy part is a particularly impressive conclusion to the experience.

But despite all the gizmos of 4 wheel drive, the simple truth is the best weapons you have for snow are your tires and having the right ones for winter conditions.

I've lived in Alaska for 10 years and only had all wheel drive for 2. Never failed to get around, because if we had a problem getting to work or school when it snowed, the whole state would be shut down for 6 months of the year. Our airports don't close either, but that's another story.

Of course it helps that our local authorities aren't taken by surprise by the season of winter, ie they expect to happen every year, but simply using all weather tires allows the financial mortals amongst us to keep moving when the racing slicks they sell in the UK would fail.

So the moral is simple. Get better tires and drive at sensible speeds, even if you have a 4X4. Cos everyone is definitely going to laugh at you if you stick your shiny new jeep in a ditch.

@FYI

Lowest crime rates? I always find that one amusing. In Alaska you can buy machine guns and assault rifles in Walmart. This guy would be getting at least 2 tickets in Anchorage but in SD he's not breaking any laws. Does that make Anchorage a more dangerous place to live because it has crime statistics that include arresting people for getting drunk in public places?

My feeling the city that gets drunks off the street, particularly armed drunks, is the better place to live. Even if that means a statistic is higher because of it.

Yes, we all know how well that went

Yes, giving everyone a few hundred dollars has certainly helped prevent the mother of all economic disasters, thank god Bush was in charge or something bad might have happened.

Funny, but what I saw was shortly after these stimulus checks were spent, the economy tanked into an even worse position. Because oddly the answer to fixing a deficit is not to allow greedy investment bank executives to do as they please or to give rich CEOs huge tax cuts - which were the other key components of the bills that gave the plebs a few hundred bucks to spend.

In fact most of the Republicans argued that giving working people any sort of tax cut at all was not required, and that all of the money should be handed to rich CEOs. After all this way we were assured that they would re-invest into the economy, providing more jobs and further growth and therefore bigger tax returns. Wonderful how well that has gone. Hardly a day goes by now without some great news on the job front.

And they also told us all that regulation was stifling the economy. You know pointless red tape - like making sure that people actually had the money to repay those obscene mortgages. So best to get rid of that too, and boy hasn't the economy done well because of it.

So yeah, we can thank the Bush Administration for doing a truly awesome job on the economy.

Err.. and the problem is?

Not sure what the problem is here. He simply planned to save them thousands of man hours by resetting their mortgages to their actual value of $0.00. As far as I can see he's done a crackerjack job of accelerating a process that might have taken days or even weeks under the current economic climate.

Money talks

We went the other way, and if there's a good reason for increasing the cost of internet services per workstation from about $5 to $20 per week I don't see it.

We moved from a Mozilla based system to an Exchange system, lost features, decreased security and increased cost.

Simple things like auto-completing from your online email address directories aren't possible with Outlook or an Exchange system. And just because it comes with a built-in calendar doesn't make it better. There are plenty of online calendars that are open source and work just as well as Outlook. We used one from Oracle, which integrated into our email system perfectly.

This example isn't true of all applications of course. But there is no reason to pay for software if your main applications are internet based or along the lines of word processing, spreadsheet and database applications.

Support is no more expensive for open source applications. They're not more difficult to maintain, and given the reliance that almost every business puts on community based support forums, there's actually not a lot of difference in support. At least none that has anything to do with the software costing money or not.

Autodesk for example, relies extensively on it's own community to provide support. That's not even a criticism, you usually find the people that know the most about a piece of software and how to get something out of it are the everyday users of that software. In the 8 years I've been supporting Autodesk products, I can remember only 2 occasions when I needed support that went beyond their forums and actually required their own people to come visit our offices.

Given the $50-60 thousand dollars a year we pay in maintenance, there just might be a saving somewhere if an open source product was available that does the same thing. Most of that maintenance cost comes in the form of annual upgrades to the latest versions of their software, not from direct customer support. Open source software doesn't come with an upgrade cost, except that of implementation (something that all software shares).

So I would say that if you are using nothing but Microsoft Office applications in addition to the usual internet services you'd expect in a modern office or school, then there is no reason why you should pay more for something that isn't open source.

Fine if you feel more comfortable running Windows, go ahead. But don't waste money of things like Office 2007 when Open Office does exactly the same thing for free.

I wonder if Sony are watching

Nothing more annoying to me than the scratches you get almost as standard on a PSP. I love the thing to death, it's screen is awesome .. except for two minor details, which combined make it an ideal candidate for waiting for your 23 cent check in the post*.

They're both pretty well known, easily scratched and difficult to view in bright light. Curiously the one thing that isn't difficult to view in bright light is the scratches. Bad (or no) light and you're golden. Even the scratches are difficult to view. So I'm wondering if Sony are watching this, because their product is possibly the most scratch-prone device ever to reach the market.

They even stopped including the cleaning cloth with the device by the time the second version arrived, because the worst thing you can do is attempt to rub off fingerprints or specs of dust.

And it's infuriating because for the 3 minutes that the device doesn't come with scratches, the picture quality is unrivaled by any hand held device. A cheap 8gbyte memory stick can hold about 4 movies at a time (I use a fairly high resolution and decent sound quality so most movies I convert take up about 2gbytes), and the disks are so cheap now they're even worth buying if you have somewhere to store them while you're traveling.

*(I once won a class action lawsuit and got 23 cents for taking the trouble to fill out a form, this amount seems typical of your average pay out which confirms the first poster's comments).

Silver Lining

There is actually one huge silver lining - well there is for me. During the recessions of the 80s and the 90s I remember countless heart warming stories about people being harassed by credit card companies, who tricked them into paying credit card bills at the expense of their mortgages and utilities.

Now all these wonderful people that convinced so many to lose their homes in order to temporarily save their credit cards are facing the very calls we got when we lost our jobs back then.

Outstanding one liners like "You have a moral obligation to pay your credit card" are soon to be heading their way. Yes you too have a moral obligation to put your family on the street or see them freeze in the dark when the gas and electricity are cut off.

Still they'll soon be back in a job, because I have a feeling getting money back from people not stupid enough to pay credit cards instead of mortgages will once again become a booming industry.

And that people is why I'm against any bank bailouts whatsoever. Anyone who thinks giving our money to banks is going to stop anything bad from happening is a fool. Every penny they've received so far from governments has been horded to protect themselves while they ride out the storm. Oh some of them might use it to lend you your money at 20% interest rates, charge you late fees and jack those rates up to 30-40% when the company you work for goes out of business. But what they won't do is lend the company you work for enough money to keep you in a job, because no one is enforcing the rules that went along with the bailouts.

You do realise don't you..

That you just placed yourself front and center in the firing line of frothing-at-the-mouth fanboyz for daring to criticize their beloved Apple?

Go ahead, pour some more petrol on the fire while you're about it... ahh.. okay, I see that you did..

"Apple is, of course, under no obligation to list or reject any application, nor explain its reasoning - but censoring books and filtering applications without explanation or any apparent consistency does leave a nasty taste in the mouth."

Brilliant. I applaud you sir and your asbestos suit.

This is why sex offender registries mean nothing

This isn't new people. There are already many on those lists of predators in your communities that did similar sorts of things. For example I know one guy who's a registered sex offender for the crime of playing "if you show me yours, I'll show you mine" at the age of 10.

Nothing great about that, I would knock some sense into any of my own kids that did it, but that's the punishment these kids should be getting. Not facing imprisonment and the rest of their lives on a sex offenders registry. For those that think these things go away when they reach 18, no they don't. This is for keeps.

What I want to know is why no one has stood up to these prosecutors yet in the US. No one appears to be saying that taking away their cell phones is a more reasonable punishment that the insanity that's progressing. I don't even understand why these people still have jobs, including anyone at the school that reported them to the authorities without making sure their parents couldn't deal with it themselves. We don't need people like this "serving" our communities. Because they aren't protecting anyone from anything, they aren't representing the wishes of the people that elected their political bosses, well not most of them.

Except for a few religious extremists, no one wants to see these kids punished in this way, and there should be consequences for government employees that abuse their positions like these guys are doing. I'm a government employee, my duty is to work for the people of my state, not to work against them. Fire the lot of these fuckers and stick them on trial for abusing public money.

'What the f***k does he know about Doom?'

hahahahahahahahaha.. yes because Doom's storyline is classic masterpiece that could only be continued by, I don't know, anyone that has more than 3 minutes to spare and the ability to scrawl crayon on a piece of paper.

As the Reg put it. Kill monsters, find keys, open doors, kill big monster. Woah, no one with a mere background in fantasy literature could hope to conjure a sequel to that epic tale of heroic deeds.

And then there was the heart stirring spin off, about the 8 people that got big fucking guns and jumped around a lot as they tried to kill each other. I would say that no one who hasn't played the game from its very first version would understand such a complex and thought provoking game history. Who can forget the immortal words of one victor "pwned your fucking arse dick weed". Tears are welling up as we speak. I own a first edition hard cover myself, and will probably pass it down to future generations as a family heirloom.

Wouldn't worry about it

Most crazy people bills don't see the light of day, this is just another of those. There's no way Congress is going to pass a law based on the frenzied mutterings of one representative. Remember the furor over nekkid cartoons in video games? That one had all kinds of high profile politicians jumping on the bandwagon including Hilary Clinton, and not a single bill made it past the insane scratchings on a piece of paper stage of legislation.

If you were to delve into the bills created by nutzos from the South in particular, you'd find all kinds of entertaining reading. Most of it is just to cover themselves for the next election. They have all kinds of inbred constituents that lap up the rabid comments of right wing radio hosts, so they're forced to pull out the crazy book every now and then and pretend the wacked out bills they're creating actually stand a chance of making it. Funny part is most of them would be horrified if these bills actually did become law.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much. Some other shiny object will come along soon, and a bill that bans dogs from the homes of children or one that demands all cell phones rat out text bullies will be announced and then forgotten about too.

He has to pay for this?

As a parent of a US teenager I can't believe any similar parent is unaware of how popular texting is. Most kids would be just as happy with their cell phone if it couldn't make voice calls, as long as the texting was free.

All you do is sign up for an unlimited texting plan. They usually cost between $20-$30 a month (15-20 quid) and include a limited amount of freee voice calling time.

Don't ask me why kids prefer texting over talking, they just do. For example I tried to call my kid one afternoon to find out when he wanted to get picked up, and while 4 calls went unanswered a text message was replied to in seconds.

I don't get it or like it, but it just is. As the text plan is less expensive than the equivalent voice plan I don't see the harm.

Not sure I see the difference

We call them Israelis or Jews, but seems to me they are little different from the other Arab nations in the area. It's a bit like that thing where British people don't like to be called Europeans.

Several facts to muddy the waters include Jewish Palestinians and Muslim Israelis. Both groups are minorities, but they exist. You could further cloud things up by including Christians that belong to both communities.

Thing is Hamas are essentially what Sin Fein were 20-30 years ago. They're supposedly a political party, but engage in terror. By the way terrorism has nothing to do with religion per se as one commenter seems to think, it's using violence to cause people to be terrified. Hence the name. It just seems the people who are best at it also tend to be religious extremists.

Are the Israelis committing terrorism or war crimes? Both. The mass slayings are war crimes, and the purpose behind most of their actions is to terrify the population of Gaza into submission.

Most of the civilian population of Israel just want the suicide bombings and the rockets fired into houses and shops to stop. They're also quite angry and don't see why they should be negotiating on a political level with the organisers of these things. Sort of like how we didn't see why we should deal politically with the IRA.

On the other hand the Palestinian population don't deserve many of the injustices they've been getting at the hands of the Israelis for the last 50 years or so. Watching Israeli children play in water parks while you queue up in the street with a small bucket for your weekly ration of water is the sort of thing we're talking about here. When Israel was created they were given the land that controlled the region's water, meaning the Palestinians have to rely on Israeli good will or they go without.

Gaza is a piece of land that helps the Israelis protect their control of the water. Giving it 'back' to the Palestinians was not something they were ever comfortable with. This is why Israelis were encouraged to settle there even though it wasn't part of Israel when the borders were drawn up.

It's not so easy to sit here in comfort and judge either side. There are dozens of other issues, including the fact that Israel has been constantly terrorised by neighbouring Arab states and the murder of their own children. Hamas have hidden weapons in schools, weapons used to blow up school buses and restaurants. Hamas have hidden themselves in UN compounds filled with civilians and then fired rockets from those compounds into Israel.

What I don't get is how the Israelis think they will continue to get the support of the west if they are so indiscriminate in their killing. They're acting like their enemy and I see little difference between the two now.

re: Global warming and increased piracy

"How does global warming causes earthquakes?"

Duhhh, it causes it by all the fat Americans moving away from the hot places to the cooler places, massively impacting tectonic plates.

It also causes piracy. It gets so hot outside, everyone is forced to strip down to tight t-shirts, cutlasses and trousers cut short in a giant saw-like pattern. They then go to the sea side.

"I do find it funny that atmospheric conditions and natural disasters are always attributed to Global Warming."

Yes, it's hilarious that people are saying atmospheric conditions and natural disasters caused by extreme weather are in some way tied to extreme weather. I mean it's so obviously a scam. Those hurricanes that are made stronger by warmer than usual temperatures, occurring more often because the warmer temperatures last longer, would have just happened anyway if everyone took a hairdryer to the Atlantic ocean and stayed there warming it up during the months when hurricanes couldn't normally form.

Negative reviews?

When you look at the reviews of a Amazon or Ebay seller, are you influenced by the experience of a single person, or by the reviews of the majority?

In order to be impacted severely by a negative review, it'd more or less have to be backed up by many other negative reviews or be the only one for the business.

Most people aren't like this imo. I don't particularly want to see restaurants I like go out of business and the reasons ought to be obvious. If I get good service and good food then I'm better off. Getting a free meal once or even twice and then losing somewhere I enjoy going to a month later is not exactly doing me any favours. I'm pretty sure most people would see the logic in this.

And besides, most of the time if the business is decent you like the people working there. Any semi-decent person wouldn't want to see them lose their jobs.

You get twats of course, but I would think these would be in the minority, and if the business is any good, the positive reviews would overwhelm the negative.

@WTF

Very true statement, however that still means they were in breach of copyright law as they didn't have the permission of the photographer to reproduce the image.

Still you have to ask what the harm was in using an image of Spielberg. Only the completely retarded would have thought that he was in some way connected to the course. It's not like they were saying you would be personally taught by him or that he endorsed the course in any way.

It was more of a "Hey you want to be the next Spielberg? Well you could do worse than start with a screen writing course at our University."

Sell it again

Why didn't he just sell the sob story rather than try to match her in the dickhead stakes? Marriages work, or they don't, but on the face of it all they are is a glorified boyfriend/girlfriend deal with a bunch of legalese to back it up.

Promises to stay faithful, true and supportive for the rest of your life is more or less setting yourself up for failure 50% of the time (hence the divorce rate). He stuck to his side of the bargain, she didn't. Big whoop, have a cry, write some bad poetry, sue for the kids (believe me you want the kids and not the child support payments) and split the record collection in half.

The kidney thing should be nothing more than an anecdote to your decentness (yes I know this word doesn't exist). Saying you wouldn't have donated it if you'd known she'd be unfaithful sort of negates this. Either you are a decent person and would sacrifice for your wife, without condition, or you won't.

Don't expect many people to agree with that point of view, but I know I would sacrifice a kidney if it would save my wife's life, regardless of whether she remained faithful to me for the rest of our lives, because the two things aren't related in any way.

No one else sees the irony here?

That the, well for argument's sake anyway, first eco-friendly plane in the US is flying out of "Bush" International Airport? I'm surprised the current Bush didn't stop it just to keep his reputation intact.

Here's a scary tidbit for you. Bush Senior thinks Jeb Bush would make a fine President and should perhaps run for office in 2012. I wonder which continent should be crapping itself right now at the prospect of total destabilization by 2016. No need to worry too much I feel, the first two probably still think Africa could use a bit more of a kicking and will direct Bush #3 to proceed accordingly.

There's no substitute for a good blaster kid..

No doubt in my mind that version one failed because it lacked some sort of discipline feature for failure to reach out with the force and adequately defend yourself with a light saber.

iTouch?

iPhone Nano? I don't see why Apple would do it. In the US at least there's no shortage of potential customers begging for a full-priced version of the iPhone. If they were to finally release an unlocked version, something that probably won't happen until the clones start appearing, they wouldn't be able to keep up with demand.

But a cheap, small version? Why? I can't see why anyone would be interested, they are far more likely to grab an iPhone clone than a phone with a screen you can barely see.

On the other hand if they were to release an iTouch Nano it would continue to move their entire product line towards the same technology. The only device that doesn't make sense to go this way is the large capacity classic iPod, but that's only a matter of time.

The current iTouch is almost identical to the iPhone in every way except voice communications. Protective jackets double for both devices. My guess is the real device this protective jacket has been made for is the next iPod, not the next iPhone.

I'm guessing

That this X-Factor thing is another one of those karaoke shows? I still think the quality karaoke shows all come from Japan, nothing beats a Japanese version of the Beatles and the timeless classics they belt out.

Uhuh

Are you sure they didn't just throw up images of random naked women and find to their amazement that this was precisely what their male test subjects were thinking about?