Posts by Gerry Doyle

ArseASA rules 'Feck' non-offensive

@ the lot of ye

Apologies in advance, asterisks inserted to get past company 'profanity' filters...

Let's get one thing straight - feck and f*ck are NOT the same word, they are not used interchangeably.

The word 'feck' for them that need it to be explained again, means 'to steal', it is not a swearword, it never was and it never can be. You may well use it if you'd rather say feck than f*ck, and that's your choice, but their meanings are not the same and you certainly wouldn't say f*ck if you really meant feck.

Think duck and deck, or indeed think *sshole and grasshole and fub off the lof of ye.

Apple tells Mac users: Get anti-virus

Creating a market

AV has always thrived on fear and ignorance for its success, and it must seem like a terrible waste to the AV makers that the Apple market has been immune to their charms for so long, so if Steve was to throw them this particular bone, I'm sure they will be grateful.

That said, I have been online for over 10 years, an MS user man and boy, with nary a bit of AV software ever, nor any infections either. And for those unfortunate, or silly enough to be infected, I have never seen a virus that couldn't be handled or prevented with basic IT skills. A virus is just an application like any other, and while some are trickier than others, I have never seen one that warranted a re-install. Nor have I seen anyone equipped with AV that was immune to them either, if anything they suffered from a false sense of security, and a hobbled machine limping along under the weight of bloated AV.

Komplett closes retail ops across Europe

P+P?

For anyone ordering from UK online stores it's the P+P rates that have always been the killer, it's as if they simply did not want to do business with anyone abroad.

If something from dabs was cheaper than komplett you could be sure that this would be wiped out by their P+P. Trying to order a bass guitar I was quoted 75 of your British pounds for carriage, while Thomans in Germany charged a maximum of 15 euros and free if over a certain amount - and that's right up to entire PA and lighting systems. I've ordered sets of large hardback books all the way from the USA for less than Amazon.co.uk charge for a single slim volume.

MS bashes Gay(wood) Xbox Live gamer

Quite possibly she's well past such things but...

this all makes me wonder how an old flame of mine - Ann Kuntz - manages to get by at all?

@ Mickey O'Malley - Gay Names

When I was a kid in Ireland, a long time ago, I just couldn't understand how the broadcaster Gay Byrne was a man while radio 'Dear Frankie...' Frankie Byrne was a woman. Although to this day in Cork City Florance is a common name for men, as is Mary as a middle name.

Mickey on the other hand seems quite innocent to many - personally though I was creased up laughing at the myriad combinations while at the Paris Disney, especially a box labelled 'Jedi Mickey'. The mind boggles...

I'm assured that tour guides in the USA Disneys are often perplexed at the ripple of laughter from Irish tourists when introduced to a statue billed as The Biggest Mickey in the World.

As for young kids use of 'gay' - many of them are now unaware that it has any other meaning than 'rubbish'.

Dixons admits 'it's even worse than you thought'

Matching Staff to Customers?

One of the few fun things about PCW is eavesdropping on the sales people bullshitting the customers - I heard one bloke say to a woman, and I quote, "this machine has Microsoft spreadsheet, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah" and the woman kept nodding as if he was saying something she understood.

Made for each other.

As for 'extended warranty' the other day I was asked in another of those furniture warehouses to supply name, address, phone number and email address - to buy a bed! As if.

Record labels to ditch CD singles for USB Flash drives

USB is the best thing since vinyl

Dunno about you lot, but I have gotten well sick of supposedly eternal CDs becoming scratched and unusable after a week or two of hard handling in the car, mostly by the kids. I've had to make copies of every CD I bought and use that for the few weeks that it might last. The result has been stacks of useless silver disks all over the place or fast-forwarding to find a non-skipping track.

Recently I bought a new car stereo with an SD slot, a USB port and an AUX jack, and life has become so much simpler. I bought a 1GB key for each of the 3 sprogs and leave them to put whatever they want on them - and no more burning of entire CDs just to add one song to the playlists. No more CDs in fact. They take turns with the keys, or plug their mp3 players into the USB port or the AUX jack, and control it all by the remote.

Everything that I want to hear, well OK, that they DON'T want to hear, is on my own key.

And the entire collection is stored in the hitherto-defunct ashtray!

The player will also rip from CD to USB so I only need to play a new CD once on the way home from buying it...

And if 1GB isn't enough space for them? Tough, they can delete something that they probably never listened to anyway.

As for vinyl, I'm still playing albums that were pressed over 30 years ago.