Posts by Alistair Dabbs 1308 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2009
The first time I saw Windows 95 was during a demo at a Computer Life readers' evening. The demonstrator double-clicked on three videos, whereupon all three launched immediately and played back simultaneously in separate windows - no glitches or hitches. To this day I have not been able to reproduce this feat (on a Windows computer).
Well it can't be the *same* shirt as worn by Steven Gerrard for the simple reason that Steven Gerrard will be wearing that one. It can't be *identical* either because Steven Gerrard's shirt is not a size XXXXL. But in every other respect, the replica shirt is of the same design, uses similar materials (again, not the *same* materials because those are already sewn into SG's shirt) and created by the same manufacturer.
Now look how long it took me to write all that. Easier to write 'virtually identical t-shirt'. That's good enough for anybody except for an insufferable pedant.
To be fair, the DM guys write this stuff not because they are lazy (they are not) but because this is exactly the kind of thing DM readers want to read. People often blame the DM for turning readers into nutters but publishing works the other way around: you target your readership with stuff they want to read. The Guardian does this too, of course.
Not sure that three stars counts as a glowing review. From a reviewer's perspective, there exist products that don't work properly or are poorly implemented or break down easily. It stands to reason, then, that if a product actually works, it merits more than one or two stars.
Reput isn't breaking any law. In fact, I believe Reput honestly expects the app to be used responsibly. I just happen to think they are mistaken. As soon as one user conveys an opinion to another about a third party's perceived reputation, a libel is all but guaranteed to take place. When the UK construction industry was found to be sharing opinionated and unchallenged reputation data about potential employees, there was a scandal. Reput, however, reckons users will only say nice things about other people.
I paid for Amazon's Prime service for a year and most of my orders arrived after 2-3 days. Many took up to 5 days. One delivery of an in-stock item took nearly two weeks to arrive with Prime. When I complained, I was ignored.
I wonder if this means it'll now take two weeks to stream a movie...
Can't help you, I'm afraid, at least not yet. The best I can offer is a photo of the offending item: http://pic.twitter.com/PEVO3CbuGh
It's about four feet high. I would dearly love to use it as a drinks cabinet. But until I get the right to open it, it remains a large piece of junk that occupies space I'd like to use for something else... such as a drinks cabinet.
I have learnt that the boss bought the sack of gas masks in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London. Remember the bus on Hackney Road that didn't explode? That was just outside the office.
Unfortunately, I have also learnt that the gas masks were a job lot from that dodgy supplier rejected by the Israeli military, i.e. they probably don't work.
I've seen a lot of DPD vans around. This makes the Dabbsies giggle because of a puerile pun in French. 'DPD' in English sounds like 'dee-pee-dee' but in French it is pronounced 'day-pay-day', which sounds like 'des pédés', which is an old-fashioned and derogatory way of referring to gay men.
Not that we laugh at gay men. But it is funny when my wife looks out the window and appears to be telling me that there are some gays at the door: "Il y a DPD à la porte."
This is a local shop, remember. This means the Post Office is closed for most of the time. When it *is* open, the queue runs from the counter right through the shop and out the door. Makes you wonder why they keep closing them down.
Not sure about paying for a courier. Given that my eBay item will have sold for £1.50, no-one will want to pay £10 for it to get lost *professionally*.
I don't like LinkedIn's way of amalgamating all of one's email addresses into its account simply because someone tries to add you to their network using the wrong email. I keep my domestic email strictly personal and separate from work, as I do with Facebook. The last thing I need is for my exchanges with my daughter studying in Amsterdam to be interspersed with blathering from irate readers and PRs.
The Dabbsies were also surprised - nay, amazed - to see Parappa mentioned in the programme, let alone praised to the skies. The kids adored Parappa when they were smaller (now aged 21 and 17, they actually played Parappa 2 for a laugh last week - pure coincidence) but we had no idea that anyone outside Japan, other than cultists, had heard of it.
I could be wrong but I wonder if its inclusion in CB's history had anything to do with Labrinth trying to get him to play a bit of one of his videos.
If the dollar crashed, the US economy would go tits up too and there's a chance it could take much of the Internet with it. So your Bitcoins would be temporarily useless until someone rebuilt Western civilisation so that there'd be enough connected computers to start allowing transactions again.
I'm not sure about this. France has a vibrant hunting scene and during the season, they'll shoot everything that moves, even in their back gardens, sometimes (by accident) their own dogs or indeed each other. Surely a drone is going to get hit eventually, purely by chance.
>> If your business is network based why do you need to be in London in the first place?
Everyone asks this. In the kind of science fiction bollox that only CEOs, politicians and other people of limited intelligence believe, networked people can work from anywhere.
What happens in real life is that distance-workers don't work at all - they just goof off and watch daytime TV.
Bright minds need a place to meet up, spark ideas and get stuff done - not necessarily 8 hours every day but often - and it has to be somewhere mutual that isn't a noisy Starbucks with bad music and sticky tables.
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