What the fork?

Deary me. It's all about appropriate use, isn't it? Like AC@09:34 said.

I was always a little disturbed by the French Connection thing. Some marketing w*nk (wonk) scored a brownie point or two when he realised the significance of their initials, I'm sure, but I'd say the joke's getting a little long in the tooth. It's been, what, over ten years? Surely they should have grown up by now.

79% accurate?

Is this the new Pentium, then?

I was invited to see that movie...

...I declined. I didn't see the benefit in paying Hollywood for the privilege of sitting in a dark room for a couple of hours despairing about Mankind's ability to ignore the fucking obvious. Bad science in movies annoys me. Probably more than it ought to.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the willing suspension of disbelief, but come on. There's a limit.

The matrix was bad enough.

@AC 11:16

You should be grateful to the Apple Marketing folks. When the inevitable alien invasion happens (it's coming, you know it is) the invaders will be convinced by our emissions shell to turn up with a toolkit for subverting every piece of apple hardware on the planet.

Most of us won't notice.

Bastards

This is why our fourteen-year-old daughter is slowly developing an eating disorder...

@Kevin

I think you're thinking of Amazon's less-well-known service, the Knicker Elastic Komputing Service.

It's pants.

The one with the lacy stuff in the pockets, thanks...

@Matt89 - I call bullshit

Dollar is a corruption of "Thaler", an old German coin.

I'm not sure I'd pay a penny for your thoughts, matey... ;)

Well...

...there's a lot to be said for the collaborative capabilities of Google Apps (and, to be honest, I'm extremely keen to have a play with Wave for the same reason) but even to me this seems a cloud too far...

Perhaps I simply don't get it. Maybe I should have another glass of kool-aid...

@TeeCee - Hee hee!

Nice..

Can I just say, I've been to Wake Field, and it wasn't an entirely happy experience. I don't know whether it's damaging to particle colliders, but I saw a car missing its wheels...

Goggles on.

Now, if we'd had the national ID database...

...and each of those "virtual" kids had had their own virtual biometric card...

...then they would have existed for real, and both of these guys would have been innocent. Reality would then need to be banged up for not matching the database.

Ah, if they'd only waited a few years they might have gotten away with it...

Genius

...as usual...

Seen this somewhere before.

Um. That's a Wii remote, isn't it? I mean, this isn't exactly new...

It's shallow, I know...

...but I'm with Skavenger on this. The advert is enough to put me off the product. Nice thing about the market as it stands is that there are enough alternatives to allow me to make such a shallow decision without suffering too badly for it...

...were I actually looking for a new phone right now, that is...

Surgical and painless?

I'd love to see these criteria for "surgical and painless" being applied to general medicine. Obviously I'd appreciate a little warning beforehand so that I can step away from the local hospital first...

The white one, please. With the 5lb reflex hammer in the pocket.

@AC 4

Yes. I think you may be deliberately missing the point. I believe the question is more _where_ he should face justice, the degree to which the charges he faces have been trumped up and what our government's roll-over-good-doggie attitude to the extradition question says about our society.

Still. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?

(Sorry. Couldn't resist the hungry look on his little troll face...)

@Geoff Mackenzie

Shows what you know. I have wireless backup. Nyah.

But point taken. Tongue removed from cheek...

@Nater

"Scotch Whiskey"

Fail. Scotch Whisky. Whiskey comes from the rest of the world.

Scots tend to get quite irate on this point. Look at them all now, bristling away with fury. Y'scunner.

Botnets?

I thought the actual source of these spam messages was a distributed grid of pwned hardware which are unlikely to be affected much by this outage.

Mind you, I'm sure I remember someone explaining how the internet was supposed to be able to repair itself magically by rerouting around breaks like this. Sounds like I've been sold a lemon. Where can I get a refund for this broken internet?

@lglethal

You left out the end of the story:

"And then it was flogged to some pretentious, gullible idiots and we lived happily ever after."

...The one with the half-bottle of Teachers in the pocket, thanks. *hic*

Didn't they just buy...

...the Brooklyn Bridge?

Or was that some other chump?

@Jesthar

Nail on the head! I was trying to think what that new logo reminded me of, and it's all the affordable housing developments that seem to pop up spontaneously across the south-east of England. They generally have a logo similar to this one on a hoarding nearby.

And fewer badgers, obviously...

Nice to see Peter Andre back at work again.

isn't it?

What happened to XIV...

Wasn't it superseded by XV?

The leather jerkin, thanks. With the short sword.

Have a great weekend, guys.

You earned it. Perfect Friday afternoon fodder. Especially pic #3.

Oh, and @AC 13:29: Yes, that seems to be the consensus. Well spotted you! Help yourself to a pat on the back.

Oh boy.

I knew Spotify was too good to last.

Now MS have spotted the market (by following the spoor of others, as usual) they'll move in, take over and then fuck it up. As usual.

Sorry, I'm doing an RW here, but I can't help thinking he's hit the nail on the head.

@The Vociferous Timewaster

"I just want to rip her face off and use it as a funny mask for my cat."

One keyboard and a clean shirt, please.

Typical...

Holywood remake of a classic oldie. No doubt there'll be extra car chases and the moon will suddenly relocate to California or something...

Darwin must be spinning

What should have been another triumph for Darwinian evolution is now going to turn into an opportunity for an undeserved cash-grab.

Deary me.

Sounds familiar...

...and, in terms of what possible uses this might be put to, it IS interesting, and may be useful, to know what types of sound we are conditioned or have evolved to find comforting, or arousing, or whatever. The fact that this arose from someone's (probably idle) observation of the different noises made by a hungry vs a full cat is happenstance.

Not that we're likely to have smoke alarms' shrill "Peep! Peep!" replaced by a hungry cat's purr any time soon, but there it is. I can sort of see the point.

I hope this wasn't VERY well-funded research, though. I hope the budget stretched to decent cat food, but not very much further...

Scarier still...

The thought that my mobile phone (it's on a UK contract, so it's certainly not a cell) has a better sense of humour than Simon Taylor 2...