Category Archives: Silly

An Amusing Collection of Quotes

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From Shelley about IE7:

Writing Learning JavaScript and now Adding Ajax, as well as creating web page applications such as my photo popup has led me to an epiphany: Microsoft really doesn’t want us to use IE. No, I’m not being facetious–the company would probably prefer that people move to another browser.

(Those looking for an alternative might want to try Firefox)

Shelley also mentions how she has to test with IE6 now, using a Virtual PC image:

According to the IE weblog, this VPC image will only function until April 1st, 2007, but I think the April Fool’s joke is getting people to reserve both memory and disc space–as well as having to go through Microsoft’s validation process–just to test against a browser. What happens after April, then? Are all the Windows 2000 installations going away? There will be no need to test for IE6?

But there seems to be a problem with those images, as Paul Morriss found out, Microsoft seems to think they’re dodgy knock-offs, even though they came from them originally:

Just for fun I then decided to upgrade IE on the Virtual PC to IE7. When it got to verifying whether the copy of Windows on the Virtual PC was genuine it concluded it wasn’t.

He’s got a screenshot as proof..

Then, as a final funny thought, this worked example from Sterling W. “Chip” Camden derived from a theory by Shelley that “Every spec should be written like it was going to be read by VB developers.”:

See Dick and Jane play tag.
See Dick forget his namespace prefix.
See Jane throw an exception.
Run, Dick, run!

🙂

Richard Dawkins website blocked for being “occult” and “religious”

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This is a classic from the New Scientist Feedback section (25th December) where Eliot Attridge let them know that when he wanted to read more about Richard Dawkins:

Unfortunately, the school has installed a net filter called Netsweeper which, Attridge discovered, blocks access to www.richarddawkins.net on the grounds that it is an “occult site”.

To add insult to injury when Eliot tested with Sonicwall that described his site as “religious” – I wonder which wrong label would infuriate Dawkins most ? 🙂

FAA : Passengers Considered Harmful

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From that ever reputable source of news, The Onion:

Under the proposed reforms, the FAA would institute a strict ban on adult passengers, passengers 18 and under, international travelers, and domestic customers. A battery of questions and ID checks will be used to determine whether an individual is a pilot, flight attendant, or federal security officer—the only humans who will be allowed to board an aircraft flying within or headed for the U.S.

Sounds like someone’s finally done a root cause analysis and come up with the obvious solution, a sensible policy from the US at last!

“Frankly, we’ve tried everything else,” Blakey said. “We’ve put up more metal detectors, searched carry-on luggage, and prohibited passengers from traveling with sharp objects. Yet passengers still somehow continue to find ways to breach security. Clearly, the passengers have to go.”

Via the ever good Mikal.

The Parable of the Tulsa

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In the beginning was the Xeon, and it was 32-bit.

Then Intel moved over the face of the Xeon and created Nocona, which was 64-bit, and Intel thought it was, well, OK.

So Intel took Nocona and added more L2 cache, and thus begat Irwindale. Intel saw Irwindale was good, but Opteron was still better.

So Intel was wrathful and split Irwindale asunder internally, creating Paxville DP, with dual cores.

Intel looked at Paxville DP and said unto itself “still not enough cache!” and soon more cache grew within the Paxville DP and thus begat Tulsa.

Thus endeth the lesson, from the book of Wikipedia, Chapter Xeon..

Ahem..