Sex sells
‘A colleague of mine,’ begins Chris Green at Apak Group, which we think might mean that Chris is disguising his own involvement, ‘suggested to another colleague that he demonstrate a new piece of code to a customer of ours. But when he attempted to say: “Why don’t you show her your sexy new functionality,” it came out as: “Why don’t you show her your funky new sexuality.”’
He doesn’t tell us whether his ‘colleague’ made the sale, but we can only imagine the sales pitch.
The Russian way to have fun
The Russians are stealthily taking over our thread about language difficulties.
‘Former submarine commander Lt Cdr Edward White tells in his autobiography of how he found himself on convoy escort duty to Murmansk,’ says Neil Adamson at IBM. ‘After arrival, the Royal Navy were entertained by their hosts.’
This wasn’t easy: one person on each side spoke French, so all conversation had to be translated twice.
‘When the subject turned to “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”, it is reported to have come out as “the vodka is strong but the meat is rotten”.’
We’ve visited Russia. It’s actually true.
Licensed to bill
Antony Hawkins at the University of Sheffield wants to inaugurate a Most Pointless Download award, which he would give to Microsoft, so it may not be a good idea: the company has enough awards already, many of them from Backbytes.
However, you decide: ‘Listed as a “high priority update” in Windows Update is the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification tool. Apparently, this tool will tell me if my copy of Windows is “non-genuine”,’ he says.
‘If my copy was non-genuine, I suspect that I would know, and would certainly not be wanting any tool to “help (me) obtain a licensed copy”. Therefore, I would definitely not permit the tool to download or install.’
A lucky break
‘For almost three months I have told my workmates that my nephew is going to be a ball boy in Berlin for the World Cup,’ says Richard Hunt at Blue Square.
‘When England face France in the final on 9 July and we win 2-1, I won’t be in on the Monday as my nephew will have broken his leg on Friday 7 July, and I will have had to leave for Germany to get him. Thus I will have a prepared bleeding heart story of listening to the game on the radio and comforting a crying 10- year-old.’
Think inside the box
An offer you can’t refuse. ‘The simple answer for anyone who wants to see the England World Cup games is to get a job working for a company that programmes satellite TV boxes; they even pay for your Sky+ subscription,’ says our old mate Cliff Lawson at Amstrad, causing us to launch into another round of shouting: ‘You’re fired,’ which wasn’t even funny the first 30 times.
‘The rather sad irony of it is that I can’t stand football. So does anyone want to don a Cliff Lawson disguise and come and sit at my desk for the month of June?’
Even with the chance to watch the footy, it’s not exactly the offer of a lifetime.
Perfect 10
We might accidentally have called for a metric week. In which case, we did the right thing.
‘A 10-day week is a small price to pay for a 10-week year. And with 10 minutes in an hour and 10 hours in a day, a metric year would be about equivalent in length to the present week,’ says David Norfolk at Greenwich Primary Care Trust.
‘And we have forgotten about the 10-second minute. This would reduce the metric year to something less than a day and a quarter.’
Retirement would happen at the sprightly age of 5,600, and we would never do any work because, as David points out, we would be celebrating a birthday every 28 hours. So really, there’s no reasonable argument against it.
Our friends electric
John Dow says he has ‘a substantial amount of metal in me holding the pelvic bone together’, after he came off his mountain bike, and is concerned by the suggestions of water bed induced currents.
‘The magnetic heater would cause current to flow in these metal parts. Of course whether it would be large enough to cook me from the inside is unknown, but I’ll certainly avoid hotel water beds from now on,’ he says. It’s a good idea, John. They’re so 1970s.
Meanwhile, the teacher who wasn’t earthed last week could have left his caravan, says Gary Cailes. We know you’ve been worried sick about him.
‘Since he had very little capacity he would have been safe to leave the caravan immediately, assuming he had put down the offending equipment. The effect would have been similar to that when he had first picked up the circuitry.’
How’s your Java?
Paul Field, who works at ‘a major financial institution’, has been excited by Google Trends, which tells you not only what people are searching for, but where they are when they are searching for it. So, in the interests of work, he compared Java with .Net, and found that not only was Java more popular, but that it was especially popular in major Indian cities (www.google.com/trends?q=java%2C.Net).
So he decided to compare Java with sex, as you do, (www.google.com/trends?q=java%2Csex&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all) and found that in Bangalore, Java is even more popular than sex.
Wooden scart
Our next reader reveals only that he works in IT at ‘a small NHS hospital in Northern Ireland’.
‘Last week, a user decided that the monitor stand on her Dell PC was too tall,’ he writes. ‘Rather than adjust the height in the normal fashion, she got our Estates Department to remove the monitor plate (the bit which hooks into the back of the monitor), and glue on a nice bit of plywood and 2x4.’ Well, it’s sturdy at least.
The football fixtures fixers
Creative columns offer ways for you to bunk off to watch England play in the World Cup. Really creative columns simply redefine the problem.
‘There’s no need to bunk off work to watch World Cup matches – £40 or so is enough to acquire a USB digital TV receiver that should not be beyond the wit of most to conceal in the tangle of wires behind one’s PC. Some might even find they’re able to lose the cost in an expense account,’ says Antony Hawkins, who works in the public sector at the University of Sheffield.
And really creative corrupt columns offer publicity to people who want to make a profit from this problem. ‘We will very conveniently be running “seminars” all around the country at handy locations “just far enough away” from your offices’ says Graham Brown of Brown Corrupt Industries. All seminars will be scheduled to clash with England games, and have any title you want.
‘All this for a nominal £10 per person to cover a valueless delegate ID badge and directions that would choke a satnav,’ he adds. At which point, go home, put your feet up and watch the game.
Battery will get you nowhere
Richard Rose at Altimus has been looking closely at the latest Microsoft SQL Server 2005 ads.
‘The adverts show huge corporate buildings and container ships, apparently with the battery cover removed, and being powered by 2 D-cell batteries.’
The batteries carry the SQL Server logo. It’s just that – and we speak with some authority on matters of electrical power, as our regular readers know – ‘the batteries are in the wrong way round. In a standard battery compartment the negative ends of the batteries are against the springs’. We predict a power failure.
Just desserts
John Loader at DotSix Brailling Services asks us to ‘spare a thought for a group of people in Suffolk who are restricted to 512kbit/s ADSL broadband because of aluminium cable installed a couple of decades ago.’ Poor consumers.
‘Sadly many are themselves current or retired BT employees and it just so happens that, being in Martlesham Heath, served by Kesgrave exchange, they are within half a mile or so of the BT Research Centre where many used to work,’ he adds.
We believe that can be filed under the heading ‘irony’.
The long and the short of it
Last week we asked: do ‘shorter working hours’ exist, or are there just fewer of them? The answer comes first from what used to be known as the time-and-motion departments of our public sector.
‘As a manager at a particular public-funded body, I can say that the workers here are already well up on the concept of “shorter working hours”,’ says Mark.’ I think the current estimate here is 17 minutes of actual work for every hour on the job.’
Only seven minutes less work and we could introduce the metric hour, although of course that could mean a 10-day week.
Office harmony
Back in 1965, John Moore joined the Electronics Department of the Lucas Group Research Centre in Solihull, West Midlands.
‘Computing services were provided by an Elliot 803 mainframe jealously guarded by “experts”,’ he says. ‘The heart of the machine was a control console complete with full audio output. Around Christmas time, many man-hours of programming effort were expended to achieve audio renditions of popular Christmas carols, often in multipart harmonies.’
Cluedo overkill
The Business Software Alliance has launched Software Cluedo. It claims: ‘The online game, which gives players just five minutes to locate the software pirate, entertains the player while highlighting the serious nature of software piracy.’ Entertaining and serious – we’ve never aspired to be both at the same time.
Pre-monitions
‘Our pupils are required to submit pre-prepared work for ICT examinations,’ says Bill Lamin at Poole Business and Enterprise College. ‘If we do some preparation for preparing the pre-prepared work, is this session pre-pre-prepared?’
John Allard adds this definition of ‘prefix’: ‘The act of completely breaking a partially broken object before calling a professional.’
Current thinking
More shocking stories about electricity.
‘The importance of an earth was demonstrated to a teacher at a school I attended when he was working in a mobile radar caravan during the Second World War,’ says Mike Hayes at O2.
‘The caravan had a thick rubber floor to protect people from accidental electric shocks. One day he realised he had been holding a highly charged bit of circuitry, but had not received an electric shock.’
Here’s where it gets interesting. ‘His dilemma: was he now charged to the same level as the equipment, his body acting as a capacitor, in which case if he left the caravan and earthed himself would the sudden discharge kill him? He decided to wait and give himself time to discharge to the air slowly, and survived. No one could give him a definite answer as to what would have happened if he had just jumped out of the van.’
Until now, we expect.
Word imperfect
A new take on our Babel experiment from Chris Pritchard at Flexible Lamps:
‘In the late 1970s, presenter James Burke had a TV programme called Connections. To demonstrate that computers were stupid, he explained that a computer had translated ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ into Russian and back, giving the result: “An invisible madman”.’
The results using Babel Fish were: From the sighting, from the reason (Russian); Stemming from sight, outside brains (Chinese); From vision from heart (Japanese); and Face, opinion (Dutch). Reader Charles Oglethorpe’s wife calls this process ‘double-de-gook’.
Three lyings
We have had many suggestions for how to bunk off for England World Cup games.
‘I note that the Rail Maritime and Transport Union is making noises about going on strike in June. It occurs to me it’s the perfect way to watch the football, as well as supporting your comrades in their struggle,’ says a union member who declines to be named.
Paul Hickling at Fletcher Data Services suggests claiming to be on jury service. Not only do you get to see the match, but people feel sorry for you because you had to miss it.
Mark Woolaway says: ‘If I do take a sick day on one of England’s match dates then people will know I am genuinely sick because I make it quite clear that I dislike football. I advise true football fans to adopt the same approach and regale everyone with how much they detest the game.’
Footy hookey
Finally, you might have noticed that the World Cup is almost upon us. Many of you will want to watch the matches, but throwing a sickie while England are playing is high-risk.
If anyone has any tips on how to bunk off to watch the matches without being caught, you know which column will print them.
Quick time
‘I know we are all concerned about the “pre” in pre-booking,’ says Christiaan de Haes at Northamptonshire County Council. But he has even more important things on his mind.
‘Over the years the rather strange concept of “shorter working hours” has crept into the language as a possible and acceptable concept. Does the clock at work run faster?’ Not in this office, it doesn’t.
A bit pre-vious
Last week, ‘prehistory’ was reclaimed for the English language. This week, Sue Flower at Elsevier defends this country’s domestic cleaning labels.
‘I don’t think it’s bad to call it a “pre-wash” on a washing machine or dishwasher. Machines would be a bit large if they had to fit “short extra wash before the main wash” on the buttons.’
And we will rule out another word before anyone tries to rule it in: Ian Philipson is dismayed to find that a prelate is the ‘incumbent of a prelature, ie, of an ecclesiastical office with special and stable jurisdiction and with special precedence over other ecclesiastical offices’, when he claims he thought it was someone who was punctual.
But he didn’t really; he’s just being silly.
Electric slumberland
It is about time we consulted someone who really knows about electricity, and in the absence of that old-time BBC engineer who could tell the voltage by sticking his fingers in a socket, we have Brian Adams at the North Eastern Education and Library Board.
His personal motto is: ‘Everything I do, I do it for you’. We just made that bit up, but our coverage of hotel bedside lights and waterbeds has certainly ‘lit up’ Brian, ho ho.
‘Leigh Jones suggests that he has experienced a stainless steel light switch where the earth has been incorrectly connected to the live. Now, if live and earth connections were reversed, the light wouldn’t work. And if live and earth were connected together, the fuse would blow,’ he says.
‘The only way for the plate to be live without blowing the fuse would be to leave off the real earth connection deliberately, and put a link between the live and earth terminals. That’s not an accident – it’s attempted murder.’
Still, what do you expect for £50 a night?
‘The heaters in a waterbed, like any other electrical circuit, induce a magnetic field. But since human bodies are not magnetic conductors, the field would not induce a current in Mr Cartwright, or anyone accompanying him on his experiment. I don’t know what caused him to have a tingling feeling, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t magnetic induction.’
We cough discreetly, and move on.
Certifiable
Jonathan Trifts at CGI Group has discovered an excellent service offered by Companies House: go to www.companieshouse.gov.uk/infoAndGuide/faq/registerNewComp.shtml, where those of you who are self-employed can find out about registering a new company.
‘To obtain a certificate signed in person by a Companies House official, customers need to request a “certified certificate”,’ says the site.
‘Apparently the certificate certifies someone for something, and someone else needs to certify the certificate itself. But who then certifies the certifier?’ he asks.
A load of Babel
‘I serve in a north English university, and we pass common persisted sends out the regular email name list Chinese director which mails to all staff members,’ says an anonymous contributor.
‘This gave me to use the email which the Babel Fish idea translation possessed me to egress to become Chinese, with then returned to English.’
Now it is our turn to translate: inspired by one of his Chinese colleagues, whose all-staff emails were a little difficult to decipher, our contributor took to using machine translation to change all his work emails into Chinese and back again before sending them. His employers have politely requested him to desist.
But you might want to try it. Let us know how it goes.
A stab of pride for the Welsh
We hate to brag, but what other column could make a bodkin controversial?
‘I presume that Graham Morgan, in referring to “medieval English archers”, is in fact referring to the cohorts of Welsh archers employed by the English at Crecy and Agincourt against French knights and men-at-arms,’ says Alistair Maclean, who with a name like that is obviously Welsh himself.
‘In a recent TV program a study was done which showed that the English archers did not slay the French with arrows but rather with hand weapons, as the arrows were incapable of penetrating the plate armour worn by the French,’ says Shaun McGuile at Nicholsons.
Nerves of steel
Are your hotel lamps alive? Sorry, we mean ‘live’?
‘I just have to set the record straight, I know of the lamps your reader is referring to, they are lacquered and the lacquer on the metal lamp forms an insulated barrier between your hand and the live lamp base,’ says Leigh Jones.
‘When the lamps get old it wears thin. When this happens you can just receive a slight tingle. Not only have I experienced this on a lamp, but also on a stainless steel light switch where the earth had been incorrectly connected to the live.’
An element of comfort
‘I can, I reckon, go one better: how about inducing a current by lying on a waterbed and touching a radiator?’ says David Cartwright at Korana Technology, who has probably used that chat-up line many times.
Anyway, the physics: ‘Waterbeds, as you probably know, have heater pads underneath the mattress – they’d be darned cold if
they didn’t. The heater is just an electric heating element, so when current flows through it, it induces a magnetic field.
‘On our old waterbed you could lie there and touch the radiator with your finger, and you’d feel a definite tingle in your fingertip.’
In answer to your question, he never tried to lick the radiator. Definitely an opportunity lost.
First things first
Incidentally, our waterbed correspondent adds: ‘It surprises me that in your discussion of the “pre” prefix, no one has mentioned that concept beloved by airline gate staff: pre-boarding.’
This is when people with babies are invited to the front of the boarding queue, and then spoil it all by actually boarding. But we can’t discuss this in any more detail just yet; first we need to deal with prehistory.
Ophelia Dodds is just one of many readers who ended up in an argument with their spouses and then looked it up in the dictionary, thus saving us a job.
‘I established that “history”, the study of past events, is not the same as “prehistory”, the period before written records, thus allowing the adjective “prehistoric” to legitimately exist.’
We are expecting an email from BA to justify pre-boarding any minute.
Musical motors
Talking of pre-history, making disk drives play happy tunes need not be something your mum and dad did in the 1970s when there was nothing on TV, you will be delighted to know.
Michael Hughes at Nortel has made an exciting discovery. ‘I was programming a controller that drives a three-phase motor,’ he writes. ‘One of the parameters was “tonal adjustment”. It seems this was to adjust the motor frequency to change the harmonics in case the motor produced a harsh or annoying noise. After three hours of plying I had a nice little tune going!’
Jane Williams at Unipath recalls a time when even practical jokes were in their infancy. ‘There was a hoax file for the very early PC that claimed that your disk drive needed washing, and it was about to start the spin cycle. The noises it got from a 5.25in floppy drive did sound worryingly convincing, if not at all musical.’
A fishy tale of undercurrents
‘The electric field around wires doesn’t just attract mice – it attracts sharks, too,’ says David Cartwright.
‘A former colleague once told me that the incidences of shark-bites on under-sea cables reduced dramatically when copper wires – which generate electric fields – were replaced with fibre-optic ones – which don’t.’
So if parts of your office network are underwater, once again we bring you useful and little-known advice to make your job easier.
