Tales from the memory bank
After a week away, our arts section reviews two more compelling six-word stories for you, either to whet your appetite for more great literature – in which case you’re probably looking at the wrong column – or to save you the bother of reading them right to the end.
As one of Thanet District Council’s finest novelists, William Neech takes the contractor thriller genre to new heights with the spare finality of: ‘The consultant did it, he’s gone.’
And a mysterious new talent on the scene, an author who signs himself only as Andrew, blazes brightly like a young meteor with the informal knockabout support desk comedy: ‘Really! Mine doesn’t do that’.
Full stop
Several weeks after we stopped discussing whether glasses are half full and half empty, the explanations continue to trickle in, involving philosophy, psychology or even quantum physics.
But as far as we’re concerned, this final explanation really nails the question: ‘Empty means there is nothing in the glass,’ says Raj Patel at Control Equipment. ‘Therefore half of nothing is still nothing. So the glass must be half full.’
Raj not only displays irrefutable logic, but reaches an optimistic answer – the opposite of what you usually read in backbytes.
Virus solution is out of this world
Some more Hollywoodesque computer silliness.
Mike Edwards at Theos Software writes: ‘I nominate any programme – in particular I’m thinking of Hustle – where the spy or crook puts a USB drive into a laptop that he’s never seen before and it doesn’t come up with: “Windows is looking for a driver, come back in 10 minutes”.’
‘My favourite is in summer blockbuster Independence Day,’ says someone who signs himself only as Chris – perhaps to avoid vengeful aliens.
‘To save the world from certain doom, Jeff Goldblum’s character “plugs” his laptop into the docked alien space ship and uploads a virus to the mother ship. How did that work? Do aliens use Cat5? Do they use TCP/IP? Was the ship equipped with a 5v DC power adapter? How did he authenticate on their network?’
For anyone involved in network security consultancy, it’s comforting to see that even in advanced situations there are still a few kinks to be ironed out.
Wii for free
A reader, who prefers to remain anonymous, was recently offered a free gift for the first time from a regular supplier to the school in which he works.
He gratefully accepted the Nintendo Wii, ‘and enjoyed a weekend’s worth of Wii tennis and boxing’.
His joy was punctured on Monday when an invoice arrived for zero pounds – but for his Nintendo Wii. Our reader had to confess to accepting the gift and was let off the hook, but had to give his Wii back to the school.
So his question is: how do you justify getting a free Wii? What is the biggest freebie you’ve ever managed to justify, and how?
Bad language
Sad news of the standard of spelling and grammar in your software.
Kevin Langthorne from Stafforce Personnel attaches a couple of screenshots from his company’s recruitment software, one of which explains that: ‘Your password will expire is 7 days’, and the other that: ‘Sorry – you do not have delete priviledges on this file’.
‘We used to use a program called Winimage,’ another reader tells us. ‘If the floppy drive was in use by another application the error would read: “Floppy drive exceeded, Make sure someone dont use it”.’
Which has its own demonic poetry, we think.
Custard lie
Some of you have been contacting iGod for a chat.
Andy Bradley at Bexhill High Tech Department has given us some insight into iGod’s daily routine.
‘Do you love bathing in custard?’ he asked. To which iGod replied: ‘Yes. God loves everyone and everything.’ We like a deity with a can-do attitude.
Andy also asked one of the big questions: do you believe in hell? To which iGod replies: ‘Jacksonville, Florida’. We’ve been there. He (or she) is absolutely correct.
Y front
Finally, the drive names are still coming in. One of this week’s cleaner offerings comes from Mike Hogan, who suggests Y:work.
Received and understood?
Not every message you see on your computer is strictly necessary. Such as, for example, the one Chris Rayers at Atos Origin received as an email return receipt.
‘This is a Return Receipt for the mail that you sent to [name]. Note: this Return Receipt only acknowledges that the message was displayed on the recipient’s machine. There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.’
If our computer started sending such receipts, we might conclude that the Computing email server was having a pop at our ability to comprehend the English language.
They’re getting cocky, and we can’t do a damn thing about it.
Storm in a D cup
While we’re on the subject, a reader from London, who doesn’t want us to publish his name for very good reasons, has suggestions for our directory alphabet following on from our contributor who was having difficulty finding G:Spot.
‘He might seek D:cups which is much easier to see. Do not use the C:Word or F:Word. If you do find all the files, copy the results into O:Baby. Regard all this data as X:Rated.’
You’ll not be surprised he works for a company called Imagination. Whatever they’re putting in the coffee machine, we’ll have a cup.
Six-packaging
We review some more of our favourite six-word IT stories, in case you want to read them right to the end.
Chris Bristow at BT offers a cheeky glimpse of humour, while hinting at a darker story lurking below the surface of the dialogue with the snappy: ‘I hope you retained your packaging.’
Murray Grainger at Elizabeth Finn Homes captures the stubborn spirit of an IT department keeping its head when all around are losing theirs in: ‘Let’s wait for the service pack’.
He’s been inspired to work on a fantasy epic which we’re frankly not convinced about.
We think our readership would have trouble relating to ‘Our paperless office has finally arrived’, so we’re sending it back for revision. More six-word epics please.
A tight squeeze
Oh the names they give these hard disk drives: Gary Clinton at Bibby International Logistics was looking for the impressively-named 60Gb Quantum Fireball Plus on eBay, or at least that’s the story he’s sticking to.
But the racy moniker seems to have persuaded eBay that his tastes were more exotic than a little extra data storage.
‘Similar items from all eBay sellers’, it said. ‘Sexy black fishnet tights XXL Plus size 50in – 60in hip’.
We have no evidence that Quantum has diversified into this line of work, but frankly if it did, we might be tempted to write about it a bit more often.
‘I wonder what the capacity of XXL fishnet tights would be?’ asks Gary.
If anyone has a picture of these particular garments on your XXL legs to provide the answer to this question, please send to us. We’ll believe you when you tell us you just went into the shop to buy a hard disk drive.
When Unix ruled the Earth
More Hollywood (or Pinewood) technology idiocy: Phill Jempson at Torbay Council has a particular favourite that many of you will have enjoyed.
‘I liked Jurassic Park, the scene where the young girl goes: “ah Unix, I know this” and proceeds to fly into a 3D representation of the park’s electrical circuits.’
One day, someone will tell the true Hollywood story of Unix, but before then, there are more urgent wrongs that we need to right.
‘I used to work for Philips Business Systems and nearly fell off my cinema seat laughing when James Bond in For Your Eyes Only tried to retrieve the British encryption decoder from the evil Russian empire,’ says Len Shingler at Wirral Health Informatics Service.
‘ It turned out the decoder was a Philips P6271 keyboard last seen on the counter at your local Halifax branch.’
God help us
For those in need of guidance and spirituality, Gavin Callard sends us to igod, who lives, if we can say that of a divine being (or a basic piece of AI software), at http://www.titane.ca/concordia/dfar251/igod/main.html.
Gavin recommends igod because he (she?) recommended he should have tuna sandwiches for lunch.
If you have something similarly weighty on you mind, go to the site, ask igod a question, and let us know the answer.
