Posts by GrapeBunch

... the lemon flower is sweet ...

Hexit

If he were selling the stuff, they'd have evidence or, gasp!, proof. Of course, smearing with the innuendo brush is an old party trick.

Perhaps he was super-patriotic and simply thought that in the case of a) civil chaos or b) a cover-up by a boss, the documents would still exist to bolster the National Security. His fellow hoarders could only wish they had a cache, even a measly 1 TB, of Top Secret. That way, when you're old and gray, then a stack of old newspapers falls on and suffocates you, it'll be the secret, the top secret, that polishes you off. An Hexit dream.

"Never Give a Sucker a Break": a motto brought to you by the Byzantine E.

You Would Have Bet Your Bottom Dollar

I can't see "Sueball" without hearing "Stewball", a song about a horse race, covered by The Weavers.

And sueballs do have the unpredictability of a horse race.

Ask not for whom the bong bowls

O Ca-na-bis, our OM and naif lad!

Seriously, though, pot is among those medicines that should never be given to the unsuspecting. Some people react poorly to it, they should be given the opportunity to say "No, thank you." Almost as bad, even the ones who enjoy it may be disconcerted by the lack of warning. Am I high, or am I finally, irrevocably, Losing It? Tell Laura I love her.

Pretty Boy Floyd

as sung by Joan Baez, as remembered by moi:

"... As through this world I've traveled, I've seen lots of funny men

Some will rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.

As through this world you travel, as through this world you roam

You'll never see a video pirate drive a family from their home."

Obscure cultural reference: fountain pen is an ancient form of EULA, amongst other possibilities.

Restore authorized copies from originals ... ?

Sounds like a recording industry group offered them more in cash to lose the files, than the Sat-on-My-Face-All-Night-ers (apologies to Jennifer Saunders) offered to not-lose them. Why is there even the slightest surprise about this story?

Supplementary question, m'lud: were the uploaded-and-later-lost MP3 files authorized copies by the recording companies?

The Henge of Fate

Hengian A state of mind and the accompanying actions when attempting retrospectively to wall a garden.

For example, "Microsoft provides Hengian support for *nix."

The neologism is inspired not by stone, but by this very thread, as I attempted to imagine a penge-win.

IANAL, but I'd say Uber is liable for all damages by that driver from the date the first complaint was filed (or attempted to be filed, or reported by phone). It must be their duty to follow up on complaints. No matter what weasel-words they put in their user agreement. No slight intended against any Mustela.

Mon dieu!

How is that even a business? If I offered lists of, oh, where's the best place in each town to set up a bordello, for example, I'd be called a criminal.

Lemon tree very pretty.

Dys-FoBia

Here in Canada, I have not been required to give a phone # to maintain a fb account. Of course, I wouldn't. I'd rather abandon the account. Canada might be different, because for historical reasons not everybody has a mobile.

There are (at least) two identificatory (not a word, according to the spellchecker) universes: phone numbers and e-mail addresses. FB tricking you to give a phone # allows them to unite those two universes. It is pure gold for whatever nefarious purpose they have in mind. I would not worry so much about what they have done with a phone number. Rather I would worry about what they can and will do with it. Yeah, of course the home address and the passport number and the social insurance number are also identificatory universes. I'm sure they'll get to those! In a unificatory way, for themselves.

LinkedIn ransacked my gmail contacts. Don't recall ever giving them permission.

MicroCasey

If they're happy with Microsoft (the OS purveyor) being the same company as Microsoft (the publisher of user software), and the trade practices it has engaged in, then I don't foresee much joy in mudville.

Dear Three

I think you should change your name to Kazillion. Because there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Metal poisoning

I have not used Chrome in years. Though I do use Chromium-based Opera and Vivaldi. They have operated well, where Chrome didn't. The scary change seems to be targeted at Chromium, so I wonder to what extent Opera and Vivaldi will be able to go against the flow, and to what extent they will go against the flow.

Didn't Fred Hoyle and Asimov write about this?

Science Fiction is full of stories of humans putting life (even microscopic) on heavenly bodies and then the life coming back to bite the humans. Is this China experiment on the same page as the rest of Science? Or is the Moon considered contaminated because of what may or may not have happened circa 1969?

I've made smart-ass comments in these fora, but this time I do want to know the answer. Fire-arms opened the Wild West. Is all that is required for opening Space, just a rocket (a space-ass) with enough boosters? Shall we toss the last smollpox sample over to Deimos, to see what happens?

Science is Mankind's almost-identical sibling

As t gets large, so will the number of faces you can produce which both look enough like you to fool a human, but don't fool many an algorithm.

This could actually be good news for weaklin humings. For a short while.

O Canada, we stand on guard for T.