Does standing in a newsagent’s shop and reading a magazine, and then not buying it, constitute theft (in a very small way)?
Should, therefore, the likes of W.H.Smith’s have the right to remove any information you’ve gleaned from you brain as you leave the shop?
Dear W.H.Smith,
I have a power drill, and will perform lobotomies for free.
Yours etc.
Tony.
Nothing annoys me more* than having to push past “free readers” to get to my copy of Cat Torturer Monthly.
*Actually that is a lie. A lot of things annoy me more. French cars, for example.

“And the Great One did descend from the mountain, bearing a strange staff,
and looking a lot more like Neptune than he had before.
To the faithful he gave a list of things that should be, and some that should not be.
All who followed his commandments were happy, and those who disobeyed
were cursed with an eternity of non-standard cables and missing driver disks.”
Here are what I shall term as the “New Commandments”.
- There shalt be no other interface than mine – All mobile phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and their like shall use a standard USB connector to interface to a computer, and if applicable as a power supply for charging. Nobody want to have to carry a bag of different adaptors, especially when the likes of Nokia can’t decide what size charger you need.
- Spread the interface, for the interface is good – All desktop peripherals that use USB (and they all should), must include a built in mini-hub, or at least the ability to daisy chain one device.
- Thou shalt not have any graven driver disks – Every USB device that requires special drivers should store them on the device itself in a sort of memory stick ROM. Nothing is more annoying that re-installing your machine an finding that you’ve misplaced a couple of inportant device drivers.
- Honour thy specification, and do it properly – If I want to use my camera as a memory stick, I should be able to do it. It shows up as a removable drive on the PC, so it should bloody well connect to the printer for direct printing.
- …seriously, do it properly – if the maximum cable length is 4m, bloody well work on a 4m cable.
Follow those five simple rules, and I won’t be forced to visit you with a flensing knife.
Recent Comments