Having said that there was a piece on the radio the other day about these shows, and there was a remark which struck me - the reporter suggested that these programmes are social experiments masquerading as mass entertainment, whereas the thing that for me distinguishes British efforts in this arena is that they are exactly the opposite: there is always some affectation of worthiness, such as the Big Brother psychologist.

Of course, later tha same day I heard the chairman of the FCC ask rhetorically (and apparently without irony) if there was any other broadcast system in the world that the listener would choose to replace the US one with.

If they are browser popups, then there is always ad-aware to stop spawning advertising windows and spyware. Simply inhibiting all popups can be inconvenient.

[Bob,gil] I switched off all Java and JavaScript on my browser ages ago and it's never inconvenienced me even slightly.

No, sir. I wouldn't do that, sir.

In the meantime, it all seems a lot speedier than I'd expected, so hurrah. Glad to help, and it saves me writing a server of my own.

[All] You might be touched to learn that the Manchester Evening News is running a special David Beckham Memorial Issue.

I ask because I'm a) drunk, and b) not aware of any glitches. Tell me, I'm your friendly neighbourhood BOFH.

The best thing as far as I'm concerned is that the sysadmin is someone who understands what this space is for. That's priceless. (But for everything else there's MasterCard).

I couldn't help myself, it was Franics my 12 year old son's fault, as I was passing his bedroom he called out "Aunt Petunia's had a howler!", so this evening instead of doing the ironing I've been engrossed in HP and the Order of the Phoenix, page 100 so many suprises I'm gripped already (by a childrens book?).

However - and this may well be an entirely different issue - I am firmly of the belief that a University is not a training camp: if companies want their intake to have specific skills then they should stump up the cash and train them themselves rather than let the burden fall on the taxpayer. Furthermore, a University education should be largely academic: that's rather the point. This, however, has the consequence that it's not suitable for a majority of the populace and, crucially, I feel there is no shame in such institutions being 'elitist' in the sense that they select only people for whom such an education is beneficial. The main problem faced in the UK today though, as far as I can see, is that institutions with a more vocational approach to higher education have been crowbarred into an existing structure designed to do something different, and anything that isn't a 'degree' is considered a second-class qualification. Not easy to see how one can change the general public's attitude to non-degree qualifications. Anyway, that's roughly what I wanted to say though I'm not sure it makes sense.

This seems particularly bizarre, though, when you realise that even having a degree is irrelevant if you have more than about three years of industrial experience. That hasn't stopped hiring decisions made by my boss from being blocked because the higher management felt that the degree was from a school which "wasn't good enough". Ludicrous.

[Thos] Fancy an apple? Or a tangerine (and you could carelessly throw the skin away with that too!)?

My apologies. One of my mates has been foisting it upon me at every opportunity for days, and I can't help enjoying it, and nor could I keep it to myself any longer.

A woman wakes up with a terrible hangover and finds herself sharing her bed with an elephant. "God I must have been tight last night!" she exclaims. "Yes," says the elephant, "at least the first couple of times."

Luckily I can't be bothered to type out the hamster joke.

...he didn't hear the steamroller.

I said to the newsagent, "I'd like to read a magazine on the supernatural, please."
Newsagent: Fortean Times?
Me: No, just once.

[Lib] That one just sticks in my mind.