Absolutely Average

After being MIA for a short while I just popped over to Mamahog’s blog to see what’s happening, (well actually I wanted to reprimand her for suggesting I spend too much time at my holiday villa secret hideout sunning myself).

I was shocked to see that TPTB (read high powered lawyers) have seen fit to get the whole of Wordpress banned so that no Turkish residents can access any of the site. Being a loyal supporter of Wordpress for some time I find this kind of action is not helping my plans toward World Domination at all.

Fortunately Keda was kind enough to provide a link to a petition for you all to sign. I myself cannot take any direct action against TPTB yet as that could jeopardise my future plans so I expect all of you to sign this petition, anybody who doesn’t can expect an official visit from my most dedicated employees henchmen.

Some funny quotes from the Quotes Database:

1. JadussD: All i can say is, the native americans could not have had better vengeance on americans than tobacco hundreds of thousands of dead each year. “hey, we’re going to enslave, decimate, relocate, and destroy your way of life.” “oh, okay. here, smoke this”
2. DrSeuss: My dad was calling me gay and shit. He was like “Youre a stupid queer! You cant even get a girlfriend!” Thats when I said “Shut up dad, you dont know anything about my life!” … So I grabbed my pom poms and left
3. DawnG I was forced to attend a seminar on leadership. We were broken into small groups and each was asked to state what skills a good leader possesses. I wrote, “Needs to be good with elephants and crossing Alps.” The others at my table were amused, but the seminar coordinator didn’t get it. I said it was a reference to Hannibal, known for his leadership qualities. Her reply: “What leadership qualities? He was a cannibal, and anyway, it was lambs, not elephants.”
4. PoPsI Today in english, my teacher asked us to write down one thing we regretted or wondered what would’ve happened if we had done something else. After that, he asked us to share some and he picked me. He’s like “What did you write down?” and i say “I wonder what would’ve happened if i had taken the red pill…” Then everyone stared at me…it was hella funny.
5. wesleymason The handwriting on these card envelopes look like they’ve been written by a retarded 6yr old Basque speaker who’s learnt English off a box Engrish-translated Japanese sweets. In a hurry. During a storm. At night.
6. xterm The problem with America is stupidity. I’m not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don’t we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself? (Let it be known that this is not my opinion, I just think it’s funny - Scouser)
7. NES I download something from Napster, and the same guy I downloaded it from starts downloading it from me when I’m done I message him and say “What are you doing? I just got that from you”, “getting my song back”
8. jeebus The “bishop” came to our church today he was a f#*ken impostor, he never once moved diagonally
9. Reverend IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
10. [TN]FBMachine i got kicked out of barnes and noble once for moving all the bibles into the fiction section
11. scirDSL I hated going to weddings. All the grandmas would poke me saying “You’re next”. They stopped that when I started doing it to them at funerals.
12. DaZE at my school.. the cop from DARE passed around 3 joints to show everyone… and he said “if i dont get all three of these back this schools getting locked down and everyones getting searched till i find it..” and like 30 minutes later when everyone got to see ‘em and they got passed back the cop had 4
13. Mike3285 wtf is a palindrome - MaroonSand no its not dude
14. benja A worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was:”Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?” The survey was a huge failure… In Africa they didn’t know what “food” meant. In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what “honest” meant. In Western Europe they didn’t know what “shortage” meant. In China they didn’t know what “opinion” meant. In the Middle East they didn’t know what “solution” meant. In South America they didn’t know what “please” meant. And in the USA they didn’t know what “the rest of the world” meant
15. samsim I heard about this guy who broke into a lion’s den at the zoo and got mauled and people were talking about how there should have been better defences put up to prevent people getting into the cage a friend of mine suggested setting up some kind of deterrent for example, putting some sort of fierce animal in the cage, which would attack anybody who climbed in

From the BBC news website

Technology giant Apple has reached a deal with the Beatles to end the dispute over the use of the Apple name.

Apple Inc will now take full control of the Apple brand and license certain trademarks back to the Beatles’ record company Apple Corps’ for continued use.

Apple Corps’ (The Beatles) lost their recent court battle against Apple Inc. (Apple Computers), some would say on a technicality. This is unfortunately not true. So why did Apple Corps’ lose this case ? Let’s see if I can answer.

The actual agreement between the 2 parties from 9th Oct 1991 can be found in this article. Here is a snippet (with my added emphasis):

1. DEFINITIONS

• 1.1. “Apple Catalog” means the sound recordings, musical works, films and videos which now or hereafter cannot be released or published without Apple Corps’ consent.
• 1.2. “Apple Computer Field of Use” means (i) electronic goods, including but not limited to computer, microprocessors and microprocessor controlled devices, telecommunications equipment, data processing equipment, ancillary and peripheral equipment, and computer software of any kind on any medium; (ii) data processing services, data transmission services, broadcasting services, telecommunications services; (iii) ancillary services relating to any of the foregoing, including without limiation, training, education, maintenance, repair, financing and distribution; (iv) printed matter relating to any of the foregoing goods or services; and (v) promotional merchandising relating to the foregoing.
• 1.3. “Apple Corps’ Field of Use” means (i) the Apple Musical Artists; the Apple Catalog; personalities or characters which appear in or are derived from the Apple Catalog; the names, likenesses, voices or musical sounds of the Apple Musical Artists; any musical works or performances of the Apple Musical Artists; (ii) any current or future creative works whose principal content is music and/or musical performances; regardless of the means by which these works are recorded, or communicated, whether tangible or intangible;

As you can see in 1.2. it was agreed that Apple Computer could use the name in relation to computer software of any kind on any medium, data transmission services and broadcasting services. This clause in the agreement grants Apple Inc. the ability to transmit/broadcast data using any kind of software. Now their argument in this case was that iTunes doesn’t actually transmit music but data and unfortunately this is correct.

If however Apple Corps’ had used section (ii) from clause 1.3. as a part of clause 1.2. to limit what form of data Apple Inc. could transmit then this case would have gone the other way.

Because of this oversight (and it was an oversight as in 1991 when this agreement was made, it was already possible to encode music as digital data and transmit it) Apple Corps’ now have to license their own name back from Apple Inc.

I heard this on the radio this morning and thought it quite amusing

The phone rang this morning, it was girl from a re-mortgage company. Conversation went like this.

Caller: Do you have a large mortgage on your home?
Me: No actually, I’ve nearly paid it all off.
Caller: Well then are you interested in consolidating all of your loans & credit cards into one easy payment?
Me: I’m sorry, but I don’t have any debts only my small mortgage
Caller: Ok then, how about a loan to make some home improvements?
Me: Funny that but I’ve just had some work done and I paid cash for it.
Caller: What about a new car sir? Are you considering a loan for a new car?
Me: I don’t need one, I’ve got a fairly new Ferrari in the garage next to my Triumph motorcycle.
Caller: Just one more question then sir. Are you looking for a wife?

Some of you may notice old posts registering in the recent updates list. Don’t panic, this is due to me correcting problems incurred during the import process (when I imported the Textpattern database into Wordpress). Images and such were not being displayed correctly but I am editing them a few at a time so they will all be corrected eventually.

Unleashed back in October 2006, Google Docs & Spreadsheets has everybody’s favourite search engine doing battle with the evil that is Micro$oft. With Docs & Spreadsheets users with google accounts can upload or create their own documents or spreadsheets and store them online, share them with friends and colleagues or even download them to their desktop in a variety of formats. Upload / Download formats including Word, OpenOffice & PDF. You can even publish the results to your blog (many of the blog APIs are supported).