Category Archives: nördig

I am delighted to find that there are clever people who waste their time even more spectacularly than I can. Language log is one of the blogs which does the work that some mailing lists used to do ten years … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Yea, even as it is written: “Nerds working with Nerds that which is unseemly, and receiving within themselves the messages of their error which was meet.” I have spent all bloody afternoon trying to reproduce what felt like a perfectly … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Let’s see: I find every year fresh means of procrastination toys productivity tools: what have this year’s been? Directory Opus. I’ve been looking for years for something that would give me simple two-pane file management in Windows to replace explorere. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Q: I have here a 35mm film canister containing “Creosote salve”, which says it can cure Självsprickor, excema, and weeping sores, as well as repelling mosquitoes and midges. Will it also cure colds? A: Not entirely, but if you rub … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I loathe these things, and refuse to transmit this one even to He or qB whose answers might be interesting. But Mrs Tilton has brought such beautiful legs into my life – eight at a time — that I must … Continue reading → Continue reading →

OK – I only found it after the deadline. But some idiot in the US Patent Office has approved one for “a flying saucer which depends on antigravity.” In a way, that’s almost more shocking than patents on hyperlinks.

I have a big piece on IP going into Saturday’s Guardian. I’m not very happy about it, because I think it misses an important point about Sony’s rootkit, one of the most egregious examples of corporates taking ownership of things … Continue reading → Continue reading →

qB commented a few posts back that no one need worry about copy protection on music CDs because it was laughably easy to uninstall. Not if you play Sony CDs on Windows, it isn’t. An astonishingly unpleasant story, found through … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Tim Bray, whose career has taken him from the OED to Sun Microsystems, is regarded as a huge XML evangelist. But there is a fascinating passage buried on his latest blog, where he was asked for advice by the people … Continue reading → Continue reading →

If anyone knows the code that will produce rss feeds of comment threads, will they make themselves known to the management? I really would like people to be able to subscribe to these, if they want to. Continue reading →