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Questions and Answers - Part 3

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09:26 / 20.04.06

muchas gracias Mr Mordant, I like the sound of a prawny-tomatoy-curry affair. I shall try it out on the leafy devil tonight....

(leafy devil being the pak choi, not the....oh, dear. never mind.)

All Acting Regiment

09:50 / 20.04.06

So I've just been given a small, portable, black and white tv. Do any of those qualities mean that I don't need a tv license, because I haven't got one, and I've only been given this tiddy teevee so I can watch Who on saturdays.

09:54 / 20.04.06

No, unfortunately. BUT, you get it for a bargain £44 cause it's black and white.

10:15 / 20.04.06

Do any of those qualities mean that I don't need a tv license, because... I've only been given this tiddy teevee so I can watch Who on saturdays

But what better reason to pay your license!

(That's just supposed to be a Joy of Who moment, rather than a prim/authoritarian 'if you don't pay your license fee they'll take the BBC away and no dinner for you!' kind of a thing, btw. Glad to hear you only have to pay £44. [The b&w discount seems substantially heftier than the discount you get for being blind, oddly enough])

All Acting Regiment

10:16 / 20.04.06

Hmm. Hmm. I wonder. How does the whole detection thing work?

10:24 / 20.04.06

Exceedingly slowly, I think.

10:26 / 20.04.06

Here, the only way they can bust you, is if you make the mistake of having a satellite dish. They don´t even have the right to enter your home (although they act as if they do).

Just enjoy watching and not paying!

10:34 / 20.04.06

Detector vans are a myth. Here's a question, I have a TV to watch VHS and DVDs on, no aerial, don't watch TV, it's not tuned in etc. so I don't need a TV license.
Is that right? I don't watch TV so I won't buy one (I would buy a radio license if they still existed) since the only good thing on TV is Teh Joy Of Who, which I can watch on video a few days later thanks to friends with TV.
Am I brekkin' teh law?

10:40 / 20.04.06

Can anyone explain del.icio.us to me? I've seen lots of mentions of it round and about, and went to have a look - and I don't really understand what I'm looking at. What is it, what does it do? should I be interested?

Ex

13:56 / 20.04.06

This is a bit obscure - any law fol out there?
Does anyone know in which order the names of the prosecutor and the defendant go, in an X versus Y case? Or is it random, or alphabetical? I know it's usually 'The Crown versus The Alleged Evil Dude' in criminal cases, but does one always put the prosecutor or claimant first?

I'm reading a Victorian novel in which a breach of promise case is referred to as 'Hobbs versus Nobbs'. Breach of promise in this case specifically referring to marriage, so it would be the lady - or her father - bringing it against her shirking fiancee.

So which one is Hobbs and which is Nobbs? I'd really like to know which was which, because it either makes the character involved a noble rebel against Victorian patriarchy, or a complete git.

14:11 / 20.04.06

I tend to think of pak choi as a stir fry vege because it's pretty delicate and that's the way I've usually encountered it. Just stir fry it with whatever you fancy - onions, peppers, carrots, some tofu or meat, some garlic and soy sauce and there you go.

15:01 / 20.04.06

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. You save websites to it, and then others can see what websites you've saved. Recently added pages, and pages which many people have added (Popular), are shown on the main page.

When you add a page to your del.icio.us account, you tag it. For example, if I added Barbelith to my Delicious account, I could tag it with "forum, community, comics" or whatever, depending on how you want to remember it.

Also, as a social bookmarking site, you can search through others saved sites (that "discover favorites" search box on the main page).

09:42 / 22.04.06

I once started a thread about a shop in Britain that sells clothes for ferrets. I have vital new information that needs to be posted there, but I searched and searched and I couldn´t find it (at that time, I did not have the idea yet, to bookmark threads, I started).

Help, please?

09:46 / 22.04.06

Ta daaaa

In case you missed the post telling us about it, here is the lovely new search widget.

09:49 / 22.04.06

Unbelievable, thank you cube!

How did you find it so fast ( found it, too, but it took me a couple of minutes.)? Did you have it bookmarked?

09:52 / 22.04.06

Ah, now I know, how you found it. That search engine is leagues better than the other google one!

00:00 / 23.04.06

What is meant by "the chapel perilous"?

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:15 / 23.04.06

It's a chapel. Lancelot discovers it in the Morte D'Arthur. Link here.

00:32 / 23.04.06

Thank you, Haus. But does it have metaphorical connotations?
I found it previously to mean a test, one that, perhaps, is horrifying? (at least that was my wholly unformed thinking).
I think it was used in "The Invisibles" in this sense, given that I haven't read it in quite some time, further explanation required.

ONLY NICE THINGS

00:44 / 23.04.06

Well, the chapel perilous is a standard theme in Arthurian epic. Essentially, a knight enters the chapel, there are strange happenings, involving supernatural forces - often it is plunged into darkness, or a supernatural foe appears and has to be fought. The knight survives, often by invoking Christ or the sign of the cross, and continues on his quest. So, yes, it's a test of sorts - basically, it's a perilous chapel. The test is surviving the peril.

08:09 / 23.04.06

A tech support query - this computer is driving me mad.

There are two issues that are currently working on my sanity. One is that when I log on, everything is hunky-dory, but when the other person who uses this computer uses their logon, it freezes - it loads up the desktop, but the start button and the taskbar at the bottom remain blue, and it freezes and refuses to load any further.

What seems to work is running a system restore from my logon then them logging in - it works fine for them then. A short while later, however, it starts doing the same thing, necessitating another system restore, which is only a temporary fix etc etc.

Can anyone shed any light on why the computer might be doing this? If so, you'll stop me tearing my hair out. There are no ostensible differences between my logon and theirs - no different programs, etc - that I can see would cause the problem.

The smaller query is that when I'm logged on currently, my Internet Explorer is playing up in the tiniest of ways - it behaves fine when I use my favourites or previously-visited sites, but whenever I type a url in and press return, it steadfastly refuses to budge to the site. Any thoughts?

I've tried CC'cleaning for 'Issues' and I'm considering a full virus scan, but I thought it'd be better to ask for advice before going any further from people more versed in technology than me.

Thanks!

08:59 / 23.04.06

Feverfew - it sounds like the other user's account is getting corrupted (possibly by spyware, possibly by a program they use that's malfunctioning, possibly just Windows being odd).

You could create them a new account and let them start again, or you could delete (selectively, check the internet at large) bits of their windows profile that might cause the issue. I think it's likely to take less time just to make the new account, personally.

As for the Internet Explorer problem - if you want to fix it, google for the symptoms, but problems with IE are legion, some trivial and some related to the most fundamental Windows workings. A better bet if you can is to visit http://www.mozilla.org and get Firefox instead.

A virus scan (and possibly a spyware scan, using the MS spyware tool from microsoft.com is probably best) is always a good idea, even if the computer's working well.

09:03 / 23.04.06

Thank you!

I'm currently running concurrent Adaware, Microsoft Anti-spyware and AVG free edition scans. Adaware has turned up 58 critical objects, which I hope may be those causing the problem, as they seem to be located in the other user's profile.

Re: Firefox - I tried it, I liked it, but it interfered quite heavily with the Java settings causing another vital program to no longer function, so it had to go, alas.
Thanks again for the advice!

All Acting Regiment

16:49 / 23.04.06

What, if anything, does the word "cyrinx" (sp) mean?

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:54 / 23.04.06

Syrinx. It means "reed".

ONLY NICE THINGS

16:59 / 23.04.06

Sorry. Hit send to soon. It means reed - it was the name of a nymph who was turned into a reed to avoid ravishment, by Pan I think. It's come to mean a hollow tube - so, the most obvious derivation is syringe, but also in modern medicine a syrinx is a space that develops in the spine, I think, which then fills with fluid. Something like that, anyway.

08:54 / 24.04.06

Quantum. You're not breaking the law if you have a TV but don't watch it. However, I think you’re right about the detection van swindle, but they will know who does and who does not have a TV licence so expect to get letters through asking why you haven’t paid etc.

15:02 / 24.04.06

I know other countries vary, but what is the law for this vis a vis boys and girls. IE if the monarch had a daughter who was older than her son, who would be natural successor? The girl because she was older or the boy because he had a penis?

Ex

15:17 / 24.04.06

Still the boy, in the UK.
But I'm not sure, if there's no boy (as with current Queen), they still re-route it through the previous generation(s) until they find a willy.

18:37 / 24.04.06

Quantum

We had a dispute with the TV licence people a few years ago. We were told it was legal to own the TV if we did not watch TV on it, however you would only be able to watch recored videos if they had been recored when you owned a TV licence. Not sure if it's just BBC programs that applies to though. The TV licence police requested to inspect our property and clamed that thay would like to see our video collection to ensure we has no recently recored programs, I don't know if they planned to take over my livingroom for a month to watch 200+ videos. We politely declined the request.

They are basically vampires - if you don't invite them in you're fairly immune as far as I'm aware.

18:57 / 24.04.06

Thanks for responses, as I thought TV licencing is basically a big protection racket. We got a letter because we bought a DVD/TV, then the hassle diminished to a quarterly autoletter reminding us that we hadn't got one. They have no right to enter your property AFAIK and it wouldn't be worth prosecuting if they had, it's a silly system. Remember the TV ads about detector vans and the noise your telly makes? Utter, utter bullshit, there isn't and never has been a device to detect a TV and distinguish it from a monitor or mobile phone or microwave*, I call propaganda!

Chapel Perilous- the term has reached common hippy usage thanks to our old pal Robert Anton Wilson using it as a metaphor in Cosmic Trigger. Many people use the term with no knowledge of the Arthurian connection, it's the long dark teatime of the soul, the descent into the underworld, the dangerous part of Joseph Campbell's metamyth where Our Hero is tested.

21:23 / 24.04.06

Could anyone tell me anything about how prevalent arranged marriages still are in India? And is their prevalence in anyway linked or influenced by either social class or religion?

All Acting Regiment

21:48 / 25.04.06

Does anyone remember that show with that guy, in the future, hung out with robots and stuff, there were some "sports-bots", some other stuff? Guy was like a cool dude. Some robot-o transformy police cars too. It wasn't transformers, mind.

I remember at one point there was an evil bald guy who broke into a safe/base using a special laser that formed itself into a cross to break the seal on the door. "Child's play", he snickered.

All Acting Regiment

21:58 / 25.04.06

Also, I found this transformer in my house the other week. It's a jet plane, decepticon, and can transform into either a man form or a theropod dinosaur form. In both these cases, the head is formed from a small pilot figure who sits in the plane's cockpit. He's a transformer in his own right, going from little man to robot/dinosaur head (he can face different ways to acheive this).

He clips in via a set of sprung cubes at the man/dinosaur's neck.

What's this transformer called?

08:29 / 26.04.06

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