'Tired and Emotional' was a term coined by the satirical magazine Private Eye when a well-known politician, George Brown - notoriously alcoholic - put in a rambling performance which one of his aides then put down to him being in a 'tired and emotional' state. From then on, Private Eye repeatedly used it as a euphemism (something they are well-known for, see 'Ugandan affairs' and numerous others) until it passed into common usage.

As others have pointed out, in British slang, 'pissed' has always meant drunk and never the American 'annoyed, angry' intepretation, at least not until very recently.

There is much truth in what you say here. For most politicians I have encountered in a long career, if legislation actually works 'as intended' that is considered a lucky and surprising bonus, since the real goal of the legislation was to show the electorate that 'something has been done'. If indeed it works, then so much the better, but that was not the primary objective, which is the garnering of votes by the appearance of activity.

I remember being thrilled by the first episode (Unearthly Child). As a kid keen on science it was so rare to have anything hinting at the mysteries of time and space rather than bland sitcoms on TV. It was a must-watch from the first episode until leaving to study at university at the turn of the decade - in a time when tvs were rare and expensive none of us had one and so I lost track of it.

For me, the heyday was the time of Patrick Troughton. I've never re-watched those episodes for fear that I'd be disappointed and a treasured memory of my childhood would be spoiled.

It's only the drones (male bees) that do the nasty with the queen, and they only do that at the beginning of her career when she makes a small number of mating flights prior to laying eggs. After that she's kept so full of eggs and food that her formerly trim figure disappears and she's too fat to fly and her mating days are over.

The drones have a modified sting for a penis and when they mate with the queen several hundred feet high, it's ripped from their body along with half their guts and they fall dead to the ground. Some people report having heard an audible 'pop' as the poor/lucky devils consummate their desire.You do wonder why they bother ...

Shome mishtake shurely?

When I was at university we used to brew nearly all our own beer (a good friend of mine was an excellent amateur brewer). For a laugh we made a batch of bitter with Guinness yeast grown from a bottle of bottle-conditioned Guinness - you could still get it back in 1973.

The bitter tasted STRONGLY like Guinness.

Though I claim no expertise in the way that yeast flavours beer, that one experiment left a memory that has lasted to this day.

It's absolutely standard practice in the UK for clubs, associations and other similar bodies to be companies limited by guarantee. The risk would be that if they were not, the members would be seen in law as a partnership which is BAD for the members as partnerships by default have unlimited liability and each member is liable for all debts that may be incurred. You wouldn't want to join a trade body, have it sued and then find you lose your house and savings.

This is completely normal. Note that it's not a 'standard' limited company with traded shares etc.
It will typically have articles of association which prevent it from distributing profits unless it is wound up. The guarantee bit means that each member is limited in their liability (usually one pound) in the case of any debts or insolvency.

A pound to a penny that is not about terrorism but about taxes. Whenever you see a government doing ANYTHING these days, I strongly recommend that you think 'Hmm, is this revenue related?' before considering anything else.

The UK apparently believes that it's losing around GBP 15 billion per annum in tax to various offshore and other borderline legal tax avoidance schemes.

One such scheme is to claim that you are non-resident for tax purposes. It used to be the case that you could be non-resident and visit for up to 183 days (actually nights, so you could land at 6am one day, depart at 6pm a day later and call it one day) whilst potentially remaining non-resident for taxation. That has recently been tightened so that even one second before midnight now counts as a day for residence purposes. It is highly likely that a substantial number of people claimed non-residence but in fact forgot to count the number of days. Some of those people might well be those Russian squillionaires who own Premiership soccer clubs etc. I've gone non-resident myself once and there are no obvious checks - I reckon I could sit here for a whole year, tell the authorities I'm actually non-resident and have a fighting chance of them simply not noticing.

A database which is easily searchable to find when you left and re-entered the country puts a pretty firm stop to abuses of that.

You betcha they pretend it's about security but I betcha it's at least as much about tax.

As a rule-of-thumb when hiring staff you use a 'fully costed' approach which takes employment taxes, telephone, expenses, office space, heating etc. etc. etc. into account - so employers will take the base salary of the person and then double it to get the fully-costed figure. 50,000 headline figure probably translates into a salary of 25,000 to 35,000 whi

One way of looking at networking (since I'm replying to a post on Slashdot, not writing a f*cking book) is that it lowers social and financial transaction costs.

A key part of networking is doing favours to people. You give away 'stuff' in the natural course of things that cost you nothing. You recover those photos a contact lost because their PC caught a virus. You are funny and amusing company over drinks with your store of anecdotes, building social capital. As your network grows you put A in touch with B when they can solve each other's problems without asking a finder's fee (though you might joke about 'owing you one').

And then when stuff comes up you know nothing about, you have the favours in the bank to call Joe, or Mary or whoever, and have the advice and contacts to call on to fix whatever it is in seconds, not months, and often free or at worst at non-ripoff commercial rates.

Be nice, give away what costs you nothing but don't be the doormat pushover either. People will leech off you - watch for it and find other people. Learn some basic social skills and put in the time. If you are desperately shy and uncomfortable around others, try acting or learning an instrument: it did Tom Lehrer no harm way back!

There's a whole theory of business you can look up about 'internal transaction costs', why big companies exist; because it's just more efficient that way.

Your network, apart from giving you a life in the 'get a life' sense, also gives you dramatically reduced EXTERNAL transaction costs and hugely improves your life efficiency.

If the day comes when you start out in business yourself, then you bless your network. Over, and over, and over again. And when looking for a life partner, a recommendation from a friend who knows you well beats years of hanging around in bars.

In your teens you build technical skills. In your twenties you hone them and start building social skills (if not before). In later life you focus on life skills and social abilities more and more as your undoubted technical ability becomes less important than your ability to just make stuff happen quickly. And that's why you need a network.

IMHO YMMV

I think that's Éire in Irish if you want to be extra picky

It's worth being prepared. Repeat after me "I could never remember the key, that's why I wrote it on the blue post-it note I leave next to my laptop on my desk. What, you mean you don't have it? You mean you lost it when you raided my place? How the hell I am supposed to get my data back you bastards, I'll sue you blah blah blah".

There is, of course, and never was, any post-it note.

But you now have plausible deniability that you possess the key.

I don't think that support is a mirage at all. Many customers will pay for support - I've been in numerous meetings where I say something like "You can have RedHat for xxx per year or Fedora free" and it's the last bit that scares them.

We could have a philosophical debate about how long customers will pay for support on software with a low price tag but my bet is it will be at least until we no longer have to care about it.

If the software is worth having - i.e. has a nonzero benefit to the customer - then it has a negotiable support price. How much would they lose if it stopped working? Between that figure and zero is what they will pay per year to not have it stop. The more it's worth to them the more they will happily pay as an insurance policy let alone to guarantee access to updates.

Until you have been in those meetings negotiating the prices it's hard to get a grasp on how much that means to many customers and how delighted they are to be able to pay someone.

Remember, if the system goes down and they are summoned to talk to higher management who ask "how much were we paying in support for this stuff" - and their answer is "we didn't pay for support" then that's their job on the line. Senior management will not be impressed by that reply.

So for many customers if nothing else it's ensuring that they keep their jobs and it's not coming out of their pockets. There is a budget for support and it has to be spent with someone.

In the UK you must submit a GBP 500 deposit to stand for election, a sum which you lose if you poll less than 5%.

The trick of "losing your deposit" is gleefully featured in news reports when one of the major parties achieves it.

This handily prevents a) the poor and b) joke candidates from offering an alternative choice or just some simple amusement.

I've seen Windows people go slack-jawed in astonishment as I ssh to the other side of the world and run X programs over forwarding.

Some refuse to believe it, others shake their heads and walk away.