So, a trope-aware Magical Girl-Girl show where the lead character channels Recette? I’m in.

Ah, Amazon recommendation system, how I’ve missed you.

Why is it that when I have a block of text selected, and I wish to drag it somewhere, that you insist on having me click on a pixel that’s part of one of the characters in the selection. Not “inside the bounding box”, not “inside the enclosed area”, but actually “on a pixel whose color was set by drawing the character”, so that with black text on a white background, only the black pixels count. And not just for dragging a block of text around, but for dragging a dozen messages to another folder in Mail.app, etc.

I’ve been fighting it for years, but the simple shapes and bold strokes of the latin alphabet are fairly easy targets, so it used to be a minor nuisance. But with kanji, it’s a real pain in the ass. Well over half the time, when I try to sort email with kanji senders and subject lines, attempting the “drag to folder” action will instead result in the “extend selection range” action. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Ordinarily, I’d expect that the lessons learned working with the crude accuracy of poking an iPhone with a finger would have taught you something about requiring excessive precision in selection, but I’ve actually used an iPhone, so I know you haven’t figured it out there, either.

I…, I…, I have no words.

(below the fold, to protect the weak of heart)

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User: “Help! I can’t find some of the files I need on the server for this morning’s meeting.”

Sysadmin: “Okay, that server looks fine, and we have good backups. What folders are missing files?”

User: “Well, I was looking in the agendas folder, and then it was gone, and there was a porn folder, and a sexy pictures folder, and…”

Sysadmin: “That sounds a little more serious than missing files. We’re on our way.”

…then run off in a huff when you call them on it.

[Update: he deleted the entire thread or marked it private; a bit sensitive to light, it seems…]

In 1889, John Moses Browning converted a lever-action rifle into an automatic weapon. This became the basis for the M1895 Machine Gun.

In 1910, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated with a .32-caliber semi-automatic pocket pistol, designed by John Moses Browning.

In 1911, the US Army adopted the service pistol they would use for the next seventy years, the M1911, still the sidearm of choice for many experts, and still parts-compatible with guns made today. It was, of course, designed by John Moses Browning.

In 1919, General John T. Thompson designed the sub-machine gun that bears his name, often called “the gun that made the Twenties roar”.

In response to Prohibition’s invention of organized crime, the Gun Control Act of 1934 severely restricted civilian ownership of automatic weapons, sawed-off shotguns, silencers, and sundry other items that scared the news media.

In 1935, Fabrique Nationale released a collaboration between Dieudonné Saive and the late John Moses Browning, the Browning Hi-Power, featuring Saive’s invention of the high-capacity double-stack magazine, holding 13 rounds of 9mm ammunition.

Everything since then has been materials engineering.

(and anyone who wants to discuss the feasibility of restricting the supply of ammunition and gunpowder is invited to google for the terms “handloading” and “meth lab”)

Adobe Acrobat release notes:

"Because PDFs are used so universally, they can be a target for hackers. Adobe provides regular updates to safeguard your computer from attacks."

What they really mean:

"Because we took a perfectly-safe document-formatting system and crufted it up with Flash and JavaScript and anything else we could think of, downloading a PDF file is about as smart as blowing a junkie in a third-world shantytown. Have a placebo and come see us again next month."