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Hundreds of Christmas crackers due to be sent to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had to be defused after it was discovered they were classed as explosives. The British Forces Post Office website defines Christmas cracker snaps as explosives, banned on RAF aircraft. There are no such rules for passenger aircraft. Major Iain Dalziel-Job, of the Scots Guards Association, learned of the regulation as he prepared 650 Christmas parcels for the soldiers. He said: "Every cracker has got to have the snap taken out of it because the RAF won't fly them with the bit still it in. The soldiers will just have to go 'bang' themselves when they pull them." (Source: BBC)
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Software engineers told Fortune magazine in November that they are constructing a filter to eliminate stupid messages to online forums and bulletin boards. Lead researcher Gabriel Ortiz said his team had compiled a database of idiotic comments. He said the new software would detect unintelligible remarks and either alert the writer or divert the message to the recipient's "junk mail". Easy dumb messages to filter: those with the tacky, immature repetition of a closing consonant, eg "That thing is amazinggggg!!!" More difficult: how to treat sarcasm and irony, in that smart writers sometimes deliberately use dumb statements to mock other writers. (Source: News of the Weird)
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Craig has a warning for any readers planning to buy the new iPod Touch. "It retails for over $400 and the system requirements are for a 32-bit OS XP or Vista. It creates the assumption that if you have a bigger 64-bit OS all will be okay, but no. If anyone has bought a computer running Vista that is 64-bit, your brand new iPod will not work at all and you won't be able to download iTunes properly either. You get the message on your computer that your iPod will not work until you download the 64-bit version - but there isn't one. What you will end up with is a very sleek looking ornament."
