Via Stuart, comes the online version of Twenty Questions. Think of an animal, vegetable, mineral (yeah, anyone ever picks that) or object and it asks you questions to hopefully guess it.

It works quite convincingly most of the time, just stay away from “cafe” as an object. Although, it learns in time, so even that might not be a problem soon.

Updates should be back to normal now. Well, at least until next week. I’ve just finished this weeks batch of exams (for more information on those, I suggest reading the round-ups on Derek’s site, although I thought Algorithmic Foundations was much harder than he apparently did), and don’t have any more until next week – which is the last block.

So, for at least a week, normality will return. That is all.

Due to changes in the layout, a few bugs have made their way onto the site. They should die as soon as the site cache is emptied (which will be when I add this piece of content). If you see any residual bugs, try reloading by pressing CTRL and F5 together.

It’s 11PM on a Saturday night. Where am I: out-drinking, watching a film, or having a quiet night with my girlfriend? None of the above. I’m fecking studying.

Exams: I hate you with a passion so intense it could make Julia Roberts good looking.

According to Microsoft, IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation of Internet Explorer. The reason? “Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS” (emphasis is mine).

Now call me crazy, but Mozilla and Opera have managed to create vastly superior browsers to IE on the same OS (transparent PNG support, support for a slew of standards, faster rendering, etc). So obviously that reason is bullshit.

So what could the real reason be? Perhaps they want to push their next OS (Longhorn) on the back of, in part at least, the new version of IE that will be included. At the moment, I sure as hell don’t want it. The freedom-crippling components, sorry, DRM software are off-putting enough.

The truth is that there are vastly superior browsers to Internet Explorer already available, it’s (slowly) losing market share, and Microsoft are getting desperate. Good luck to them, but I hope the general public wake up and get a decent browser first.