at all if you’re using an ad blocker, like that will make them a more popular site to visit. And a group of French publishers even considered legal action against Adblock Plus, as they believed that it was damaging their businesses. There is quite obviously a lack of common ground, as the advertisers want free range, and the likes of Adblock Plus want to make money out of people’s hatred of widespread ad abuse. Going after ad blocking software writers is attempting to shoot the messenger, as the marketing industry doesn’t want to really have a conversation with those who aren’t happy with their activities: the surfing public. Without that conversation, this can only go one way, because the public’s patience with pop-ups, unstoppable video streams and other abuses is quite reasonably exhausted.
Mark Pickavance
LAST WEEK'S CROSSWORD Across: 7 Roentgenogram, 8 Adorno, 9 Edison, 10 Doppler, 12 Gyron, 14 Adopt, 16 Profits, 19 Insert, 20 Shrewd, 22 Class Interval Down: 1 Word, 2 Entrap, 3 Agnomen, 4 Index, 5 Uglify, 6 Nanovolt, 11 Ordinals, 13 Presets, 15 Please, 17 Furore, 18 Strip, 21 Wear
DISCLAIMER The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the publishers. Every care is taken to ensure that the contents of the magazine are accurate but the publishers cannot accept responsibility for errors. While reasonable care is taken when accepting advertisements, the publishers cannot accept any responsibility for any resulting unsatisfactory transactions. Housework sucks. Let there be no mistake about this: we absolutely hate it, and we’ll go to great lengths to shirk our domestic duties. Considering our aversion to such things, it made sense for us to get a dishwasher. For years we’ve been struggling with the chore of washing dishes by hand in a sink, so this was sure to change our life and help us keep our kitchen
THIS WEEK'S CROSSWORD Across 7 Someone who makes illegal copies of things for commercial gain. (13) 8 A city in western Saudi Arabia; site of the tomb of Muhammad. (6) 9 A futures contract traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Globex electronic trading platform, which represents an even smaller fraction of the value of the normal futures contracts than the corresponding E-mini. (1-5) 10 An internet service that lets users send and receive files and information over the internet without fear of being monitored or logged. (7) 12 Software version with added muscle! (5) 14 A meta object system for Lua, based on Perl’s Moose. (5) 16 A short reusable piece of computer source code. (7) 19 Having a hole or empty space inside. (6) 20 In 1980, this Japanese peripherals company became the first major developer and supplier of memory enhancement products for Sharp personal computers. (1-1,4) 22 Computational and statistical techniques for biological data processing and analysis. (13)
Down 1 In BASIC, the command to set the contents of a memory cell. (4) 2 Paid for on credit or in instalments. (2,4) 3 Shots or scenes in movies that have to be filmed repeatedly to achieve the desired effect. (7) 4 Present for acceptance or rejection. (5) 5 A person’s social environment. (6) 6 Technology that is small or light enough to be embedded into clothing or carried on one’s body. (8) 11 A formal written defence of one’s opinions or conduct. (8) 13 Graphic design technique composed with ASCII compliant character sets. (7) 15 A photograph of oneself, especially one taken with a mobile phone or tablet camera held at arm’s length. (6) 17 An elevated or underground footway built for pedestrians in an urban area. (6) 18 A framework enabling financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure environment. (Abbreviation) (5) 21 This command allows the OS to inform an SSD which blocks of data are no longer in use and can be wiped internally. (4)
spotless. And, indeed, it did. For about a week. Then we found our laziness growing in size, as if it knew there was suddenly more space for it to lie back and stretch its legs (we imagine it sleeps in a hammock and has a long piece of straw hanging from its mouth). Now, rather than fretting about having to tackle a sink full of dirty e plates and mugs, we dread the time when it comes to emptying the dishwasher and then putting the next load on. Clearly what we really need is a robot butler, one that can do all this hard work for us. That should solve all our problems. Yes, the more we think about this, the better it seems. Just one problem: who’s going to tell it what to do? That will involve speaking. Okay, what we really need is a mindreading robot butler. If anyone has one we could borrow, let us know.
Issue 1351
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