Alan Guest contacts us with details of the excellent scheme that the BCS offers for life membership. ?As I qualify, I sent an email asking for more details,? he explains. ?After some time the snail mail reply arrived. This contained the required information, plus a form to be completed and returned, so that the BCS could then send an application form for life membership.? At this point Mr Guest gave up.

Back to the future

A helpful reader forwards this from www.microstaff.co.uk: ?MicroStaff is a dynamic organisation with well over 100 years? experience in computing, yet as fresh today as when the PC was invented.? Of course, computers in 1898 were very different to the ones we know today.

Flying discs

Further to Backbytes? mention of the Panasonic advertisement in which the model is using her CD-Rom upside down, Andy Carmichael of Object UK and Tim Hatton of Central Europe Trust point out that whichever way up the disc is, you won?t make many friends on some airlines by using a CD-Rom at all.

Nobo?s slide rule

More barmy advertising: a reader tells us that the cover of the latest Nobo catalogue shows a woman loading a slide onto an OHP machine with the mirror cunningly aimed at the floor. We know of several presentations that might be improved by this interesting tactic.

One small step

Tricom?s latest mailshot tracks the history of tech- nology, including the surprising revelation that ?NASA launched Sputnik 1 in 1956? ? thus saving the Russians the effort. ?Nul points for history, chaps,? as our informant puts it. More ridiculous advertising please. Prizes for the best.

Nappy rash

Back to the Talking Twaddle Awards: our urban myth about nappies, beer and data warehousing has prompted many letters. Henry Stewart of Happy Computers (a contradiction for most of us) claims that the source of the myth is Wal-Mart in the US.

Andrew Bradbury from Syntegra also contacts us to claim the myth for Wal-Mart, and so does no less a figure than Robin Bloor, chief executive of Bloor Research. Only one problem: we know someone who asked Wal-Mart about this. They do sell nappies, they admit. It?s just that they don?t sell beer.

The pound of tripe will soon be in the post to the person who has most offended us with indiscriminate use of this myth.

Backs to the wall

More urban myths: progress in our quest to discover the truth about the bank vault with an embedded processor that supposedly can?t be taken out unless the bank wall is demolished. ?I saw a feature about the bank on Channel 4 News,? says Graeme Foster of Aston Electronic Designs. Andy Fair of Sitel UK claims to have seen it on the Beeb as well. Should we send some tripe to the broadcasters?

Rinse and spin

Talking of millennium myths, can anyone give us a decent reason why any washing machine should not work in the year 2000? If you know a washing machine that isn?t millennium compliant, you might save some poor guru from receiving the dreaded Backbytes pound of tripe.

Calling all poets

Welcome to our new Backbytes competition. This time it?s a poetry competition, and we guarantee it will be even more intellectual than our famous limerick competition.

We?re looking for haikus. What is a haiku? Well, it?s a Japanese poem with three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Here?s one to get you going. Champers for the best.

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