Then the storm broke, with a violent flash of lightning and an appalling crash of thunder.

Hmm. Someone has just deleted all their comments from my most recent cri de coeur concerning Windows as plague pit, under merciless questioning from damerell.

(Let me state here that David Damerell is a fine fellow with a proper appreciation of real ale and is jolly nice in person. I'm sure his modem balls are a feature rather than a bug.)

These comments were to a public post, they were up in public for a week before deletion, and I have them in my LJ Replies mail folder.

[Poll #186322]

I shall, of course, reserve my personal opinion, so as not to bias your selection.

Never say anything online you don't want around for years.

(I did keep my original response to "You are being grossly half-smart.")

Update: To switch off animation of GIFs in Mozilla or Firebird, enter about:config in the address bar, enter anim in the filter and it will bring up image.animation_mode - set to 'none' for no animation, 'once' for a single run-through, 'normal' to loop forever.