APR 04
coned off
Psychologists have a term for very obvious behaviours – they call them ‘Human Givens’. Here’s a human given - everyone hates traffic cones. But the cones are about to enter a new realm with regard to their popularity – they are about to become robotic.
Imagine hordes of cones which re-arrange themselves under the command of a human operator in some remote ( i.e. safe ) location. That’s the dream of Prof. Shane Farritor of the Walter Scott Engineering Center University of Nebraska Lincoln. Imagine hundreds ( possibly thousands ) of cones, or in this case barrels, coning-off a new section of the motorway just as you are approaching.
Inside the cone ( barrel ) is a battery, the drive electronics and two small wheels plus a third passive caster. They can move at about walking pace. They are linked up via radio, and, in effect become a network of interdependent computers .
The operating system which controls the network ? Windows™
Shane, the best of luck to you mate.
See:
http://robots.uni.edu/files/papers/
You have seen the future – and it’s coned-off.
expressionless
“ Oh God, sorry, it said on the form here that you play the lute, not the flute, - must’ve been a barcode error.“
If you repeat the same physical activity again and again and again, two things can happen. You can get very good at it – and you can damage yourself.
This unfortunate trade-off is well known to musicians, who can find themselves suffering from ‘focal task-specific dystonia’ ( FSD ) In other words, they get a version of repetitive strain injury well known to anyone who has to work at a computer all day. These types of physical problems, if not treated and alleviated, can be so serious as to terminate the careers of the sufferers.
But help is at hand, and results are being reported at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology this week. According to the outcomes of two recent studies, one in Germany and one in Cleveland Ohio, the answer ( or at least an answer ) lies in that old favourite of the wrinkle-removers – botulinum toxin – a.k.a ‘Botox’
The studies, which focused on guitarists, woodwind players, keyboardists, and bowed-string instrumentalists, found that nearly seventy percent of those treated with injections of the drug gave it the thumbs-up. (slowly)
Personally, if I were a professional musician, I’d be just a touch nervous about allowing someone to inject me with a nerve-poison which paralyses muscles for six months or so. But, I guess if an end-of-career scenario is the alternative . . .
If you want to find out more, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, has special facilities for treating musicians with repetitive strain injuries, and must be one of the very few medical clinics to have a piano on-site ( other than for entertainment purposes.)
http://www.clevelandclinic.org/neuroscience/
Fans of Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Steve Reich take
note . . .
mash-up
Largely as a result of lame and misguided record company strategies, pop-music has turned conservative. Ultra-conservative.
It’s getting increasingly rare to find any spark of creativity in the churned-out dross from the Big Five and their zillions of pretend-independent sub labels. Pop music has to be alive and vibrant if it’s going to have any long-term viability. It needs to present something new and dangerous - cutting edge if you like - every week. At the moment, it’s more like once every five years or so.
Which is why it’s so nice to find something from popland which really is different. Even if it takes a 57 year-old to do it. Step up David Bowie. He’s one of the very few pop-artists who dares to come up with a truly new idea on a regular basis. His latest inspiration is to invite budding record producers to remix his songs. There's a competition, and the prize is a thirty grand car. The venture, which appears to be a joint effort from three record companies, a tour company, a web PR company, a film company, a motor manufacturer, a music software house, a magazine publisher, and DB himself, must have been pretty tricky to put together.
The idea is that you ‘mash-up’ ( i.e. remix ) two Bowie tracks ( one has to be from his current album ) to produce a third track. His website even provides links to a fully featured, free downloadable sound remixing tool – and samples of his recordings ( although you can use any* of his previous works if you want to )
The idea of digitally chopping-up one or more tracks to produce a new one is far from new of course – it was being done twenty years back – but what is new is the idea of allowing ( encouraging in fact ) anyone to have a go at it. And a thirty grand prize is better than the fee most professional remixers will get to mash-up a track.
The rule-sheet is somewhat stringent though. You can download all 3,800 words of it here :
http://www.acidplanet.com/contests/
Oh, and if you win, you might have to sign this affidavit as well :
http://www.acidplanet.com/contests/
Still, bearing in mind all the companies which are involved, and their legal entanglements with the artist, it’s nigh-on miraculous that the competition got off the ground at all.
Here’s the motor manufacture’s site competition
site:
http://www.davidbowie.com/neverFollow/
( the competition ends on May 17th )
p.s. Don’t try it with anyone else’s work unless you get permission
first - or their lawyers will probably mash you up bigstyle . . .
*includes “The Laughing Gnome” ( Deram records DM–123
, April 1967 )
soak it up
According to the UK’s Independent newspaper, a leading professor
of dermatology has been persuaded to hand-in his resignation because he’s
launched a book which advocates sensible sunbathing.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/
His colleagues were none too happy about his pronouncement, and the AAD ( American
Association of Dermatology ) ‘compared his advice on the benefits
of the sun to suggesting that smoking might be used to combat anxiety’
The debate rolls on about how much sun-exposure we need. But the facts are that we have been around for a few million years p.s. ( pre suncream ) and still seem to be doing pretty well. Without the sun’s radiation, all life on earth would be extinguished within a few months.
I’m not a dermatology prof., but my personal take on the subject would be ‘grab every opportunity to get some sun, but make sure you don’t get burnt - not by using suncreams, but by being sensible about exposure times’.
I wonder if I could get a research grant from the Indoor Tanning Association like
the prof allegedly did ( according to the Independent’s report
)
sticky feet
It’s odd how scientific research is just as subject to ‘trends’ as is high street fashion or pop music.
One of the current fads is the investigation into the physics which allows flies, spiders, geckos etc. to walk on the ceiling. You might think that they all use some kind of sticky pad or glue on their feet . But it seems that they don’t. Their feet are perfectly dry and adhere by means of mysterious ‘ Van de Waals ‘ forces. This odd attractive effect starts to come into play when objects are placed very close to each other – at nanometre scale in fact.
So, for example, a single spider’s foot carries some 600,000 microscopic hairs which produce enough adhesion to support 170 times the animal’s weight. The finer the hairs are, the more they attract, so heavier animals like geckos use even tinier hairs to do the job.
If it were possible to manufacture such micro hair arrays they would certainly have many applications, especially in areas where sticky glue needs to be avoided. And they never ‘wear out’ like traditional adhesives do. ( I would reckon though, that the owners of such sticky feet probably have a full-time job keeping them clean and dust free etc.)
The main driving force for non-sticky sticky research, as ( almost ) always, is from the military, who want to make small reconnaissance and attack robots which can crawl up walls and stick to ceilings etc. I guess it’s easier than training cockroaches with cameras on their backs.
Here’s a link to a very clear page which explains the effect and has some excellent electron-microscope images of spider’s feet.
http://physics.iop.org/IOP/Press/
comment: The military are also desperate to find
a new alternative to traditional 'hook-and-loop' fasteners for clothing.
Operating fasteners like Velcro™ is noisy, and can give a way a soldier's
position in close combat situations.
wooden mice
New EU laws will soon require manufactures to take back their products at the end of their life, for recycling purposes. The laws only apply to certain specified products such as cars and electrical equipment. Electrical equipment like computers.
There’s a lot of recyclable material in the average PC - plastics, several exotic metals ( including gold ), and parts which can very simply be re-furbished and used again – chassis-screws for example. But perhaps a more sensible method of production would use sustainable ( farmed ) organic material in the first place ? Does a monitor case necessarily have to be made of plastic ? Nope. It can be made of wood.
Here’s a link to a Swedish company which makes wooden monitor cases, keyboards, and mice. http://www.swedx.se/products/products.asp
Not
only is wood more environmentally friendly ( providing it’s from properly
managed forests ) , but it doesn’t usually emit any dangerous chemicals,
such as plasticisers, into the air of the room where the computer lives.
( and I’m writing from the point of view of someone who was made ill
for several weeks from the fumes emitting from a new monitor )
Of course, it does bring a possible new meaning to the phrase ‘computer worm’ though.
p.s. Just one niggle. The website’s designers might possibly want
to reflect on the concept that ‘things which flash and move around
on a webpage page are really interesting‘
smoke gets in your eyes
The EU insists that all packets of cigarettes sold in its territories must have h u g e labels with messages like : “smoking kills” : “smoking while pregnant harms your baby” : etc etc.
The EU thinks that smoking tobacco is b a d ;
Growing tobacco however, is, apparently, g o o d.
So
good, in fact, that it pays farmers to grow it. Despite the fact that last
year, the common agricultural policy agreed that the ‘link
between production and subsidies would be broken’. ( in other words,
farmers will no longer be paid to overproduce ) Tobacco was expressly excluded
from the agreement !
Things are gradually changing though. Yesterday, it seems that the agricultural ministers responsible have finally resolved that the tobacco subsides will, eventually, be phased out. But not until 2010.
So until then, here’s how the deal rolls up . . .
>Taxes on tobacco products raise fortunes for governments.
> Healthcare costs for people made ill by smoking are astronomical
> But because smokers don’t live as long as non-smokers, the governments save a massive amount on pensions.
> So, all in all, governments make a packet out of smokers.
> What do they spend the money on ? Paying farmers to grow tobacco of course . . .
dead plastic
Once upon a time there was a thing called a Credit Card. If you had one of these plastic cards, you could travel the world at your whim, walk into any bar in Budapest, shop in Shoshone or hotel in Hove, and use it to pay. No fuss, no questions. OK, you and the retail outlet had to pay a small commission, but it was worth it for the convenience and security.
Shame it didn’t last.
Now, because of the level of credit card fraud ( accurate figures, not surprisingly, very hard to come by – but certainly into $Billions per year ) some UK banks are saying that you can’t use your card if you go abroad. Well, not unless you ring the card company and tell them where you are going first.
Here’s a sample conversation :
“ Oh hello, my card’s stopped working – sorry, but what’s going on ? I know the account’s not overdrawn ”
“ Ah yes sir, we noticed that the card has recently been used in Sri Lanka. Due to the current level of fraud we’ve had to stop the card until we could speak to you and confirm some details . . . “
“Well, I am in Sri Lanka, and I’m none too happy. Thank god I had some local currency with me, enough for a taxi fare, or you guys would have really screwed up my holiday “
“Well sir, we are asking all customers to ring us and let us know if they are going abroad so that we can put a note on the computer system”
“ Er . . . What? Are you saying I have to phone you every time I go out of the country on business or pleasure ?”
“ Yes sir – we are trying to cut down on fraudulent activities you see”
“ So, I have to phone you every time and tell you where and when I’m going, or you’ll stop the card ?”
“That’s correct sir “
“Brilliant”
“Could we just confirm some details and then I can re-authorise the card from here “
“Well , ok, but I’m really miffed about this, I could have been stuck in the middle of nowhere with a dead card . . . “
“I Understand sir. Now, what’s your star-sign ? “
“ Eh?”
“ Your star-sign sir ? “
“ You’re kidding me right ?”
“No sir, we ask customers that question rather than their date of birth in case of telephone eavesdropping you see . . . “
“ Look, just forget it. I’ll go back to traveler’s cheques next time. Bye”
“Pleasure to be of service sir “
Note* Although this conversation is imaginary, the facts, re the phone calls
before every departure, and the questions about the star-signs, are - believe
it or not – a current reality . . .
Want a waffle with your coffee?
Does ‘brain enhancement’ present ethical problems ? This is the question scrutinised by a think-tank funded by the National Science Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences. The idea is that as tech progresses, it might be possible to augment brain power in the same way as it’s currently possible to chemically enhance muscle power, or medically remove signs of aging . . .
They cite chemicals which allegedly enhance brain function like caffeine. ( If coffee really did make us more intelligent , then the world would currently be run by Kenyans, Costa Ricans, Brazilians and people from Java.) They also mention that, in the future, there may intelligence-enhancing bionic brain implants of some kind. ( Oh yeah ? what operating system will that run under I wonder ? )
According to the study group, legislation isn’t necessary at the moment – but caution is.
It seems a little premature to be worrying about potential problems which may or may not be caused if we ever find some way to become more intelligent. For, unfortunately, nature seems to have given up in this department, as Steve Jones has recently pointed out, there is no biological evidence whatever that our brains have been evolving at all over the last few tens of thousands of years. A quick glance at recent history confirms his theory.
If it ever does happen though, surely the important question is whether this increased ‘intelligence’ will be . .
A) used to make the human world a better, fairer and more benign place, or
B) allow the clever ones to dominate the rest, make even more effective weapons and generally carve-up the place at an even faster rate than at present.
To put the debate into perspective, it might also be worth recalling that there isn’t, as yet, any coherent definition of what ‘intelligence’ actually is . . . Every attempt so far from philosophers, scientists, and religious gurus has ended in failure. As the psychologist Stanley Garn put it “If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.”
It’s going to take an awful lot of coffee to sort out . . .
http://mednews.stanford.edu/releases/
also see
http://www.quotegarden.com/intelligence.html
Corporate Copyright Claptrap.
There’s always a good deal of confusion about copyright law – although the basics are very straightforward. In the EU, at least, if you create ‘a work’ of any kind, you own the copyright – end of story. You can, however, allow other parties to use your work, ( and it’s up to you whether you ask them to pay you or not) - but you will always remain the owner of the work.
Recently I’ve come across a couple of large corporate television sites asking for artistic contributions from the public. They make it very clear that if you upload your contribution, you will be assigning the company a so-called ‘all rights’ copyright licence. That means that you give the company the right to use your work for the rest of time, in any way they see fit.
They can alter it, edit it, copy it, re-publish it, earn money from it – and you won’t get a bean. Not only that, but they also insist you waive your ‘moral rights’ – which means they don’t even have to credit you as the author ! The online ‘contracts’ make it crystal clear that if you don’t agree, you shouldn’t send-in your contribution . . .
Hmmm. So that’s pretty clear then. They adopt an attitude which has all the fairness and reasonableness of a delinquent warthog on steroids.
Let’s see how it works the other way round.
Can you use any of their product without permission ? Nope.
Can you alter any of their products ? Nope
Can you make money from them ? Nope
Can you even make a copy for your own personal use? errrr. probably not.
If you do any of the above and the company gets to hear about it they will probably threaten to sue – and if they do so, they will win the case – every time.
So, in an attempt to restore some balance to the clearly ludicrous ‘contracts’ you’ll find online, here’s a sample letter you can send to your fav TV company . . .
Dear Sirs/ Madams,
You have recently been transmitting unsolicited TV programmes to my house.
I would like to make it clear that by ‘uploading’ your programmes
in this way, you are assigning to me an ‘all rights’ copyright
licence to use your product in any way I see fit for the rest of time without
paying you a cent. If you do not agree, you should not transmit any future
programmes . . .
Would that stand up in court ? Not for one second – and neither should
the pernicious online contracts which TV companies, magazines, newspapers and
games-sites are foisting on their ‘customers’.
paper view
Sony and a company called Toppan have announced details of a new-style DVD which is made mostly from paper. Well, when they say mostly, they actually mean 51%. The reverse, i.e. non-data side of the disc is made from a paper / plastic mixture which according to the press release means that "Using printing technology on paper allows a high level of artistic label printing on the optical disc. Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc" http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp
Er . . . but of course you can print in any quality you require directly onto the plastic of an ordinary DVD or CD can’t you ? And if you want to destroy the data on a disc, a quick scratch with a sharp object will turn it into a beer-mat pdq. You don’t have to cut it up.
So what’s the deal ? One possible motive, and this is just a wild, out-of-the-box guess, is that polycarbonate is tough, really, really tough. When it ends up in a landfill it can last for centuries, and if it’s incinerated can produce toxic by-products. As EU, and Japanese anti-pollution legislation strengthens, there could well come a point when manufacturers will be forced to take back unused or unwanted plastic discs and re-cycle them in some way . . . But what if they are ‘mostly’ (51%) paper ? Will they still fall under the plastics recycling laws? I don’t know. Maybe someone else will . . .
To clear the PR fog – just take a look at Toppan’s ‘vision’ page
and all will become lucidly transparent . . . http://www.toppan.co.jp/english
More on sound archives
Well, yes, using a ‘non-contact confocal optical probe’ it’s possible to read the grooves in old 78rpm shellac records and Edisson cylinders etc. Berkley Labs in conjunction with the US Library of Congress is using an optical method to produce a 3-D rendition of the grooves. Software then analyses the pattern and can remove scratches and surface noise etc. The new method avoids actually having to use a needle in the groove to play the records ( which of course is what they were designed for )
Maybe I dreamed it, but I was under the impression that similar non-contact methods ( e.g. laser readers ) had been around for decades. Noise removal software has definitely been commercially available for years too – and does an excellent job at ridding recordings of scratches etc. It’s such a common technique that you can even get PC based versions as freeware.
The recording quality, in other words the accuracy of the lathes which were used to cut the discs, was way better than you might expect. But most people's home record players were pretty bad, so that listeners very rarely, if ever, got to hear the full quality of the recordings. Nowadays we can squeeze the full spectrum from the discs and it’s really surprising how good they were . . .
So, exactly what is the story here ? http://www.lbl.gov/
Search me. But they have a couple of good before-and-after recordings to
listen to on the site.
Which is worse , spam or real junk mail?
Although laws are popping up here and there to stop spammers, the root of the problem is that it costs nothing to send an e-mail ( OK, it prob does have a cost, but so low as you can ignore it ) Whereas, of course, real bulk junk-mail can be very expensive. And there’s a very easy way to add to the junk-mailer’s expenses. Just helpfully post-on any unsolicited prepaid envelopes which you receive – the licensee has to pay for each and every one of the envelopes which goes through the postal system. If you wait till you’ve got, say, a hundred of them, ( won’t take long ) send ‘em all in one hit for extra effect.
That way, you will be helping the cash-strapped Post Office, by raising around £30 for them, and at the same time discouraging ‘banks’ from sending the next unwanted credit-card application number 549 which will fall through your letter box next week.
If you’re concerned about the legal aspects, just scribble ‘No Thanks’ on each one before you send it – that way you’ll be responding to the question the ‘bank’ asked you . . . viz. “ would you like to get even deeper in debt with our new card scam scheme ?”
on line sound
The British Library is putting some of its extensive sound archive on line. Their site makes it far from clear how this is actually going to be done, and who will have access to it. Some of the recordings are already available though, so, if you wanted to listen to the call of the ‘New Britain Friarbird’ you might be able to find it here http://cadensa.bl.uk/cgi-bin/webcat
Personally, I would think that it’s a very good idea to put all their archive on-line as soon as possible. That way, they will have, in effect, another backup of the data. Some years back, I tried to persuade them not to start transferring their old recordings onto DAT. My advice fell on deaf ears ( heh!), so presumably they now have shelves and shelves of unplayable tapes suffering from the dreaded ‘sticky tape syndrome’*
The DAT format was never very reliable even before the tapes started to degrade - recordable CD’s are way more stable if treated with care – but of course, no-one knows how they will behave in 50 years time.
Here is the main archive page; I hope you can make more sense of it than I did . . .
http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/
*Sticky Tape Syndrome has been a major problem for archivists,
record companies and recording artists. It’s very common for master
tapes to become totally unplayable after a few years. The magnetic oxide
sheds and blocks the playback heads. Sometimes the tapes can be temporarily
restored by being ‘baked’ at high temp for a few hours. This
gives one chance at an error free playback to make a copy – maybe ,
if you’re lucky, on a good day . . .
costly ink
Time for a ‘dog bites man’ story. Various news sites have been running items about the high cost of printer cartridges. The complaint seems to be that the printers are too cheap and the ink too expensive. Errr. Yeah . . . that’s the idea guys.
The printers themselves are often sold at a price which raises no profit whatsoever for the manufacturers. The shops and distributors make their normal markup ( and of course the government gets its tax cut ) but the makers get zip. They know that they can make up the profit from the punters by selling them wickedly overpriced ink cartridges.
This obviously creates a market for ‘cartridge refillers’ who can pump ink back in, but needless to say the printer manufactures go to great lengths to prevent this. Even to the extent of incorporating a cheap electronic chip into the cartridge which is disabled by the printer system when the ink runs out. That way, if the cartridge is re-filled, it still won’t work.
The ink itself is reasonably cheap to produce – but, as some observers have pointed out, by the time it gets to the punters it can end up costing more than vintage champagne on a volume by volume basis.
comment: Update July 2004 : Here's a good overview
of what allegedly goes on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
want ads with that?
For a facility that hasn’t even been fully rolled-out yet, the Google e-mail service is already making big waves. Even to the extent that the State of California’s legislators are apparently considering maybe perhaps possibly drafting a law which would target the service for “invasion of privacy”. See http://news.bbc.co.uk The lawmakers appear to think that the fact that the company will be using automated software to read e-mails and repackage them with targeted adverts may not be acceptable.
But surely, by now, just about everyone knows that all e-mail can be read, stored, tweaked, hi-jacked, forged, binned, delayed and generally messed-with at just about any or all stages of its travels through cyberspace. Anyone who still thinks e-mail is secure and reliable needs a full-on reality check-up straight away.
In any case, if the users of the new service object their mail being read, why not use a lightweight encryption prog just to scramble the e-mail enough to confuse the ‘robots’ which read and assign the advertising ? Or write it in Welsh or Klingon.
Presumably, and this is pure speculative guesswork on my behalf, the users of the new service will be divided into 3 types.
The first, and by far the largest group, really couldn’t give a monkey’s
one way or the other. Then there will be a very much smaller group who might
find it vaguely amusing to fill their e-mail headers with oddball words like ‘topiary’ or ‘lignite’ just
to see what inappropriate obscure cheesy adverts appear at the other end.
And the third, but infinitesimally tiny group, who actually pay any attention
whatever to the ads.
warbots?
The National Science Foundation has press-released details of their Cots robotics project. Cots stands for ‘commodity off the shelf’ - in other words cheap and cheerful. The current design certainly is nice and simple – being a cylinder with a wheel at each end – a format much favoured with competitors of ‘Robot Wars’ and similar TV progs.
The robots have a few sensors on-board, a camera, p.i.r. chip, etc and can relay info about their surroundings back to a human operator. The press release has all the clarity of a set of instructions for a self assembly wardrobe, but seems to be saying that the NSF are trying to develop a system to control more than one robot at a time without confusion setting in.
But what are the robots actually for ? The release mentions ‘emergency response teams’ a few times, so perhaps the idea is to send out swarms of them at a disaster site – an earthquake zone perhaps. Needless to say, they little critters are going to find the going a bit rough in such a scenario – they’re happier on a lawn or an office floor really.
Anyway, the release does have one or two tiny clues which might point to other uses the designers have in mind .
Like for instance the ‘bots talents for “finding a dark location in which to hide” er . . . what use exactly would that be to emergency response teams ? . . . Like the fact that the robots shown in the site’s video are sporting military camouflage . . . If they were really destined for emergency service rescue work, they would of course be painted fluorescent orange or similar.
Anyway, according to the site, the little rollers could “literally mean the difference between life and death” Yep. That bit I believe.
Same old same old.
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=74
truth serum
It might not be the country which would immediately leap to mind with regard to cutting-edge common-sense – but Spain has created new legislation – due to come into operation on 1sy May – which will revolutionise drugs trials.
Drugs companies will be obliged to publish details of the clinical trials which they sponsor – even if the results are negative. Not only that, but when the trials are published , they must be accompanied by details of the funding – i.e. how much, and who paid. Ouch !
Legislation like this will go down as the bitterest of pills with the pharmaceutical companies – and also of course with the universities. But a dose of honesty and openness is definitely just what the doctor ordered from the public’s point of view.
We’ll have to live in hope that the Spanish government will also oneday
outlaw the outrageously lax statistical tests which are needed to ‘prove’ a
product is effective. A recent New Scientist article pointed out
that if the same ‘rigorous standards’ were to be applied to just
about any half-baked ESP experiment, spoon bending, dowsing, and crystal
therapy would all be considered sure-fire logical science.
Techiquette
If you were a (male ) late-teenager in the 1960’s UK, you will almost certainly have ploughed any available cash into the quest to buy a cheap seconhand car. The second item on the list would probably be one of the newly available air-horns which played the first few notes from some famous tune. If you had one of these horns – you could more or less rely on being classed as a cool cat by your peergroup.
Nowadays, driving around and showing off your airhorn at every available opportunity would certainly get you classed as a grade-one halfwit plonker.
See? things have improved haven’t they ? It took 30 or 40 years, but people eventually worked out that musical airhorns are great for ambulances and fire-engines – but that’s about it.
Unfortunately then, we’re probably going to have to wait a similar length of time before punters realise that musical ringtones on a mobile won’t always necessarily confer K3WL-ness on their owners. There’s already a bit of a backlash going on of course, and many companies are selling cell-phone blockers – i.e. jamming systems – to stop mobiles operating in a certain small area.
The makers claim the devices are legal in some countries ; but I would definitely check out the government legislation with a fine toothed comb before you buy one. Not only that, but operating a jammer could render you liable to civil court action. What if your jammer prevented a user receiving a life–or-death emergency call ?
No. The only safe and reasonable way to avoid ‘other people’s mobile’ aggravation is to wait. A very long time.
Now I don’t want to worry you – but . . .
There’s always a chance that a stray meteor could hit the Earth. In fact, there’s a very good chance a stray meteor will hit the Earth –oooh, just about everyday I reckon. It’s just they’re not usually very big. It’s the big ones you need to worry about ( or not, depending on your philosophy / disposition )
If you are the worrying type, help is at hand . The University of Arizona have just launched a web-based Earth Impact Effects Program. This takes the form of an online, er.. form, into which you can enter details such as the ‘projectile’s’ diameter, it’s velocity etc etc – the prog will then calculate the devastating ( or not ) effects for you.
As a quick guide, I tested the page with an imaginary meteor just 19 meters in diameter. The result came back that it would cause an impact the same as 10 tons of TNT – which sounds pretty scary to me. Worse to come though, it also informs me that “The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is less than 1 month “ Well, I don’t know about you, but that sounds way too many for my liking.
Anyway, test your luck here:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
hole in the ground
There’s an old saying “Owning a yacht is like owning a large hole in the ground into which you pour your money” – but why not go a step further ? Why not actually own a hole in the ground and really pour your money into it ?
We are , of course, talking Channel Tunnel.
Stakeholders, er no, co-owners, er no, shareholders have seen the value of their stocks fall by a swingeing 90% in ten years. I guess if you’d invested £100 in the original plan, you might just blow the last £10 on some Pernod and put it down to experience. But investors who poured in millions won’t take it quite so lightly.
Plagued by government incompetence, myopia, and obfuscation from the start, it’s not really all that surprising that things have gone so badly wrong. Giant construction projects can almost be defined as 'works doomed to go horribly overbudget'. The Tunnel now has a debt of £6.4Billion.
Last week, angry ( mainly French ) shareholders managed to remove the chairman and chief exec, and now want the UK and French governments to help them out financially – again . . .
Bearing in mind that the UK and French population were promised by politicians time and time again that their tax-cash wouldn’t go to bail out the tunnel – promises which were of course cuckooland nonsense – being asked to stump up even more cash might not go down too well with the general population of the two countries.
There’s nothing wrong with the tunnel. It works. It’s efficient and fast. So what’s the problem? The problem is not enough traffic. ( When I say traffic, of course I mean rail-traffic. Readers outside Europe might be surprised to learn that the tunnel has no roadway – it’s rail only – clearly a fundamental part of the trouble )
So, how can the owners get more traffic ?
erm erm er ummmm . . .
Ahhh! , I know ! How about reducing the price ?
Current price return hovercraft £35
Current price return ferry £45
Current price return tunnel £62
soho
Hard to believe, but since it’s launch 9 years ago, the NASA/ESA SOHO ( Solar and Heliospheric Observatory ) has been revealing comets at the rate of more than one a week. So far 750 new ones have been found ! It seems the local solar system is more or less swarming with ‘em.
Here's an artist's impression :
Given that there are so many about, it’s strange that we don’t find them crashing into the Earth every few months. Perhaps all the ones in the relevant orbits did crash into the planet, or in other words were hoovered–up by the Earth’s gravity long ago.
There’s still lord knows how many left though, and if you live south of the equator, you should get a chance to see a couple NEAT(C/2001Q4) and LINEAR(C/2002T7) in May – without the need for a military funded satellite.
If you want to discover your own comet, the ESA site below has a link to a database where you can view the SOHO images and search. Three quarters of the discoveries so far have been made by amateur comet-hunters ! ( Unfortunately the link appears to be down at present )
and
http://orbits.esa.int/orbits/satellite/info/sohoinfo.htm
Music sales: Now I’m confused.
According to the Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Koleman S. Strumpf,
“Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero”
You can read his full report here : http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/
Unlike the Prof, I don’t have a Phd in economics from MIT, so I find some of the paper somewhat hard to grasp, but the basic findings do seem to me have a ring of truth about them. His point appears to be that song downloading can have a very positive effect on artist’s sales, especially well-known ones, simply by drawing attention to the artist’s works – in other words, it’s advertising.
If I’ve understood it correctly, ( OK, you try !. . . )
according to the prof, the promotional effect outweighs the negative aspect of lost sales due to downloads. If he’s right, it leaves the music industry with an ( even bigger ) problem . .
If it’s not downloads which are causing the massive drop-off in music sales worldwide – then what is ?
Anyone know where I can get a techno-trance remix of ‘Blowin in
the Wind” ?
A bit late for April Fool’s . . .
A UK ‘conceptual artist’ says she has created a transgenic cactus which grows '‘human hair'’ instead of spines . . . She claims to have created the being with the help of an unnamed genelab where genes coding for hair were inserted into the cactus via a bacterium . . .
In an interview with New Scientist magazine, she said “The response from bio technologists in the US was phenomenal, from those in the UK it was largely negative”
rrrrright . . . .
Here is her website. http://www.lauracinti.com/
Unfortunately, although there are numerous close-up photos of the ‘being’ in half-thumbnail size, none of the larger images shows the creature in any detail
. . . Hmmmm.
No matter. Whether it’s real or not, it does make one think about endless horrendous GM possibilities ( we’ve all seen the pics of the mouse with the human ear ) which, given enough time, personkind will ultimately perform.
But, for the time being, as Sigmund Freud once said “the important thing is getting oneself talked about”
Time for another GM reality-check.
It took a non-profit making org, rather than a government or commercial
concern, to do the obvious test and publish the results.
The obvious test ? Buy some random samples of conventional farm seeds, ( in
this case maize, soyabeans and Canola ) and check to see if they’ve been
contaminated by genes from GM crops.
The samples were sent to two independent genetic test labs in the US – and guess what – they found 50% of the batches were contaminated. Big surprise. It really couldn’t be more blatantly obvious that GM pollen will, eventually, contaminate every conventional plant of the same species which isn’t locked up in an hermetically sealed bunker somewhere. Organic farmers had better start building greenhouses with positive-pressure airlocks right away . . .
No big deal perhaps if the GM varieties have been engineered to contain more vitamins, or grow quicker, or be resistant to certain pests – but what about the others ? The others being the so called ‘Pharm’ crops. Viz. plants which have been engineered to produce drugs, plastics, vaccines etc etc ? Do you really want to be eating a dose of animal vaccine with your breakfast cereal ?
Here’s the deal. GM is big business – gigantic in fact. Most politicians have almost no idea about even the most basic of scientific concepts. Even if they did, commercial pressures ( ie money ) can be guaranteed to push them in the direction of support for the giant transnational corps ( with their transnational crops ). If in doubt, read ‘Captive State’ by George Monbiot.
The cat’s out the bag. The pollen’s out the field, the politicians are out to lunch and your breakfast is out of order . . .
See :
http://www.ucsusa.org
for the full report click on the .PDF links . . .
Also see :
http://www.Really Magazine/meme_07.htm
also see:
http://www.monbiot.com
not happy
If Harry Enfield’s ‘Kevin’ lived in the US he’d be on antidepressants. The prescription of the drugs in the 0 -18 yrs group has increased by a staggering 49% in just four years. Almost unbelievably, the fastest growing group is ‘preschoolers’ aged 0 - 5 . . . Factoids like that can make you depressed. ( source express-scripts.com )
Not a happy scenario for the children. ( Especially when some of the drugs have been linked with “ increased risk of suicidal thinking and suicide attempts.” In other words – they can make things worse.) For the drugs companies though, the future looks rosy. The more depressed people there are, the more they sell. In 2002 global sales of the seven major antidepressants ( SSRI flavour ) generated a healthy $10Billion for the major pharmaceutical companies. Sorted.
Although the drugs are not addictive in the usual sense of the word, it can be very difficult to stop using them. I would risk a wild guess that if you’d been taking them on a daily basis since before you went to school, you might well get stuck with them for life.
From the drug companies’ point of view, just what the doctor ordered.
sorry state
Here’s an update and error-correction for the Mar 12th story about the explosives used in the appalling Madrid bombings.
The Washington Times, Guardian and other sources are now saying that the Spanish authorities have ‘changed their mind’ about which type of explosive was used . . . and are now claiming that it was not French after all, but was made in Spain ‘under special licence’.
Considering that they found two or three unexploded bags on the trains ( one with it’s mobile-phone-detonator combo set to .pm instead of .am ) it’s odd, to say the least, that they made a mistake identifying it, and calling it ‘Titadyn’. It even smells different apparently . . .
El Pais, and dozens of other news-sites, are now telling us that it was, in fact, a product of ‘Union Espanola de Explosivos’ (UEE) whose head office is in Madrid - which presumably, won’t go down too well with the Spanish population PR-wise . . . ( Their website is http://www.uee.es, but oddly, it appears to be offline at the moment . . . )
Yet again, from the news headlines, you might think that the company is an innocent maker of mining explosives. Well, that is one of their talents - but they also make hardcore arms via their enormous sister company Expal - which is registered at the same head-office address in Madrid.
Expal’s own website http://www.expal.es is, curiously, also offline at the moment, which is a shame, because presumably it would list some of their products, such as laser guided penetration bombs, mortars, grenades, submarine mines, surface to surface missiles etc etc, ( they don’t make landmines any more since the Spanish government banned them )
( you can see a small part of the company structure here at their sister site, the charming http://www.ueec.es
For further reference, please don’t miss this astronomically crass site - it really has to be seen to be believed - it’s the official Spanish Ministry of Defence http://www.mde.es/mde/index.htm ( make sure you have your speakers turned on )
Note: the site has now disappeared
Using the formula “follow the Money” the sub-page of interest is http://www.mde.es/mde/infoes/indus2/pi04.htm ( also now disappeared ) where it informs us that the entire explosives/arms consortium is, ( or was ) actually owned by “Pallas Investments” a Dutch group formed by several banks and oil companies . . . There the trail comes to an abrupt end, which is a shame , because personally, I’d like to know exactly who the owners are – It seems to me that they must be ultimately responsible for the products their companies make ?
My point is this. Nobody could blame a lawn-mower manufacturer if someone ran-amok in a city centre killing dozens of pedestrians. But when a firm is in the business of making high-tech armaments designed specifically to destroy property and kill people, the scenario must surely be viewed a little differently. Doubtless the Spanish authorities will be making extensive enquiries as to how the explosives came to ‘leak out’ into the public domain, but transparent and publicly declared results might be a little way off yet – like most European governments, they support, and even subsidise the arms industry with taxpayer’s money, . . .
Defenders of the arms industry would probably claim ( nowadays ) that companies have to continue making such weapons in the interests of the ‘Fat Ginst Terrism’, but the fact remains, that, without such ultra-high-tech explosives – whether designed for mining or for bombs - 200 or so innocent Spanish citizens would still be alive today .
A final question. Bearing in mind that the company exports around half of it’s production, ( supplying, in past years, countries such as Iraq, Argentina and the former Yugoslavia,) does their existence make the world a safer, or a more dangerous place ?
As always, if any of the companies concerned would like to respond, please e-mail and I’ll post the results here . . .
some holiday
When cellphones first came on the market in the UK, they were the size of large bricks – but heavier. They were extortionately expensive, and so of course were snapped up by upper management who wanted to be perceived as ‘cool’. The infatuation didn’t last long, as the execs soon found that they couldn’t escape work . . . the office would phone them at 10pm to remind them that their golf clubs had to be picked up in the morning.
Now there is almost no chance to escape. If you aren’t teched-up mobile-wise you’re not going to get very far in the work environment. But that means there’s very little chance of avoiding work anytime, anywhere . . . and that includes holidays . . . Yahoo recently surveyed a group of 1000 backpackers and found that 80% took their mobiles with them. ( of course they can be a life saver in an emergency – but so can a pack of marine flares and survival rations, and they get left behind ). 13% of trekkers even took their laptop with them !
It’s nice to keep in touch with your friends and loved-ones while you’re away, but, of course, most people end up checking their work e-mails and responding – so, is that still classed as a holiday ? Now that most mobiles can work pretty much anywhere on the planet, you might find yourself on a spectacular Tibetan plateau responding to angry customer complaints about leaky flange valves in Stockport.
There is no (great) escape - you have been assimilated . . .
cool ! (not)
As it happens, I sometimes have to transfer music from an ordinary music CD into mp3 format ( and yes, I do own the copyright ). An obvious easy way to do this would be to plug the output from a CD player into the computer’s line-in audio socket. Trouble is, the CD player is in another room, and I don’t have a lead long enough.
But, as luck would have it, the computer’s got it’s own CD player – a very sophisticated one in fact, which can replay audio files a stonking 32 times faster than the hi-fi. Case solved then ?
Errr . . . not quite. Because I need some software which will act as a ‘human interface’ between me and the CD drive. Fortunately, the operating system which I use incorporates a piece of software to do just that. You can see that the developers went to some trouble writing the code, because they’ve made the pretty ‘control –panel’ look a bit like a conventional CD player. Complete with imitation blue ‘plasma’ readouts and ‘buttons’.
Only one problem , it doesn’t ******** work properly. It skips tracks, gets lost, keeps jumping back to track 01, is as slow as hell – oh, and by the way, during the writing of this piece, it locked up the whole system as I was trying to measure it’s boot-up time – so this is my second attempt at writing this piece, as the entire first attempt got trashed . . .
All the developers needed to do was to provide 8 buttons. Play, Pause, Stop, Rewind, Forward, Next track, Last track, and of course, a tracklist menu. I guess any competent programmer could write the code for such a controller in say, three or four days ? The operating system developer however, despite having around ten years to write the code, using one of the largest teams of software writers ever assembled – evidently can’t manage it . . .
Why ?
Let me guess the response from supporters of the company concerned. Something like this . . .
“ Yes, but that particular piece of code is not system-critical. It’s just provided on an ‘as-is’ basis for entertainment purposes”
Yep, that’s one way of looking at it. While the firm is busying itself with all-important ‘encryption protocols in local-area server-based wireless networks’ why should it worry about a crappy little CD player ?
Here’s why. Because, looking at it from the other side, we can ask, ‘If the company concerned can’t even get a crappy little CD player to work after ten years, what hope have they got with the more tricky – and more important stuff ?’
Trade regulation laws in Europe, the US, Japan, Australia, and just about everywhere else would clobber any company making a hardware version of the player which behaved so abysmally. Every single customer who bought such a piece of junk would be back at the shop next day wanting a refund. The manufacturer would have to compensate every dissatisfied customer, give a re-fund – and would shortly be bankrupt.
So, why don’t customers demand the same level of service from the software ? Here’s a possible explanation. Computers are extremely complex machines. It’s just not reasonable to expect a normal ‘non-geek’ person to understand what’s going on underneath the bonnet ( hood ). So, when things do go awry – i.e. every five minutes – the customer *always assumes it’s their fault* - let’s call it ;
‘Auto-culpability’
It’s a sinister syndrome, and one which has let software developers sell us heaps of half-baked junk for decades now. Time for a bit of consumer resistance perhaps ?
p.s. I don’t use a Mac, or Linux.
1st Apr
Spring is in the air – at least in the Northern Hemisphere. Birds are starting to serenade, plants are beginning to sprout – but all is not quite as it seems. Scientists have discovered that at this time of year, levels of a chemical called CAS 7782-44-7, found especially in rural air, starts to rise alarmingly. The chemical, which is an odourless gas, has been found to have dangerous effects. At high concentrations it can cause nausea, vomiting, visual disturbances, tinnitus, vertigo, twitching of lips, cheeks, nose or eyelids, and even fainting or convulsions. Long-term exposure to the gas, even at low levels, has been proven to increase the rate of aging in mammals.
Although scientists say that there is virtually nothing we can do to limit the amount of the potentially dangerous chemical in the atmosphere, we can take steps to avoid it. Large towns and cities tend to have significantly lower levels than rural areas, and also, because the gas is relatively heavy, you can elude high concentrations by moving to higher altitudes.
An ideal location, then, would be a large city at high altitude, preferably in the Southern Hemisphere. One which springs to mind would be La Paz in Bolivia. ( 3.6Km above sea level, pop 2.1M ) The levels of CAS 7782-44-7 are especially low there at this time of year. So, fortunate individuals can prevent premature aging for the price of a plane ticket. ( If you walk aimlessly around the streets behind the rail station at three in the morning, wearing some ostentatious gold jewelry and looking lost, you may be able to avoid aging completely.)
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