AUG 05
Progress ( beyond the stars ) . . .
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is currently hosting a three day conference at Long Beach , California, called Space 2005.
It’s a huge event, with more than 100 conference sessions. But the mainstream press coverage has not been exactly overwhelming. One chirpy story which has made the headlines though is the Raytheon ‘ Lunar Penguin ’.
See : http://today.reuters.co.uk/news
The Lunar Penguin ( still at the ‘concept’ stage ) will might someday be hopping about on the moon. Not surprisingly “ it looks nothing like an actual penguin “.
But Lunar Penguin “ could be the delivery vehicle for the science community “ said a spokesperson for its designers, Raytheon – currently the fifth largest arms manufacturer on this planet – 2004 sales topping $20Billion ( Source : http://www.sipri.org )
Not altogether surprising then, that the penguin relies fairly heavily on arms tech. In fact, “ It uses rocket engines from ground-based missile defence systems, and the guidance system of a Tomahawk cruise missile “.
Exploring the idea of the tie-in between space ' research ' and arms systems - inspection of the Space 2005 agenda reveals that the word ‘ Security ’ appears no less than fourteen times . . .
As an example, check out discussion sessions such as 39-AS-1 , “ Space Control Imperatives " - “ One of the cornerstones of national security space strategy is ensuring freedom of action in space. A panel of experts will address achieving this goal through Space Situational Awareness, Offensive Counterspace and Defensive Counterspace. .”
Or maybe Session 36-SW-2 , more boldly titled “ Enabling the Warfighter in Space “
Or perhaps 11-SW-1 “ Achieving Responsive Space - revolutionary advancements for the warfighter in the field, moving Space from strategic to tactical focus “
Or possibly the most revealing of all, the refreshingly frank Session 66-AS-2 “ Achieving Superiority in Space “ . . .
Quite a long shot from a chirpy Lunar Penguin story ?
31 AUG 05
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Weed roundup ?
Kudzu ( Pueraria montana ) was introduced into the US in 1876 at the ' Centennial Exposition ' in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
By the 1940’s, farmers were being paid grants of around $40 per acre to plant the vine as a way of combating soil erosion : ( for more info see: http://www.cptr.ua.edu/kudzu/ )
The government-backed campaign was a resounding success – so much so, that now Kudzu is officially part of the problem of ‘invasive plant’ control – which is estimated to be costing around $34Billion per year in the US.
Kudzu forms dense 2m thick canopies, or mats, which smother other vegetation – “ It kills or degrades other plants by smothering them under a solid blanket of leaves, girdling woody stems and tree trunks, and breaking branches or uprooting entire trees and shrubs through the sheer force of its weight “ Its branch tips often grow 30cm per day.
Today, a one day symposium in Washington is discussing the strategies of Exotic Plant Management Teams (EPMT's) – who presumably will be tasked with the challenge of controlling the weeds exotic plants, which currently ‘ infest about 2.6 million acres ‘.
Given the size of the problem, how will the control process be carried out ? One clue might come from the symposium’s sponsoring organisation – The American Chemical Society . . .
The words ‘ glyphosate isopropylamine ’ spring to mind . . .
* * *
If you’d like to download a list of the current ‘Invasive Species’ , which gives an I-Rank ( invasiveness rating ) for each plant , it’s available here : ( Kudzu is I-Ranked –‘Medium’. )
30 AUG 05
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Warm Fuzzy Continua ? Discuss.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to pin down the boundaries where art stops and science begins ( or vice versa ).
Happily, many organisations are asking whether the two disciplines may really be part of a fuzzy continuum rather than separate subjects. ( A pioneering example would be the SciArt project sponsored, at £0.5Million a year, by the Wellcome Trust )
Now, the University of York , in partnership with the Arts Council of England is launching a new Science/Art project in the form of a three day conference entitled ‘ Rules of Engagement ’.
“ Art and science each hold the allure of a powerful cultural ‘other’.”
Entry to the conference costs £165 ( £75 concessions ), so it’s a fair bet that not many ‘starving artists’ will be attending. If they can't, they will miss :
“ Visualizing biological abstraction in nature: Exploring the occurrence of deformed amphibians “
“Ooops...The boners and blunders of bioart practice and pedagogy”
and
“ Art, Biotechnology and Ethics or What Would Jesus Do ? “
* * *
The conference starts on the 5th Sept.
Details here : http://www.rulesofengagement.co.uk/
Programme here : http://www.artscouncil.org.uk
29 AUG 05
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In the clouds.
Continuing our recent psycho-mystical theme, we can link today to some new research from Switzerland / Israel which asks the question : “ Why revelations have occurred on mountains ? “.
As a starting premise, they point out that “ The fundamental revelations to the founders of the three monotheistic religions, among many other revelation experiences, had occurred on a mountain “ . . .
And go on from there to try and explain the phenomena by linking the low-oxygen environment with “ prefrontal lobe dysfunctions “ which “ might contribute to the induction of revelation experiences “.
Really Magazine would also like to float the idea that – if there is an 'Almighty' – and if the 'Almighty' resides in a 'Heaven' of some sort ( widely believed to be ‘Above’ ) then perhaps the participants would indeed be physically nearer to the(ir) deity by climbing a peak ?
Read an abstract of the research here :
27 AUG 05
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Hungry sharks meet poisonous soles . . .
If you had to come up with possible chemical candidates to test as shark repellants, then steroids might be a good starting point.
At least that’s the tack taken by Prof. Williams at Temple University, Philadelphia. Beginning in 2002, he and his team have been testing two chemicals - Pavoninin-4 * and Pavoninin-5 * at the Bimini Biological Field Station Sharklab in the Bahamas.
Unfortunately, the early tests were " somewhat inconclusive ".
The sharks were indeed repulsed by the chemicals – but, as Really Magazine understands it, their repellant properties worked only when the compounds reached the sharks' gills – in other words, after they had taken a bite out of the laced food . . .
If further research proves that the chemicals really do leave a bad taste, then, looking on the positive side, at least they might prevent people being bitten more than once by the same shark - which would, at least, be a step in the right direction.
" We have a nice, inexpensive starting material, " concludes Prof. Williams. " Hopefully, we can modify it sufficiently to make it biologically active."
More work needed . . .
Note :
Pavoninin-1 was tested back in 1997 at the chemistry dept of the University of Tokyo, after it was noticed that the chemical was secreted by a type of sole ( Pardachirus spp.) which is evidently repulsive to sharks.
26 AUG 05
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OBE's
Have you ever had an OBE ? If so, the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester would like to hear from you.
They are involved in a study of ‘ Out of Body Experiences’ – which at least 10% of people experiences at some time during their lives. The experiences usually involve a sense of floating in space, and are often associated with a sense of ‘seeing one’s own body ‘ from the outside.
“ Despite the high incidence of OBEs however, there is still a great deal scientists don't know about the phenomenon. “ says the press release.
Quite. In fact it could perhaps be phrased the other way around, ' scientists know something approaching nothing whatever about it '.
Hopefully though, the new research will shed some light on the subject, with a worldwide on-line survey, running over the next six weeks
You’ll be asked to fill in a series of questionnaires, and rate, confirm, or refute statements such as :
If you have had ( or haven’t had ) an OBE, the university would like to hear from you at
25 AUG 05
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ED and bicycle saddles.
Are
you a ( real ) man ? Do you like riding a bicycle ? If so, you should read
these two articles, just published in the Sept edition of JSM.
For search-engine related reasons, Really Magazine won’t be making a full comment on the research – except to quote " Straddling bicycle saddles with a nose extension is associated with suprasystolic perineal compression " . . .
Featured saddle : Selle San Marco Aspide Triathgel
24 AUG 05
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Necktie not required ( official ).
‘ Cool Biz ’ ends on Sept 30th. And will be replaced, naturally enough, by ‘ Warm Biz ’ – a Japanese government campaign to encourage workers to wear more.
Public sector departments will have their aircon thermostats re-set to 20C on October 1st – after which, thick socks and turtleneck jumpers will be positively encouraged - officially.
Currently though, Cool Biz is still in operation , and has the aircon set at 28C. Attempting, with some success, to get Japanese business men ( and women ? ) to remove their ties – and even their jackets. According to the official website, removing your jacket and tie makes you feel 2C cooler.
The idea of these radical thermic regimens is of course to save energy, money, and, perhaps even go some way towards saving the planet.
Don’t forget though that “ When heat the button is opened too excessively, being to become slovenly impression note.”
For guidance on the correct (official ) manner to unbutton your shirt, see this ( ' translated ' from Japanese by Google )
here's more. ( "" )
23 AUG 05
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Policing to cost a bomb.
Time soon for the bi-annual arms-industry fest in London’s docklands. This year's event promises to be bigger than ever, and will showcase ultra high-tech weapons systems to 20,000 invited delegates from across the world ( last year’s bargain hunters came from 26 countries – including Angola, Columbia, Pakistan etc etc )
As always, there will be anti-war protestors in the vicinity – and, as always, they will be prevented from getting anywhere near the site of the exhibition - and possibly marring a day’s weapons shopping.
Although the majority of the personnel employed to keep the protestors out are from private security firms, the London police will also play a large role, and this year their management are less than happy about having to participate.
The UK police are currently burdened with what has been called the largest investigation in the history of the country – analysis of the recent bombings in central London.
The UK’s Independent newspaper is reporting that the current estimate of the cost of policing the four day event is reckoned at £1Million per day . . .
Because the police will be deployed outside the exhibition area, the organisers aren’t obliged to contribute to the cost – that’s the taxpayer’s job . . .
“ All elements of the supply chain come together at DSEi “ London, 13-16 Sept.
Really Magazine would like to be able to tell readers what’s at the end of the chain – but couldn’t find any details on the DSEi website .
22 AUG 05
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Report from the center #4
If anyone doubts the importance of energy-supply for maintaining the ‘West’’s development at the level to which it has become accustomed, they should read the energy report from the University of Colorado at Boulder. It was first released in 2003, but remains just as relevant today ( if not more so ).
The 52 page report is entitled “ What Every Westerner Should Know About Energy ” , and describes in stark detail predictions about the West’s ( actually referring to the western US ) supply resources for the next century or so.
And the future, it seems, is black. At least around Colorado, where over 30% of the US coal reserves are to be found. Coal is “ The West’s cheapest and most abundant fossil fuel “.
“ Placing a chunk of coal by every bedside reading light would enhance every Westerner's status as an energy expert “ says the lead author, professor Limerick.
As for oil: “ Oil is too valuable to burn “ being the source material for making crayons, shoes, bubble-gum, lipstick and ‘guitar strings ‘ ( ? presumably they’re referring to the Nylon ™ variety )
To sum up - “ The public attention to the predicted oil shortfall is essentially zero “.
Get a full-blown reality check on energy ( and cultivate a “ one-stop
worrying “ ethos too ) at ;
Editor’s note :
If any readers would like to compose a short poem
about the West’s imminent energy problems, please send them in. The
mini-poems should consist of five anapaestic lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 should
have seven to ten syllables and rhyme with one another. Lines 3 and 4 should
have five to seven syllables and also rhyme with each other.
19 AUG 05
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Pleistocene rewilding.
You might not immediately think of the plains of North America when considering elephants, cheetahs, lions and camels.
But that could be a mistake, as all four were residents there during the Pleistocene era.
Now researchers from Cornell University want to redress the situation - with ambitious plans to re-introduce an impressive list of animals which have now become extinct in the US.
"Obviously, gaining public acceptance is going to be a huge issue, especially when you talk about reintroducing predators " says the lead author of the research paper, Josh Donlan.
Regardless of the PR difficulties, preparations are underway for a pilot study which will, slowly but surely, begin ‘rewilding’ the area - with the release of endangered Bolson tortoises in New Mexico ( on a private ranch ).
* * *
The research paper is in the latest issue of Nature, (subscription reqd.)
which also carries this untimely news flash . . .
for the Cornell pages, see:
18 AUG 05
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Engineering the future . . .
If you needed to generate power for a biomicroelectromechanical system ( bioMEM ), what better way to do it than via a biological method ?
Researchers from the A*Star Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore have devised a method of generating electricity – from urine.
Using a magnesium anode, and a copper chloride cathode, the device can supply 1.5 mW for several hours from just two drops.
An average healthy human produces 1,200 ml per day, so the electricty-generating capacity is evidently fairly substantial – though media headlines about power sources for mobile phones and even transport systems are obviously greatly exaggerated . . .
There is a puzzling detail, however, which Really Magazine hasn’t been able to resolve. The chemical equation governing the battery’s operation is given in the research paper as :
Mg > Mg2+ + 2e-
2CuCl +2e- > 2Cu + 2Cl-
And, as readers will have noticed – there is no mention of uric acid in the equation . . . is it possible, then, that any ( suitable) liquid would activate the system ?
For full details, see this month’s Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.
* * *
p.s. also see: http://www.unit5.org
17 AUG 05
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All right, all right, don’t get carried away . . .
SCI’s have now reached the alarming level of 6%. At least in Turkey.
The SCI’s in question are ‘ Score Celebration Injuries ’. viz. injuries which disable professional football players during post-goal-scoring displays.
The displays can include :
Sliding (prone or supine) ,
Sliding while Kneeling ,
Piling up on Jubilant Teammates,
and being Tackled while Racing Away . . .
The Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Traumatology , Karsiyaka, Izmir, Turkey, examined 152 soccer players over the course of two years, and found an alarming range of S.C. Injuries which included ankle, clavicle, and rib fractures; medial collateral ligament sprain; low back strain; hamstring and adductor muscle strain; quadriceps muscle sprain; and coccyx contusion . . .
Conclusions ? :
“ Exaggerated celebrations after making a goal, such as sliding, piling up, and tackling a teammate when racing away, can result in serious injury. “
That's a warning.
Results published in this month’s American
Journal of Sports Medicine.
16 AUG 05
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Adran Astudiaethau Theatr, Ffilm a Theledu.
“ We found that the highest levels of enjoyment and importance came from those who saw watching it as going on a spiritual journey. It was not just ' entertainment ' “.
What are we referring to ?
The ‘not just entertainment’ in question was ‘Lord of the Rings III ‘, and the research, published over the weekend, was performed by the Film and Television Studies dept. at the University of Wales.
The ESRC funded study took in 25,000 people in 20 countries, was conducted in 13 different languages, and lasted a year and a half. The largest ever study of its kind.
Really Magazine hasn’t been able to determine the exact conclusion of the research, but the university’s Professor of Film and Television Studies helps clarify things like this :
Movies are : “ for many of us a place to work out a bit what might be wrong with the world “ .
for details see : http://www.esrc.ac.uk
* * *
p.s.
“ An unexpectedly large number of unskilled
manual workers had read the books “ . Well !, there's posh
for you . . .
15 AUG 05
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Attentional rubbernecking
Researchers from Vanderbilt University , Nashville, have just completed a study into ‘ attentional rubbernecking ’.
Subjects
of the experiment were shown, for example, violent or er0tic photos.
It seems that they are distracting.
They found that “ people fail to detect visual images that appear one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after viewing neutral images.”
The researchers have provided a website page, with on-line tests, which you can use to gauge your own attentional rubbernecking vulnerability level.
Conclusions ? :
“If you are simply driving down the road and you see something that is s3xually explicit on a billboard, the odds are that it is going to capture your attention and – for a fraction of a second afterwards – you will be less able to pay attention to other information in your environment,”
That will no doubt come as a welcome surprise to ad agencies . . . who, acting on a hunch and backed-up by pure luck, have been exploring similar effects for decades . . .
* * *
Full details of the research is published in this month’s Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, ( no on-line content ) ( along with ‘ Capacity and Limits of Associative Memory in Pigeons ‘ )
Editors note :
The image above is our own, shown by way of example. It is not in any way associated with the university study.
12 AUG 05
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Nuke industry cleans up . . .
Think what you can do with a £Billion . ($1.8Billion) You could build a ‘ Millenium Dome * ‘.
Then imagine that you had sufficient cash to build 56 Millenium Domes, you’d now have enough to clean up ‘decommission’ the UK’s aging nuclear power stations.
A report released today ups the previous estimate by £8Billion ( to £56Billion ) , and the work is now estimated to take 70 years ( if all goes well ).
Really Magazine would like to take a wild guess that accurately estimating the cost of a seventy-year über-engineering scheme may be a touch tricky for the civil servants involved – in fact, as far as we are aware, no civilisation in the history of the planet has ever been able to foresee the outcome of such a long term project with any kind of reasonable accuracy.
In all likelihood, Really Magazine won’t be around to report the final cost of the work when it’s completed in 2075 ( assuming all goes exactly according to plan ). To be on the safe side, we’d estimate that the UK taxpayers might need to resign themselves to the idea of coming up with, say, ten to one hundred times the current ‘estimate’ ?
Note: The $1Billion dome was eventually sold to a developer for £0.50 . . . ( yes, that’s 50p.)
11 AUG 05
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Mutant die off.
A report in this week’s Nature magazine claims that 19 years after the Chernobyl disaster, biodiversity around the nuclear site is now better than before the accident.
The 4000 square kilometer site – which is still classed as uninhabitable for humans – now contains around 100 species from the IUCN red list.
The research, conducted by the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in Kiev, focuses on the idea that mutant animals and plants ( which are still common in the area ) tend to die younger than their counterparts which happen to be healthy.
The news will be welcomed by the local authorities, who want to develop the site – for ecotourism . . .
In fact, tourist groups can already visit the site, but levels of radioactivity
are still too high for long stays. Unless a truly miraculous clean-up technique
is devised, radiation levels will stay off-the-scale for “ hundreds
of millennia “ – so it seems that there will be plenty
of time for more studies into the biological effects of radiation.
10 AUG 05
Caution :
Contents may be hot.
10 AUG 05
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Celluloid on the couch.
If you happen to be in London 3-6 November 2005, why not check out epff3 ?
epff3 is the third European Psychoanalytic Film Festival. There will be a programme of screenings, discussion groups, and presentations by a distinguished panel of experts.
To clarify, the festival won’t be exclusively concentrating on ( the few ) films made about the subject of psychoanalysis - but will look instead at ‘ ordinary ‘ films - though the eyes of a psychiatrist.
The festival website has a list of films which are up for psychoanalytic sctrutiny, though only a few have yet received the treatment.
Films thus far analysed include Michael Radford’s Il Postino, and, of course, Hitchcock’s Psycho.
If readers would like to suggest the titles of any films which could benefit from a psychiatric reading – please get in touch.
Our suggestions would include Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage ( 1987 ) , David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) , or anything from Woody Allen - e.g. Bananas (1971) ,
p.s.
The site also hosts a ‘ quiz ’ page, which will “ test your knowledge of European Film “ . . . ( allegedly . . . but could there be a hidden agenda . . . ? )
09 AUG 05
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Semantic ambiguity unraveling.
A week or so ago we drew attention to a phrase on the London Aquarium’s website :
“ For every day of the year there is a species of fish at the London Aquarium.” - and we wondered which species it was . . .
Now, a new joint study from the University of Dundee, Scotland, and University of Turku, Finland, has shone further light onto the problems of semantic ambiguities . . .
Experimentees were shown ‘mini stories’ with deliberately ambiguous pronouns taking the form -
" Medicines can be harmful to young children. Make sure you keep them locked in the bathroom cabinet."
– and an Eyelink II tracker was used to determine which characters in the story they were concentrating on – thus showing how they’d interpreted the text.
The research refutes earlier work which showed that the experimental participants simply tended to favor the first-mentioned noun-phrase.
Now it has been shown objectively that subjects favour subjects over objects. ( or is it subjectively ? )
The research was recently published in the journal Psychological
Science.
08 AUG 05
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Irrefutable evidence ( of an aquatic nature ).
As private investigators and police forces know, you can find out a great deal about someone by going though their rubbish.
The same technique, modified slightly and applied on a grander scale can show interesting details about entire populations.
Researchers from the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research , Milan, used mass spectrometry techniques on sewage from the towns of Cagliari, Latina, Cuneo, and Varese, ( and surface river water ) to look for the levels of benzoylecgonine – and were very surprised by the findings – published today.
Benzoylecgonine is excreted in the urine of cocaine users.
“ The largest Italian river, the Po, with a five-million people catchment basin, steadily carried the equivalent of about 4 kg cocaine per day.”
By using data from the latest population census, the team were able to calculate the average amount of cocaine-use per head of population . . . equating to 28 ‘lines’ per day per 1000 people . . . more than 2.5 times the official previous estimates.
The idea of monitoring sewage works to estimate drug use was proposed in 2001*, by the US Environmental Protection Agency. ( see :' Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products as Environmental Pollutants Illicit Drugs in Municipal Sewage ' ) , but the Italian research is the first ( publicly published ) study.
The authors suggest that the method, which, in principle, could be extendable to some other “ drugs of abuse , could be further refined “ to become a standardized, objective tool for monitoring drug abuse.”
See: (.pdf)
' Cocaine
in surface waters: a new evidence-based tool to monitor community drug abuse '
from this month’s Environmental Health journal.
* * *
Many thanks to the Guardian for the lead.
* Editor's comment :
Surely someone must have thought of it before ?
05 AUG 05
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Tattooed fruit
In
April this year we
ran an item about the benefits ( or not ) of using small, sticky, Price
Look-Up (PLU) labels on fruit.
It seems that customers ( and producers ) might not have to put up with them for much longer.
Patented laser tech allows fruit to be ‘ tattooed ’ by burning a number ( or any other graphic ) into the flauvido ( upper skin ). The tech was patented over a decade ago, and one company has been marketing a laser-powered fruit coder for a couple of years now.
But laser-etched produce has only recently been appearing on supermarket shelves ( See New York Times July 19th ).
Coming soon (?) advertising on bananas . . . It's just a matter of time.
04 AUG 05
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Macho pinned down.
If you wanted to study macho-ness you’d have to define it first. A new study from Cornell University defines it in the following way :
You are (alledgedly) macho if :
You support the war in Iraq,
you’re homophobic, and
you’re considering purchasing an SUV.
The study tested 111 undergraduates ( male and female ) by asking them to fill-in a ‘ gender identity survey ’. Unbeknown to the participants, their answers were ignored, and they were given ( random ) feedback which assigned either a “ masculine or a feminine identity “ to them.
Follow-up questions found that the female participants were not particularly concerned by the feedback, whilst the male participants “ were strongly affected “ ( if assigned as feminine )
In fact :
" if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq war more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle."
The study, entitled " Overdoing Gender: Testing the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis." will be presented at the American Sociological Association's 100th annual meeting in Philadelphia on Aug. 15.
Also see, by the same author :
“ The effects of government-issued terror warnings on presidential approval ratings “
Did the number of terror warnings boost the president’s ratings ? Sadly, as (might be ) expected, they did . . .
There’s a hint of a common denominator between the two studies . . . but we are struggling to pin it down. Is that a problem for you ? So ? And ?
03 AUG 05
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Cost of space.
AllAfrica.com is reporting that the Nigerian president , Olusegun Obasanjo , is intending that “ Nigerians will land in space between the next 15 and 25 years. “
We’re not quite sure what ‘landing in space’ means, but the president promised last week that his country is determined to carry on with an ambitious space programme.
Nigeria already has a presence in orbit. In Sept 2003 it launched a UK built satellite from the Pletesk Cosmodrome in Russia.
The $13Million bird was part of the ‘ Disaster Monitoring Constellation ’ programme. Its onboard cameras ( resolution down to 32 metres ) are used for ‘remote sensing’ during global catastrophes – but, of course, can be used for any other purpose when not required by the programme.
( Think : ‘resources management’ , say, for example, monitoring oil pipelines. )
The AllAfrica article for some reason doesn’t mention that nearly 60% of the Nigerian population live in ‘abject poverty’ ( less than a dollar a day ). What would they make of the idea of their country investing in space travel ?
* * *
Some factoids: ( source CIA.gov )
Life expectancy : 46.74 years.
People with HIV/Aids : 3.6 million.
Oil production : 2.4 million barrels/day. ($144M)
In the same year that NigeriaSat-1 was launched, the country was
ranked 2nd worse on the planet in Transparency International’s ‘Corruption
Perception Index ‘ . . .
02 AUG 05
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Demand almost always off.
A few years back, when the www was beginning to get a grip, most users had to rely on costly pay-by-the-minute dial-up connections. Now that tens of millions have ‘always-on’ broadband they tend to leave their machines, errrr . . . . ‘always-on’ . . .
Even with the use of ‘power saving’ options which turn off the monitor and hard-drive motors after a few minutes of inaction, the computer will still use at least $20 or so of power per year. Multiply that by the number of broadband users worldwide and the figure will run into $Billions.
Many users, who only need their machine intermittently during the day or night, would be happy to leave it switched off - and just turn it on when they need it – but they don’t – because booting the machine and getting it logged on is such a mind-numbingly tedious process.
So, apart from the fact that it’s profoundly irritating, there is another downside to slow-booting computers. By slowly guzzling power on a truly global scale, they are certainly not helping to ‘save the planet’.
How can things be improved ?
There would need to be a radical re-write of the common operating systems, and some hardware tweaks. Technically, it’s not a problem. If standard machines had a small bank of flash memory which would store an ultra-basic ‘connect to the www p.d.q. routine’ and the required software was efficiently written, then there’s no reason why a computer couldn’t boot up and connect to the internet in, say, five to ten seconds. ( providing your i.s.p. is up to speed of course )
It’s not going to happen. One of the reasons is a psychological one. Computer users have come to accept that their machines just need a minute or so to ‘boot’.
They don’t.
They didn’t fifteen years ago, and they don’t now.
Complain to your operating system supplier soon ; today ; now. – help
to save the planet – and your patience.
01 AUG 05
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