The BBC have an article: “UKIP MEP in row over working women”. It’s worth reading, if only to laugh.
Expect to see this particular MEP assassinated by a militarist feminist group within the week.
Tag: news
Developers Play Air Guitar To Megadeth
The Register have a report on a survey of the musical tastes of IT specialists, by profession. If you’re a geek, date a geek, live with geeks, or whatever, it’s worth a look.
A Selection Of News Items From Around The World
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
Here’s some stuff I found interesting this weekend:
Swedish health workers, in an effort to stem the growing cases of chlamydia among young people, have launched a ‘condom ambulance [BBC News]. If you find yourself ‘caught short’ in Sweden, just give them a bell and they’ll rush around to your house with a pack-of-three, for the equivelent cost of about £4.
Chinese researchers have used a carbon nanotube [Wikipedia] as a filament in a new, experimental light bulb [The Register]. This bulb emits more light and works at a lower threshold than tungsten at the same voltage, and was still functioning fine after being switched on and off 5000 times. The future of lighting?
And finally, researchers from Hebrew University in Israel may have found a solution to the problems associated with passwords. As it stands, ‘secure’ passwords are hard to remember, and often find themselves written down, whereas insecure ones can be cracker. Plus, for real security, passwords should be …
The Register Takes Off In Aberystwyth
The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?
The Importance Of A Sensible Patent System In Europe
If Haydn had patented “a symphony, characterised by that sound is produced [ in extended sonata form ]”, Mozart would have been in trouble.
Click Here — Sign The Petition
Just thought I’d share that link with you. This is something which could eventually affect the way we all use computers. To those of you who don’t recognise these images or have no idea what I’m on about, I urge you to read about the issue of software patenting in Europe.
Thanks for listening.
The Register Takes Off In Aberystwyth
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?…
[picture removed]
Dan’s Best Impression Yet
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
Want to see me do my impression of a coconut?
[picture removed]
World’s Highest Bridge Completed
With it’s road surface 270 metres above ground, and 2,460 metres long, this bridge could be visualised quite well if you imagine a bridge joining the tops of Pen Dinas and Constitution Hill, in Aberystwyth. Just another impressive feat of engineering I thought I’d share with you. I like bridges. Read the full story here.
Blimps… In Space
Now here’s a funky idea – sub-orbital spaceflight in enormous helium balloons, up to a two-mile wide sub-space station (a permanant facility at the very boundries of our atmosphere). This could be used to carry spaceship components for assembly in orbit, and then launched using ion drives at a fraction of the price of rocket launches.
The designers estimate that they can have a functional prototype within seven years – given the funding they’d like – and that journeys into space could be done almost for free and much more safely (albeit at the time expense that it would take up to nine days to get there).
Marvellous.
Remember Microsoft vs. Netscape?
Then you’re old enough to appreciate this: OSNews is running an article about the upcoming fight between Google and Microsoft. Where the Netscape/Microsoft battle involved web browsers, the weapons of the Google/Microsoft battle will be search engines and e-mail services.
If you’re confused as to how companies can be fighting by trying to increase the market share of their free product, read the article.
EU To Use Quantum Crypto-Key Passing To Beat ECHELON
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[further parts of this post were recovered on 13 October 2018]
Now here’s an interesting article [security.itworld.com]. It seems that the European Union is investing €11 million over four years into developing a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography.
For those of you not in the know, quantum cryptography (for passing crypto keys) works like this:
Quantum Cryptography For Dummies
- Alice wants to send Bob secret message, confessing her undying love, but doesn’t want anybody else to know how she feels.
- She fires some photons out of a special tube, so that some of them spin in different directions.
- Numbers are assigned to the different directions of spin, and she multiplies these together – along with a few prime numbers, for good measure – to get a Really Big Number.
- Then, Alice does some clever sums on the letters in her love letter, using the Really Big Number.
- Alice posts the first line of the new love letter to Bob (the line that says “Dear Bob,”). This is known as the ‘message header’. If Bob sends a message back saying that he got this, Alice will send the rest of…
Wargames As Public Acceptance
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
There’s a lot of defence for wargames, as Command & Conquer: Generals to see how far this can be taken. In Generals (set in the near future), the United States unite with a (reluctant) China in order to suppress terrorism in (you guessed it) the Middle East. All sides have weapons of mass destruction, but the wording is clear: while the American WMDs are called “Superweapons” the Chinese have “Nuclear Weapons” and the arab states have “Biochemical Terror Weapons”. And that’s not all – the American soldiers all say things like “Doing the right thing,” and “Defending our people,” in true American Hero voices. Meanwhile, the other sides are made to sound insidious and crafty. The Armerican tanks have names like “Crusader” (yeh; let’s make a reference to Jerusalem, shall we?) and “Patriot”, while the global …
Killer Cyberloo Kidnaps Kiddie
As The Register reports, a Plymouth child was kidnapped on Saturday by a public convenience. Go read the story.
Futurama’s Coming Back
Okay, it’s not certain yet, but Wired News reports that it, and Family Guy (also killed by Fox) will make a comeback on Cartoon Network, with new episodes sponsored by the channel.
Yay. And, indeed, hey.
And in other news, to celebrate the change of name from Lindows to Linspire, Lindows.com are giving away copies of Linspire. All you have to do is try to buy a copy of the BitTorrent ISOs from their online store and enter LINDOWS as a coupon code.
Girl, 15, Charged With Child Porn Offences And Sexual Abuse Of Childen
Not the usual kind of story I link from my ‘blog, but this particular case is of interest because the girl in question is both the perpetrator and the victim, so to speak: she posted pictures of herself online, performing sexual acts. From what we can gather, she did this of her own free will and consent.
Read more on The Register. No word from the BBC yet.