Paper tape drives

Yep, they work too - the magnetic clutch type. Maximum frequency is a bit limited, and it absolutely knackers the tape. That was a long time ago--.

Where do they get this data?

I am sitting on the edge of a village (Bramley), only just over a mile from the edge of Basingstoke. I am 3 miles from both BT and Virgin Media national backbone fibre routes. less than 2 miles from here are the UK headquarters of a number of major telco equipment manufacturers.

No-one in our area (several thousand households) can get more than 2Mb, and for most (like me) 512k is the limit - and that required considerable attention from helpful local BT guys before it was stable.

This is due to historical accident, the BT local loops head off to a distant rural exchange. Nothing can be done, the area is "not economic" to upgrade, and doesn't appear on the radar as "remote rural" so won't get any grant assistance.

Last September I stayed in a remote B+B on the western tip of Skye - 15 miles by single track road from the nearest small town. 8mbit/sec.

Somehow the powers that be need to be made to understand that there is a "micro-climate" problem, and broad-brush "deprived rural area" approaches are a waste of money.

RAMAC was not quite the first

Elliott had a thing called the ENRDC-401 in 1953, three years before RAMAC. Very few were made, however.

While

Old tale from ICL on the use of "while". Code written in Bracknell wouldn't run in West Gorton (Manchester). The compiler was written and maintained in Manchester.

Now, in southern thinking "while" means "during" or "until" so "do x during the period y is true"

In Lancashire, it means "when", so "don't do x until y happens"

You can see the source of confusion.

"Luxury" (to quote Python)

In our area, there is zero mobile bandwidth, and 512k DSL.

Where's that? On the outskirts of Basingstoke-.

Methinks this survey is a little optimistic.

Still waiting--

For the first policeman to try this on a Google Street View car.

That first graph--

- seems to show "other renewable" dropping to zero by 2030, and hydro slowly dropping slowly all the way to 2060.

Now obviously individual wind turbines etc. have a limited life, but this doesn't seem right--.

Half a mouse

Many years ago I was called to service a machine - the owner had discovered the back half of a mouse sticking out of one of the fans. I was delighted to find that the front half had been comprehensively minced.

IBM--

Back in the day, IBM managed to trademark /2 as part of the PS/2 launch--.

And lose them

Our particular 14 year old can barely find his socks. What will the average "time to lose" be for an ID card? And what happens when it's lost?

Has anyone in the cabinet actually got kids? Oh yes, Gordon--.

I tried to sign up--

- and failed. I have Egg Visa and Mastercard, and both signup routes failed at the same point: they denied that my card number existed.

That was some weeks back. Egg have yet to come back with an explanation.

I await with interest the first time my card gets blocked--.

I've seen the real Wanking Walrus

- at San Diego Seaworld. Used its back flippers quite inventively, and caused a lot of kids to ask "Mummy, what's he doing?"---.

Freedom of Speech vs Freedom from Abuse

It's interesting to see this debate both there and in other forums (notably the US-centric Net Neutrality group). The attitude of US-based posters is, frankly, worrying. It is noticeable that the NNsquad mailing list will not even accept posts which discuss the situation outside the US.

First off, I assume that no-one is suggesting that freedom of expression should include "freedom to store and propagate images of the sexual abuse of children".

In the UK, the law is plain: to even attempt to view such material is illegal - so knowingly entering the URL of an image into a broswer toolbar is illegal. On consideration, I think that is about right.

The UK authorities (Home Office) asked the ISP industry to make efforts to block access to (specifically) paedophile websites. This was done in full knowledge that such blocking was an incomplete solution - usenet, p2p, etc, provide plenty of online workarounds - but the idea was to prevent ACCIDENTAL access by the general public (kids, for instance!).

The Internet Watch Foundation (www.iwf.org.uk, to answer the "who are they" question) operates a public reporting service: anyone can contact them and report possibly infringing content. However, they then review the content (using a group of reviewers who have been granted specific immunity from prosecution) before adding specific URLs to the list of sites to block. That list is used by the ISPs.

This system has been in place voluntarily (from the ISP viewpoint) for aobut four years. The ISP industry has accepted this voluntary effort as the alternative would have ultimately been legislation, which is invariably heavy-handed.

The result of this is that a very small proportion of infringing images are hosted in the UK. Any such image is taken down very quickly.

Contrast with the US: there is no voluntary agreement, and much pressure against any such. The legal framework requires that infringing images be left up to assist the law enforcement agencies to trace the culprit. There is now a considerable amount of pressure from politicians to legislate, and the ISPs are caught in the middle. The US is one of the two countries that permanently head the list for hosting this type of content (the other is Russia: good company, guys!)

So the net result of the apparent determination of certain pressure groups to maintain "freedom" at all costs is that the US government is likely to legislate - and given the track record of the current administration at least, I'd be very wary of the result.

Get real: the UK and other countries have shown that a small degree of self-control prevents a deluge of draconian big-brother style legislation. Or do US citizens really WANT child porn?

I had a mate-

Who routinely did this with CO2 extinguishers - they advantage is you can give the smoker a short sharp, targetted squirt. Doesn't so much extinguish the fag, more blows it out of the smoker's mouth. And freezes his face for a few seconds into the bargain. No permanent damage, no cleaning, and one extinguisher gives you hundreds of shots.

Oscillations are dangerous

The only difference between the oscillations of the climate and those of climate change debate is that the latter occur much faster. What is needed is negative feedback to damp the latter.

Here's a small attempt:

There are indeed feedback mechanisms, positive and negative, some known, some to be discovered. An obvious positive one is the effect of temparature on albedo. Anyone who's seen the effect of exposed dark rocks on melting snow will know this. The reverse effect (cold = more snow = more reflection = more snow) is also a simple one.

However, there are also "destabilising events" that push the system. It is strongly speculated that the rise of the Himalyan plateau, with attendant jetsream disturbance and limestone weathering (which sequesters CO2) may be at least partially responsible for the Ice Ages. The Chixulub meterorite (or the Deccan Traps eruptions) may well have disturbed the climate sufficiently to do the dinosaurs in.

Eventually a new equilibrium is acheived.

But notice the timescales. If faced with storm, flood, and heatwave I, for one, am not inclined to say "oh well. it'll settle down in a couple of million years".

The Ephesus harbour was no doubt isolated from the sea by a long (centuries?) reduction in sea level. But what happened to the people who relied on the harbour? Did they wait??

In reverse, a rise in sea levels of a metre or two would have little effect on us over a period of centuries, but over a shorter period the human and economic cost of readjusting (IE moving and rebuilding all those shoreline cities) would be immense. Our civilisation is not equipped to plan over multi-century timescales.

It is undeniable that there has been recent warming (IE iover the last few decades). I can see it and feel it myself. It is likely, but not 100% proven, that this is due to human activity. But the effects over the coming decades are likely to be so severe (and expensive) that we have no alternative but to act on the partial information we have, and change what we can. When faced with a huge and immediate threat, you cannot afford to wait until you know exactly what the cause is, because by the time you do know, it'll be too late. "Oh shit, that's an angry grizzly heading for me. Now, what exactly is the current state of Ursine behavioural research, and should I call for further investigations?"

Ebay itself is the biggest offender

So they are requiring "businesses" to provide full contact details. Perhaps they'd care to apply that to themselves? I once tried to trace any postal address or phone number for any Ebay business - and there are several UK companies registered. Nothing in Europe. I was about to write to the only listed address (corporate headquarters) to take them to task about their utterly obfuscated "dispute" process, but decided life is too short.

This outfit (via PayPal) operates a financial service that has been the subject of attention from various financial authorities - and they still don't provide contract addresses.

I use Ebay, but only for small value items and *never* accept Paypal payment.

Compare with the likes of Amazon or (say) Egg: you can talk to humans at the drop of a hat, and they will help.

Airline Revenue Opportunity

Way back, the Daedalus column on New Scientist magazine propopsed the "collective responsibility vehicle" - a bus with each seat having a steering wheel and a coin slot. The direction of the bus was the result of the average input of all steering wheels, weighed by the amount of money put in each slot.

Now buses don't have the necessary hardware at the seat. But airliners all have seat back displays and buttons, and you can imagine the delight of the airlines at a proposal to add a credit card slot to those-.

Brings a whole new dimension to the old "take this plane to <insert dodgy republic>" stories!

Half baked

I fully support No2ID's aims BUT:

This certificate is all very well, but exactly what purpose does it serve? Who is every going to see it? The "How it Works" section on their website is delightfully vague - there seems to be an implication that merely (anonymously) downloading and (maybe) printing this thing is sufficient in itself!

An appropriate limerick

With apologies to an old friend, now sadly deceased:

There was a young monster from Mars

With a terrible passion for cars

An exhaust manifold

Gave him pleasures untold

But left him with terrible scars

Seems to be relevant to this guy--.