This mean cat is me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Someone who shall remain nameless said to me today that they’d opened a bag of sweets “because we needed something for the mousetrap”. I replied that it was the best excuse I’d heard for opening chocolates and they then said “you’ll put that on your blog now won’t you.”
Yep 🙂
Also this month’s excuse for a cat picture.
One phone call from 2Day FM in Australia to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for acute morning sickness that shouldn’t have happened is now worldwide news for the wrong reason. The DJs impersonated the Queen and Prince of Wales and were put through to the Duchess’ nurse who revealed medical details. The call was recorded and authorised for broadcast by the station management.
Soon there were two professional, caring nurses humiliated, no doubt also fearful of disciplinary action, one takes her own life, lives are left devastated and a shadow is thrown over what should be a time of anticipation and joy for the royal couple. For what? The radio station involved can say “it was just a prank” all they like but it wasn’t, a prank would be ringing a random hospital pretending to be the Queen, this was simply an attempt to pry into a private life, to satisfy the need to know every last detail of famous people’s’ existence, to feed the obsession, to get listeners, ad revenue, notoriety.
Some have defended the DJs saying they couldn’t have foreseen the outcome, but surely they could have foreseen that at least someone could have lost their job. Maybe it’s another case of how people are becoming increasingly disconnected from the feelings of others but in the end the result was a tragedy.
[BBC News]
Contemporary rendering of a poster from the United Kingdom reading “Keep Calm and Carry On”, created during World War II. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Look at your phone or tablet, most will say Made in China, Korea or Taiwan, some will say Designed in California, but what about the technology at the very heart of the device? Where were the creators of that based? Silicone Valley? Shenzhen?
More than likely they were based in the UK.
Despite the likes of Jeremy Clarkson implying that if it’s designed or made in Britain then it’ll inevitably go wrong our nation has produced some of the best minds in technology, architecture, literature and science… in the world.
Most PCs, even Apple Macs run on chips that are designed to be compatible with the Intel processors that powered the earliest IBM PC and their dependents. Mobiles though need less power-hungry processors and this is where the Brits come in.
Back in the eighties Acorn (who had created the BBC Micro computer to accompany a pioneering TV show intended to teach computing to the public, and one of the first computers I learnt on) created the Acorn Archimedes which used a RISC processor – which basically uses a simplified set of instructions to run programs which allows for powerful processors using less actual power – perfect for mobile devices which was why Apple chose the processor for their Newton handheld and were one of the three partners that formed ARM. Our school had an Archimedes and it seemed like a glimpse of the future compared to the BBCs and PCs. We had no idea.
Since then ARM has developed the core designs that they licence to manufacturers such as Samsung who build the chips that drive iPhones, Galaxy SIIIs, HTC One Xs, LG Nexus 4s, Nexus 7s, Kindle Fires… You get the idea.
The other company that has done the same with graphics chips is Imagination Technologies. In the early nineties Hossein Yassaie joined the company and decided that computer graphics were the future, shortly afterwards he decided that people would one day want to do everything they could do on a PC on a mobile – a vision that seemed impossible to many at the time due to limits of the available technology. However, like ARM, Imagination’s technology had lower power demands. As smartphones have taken off, so has demand for both ARM and Imagination’s designs.
Their strength lies in the demand for new phones, the latest, faster, brighter, better, smarter every year; chipmakers couldn’t each dedicate the kind of design teams that the British firms have to such projects and so licensing from these independents is the perfect solution, and of course having so much design talent and experience in just two companies helps to ensure constant innovation to keep us all equipped for the future.
[Also BBC News]
discovery channel ship (Photo credit: the queen of subtle)
This week has seen much confusion for oceanographers in the Pacific. Scientists from the University of Sydney tried to visit Sandy Island between Australia and New Caledonia, identified on everything from marine charts to Google Earth it was nowhere to be found and the ocean beneath its supposed location was 4,500 feet deep.
That’s a lot of island to lose – an exceptional case of coastal erosion perhaps? Or maybe one of the errors that map makers have deliberately added to maps to show who’s copied their work?
Probably the best solution has been proposed by Shaun Higgins from Auckland Museum who has found records from the whaling ship Velocity which recorded the island around 1876. It is possible that the crew were mistaken about what they saw or where they were. Since then it has been applied to all other maps of the area. Google has removed the island from its database stating to AFP that they welcome feedback and “continuously explore(s) ways to integrate new information from our users and authoritative partners into Google Maps”
Whatever the cause it’s an error that has lasted until today, demonstrating the vastness of our Earth’s oceans and how much there’s still to find, or not as the case may be.
Death Star Memorial (Photo credit: sabertail)
Both the UK and USA have websites where the populace can start e-petitions to highlight concerns on subjects as diverse as immigration, the health service, troops in Afghanistan and whether the US should build a Death Star by 2016. Er, pardon?
To quote from the petition: “By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense,”
Admittedly noble sentiments but a Death Star, really? Seems some people just can’t let go of the Star Wars programme.
I’m reminded at this point of the end of Dr Strangelove…
Credit Card (Photo credit: 401(K) 2012)
We take it for granted today, we sit down, fire up a browser on our computer, tablet or phone, load up our favourite news site, tech blog, webcomic or whatever and for most of these we don’t have to have ever entered any credit card details – unlike buying a magazine or newspaper.
And then many people complain about adverts and install ad blockers without considering one important thing; without the ads the website wouldn’t be there, or you’d have to pay for it yourself. The other problem with this expectation of no-cost browsing is that sites like Wikipedia which don’t have ads still have to pay for servers, offices and the staff who look after the site despite having an army of volunteers but don’t receive enough donations to keep going.
This blog is provided ostensibly free of charge via WordPress but has adverts (visible to non WordPress.com users) which I have never seen myself but have been reliably informed are there, I couldn’t justify paying for the ad-free version at the moment. I personally only block adverts on other sites I visit that cause problems with my browser as I appreciate that ads are a necessary part of our free and open internet, just as regular users of donation-based sites aught to donate.
Someone once said there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and for the moment this one’s no exception.
In this day in age, there is no longer privacy anymore. The reason why I bring this up today, is that because of what happened to Duchess of Cambridge Kate and William. They were just enjoying their time together in a remote area where they were just relaxing, and the press takes shots of Kate topless. I mean where do we draw the line? Celebrities and Royal Family is entitled to their privacy too. Even with Prince Harry in Vegas. I mean leave them alone, they are entitled to have fun too and do what they like too. The media always has so much time on their hands that they want to cover news like this all the time. It shouldn’t happen. Peoples privacy is at stake. It is not cool to invade someones privacy. You always here, oh this celebrity is vacationing off this island, or this celebrity is…
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Longfellow's 21st Century Lunch 