Monthly Archives: September 2006

Parrot sketch

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Alexander Cockburn, in quasi-sentimental mood..

I was nearly 30 and yearned for escape. I could see English politics stretching drearily ahead. After Wilson’s return there would be James Callaghan. After Callaghan, Michael Foot. After Foot, Neal Kinnock. After Kinnock…One day in the late summer of 1972 I had occasion to be in the portion of south London known as Balham. It was hot, and the streets infinitely dreary. I must get away, I muttered to myself, like Razumov  talking to Councillor Mikulin  in Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.

I turned in the direction of the subway station. A dingy sign caught my eye, in a sub-basement window. Parrot readings. I was puzzled. Surely it should be Tarot. I knocked, and the sibyl, in Indian saree, greeted me. She had tarot cards and a parrot, a method of divination with an ancient lineage in India. She dealt the cards. The parrot looked at them, then at me, then at the fortune teller. Some current of energy passed between them. The sybil  paused,  then in a low yet vibrant voice, bodied forth the future to me , disclosing what lay ahead in British public life. Her lips curved around the as yet unfamiliar words “New Labor”. Falteringly, raising her hands before her eyes in trembling dismay at the secret message of the cards, she described a man I know now to have been Tony Blair. I paid her double, then triple as, amid the advisory shrieks of the parrot, she poured out the shape of things to come.

Within a week, obeying the promptings of the parrot, I had booked a flight to New York and a new life. Ahead of me lay a vast political landscape, seemingly of infinite richness and possibility. Never for a moment have I regretted my journey westward. That parrot in Balham had read the cards correctly. It is probably still alive, and I’m sure that if I were to return for another consultation, it would cry out, “I could have told you so”, and cackle heartily as it described the blasted expectations raised by Democrats stretching from Carter to Clinton…

Thanks to Godfrey Boyle for spotting it.

CrackedForSure

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Unable to protect its PlaysForSure Digital Rights Management (DRM) software from FairUse4WM, a tool that renders its file-sharing restrictions impotent, Microsoft has filed suit against its creator, “Viodentia,” alleging he illegally accessed copyrighted Microsoft source code….

Trouble is, they have no idea who he (or she) is!

A true shaggy dog story

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From BBC NEWS…

A breakdown patrol man who came to the rescue of a woman motorist has managed to get her car started using her dog.

Juliette Piesley, 39, had changed the battery in her electronic key fob but was then unable to start her car.

When AA patrolman Kevin Gorman arrived at the scene in Addlestone, Surrey, he found its immobiliser chip was missing.

Ms Piesley said her dog George had eaten something, and realising it was the chip, he put the dog in the front seat and started the car with the key.

Mr Gorman said: “I was glad to get the car started for the member.

“They will now have to take George [the dog] with them in the car until things take their natural course.

“It is the first time that I have had to get a dog to help me to start a car.”

PC on a stick

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Time was you only got toffee apples on a stick. But now an outfit called MojoPac is claiming that its stuff enables you to take your entire computing environment with you on an iPod — or even a USB stick. Sadly, I do not have a Windows PC on which to try it, but my colleague Tony Hirst does, and I await his report with interest.

Social networking for the discriminating customer

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Well, that’s what it implies.

Socialize with the people you know – and want to know – in a safe, ad free environment where you control who has access to your personal content.

According to The Register, Wallop (where do they get these names from?) “was spun out from Microsoft’s IP ventures program and research department. Microsoft holds an equity stake in the company.” Apparently you have to be invited to become a member. How exclusive is that! Just like a Frat House in an Ivy League college. Wonder if they do online hazing?

Conflict resolution

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Here’s a good idea — a site that

lets you enter shared bills and objectively know where you stand with your friends. When you’re on the go, you can record debts from your phone via SMS. The notion of borrowing is extended to include your personal library so you can track which things are lent out. There’s all sorts of cool features like auto-splitting bills, ties into amazon’s product lookup system for tracking your book collection, etc.

Link via BoingBoing.

Posted in Web

Misunderstandings

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“Free Bruce Schneier talk in LA today, 7PM” is the headline on a Boing Boing post today. My first reaction was: “Huh? Bruce Schneier has been arrested?” And then the correct interpretation dawned.

Reminds me of that old joke about the graffiti response to notices on walls in public spaces saying “Bill Stickers will be Prosecuted”: BILL STICKERS IS INNOCENT!

The speech

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Listening to Tony Blair’s valedictory speech I was struck by two thoughts. The first is how good he was at reminding his party about how and why it won office (and, by implication, warning it not to forget that lesson). The second was that, but for his single, colossal misjudgement about Iraq, he would have gone down as one of the great reforming prime ministers in British history.

There were some really good lines in the speech — for example, his crack about Labour’s “core vote” being the people of Britain rather than its traditional “heartlands”. The observation that the only Labour party tradition he abhorred was “failure”. And his frank admission that some of the things that were done by Thatcherism had to be done if Britain were to become a modern country. Nobody who recalls the chaos of the Wilson/Heath/Callaghan years will dispute that.

That said, Blairism wasn’t the continuation of Thatcherism by other means. Listening to his recital of what his administration has done in terms of renewing the country’s public services, schools, hospitals, etc., it was impossible to believe that a Tory government would have done the same. A few weeks ago I met an American who had been a student here in the 1970s and hadn’t been back to the UK since. He was dumbstruck by how much had changed — for the better. And he was right.

So long as it stuck to domestic issues, the speech was terrific. But the moment it moved on to the ‘war’ against terrorism, it lost its way. Just like its author.

Google to push for more efficient PC power supplies

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Report by John Markoff in today’s New York Times…

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 25 — Google is calling on the computer industry to create a simpler and more efficient power supply standard that it says will save billions of kilowatt-hours of energy annually.

In a white paper to be presented Tuesday on the opening day of the Intel Developer Forum here, two leading data center designers at Google will argue that the industry is mired in inefficiency for historical reasons, dating to the introduction of the first I.B.M. PC in 1981. At that time, standard power supplies, which convert high-voltage alternating current to low-voltage direct current, were required to provide multiple output voltage, which is no longer necessary in today’s PC’s.The Google plan calls for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard. Although voltage conversion would still take place on the PC motherboard, the simpler design of the new power supply would make it easier to achieve higher overall efficiencies.

The Google proposal is similar in its intent to an existing effort by the electric utility industry to offer computer makers financial incentives for designing more efficient power supplies for personal computers. Existing PC power supplies vary widely in efficiency, from as high as 90 percent to as low as 20 percent… Er, an even better idea after making servers more power-efficient would be to move to ultra-thin-client networking along the Ndiyo model.

As the push for efficiency in power supply design continues to gain traction, the shift to more streamlined solutions is becoming increasingly important in sectors beyond just personal computing. For industries relying on continuous uptime and minimal power disruption, a UPS system is essential. A distributor of Schneider APC can provide tailored uninterruptible power solutions to ensure that businesses maintain stability, even during fluctuations in power quality. By integrating more efficient power supply designs, such as those advocated by Google, UPS systems can help optimize energy usage and provide greater cost savings over time.

In addition to offering enhanced power protection, UPS systems from trusted providers like Schneider APC can also support the modernization of energy infrastructure within data centers and beyond. With the focus on single-voltage systems, the adoption of more efficient power supplies will enable UPS devices to operate with higher overall efficiency, safeguarding equipment from downtime while driving energy savings. This evolution aligns with the broader trend toward sustainability and efficiency in the tech and energy sectors.