This is why (a) I love geeks and (b) the rest of the world wonders what they’ve been smoking!
Er, full disclosure. I have a fancy piece of software that takes my digital photographs and processes them to mimic the grain pattern of, say, Tri-X B&W (i.e. analogue) film. When I demonstrate it to normal, rational people they shake their heads in wonderment and talk about leading-edge uselessness.
I’ve been testing the Dragon dictation App on the iPad and iPhone. Here’s the test passage with the corrections/omissions encased in square brackets.
Dear I [iPad] this is a most interesting development, and one that I hope we will be able to build on. If I can master [it] adequately I think it would make me more efficient. [On] The other hand, it might seem very strange to others to watch somebody talking to the screen. But if the fish is the games [efficiency gains] were worthwhile then I think I would be able to overcome my embarrassment.
I really like the way it interpreted “efficiency gains” and “fish is the games”! But for short passages (e.g. SMS) it’s often accurate enough — especially given the way iPhone/iPad autocorrect creatively garbles what I type.
Lovely cover on this week’s Economist.
American Cemetery, Madingley, late Autumn 2011. Photographed with a 90mm f2 Summicron, which is a revelation to use.
I’m writing about last week’s London Confererence on Cyberspace and while doing some background research came on a splendid YouTube video made by the British Ambassador to Mexico — in both English and flawless Spanish. But — you know how it is with YouTube — what should appear on the side but this wonderful Monty Python sketch about the British Embassy in Smolensk.
The result of this serendipitous discovery is that I have been unable to write for at least five minutes on account of a severe outbreak of uncontrollable laughter. You have been warned.
From the Canonical Blog.
Any new Windows 8 PC will have Secure Boot switched “ON” when it leaves the shop and will be able to boot Microsoft approved software only. However, you will most likely find that your new PC has no option for you to add your own list of approved software. So to install Linux (or any other operating system), you will need to turn Secure Boot “OFF”.
Hmmm… I wonder how many computer users will know how to do that — or understand why it might be necessary to do it. Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) wonders about that too:
Even with the ability for users to configure Secure Boot, it will become harder for non-techie users to install, or even try, any other operating system besides the one that was loaded on the PC when you bought it. For this reason, we recommend that PCs include a User Interface to easily enable or disable Secure Boot and allow the user to chose to change their operating system.
I go to London quite a lot. This wonderful device (a Brompton folding bike) has enabled me to stop using the Tube. And taxis. Over the years it’s more than paid for itself.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
W.B. Yeats
LATER: An email from Barry McMullin tells me that it’s probably a misattribution. It’s not clear that Yeats ever said it, and if he did he was paraphrasing Plutarch:
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”
Which suggests where Amazon got the name for its eReader.
Interesting commentary by Robert Peston.
Or to put it another way, the rescue does not promise a bright new dawn for Greece any time soon. Or to put it another way, the only way for the referendum to be won by Mr Papandreou would be for him to demonstrate that the alternatives are far worse.
For the rest of the world, those alternatives look shockingly bad.
They could include, in no particular order of probability or potentially devastating impact on the stability of financial market, default by Greece, exit by Greece from the eurozone or a much more generous rescue deal.
Let’s examine these.
A decision by the Greek government to renege on all its debts would impose huge losses on European banks, the European central banks and European taxpayers.
Such a default would raise the spectre of default by other over-indebted eurozone governments, which in turn would undermine the perceived solvency of some very big banks. We could be back in the territory of paralysis of the European financial system.
Or Greece might decide to quit the eurozone, so that the exchange rate would be able to fall to a level that would allow the Greek private sector to compete.
This could have the spurious attraction that it would mitigate the ostensible fall in Greek wages necessary for recovery.
But its impact on markets could be even worse than a default, it could be a default on steroids: if it became accepted that membership of the eurozone isn’t forever, huge doubts would arise about the true value of hundreds of billions of euros of contracts.
There is an even grimmer alternative Peston doesn’t mention: a military coup in Greece.
Cyclists have a touching faith in apparently robust bike locks. This pic (snapped on a Cambridge street yesterday morning) may persuade them to think differently. It shows how easily an apparently thick chain can be neatly snipped with bolt cutters. The work of a moment, I’d guess.
LATER: I had a nice email from Dermot Ryan, who knows a thing or two about this stuff.
The type of lock in your picture, which is a cable lock rather than a chain, is famous among experienced cyclists for being easily defeated. A bolt cutters, as you suggest, can dispatch one in seconds, but some of the cheaper versions can be bust open by simply pulling vigorously on the bicycle.
Suffice to say, one can put one’s faith to a large extent in robust bicycle locks made out of tempered steel (for example), but not cheap cable locks.
