May 23rd, 2006 §
Screw democracy! The IHT is running a story today that makes me wonder where the French ideas of equality and liberty have gone. In a debates about new copyright laws, in which the Senate wanted to make its classicly-French mark on European copyright law, the legislators ran into unprecendented lobbying, emails and contact from members of the public. Surely that would make you think again about your proposals, but the story goes on to quote Michel Charasse, ‘a senator since 1981′:
“Rarely in parliamentary life have those elected by the nation – deputies and senators – been subjected to so many letters, e-mails, menaces and pressures,” Charasse, said during the debate, to resounding applause from his colleagues. “I would ask the Senate staff to rigorously clean the corridors of the lobbyists from all sides who jump on us as soon as we leave the hall.”
Clear the corridors?! What, so they could get out without having to encounter the rif-raf of the public! I’m embarrassed for the French public that they have such disgraceful politicians as this!
IHT: In Paris, ‘iPod law’ unleashes lobbyists
Popularity: 4% [?]
May 22nd, 2006 §
Did you know that the guidelines on CPR technique have changed? The bodies that develop the procedures and techniques that two thirds of all cardiac arrest patients will receive, altered their advice on how ‘we’ should carry out Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. According to the American Heart Association, only 1-2% of those in New York city who experience Ventricular Fibrillation survive. With bystanders doing nothing, people are literally left on the street without CPR or Defibrillators, to die. In Seattle, in contrast, around 30% of those affected survive (link to data). It’s those of us who are with out friends or just walking around on the street, that happen to stop and wonder what’s happening, that make the difference. These new guidelines were created at the International Consensus Conference in Dallas, Texas in January 2005. The new guidelines are agreed with the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR).
The main new focus is on giving effective and unhalted chest compressions to accompany one second ventilations (breaths) that produce notable rise in the chest.
The compression to ventilation ratio is now agreed at 30 compressions to two breaths. 30 to 2. This is what I always ‘forget’ when I’m trying to remember my technique.
Techniques like raising the chin with two fingers to open the airway, using a finger to clear the airways, and a noted dissatisfaction with finding a pulse using the carotid artery, largely because many people find it hard to find. Instead we should look for signs of circulation like colour returning to fingernails when squeezed, coughing or breathing: these are the new consensus though, “Even if the victim takes occasional gasps, rescuers should suspect that cardiac arrest has occurred and should start CPR.”
See the new guidlines on response to cardiac arrest from the AHA (with full scientific information) or just the changes and current procedure from the ‘Currents’ Winter ‘05-’06 Journal.
The University of Washington Medical School has a great page on the three main steps for CPR illustrated with moving diagrams. Whatever you do, learn how to do save the lives of your friends. Even if they can’t, you’ll thank yourself for knowing how.
Popularity: 3% [?]
April 28th, 2006 §
When you get desperate to make a buck and you like a particular brand with good consumer cachet and a nice product range, there are a couple options. You can buy some of their stuff one the sly with bulk level prices and then try and sell them on, you can manufacture your own version of one of their products, or you can copy a vast swath of what they do, manufacturing, distributing and retailing the products as if a representative of the real company.
From the IHT: Next step in pirating: Faking a company
Popularity: 1% [?]
April 20th, 2006 §
This is like the coolest collection of shopping sites around. Though Wired News has joined them all together in an article because they’re apparently ‘wacky’, I think they sound great. A $3,000 recycled paper table, buying a cow or flock of geese for a family in a developing country, a website that sells only one product per day and a subscription for monthly underwear delivery through the mail that retails beechwood-fabric panties! Perfect!
Wired News: The 10 Wackiest E-Commerce Sites
Popularity: 1% [?]
March 15th, 2006 §
I just started using ma.gnolia as a linkroll instead of del.icio.us because ma.gnolia integrates a lot of security, personalisation and user experience features that I prefer. When, for example, you make a bookmark, the company makes a digital copy of that page on their server, saved forever. That’s fantastic but when I go to the ma.gnolia.com domain today, trying to register something, the website appears to have expired! Did someone forget to reregister it? It doesn’t give me a huge amount of confidence in the company that they don’t even register their own domain names properly!
As of right now, ~11AM GMT, I’ve replaced ma.gnolia with del.icio.us again.
ma.gnolia.com
Popularity: 1% [?]
March 1st, 2006 §
Then this is probably how they’d have designed the packaging.
Microsoft iPod on YouTube
Popularity: 1% [?]
February 20th, 2006 §
The American Government’s elite research body DARPA has created a game for troops that aims to teach common Arabic styles and approaches with body language. The game is important beecause body language plays such an important role in relations between soldiers and civilians who do not speak the same language.
One of the system’s creators says the training tool, known as Tactical Iraqi, has already been a great success. Hannes Vilhjalmsson, a research scientist at the University of Southern California, gave details of the Tactical Iraqi at a conference in St Louis, US.
The program teaches military personnel Arabic language skills and some key gestures such as an up-down movement with the right hand to ask someone to slow down and gives them tips such as removing mirror sunglasses when approaching local people.
US troops taught Iraqi gestures
Popularity: unranked [?]
February 17th, 2006 §
In the latest update to the Apple Macintosh OS X Operating System, now labelled ‘10.4.5′, Apple Computer have penned a short request to would-be hackers to not crack the Operating Stystem so it can be used on generic non-Apple hardware. The request is only really notable because it is written in verse. Technologically adapt users around the world have jumped at the chance to make the Apple OS work with hardware than can be bought at any standard computer store, rather than at the Apple Store’s more significant markup prices, and have been racing to make the system work. The recent transition to Intel processors instead of IBM PowerPCs has meant that the OS has for the first time been able to run on Intel’s more widely available (and cheaper) processors because software is designed for the specific processor on which it runs. This Intel shift has lead to, amongst other things, the first reported OS X Trojan Virus on macrumors.com website forum designed to look like an image download. Macrumors is one of the most widely read Macintosh-related sites on the internet and so is a logical home to anyone trying to find a large Apple user-base.
The transition to Intel has meant that many Apple users are more fearful of Viruses and such problems propagating on the Macintosh network of users, an issue to which Apple has largely been thought to be immune. Virus writers have to be adept at writing for the less-used Apple development environment to create a virus and now that this environment is more akin to the Windows one, virus threats are more likely. So it is with this in mind that Apple’s software engineers write to warn users not to hack into the OS X system.
First discovered on the OSX86Project.org website, a community which focuses on the movement from PowerPC to Intel (otherwise known as X86), the warning reads:
Your karma check for today:
There once was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind,
he’d do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.
Please don’t steal Mac OS!
Really, that’s way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc.
OSX86Project.org: Apple Seeks (Poetic) Justice
Popularity: unranked [?]
January 30th, 2006 §
If an airplane is on a large conveyor belt and is trying to take off by exerting the thrust needed to move it forward at 100 knots, and the conveyor belt starts moving backwards at 100 knots, will the plane be able to take off, or will it just sit stationary relative to the ground, with the backwards speed of the conveyor belt counteracting the forward thrust of the plane?
There is debate. I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s kind of cool.
Tempus Fugit: Airplane on a Conveyor Belt
Popularity: 1% [?]