Lyons was a huge company. It didn't just make tea, it had a massive bakery division and also ran a very successful line of high street tea and coffee shops (think Starbucks - they were that common). It also did almost everything in-house - from vehicle maintenance to manufacturing its own machinery.
Finally, the company was seen as a very progressive concern - from the way it treated its workers (many of whom were women), through to adopting the latest business techniques - often from the US.
One of the original tasks was payroll automation - a huge task in a massive company with hundreds of pay grades and pre-decimalised coinage. But LEO came into its own when it was to process orders from these shops.
At the end of each day's business, managers would telephone a summary of their day's trading and their next order to Lyons HQ where the information was put on to punch tape and sent to LEO. The computer could then produce a collation of the orders to go to the bakeries, print dispatch slips, even generate a packing order for the trucks so that fragile items were added last!
LEO was even used to predict buying patterns - which foods were most popular at certain times of the year or in certain regions and ensure that supplies were ready for timely manufacture.
LEO was so successful it was then put to work for the government determining tax information for the Chancellor's budget and timetabling British Railways. Naturally it was such an advanced computer that it had to be killed off by one of the Labour Party's periodic bouts of nationalisation. The spin-off LEO Computers Ltd. was folded into the larger English Electric to become English Electric LEO, which then became English Electric LEO Marconi and finally ICL who eventually disappeared into the maw of Fujitsu.
There's an excellent book about LEO: 'A Computer Called LEO' by Georgina Ferry, ISBN 1841151866, Harper Collins UK, 2004. Well worth anyone's time. And the LEO project is remembered at LEO Computers Society.
Half life just means that half the nuclei present in any given quantity of an element will have decayed in that period. A quarter will last for two half lives or longer, an eighth for three or longer, and so on.
So infinitesimally small numbers of nuclei can survive a huge number of half lives from their origin in a supernova long before the Earth was formed.
This story also says a lot about the state of modern detection that it can find these nuclei.
It'll be a brave lawyer who threatens North Korea with patent violation.;)
The nuclear chain reaction was patented in the UK in 1934 by Leo Szilard. To guarantee secrecy it was later transferred to the British Admiralty, but by 1938, Szilard had lost faith that chain reactions were feasible and recommended the patent be withdrawn. In January 1939, when he learned that fission had been observed in uranium, Szilard sent an urgent telegram to the Admiralty telling them to disregard the cancellation.
I'm not sure (but would love to know) if the UK passed Szilard's patent, (along with all the rest of our nuclear secrets), to the US Manhattan Project. Certainly Szilard never collected on his original patent and his attempts to get money out of his patents from the US government came to nothing.
The Trinity design, and by extension the first Soviet and British weapons, was a solid sphere of plutonium at the centre of which was the neutron source known as the initiator, or by its designers - the Gadget. There was a subcritical mass of plutonium in the bomb, but if it was compressed it would become supercritical and explode (compressing, reduces the distance between nuclei making it more likely that a neutron from one fissioning nucleus will hit another and propagate a chain reaction).
The compression was achieved using a sphere of high explosive lenses which when detonated acted to symmetrically squeeze the plutonium core into a tiny fraction of its original volume. At the same time, the initiator would be crushed, rupture and begin spilling additional neutrons into the core of the bomb. The timing here is crucial, there is actually only a tiny tiny fraction of a second for the bomb to reach optimum conditions for fission, so even though the initiator spits out billions of neutrons, only ten or so are present at the crucial moment!
The Trinity design was pretty much obsolete in the US from about 1948 when the US exploded a series of bombs in Operation Sandstone. These weapons used a so called levitated core - a hollow core of plutonium rather than a solid core. The hollow core allows for much greater compression and allows plutonium to go much further. It also led to smaller, lighter weapons that could be put on a missile.
The broad design of Trinity has been known for some time now, but what has been much less understood are the designs of the explosive lenses, the detonators for the lenses and perhaps most secretive - the initiator.
Knowledge of the initiator design was crucial for the Soviet Union to explode Joe 1 in 1949, they got that from spies within the Manhattan Project, including Klaus Fuchs who had been on the initiator design team. When the US excluded the UK from nuclear weapons research (despite the UK providing them with many of the key technologies), Fuchs and co. went on to help design the first British weapon, Hurricane, which was detonated in 1952 a few days before America exploded Mike, the first true hydrogen bomb.
Over here in the UK the one striking fact about HD releases so far is how bad the selection has been. It's almost as if studios think the likes of 'Alien vs. Predator' and 'Fantastic Four' will suddenly be transformed into boxoffice gold by the high definition fairies.
Me? HD-DVD gets a little bit more of a thumbs up by not using region coding.
'The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced... The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.'
Its high time we got back to teaching Aristotle in physics and Genesis in biology - these modern consensuses drawn up using experimental evidence get in the way of a good debate. Forwards to a glorious Ptolomaic Universe!
The hyperinflation of the Yeltsin years was a direct result of Western economic advisors enforcing a rapid transition to market economics. All of this was done under the 'Washington Consensus' of the IMF, World Bank, and US Treasury. At first, they opened the markets to imports without any attempt at preparing the domestic market, then watched as domestic producers went out of business and capital fled the country in the form of buying imports with ever devaluing roubles. To cure the hyperinflation they'd unleashed, the advisors then enforced an austerity regime involving a lack of credit, high interest rates (killing off those industries that could have survived with access to loans) and removal of subsidies on basics like bread and energy which hit the poorest people hardest.
According to The World Bank (not known for its enthusiasm for Communism) 1.5% of the population lived in poverty (less than $25 per month) in the last days of Communism; that went up to somewhere between 39% and 49% by 1993. This is a collapse akin to that of the Great Depression in the West - and look what nasties that spawned.
The Communist economic system needed to be dismantled, but the way it was done in Russia was barbaric. We botched it, now we're reaping the consequences.
It doesn't matter what the current missiles CAN do, its what future missiles COULD do and what the Russians THINK America wants to do.
To clarify. Poland and the Czech Republic are on Russia's doorstep, less than a generation ago they were firmly inside the orbit of Moscow. Now, not only are they members of NATO but they are enthusiastically embracing the policies of the US military. This is bound to set red lights flashing in the Kremlin. Imagine the reaction in Washinton if Ottawa announced it was placing Russian missiles in Ontario - the US would see it as a grave provocation within its sphere of influence.
Secondly, long term treaty aims are to reduce the amount of MIRVing on missiles AND to reduce to the number of missiles. The Russians are already coming from behind on this, they have large fleets of liquid fuelled SS18 missiles, well past their sell-by date, but capable of putting 10 warheads pretty much anywhere in the US. If they go down the treaty route they'll find themselves surrounded by anti-missile stations that MAY be upgradeable to take out Russian missiles.
Russia was humiliated by the end of the Cold War, it lost its Empire, saw its beliefs collapse and then allowed its economy to be destroyed by Western 'reformers'; the end result was millions of Russians in horrifying poverty, the collapse of the economy, social system, education, and in large parts of the country, law-and-order. Now, it has discovered it has unbelievable power in the form of its energy reserves, it has massive amounts of foreign currency sloshing around, AND in the form of Putin, the fabled Russian strong man who can unite the country.
American policy towards Russia under Bush has been a disaster, it has provoked confrontation after confrontation, rolled its tanks up to the borders, abbrogated long-standing treaties and acted like Russia was a backward nation. Putin is using national resentment to give America (and Britain in particular) a serious case of the jitters.
Whether American missiles can destroy Russian missiles is almost immaterial, it gives the Russians a chance to throw their not-inconsiderable weight around, and it offers their, let be honest, stunning missile designers, plenty of opportunities to bring in a new generation of planet killers. Putin can now make sure he's succeeded by a fellow strong man and Russia can really start to influence European politics - at the end of the day, it's going to be the gas taps as much as the warheads that will make Europe gradually turn towards the East. And that may not be a good thing.
But you can be sure this will also have been noticed in Beijing - another cash-rich country will soon be pouring money into solid-fuelled, MIRVed missiles. China is almost certain to build a missile submarine fleet and expand its own Pacific fleet - which brings another force into direct conflict with US strategic interests. At the end of the day, can the US compete in an arms race against TWO superpowers?
Oh yes, its a less-useful rival to the Apple eMate - just 10 years late. The eMate had instant on, large screen, amazing battery life, a proper keyboard, network connectivity, productivity apps - AND handwriting recognition - AND it was built to withstand pretty much any punishment from carrying it around.
Come on Apple, show us the real portable, lightweight computer.
Extraordinarily, the complainants include Amazon; who ship CDs and DVDs into the UK from their warehouse on Jersey. In doing so they avoid sales tax and can undercut high street retailers. If importing from a low-cost region is good enough for Amazon, what's CD Wow! done wrong?
I agree that Russia should face up to what they did after the war but to dismiss their sacrifices during WWII and to make the Baltic states look like innocent lambs is disgraceful. Don't lump one with the other.
I've never heard an apology from the Russians for the 2 years of collusion between Germany and the USSR brought about by the Nazi Soviet Pact, which resulted in the occupation and division of Poland, annexation of the Baltic States and mass deportations to the gulag. Not to mention the endless provision of war materiel to the Nazis so that they could prosecute their war against the West.
The Russians like to portray their losses as a heroic battle against fascism, but the Soviet Union fed the monster that eventually turned against them. A little bit more criticism of their own actions would be useful.
...she's not demanding enough.
$75,000 damages?
In this day and age?
In America?
What sort of lawyers has she got?
Let's add a couple of zeroes to that number - then we'll be talking about teaching the university a lesson it won't forget.
This isn't Homeland Security (U.S. department). This is the Home Secretary (U.K. minister). Unless you really believe that the U.K. is now part of the U.S. that is.
The whole of Tony Blair's foreign policy has been to make our foreign policy indistinguishable from that of the US. Clearly we've entered an even more exciting part of the New Labour project where you get to run our domestic policy.
How they're going to tell Rupert Murdoch he's no longer responsible for taxation, broadcasting and law and order I just don't know.
Steve Jobs - easily the most stubborn man in high tech meets our alcoholic, belligerent, bullying Minister of the Interior.
At last, Dr. (economics (Marxist ones at that)) John Reid will come up against someone every bit as awkward as him - although unlike Reid, Steve Jobs sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
Apple and Sony will tell Dr. Demento that they don't make their products in the UK, nor do they design their products in the UK and that the UK only represents a tiny part of their market so they see no need to burden themselves with additional costs just so that John Reid can bolster his chances of leading a clapped out Labour Party by looking tough on crime.
I just hope Steve Jobs is a little more blunt about it and shows Reid just where he can stick a music player in order to deter thieves.
'Windows Vista is starting to look like those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale...
Unlike Vista, Persian rugs only contain a single flaw.
The fact that I never claimed I could is probably as meaningless to you as any other fact that does not fit your dogma. I'm not saying that logic has anything to do with your rant, but it would seem a tad nonsensical to ask someone to point to a doomsday prediction that has already come to pass.
High latitude, ozone depletion was a near catastrophe. Predicted on thermodynamic grounds by Rowland and Molina in 1974, first measured by the British Antarctic Survey in 1978-79. Left unchecked it would have had disastrous effects on the productivity of the Antarctic Ocean and human activities at high latitudes.
Re:I disagree with Smart Appliances being listed
on
The Top 21 Tech Flops
·
· Score: 1
Bar codes work better.
All good points. If I can add another?
When bar code readers fail to read the code, the operator can simply type in the unique number of the item. When RFID goes wrong - erm - I guess they're going to need to print a unique number as well. So what's the chip for again?
It's nothing to do with developing a competitor. Ever since the EEC was founded by the Treaty of Rome, there have been a series of binding legal agreements on member states to enforce free trade. With a few minor exceptions, it is illegal for a member state, or an organisation operating inside the EU, to create barriers against the free movement of people, goods or services. Differential pricing can be seen as an impediment to free trade between members and therefore falls under the remit of EC Law (EEC, EC and EU - yep it's complicated).
If there is thought to be a case against Apple and the record companies then the EU Commission can refer the case to the European Court of Justice for a decision. If they are found to be in breach then the EU has the power to impose penalties on the companies.
From David Davies (Shadow Home Secretary) to Sir Gus O'Donnell (head of the Civil Service):
'I am writing to you in relation to the Government's planned roll out
of its national identity card scheme, commencing this year. You will be aware
that there is a longstanding convention that one Parliament may not bind a
subsequent Parliament.As you will also be aware, the Conservative Party has
stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID cards project
immediately on our being elected to government. You are now formally on notice
of our position and fully appraised of the contingent risks and associated
liabilities arising from the national identity card scheme.'
The Earth does contain billions of tonnes of uranium, but almost all of it is locked away in uneconomic quantities - you just can't get your hands on it for a reasonable amount of money - and never will.
That's not to say it's uncommon; according to 'Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand'; global uranium reserves that can be mined for less than $130/kg amount to about 4.7 million tonnes. At current rates of consumption and no reprocessing that's about 85 years of supply. Include fast breeder reactors and reprocessing of spent fuel and you can spin that out to about 2,500 years. Non-conventional reserves such as low-grade phosphates could be as high as 35 million tonnes.
Of course these numbers get more complicated since deposits aren't uniformly distributed around the globe and the length of time they will last will go down if we choose to expand nuclear power generation. And we mustn't forget that there are political questions over whether we are prepared to allow countries that we disappove of to generate nuclear power. The latter problem becomes even more pressing if we want to make a decision about reprocessing; any country that can reprocess spent fuel into reactor grade plutonium can make a perfectly serviceable bomb.
Uranium reserves could be supplemented by thorium breeder reactors; the Indian Advanced Heavy Water Reactor and KAMINI programmes are designed specifically to use that country's massive reserves of thorium rather than its relatively small supply of uranium.
'Radical measures for tackling crime - ranging from monitoring the behaviour of the mentally ill with radio chips to hormone injections for sex offenders -- are to be considered by the Government in a wide-ranging policy review ordered by Tony Blair.'
Knowing this lot you can be sure they'll start selling it to other parts of the population - after all if you can do it for the mentally ill you can do it to anyone. I can imagine the sales pitch;
Say mum and dad the Home Office is offering to chip your kids. Just think how horrible it will be if little Johnny got lost in the city; but now there's no need to worry, one little chip and any policeman will know his home address and return Johnny to you safe and well. Peace of mind? Priceless.
Grandad. How's that diabetes? Wouldn't it be terrible if you fell into a coma and were unable to tell A&E about your other medical conditions? One little injection and we'll know everything. The best in health care? Priceless.
Illegal immigrants - how can we be tougher? We're going to chip all legal migrants. If you're an employer you'll want to know all your employees are legal, that's easy with one of our Home Office certified RFID scanners. No chip? no place! Acceptable xenophobia? Priceless.
I hate to tell people what they can and can't create on their computer, but if there were a situation that warranted it this might be it. I guess the real question is whether this starts down the slippery slope.
You might hate telling people what to do, but the corrupt authoritarian technocratic millionaires who run New Labour thrive on telling people what they can't do, what they must do, what they must pay to do it, where they can do it and where they can't, what they can eat, drink or smoke when doing it (and what they cannot), when, where and how long they can protest about not being allowed to do it - sorry not that one - what they can say to do it and what they must report to the authorities if they see someone else doing it.
There is no aspect of life too small for New Labour to feel that they shouldn't exert total control; they may not understand it - hell they usually don't - but they are terrified of not controlling people (apart from Rupert Murdoch who controls them). To back it up - more than 3,000 new criminal offences since 1997 - that's just about one new offence every day since they came to power.
In fact their only saving grace is that they give me a good laugh when visiting the US and I hear how the Bush administration is the worst threat to freedom in history. After the American horror stories I take a deep drink and say 'Well you thought Dubya was bad, let me tell you about Tony...'
He did use to be a Marxist and he did accept hospitality from Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadic whilst Sarajevan civilians were being shelled in the streets - but he's not a Nazi.
Let me start by saying I am an athiest. Now, about this. I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?
This kookfest was on the UK's Channel 4 News in the summer. They had one of the museum's 'scientists' standing next to Adam and Eve's animatronic pet baby T-Rex and explaining that there was no problem with the exhibit since dinosaurs didn't eat meat before the Fall of Man.
Presumably the knife-edged teeth were for particularly tough mango skins.
The real question is, if Jesus were to drop on by, would he approve of $25M being spent on religious idolism?
No, the real question would be how a dark-skinned, bearded religious fundamentalist from the Middle East got into the country without Homeland Security knowing about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, the company was seen as a very progressive concern - from the way it treated its workers (many of whom were women), through to adopting the latest business techniques - often from the US.
One of the original tasks was payroll automation - a huge task in a massive company with hundreds of pay grades and pre-decimalised coinage. But LEO came into its own when it was to process orders from these shops.
At the end of each day's business, managers would telephone a summary of their day's trading and their next order to Lyons HQ where the information was put on to punch tape and sent to LEO. The computer could then produce a collation of the orders to go to the bakeries, print dispatch slips, even generate a packing order for the trucks so that fragile items were added last!
LEO was even used to predict buying patterns - which foods were most popular at certain times of the year or in certain regions and ensure that supplies were ready for timely manufacture.
LEO was so successful it was then put to work for the government determining tax information for the Chancellor's budget and timetabling British Railways. Naturally it was such an advanced computer that it had to be killed off by one of the Labour Party's periodic bouts of nationalisation. The spin-off LEO Computers Ltd. was folded into the larger English Electric to become English Electric LEO, which then became English Electric LEO Marconi and finally ICL who eventually disappeared into the maw of Fujitsu.
There's an excellent book about LEO: 'A Computer Called LEO' by Georgina Ferry, ISBN 1841151866, Harper Collins UK, 2004. Well worth anyone's time. And the LEO project is remembered at LEO Computers Society.
So infinitesimally small numbers of nuclei can survive a huge number of half lives from their origin in a supernova long before the Earth was formed.
This story also says a lot about the state of modern detection that it can find these nuclei.
It'll be a brave lawyer who threatens North Korea with patent violation. ;)
The nuclear chain reaction was patented in the UK in 1934 by Leo Szilard. To guarantee secrecy it was later transferred to the British Admiralty, but by 1938, Szilard had lost faith that chain reactions were feasible and recommended the patent be withdrawn. In January 1939, when he learned that fission had been observed in uranium, Szilard sent an urgent telegram to the Admiralty telling them to disregard the cancellation.
I'm not sure (but would love to know) if the UK passed Szilard's patent, (along with all the rest of our nuclear secrets), to the US Manhattan Project. Certainly Szilard never collected on his original patent and his attempts to get money out of his patents from the US government came to nothing.
The Trinity design, and by extension the first Soviet and British weapons, was a solid sphere of plutonium at the centre of which was the neutron source known as the initiator, or by its designers - the Gadget. There was a subcritical mass of plutonium in the bomb, but if it was compressed it would become supercritical and explode (compressing, reduces the distance between nuclei making it more likely that a neutron from one fissioning nucleus will hit another and propagate a chain reaction).
The compression was achieved using a sphere of high explosive lenses which when detonated acted to symmetrically squeeze the plutonium core into a tiny fraction of its original volume. At the same time, the initiator would be crushed, rupture and begin spilling additional neutrons into the core of the bomb. The timing here is crucial, there is actually only a tiny tiny fraction of a second for the bomb to reach optimum conditions for fission, so even though the initiator spits out billions of neutrons, only ten or so are present at the crucial moment!
The Trinity design was pretty much obsolete in the US from about 1948 when the US exploded a series of bombs in Operation Sandstone. These weapons used a so called levitated core - a hollow core of plutonium rather than a solid core. The hollow core allows for much greater compression and allows plutonium to go much further. It also led to smaller, lighter weapons that could be put on a missile.
The broad design of Trinity has been known for some time now, but what has been much less understood are the designs of the explosive lenses, the detonators for the lenses and perhaps most secretive - the initiator.
Knowledge of the initiator design was crucial for the Soviet Union to explode Joe 1 in 1949, they got that from spies within the Manhattan Project, including Klaus Fuchs who had been on the initiator design team. When the US excluded the UK from nuclear weapons research (despite the UK providing them with many of the key technologies), Fuchs and co. went on to help design the first British weapon, Hurricane, which was detonated in 1952 a few days before America exploded Mike, the first true hydrogen bomb.
How come it's stocking *ANY* HD disks?
Over here in the UK the one striking fact about HD releases so far is how bad the selection has been. It's almost as if studios think the likes of 'Alien vs. Predator' and 'Fantastic Four' will suddenly be transformed into boxoffice gold by the high definition fairies.
Me? HD-DVD gets a little bit more of a thumbs up by not using region coding.
'The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced ... The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.'
Its high time we got back to teaching Aristotle in physics and Genesis in biology - these modern consensuses drawn up using experimental evidence get in the way of a good debate. Forwards to a glorious Ptolomaic Universe!
According to The World Bank (not known for its enthusiasm for Communism) 1.5% of the population lived in poverty (less than $25 per month) in the last days of Communism; that went up to somewhere between 39% and 49% by 1993. This is a collapse akin to that of the Great Depression in the West - and look what nasties that spawned.
The Communist economic system needed to be dismantled, but the way it was done in Russia was barbaric. We botched it, now we're reaping the consequences.
To clarify. Poland and the Czech Republic are on Russia's doorstep, less than a generation ago they were firmly inside the orbit of Moscow. Now, not only are they members of NATO but they are enthusiastically embracing the policies of the US military. This is bound to set red lights flashing in the Kremlin. Imagine the reaction in Washinton if Ottawa announced it was placing Russian missiles in Ontario - the US would see it as a grave provocation within its sphere of influence.
Secondly, long term treaty aims are to reduce the amount of MIRVing on missiles AND to reduce to the number of missiles. The Russians are already coming from behind on this, they have large fleets of liquid fuelled SS18 missiles, well past their sell-by date, but capable of putting 10 warheads pretty much anywhere in the US. If they go down the treaty route they'll find themselves surrounded by anti-missile stations that MAY be upgradeable to take out Russian missiles.
Russia was humiliated by the end of the Cold War, it lost its Empire, saw its beliefs collapse and then allowed its economy to be destroyed by Western 'reformers'; the end result was millions of Russians in horrifying poverty, the collapse of the economy, social system, education, and in large parts of the country, law-and-order. Now, it has discovered it has unbelievable power in the form of its energy reserves, it has massive amounts of foreign currency sloshing around, AND in the form of Putin, the fabled Russian strong man who can unite the country.
American policy towards Russia under Bush has been a disaster, it has provoked confrontation after confrontation, rolled its tanks up to the borders, abbrogated long-standing treaties and acted like Russia was a backward nation. Putin is using national resentment to give America (and Britain in particular) a serious case of the jitters.
Whether American missiles can destroy Russian missiles is almost immaterial, it gives the Russians a chance to throw their not-inconsiderable weight around, and it offers their, let be honest, stunning missile designers, plenty of opportunities to bring in a new generation of planet killers. Putin can now make sure he's succeeded by a fellow strong man and Russia can really start to influence European politics - at the end of the day, it's going to be the gas taps as much as the warheads that will make Europe gradually turn towards the East. And that may not be a good thing.
But you can be sure this will also have been noticed in Beijing - another cash-rich country will soon be pouring money into solid-fuelled, MIRVed missiles. China is almost certain to build a missile submarine fleet and expand its own Pacific fleet - which brings another force into direct conflict with US strategic interests. At the end of the day, can the US compete in an arms race against TWO superpowers?
Come on Apple, show us the real portable, lightweight computer.
Extraordinarily, the complainants include Amazon; who ship CDs and DVDs into the UK from their warehouse on Jersey. In doing so they avoid sales tax and can undercut high street retailers. If importing from a low-cost region is good enough for Amazon, what's CD Wow! done wrong?
I've never heard an apology from the Russians for the 2 years of collusion between Germany and the USSR brought about by the Nazi Soviet Pact, which resulted in the occupation and division of Poland, annexation of the Baltic States and mass deportations to the gulag. Not to mention the endless provision of war materiel to the Nazis so that they could prosecute their war against the West.
The Russians like to portray their losses as a heroic battle against fascism, but the Soviet Union fed the monster that eventually turned against them. A little bit more criticism of their own actions would be useful.
...she's not demanding enough. $75,000 damages? In this day and age? In America? What sort of lawyers has she got? Let's add a couple of zeroes to that number - then we'll be talking about teaching the university a lesson it won't forget.
This isn't Homeland Security (U.S. department). This is the Home Secretary (U.K. minister). Unless you really believe that the U.K. is now part of the U.S. that is. The whole of Tony Blair's foreign policy has been to make our foreign policy indistinguishable from that of the US. Clearly we've entered an even more exciting part of the New Labour project where you get to run our domestic policy. How they're going to tell Rupert Murdoch he's no longer responsible for taxation, broadcasting and law and order I just don't know.
Steve Jobs - easily the most stubborn man in high tech meets our alcoholic, belligerent, bullying Minister of the Interior.
At last, Dr. (economics (Marxist ones at that)) John Reid will come up against someone every bit as awkward as him - although unlike Reid, Steve Jobs sounds like he knows what he's talking about.
Apple and Sony will tell Dr. Demento that they don't make their products in the UK, nor do they design their products in the UK and that the UK only represents a tiny part of their market so they see no need to burden themselves with additional costs just so that John Reid can bolster his chances of leading a clapped out Labour Party by looking tough on crime.
I just hope Steve Jobs is a little more blunt about it and shows Reid just where he can stick a music player in order to deter thieves.
'Windows Vista is starting to look like those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale... Unlike Vista, Persian rugs only contain a single flaw.
High latitude, ozone depletion was a near catastrophe. Predicted on thermodynamic grounds by Rowland and Molina in 1974, first measured by the British Antarctic Survey in 1978-79. Left unchecked it would have had disastrous effects on the productivity of the Antarctic Ocean and human activities at high latitudes.
Bar codes work better. All good points. If I can add another? When bar code readers fail to read the code, the operator can simply type in the unique number of the item. When RFID goes wrong - erm - I guess they're going to need to print a unique number as well. So what's the chip for again?
It's nothing to do with developing a competitor. Ever since the EEC was founded by the Treaty of Rome, there have been a series of binding legal agreements on member states to enforce free trade. With a few minor exceptions, it is illegal for a member state, or an organisation operating inside the EU, to create barriers against the free movement of people, goods or services. Differential pricing can be seen as an impediment to free trade between members and therefore falls under the remit of EC Law (EEC, EC and EU - yep it's complicated).
If there is thought to be a case against Apple and the record companies then the EU Commission can refer the case to the European Court of Justice for a decision. If they are found to be in breach then the EU has the power to impose penalties on the companies.
From David Davies (Shadow Home Secretary) to Sir Gus O'Donnell (head of the Civil Service):
'I am writing to you in relation to the Government's planned roll out of its national identity card scheme, commencing this year. You will be aware that there is a longstanding convention that one Parliament may not bind a subsequent Parliament.As you will also be aware, the Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID cards project immediately on our being elected to government. You are now formally on notice of our position and fully appraised of the contingent risks and associated liabilities arising from the national identity card scheme.'
The Earth does contain billions of tonnes of uranium, but almost all of it is locked away in uneconomic quantities - you just can't get your hands on it for a reasonable amount of money - and never will. That's not to say it's uncommon; according to 'Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand'; global uranium reserves that can be mined for less than $130/kg amount to about 4.7 million tonnes. At current rates of consumption and no reprocessing that's about 85 years of supply. Include fast breeder reactors and reprocessing of spent fuel and you can spin that out to about 2,500 years. Non-conventional reserves such as low-grade phosphates could be as high as 35 million tonnes. Of course these numbers get more complicated since deposits aren't uniformly distributed around the globe and the length of time they will last will go down if we choose to expand nuclear power generation. And we mustn't forget that there are political questions over whether we are prepared to allow countries that we disappove of to generate nuclear power. The latter problem becomes even more pressing if we want to make a decision about reprocessing; any country that can reprocess spent fuel into reactor grade plutonium can make a perfectly serviceable bomb. Uranium reserves could be supplemented by thorium breeder reactors; the Indian Advanced Heavy Water Reactor and KAMINI programmes are designed specifically to use that country's massive reserves of thorium rather than its relatively small supply of uranium.
Microchips for mentally ill planned in shake-upe ws/2007/01/17/ncrime17.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
'Radical measures for tackling crime - ranging from monitoring the behaviour of the mentally ill with radio chips to hormone injections for sex offenders -- are to be considered by the Government in a wide-ranging policy review ordered by Tony Blair.'
The whole briefing document is at http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/policy_review/docu ments/crime.pdf (PDF document)
Knowing this lot you can be sure they'll start selling it to other parts of the population - after all if you can do it for the mentally ill you can do it to anyone. I can imagine the sales pitch;
Say mum and dad the Home Office is offering to chip your kids. Just think how horrible it will be if little Johnny got lost in the city; but now there's no need to worry, one little chip and any policeman will know his home address and return Johnny to you safe and well. Peace of mind? Priceless.
Grandad. How's that diabetes? Wouldn't it be terrible if you fell into a coma and were unable to tell A&E about your other medical conditions? One little injection and we'll know everything. The best in health care? Priceless.
Illegal immigrants - how can we be tougher? We're going to chip all legal migrants. If you're an employer you'll want to know all your employees are legal, that's easy with one of our Home Office certified RFID scanners. No chip? no place! Acceptable xenophobia? Priceless.
And so on...
You might hate telling people what to do, but the corrupt authoritarian technocratic millionaires who run New Labour thrive on telling people what they can't do, what they must do, what they must pay to do it, where they can do it and where they can't, what they can eat, drink or smoke when doing it (and what they cannot), when, where and how long they can protest about not being allowed to do it - sorry not that one - what they can say to do it and what they must report to the authorities if they see someone else doing it.
There is no aspect of life too small for New Labour to feel that they shouldn't exert total control; they may not understand it - hell they usually don't - but they are terrified of not controlling people (apart from Rupert Murdoch who controls them). To back it up - more than 3,000 new criminal offences since 1997 - that's just about one new offence every day since they came to power.
In fact their only saving grace is that they give me a good laugh when visiting the US and I hear how the Bush administration is the worst threat to freedom in history. After the American horror stories I take a deep drink and say 'Well you thought Dubya was bad, let me tell you about Tony...'
Actually he isn't.
He did use to be a Marxist and he did accept hospitality from Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadic whilst Sarajevan civilians were being shelled in the streets - but he's not a Nazi.
Just one question - is he worse than Blunkett?
Let me start by saying I am an athiest. Now, about this. I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?
This kookfest was on the UK's Channel 4 News in the summer. They had one of the museum's 'scientists' standing next to Adam and Eve's animatronic pet baby T-Rex and explaining that there was no problem with the exhibit since dinosaurs didn't eat meat before the Fall of Man.
Presumably the knife-edged teeth were for particularly tough mango skins.
The real question is, if Jesus were to drop on by, would he approve of $25M being spent on religious idolism?
No, the real question would be how a dark-skinned, bearded religious fundamentalist from the Middle East got into the country without Homeland Security knowing about it.