The fact that Qantas allow the use of mobile ("cell") phones while the plane is taxi-ing is old news, but I noticed recently that there is a new exclusion that allows Bluetooth and WiFi devices to be used in the air.
you merely have to imagine answering it, at which point your chip will open the line and forward your thoughts to the gentleman on the other end.
Jesus.
Some people say that this is already possible. I think they call it "praying" or something. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I don't think you need a chip.
Because the detector vans can't actually 'catch' people watching such broadcasts on their computers
The detector vans?
Quick poll: Who believes the TV "detector vans" are real? They must be real! Right? In fact, I've seen the advertising for the new hand held TV detector units. "We know what Mrs Brown from number 7 is watching!" They would never lie to us! Would they??
If they didn't have detector vans, how else would they know if you had an "unlicensed" TV?
Well perhaps they might just be suspicious of any household that didn't have a TV license. This is the 21st century after all. If you have ever lived in the UK and not had a TV license you will know that you get a nice warning letter in the mail pretty quickly. "We noticed that you don't seem to have a TV license for some reason. Unless you are some kind of anti-TV weirdo, maybe you should go get a license, and then we won't have to fine you."
Their "detective" skills don't end there:
A colleague recounted a story where the TV license at his flat was in a friend's name, but the friend no longer lived there. Somehow they got suspicous, and sent someone to the door to investigate. A man turned up claiming to be from the post office, and made some excuse as to why he should be let in. When the "post office" guy entered the lounge room he wanted to know if there was a license for the rather obvious TV sitting there.
"Wait a minute. What do you care? You're from the post office right?"
The guy brings out some kind of ID card saying "TV License Inspector", with some small print about being an agent of the post office.
I heard this story before in relation to a software QA program: Introduce deliberate bugs and see if they get detected.
The moral to the story is to make sure that you go back and check that the bugs were actually resolved. Supposedly the plane-flip-over-when-crossing-equator bug was deliberately introduced ("They're sure to pick this one up!") but went through undetected.
I supposed this story was an UL, but some preliminary searches can't seem to turn it up.
It is scary to think that at one point I e-mailed the WebCrawler people to ask them how it worked. In response they sent me a copy of the source (Objective C for NeXT) so I could compile it up on my NeXT PC (I had a "black" NeXT - 68000 based) to index my intranet web server.
I doubt that someone like Google would send you a copy of their source these days - even if you asked nicely.
I could never get it to compile, and I deleted it long ago, but I kind of wish I had kept it now. An interesting piece of internet history.
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The fact that Qantas allow the use of mobile ("cell") phones while the plane is taxi-ing is old news, but I noticed recently that there is a new exclusion that allows Bluetooth and WiFi devices to be used in the air.
Some people say that this is already possible. I think they call it "praying" or something. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I don't think you need a chip.
I shudder to think of how much energy was wasted cleaning the whole internet. I know to ignore those e-mails now!
Did everyone else just skim over this one?
Because the detector vans can't actually 'catch' people watching such broadcasts on their computers
The detector vans?
Quick poll: Who believes the TV "detector vans" are real? They must be real! Right? In fact, I've seen the advertising for the new hand held TV detector units. "We know what Mrs Brown from number 7 is watching!" They would never lie to us! Would they??
If they didn't have detector vans, how else would they know if you had an "unlicensed" TV?
Well perhaps they might just be suspicious of any household that didn't have a TV license. This is the 21st century after all. If you have ever lived in the UK and not had a TV license you will know that you get a nice warning letter in the mail pretty quickly. "We noticed that you don't seem to have a TV license for some reason. Unless you are some kind of anti-TV weirdo, maybe you should go get a license, and then we won't have to fine you."
Their "detective" skills don't end there:
A colleague recounted a story where the TV license at his flat was in a friend's name, but the friend no longer lived there. Somehow they got suspicous, and sent someone to the door to investigate. A man turned up claiming to be from the post office, and made some excuse as to why he should be let in. When the "post office" guy entered the lounge room he wanted to know if there was a license for the rather obvious TV sitting there.
"Wait a minute. What do you care? You're from the post office right?"
The guy brings out some kind of ID card saying "TV License Inspector", with some small print about being an agent of the post office.
TFA has a caption that says "bathroom", but the photo is clearly a toilet rather than a bath tub.
Self cleaning or not, I'm not sure that's a very sanitary mistake to make!
Oh yeah, one other great thing about newspapers: no animated ads. :-)
Well not yet anyway, but they're working on it.
I heard this story before in relation to a software QA program: Introduce deliberate bugs and see if they get detected.
The moral to the story is to make sure that you go back and check that the bugs were actually resolved. Supposedly the plane-flip-over-when-crossing-equator bug was deliberately introduced ("They're sure to pick this one up!") but went through undetected.
I supposed this story was an UL, but some preliminary searches can't seem to turn it up.
It is scary to think that at one point I e-mailed the WebCrawler people to ask them how it worked. In response they sent me a copy of the source (Objective C for NeXT) so I could compile it up on my NeXT PC (I had a "black" NeXT - 68000 based) to index my intranet web server.
I doubt that someone like Google would send you a copy of their source these days - even if you asked nicely.
I could never get it to compile, and I deleted it long ago, but I kind of wish I had kept it now. An interesting piece of internet history.