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Posted: 24-01-2009 21:20 Post subject: The March of Technology

Apple's first Macintosh turns 25

The Macintosh - the first Apple computer to bear the name - turns 25 on 24 January.

The machine debuted in 1984 and kicked off a product line that were Apple's flagship computers for many years.

The Macintosh helped popularise the combination of graphical interface and mouse that is ubiquitous today.

The machine was unveiled using a hugely expensive TV advert, directed by film maker Ridley Scott and shown during the US Superbowl on 22 January 1984

The project to create the Macintosh was started by legendary computer maker Jef Raskin and the original machine had a 9in screen in an upright beige case, 128k of RAM, internal floppy drive, and came with keyboard and single-button mouse.

Apple had previously produced computers using a graphical user interface (GUI), such as the Apple Lisa. But those machines cost far more than the original Macintosh.

Although Microsoft had launched its operating system - MS DOS - in 1981 it was not until 1985, a year after the Macintosh made its debut, that it introduced its own GUI, Microsoft Windows. However, this did not enjoy significant popularity until the advent of Windows 3.x in 1990.

The Macintosh's relatively low price tag of £1,840 ($2,495) made it very affordable, said Mark Hattersley, editor in chief of Macworld UK.

"It was a hugely popular machine," said Mr Hattersley.

"It took desktop computing away from IBM and back to Apple for a good number of years," he said. "It brought the notion of the desktop graphical interface to the mass market."

The "Macintosh" moniker was reportedly taken from the name of Mr Raskin's favourite Apple - the McIntosh.

However, this form of the name had to be altered to avoid legal wrangles with another company already trading under that name.

Once successors to the first Macintosh were introduced by Apple, the original machine was re-badged as the 128k version.

The initial production run of the first Macintosh reputedly have the signatures of the design team burned in to the inside of the case.

In the UK, science-fiction author author Douglas Adams was the first to buy one of the original Macintosh machines. Second in line was Stephen Fry.

Sadly, he said, he no longer possesses the early machine.

He told the BBC: "Oh I wish I still had it. I remember giving it away in 1986 to a primary school in a village in Norfolk."

Apple has retained the Macintosh name for many of its products - in particular the shortened form re-emerged in 1998 with the launch of the iMac.

Jason Fitzpatrick, from the Centre for Computing History in Haverhill, said that it was now hard to find a working 25-year old Macintosh.

Many, he said, have suffered what is known as "bit rot" in which the memory chips inside the machine decay, leading to a gradual loss of functionality.

Kevin Murrell, director of the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, said it had many working Apple machines even older than the 25-year-old Mac.

Even new, he said, the Macintoshes had their quirks. The external hard drive available for later versions of the Macintosh had to be placed on the left side of the machine to avoid interference with its power supply.

The lack of hard drive meant that anyone working with the machine had save everything on a floppy disk, leading to an awful lot of disk swapping.

But despite this, he said, many people had very fond memories of the time they spent with an original Macintosh.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7846575.stm

Posted: 24-01-2009 21:24 Post subject:

Britain's oldest microwave still going strong after 40 years - and 150,000 meals
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:41 AM on 24th January 2009

They are part and parcel of most kitchens now. But in the Swinging Sixties, microwave ovens were cutting-edge technology.

Frederick Stephens was among the first in Britain to buy one and 150,000 meals later, it is still going strong.

The 78-year-old believes it is the country's oldest still in everyday use.

He paid £230 - equivalent to more than £3,000 in today's money - for the brown Panasonic NE-691 and has used it every day in the four decades since.

There were so few microwaves on the market, that Mr Stephens and his late wife Francis needed a demonstration on how to use it.

'I'm so surprised it has lasted this long,' he said. 'It was a real novelty when we bought it as there weren't many around in those days.

'At the time, it was life-changing and since then it's become one of those everyday things you wonder now how you could ever live without.'

Mr Stephens, a grandfather-of-four from Cheltenham, added: 'I use it all the time to heat up ready meals and to do my Horlicks before I go to bed every night. It's marvellous really.'
Mr Stephens bought the oven from an electrical shop in Gloucester in the mid or late Sixties - and it has outlasted the store, which has since closed. He said: 'It's a slice of history and is amazing to think how long it's lasted.

'At the time of buying it, there were so few around we had to have a demonstration in the shop on how to use it and it was like looking at the future. We must have eaten thousands of meals over the years which have been heated in it.

'Francis used to cook the Christmas puddings in it and would make food in it for the kids.

'Even the shop which sold it has gone now, but the microwave is still going strong. We've definitely had our money's worth.' Very Happy

Since being widowed in 2005, he said the microwave has been a great help heating up his meals and nightly hot milks.

'It's never had to have any sort of maintenance and the only thing that's ever gone is the lightbulb for the door,' added Mr Stephens.

The world's first microwave oven was built in America in 1947 by technology firm Raytheon, which filed the first patent after employee Percy Spencer made the breakthrough.

Dr Spencer, a self-taught engineer, was testing a new vacuum tube during radar-related research when he noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. Shocked

By late 1946, the company filed a patent proposing that microwaves be used to cook food.
The first one produced weighed 340kg, stood 6ft tall and cost $5,000 (£3,664).

But years of work were needed to make the invention affordable and small enough for kitchens.
Between 1952 and 1955, the first home model was introduced by Tappan at $1295 (£951), and by 1967 Raytheon released the first counter-top, domestic oven.

The 100-volt microwave oven cost just under $500 (£366) and was smaller, safer and more reliable than previous models.
After a slow response to the large cumbersome models, the smaller models became more accepted, particularly in certain industries.
The microwave oven allowed restaurants and vending companies to keep products refrigerator-fresh up to the point of service and then heat them to order.
They could serve fresher food, with less waste and costing less money.

By 1975, microwave sales had taken over those of gas ranges.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1126982/Britains-oldest-microwave-going-strong-40-years--150-000-meals.html

Posted: 24-01-2009 21:38 Post subject:

Sight fears over low-energy bulbs

Charities and eyesight specialists are calling on the government to halt its plans to phase out the sale of traditional light bulbs.

Campaigners want retailers to disregard a promise to phase out the incandescent bulbs by 2012.

They say replacement lower energy bulbs do not provide enough light, causing problems for people with poor vision.

The government admitted there was a problem but said that alternatives were still available.

Under European Union rules, all incandescent bulbs for sale must be replaced by energy efficient compact fluorescent lamp (Cfl) bulbs by 2016.

By September 100 watt bulbs will have been taken off UK shelves.

But David Adams, spokesman for The Royal National College for the Blind, said lower energy bulbs made things more difficult for those with a sight condition.

He said: "They do come on slowly and if there are steps or objects in the way, people can fall over, have accidents and that's the biggest danger."

He said most blind people did not have a total loss of vision and therefore would want to make the best of the amount they had left.

Greenpeace has said that the traditional bulbs waste 95% of the energy they use.

They calculated that phasing them out in the UK would save more than five million tonnes in CO2 emissions a year.

The compact fluorescent lamp bulbs have 80% less power and provide a diffused light whereas the traditional bulbs give out spots of light and have a high contrast.

John Clingan, who is partially-sighted, said he was concerned about how he would cope without the stronger light.

He said: "If I try to read a book under one of the new lights - I just can't read properly for long because the light levels are just not high enough."

Larry Benjamin, of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, said the situation needed fixing:

"Incandescent bulbs give a general bright lighting source and the worry is that if they disappear, patients won't be able to have the same level of lighting in their homes.

"There's quite good evidence that low lighting can lead to a greater number of falls in people with low vision. So it is quite important."

There have been reports of people stockpiling the traditional bulbs.

Jane Milne from the British Retail Consortium said shops would continue to offer consumers a choice.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said alternatives were available.

She said: "We recognise that compact fluorescent lamps do not offer the same 'contrast' that incandescent lamps offer as they give off diffused light.

"To address these concerns halogen lamps, which do provide contrast lighting, will remain on the market.

"These offer 30-45% energy savings in comparison to incandescent lamps."

She said that the price of the bulbs will come down and the technology will improve.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7848859.stm

I used to dislike the slow start-up of compact fluorescent lamps, but I've learned to realise that when you switch them on in a dark place, they give your eyes time to adjust, whereas incandescent bulbs could dazzle you.

I think we use far more artificial light than is really necessary, switching lights on far earlier than they are really needed.

Posted: 24-01-2009 22:49 Post subject:

I really don't understand why people bitch about the cost of long life bulbs.

I bought 5 about 10 years ago and they are still going strong. In those days they cost about £5 each.

However I thought that one of them was about to go so went to buy a new one. They were 99p each or 5 for £1

They are not expensive.

I do agree that the light they give is not as bright as old fashioned, what about some kind of LED bulb as an alternative?

Posted: 24-01-2009 23:13 Post subject:

Modern low energy bulbs can provide 60 - 80watts output. Have a browse around your local DIY shop - you'll be surprised how technology has moved on from the days of the 40 watt rubbish that's still given away by energy companies.

Posted: 25-01-2009 10:22 Post subject:

Text messages could be used to stop stolen cars
Police could use text messages to switch off the engines of getaway cars.

By David Millward, Transport Editor
Last Updated: 10:05PM GMT 22 Jan 2009

They could be given the power to stop cars remotely as a result of trials being carried out by the Home Office.

It has asked for companies to come up with schemes for "vehicle stopping technology" which would enable officers to stop stolen and getaway cars.

The aim is to cut the number of high speed car chases, which have led to the deaths of officers and civilians.

"If new technology can help police stop vehicles more safely and more effectively then it is right that we look at all the options carefully," the Home Office said.

"We have asked companies to propose possible electronic solutions and we will be in a position to say more once all the options have been properly tested and fully evaluated."

According to Police Review, they could include "intelligent transport systems", commercially available technology which enables owners to use a mobile phone to regain control of their cars when they are stolen.

This tracking system uses satellite navigation to locate a car, whose position is shown on a website. The car is also fitted with a receiver which can receive text messages.

Should the car be stolen the owner – or a company acting on his or her behalf – can use a text message to send instructions to the car's on-board computer.

It can switch on the headlights, sound the horn, slow the car down or – if it is stopped – immobilise it completely.

According to Police Review, officers would welcome access to the technology as an alternative to devices such as "stingers", which they currently use.

Stingers throw spikes into the path of the car, which burst the tyres.

Alan Jones of the Police Federation welcomed the Home Office initiative.

"If the police service can use technology to its benefit to improve policing and ensure it is far safer for both police officers and members of the public, then ultimately we should applaud those developments.

"But we also recognise that it is sensitive area and we need to have a proper debate and discussion about where it may go."

A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers added. "The police service nationally is involved in pursuits which, by their very nature, involve an element of risk, on a daily basis. Safe resolution of pursuits is essential and while current methods of stopping vehicles have proven effective, we must not be complacent.

"The service is constantly looking to improve practices and research technologies which may have the potential to offer new ways of delivering front line policing in a safer, more efficient manner."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/4316789/Text-messages-could-be-used-to-stop-stolen-cars.html

Posted: 25-01-2009 10:54 Post subject:

Websites 'must be saved for history'
The British Library's head says that deleting websites will make job of historians harder
David Smith, technology correspondent The Observer, Sunday 25 January 2009

Historians face a "black hole" of lost material unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records, the head of the British Library has warned.

Just as families store digital photos on computers which might never be passed on to their descendants, so Britain's cultural heritage is at risk as the internet evolves and technologies become obsolete, says Lynne Brindley, the library's chief executive.

Writing in today's Observer, Brindley cites two examples of losses overseas. When Barack Obama was inaugurated as US president last week, all traces of George Bush disappeared from the White House website, including a booklet entitled 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration, which is no longer accessible.

There were more than 150 websites relating to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, she continues, but these, too, vanished instantly at the end of the games and are now stored only by the National Library of Australia. "If websites continue to disappear in the same way as those on President Bush and the Sydney Olympics - perhaps exacerbated by the current economic climate that is killing companies - the memory of the nation disappears too," Brindley writes. "Historians of the future, citizens of the future, will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century."

Historians have become increasingly concerned that while the Domesday Book, written on sheepskin in 1086, is still easily accessible, the software for many decade-old computer files - including thousands of government records - already renders them unreadable. The ephemera of emails, text messages and online video add to the headache of the 21st-century archivist.

"Too many of us suffer from a condition that is going to leave our grandchildren bereft," Brindley states. "I call it personal digital disorder. Think of those thousands of digital photographs that lie hidden on our computers. Few store them, so those who come after us will not be able to look at them. It's tragic."

She believes similar gaps could appear in the national memory, pointing out that, contrary to popular assumption, internet companies such as Google are not collecting and archiving material of this type. It is left instead to the libraries and archives which have been gathering books, periodicals, newspapers and recordings for centuries. With an interim report from communications minister Lord Carter on the future of digital Britain imminent, Brindley makes the case for the British Library as the repository that will ensure emails and websites are preserved as reliably as manuscripts and books. "This vision of a digital Britain must include the critical public service of preserving digital Britain's collective memory and digitising the unrivalled content within the British Library."

The library plans to create a comprehensive archive of such "notoriously ephemeral" material from the UK web domain - there are about eight million .uk domain websites, growing at a rate of 15-20% every year. It also has a collecting and archiving project for the London 2012 Olympics.

In 2007 the library worked with Microsoft and the National Archives at Kew to prevent a "digital dark age" by unlocking millions of unreadable stored computer files. Microsoft installed the Virtual PC 2007, allowing users to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on the same computer and unlock what are called "legacy" Microsoft Office formats dating back 15 years or more.

The library and national archives have set up projects to capture daily exchanges of information almost entirely now transmitted by emails and texts. Government departments are storing emails and archiving them at Kew, and the library is encouraging individuals to store theirs voluntarily.

Historians regard some of today's electronic data as a vital legacy that must be protected. Tristram Hunt, of Queen Mary College, London University, said: "It's essential that mainstream institutions such as the National Gallery or the White House or the Ministry of Defence keep email correspondence, and I think they're quite good about that now. We saw all that come out in the Hutton report and it was fascinating. That's an absolutely essential historical record."

But Hunt argued that libraries and other institutions need to be selective. "On the other hand, we're producing much more information these days than we used to, and not all of it is necessary. Do we want to keep the Twitter account of Stephen Fry or some of the marginalia around the edges of the Sydney Olympics? I don't think we necessarily do." Cool

There is already one stark warning from history. The BBC's Doomsday Project of 1986, intended to record the state of the nation for posterity, was recorded on two 12inch videodisks. By 2000 it was obsolete, and was rescued only thanks to a specialist team working with a sole surviving laser disk player.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/preserving-digital-archive

Posted: 26-01-2009 09:13 Post subject:

All aboard world's longest busway that will replace the train
Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Drinking hot coffee on a bus is normally a bad idea, but passengers will be encouraged to try it on a new service that promises to be as smooth as the most modern train.

No one will need to “hold on tight”, as Routemaster conductors used to cry. Indeed, the driver will be instructed to take his hands off the wheel and allow the bus to steer itself.

The only difference between the St Ives to Cambridge buses and their standard counterparts is two small guide wheels attached in front of the regular wheels. These engage with a concrete channel that is being built along 16 miles of disused railway line across the Fens.

When the service begins in late summer it will be by far the world's longest guided busway, more than twice as long as the current longest in Adelaide. Its impact will be felt far beyond the severely congested A14 commuter corridor in Cambridgeshire. The Department for Transport (DfT) is determined to prove that guided buses are much cheaper and more flexible than trains or trams. Several other disused railway lines are earmarked for conversion to busways and, in the longer term, some branch lines could be concreted over and carry rubber tyres instead of steel wheels.

Unlike trains, buses can pick passengers up in scattered villages before joining the busway for an uninterrupted 60mph glide across the countryside. In the city, they switch back to roads. The DfT also believes that busways will be far cheaper to maintain than railways. The Cambridgeshire busway is designed to operate without any significant maintenance for 40 years. A railway needs weekly inspections, regular repairs to damaged points and rails, as well as an expensive signalling system.

If a busway has to be closed, the buses would simply avoid that section by switching to roads. Cambridgeshire County Council, which is building the busway, estimates that the maximum delay from such a diversion would be five minutes, compared with an hour or more if a railway line closes.

The council believes that the busway will be safer than rail because the braking distance of buses is a tenth of that of trains. Buses also accelerate more quickly than trains, so they can stop more frequently to pick up passengers without adding to journey times unduly. The busway will carry a bus every eight minutes; comparable branch lines carry one train an hour.

The £116million cost of the busway is being funded by the taxpayer, but the operating costs, including the buses themselves, will be paid by the bus companies. They will also pay a small access fee to cover the cost of busway maintenance. Branch lines require large annual subsidies for train services and maintenance.

Bob Menzies, the head of the busway project, said: “We think [people] will be attracted by the smoothness of the ride, leather seats and free wi-fi. We want people to be able to ride on the busway having a cup of coffee with their laptop open, catching up on e-mails.”

St Ives to Cambridge city centre takes 50 minutes in the peak period by car but will take 32 minutes by bus.

Disused railways being considered for busways include routes from Luton to Dunstable, Bath to Bristol and some old track beds near Portsmouth.

Bruce Williamson, of Railfuture, which campaigns for rail expansion, said: “The DfT has gone for a cheap and nasty option after riding roughshod over local opinion in favour of reopening the train line. Trains are greener than buses because steel wheels on steel rails have much less rolling resistance, and therefore use less energy, than rubber on concrete.”

Matt Bradney, the council's cabinet member for transport, claimed that busways would win enthusiasts as passionate as those who support the railways — but he admitted “it might take another 150 years”.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article5586560.ece

Posted: 31-01-2009 10:49 Post subject:

Michel Desjoyeaux less than day from Vendée Globe race finishing line
Peter Nichols

Some time Sunday morning a Frenchman, Michel Desjoyeaux, will reach the port of Les Sables d'Olonne in France and win the sixth Vendée Globe race after sailing alone, without stopping, 24,000 miles around the world. Probably.

Even after 83 days at sea, and with Desjoyeaux enjoying a 1,000-mile lead over the second-placed Roland Jourdain, the race organisers were hedging their bets.

From an original field of 30 starters, only 12 competitors, among them two British women, remain in this, possibly the toughest race in the world. At sea, anything could happen, whether it is in the farthest reaches of the Southern Ocean or a few miles off the French coast, and even as Desjoyeaux fought towards the finish line in 25-knot winds, nothing was being taken for granted.

It was the 2001 race that propelled Ellen MacArthur to fame after pictures were beamed home of her scaling the mast to make repairs to her boat, Kingfisher, in horrendous conditions. The 2008-09 edition, though, has possibly been even more gripping.

On the first night of the race, within 100 miles of leaving, the fleet met appalling Biscay weather. Two boats were dismasted. A third ruptured her hull. Four, including Desjoyeaux, returned to port to make repairs.

On January 6 the Frenchman Jean Le Cam radioed that he was in difficulty west of Cape Horn. A few hours later a Chilean navy rescue aircraft reported spotting the yacht floating upside down. Two Vendée Globe competitors, only hours away, began streaking toward Le Cam's position. The first to arrive was another French sailor, Vincent Riou, who manoeuvred alongside Le Cam's yacht. Le Cam emerged from under his boat in a survival suit and clambered aboard Riou's yacht, PRB, which was damaged during the rescue, putting him out of the race.

On the face of it, sailing around the world in an era of global positioning systems, sat-phones and high-tech, million-pound boats can seem unremarkable. It is events such as this that hammer home just how cut off and exposed to the wilds these sailors are.

While nearly 500 astronauts have voyaged into space since Yuri Gagarin's historic flight in 1961, by the end of this year's Vendée Globe there will still be only about 270 solo circumnavigators, and only 60 or so have done it without stopping.

Circumnavigating in a boat and orbiting the Earth in a space capsule share similarities: a small, fragile, podlike vehicle, same circular course, same destination (the end is where you started from). Both endeavours have essentially the same motivation. No one is really pretending that it is anything less elemental than George Mallory's answer to why he wanted to climb Everest: because it's there.

In the first solo, non-stop, round-the-world sailing contest, the 1968-9 Golden Globe Race, sponsored by The Sunday Times, the competitors were amateurs. Chay Blyth did not know how to sail or navigate on the day he departed from Hamble in a 30ft weekend cruiser. Shooting the sun and stars with sextants, the Golden Globe racers lived in a distant maritime age, closer to Columbus's. Yet, while they crawled across the oceans averaging little more than a walking pace, Apollo 8 orbited the moon above them.

Once over the horizon, the competitors vanished. Their whereabouts and progress could be known only when they reported in on the shortwave radios that almost all the boats carried.

The darkest story of the Golden Globe belonged to Donald Crowhurst, a charismatic, unstable electronics engineer from Devon, who appeared to be streaking around the world at an unheard-of pace, until his trimaran was found abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic. The logbooks aboard revealed that Crowhurst had faked his progress with false position reports, never left the Atlantic, and had finally gone mad and stepped overboard.

All that has changed. Digital cameras, e-mail, a website for each contestant, GPS and satellite transponders provide minute-by-minute audio, video and blog updates from every boat. No one can get lost: we know at all times where they are. Today's racers sail an up-to-the-last-minute carbon fibre capsule, the Open 60, as uniform as Formula One race cars.

Modern sailors are almost equally evolved. They are more socially integrated creatures. Samantha Davies, an English sailor lying fourth in her boat Roxy (the other, Dee Caffari, is lying seventh), says: “I don't get lonely because I'm not really alone. There are other racers out there, and we talk to each other by satellite phone and e-mail.”

Before ever stepping aboard a boat, today's round-the-world solo sailors must successfully navigate the world of corporate sponsorship. They are professional sportsmen and women; racing is their living and the more success they have, the higher their earning potential.

And yet, this is not cricket. The sea is unchanged. The high-tech approach has only made the challenge more ferocious. Prudence and caution, in the sense once understood as seamanly virtues, have been jettisoned along with wooden planks and copper nails. They hurtle across the world's roughest oceans, among icebergs, at racehorse speed, while they work, navigate, eat, and try to sleep.

If they do manage to drop off despite nerves stretched as tight as rigging wire, all sorts of alarms, for wind change, course change, excessive angle of heel, wake them up. Most of them at some point encounter serious problems. And a few die. Nigel Burgess, a Briton, was swept overboard in 1992, Gerry Roufs, a Canadian, in 1997. Mike Plant, an American, was lost in the Atlantic on his way to the race start in 1992. The Vendée Globe has a fatality rate of 4.5 per cent. The rate for space travel is 3.7 per cent.

All these sailors, like astronauts, have found inside themselves the Right Stuff. This is the only race where you are competing 24 hours a day for weeks, months on end, thousands of miles from home and, in the Southern Ocean, beyond the range of any rescue helicopter, your life utterly dependent on your craft staying intact. Yet it is not the ships but the sailors in them. Therein lies the key to the appeal of this extraordinary race.

Peter Nichols is author of A Voyage for Madmen, the story of the Golden Globe race, published by Profile.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/sailing/article5622444.ece

Posted: 11-03-2009 10:59 Post subject:

World's first computer was used to generate love poetry
A "love poetry generator" developed for the world's first computer has been recreated on the internet.

By Nigel Bunyan
Last Updated: 3:03PM GMT 10 Mar 2009

Back in 1952 a team of scientists was desperate to test the capabilities of Mark One `Baby`, the computer built at Manchester University.

One of them, Christopher Strachey, devised a quirky software programme by entering hundreds of romantic verbs and nouns into the new machine.

He then sat back as Mark One `Baby` trawled the literary database to create a stream of light-hearted verse.

In much the same way as magnetic letters are displayed on fridges today, he and his team would print off the computer’s best efforts and put them on a notice board.

David Ward, a German computer `archaeologist` unearthed the program while researching Strachey’s papers at the Bodelian Library, Oxford, and then spent three months creating his own version of the software.'

His website allows vistors to generate their own random `poetry`.
http://www.alpha60.de/research/muc/

Meanwhile, Mr Ward has also created a working replica of the One `Baby’ computer which will run the love letter programme for an exhibition in Germany.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4967408/Worlds-first-computer-was-used-to-generate-love-poetry.html

Posted: 16-03-2009 14:25 Post subject:

A hi-tech aid to an age-old crime:

Builder used Google Earth to pinpoint historic buildings before stripping them of lead in £100,000 raids
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:33 PM on 16th March 2009

A builder used Google Earth to zoom in on historic buildings before stripping £100,000 of valuable lead from their roofs.
Tom Berge used the internet tool, which shows aerial photographs of towns across the world, to pinpoint museums, churches and schools across South London.

During the six-month spree he picked out those with lead roof tiles because of their darker colour.
After identifying a potential target he would scale its roof, take the metal then abseil down the side of the building before selling it on to scrap metal dealers.

The 27-year-old, from Sutton, South London, admitting using his computer to carry out more than 30 separate offences.

He was given an eight-month suspended jail term, 100 hours of community service and put on curfew.
Detective Sergeant Chris Grant, who led the investigation, said 'He was a prolific offender up until the time he was arrested.
'Since then our crime figures for theft of lead have reduced significantly.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1162356/Builder-used-Google-Earth-pinpoint-historic-buildings-stripping-lead-100-000-raids.html

Posted: 16-03-2009 21:00 Post subject:

More on those energy saving lightbulbs and the extreme dangers they can cause in the home. Apparently, they're just like dirty bombs waiting to go off.

Posted: 16-03-2009 21:28 Post subject:

Posted: 16-03-2009 21:59 Post subject:

Posted: 21-03-2009 09:59 Post subject:

Wind-up walking stick unveiled by Trevor Baylis
Trevor Baylis, the pensioner who invented the wind-up radio, has unveiled his latest gadget – a walking stick which uses elbow grease to power a built-in torch and safety lights.

Last Updated: 1:14AM GMT 21 Mar 2009

The lightweight collapsible Slik-Stik also carries a personal alarm and has a magnet to solve the tricky issue of how to pick up dropped keys for those who are not as flexible as they once were.

The stick was the brainchild of Denise Anstey, who realised the gap in the market after she was left with severe mobility problems after a car accident.

She got in touch with Mr Baylis's company, TCL Products, who turned her idea into the finished product which is to go on sale priced around £35.

Mrs Anstey, 44, from Bristol, said: "When I was walking I felt very vulnerable, a walking target.

"I thought it would be good for the elderly to have something they could immediately press to alert people to help.

"I didn't want batteries which are very costly and difficult to change. I found the wind-up technology and didn't know whether it would be powerful enough to power the stick – fortunately it was.

"I contacted the company on the Monday and on the Friday they were in China to get it manufactured."

The stick has won the approval of Mr Baylis, 71, whose own wind-up radio, patented around 17 years ago, used a clockwork system, powered by a spring.

Modern wind-up systems produce electricity, giving the devices longer life.

Mr Baylis, who lives near Twickenham, said: "It all came on the back of that radio, which is extraordinary. I never thought it would go as fast as it has.

"Batteries are hideously expensive and with this technology you can forget them. If you run out of power all you have to do is wind it up."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5025640/Wind-up-walking-stick-unveiled-by-Trevor-Baylis.html