HERE’S A story of the times.
A former colleague has a friend whose brother lives in Liverpool, whom we
will not name to save his blushes. The brother is in a band and last week he and
his fellow musicians were trying to drive to London to do some recording. They
got stuck in traffic when they were still in Liverpool town centre. Listening to
the radio, they discovered that the reason for the traffic problems was that
there had been an anthrax scare at the main postal sorting office in
Liverpool.
It was only later in the day, when they had finally reached London, that the
brother received a phone call telling him the letter containing the “anthrax”
had been addressed to him. By this time, the security forces had discovered that
it was in fact sand from an Australian beach. A friend had innocently sent it to
our musician to show him what he was missing, stuck in Liverpool while his mate
was happily enjoying the sun and surf down under.
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MEANWHILE, we enjoyed this from a Boston-based New Scientist
reporter who recently attended a party where she was offered cupcakes sprinkled
with icing sugar. “Thanks, but I’m not too sure about the anthrax,” she said.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the current situation, her hostess was not
amused.
THE MOVIE Enigma has been attacked both for containing “too much
talk about numbers” and for “trivialising a serious subject”. That tends to
confirm Feedback’s impression that it got the balance right—and did a
pretty good job of explaining encryption and code-cracking.
For a colleague who was one of the last people in Britain to do military
service, the scene in the film where the boffins at Bletchley Park use a British
Typex encryption machine to check the German Enigma codes evoked some special
memories. He had spent the best part of a year at an RAF station “somewhere in
Wiltshire”, learning how to repair military electronics. The class had to sign
the Official Secrets Act before going into a hut accompanied by armed guards.
There they were lectured on the electronics inside Typex, given technical
reference sheets and encouraged to take notes. And at the end of the hour’s
lesson the reference sheets and notes were all taken away.
This happened several times, at widely spaced intervals, and when the time
came for them to take their exams, no one could remember anything about Typex
and had no way of refreshing their memories. Fortunately, our colleague was
never called on to save his country by mending one.
INFORMATION is useless if it arrives too late. Reader Perry Bebbington bought
a book and CD-ROM from Microsoft on how to use MS FrontPage 2000. He was warned
when he bought it that once he opened the CD package, he would not be able to
return the goods for refund.
He had no problems installing the CD on his PC, but in the “read me” text he
found the following note: “For users of IBM ThinkPads: Web Publishing Step by
Step Interactive CD-ROM will not work on IBM ThinkPad computers. There is a
problem with the ThinkPad not being able to read non-ISO 9660 compliant
ٲ.”
Thankfully, Bebbington does not have a ThinkPad, but he points out that this
note is hardly any use to people who do. They will have broken the seal on the
CD and found the disc does not work. But because it doesn’t work, they won’t be
able to read the message that tells them what the problem is. Then, when they
take it back to the shop, they will be refused a refund because they have broken
the seal.
READER Joe Geesin had a similar experience. Having just plugged in an Iomega
Zip drive, he opened the seal on the installation disc and noticed a warning on
the envelope: “Breaking the seal on this envelope indicates your agreement to be
bound by the terms of the licence…”
The licence agreement, of course, was encoded on the CD-ROM, so he would have
to break the seal to load the disc and read the terms.
As we said the last time we came across this habit, warnings like this have
no force in law. But they keep on doing it.
WONDERFUL though it is, the Web doesn’t always provide the best possible
explanation of scientific research to interested members of the public. For
example, reader David Bradley points us at
www.furman.edu/engaged/internres/research/current.htm,
from Furman University in South Carolina.
“Here’s the ‘description’ for this research project,” it announces: “Blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah. . . “
A SIGN by the lift in the physics building at Durham University sparks
philosophical debate among students by stating: “Do not use lift when building
is unoccupied.”
ARE YOU confused by the unpronounceable acronyms sometimes used to identify
space missions? You are not alone. To avoid coining any more tongue-twisting
acronyms, NASA is asking for your help to find a user-friendly name for a new
space-based observatory, currently called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility,
or SIRTF for short. Will that be “Sir T. F.”, a knighted acronym, or “sirtuff”?
You have until 20 December to visit http://sirtf.caltech.edu/namingcontest and,
maybe, win a flight to see whatever-you-call-it launched in July 2002.
READER Jenny Brown was looking through the Index shopping catalogue
for presents for her children. On page 225 she found a truly wonderful idea:
headphones that won’t bother nearby people—such as parents—with that
annoying tinny sound.
The “Inner ear headphone with in-line volume control” is available for just
£4.99. It isn’t clear, Brown notes, whether the cost of surgery is
included in the price.
FINALLY, we applaud the sense of humour of the person seen by reader Nick
Vaughan in a Yorkshire pub the other night. Vaughan was having a quiet drink
when the man hobbled in on crutches. The T-shirt he was wearing carried the
slogan: “Gravity—I fought the law and the law won.”
