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The Highlights
According to the Norse, this is the day when Loki goes around causing mischief. He was certainly at work at work. Transfer the contents of a 2GB hard disk to a 6GB disk. Simple. Apart from the screws that can only be unscrewed by one screwdriver, right the other end of the building. Apart from the spaghetti wiring in the old PC, which broke. And the cable that only went in upside down. And the replacement PCs that were short of vital components, such as working power supplies. Eventually, though, the PC is battered and broken into submission. Finally.
GroovyGrl2 TV The Amanda Show (1999, Nickleodeon) Premiering over here, this is a sketch show starring Amanda Byrnes. Like all sketch shows, it has its good moments and its bad moments; unlike most British sketch shows, the good moments are far more common. Silly after-work fun. |
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For those in the Northern hemisphere, today marks the traditional festival of Lammas. It's the hottest time of the year, and this year is no exception here.
Organic farmers are harvesting the wheat, ripe now, and bailing to make hay while the sun still shines. This is the peak season for explosive performances - the ancient Greek Olympics took place in August, and their modern-day equivalents often occur around now. In a couple of weeks, the nights will begin to get a bit of a chill, the nip that denotes summer is over, and autumn is beginning. Nights are beginning to get longer, days shorter. Next stop: equinox. It turns out that yesterday's PC problem was infected with the wriggly grey little worm that has been the bane of my life all week. And it's getting re-infected through open network shares. Not for much longer... |
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One of *those* days at work. I have plans to do things; other things keep popping in the way and eventually win out. Get a laptop ready; add anti-virus software to another; (why? av software doesn't work) do a stock check because Eris has forced so many moves we've lost count; prepare for a printer guy to come; unjam another printer; lose my desk so that Eris can see how to check her email. It's enough to cause runctions.
Thence off on a canal trip with friends from uni. There will be no report. |
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University Challenge staged a quiet return last week. Here's the first two matches. Bristol -v- Somerville Oxford The early standard is high; the first fifteen questions are answered correctly. The lead yo-yos - Somerville always leads, and after the opening skirmish, they're never seriously challenged. Somerville wins, 300-185. That might be enough to come back as a high-scoring loser; we'll find out over the coming three months. London School of Economics -v- Bristol LSE gets the first starter, and Bristol incur a penalty on the next one. But Bristol scores 75 without reply, only to fall back through incorrect interruptions, and LSE has the lead after the music round. They soon lose it, but Bristol never pulls away. Bristol wins, 180-140, but only gets 17 of 33 bonuses; the LSE scores 10/18. Bristol's winning score is 5 points lower than Hull's losing score last week. |
Ministers look daftGovernment ministers launched scathing attacks against a television programme last weekend, then looked sheepish as they confirmed they'd not seen the show. Interior minister David Blunkett, his deputy Bev Hughes, and culture minister Tessa Jowell all leaped to criticise Brass Eye. The Channel 4 satire had launched a scathing attack on the way the media sensationalises paedophilia, how celebrities and politicians suck up to the press, and how it's impossible to have a reasoned debate on the issue. Blunkett, Hughes and Jowell call for the programme to be banned. It later emerges that Hughes said: "I have not seen the programme. I really don't want to. The interior minister clearly hasn't seen it. He's very clear what's in it." Jowell made similar comments, but retracted them after being slapped around the gills by Tony Blair. Her intervention has raised one important issue: if the government had the power to ban transmission of television programmes on the grounds of taste, would it have shown Brass Eye? She later says that television is not, after all, a matter for government regulation. By Monday night, 2000 people had complained, 3500 had praised the show. The underlying issue that no-one's mentioning: that the "war on paedophiles" is the government's preferred excuse for removing civil liberties. Internet use is monitored, there are mandatory police nosinesses for anyone wanting to work near children, and countless other attacks. If anyone dare complain, the catch-all excuse "it's for the children" protects from harm. Can I come in here?Louis Farrakhan wins his court challenge to enter the UK. The leader of the Nation of Islam has been denied a visa since 1985, as interior ministers from Leon Brittan to Jack Straw considered him a threat to racial harmony and public order. He won't be allowed to enter before October 1, when the judge will provide a full explanation for his decision. 229 people, including a US anti-abortion activist, Sun Myung Moon of the eponymous church, and the leader of NORAID, a US group that raises funds for the IRA, are currently banned from entering the United Kingdom.) The judge has taken the rare step of intervening in a matter involving a senior minister's personal discretion. People on both sides of politics applaud. If Farrakhan indulges in his old rhetoric, it would not be difficult to arrest and deport him. If he resists such incitement, he has a right to be heard. Exclusion merely bestows upon him a heroic status in the eyes of his followers which he does not deserve and would otherwise not be able to receive. There is no reason to exclude anyone from this country, however vile, contentious or unpopular their views, unless there are genuine fears that their presence would lead to violence or abuse. It is the mark of a strong democracy and a confident nation that it can cope with views it finds profoundly distasteful. Ron Dick makes his markRonald Dick, head of the FBI's computer crime division, lives up to his name. He appears on all good news media (and Sky News) Monday evening blathering on about how some worm would bring down the internet on Wednesday. He urged people to download a patch for fundamentally insecure software, the computer equivalent of applying a sticking plaster to a severed arm. If your PC crashes unexpectedly, fails to boot, reports problems scanning the disk, is unable to connect to your ISP, loses work, cannot communicate with the printer, prints strange and nonsensical characters, or generally fails to perform to expectation, the FBI warns as follows: You are not infected by a virus. You have installed a Miscoraft product. By Wednesday night, it turned out that Dick had blown the situation out of all proportion. The internet didn't slow down at all - it's *always* that slow. The FBI claimed they'd detected 22,000 reports of virus activity, but didn't say that they make that figure on a slow day. Research by the BBC found the grand total of 13 (thirteen) web sites infected. Prevention measures are estimated to have cost a million dollars per infected site. One firm that claims to protect against malware blames home users and small businesses. "All the emails we are stopping are from people using domestic internet providers like Hotmail and Freeserve. These are people who do not have the expertise to realise that their anti-virus protection is either non-existent or badly needs updating. Some of us reckon the blame for the growth in viruses should be aimed not at users, but at software companies who had failed to build adequate protection into their products. We're back to Miscoraft products. Behind this brou-ha-ha is the funding of the FBI. On Tuesday, the bureau's new chief was hauled before the US congress, to face stiff questioning about why his charges were spending so much to achieve so little. This Week's Top 5: Words That Rhyme With Amanda1) A panda2) Salamander 3) Bandana 4) Uganda 5) Gander |