SOME people just don鈥檛 trust computers. In the US, for example, the White House had to drum up Doris Meissner, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, to soothe the fears of ethnic and civil rights organisations about the proposed national computerised identification system. The system is being developed to prevent illegal immigrants from getting jobs and services, but critics say that computer glitches will prevent it from working and lead to miscarriages of justice.
So, The Washington Post reports, all the most prominent opponents of the scheme were assembled in the White House鈥檚 Old Executive Office Building to hear a briefing from Meissner explaining how efficient the system would be. They waited expectantly for her to appear 鈥� and they waited 鈥� and they waited.
Half an hour after she was scheduled to give her speech, a flustered Meissner finally joined the meeting. She had been in the lobby of the building all the time, it transpired 鈥� but had been unable to get in because the White House computer had refused to accept her identification and give her clearance to pass the security guards.
Advertisement
鈥淭his seems to happen every time she tries to enter the White House,鈥� said one of the guards, adding as an afterthought: 鈥淲elcome to the information superhighway.鈥�
THERE are also people who don鈥檛 trust computer users. Larry Kimminau, the president of Analytic Concepts in San Jose, California, says he has just the thing for them. 鈥淓mployees know they shouldn鈥檛 be playing games during office hours, yet they still do,鈥� Kimminau says. 鈥淐omputer games distract them from their work and cost companies millions in lost productivity.鈥�
Enter GameCop, which the boss can install on every PC in the office, where it sits 鈥渞unning invisibly in the background鈥�, and checking any active window for signs of a game. When it detects one, out pops a 鈥減rewritten memo鈥� that can be 鈥減ersonalised to fit the manager鈥檚 personality style鈥�
If the nice-cop approach doesn鈥檛 work, however, GameCop can be reprogrammed to make the offender鈥檚 computer shriek with its 鈥渟iren sound feature鈥�. And Analytic urges owners to take it home: 鈥淚magine a child鈥檚 bewilderment when he sneaks in a game of solitaire during homework, and a message from mom or dad appears telling him to get back to work!鈥�
Readers with an authoritarian streak who are tempted by all this can buy GameCop for just $39.95.
THEN there are people who think that computers will solve all our problems for us. The American company AT&T for example, believes that the future of telephone operator assistance lies in voice-recognition computers, and it has installed them in many of its exchanges. There is just one problem, though. For the voice recognisers to respond, you have to have an American accent.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Londoner Caroline Goldie, who lives in Washington, tried to place a long-distance call through an AT&T exchange. 鈥淧lease say 鈥榗ollect, calling card, third number, person-to-person or operator鈥�,鈥� a recorded voice asked her.
鈥淥perator,鈥� said Goldie.
鈥淪orry, please repeat,鈥� replied the voice recogniser.
Goldie tried again, several times, but the recogniser was baffled. Finally, she passed the phone to an American friend, who said 鈥渁h-per-aid-er鈥� (or something along those lines) and got through immediately.
AT&T concedes that the recognisers might have problems with foreign accents. Jay Wipon, who helped to develop the system at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey says: 鈥淎n English accent to a recogniser might almost be another language.鈥�
THANKS to Paul Harrison, who spotted this in a recent issue of the English language newspaper The Moscow Tribune:
鈥淎 former nuclear power station in the Crimea has switched to bottling vodka, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
鈥淭he agency said various projects including a clothing factory and a fish farm had been considered when the plant was converted but had been rejected.
鈥淭he contest was won by the most enterprising people and now the former nuclear plant houses a production line for bottling vodka and other alcoholic drinks, lTAR-TASS said.鈥�
Feedback looks forward to Sellafield putting in a bid for a similarly imaginative new type of reprocessing contract.
ACCORDlNG to page 64 of the February edition of Physics World, the lamentably little-known journal Acta Physica Hungaria has been transformed into the new and, it is hoped, more popular Heavy Ion Physics. The honorary editors of the fledgling journal, we are told, include none other than Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner.
Feedback is a little puzzled about this, however, because two pages earlier in the same issue of Physics World there appears an obituary of Wigner 鈥� written by Teller.
THINGS may be tough for scientists in Russia these days, but that doesn鈥檛 stop them attempting to tackle fundamental problems. L. I. Karamushko and M. I. Shatunovskiy, for instance. They have a paper in the Journal of Ichthyology entitled: 鈥淏ioenergetics of God, Gadus morhua morhua, Wolffish, Anarhichas lupus, and Plaice, Pleuronectes platessa.鈥�
WE mentioned on 28 January the use of culinary nomenclature in the proposed large hadron collider at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory. Alan Wallace writes to say that the phenomenon is also found in medicine. When studying pathology at the University of Sydney, he came across terms such as nutmeg liver (seen in heart failure), cranberry jelly clots (postmortem blood clots) and bread- and 鈥� butter heart (a type of heart infection).
The advantage of imagery like this is that it is easy to remember. The disadvantage is that when presented, for example, with Christmas turkey and trimmings at yuletide, the pathology student can find it extremely difficult to tuck into cranberry jelly with the same enthusiasm as everyone else.
WAS this a ghastly mistake, or just a subeditor鈥檚 little joke? A headline in The Guardian newspaper towards the end of last month read: 鈥淧hysicist recommends bigger balls to slow down male tennis players鈥�.