WE WERE impressed to hear about the largesse of a prominent British government-funded research organisation, which we won鈥檛 name to avoid creating embarrassment. But we were less impressed by its computer security.
A friend turned up last week bearing a rather nice laptop computer. He had just found it in some rubbish outside a block of London flats. Dutifully, he phoned the number marked on the laptop, established that it had come from the research organisation鈥檚 administration offices, and asked what he should do with it.
鈥淜eep it,鈥� they told him. 鈥淲e鈥檝e replaced all our PCs and the old ones have been junked.鈥�
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The laptop is now going to a good home where it will be used for a charitable purpose. But before passing it on, we did a check on what was stored on the hard disc.
No attempt had been made to delete stored files, so we were immediately confronted with documents on staff promotion processes and the costs of redundancies abroad. Even more interesting was a long form assessing the sometimes very poor performance of some 50 professors and their research departments around the country.
The research organisation need have no fear. We have stripped all this information from the computer. But others might not be so conscientious. Perhaps the next time the organisation dumps a perfectly good computer in a public place, it might consider wiping personal and business data off its hard disc first.
A STRANGE thing happened as reader David Pilbrough was taking his daily constitutional in North Rocks, New South Wales. He noticed a male kookaburra hanging upside down from a branch by his feet, with a female kookaburra apparently hanging from his beak by her own beak, swinging to and fro and looking as if she were dead. Closer examination revealed that the beaks were only just touching at the tips, not clasped together.
How was this possible and what was going on? All became clear when the female dropped away and the male was seen to swallow a large lizard. It seems the male was in the process of eating the lizard when his opposite number decided she wanted some too and started to ingest the other end. In the ensuing tussle she must have fallen off the branch, leaving her attached to the male by the lizard.
David Attenborough, where were you and your cameras?
CURIOUS, the things some people devote their lives to. A site called nomoreaolcds.com 鈥� hosted by three people calling themselves GrandHighPooBah, Go2Guy and Abner the Rhino 鈥� is devoted to collecting unwanted AOL CDs.
Why are they doing it?
鈥淲e represent all those who are sick of receiving unwanted AOL CDs. By sending us your unwanted AOL, Netscape or CompuServe CDs, you can help us make a statement. Once we have 1,000,000 collected, we will make our quest across America to give them back to their rightful owner, AOL, and say 鈥楽top doing this鈥�.鈥�
The site includes an 鈥淯nwanted AOL Haikus鈥� section, with examples such as this by Denise Fedupwithaol: 鈥淭his cannot be real/another version/ released/will they ever stop?鈥�
So far 127,893 CDs have been sent in, meaning another 872,107 are needed before the unwanted AOL CDs site itself becomes unwanted.
WITH gene therapy rarely out of the news, we were keen to read an update from the British government鈥檚 Advisory Committee on Gene Therapy that landed in our in tray last week. It turned out to be their latest annual report鈥or the year 2001.
Hot off the press, it told of an exciting public workshop held nearly two years ago, plus 鈥渆ncouraging results鈥� from a gene therapy trial to treat severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) 鈥� a study that was put on ice last October for safety reasons.
Still, it鈥檚 not as if gene therapy is a fast-moving field at all.
AS we discovered when we ran an item on 23 November 2002 about a warning on a hairdryer, Australians are considered smart enough to look after themselves in the bathroom and are trusted to use electrical appliances there without electrocuting themselves.
However, the same doesn鈥檛 seem to be true in the darkroom. When Alistair Hamilton recently purchased some Ilford PQ Universal paper developer, he was surprised to find it carrying a warning in large letters: 鈥淔or Australia: HAZARDOUS鈥�.
FINALLY, reader Anthony Waddington was recently sent an ISO-TECH ILM350 light meter, essentially a small box with a simple numeric LCD read-out.
He says it seems to work fine, but he has yet to find out how it justifies the description 鈥渕ulti-lingual version鈥� plastered across the front of the box.
WE WONDER how many people will be persuaded by the spam advertising distance learning programmes from the Professional Career Development Institute with the subject line 鈥淏usy? Home Study Makes Sence!鈥�