WE PREDICT incidents of trolley rage in supermarkets if inventor Murray Laidlaw鈥檚 idea of a 鈥渟mart鈥� shopping trolley gets taken up. According to the Ananova news site, Laidlaw, of Norwich, has been given a 拢30,000 government grant to develop the idea of a trolley that uses electronic navigation to help customers around the supermarket.
It also advises shoppers about special offers in nearby aisles, keeps a tally of their purchases, gives recipe ideas and the user鈥檚 last shopping list.
Laidlaw says: 鈥淟ots of people just don鈥檛 shop in a methodical manner. They waste so much time.鈥� We are not at all convinced. Like most shoppers we鈥檝e come across, we already know our way round the supermarket and we don鈥檛 need our shopping trolley to guide us, thank you very much.
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And if our trolley ever starts suggesting recipes to us while we鈥檙e rushing round to get the basics in, it鈥檚 highly likely that we will be driven to violence.
A KEY element of the current version of the British government鈥檚 proposals for a national identity card is the inclusion of a biometric. The front runner is an iris scan.
Of the doubtless thousands of Britons who will not be able to supply an iris scan, two are already known. Ironically, the first is the chief proponent of the cards, home secretary David Blunkett, who is blind. Iris scanning systems generally have difficulty reading the irises of people who are blind or have cataracts.
The second, less surprisingly, is the chief opponent of the cards, Simon Davies, executive director of Privacy International. He has pendular nystagmus, a condition that means his eyes constantly move. The irises would never stay still long enough for the scanner to work.
THANKS to all those readers who had the presence of mind to do a Google search on our story about George Doughty of Colorado, who shot his computer four times because it kept crashing on him (19 April).
We concluded the story by saying: 鈥淯nfortunately, the reports don鈥檛 tell us whether the computer was a Windows PC or a Mac.鈥� Now our readers have found the unsurprising truth. The computer was a Dell laptop that one can only assume was running Windows.
PARTICLE physicists searching for dark matter at the bottom of a working potash mine in Boulby, Yorkshire, have recently benefited from a 拢3.1 million upgrade to their underground laboratories. On a recent visit to Boulby Mine, one of our colleagues was impressed with the swish new facilities, but concerned that the improvements failed to include a toilet.
Researchers caught short 1100 metres underground face an agonising wait of up to 8 hours to catch a lift to the surface with miners at the end of their shift. Not surprisingly, one male physicist admitted that rather than waiting, researchers have taken to peeing against the tunnel鈥檚 walls.
We wonder how this fits in with the aim of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council to attract more women into physics.
IT IS always slightly risky to expose one鈥檚 computer to trial software, so with the release of its iSync 1.0 Beta, Apple sagely advises backing-up first.
It tells customers installing the software: 鈥淚mportant Information: this software is beta software. You should back up important data before you install and use it. To back up your data, you can use the menu command in iSync.鈥� Question: how do you use iSync to make back-ups before you have installed it?
WE WONDER how many people are made any the wiser by the instructions that come with the Styline grease gun from Taiwan. They advise users needing to know how to work the gun as follows:
鈥�1. If the way of Cartridge Loading to be used, it could be cause Rubber Plunger transfigure and contract by squeezed long time which in inside of grease cartridge, and by soak of grease a certain period.
鈥�2. At this moment, if change the loading way to Dispenser Loading or Bulk Loading, and then, there is a normal phenomenon that have a little amount grease is possible seep out from the bottom of Container Tube.
鈥�3. In order to avoid the above phenomenon happened, please decide use long period and a proper loading way initially (depends on variety of grease that your local supplier applied) and use it incessantly. (Do not use MULTI-LOADING alternately!!)
鈥�4. And now, puzzle of grease leakage been settled.鈥�
FINALLY, an odd use of statistics by Runnymede council, south-west of London, which has started recycling collections. The leaflet that arrived at reader Nigel Forward鈥檚 home along with the recycling box begins: 鈥淒ear Householder, each year enough rubbish is produced in England and Wales to fill Lake Windermere every nine months.鈥�
A colleague tells us of a Bristol charity shop he visited that displays a sign saying 鈥淏uy one book, get the cheapest free鈥�. Now that is charity