THE UK government remains hell-bent on introducing biometric identity cards. We have to wonder how many of the civil servants behind the scheme have tried using the iris-recognition technology the government introduced a year ago to make it quicker to get through passport control at UK airports and which Feedback reported on at the time (14 April 2007).
A colleague who regularly travels abroad has gamely persevered with the iris scheme. He leaves his friends waiting to show paper passports in the immigration line and joins the iris line. Then he enters a cubicle, looks into a camera and obeys synthesised voice instructions to stand further back, closer, to the left, to the right and so on.
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The iris line is always short or empty because very few passengers now bother to try it. Most of those who do are routinely rejected. The camera and computer spend several minutes trying to recognise the traveller鈥檚 eyes before saying no. The reject then has to back out of the cubicle and return to the line to show paper.
Airport staff have obviously now grown to expect this. They wave rejects to the front of the passport line with what has become a stock cheery excuse: 鈥淒on鈥檛 blame us, it comes from France.鈥�
鈥淭he instructions on Anna Ghislaine Williams鈥檚 bottle of energising ginseng gel read: 鈥淎pply coin-sized gel to palm of hand and spread behind ears, neck and face.鈥� Would that mean inside the nasal cavity?鈥�
So iris recognition does save time standing in line, but not in the way the government intended. And what will happen when everyone has to have a biometric ID card? Will the computers say no on a similar scale? It sounds like a recipe for the country grinding to a halt.
OWNERS of Apple Mac computers are often quick to explain why Macs are superior to Windows PCs, and in particular how less prone they are to bugs and viruses. What they often fail to mention is that when Macs do have bugs they can be weird indeed.
An anonymous reader of the website describes a 鈥渒nown鈥� problem with AppleWorks version 6 for the Mac: 鈥淲hen typing long documents, when you get somewhere into page 42 all the text disappears. No one knows why (or is not telling).鈥�
Feedback would find this quirk pretty exasperating, but the writer is reassuring: 鈥淒o not panic. The text has only changed to the colour white. Simply 鈥楽elect All鈥� (Command-A), then change the text colour to black. Save immediately, then immediately paste in enough text to get beyond page 42. Save again.鈥�
We shall pass over the fact that having to do this could well bring on an attack of computer rage, and ask instead: could there be a reason why this problem only occurs on page 42?
EURALERT, the information service for Scottish business, academic and research communities, sent Nina Baker a 鈥減artner request for projects鈥� in what was entitled 鈥淎n ontology-based and context-aware system for multimodal and multidevice content delivery鈥�.
The message went on to assert, for example, that: 鈥淭he introduction of semantics to model the user and device profiles and to support the decision logic in combining them with the context, will allow the creation of user interfaces which are able to deliver content specifically targeted to the user and his device.
鈥淎s we are dealing with different devices and constraints such as bandwidth or user preferences or limitation in accessing the content, the proposed solution will make use of a renderer capable of rendering the content in the specific user interface required by the device and user profile and context, based on multimodal content provided in a standard format鈥︹��
Baker hasn鈥檛 the faintest idea what they鈥檙e talking about. Nor have we.
WHILE browsing the population trends tables in the world-data section of the (PRB), Michael Banther noticed that Norfolk is listed as a separate nation 鈥� with a projected population in 2025 of 2000 (sic), compared with, say, Nigeria鈥檚 204,900,000.
Banther says he hadn鈥檛 realised that devolution in the UK had gone quite so far as to grant one of its counties independence, and wonders why the people of Norfolk have been so slow to stage a celebration to mark their new-found nationhood. It seems he is also feeling stirrings of secessionist zeal in regard to his own county. 鈥淲hen,鈥� he asks, 鈥渨ill we obtain equal treatment here in South Gloucestershire?鈥�
Then again, perhaps the PRB was talking about the antipodean territory of Norfolk Island 鈥� though that hardly seems like a nation state, either.
AN ADVERTISEMENT for Limbitin that Ian Fraser came across reads: 鈥淟imbitin is a natural medicine formulated specifically to treat Restless Leg Syndrome. Limbitin comes in an easy-to-take form and is consumed orally through the mouth.鈥�
Fraser wants to know if he can take this medicine orally some other way.