Letter
Viruses such as Melissa and ExploreZip are not computer viruses. They are
Microsoft/PC-related viruses.
Anyone using a different operating system and e-mail program will not be
affected. It is those using Microsoft products who should be concerned about the
current rash of virus outbreaks. These viruses spread by exploiting some
astoundingly silly features of certain Microsoft software products.
Letter
The time has come for Microsoft and its less ubiquitous cousins to put proper
defences into their operating systems. If antisocial malcontents can adapt, why
not Microsoft? Because it would threaten the lucrative anti-virus industry?
Good old petrol?
Michael Harper of Finland asks an interesting question: “When our cities are
filled with vehicles producing water vapour, will we look back on the golden age
of petrol engines, when the streets weren’t more humid than a Turkish bath?”
(Letters, 5 June, p 56).
I’m leaning towards the answer no.
This is because our cities already are filled with such vehicles. Burning
octane produces 43 per cent as much water vapour as burning hydrogen.
It’s also possible that vehicles will burn not hydrogen but solid boron, fed
as a filament into a chamber where continuous combustion occurs.
Recycling threat
Your article on the Belgian food scare is particularly alarming, if I have
understood it correctly
(This Week, 12 June, p 4).
You state: “One theory is
that used transformer oil, rich in PCBs, was dumped in a public recycling
container for used frying oil. The batch would have made 1600 tonnes of feed,
enough to feed 16 million chickens for a day.”
So used cooking oil, collected from public recycling sites (which are largely
unsupervised, if British sites are anything to go by), is not, as I had always
assumed, used in manufacturing hydrocarbon-based materials, but is put straight
back into the food chain.
It sounds like a bad idea. Is this really the case?
Data destroyers?
We’ve all read the arguments over mobile phones and tumours, and it’s really
a matter of personal choice which we find the most convincing. However, with the
exception of the embargo on mobiles at filling stations, oil refineries, nuclear
power stations and on aeroplanes, I’ve not heard much about other potential
effects of radio frequency radiation.
I have a mobile that, like all others, emits a signal periodically so the
service provider can pinpoint exactly where it is. If I’m near any audio
equipment when this occurs, I hear a series of buzzes through the loudspeakers
for a few seconds. If I happen to be making a tape recording at the time, then
the buzzes get recorded as well.
If the signals can do this to audio tape, what effect will they have on other
data stored magnetically鈥攙ideos, bank and other swipe cards, floppies,
even (gasp) hard disc drives?
Head banging
I expect that Michael Barrett’s patent application for a device to measure
the number and force of blows in boxing is based on measuring acceleration
(Patents, 29 May, p 7).
Drawing an analogy with the cranial anatomy of
woodpeckers, which involves resilient mounting for the brain, it follows that,
in humans, the acceleration of brain tissue resulting from a blow to the head
will result in damage, because of the absence of protective mounting.
What a pity that Barrett did not design his boxing touch sensor to record the
degree of brain injury. His application to the patent office would then have
been blameless, at the same time sparing the comptroller of patents any risk of
involvement in a charge of compounding felonies.
Earth's odds
You’re going to have to stop frightening the hell out of me. Robert Matthews
claims that there’s a 1 in 100 000 chance that Earth will be ejected from its
orbit, a higher possibility than my winning the Michigan state lottery
(This Week, 12 June, p 17).
I was terrified until I thought about it more carefully.
You don’t say how long a time period is covered by these odds, so I assume
you mean about 5 billion years, after which the Sun becomes a red giant and all
bets are off. I don’t know how often they have a draw on the Michigan lottery,
so let’s say it’s once a month.
That means I’ll have 60 billion chances to win it before the Sun toasts
Michigan to a cinder. Again, I don’t know what the odds are for winning it once,
but if I have 60 billion goes at it I think my odds won’t be all that
bad鈥攁nd they should be considerably better than the odds of a passing star
using Jupiter to knock Earth for six.
Except that I don’t ever buy tickets for the Michigan state lottery. And even
if I did, I doubt I could keep it up every month for the next 5 billion
years.
Unless we compare like with like, my horse will always be faster than your
pig is fat.
Buried alive
Feedback
(12 June)
describes a patented coffin that sends out a radio signal if its occupant stirs.
This is far from being the first such patent. On the contrary, there is a
long line of such patents, many of them German, which come under the
international patent classification heading: “A62B33/00. Devices for allowing
seemingly-dead persons to escape or draw attention; Breathing apparatus for
accidentally buried persons.”
It seems that at the end of last century, many people were concerned with the
possibility of being buried alive. For those who like to browse such things, a
new site, www.european-patent-office.org/espacenet/info/access.htm, will
be indispensable. Organised by the European Patent Office, it contains links to
the databases of 17 participating national offices as well as the central one.
Nano brains
So now we can mass-produce tiny brains
(“Hard wiring”, 12 June, p 40).
Surely this has been done for hundreds of years: the end results are
politicians.
Milkman's droop
I suspect you have been led slightly astray in your story about Swiss
labelling of milk cartons
(Feedback, 19 June).
First, there are four official languages in Switzerland: the three you give
plus Romansch, a Latin-derived language spoken by only about 50 000 native
speakers, but a full idiom and recognised as such in the Swiss constitution
and鈥攑robably much more telling鈥攁lso on the Swiss bank notes, where
all denominations are given in the four languages.
Second, whoever told you the one about milk laying you flat is either not
very fluent in Swiss German or was being somewhat, let us say, delicate, as
“Milch lait latte” actually translates as “milk lays down [your] erection”.
Letter
“Milch lait latte” does not mean “Milk lays you flat” in Swiss German. It
actually means: “Milk gives you an erection”.
<B>Correction:</B>
The picture caption for the article “High and dry”
(This Week, 5 June, p 10)
incorrectly stated that “half a billion litres of water
pours over Niagara Falls each day”. This figure should have been 500 million
cubic metres, as in the text.
Don't panic
I am profoundly worried when I read an editorial in a supposedly rational,
scientific magazine that advises: “When it comes to e-mail, trust no one”
(Editorial, 19 June, p 3).
There are any number of journalists, tabloid and broadsheet, who are only too
willing to spread scare stories about hackers and viruses. The consequence of
this is a growing sense of mistrust and fear, which will provide more of an
impetus for the implementation of intrusive surveillance than a few viruses and
worms will.
New 杏吧原创 should not add to a sense of panic that will lead to
an acceptance of intrusive monitoring of cyberspace. Nor should it add to the
all-too-prevalent sense of mistrust that is an unwelcome characteristic of
modern society.