Then you’re old enough to appreciate this: OSNews is running an article about the upcoming fight between Google and Microsoft. Where the Netscape/Microsoft battle involved web browsers, the weapons of the Google/Microsoft battle will be search engines and e-mail services.
If you’re confused as to how companies can be fighting by trying to increase the market share of their free product, read the article.
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[further parts of this post were recovered on 13 October 2018]
Now here’s an interesting article [security.itworld.com]. It seems that the European Union is investing €11 million over four years into developing a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography.
For those of you not in the know, quantum cryptography (for passing crypto keys) works like this:
Quantum Cryptography For Dummies
Just extracted this from the just-released minutes of our last staff meeting. It’s from a section about what tasks are assigned to whom:
Dan:
How very right.
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In this era of pro-Linux and pro-Windows hoo-hah, it’s good to see an article who’s writer really has his head screwed on: Common OS Myths Debunked is a wonderful piece; go read it.
Linux is not the answer!
Windows is not the answer either!
Don’t even get me started on MacOS…
Operating…
Typhoid in my left arm. Hepatitis A in my right arm, and a heap of Malaria tablets to boot. Decided that the best way to get this lot into my bloodstream as fast as possible was a quick sprint around Aberystwyth. Now I feel slightly dizzy and nauseous. Lovely.
On the up-side, I didn’t have to pay for any of this medication. Today was the last day that the surgery I attend isn’t charging for those which are considered ‘holiday medication’.
Feeling a little more woozy now. Think I’ll dance for a bit to make sure it’s worked it’s way into my system properly (better to make myself hideously sick for a day than ill for a week, I say), then take a rest.
Hooray for pathogens!
Yes, the the rumours you’ve heard are true – The Flat has been rearranged. In a mighty effort (and with the help of Claire, Paul and Bryn), we’ve pretty much ‘mirrored’ the room widthways. This change provides several benefits:
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The Register are running an article about the new UK ID card, and what it all means. They’re always a great source of information on such things, if slightly cynical… and this document is no exception. Go read it. Then throw rocks at Mr. Blunkett. <grin>
Last night’s dream
Claire was complaining at me because I’d bought online driving lessons, which she considered to be significantly worse value for money than ‘traditional’ ones. I argued that I didn’t
actually want the lessons, but they were only 10p each and I only had 20p pieces and I needed 10p pieces, so I bought them so as to have them give me 10p pieces in change.
After I was woken by the alarm and hit the snooze button…
This morning’s dream
I wake up on Ynyslas beach, and (despite wondering how I got there) decide that I ought to go to work, so I start trekking South towards Borth. Alex, a coworker, overtook me, driving
his old car (he replaced it a few months ago).
Monday night’s dream
Somewhat reminiscent of Far Cry (a first-person shooter I’ve been playing too much of recently), I was armed to the teeth and shooting heaps of mercenaries. As time went on, I began to
have a conflict of morals, and began wondering who was the ‘bad guy’ – me, or them. Then, perhaps to prove it, I raped one of the hostages I was supposed to be rescuing. Hmm.
I woke up this morning to two mysteries:
1. Why had I set my alarm for 8:30am?
2. Why do I have a nose bleed?
I’ve solved the former: Claire needs to move her car (which is parked on double-yellows outside) or she’ll get ticketed when the morning wardens come by (morning wardens? they’re like traffic wardens, but they put tickets on people who still look half-asleep). The latter? No idea.
Yay; we’re off to the Borth Animalarium today, to look at meerkats! Followed by Troma Night!
My ‘Online Bank’ project isn’t going very well. So far it allows you to add Books to a Cart and get the total cost of them all. Which isn’t terribly useful, because that sounds more like a bookstore to me than an online bank… but I couldn’t find an example online about how to use EJBs to make an online bank, just a bookstore. D’oh.
Have you seen AQA (All Questions Answered), a new online/SMS service? The idea is that you text message a question to 63336 (only on O2, Vodafone, and Orange, right now: costs £1) and their server uses a clever combination of intelligent algorithms, data mining, and human researchers to provide you with an answer.
They’re working on the policy of ‘All Questions Answered’. It could make the Scholars pub quiz a little easier. =o)
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
This is just plain weird. How to perform a fecalectomy on a keyring.
I’ve got some damn cool new board games, including the second best one in the world, and another one in the top 100, according to the voters on BoardGameGeek. Paul, Claire and I played Hacker from Steve Jackson Games (the people behind Chez Geek and the inspiration for all those weird cards I’ve been posting to my blog). Later, Bryn, Paul, Claire and I played Carcassonne, a clever tile-laying game, and tonight, Claire and I played Tigres & Euphrates, another tile game. I’m rediscovering my love of board games, and slowly forcing it upon others as well. Bryn bought a copy of Risk, and Claire’s spent forever cutting all of the little pieces out…
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I handed in my dissertation yesterday. What a farce. Here’s the approximate order of things.
08:30 – Get up. Compile a postscript (.ps) copy of my dissertation, and upload both this and the .tex source files to central.aber.ac.uk. Start walking up to campus (Bryn offers to give me a lift, but I feel energetic, so I bound on up the hill).
09:00 – Reach campus and pay for £5 of printer credit (100 pages). Find a workstation room, log into central, and lpr -Puserarea diss-final.ps (print) it. Marvellous. Pick
up the printout.
09:15 – Drop my (printed) dissertation off at the Library to be hardback bound. Everything’s going splendidly. Trek back down town. The hand-in window is 14:00-16:00, so I’ve got loads of time.
13:30 – Arrive back on campus, this time with two CDs (containing the source code and sample data for the project). I buy sticky things from the Union with which to attach them to the inside cover of my dissertation, and then trek to the Library to pick up the masterpiece.
13:45 – Hmm. The binding office seems to be closed. Guess they’re on lunch. I go to return a library book from the Physical Sciences Library, …
Update, 11 January 2020: As the tail-end of this post appears to be lost forever, I’ll fill in the essence of it from memory: after a leisurely morning/early afternoon of getting my dissertation printed and bound for delivery, well-ahead of the deadline later in the day and thus avoiding the mad rush for the printers and binders later in the day, I arrived at the hand-in point only to be told I was supposed to be handing over two copies, not one, and so I ended up caught up in the mad rush I’d been smugly avoiding after all.
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
There’s a lot of defence for wargames, as Command & Conquer: Generals to see how far this can be taken. In Generals (set in the near future), the United States unite with a (reluctant) China in order to suppress terrorism in (you guessed it) the Middle East. All sides have weapons of mass destruction, but the wording is clear: while the American WMDs are called “Superweapons” the Chinese have “Nuclear Weapons” and the arab states have “Biochemical Terror Weapons”. And that’s not all – the American soldiers all say things like “Doing the right thing,” and “Defending our people,” in true American Hero voices. Meanwhile, the other sides are made to sound insidious and crafty. The Armerican tanks have names like “Crusader” (yeh; let’s make a reference to Jerusalem, shall we?) and “Patriot”, while the global …
At long last, after many nights (and days) slog, my dissertation is done. Enormous thanks to everybody who provided feedback to the developmental copies (don’t make any more comments now, ‘cos I’ve “gone gold” with it). Tomorrow I hand it in and I’m rid of it forever, yay!!!
I’m actually not as happy with it as I’d like to be. There’s so much more that I wanted to do with it. But I’m over the word limit already and pruning out old stuff and shortening sentences is such hard work, and I don’t think I actually have time.
Still: I bet I’m the only person who submits their project on two CDs… <grins> If only size were everything.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that I’ve been an unbearable cunt over the last few days (mostly to Claire); a result of the heaps of stress at this work I’ve had to do (alongside everything else… as usual). I’m not usually one to let stress get to me, but there I was, snappy and irritable. Much apologies and backrubs owed, methinks.
But hey. It’s done.
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I’m looking for help proofreading my dissertation. If you’ve been invited to, or you’d like to help, please go to https://danq.me/diss/, download the latest version, and post any comments here.
You will need a password. To ensure that only invited parties can get hold of the password, you’ll need to prove your identity. The following groups are permitted to log in: