Stochastic blue-sky research
If you’re wondering, stochastic blue-sky research is the marvellous term coined by New Scientist’s Feedback column for idly surfing on company time (see the 25th February issue). Here are some of the fruits of my idle surfing over the past few days while I really should have been doing other things.
1. April Fools
There were some decent April Fools this year. I thought the New Scientist one (first Feedback item) was only mildly amusing, but these I liked:
China buys Google
Bush preps historic Third Term
USB Memory Stick
Scientists find new disease
Bill Gates lands role in Doctor Who
Royal Family Tree
I see that the two from The Register are now marked as being April Fools, which wasn’t the case on Saturday. I liked the Mirror one mainly because of this bit: The exact location of the tree, in the New Forest, Hants, is being kept secret because of fears it could attract druids.
I thought this story from the BBC was an April Fool, but it is datelined March 31st, so I guess not. In fact, the only BBC April Fool I know of is the Today programme’s evil one where they said that the Radio 4 “UK Theme” (the junking of which has been causing an enormous stooshie on Radio 4) was going to be replaced with a “Euro Theme”. That would cause apoplexy over the bacon and eggs.
The consensus seems to be that pentagramwearer made a Fool of himself, both through posting his prank post after 12:00 and through it being, well, not funny at all. Mind you, it may be that if you live in Northern Ireland for any length of time, things like sharing a flat with heroin addicts and the wetty death of a gerbil in the front-loader seem like a real hoot.
2. What is it with Boris Johnson?
Crikey. He just can’t stay away from the ladies, can he? Which is not hugely interesting; but what made me laugh was discovering that his wife Marina is “a 41-year-old divorce lawyer”. Perhaps he thinks she needs some work.
3. Green Wing
I mentioned it the other day, and at the time I thought it was a difficult series to describe. Funny, yes; strange, certainly; but nothing like that does it justice. The Register has precisely the right description: “a second series of jump-cutting and speedy-uppy-slowy-downy hospital action”. (Though The Reg does need to check up on what the word mentalist means. Although, having seen some of Friday’s episode...)
4. Why would anyone use anything as broken as IE?
I have wondered why I occasionally get spam which includes bits of BBC stories with a link to read more; obviously, for nothing good, but not being inclined to follow the links, I never did see what the point was. It seems these emails actually point to sites which try to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer which would allow a hacker to install key-logging software on Windows machines. Good grief. What are users advised to do? According to The Register, Surfers are advised to avoid responding to spam messages, no matter how enticing.
Which is the bleeding obvious, but then people really are that stupid. Another Register article links to a PDF of a study into how phishing sites trick people into trusting them. One of the people in the study said she would enter her username and password into a site to verify she had an account there; and, yes, she did use the same password on many different sites. She said that passwords are not dangerous to give out, like financial information is.Disabling Active Scripting in IE or using an alternative browser until Microsoft issues a patch are also advisable.
Now that is good advice; except that it sounds as though this is the only security issue with IE, which isn’t the case. I wouldn’t myself consider using IE (on Windows, anyway) for normal browsing; it would take a lot to entice me away from Firefox, which with the NoScript and AdBlock extensions as well as the built-in pop-up blocking gives a pretty secure surfing environment. (I would also recommend the NukeIt Enhanced extension, which can remove any object in a page - very useful at improving the readability of articles presented with big ads in the middle of them.)
5. Have the opposition found their balls?
David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary) has said that a future Tory government would repeal the ID card bill if it becomes law. It’s about time the official opposition did some opposing of this government.
I hope the opposition parties will also do some opposing of the notion of introducing airport-style metal detectors in train stations. That is an insane idea. There are fundamental differences in the way people use railways from the way they use aeroplanes, and people do carry metal (sometimes even knives, for wholly legitimate purposes) when they are travelling by rail. I also would not been keen on going through something like that if I were carrying any media which might be adversely affected by magnetic fields, which is something I do fairly often. Reports of the initial use of the machines on Merseyside said that people could refuse to go through the detectors, but the reports yesterday seemed to suggest that if you did refuse to go through a metal detector you would receive the attentions of a police officer.
And then, of course, there is the LRRB; but no sign yet, as far as I can see, of the opposition parties raising a rumpus about that.
6. The popularity thing
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1. April Fools
There were some decent April Fools this year. I thought the New Scientist one (first Feedback item) was only mildly amusing, but these I liked:
China buys Google
Bush preps historic Third Term
USB Memory Stick
Scientists find new disease
Bill Gates lands role in Doctor Who
Royal Family Tree
I see that the two from The Register are now marked as being April Fools, which wasn’t the case on Saturday. I liked the Mirror one mainly because of this bit: The exact location of the tree, in the New Forest, Hants, is being kept secret because of fears it could attract druids.
I thought this story from the BBC was an April Fool, but it is datelined March 31st, so I guess not. In fact, the only BBC April Fool I know of is the Today programme’s evil one where they said that the Radio 4 “UK Theme” (the junking of which has been causing an enormous stooshie on Radio 4) was going to be replaced with a “Euro Theme”. That would cause apoplexy over the bacon and eggs.
The consensus seems to be that pentagramwearer made a Fool of himself, both through posting his prank post after 12:00 and through it being, well, not funny at all. Mind you, it may be that if you live in Northern Ireland for any length of time, things like sharing a flat with heroin addicts and the wetty death of a gerbil in the front-loader seem like a real hoot.
2. What is it with Boris Johnson?
Crikey. He just can’t stay away from the ladies, can he? Which is not hugely interesting; but what made me laugh was discovering that his wife Marina is “a 41-year-old divorce lawyer”. Perhaps he thinks she needs some work.
3. Green Wing
I mentioned it the other day, and at the time I thought it was a difficult series to describe. Funny, yes; strange, certainly; but nothing like that does it justice. The Register has precisely the right description: “a second series of jump-cutting and speedy-uppy-slowy-downy hospital action”. (Though The Reg does need to check up on what the word mentalist means. Although, having seen some of Friday’s episode...)
4. Why would anyone use anything as broken as IE?
I have wondered why I occasionally get spam which includes bits of BBC stories with a link to read more; obviously, for nothing good, but not being inclined to follow the links, I never did see what the point was. It seems these emails actually point to sites which try to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer which would allow a hacker to install key-logging software on Windows machines. Good grief. What are users advised to do? According to The Register, Surfers are advised to avoid responding to spam messages, no matter how enticing.
Which is the bleeding obvious, but then people really are that stupid. Another Register article links to a PDF of a study into how phishing sites trick people into trusting them. One of the people in the study said she would enter her username and password into a site to verify she had an account there; and, yes, she did use the same password on many different sites. She said that passwords are not dangerous to give out, like financial information is.Disabling Active Scripting in IE or using an alternative browser until Microsoft issues a patch are also advisable.
Now that is good advice; except that it sounds as though this is the only security issue with IE, which isn’t the case. I wouldn’t myself consider using IE (on Windows, anyway) for normal browsing; it would take a lot to entice me away from Firefox, which with the NoScript and AdBlock extensions as well as the built-in pop-up blocking gives a pretty secure surfing environment. (I would also recommend the NukeIt Enhanced extension, which can remove any object in a page - very useful at improving the readability of articles presented with big ads in the middle of them.)
5. Have the opposition found their balls?
David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary) has said that a future Tory government would repeal the ID card bill if it becomes law. It’s about time the official opposition did some opposing of this government.
I hope the opposition parties will also do some opposing of the notion of introducing airport-style metal detectors in train stations. That is an insane idea. There are fundamental differences in the way people use railways from the way they use aeroplanes, and people do carry metal (sometimes even knives, for wholly legitimate purposes) when they are travelling by rail. I also would not been keen on going through something like that if I were carrying any media which might be adversely affected by magnetic fields, which is something I do fairly often. Reports of the initial use of the machines on Merseyside said that people could refuse to go through the detectors, but the reports yesterday seemed to suggest that if you did refuse to go through a metal detector you would receive the attentions of a police officer.
And then, of course, there is the LRRB; but no sign yet, as far as I can see, of the opposition parties raising a rumpus about that.
6. The popularity thing
tanngrisnir's LiveJournal popularity rating is 2.64/10.
tanngrisnir is more popular than 84.2% of all LiveJournal users.
tanngrisnir is more popular than 35.7% of their mutual friends.
How popular are you?
LJ Popularity created by thehumangame.