Will’s Web Miscellany

A. Yes it does, perfectly and at the highest detail level.

I saw these amusing wireless network names on my way into Manchester to meet Paul Robinson the other week.  Not had a chance to post them until now.

My wireless network is less imaginatively named ‘foo’.

I despair of eBay, and the internet in general. How did these not sell? How?

I mean, who wouldn’t want 8 mouse balls, especially when posed so artfully.  They are pleasantly rubbery, quite heavy; obviously good quality. Someone missed a bargain today, they really did.

I am posting this a a blog entry because I can’t see an obvious way to leave comments on Sam Clark’s blog where he wrote about the subject of metal detectors on the London Underground (LU).

Boris (and everyone else who promotes the idea of detectors) seems to be ignoring the fact that whilst creating a target with the size of queues they will undoubtedly cause, the scanners will only deter the most incompetent terrorists.

Why? Because the LU is a huge, open system.  You can simply climb a small fence and from there get to any other part of the system. Securing the stations alone will not make a difference, and will almost certainly lead to a false sense of security which could put travelers in a worse situation than before as their guard will be lowered.

You could solve this by securing the entire of the underground system; closing it off, but that is going to cost an astronomic amount of money and will only be as reliable as the least secure part of the whole system. Or you could spend the money on gathering better intelligence, more policing and maybe starting to solve some of the fundamental problems that drive people to terrorism.

People who advocate detectors at LU stations either don’t understand the security situation, or are only interested in the “fell good” response the suggestion would have with the public.

There are a couple of good quotes from Geoff Dunmore, operational security manager (March 2006) for LU:

“…the network would not be the right environment for the technology.”

“Basically, what we know is that it’s not practical”

“Finally there’s also the risk that you actually create another target with people queuing up and congregating at the screening points.”

The Asus LS201: Punchable ’scratch-proof’ monitor:

… the Asus LS201 – a TFT monitor with a protective panel made of crystal-sapphire. Our Asus rep says not only is it scratch-proof, but it’s also ’punch-proof’. 

Excellent You Tube Video

[09:16] carl: my god, that video is excellent.[09:16] carl: In soviet russia, the monitor hits you! 

After writing about how Ashley Highfield (BBC Head of Technology) claimed that only 400-600 out of 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk run Linux I started to wonder what the proportion of visitors to my own jokes site were using Linux. Here are screengrabs taken from my google analytics account:

Nearly 94% use windows, 5% use Mac. OK, that matches Ashley’s claims. But wait, 0.9% of my sites visitors use Linux. That is significantly more than the 0.00003% that Ashley Highfield claimed use bbc.co.uk. If we use that 0.9% figure against the 17.1 million visitors he claims visit bbc.co.uk the number of Linux users would be closer to 154,000.

Where the hell did he get his numbers from?

Just for fun, here are the browser versions. Good to see Firefox doing so well:

Bollocks. Either Ashley Highfield (BBC Head of Technology) has someone particularly stupid interpreting the stats for the site, or he is trying too hard to justify the BBC’s recent use of Microsoft client only technology.

Sign the petition to let the BBC know you use Linux. Found at PerfDave.

Edited to add: I estimate they have closer to 154,000 Linux users.

According to this page:

“Command-Shift-3 shortcut for taking a screen capture of your entire screen”

Useful, but even better:

“Command-Shift-4, … gives you a crosshair cursor so you can choose which area of the screen you want to capture.”

That is really great. There are a couple of other options for saving the screen grab to the clipboard instead of the desktop.

Have your IP address ‘moaned’ to you at moanmyip.com, a useful diagnostic tool. Possibly NSFW.