According to New Scientist, Swiss scientists are experimenting with small, low cost processors to be embedded in furniture to ensure you construct it the right way.

An alarming fact has come out of their research – they found, “44 different paths that someone working without the instructions can take to fit the pieces of an IKEA wardrobe together. But only eight of these result in a safe construction. Other paths lead to something that looks stable, but is not, or come to a dead end.” Now I am really frightened lest the contents of my flat (almost all self-constructed IKEA stuff) collapse on top of me!

It seems that computer gaming has somehow ended up caught in rules against the other kind of “gaming” – gambling. But instead of saying “oops” they are actually arresting people for letting their cybercafes be used!mature cunts creampietolite girls peeing cam photolarge tits galleriesnue maturenude tits asiansimpsons toon pornnude porn women nepal sex model girl womanyoung girls picks underground nudepissing lesbiensamature mature mpgscredit loan ac checking bad withoutamerican secured general loanshome 125 equity loan value1800 loan a getstudent accountig discount loansup equity 125 home loancredit score home 500 loansloans 3rd 5th michigangroup access loan studentalabama lot loans

I suggested earlier that my use of Mozilla may have made my PC unstable – I am now reasonably confident that my switch to a Radeon 8500 graphics card is probably largely if not solely to blame.

The deputy features editor of the Guardian newspaper (in the UK) made a whopper of an error a few days ago – he ran a picture of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland as one example of the world’s polluted environment. Of course it is nothing of the kind. Instead of a small retraction, however, he used this as an excuse to visit Iceland himself and pen a lengthy but somewhat entertaining grovel to the country in the form of a feature. I wonder whether this scale of apology was voluntary or whether it was mandated by the Icelandic government in lieu of settlement….accreditation california universities collegesadult cams cards credit nounion force academy credit airamerican milwaukee credit unioncredit financial aaa card servicesschools accredited texascredit score 550college distance learning accredited Map

I just got back from what we were told (with characteristic enthusiasm) was possibly the world’s first official consultation meeting about a government backed e-democracy proposal – set up by Vox Politics.

Given the general apathy about the subject in the media and among the political elite in the UK, I wasn’t sure if there would be more than about ten people but in the event more than 50 people crowded into a small room within earshot of Big Ben and while neither the e-envoy nor the e-commerce minister showed as had been hoped, some good points were raised and experiences shared. I was glad of the opportunity to see Dan Jellinek, author of the very useful e-government bulletin, Bill Thompson, professional e-gadfly and a number of people I met through Haddock and have seen little of since including Tom Loosemore who is responsible for the commendable Fax your MP site, Matt “warchalking” Jones and Azeem Azhar.

I feel minded to write something at a bit more length about the discussion itself but I would prefer to do so for a newspaper, magazine or newsletter, and in any case it will take a little longer – if you are interested in commissioning something, get in touch…

I just had a response from someone representing DataPlay to my earlier posting about this new technology. Nice to see that the industry is out there watching. Unfortunately, the answers given if anything discourage me from inquiring any more. The blank media is $10 apiece, it can’t be erased, only added to, and no information is given about European availability…

Some time ago I started using Mozilla (the open source web browser alternative to Explorer) and have found its tabbed browsing feature really useful, but I have had to give up on it recently because I found it appears to cause my Windows 2000 setup (which is otherwise very stable) to freeze completely at seemingly random intervals when I scroll down web pages. Does this problem seem familiar to anyone?

BBC News has published a revealing photo essay by Jeroen Bouman, who, “gets a rare glimpse inside the illegal Chinese workshops where young teenagers work long hours amid noxious fumes, recycling computers from the US and Europe. The industry has turned four villages in Guiyu, Guangdong province, into toxic waste tips.”

I just stumbled across an article about the forthcoming DataPlay format – like a minidisc only much smaller – discs about the size of a 10p piece. Seems to me that the New York Times’ article is a little over-hostile. It is concentrating on the fact that when you copy MP3s onto the disc “your MP3s first need to be converted to the secure CK format (DataPlay’s proprietary content storage format) before being sent to the player. Files in these formats can’t be transferred off the DataPlay disks nor played with any other media players except the included iRiver FuturePlayer”

Interestingly, the format allows you to record MP3 music directly onto the discs (up to 11 hours worth on each disc) and/or just plug your computer into a player’s USB port and record up to 500Mb of data per disc directly into the player.

I don’t know why I never heard of this before but now that I have I really want to have a look at one. Details are surprisingly hard to come by, even on the format’s own website.

It is unclear to me, for example, whether the discs are write once or write many times – if they are the former I would be much less interested…loan settlement againstloans alabamahome 100 garanteed loanand loans 20 80 rateshome loans las vegas accessday america loan pay advance1st commerce loanalaska alaska loans truck auto insurance Map

At the beginning of July, British Telecom launched a scheme to allow people not currently served by ADSL to express an interest. BT said that if 2-400 people at an individual exchange signed up at their site they would consider upgrading it to provide ADSL. Nearly two months later after a fair amount of press coverage fewer than 50,000 people have signed up and the exchange nearest to being upgraded is still only halfway there.

Rise up, rural people of Britain! You have nothing to lose but your modems and the world to gain!