iamcal.com Since May 2000

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• Hello!

(because I think I may have started a thread like that before)

If there was a plane (a 747, say) that could fly right around the world without refuelling, how long would the flight take?

(I think that might be one for the Great Oracle Brockles) or GOB for short!

depends entirely on its speed...

eg a perfectly sealed balloon loosed into the jetstream will quite happily circle the earth. it just won't be quick.
eg a geostationary satellite circles the earth every 24 hours, and its speed depends on how far up it is. (unpowered ones must be at a particular height -- thank you arthur c. clarke for pointing this out and making modern satellite communications possible)
eg a jumbo proceeding at say 800km/hr at a height of 0 feet must travel something like 40,000km to circle the earth so 40,000/800 = 50 hours

here we go, geostationary satellites do 11,052km/h. and that's ON TOP OF an earth whipping round the sun at what 22,500km/h or somesuch. no wonder my hat keeps blowing off. (pew)

a jumbo proceeding at say 800km/hr at a height of 0 feet

would probably only go only a few yards before crashing into something.

Go on, spoil my pedantic day by saying it was just hypothetical.

Thanks, Salty. Look at all that lovely maths on that site...

no worries

wh: it's not a hypothetical jumbo, it's a hypocritical jumbo. it goes around telling other jumbos they should all fly at 0 feet but then goes all chickenshit and flees upstairs to 30,000 feet and gets there late.

hahahaha!

Speaking of Arthur C. Clarke...I have a newspaper article of predictions he made in the year 2000, or 1999, can't remember...I'll post a few tomorrow if I can remember to bring the article in.

Remember, the higher the jumbo flies, the further it is to go around the world.

what ever happened to cold fusion?

iamhal

hahahahahaha!

what ever happened to cold fusion?

They broke up around 1975 when the bottom dropped out of progressive rock, but I heard somewhere that they may be about to make a comeback.

Cold Fusion is Old News. All the new scientists on the block are getitng excited about Frigid Fusion.

But they're not getting anywhere with it.

Whereas all the new scientists on the brock are getitng excited about a frigid loosen.

6 for a fiver, eh?

Fuckin' bargain!

Another stupid question : why don't they have DNA codes converted to a unique identity number and store them on a computer as soon as somebody is born? That way, when a crime is committed, all they have to do is scan the cells found at the scene, and presto, you have your criminal.

Because stupid liberal fucks and criminals don't want that to happen.

I've never understood why people are against this sort of thing. unless they are guilty of something. I'd be quite happy to be databased.

Because if that information is stored, and added to from many sources, before long it will be possible for people to be tracked throughout their entire life. And while that theoretically doesn't matter if you haven't done anything wrong (and only the 'right' sort of people have access to it) it is still an invasion of privacy, even more so if for some reason that information becomes public domain.

But noone can tell me why "invasion of privacy" is such a bad thing.

I don't care if Tescos know what food I like, in fact it's good cos they give me vouchers for vege things.

I don't care if everyone knows that I spent the weekend with some friends in Wales.

Why does this privacy thing matter so much?

So that people can have privacy when cheating on a partner? So people can have privacy to commit fraud?

Why then, 'alfie', do you object when I use your real name on here?

And also, because people can, believe it or not, use that information for evil. For instance, if I knew you went to Wales every third weekend, I'd know when to burgle your house, wouldn't I?

Never mind the fact that some of us don't want other people knowing what we do because it is quite simply none of their fucking business.

"simply none of their fucking business."

well i hardly thing having my DNA on file is going to matter a lot to me. Other than to remove me from any police enquirey.

People who spout on about "invasion of privacy" dont usually have much to hide. They just have this mistaken believe that they are so interesting that other people are going to WANT to use this information to find out about them. What they don't realise is their own massive insignificance.

For instance, if I knew you went to Wales every third weekend, I'd know when to burgle your house, wouldn't I?

Wouldn't take the police long to catch you, though, would it?

hahahahaha.

I'm cutting this argument short, because im sure we've had it before.

I dont want my DNA databased for the simple reason that I have done things wrong and, although I have nothing planned, may well do something wrong again. In either case I wish not to be caught.

I'm just surprised it's not been implemented yet, it would save time in solving crimes. At the moment, your DNA is only matched if you are a suspect but i think it would be easier to have everyone recorded. I can't see that it's any more of an infringement on privacy than to have your fingerprints taken?

(mind telling us what you did wrong, Sul?)

(killed a nosey south-african)

ahaha

the usual invasion of privacy argument goes like this:

it would b fine if the current government had access to such data, but what happens when somebody else gets access - a new nasty government or some idiot clerk.

bnew nasty government decides they want to cull people of french heritage (for instance) and have a nice big file listing everyone to kill. etc etc, applied to any particaular viewpoint

would also make it alot easier to frame people for crimes convincingly

Being honest, it's not really that much of a tough call. There are good arguments for either side but the "information always seems to be abused" is an extremely good and also currently valid point.

Taking the voters list being abused for marketing for instance. I think we'll all agree that it's wrong but it happens. (Who got discount tickets to a local club for their 18th out of the blue or suddenly got credit card offers?)
Now what happens when DNA is mapped further? The current government say "I promise not to give the database to anyone", then someone gets the idea that more (not-so-hidden-tax) revenue could be gained if they released it to select parties. Now it's out of your hands and in the hands of the house to vote on it for you. That's VERY worrying.

I, for one, do not want my small penis DNA trend to be given to a load of mail/phone/door-to-door salesmen. It's bad enough one of those online bitches told some spammers about it.


edit: yeah it's just an extension of what cal said but with a current example

Plus they don't have internet access on the inside and you guys would miss me soooo much. :)

Ye Gods!
Forget about me being SFG, it appears Cal is Beargod!

How do you get that Cal is Beargod?

The spelling. Or more accurately, typing with his fists.

Oh.

One fist, an elbow and his forehead.

As he will no doubt be eating something at the time.

cal's post flags one side of the key problem; ditto sul's.

others:

• ERROR- TECHNICAL
dna tests are NOT conclusive, they are statistical probabilities. in england for example, dna tests are much less powerful than those used in america. more than one in a million chance of a match IF our current understanding of the probabilities is correct, which i very much doubt, given the number of things we're still learning about dna and the fact that the probabilities are NOT based on empirical fact but on statisticians doing a linear estimate based on schoolboy assumptions which have not been tested.

• ERROR- PROCEDURAL/CULTURAL
think how blindingly efficient the average govt clerk is. think how blindingly productive and nifty the average govt IT project is.

now think that this same efficiency will open up tracking every part of your life. to anyone who gets access to those dbs. even once.

plus simple error. the wrong card gets picked out of the machine and the wrong reference number entered against a result. your negative match goes to a rapist, and the rapist's positive match goes to you, convicting you of murder or burglary or whatever you were charged for.

and SHOULD you be so unlucky as to get caught up in something, the simple WEIGHT of evidence is considered more important than whether it's relevant. Operation Orr is a good example of a well-intentioned witchhunt convicting people without real evidence, but mountains of evidential records.

the issue is not what happens when things go right. it's what happens when things go wrong. humans in bureaucracy look for any easy way out of doing work that looks like it looks all right, or is "generally accepted." consider the number of people on death row who are exonerated completely. but they were still convicted in the first place! there's a chap up for life/death in bulgaria at the moment, even though another man has confessed to the murder and has loads of corroborating evidence. the court has convicted him, won't overturn it.

• MEDICAL
we know fuck all about how accurate these dna tests ACTUALLY are. and it's not as stable or black&white as "a" dna test, or even "a" dna. there are loads of people with different dna in their blood vs their skin, for example: marrow transplantees. there was a recent case where a guy got accused of rape PROVEN on a dna test. but he was observed to be in a gaol under surveillance at the time, quite some distance away. turned out he'd had a marrow transplant. but if he'd not been in gaol, he'd simply have been convicted: dna-tests are conclusive, right?
wrong.

• DELIBERATE FRAUD
here's a trick. say you're a smoker. toss away a used butt. heroin/crack boy wandering street picking up random butts. breaks into a house, drops a butt behind him. police check, arrest you for whatever he did.
now: prove you're innocent.

if he did anything sexual or god-forbid child-related, you can FORGET about getting a fair trial. even if exonerated later, that can take years and you're pretty likely to have lost your job and been forced to move before then.


or say you make a lot of money. girl gets your dna record off file, slips some money to a dna firm, and a child becomes "your" child. instant maintenance. never underestimate the self-deluding lengths some people will go to in order to gain attention or money. and it only takes one or two to fuck your life around.


• "GOOGLE-ISATION" OF INFO
we take a HUGE amount for granted in terms of privacy.

there are theses worth of thoughts here, but everyone should have a read of this:

"How a donor sperm boy traced his father using the internet"
scary as fuck. unaskedfor dna tests, and he's traced via relatives. just using PUBLIC info. and now: something he did 15 years ago for $20 and a warm inner glow has landed him with major emotional upheaval and serious financial and legal obligations which he (and ALL parties to the act) EXPLICITLY opted out of.

%&$^%&^%^$

how is donor sperm any more scary than some bloke who's casual shag decides she wants babies. She by what ever means necessary makes it happen, doesn't tell the bloke but X years later decides child support would be nice.

difference re donor sperm: all parties to the arrangement AGREED in WRITING up-front what the various future relationships would be.

well, ok, in the uk, nanny said you can't do that any more. which is why sperm donor numbers have tanked since this was announced. "you want sperm and a baby? fine. you want someone who's going to arbitrarily chop an undefined percentage out of future earnings, plus an undefinable amount of emotional dependency? ah... i've got better things to do with my time. like drink a cup of tv and watch some tea."

Thanks Sal. I suppose there are a lot of cons (scuse the pun) I wrote a Sci-Fi story about this once. I thought it would be kinda cool if you had these scanners everywhere which linked up all your info to your DNA code so that if you wanted to draw money for example all you have to do is stick your finger in the scanner. Have you read a book called "This Perfect Day" by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, A Kiss before Dying, The Stepford Wives) In it the citizens have to wear a bracelet which is linked to a super computer called Uni.

Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei
Led us to this perfect day.
Marx, Wood, Wei and Christ;
All but Wei were sacrificed.
Wood, Wei, Christ and Marx
Gave us lovely schools and parks.
Wei, Christ, Marx and Wood
Made us humble, made us good.

I heard British MP Tony McNulty talking about the ID Card Database on BBC World this morning. Anybody else catch that?

Another one : what determines whether a website will show up on the first page on a search engine or on page 623?

Loads of things, depending on the search engine.

Plenty of information at searchenginewatch.com .

Thank you Grim

How do I post a table to my blog? I have a table which I made in Word and I tried copying and pasting it to my blog and it goes all wonky. Any help would be much appreciated.