Liquid Explosives (by alaric)

Here's an interesting technical analysis of all this talk of taking explosives on board planes in liquid form.

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/msg00087.html

Where it really gets interesting, though, is towards the bottom. The author argues that stopping people from taking nail scissors and liquids on board planes is pretty stupid, since a clued-up terrorist could still hide plane-destroying materials in any metal object (sintered iron and aluminium = thermite, basically indetectable until it becomes a fireball), hide bombs in their body cavities, form hard plastic explosives into the shape of any object, convert a soft drinks can into a knife with just a couple of minute's work, etc.

The techniques developed by prisoners to improvise weapons from what they have to hand, or to smuggle and hide drugs, should give us some inspiration of what an organised terrorist group should be able to manage.

So should we give up and cower in fear? No. The fact that the terrorists aren't managing to make planes fall out of the sky can probably be put down to one of a few possibilities.

1. There just aren't enough people willing to die for their cause; motivating intelligent people to be suicide bombers is hard
2. Real security is provided by proper police work - identifying terrorists and tracing their networks to identify all the people involved in a plot, then arresting them - and that's working. Causing all this disruption at the airports in the name of security is pointless; once somebody's decided to down a plane, if they managed to recruit suicide bombers and get the materials and get them to the airport, the opportunity to actually stop them has already passed.

I'd like to see more money spent on actual policing - and less trivially-avoided, expensive, unpleasant, liberty-destroying measures like mass surveillance, laws against cryptography, and airport/train station/port screening. Sure, have an impressive-looking police presence at the airport to deter the weak-willed would-be bomber, but please, don't strip search me and make me spend an eight hour flight without my laptop.

HEHEHE!!! (by sarah)

Just thought I'd mention that I got mistaken for a teenager on Friday! 🙂

Probably the Shreik bag that did it!

Silly marketing people!

Still I'm really happy about this - Al said he'd have been peed off if it was him!

Sponsered Walk! (by sarah)

This weekend coming is the village boundary walk, now I've been practicing as a physiotherapy thing and am going to attempt it - I'll be doing the shortened version which is about 10 miles and will be with the old and infirm. We will be having regular breaks and generally taking all day about it with a stop of in a pub at the end - our lunch is being taken around for us so no carrying!

I think I might be able to do this especially as it'll be broken into stages meaning if it is too much I can back out and be rescued easily! (knowing me this is lickley ask any geologist whos been on a field trip with me!).

However I will be doing this as a sponsered walk to raise money for a charity - provisionally this will be the NSPCC though they have not yet got back to me. It will be a charity along those lines though!

Now if peeps are feeling flushed with short change and want to encourage me to work at this walk they can sponser me 🙂 I dont care if it is a penny or a pound or ten, just something would be nice!

I am aware that I wont see lots of people so you can either send me cheques etc.. or if you are coming to the Parties then I will have the form there (even though I'll already have done the walk).

Thanks guys!

Disastor Narrowelly Avoided :( (by sarah)

Occassionally I keep falling over for no good reason - I dont go dizzy or twist my ankle - my legs one or both just sort of give up. This has been happening for a while now but with enough time inbetween that I keep forgetting about it and wouldnt have thought much about it except Al started asking why was I falling over?

I didnt think it was anything to worry about considering whats happened to me recently I thought it was me setterling into movement angain - if that makes scense, especially as it tended to happen when I was 'pushing' myself.

Today however, it happened whilst I was carrying Jean, I managed to recover slightly and using new found Mother reflexes prefented her from hitting the deck, I was however then stuck in a strange sort of crouch that Al had to rescue me from 🙁

Now obviously this is not good - I dread to think of her having hit the ground - I cried I'm afriad. Now I've been a bit paranoid about this sort of thing but the nurse assured me lasst time I was at the drs that I was perfectly capable of carrying JEan (even though I regually lose all strength in left arm). I had completely forgotten about the falling over (which to be fair the dr does not yet know about as I was going to say something at my three month review) when I said to Al I would carry her 🙁 He had carried her for the entier outing around Cheltenham and when we got to the car park I offered to releive him of her so he could get to the van quicker for loading 🙁

Al agrees that its not safe for me to carry her unless short journeys in the house where I have worked out tequnics from my dizzy spell phase. This is so poo 🙁 Poor little baby she didnt even cry though it must have jolted her to some extent :'(

Tell me why am I still trusting the health service? They say I'm fine I end up crippled, they change their minds, they say I'm fine breathlessness is normal in pregnancy and then oh its a trip to cuasulty and then months in and out of hospital that could have been avoided! etc.. the list is too long these days - along with the drs here not having any records of the blood clots! Thank god Al was there - thank god I have people who where there and can coorberate what went on - they have lost the list of meds they gave me whilst pregnant plus more than half the notes where missing 🙁

They said it was fine to carry Jean - what if I hadnt been able to recover sufficently and she'd smashed her head open? How am I supposed to be a good mother? I cant even carry her anywhere - I cant take her out of the valley by myself - Al struggles getting the push chair up the hill?

Sorry this is yet again another winging self indulgent - arggg! I dont really know what to do post.

Jean is fine though and Als going to frog march me to the Docs! (more pointless tests where the results will be lost no doubt).

Virtual machines (by alaric)

Once upon a time, computers were generally mainframes - mainly because we hadn't yet learnt to make small computers.

As technology progressed, computers became smaller, and more ubiquitous.

However, at the same time, the role of the network became more and more important. At first, the model du jour was that there'd be a PC on every desk, and as a bit of a hack, networks were designed so that you could shares files between the PCs. But each file still sat on one machine, and the others just accessed it over the network.

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