The South Wales Echo has the following <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url=aHR0cDovL2ljd2FsZXMuaWNuZXR3b3JrLmNvLnVrL2NhcGl0YWxjaXR5L25ld3MvdG1fb2JqZWN0aWQ9MTY1MzA4MjgmbWV0aG9kPWZ1bGwmc2l0ZWlkPTUwMDgyJmhlYWRsaW5lPWRyaXZlci1wcm92ZXMtdGhlLWNhbWVyYS1jYW4tbGllLW5hbWVfcGFnZS5odG1s&amp;entry_id=186″ title=”http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/capitalcity/news/tm_objectid=16530828&amp;method=full&amp;siteid=50082&amp;headline=driver-proves-the-camera-can-lie-name_page.html” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/capitalcity/news/tm_objectid=16530828&amp;method=full&amp;siteid=50082&amp;headline=driver-proves-the-camera-can-lie-name_page.html’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>article</a> on how an engineer proved, using the timed images from the speed camera, that he was not breaking the speed limit.<br />
<blockquote><br />
A FATHER-OF-TWO is demanding an apology after proving a speed camera had almost trebled his actual speed.<br />
<br />
Engineer Bryn Carlyon was recorded at doing an apparent 46mph in a 30mph zone near the Gabalfa flyover in Cardiff.<br />
<br />
But after fighting a seven-month campaign to clear his name, the 47-year-old motorcyclist has proved his innocence with the help of photographic evidence from the camera which falsely recorded his speed.<br />
<br />
He used the road markings to measure how far he had travelled in the time that elapsed between the taking of the two pictures and found that his approximate speed was just 18mph.<br />
</blockquote><br />

From <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=291&amp;entry_id=185″ title=”http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69904-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_2″ onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69904-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_2′;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>Wired.com</a> comes the 2005 Foot-in-mouth awards. With no further ado, here are the awards:<br />
<br />
“Screw the nano.”<br />
<br />
– Motorola CEO Ed Zander<br />
<br />
Cell-phone makers hoping to break into the music business got little traction in 2005 in the face of Apple Computer’s iPod dynasty. The shortcoming was made all the more glaring for Motorola, when its Rokr iTunes phone debuted alongside Apple’s newest entry, the iPod nano. (Motorola later issued a press release saying Zander’s statement was a “joke.”)<br />
“I’m going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f***ing kill Google.”<br />
<br />
– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in statements attributed to him in court documents by former Microsoft engineer and recent Google hire Mark Lucovsky<br />
<br />
The accusations flew fast and furiously in a high-stakes court battle between Microsoft and Google over alleged employee poaching. Drama aside, the case highlighted a tectonic power shift in the technology industry brought on by post-IPO Google.<br />
“Walk this way, talk this wa-ay.”<br />
<br />
– Intel chairman Craig Barrett<br />
<br />
The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet. Silicon.com has the video.<br />
“Most people don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”<br />
<br />
– Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG’s global digital business division<br />
<br />
The music giant responds in an NPR interview to complaints that anti-copying technology on some of its CDs creates serious security vulnerabilities in computers.<br />
“You’re obviously from France.”<br />
<br />
– Intel CEO Paul Ottelini<br />
<br />
This zinger deflects criticism when a reporter with an accent asks why Intel is so far behind Advanced Micro Devices on a dual-core server chip. After the laughter subsides, AMD continues to assault Intel’s leadership position.<br />
“All research up until now has been conducted in strict observance of the government-set guidelines.”<br />
<br />
– Korean stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk<br />
<br />
The cloning pioneer initially denies accusations that he broke ethical guidelines in conducting stem-cell research, but eventually admits he lied to protect co-workers. Later, he withdraws a groundbreaking research paper amid accusations of falsified data.<br />
“I know what I don’t know, and to this day I don’t know technology and I don’t know accounting and finance.”<br />
<br />
– Bernie Ebbers, ex-CEO of WorldCom<br />
<br />
At his $11 billion telco fraud trial, Ebbers tries to pin the debacle on ex-WorldCom CFO and state’s witness Scott Sullivan. The jury is not convinced, and Ebbers is convicted of conspiracy, securities fraud and false regulatory filings on all counts. An appeal is pending.<br />
“Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the shuffle.”<br />
<br />
– President Bush<br />
<br />
Brit Hume interviews the president about his iPod on Fox News, as recorded in a hilarious transcript published by The Washington Post.<br />
“It was done as a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong.”<br />
<br />
– Fake Wikipedia poster Brian Chase<br />
<br />
A false post linking journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. with the Kennedy assassinations spilled over into public debate over the merits and failings of Wikipedia, a publicly maintained database of encyclopedia listings open to all comers. The controversy ends with an anticlimactic apology, but raises tough questions about the reliability of a new brand of participatory media, loosely dubbed “Web 2.0.”<br />
“Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop — I think a more realistic title should be ‘the $100 gadget.’”<br />
<br />
– Intel chairman Craig Barrett<br />
<br />
At a press conference in Sri Lanka, the head of the world’s biggest chipmaker disses a plan by Nicholas Negroponte to give the world’s poorest children affordable computers.<br />
“(Telecoms) and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!”<br />
<br />
– SBC Communications CEO Ed Whitacre<br />
<br />
Intimations of a “two-tiered” internet emerge in this Q&A with Business Week. The frustrations come out near the end of a year that saw the telecom industry begin to shake off bankruptcies and fraud only to confront an inescapable paradigm shift in the shape of broadband.<br />
<br />

<strong>GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY DESTROYED BY FLOOD</strong><br />
<br />
Crawford, Texas (AP) — A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where the books were kept. Both books have been lost. A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer.<br />

Matthew Evans, the restaurant critic from the <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=290&amp;entry_id=183″ title=”http://www.smh.com.au/news/good-living/bon-appetit/2005/12/13/1134236028253.html” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.smh.com.au/news/good-living/bon-appetit/2005/12/13/1134236028253.html’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>Sydney Morning Herald quits</a>. He leaves with some great parting comments garnered from 5 years of reviews.. here’s a highlight:<br />
<blockquote><br />
The amount of truffle oil a chef uses is inversely proportional to his talent<br />
<br />
<strong> A waiter apologises about the wait as he delivers the crusted tuna steak. “The first tuna didn’t come out right.” To be honest, neither did this one.<br />
<br />
</strong> There’s something scary about a dark chocolate brownie served with caramelised parsnip and orange ice-cream.<br />
<br />
Best threat:<br />
Amidst the “I’m from Calabria”-style threats, my favourite was the Japanese-inspired restaurant that offered “free” massages to help you relax. In a very Zen move I was told I’d get my head punched in if I showed up again after a less than glowing review.<br />
</blockquote>

And the answer is no according to The Australian in this <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=289&amp;entry_id=182″ title=”http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17540426%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,17540426%5e16123%5e%5enbv%5e,00.html’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>article</a>.<br />
<blockquote><br />
The developing world will not want a basic $100 hand-cranked laptop due to be rolled out to millions, Intel chairman Craig Barrett said.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
“It turns out what people are looking for is something is something that has the full functionality of a PC,” he said. “Reprogrammable to run all the applications of a grown up PC… not dependent on servers in the sky to deliver content and capability to them, not dependent for hand cranks for power.”<br />
</blockquote><br />
Even if people have these cheap laptops that they can crank to run, what are they going to do with it? Hook it up to the local wireless base station? I don’t think so.. There needs to be a coordinated plan to deploy these (if wanted) and these people have to have something meaningful to do with them.<br />

Business 2.0 has a great <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=288&amp;entry_id=181″ title=”http://www.business2.com/b2/web/dumbest/2005/1/0,22933,,00.html” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.business2.com/b2/web/dumbest/2005/1/0,22933,,00.html’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>article</a> on some of the memorable business bloopers over the years. Some of the (dis)honourable mentions are:<br />
<ul><br />
<li>Makers of tough bicycle locks, Kryptonite, are embarrassed to find that their locks can be picked with the lid from a Bic pen</li><br />
<li>A clerk at the Fashion bug accepts a US$200 note and gives out over $100 in change even though the bill has a picture of George W. Bush and its serial number is DUBYA4U2001</li><br />
<li>Bristol-Myers Squibb funds a two-year study comparing its cholesterol drug, Pravachol, with Pfizer’s Lipitor, only to blanch when the results come out in March: Lipitor actually does a better job of preventing heart attacks. After the report is published, the number of patients saying they’re going to ask their doctors for Lipitor jumps by more than a third.</li><br />
</ul>

Want to control your Mac using VNC from a Windows-based PC? Instructions live <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=287&amp;entry_id=180″ title=”http://www.macminicolo.net/Mac_VNC_tutor.html” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.macminicolo.net/Mac_VNC_tutor.html’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>here</a>.<br />
<br />
Now if only I could get around the port restrictions at work to actually try this out <img src=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png” alt=”:-)” style=”display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;” class=”emoticon” />

Found this interesting <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=286&amp;entry_id=179″ title=”http://jheer.org/enron/” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://jheer.org/enron/’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>website</a> today on the visualisation of email exchanges in relation to the corporate collapse of Enron by Jeffrey Heer of UC Berkley.<br />
<br />
<blockquote><br />
Using the Enron e-mail archive as a motivating dataset, we are attempting the marriage of visual and algorithmic analyses of e-mail archives within an exploratory data analysis environment. The intent is to leverage the characteristic strengths of both man and machine for unearthing insight. <br />
</blockquote><br />
<br />
Using his visualisation tool, Jeffrey was able to look at look at patterns of emails and identify persons of interest in the organisation based on the email traffic and a categorisation of the email content. Pretty neat way of visualising a social network similar to some of the work done on web network visualisation.<br />
<br />
One of the images he generates is below:<br />
<br />
<img src=”http://jheer.org/enron/v2/med_community.png” alt=”" />

<img src=”http://us.gizmodo.com/images/buzztrainer_usb_shock-711004.jpg” align=”left” alt=”" />Ever have problems with training sessions where your users just don’t seem to get it? Or do they continue to ring up with questions that were clearly covered in the material - if they had just only listened in the first place?<br />
<br />
Never fear, because <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=283&amp;entry_id=178″ title=”http://www.djspyhunter.com/teapot/2005/11/buzztrainer-usb-shock-therapy-gadget.html” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.djspyhunter.com/teapot/2005/11/buzztrainer-usb-shock-therapy-gadget.html’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>BuzzTrainer</a> is here! <br />
<br />
BuzzTrainer will deliver low-level electric shocks via the USB port upon any specific PC command to remind you to stay away from certain functions - such as web-surfing to <a href=”https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=284&amp;entry_id=178″ title=”http://www.gizmodo.com” onmouseover=”window.status=’http://www.gizmodo.com’;return true;” onmouseout=”window.status=”;return true;”>Gizmodo</a>. Now if I could only get the users to agree to where this continually after a training session.<br />
<br />
[From <a href="https://dave.shakenmartini.net/serendipity/exit.php?url_id=285&amp;entry_id=178" title="http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/buzztrainer-usb-shock-therapy-139874.php" onmouseover="window.status='http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/buzztrainer-usb-shock-therapy-139874.php';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">Gizmodo</a>]