- The Guardian, Thursday 14 August 2008
Chinese censorship
The Olympic Games have kicked off in China, and as the world turns its attention to Beijing, it's not just the sport that has come into focus (Chaos aims to crack China's wall, August 7). Along with China's pollution and political repression, its policies towards online freedom have also been put under the microscope. I was listening to the Guardian's excellent Tech Weekly podcast, which was discussing the so-called Great Firewall of China. What struck me most was how many parallels there are with what happens in China as there are with what goes on in the Middle East, and how much less global concern there seems to be about abuses of freedom in this part of the world.
itp.net/blogs
The Chaos Computer Club are not hackers in the common sense of the term (think of them as "good hackers"). Rather, they are advocates of electronic privacy and freedom, and create some pretty useful and interesting software projects. Their latest is a damn fine one.
borepatch.blogspot.com
Nintendocs
Assuming future studies make similar findings, the folks in Phoenix may have stumbled upon a way to save many lives (Why a Wii could be good for your health, August 7). Taking the idea step further, I wonder if it would be possible to use Nintendo Wiis to screen applicants to surgical programmes. According to a friend of mine who is a plastic surgeon, the current admissions process makes no consideration of a would-be surgeon's manual dexterity or grace under pressure before allowing him to train for surgery.
techblog.dallasnews.com
Apparently the Wii is good for something. I'm going to buy me one just so I can save on medical bills and do my own surgery on the family at home.
lr50.spaces.live.com/blog
Electricity not so dirty
I'm puzzled by the figures Prof John Miles gives in his letter of August 7. He estimates that power-station and transmission losses waste 80% of the energy input. But Prof John Young and Dr Alex White quote efficiency of "just under 60%" for combined gas-steam turbine generation. Udo Kremer agrees with them, and gives 43% efficiency even for power stations burning soft coal. As for transmission and distribution losses, these seem to be less than 7.5%. Combining these figures would indicate between 39% and 53% efficiency in the supply of electricity from a power station burning fossil fuel.
Stephen Earl,
OxfordWhat cloud-cuckooland does John Miles live in? An electric car uses only the same resources in its production as any other car. In its running, it uses no electricity from the national grid and emits no O2. So the argument simply does not hold water.
Chris Rigby,
DevonNo iPhone ire
Apple says that there are 100,000 SDK downloads for the phone. When I looked for the wave of anger Charles Arthur referred to I just couldn't find it (Apple is turning its friends into enemies, August 7). What I do see is a wave of software and the blogger comparing the phone unfavourably to a computer. Of course it is a computer, and of course it has much less functionality than OS X, but though a lot of the phone apps are a bit like widgets, they are multiplying apace. A lot of developers like Rogue - but also Omni, Novamind, Devon etc - are making good money out of the basic platform and some of them are already getting onto the phone.
Stephen Feber,
via emailTouch the future
With regards to your discussion on whether touchscreen technology will take over from the mouse (or keyboard), you did not even touch (excuse the pun) on the reason touch technology has became so popular (Touch takes hold, but it's no mouse-killer, July 24). This is simply down to the emergence of "cheap" multitouch displays. I agree when you say it is unlikely to overtake the keyboard, given you can already use your 10 fingers to work with a keyboard. This is why I see touch becoming a mouse-killer and not a keyboard-killer.
