Germans can stick tongues out on passport photos

You write in the Inquirer that Home Office is banning smiling on passport photos ... amusing since I read a couple of days ago (in the free Metro newspaper that just reached Bristol) that the German courts have just upheld someone's right to stick his tongue out on his German passport photo ... though he had to sign a disclaimer that it was his problem if immigration in any other country refused to accept the photo!

(N.b. just realise, its pretty difficult to smile and stick your tongue out at the same time so may be this is the solution for the UK)

David Shepherd

It's that Dell girl again, again

Dear Inquirer,

Like all of your readers, I am eager for more information on the Inquirer Girl. In the absence of more details on her apparently very active life, I am sure that many readers have daydreamed stories explaining her many Dell-Gateway-UPS-actuary-photo-related activities.

With this in mind, I suggest that the Inquirer hold an Inquirer Girl Fan Fiction contest, so that everyone can share their many fabricated anecdotes regarding this stunning young woman who has captured our collective imaginations. Perhaps you could provide Inquirer Girl T-shirts as prizes. Maybe there could be several categories for the entries, including "regular", "adult", and "Harry Potter crossover" fan fiction.

Sincerely,
Gordon Randall

Kyocera claims solar panel breakthrough

Hi Mike,

I am not sure whether i understand this fuss about solar panel efficiency. The thing is that semiconductors have a gaussian absorption curve. The absorption maximum i located around a wavelength depending on the band gap of semiconductors. Close around the maximum the absorption rate is >50% (close to 90% if i have my memory not betraying me).

What i would do is generate a set (say 10) of semiconductors with band gaps covering the far IR to near UV (solar spectrum on earth ground) - slice these in stripes and put them under a white light hologram acting as a flat prisma. Nothing of this is magic it has all been done already.

This striped solar panel should yield efficiencies >25% with ease (>50% if my assumption of >90% absorption rate is correct). I am still wondering why nobody did this because it is not that complicated and should not cost much more than existing solutions.

Regards,
Jens Nurmann

Nvidia rises out of hell

Well I guess ID is firing a fair shot across ATI's bow ... or is that bottom line. Whoever leaked the Doom Alpha at ATI is getting kicked on the bottom side.

Let's see what nVidia has gone through and come back

· Releasing the hot iron from hell in the FX5800
· Losing the performance crown to ATI with the 9700 Pro and solid drivers
· Getting caught cheating with repeated driver optimizations
· Losing the reputed bid for Half Life 2 and losing to ATI
· Faced with an imminent release of HL2 in September of last year with no deliver date for Doom 3

Now Doom 3 is out before Half Life 2 and it works better on their high end solution. What a comeback! That's coming from an owner of ATI cards, 9500 through x800 Pros.

My next card is an nVidia card.

Cheers,
Rich

3D Mark a goner?

I've been noticing a disturbing trend in the graphics card industry. It seems both ATI and nVidia have given up playing the 3DMark game and have gone on to fry bigger fish; namely flagship games. This wouldn't be such a big deal (REAL WORLD performance, finally!) if it weren't for the fact that now I feel as though consumers are being forced to make a decision: Do you want to play Doom 3? Buy nVidia. Do you want to play Half-Life? Buy ATI. What about those of us who -aren't- fanboys?

I would personally love to play both. While I agree optimized code is good, it seems as though five or ten years down the line, games will REQUIRE the end-user has a card designed specifically for the game (or engine). I don't know about you, but I don't feel like swapping out graphics cards every time I want to play a different game.

Ken Mortimer

Smart Weapons

Evidently its not acceptable to Nick Farrell for the US to develop/use smart weapons? I assume you haven't painted your face to join with the protest-for-hire types against US "blood for oil," but I also assume you'd rather the US/UK never removed the genocidal tyrant. After all if it wasn't for such weapons and the willingness to use them in spite of Kofi Annan and, writers like you, Saddam would reign.

The US is the big guy and you're a typical thin-skinned journo creating a mad-power perception to point your self-esteem finger down, unfortunately perversely inhumane. What does Nick Farrell stand for and how can you possibly justify it?... Writing about the 'forces of evil' :-|

Steve

IBM not so committed to Linux

I'm not sure IBM's commitment to Linux is as far reaching as your article suggests.

I applied for a job at IBM and they set me an online aptitude test called IPATO.

Basic Technical Requirements:
Browser requirements - Microsoft Internet Explorer (4.0 or higher) or Netscape (6.2, Download Set Up Type - "full") using default settings;
Minimum recommended connection speed is approximately 40 Kbps. If you are using the Java plug-in provided by Sun, then disable or uninstall it and ensure you are using the Microsoft Java plug-in.
More technical information is provided on the site.

So I wrote to them:

"I cannot run the MS Java Plug-in under Linux. Is it possible for me to take the test under this operating system?"

And got this rather fine response

"Thank you for your inquiry regarding taking the IPATO. Currently, LINUX is not a supported browser for taking the IPATO test. I hope that this information is helpful. If you have additional questions or need further information, please respond using "Reply with History".

Name, email supplied

The years I've spent installing Microsoft Windows

Hello Mike

For your edification here's the short summary version of my experiences with Windows:

Pre-Windows Era: 1980-1995 Dos, Apple II, TI 99/4A, never picked up on computers much, ignorance was bliss.

1995 Starting grad school, spend $2,000 on that spiffy Pentium 75 with 8MB of RAM and Windows 3.11. Windows is awful they say, but what else, is there?

Late 1995 Windows 95 and and NT 3.51 arrive. Run both as a dual boot on a 730MB hard drive. Spend more time re-installing NT to try and get it working right than running it. Wasn't NT supposed to be the great version of true 32bittedness? But all the software comes for 95.....

1996 NT 4.0 arrives. I sit it out.

1996-1998 Many re-installs (universal fixes) and system rebuilds.

1998 Windows 98 arrives. It's useful, I have a clue on what I'm doing, I feel the first worrying of security--the Internet's getting ugly. Try first hand at using Linux, leave in grimacing pain.

1999 Windows ME--None of the drivers worked right, half of hardware vendors just said use the '98 drivers. Re-install, try this, re-install, try that. Only version of Windows I sold while it was still a current version.

2000 Windows 2000. This is it! The Ultimate! Best of NT and 98! It's Stable! It's even more complex! Certificates and snap-ins and DCOM, oh my!

2001 Windows XP! WTF! Product Activation? I dread any major crash as I may/may not be able to get it reactivated. Everbody else wants to jump on the bandwagon of either activation or products that phone home all the time. My computer resembles an open sieve to the outside world.

2002-2004 A vast whirlwind of trying out Apple an OSX and Sun and Solaris and many flavors of Linux, trying to find something, anything else. It all comes down to the apps. Without useful apps the OS is pointless.

2004 Grudgingly I return to Windows. Knoppix is about the only Linux I could use and not have trouble with. I know a lot now, but still my Windows XP machine resembles a teetering glued together jigsaw puzzle of activations, serial numbers, program-cannot-install without SP1, and multiple passwords. This is before the ongoing arms race to keep the hackers, spammers, and snoopers away.

Someday maybe we'll have Windows XP SP2, and after that Windows XP 64 bit. The catch-22 that you'll likely have to re-install several times to fix problems and get things right, but every time you need to activate. Sooner or later we'll all be running on subscription for our software, and a re-install might as well be buying a new system.

Weren't all computers by the 21st century supposed to be quiet, artistically shaped devices of translucent plastic that worked on voice activation?

Instead the patches,updates, threats and exploits are coming faster and becoming mind numbingly repetitive.

I miss the old days.

Scott Peterson