Brazil

Good morning to Inquirer Staff.

I'm sorry, but what's kind of information are you trying to pass with the article about armored car industry in Brazil ?

The information is not accurate, and it may mess people's vision about that country.

The 600,000 deaths figure ARE NOT of murdered of assassinated people. This number is related to all people who had some sort of violent deaths. 50% of it includes people killed in transportation accidents (car, bus, plane, boat etc.), it also includes people killed by animals, home and other types of accidents (fire, electric shocks, explosions etc.) I have to agree that, although we're a huge country, these numbers are still too much, but it doesn't take the matter that your information is wrong.

Another thing is... where did you get that "Civil War" thing? Ordinary Brazilians are not taking guns to fight against the police or the government, nor we're having armored fight between policy groups. What's happening here is a fight between the police and the drug dealers. Of course it scares people, but it's not people fighting agains the government. Nobody here is talking about Civil War.

Thanks for the attention,

Rogério Ap. Silva de Andrade
SESES / CEAGESP
São Paulo, Brazil

[It all came from the Piquet press release, Ed.]

USB flash device used in e-ticketing system

Sounds like Java Card without the Java.

Sounds like trouble, potentially. These plug-in devices are approximately like floppy discs, only without moving parts; so you put the floppy in your home computer, store a token on it, take it to the game tnd slot it in the turnstile, take it home, plug it in your computer again... is this hygienic?

In principle, I prefer easyCinema's system - use your home PC to print a membership-card barcode. You don't have to plug it into anything, particularly anything you own and that stores private data. Alternatively, RFID. Infra-red beaming... is that slang for what you'd do on Clapham Common before toothing was devised?

Falung Gong

Dear Mr.Mike Magee:

I am a frequent reader of your The Inquirer website and often obtain valuable technical advanced news from the site and appreciate your efforts to bring these advance materials to the public like me very much.

However, I noticed that there are two times till today that you display the picture of previous Chinese Communist head Jiang Zemin on your website. I am not sure what is the purpose of doing this as to me and many other innocent people who are practicing Falun Gong, he is the source of hatred and a ruthless prosecutor toward the people who believe Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance which are the principles of practicing Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa).

You may already know or have heard about Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese practice for improving body, mind, and spirit. The practice includes exercise and meditation, and is based on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance. There were once about seventy to one hundred million people in China along practiced it. For over four years now, it has been severely persecuted in Mainland China. According to incomplete statistics, within the past four years beginning on July 20, 1999, more than 942 practitioners have been verified as being tortured to death. However, according to the government's official internal statistics, the actual number of practitioners who died after being arrested had reached 1,600 by the end of 2001. In addition, there are at least 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners who have been illegally sentenced to prison. Over 100,000 practitioners have been sentenced to forced labor camps. Thousands of practitioners have been forcefully sent to psychiatric hospitals to be tortured with injections that are damaging to the central nervous system. Despite the fact that it is enjoyed around the world in over fifty countries since people who practice regularly find it brings them better health, reduced stress, inner peace, and deepened moral values. To justify and propagate the persecution, the Chinese government controls all media and uses it to spread slander and fabricated stories against Falun Gong. In this way, they deceive many innocent Chinese people inside and outside China and ignite hatred of Falun Gong (Please see more details at this link. All these inhuman activities were initiated by Jiang Zemin simply because of jealousy and desire to maintain his power. On October 22, 2002, a lawsuit case against Jiang Zemin was submitted to U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois for among others, genocide, and crimes against humanity. (Please see the details at the link)

All in all, I describe the reasons about why I am not willing to see the picture of Jiang Zemin on your beloved website.

Thanks for your consideration,

Frank Chen
A reader from Boston, MA, USA

Windows on Linux

Yes, win-on-linux has been developed... in 1993, to be precise, at least for WINE, which is the biggest project devoted to this task. (See http://www.winehq.com/site/about ) I checked out the SpecOps labs web pages, and although most were short on information, the pages here: http://specopslabs.com/market_competition3.htm and http://specopslabs.com/market_competition4.htm give out a number of details, including, in the latter, everything you need to know in a single phrase: "Instead of simply using the WINE project as our basis, David has incorporated into its architecture the best features of all the windows compatibility projects such as WINE, WABI, TWIN and the others" In other words, they're following the same model as Transgaming and Codeweavers - selling WINE and commercial support / enhancements to/for it - the difference is that DAVID is supposedly a re-architecturing of WINE for better stability, software support, etc. But the thing to remember is that WINE already has developed a pretty stable software core, and I have trouble understanding how SpecOps could have done major changes to it without *lots* of time and people, or at least asking the WINE community for details or information in a way that would have been noticed by the WINE team.

So I'd have to say that their claims should be evaluated _after _their software has been released. It seems to me to be quite overhyped.

Colin Stanners

Wooden computers

The whole premise of using wood to be conscience of the environment is hilarious. If a rabid wood trend to move towards wooden computers, wouldn't more and more trees become a victim of the very concept this idea is trying to save.

I'll hold out till they come out with the more exotic ivory models myself. I would like to send a clear message to the illegal ivory trade.

Rich

Website showing US dead angers Pentagon

Columbia Crew Mistakenly Identified As Iraqi War Casualties

Here is the question. Why is necessary for a technical site to point people to photos of the dead soldiers' coffins?

Looks like we are on the way to the Vietnam syndrome where the press used the coffins for political gain. Ultimately the press were able to blame the Kennedy/Johnson war on Nixon. Kind of cool how it works isn't it. But not this time.

You need to examine what is appropriate for a tech site vs a political site. We have enough brain dead wacko Bush haters for the sake of hate already. I trust you don't have a need to feed the hate.

Respect for the fallen is the least you can have. I suggest a test. If the family of the fallen have no problem with you displaying photos of their loved ones coffin, then by all means display it. Ask yourself what you would do in their situation.

Respect

tb

USA Today

It's written only for journos who are disturbed as their profession's reputation continues south and/or think they can take themselves serious enough to offer some redeeming value to the public, including Eva Glass in spite of endless self-depreciation to the contrary. You read its entirety?

They boast "the nation's most read newspaper" - I bet if they removed the colorful format they'd lose half their readers. Their real journalism is the sports section. Once in a while they even do a good read on Euro soccer placating internationalists from meatheads to sissies. The heck with Kelly, like many in our media they feel the heat but its not one bad apple here or there.

Journalists can be strange people busied day to day ingrained with bias and deluded genuineness. When the climate of discontent is thick enough its 1 of 2 outs: the public isn't smart enough to get it or the increasingly accepted scapegoat cleansing. As information has become more readily available the former is increasingly difficult and the latter, easy penitence.

"We hope this report can help you in your efforts to create this sort of enterprise. An enterprise that will turn the troublesome Jack Kelley episode into an opportunity to make the news staff of USA TODAY more professional, collegial, creative and motivated." These folks have gone through a thorough exercise making themselves feel and appear legitimate. I don't buy it, not from people who've made a career there. Unlike in the UK if they don't take themselves serious they lose their self-esteem. The difference is more cultural than motivation, get it?

"There really is a clear distinction between UK hacks and US hacks - we're like a hackney carriage, or taxi, and will carry anyone who flags us down and pays us money. If we've already got a fare, beware the person who tries to flag us down. " Nonsense! The joke is on you?

Steve

Data speed limit discovered

Staff,

In your article "Data speed limit discovered" you call Science a popular magazine. Science is not a 'magazine' as your readers would be familiar, it is in fact a peer reviewed research journal. You guys do great work but don't please don't sell the research community short by calling Science a magazine, it takes a lot of work to get published in Science. In fact it is the crowning moment in many researchers professional career.

Thanks
Paul Johnson

India

Hi All,

Now I am a Very Proud Indian, and yes the News really took me to another High. "Bullish on India's designing capabilities, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz is setting up a centre for designing future generations of microprocessors." says a local paper. Toal investment of US$ 5 Million in next 3 years is planned. Amazing thing and a Proof of "India is Shining". I think it is the Only developing country which has R&D OR Design Centers of Big Heads in all of IT. Microsoft, Intel, CISCO, Texas Instruments, and mainly IBM.

Apart from that Asustek has chosen Mumbai (formarly Bombay) HQ for India and South Asia operations.

So any one else planning, to take me even more High?? :)

Harshal

ADSL

Hi Mike,

I think my experience of ADSL connection could help others...

Our exchange has been enabled for ADSL for a while. I am easily within reach and applied for a low-speed broadband connection. The initial check was OK and things seemed to be progressing, then there was a delay. After 3 weeks I asked what was happening? The answer came: "The BT check has shown your line loss is too great so we can not supply you with broadband."

I was not a happy chap, I wanted to establish why my line was unable to receive broadband while others in my area could. I telephoned 150 (BT Faults) and went round and round in circles, often talking to India - while the Indian personnel were always polite and courteous it was quite obvious they did not have the information to handle my query. The 'best' I got was a list of known faults in my area and an assurance that they "would be fixed by Monday at the latest".

Eventually, I managed to talk to a UK person and get a fault procedure started. The telecom engineer was VERY helpful, it turns out that my telephone wires were **made of aluminium** and had a line loss of 6.8dB which is just too much for broadband. It turns out that after WWII copper was in very short supply and some telephone wires were made of aluminium which is fine for speech, but not ADSL!

My friendly telecom engineer found me a pair of copper wires with a line loss of 4.1dB and swapped them over. The ADSL tests have just been satisfactorily completed and all is well!

So if you are in the position of being rejected while being within the normal reach of the exchange ask BT to make sure you have copper wires. Don't be fobbed off without a categorical confirmation that you have - BT do know and they are not always telling!

Timothy Birt

More Data speed limit reached stuff

Dear Mike

What a complete pile of horse manure. And that's being polite. Who do these guys think they are - and why on earth would they bother to test a theory which means precisely nothing?

Their theory is about as meaningful as an early twentieth century report that cars can never achieve more than 20 mph, or that speeds of 100 mph would kill a person. Or powered flight is impossible. :P

So freaking WHAT if there's a limit to traditional Hard Drive transfer speeds? Personally, I can't even understand why we're still using moving parts to store data. Moving parts SUCK! By the time these speed limits are even considered, we will have abandoned Hard Drives as a bad joke. The new paradigm for bulk storage will be solid state - and in not so many years from now. Non-volatile RAM will replace HDDs, have capacities measured in terabytes, transfers times measured in GB/s and latencies measured in the low-nano-second times.

So - I don't even understand why you'd report on something as stupid as this.

Kind regards
Chris Davies

FTC appoints turtle as cyberterrorist mascot

Hello Mike

I find the choice of a turtle as a mascot in a move to educate children against e-malice a little disturbing.

I would like to (re-)introduce you to a turtle by the name of "Burt"...

Here.

Best regards
Nikolaj

Creative and notebooks in baths

"However, the ASA reckoned that readers might not distinguish between the use of a laptop and other types of electrical equipment in a bath"

Ah, because us British could be so so stupid!

You know, i went on holiday once to a small place in Spain, they had glass molding near this furnace and this old couple started complaining that there wasn't any signs or barriers "telling us" not to put our hands in the fire. I mean come on, this has to stop, all this politically correct, cotton wool rapped rubbish is getting well out of hand, surly we cant be this stupid?? what are people learning in schools nowadays....oh thats right its all this "snow person" not "snowman" PC rubbish thats going about.

. Actually even 120V used in America is not actually classed as lethal although i wouldn't want to try it!

Darren
Glasgow

Spieling

Its Luleå!

My hometown darn you, its small (70k-100k people) and insignificant but with a good university which has spawned the effnet group (effective routers on cheap hardware) and mobilaris (positioning suite used by several telecom firms) if you've heard of them (there are probly more companies but those are the ones I personally know of).

Wouldn't suprise me if the commune did something like that though but the university and companies there wouldnt unless it was cheaper, quite a lot of knowledgeable people up there in sweden where the winter last for 6-7 months.

Btw, I didnt exactly understand the article :) but I figured it might have been some exclusivity where they only chose computers with Intel chips in them.

Thanks for the great site though, its always funny reading other sites flaming you even when you make it clear that some things are rumours and they themselves never do :)

Regards
Joakim Hagdahl
Programmer