Rupert Goodwins' Bacchanalian Diary

21 Dec 2001 16:45

Festive funster Goodwins takes a look back at the office party and other highlights in his last diary of 2001.

Monday 17/12/01

Bear fans the world over are not sure what to make of Raddington -- a Paddington-like plush toy for the 21st century. Said ursine has given up the marmalade sandwiches and cold stares for designer togs, mobile phone and Coke can. Not that it's anything like Paddington. Of course not. The licensing issues would be horrendous.

Where will this updating of fondly held childhood icons end? The Clangers recast as a boy band? Orlando, The Marmalade Cat in shades and baseball cap spinning the platters at the Ministry of Sound? Dennis the Menace branded as D3nNi2 da hAx0R ?

Probably not. After all, the hit of the year is one Harry Potter, who is a schoolboy straight out of the 1950s in full Jennings and Darbyshire mode. If you're hip, you don't do toys -- not even Raddington.

But it can't be long before that precious pre-teen market gets a fillip: I predict books, TV series and perhaps even a film based on the adventures of a talking mobile phone. Bit like Thomas the Tank Engine, but with a Fat Telco Owner. Anyone know a good illustrator?

Tuesday 18/12/01

Among my many personality flaws is a regrettable reluctance to fulsomely praise those who brazenly bribe me. So let me put that right at once with a huge round of applause to mobile phone company Sendo -- newbies they might be, but they keep a steady stream of new toys hurtling into the office and that's exactly as it should be. As a result, I've been using Sendo phones for most of this year: jolly nice and light they are.

However, my latest one had a problem. The 200 series is a neat little thing; doesn't do infrared or data or WAP or whatever, but is an attractive and very portable design. However, mine developed a marked reluctance to respond to keypresses on the right hand side, resulting in some absolute stonking swearwords when trying to enter text messages that didn't need letters like E or M. So, I emailed the extraordinarily marvellous Lynne Thomas of Lexis PR -- who does Sendo -- and begged for a repair. In microseconds, a new phone was on its way: this time, the 200's smoother, shinier sibling, the equally dully named 500.

Which, I am pleased to report, is a most splendid device. Rather too much so -- it has a working WAP browser and, even more fearsome, a chat mode for text messages. This displays them as a conversation, one above the other, just like chat rooms online. It's incredibly seductive, so much so that you almost never notice you're spending ten pee per message.

So thanks, Sendo. You've just made my imminent pauperisation even nearer.

Wednesday 19/12/01

Most Festive Funster: ZDNet UK's Tech Update Editor Peter Judge, whose mild bespectacled, bebearded demeanour belies his astonishing abilities out on the dance floor. Best known for his Morris dancing skills -- you may have seen him on TV adverts -- he astounded the watching multitudes at our Christmas party by cutting a most splendid rug to some droppin' hardcore house beats.

Inspired by this, we decide he's in line to head up the ZD Newz Abuze Crew. This is going to be our gangsta flava assault on the charts next year, with Laura 'Lozza Loz' Stobart, queen of production; Graeme 'Weird Wordz' Wearden; and Stollen Daddy Euge 'Euge' Lacey. We've been in the studio: tracks already waxed include My Homie's Called Intel Coz He's Always Inside, the sensuous anthem I'm Gonna Get Bluescreen On Yo' Data, Modemfarmer; and You Scratch My Disk And I'll Scratch Yours (that's the radio mix).

Thursday 20/12/01

Over in the US, more madness ferments. I've written about this before, but it bears a revisit. One David McOwen, an IT support guy working at a technical institute in Georgia, put a load of distributed processing programs on the network and settled down to take part in an encryption challenge. So far, so good. Then, the institute noticed that unexpected data was passing around the network, found out about the software and told him to get it off. Well, fair enough.

Then, the story changes. Were warnings given? They say yes, he says no. Did he carry on running the software after being told not to? Again, there's a difference of opinion. This is unpleasant, but still the sort of stuff of employment tribunals.

Not in Georgia. Mr McOwen has been arrested and told he faces up to 120 years in prison and a $400,000 fine for eight separate violations of the state law on computer crime. For behaviour that is very much in the grey area of acceptable use, that hurt nobody and that, if not stopped, would have at worst contributed a smidgeon of data to a valuable research project, this seems beyond words. The prosecutors are claiming that it was made far worse by the presence of a $1000 prize to the person who cracked the encryption problem, which gives you an idea of how strong their case really is.

It's so tempting to say "Oh, those batty Americans" and leave them to it. But all it takes is someone to call such things 'terrorism' and we'll all be marched down to the nick at gunpoint in double-quick time for running Seti At Home. You mark my words.

Friday 21/12/01

Top story of the year, reckons Science magazine, is nanotechnology. And one of the nattiest bits I've seen is the Nanowalker from MIT -- see the paper at http://biorobotics.mit.edu/fpga/NanoWalker.pdf. It's a novel configuration, with three piezoelectric legs in a pyramid shape; it's easy to control, stable and can lift up to 80 times its own weight. And it's tiny -- designed to work in teams, it coordinates via commands "received from a central computer through a fast infrared wireless communication scheme. Based on our actual design, soon these robots will be fully assembled and will walk at a rate of at least 4,000 steps per second. Every second, each robot will execute 48 million operations or instructions, performs 200,000 accurate measurements at the atomic scale while transmitting or receiving 4 million bits of information."

The paper goes on to say how it all might work, including how to make robots that make themselves. It's all frighteningly plausible, imaginative and practical. I prepare for these last days before Christmas with dreams of three-legged elves wrapping presents containing other elves wrapping presents containing... Perhaps I shouldn't have had that last small sherry at the party.

See you all next year!

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