Sneak was delighted to learn of a new range of laptop bags from luggage giant Samsonite. Fashion-conscious IT workers can choose from a range of styles from the summer/autumn 2004 collection. There is the not-at-all-sexist "Feminine Look" casual IT briefcase or laptop backpack. Surprisingly this is not pink, but is available in red, graphite, black and majolica blue, thus "making it easier than usual to co-ordinate the laptop bag with a coat or shoes". The "Creative Look", meanwhile, has "all the features of a briefcase without the formal style", whatever that means, although the target-market "urban trendsetters" may be more tempted by practical considerations such as ergonomic straps and a place to hang keys. Then there is the "Stylish Look", which is "James Bond's briefcase of choice". Sneak is not sure if this means that the contents will arrive shaken or stirred, but it does confer silently-rolling wheels - presumably to help in those situations where you may need to creep up and knife someone but don't want to leave your baggage unattended. The Stylish option also brings an expandable divided gusset, which sounds particularly painful. Last of all is the "Business Look", which Sneak had assumed would offer all the features of a briefcase with the formal style, but for whatever reason this actually means a bag that can accommodate "a set of roller blades for precious out-of-work time". All very handy, particularly for those users who live in cloud cuckoo land.

June 30, 2004 Travel | Permalink | Comments (1)

As Microsoft has already laid claim to everything that users ever use, it is now looking at owning the users themselves, it seems. With US patent number 6,754,472, the company is laying claim to any system of power and/or data transmission that uses the electrically-conductive human body (or indeed a dog's body) to carry signals from one device to another. So it seems that the Redmond giant is no longer content with trying to get the shirt off Sneak's back, it now want's Sneak's back itself as well. Meanwhile, Redmond may yet run into trouble with another controversial patent, number 6,727,830, otherwise known as the double-click patent. Free software advocates have been calling for prior art to show that Microsoft was not original in conceiving of a resource-constrained device in which a single control can gain multiple functions through differently-timed interactions. While some dissenters have pointed out that digital watches have adopted this mode of control for decades, Sneak feels that an even older, more basic and very, very widely used device has for a long time offered the ability to select between two different functions with a single control: a short pull or press for the number 1 function, and a longer one for number 2s...

June 24, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week the world witnessed the inaugural flight of the first civilian spacecraft, SpaceShipOne. It carried on its fuselage the name of its sponsor, with the legend "A Paul G Allen project". Allen's most notable prior project was, of course, the founding of Microsoft, so strictly speaking the intrepid astronaut Mike Melvill should not have been surprised that the mission was not entirely without its glitches. The worrying period where the controls froze and the craft decided to execute a couple of uncommanded manoeuvres were, surely, only to be expected. Still, Sneak hears that a new and improved version is already in the making. SpaceShipOnePointOne will be heavier, more expensive, and will principally benefit from having the grey "Start" button in the cockpit repainted a reassuring green. There are also plans for a much larger passenger-carrying variant, SpaceShipXP, which the makers say will be only slightly hampered by having to carry around all the earlier SpaceShips stuffed in its belly.

June 23, 2004 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was somewhat disturbed by news of an advanced crowd-control weapon under development in the US. Not content with the existing Taser - which fires projectiles trailing wires, delivering a paralysing electric shock to the unfortunate victim - the police and security forces will soon have access to a device known as the Close Quarters Shock Rifle. According to New Scientist magazine, this projects an ionised gas or plasma towards the target, producing a conducting channel along which electric current can flow. This will sound eerily familiar to players of the 3D shoot-em-up game Quake, which featured a rather nasty weapon called the lightning gun. Surely a case of life imitating art? New Scientist quite rightly worries about the potential misuses of this device, which is intended for quelling disturbances such as riots but could equally be used as an instrument of torture. Sneak can also see another drawback, however: if it is anything like Quake's lightning gun, it won't mix well with water. Sneak hopes riot police will remember to deploy their new weapon before they resort to water-cannon, not after...

June 22, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is, on the whole, a pretty understanding sort. But then an email arrived the other day from the spin doctors that promote SurfControl, with the subject heading, "UK businesses unable to stop confidential data being leaked through e-mail." Sneak does of course agree that private information ought not to leak out via email - information like the 300 email addresses included in the "To" field of this particular missive. Surely, in the light of privacy concerns, the global spam epidemic and data protection legislation, a person's email address ought rightly to be considered confidential data. This instant address book evidently included every scribe in the country who might possibly be interested in SurfControl - or not as the case may be. Sneak can tell, for example, that hacks over at The Grauniad must be really interested in the company, given the generous number of people on the receiving end of the email. Sneak can only hope that the irony was not lost on them. Perhaps Sneak should drop them a note to find out...

June 17, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Monday the first privately-funded manned space flight is due to take place. The rocket scientist behind the flight is Burt Rutan, founder of advanced aircraft firm Scaled Composites. The money man is Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and hence the possessor of a substantial pile of cash - enough to make the $20m spent on the SpaceShipOne project a drop in the ocean. Sneak hears that Rutan eschewed wind tunnels and the like in designing his rocket-plane, relying instead on computer simulations to predict the forces that the sub-orbital craft will endure during re-entry. Sneak for one hopes the software used to do all the number crunching is slightly more reliable than all the stuff on Sneak’s desktop that gave Allen his vast disposable income.

June 16, 2004 Science | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was of course in Portugal the other day, for the start of Euro 2004. And thoroughly enjoyable it was too, until the last-gasp catastrophe against the French ended all Sneak's fun. With nothing better to do after the game than leaf through the Euro 2004 match brochure. Sneak was surprised to discover that Kim Milton Nielsen, the Danish referee who famously sent off Beckham and disallowed Sol Campbell's goal against Argentina at the French World Cup in 98, is in fact a Danish IT manager by profession, listing his hobbies as "computer" (sic). Sneak was glad to see that all the training in making unpopular decisions, dealing with high levels of stress, and battling overheating fans has finally paid off for one of our number. Even if it has sent him blind.

June 15, 2004 Sports | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak was perplexed to learn that AMD has selected Sempron as the name of its latest chip line. The new brand replaces Duron at the cheap-and-cheerful end of the processing spectrum, below the Athlon and Opteron, but the new word itself seems to Sneak like a very lacklustre bag of letters, even for the bargain basement. Duron always seemed like a great name, sounding durable, dependable and sturdy. Similarly, Athlon quite clearly creates thoughts of athleticism, fitness and (via decathlon) versatility. And Opteron conjures up associations with optimism, optimisation and precision. But Sempron? It puts Sneak in mind of semolina. Or Semtex. Or, because of the "pron" bit, things that Sneak is sure AMD does not want to associate itself with. Sneak wonders, therefore, whether AMD tried to cut corners (and consulting fees) by coming up with the name all by itself. Previously, AMD has consistently turned to branding firm Master-McNeil for advice - it coined Duron, Athlon, Opteron and even AMD64. If, by some chance, Master-McNeil was responsible for Sempron, then Sneak takes the new name as proof that there are, after all, only so many combinations of 26 letters. All the good words must already be taken. Sneak therefore looks forward to the next new AMD chip being proudly launched under the name Crapton.

June 14, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Those who thought stealth warships were the stuff of Bond-movie fiction should think again: the BBC reports that the Swedish Navy is about to take delivery of a new and stealthy corvette, the Visby, with a carbon-fibre hull designed to cut its radar signature by 99 percent. The Visby is controlled by "state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system", according to the BBC. The Swedish Navy denied that the choice of software would leave the ship vulnerable to script kiddies: one of the designers said, "I am not an expert in computer security but we have focused a lot on that and this ship has a lot of firewalls and clever ways of avoiding [being hacked]." Assuming that nobody has been silly enough to link the ship's innards to an internet chatroom, Sneak agrees that land-lubbing hackers should be the least of the crew's worries. More unnerving is what will happen if and when the Swedes stumble over a show-stopping bug. The ship is not due to enter active service until January 2005, but Microsoft is adamant that it will halt all support for Windows NT at the end of this year. Perhaps someone should tell the Swedes...

June 10, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to the University of London's Institute of Education, children are somewhat confused about the dangers posed by internet use. Sneak tries to avoid laughing at the foolishness of the very young - other than when stealing their candy - but couldn't help snicker at a sample group of kids who thought that using the internet put them at risk of bomb-making, blindness, contracting HIV, being abducted by aliens, asylum seeking and blackmail. The fools! Still, it marks the last time Sneak will let Sneak Jr visit Teletubbies.com. Nobody wants to be held responsible for creating the next Patty Hearst.

June 10, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak prides himself on being one of the sternest critics of the overpaid brand consultants who invent pseudo-meaningful new words for product names. Yet where were these identity groomers when the moniker for the new, faster version of the Bluetooth short-range wireless standard was conceived? Enhanced Data Rate Bluetooth doesn't exactly sprint off the tongue. Sneak feels the Bluetooth overlords could have cooked up something with a bit more bite, and a little more suggestive of high speed. Why not Blurtooth, for example? Or, Blueshift? Or even, for heaven's sake, Bluetooth Turbo? Then again, given the increased potential for device conflicts, maybe Gnashtooth would be a better bet.

June 9, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pret A Manger, the chain of sandwich shops that appears to account for roughly 90 percent of the UK's consumption of mayonnaise, has evidently been studying what works in software. It's gone all open source. Sadly that doesn't mean it has introduced a roast penguin and mayonnaise sandwich, but it has posted the recipes for some of its key products on its web site. Much like the source code for Linux, it's nice to know that the technical details are available, even if you don't feel a pressing need to actually bother looking for yourself. After all, even butter-fingered Sneak is capable of making a cheese-and-pickle sarnie without Pret's patronising PDF of directions.

June 8, 2004 Food and Drink | Permalink | Comments (0)

Science magazine New Scientist reports that boffins have dreamed up a system for herding livestock based on Wi-Fi, GPS, and electric-shock-administering cow-collars. Farmers could one day move herds from one pasture to another using a laptop, as if playing a video game, the publication adds. The system would transmit the GPS co-ordinates of a virtual fence to GPS collars on each animal. Then, if an unfortunate bovine were to stray too close to the invisible boundary, the collar would persuade it to think again. By changing the co-ordinates over time, the herd could be steadily moved in a particular direction. The researchers have demonstrated the system on real cows with static virtual fences, but so far "have only tested the moving version on a group of students". Sneak for one hopes that home secretary and citizen-tracking-fan David Blunkett remains unaware of the story, lest it give him unsuitable ideas.

June 8, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

UKTV Style, one of those massively-watched satellite television channels, is launching an internet-only reality show called Watching Paint Dry. Viewers can watch a different colour paint drying each day, a pastime that the channel reckons will put less engaging reality television shows like, say, Big Brother 5, in their place. Sneak is not sure why the channel bothered to commission something that is, presumably, supposed to be tedious in the extreme, given that it already broadcasts re-runs of Flog It, House Invaders, Bargain Hunt and Ground Force. Also, having watched a bit of both WPD and BB5, Sneak has to say that the contestants on BB5 appear to have the edge on a coat of matt magnolia when it comes to being dull and two-dimensional. Sneak has therefore decided to abandon TV and read something endlessly inventive and full of surprises instead. Like, say, Microsoft's licensing terms.

June 8, 2004 Television | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has noticed more Space Invaders since last week (see Wall Stalking, below): another in Neal Street and one in Old Brewer's Yard.

June 7, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to Gizmodo, runners carrying the torch that will light this year's Olympic flame in Athens are being given cards by torch-relay sponsor Samsung that read: "If approached by media, please remember the following message: 'I am honoured to have been given the opportunity by Samsung to be a torchbearer for the Samsung Athens 2004 Olympic Torch Relay.'" It doesn't go on to say so, but Sneak assumes that the runner is required to recite this in a happy, sing-song voice through a fixed grin, and not to gasp it angrily between curses, complaints about how heavy the torch is, or comments of a political, anti-big-business or anti-crass-commercialisation nature.

June 7, 2004 Sports | Permalink | Comments (1)

Apparently the last few years have seen an upturn in the number of people visiting libraries, driven largely by new technology. This is not because chips have been installed that automatically burn a book that has been read on the toilet, but rather because of the free internet facilities that can now be found in most libraries, positioned between the mad people muttering and the serried shelves of contaminated John Grisham novels. According to a report from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, five million more people visited a library during the last year than in the previous 12 months. Sneak doesn't know where that particular library is, but its poor librarian must be worn out from all the shushing.

June 7, 2004 Books | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has recently noticed some strange mosaics on walls near to Sneak's central-London base of operations. There is one on a post in Neal Street, Covent Garden; another high on a brick wall in St Anne's Court, Soho; and yet another on an otherwise barren concrete surface in Broadwick Street. Each image, picked out in small square tiles cemented to the surface, appears to depict a classic 70s-era Space Invader. So, Sneak wonders: who erected these images; when; and what for? And are there others that Sneak has yet to discover? The only vaguely similar concept that Sneak can bring to mind is war-chalking, a system of coded marks supposedly employed by hackers to identify prime sites for grabbing a bit of poorly-secured wireless bandwidth. Sneak for one hopes that these marks are not the extraterrestrial equivalent: markers laid down by shadowy alien invaders to indicate prime sites for body-snatching...

June 4, 2004 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hollywood movies have long specialised in portraying a certain kind of computer security situation: the one in which a grungy ace hacker has 13 seconds to crack the password needed to shut down a brace of fully-armed nuclear missiles, and after two failed attempts finally manages to guess the right combination, averting Armageddon with half a second to spare. Sneak has always laughed in the face of such lunacy, but it turns out that the situation is not quite so ludicrous after all. Apparently for most of the 1970s, the super-secret code number used to authorise control over US Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles was, rather worryingly, zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero. "The Strategic Air Command ... remained far less concerned about unauthorised launches than about the potential of [coded] safeguards to interfere with wartime launch orders," recalls former launch control officer Bruce Blair. Of course nothing so stupid would happen today. No, it would probably be stupider.

June 3, 2004 Film | Permalink | Comments (0)

The trouble with Google's capacious Gmail service is that because it's free, you can't buy it. And those that aren't on the guest list for the beta test can't get an account for love or money. But of course there may be those who do have their name on the guest list that might be tempted to hand over their Gmail account in return for love, money, or something in-between. Helpfully, at least one web site has sprung up to put those who'd like a Gmail account in touch with those who have one to trade. The hot question being, of course, what exactly is a Gmail account worth? As the saying goes, a thing is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay. So according to the long list of open offers, an account is worth exactly the same as "a Microsoft styrofoam coffee cup"; "an imaginary invisible helper-monkey"; "an hour-long drum solo"; "a handmade ceramic boot, with wings"; "an original work by a 13-year-old poet"; "a vintage IBM vacuum tube"; or "a slide-rule (with instructions)." Yes, in fact a Gmail account, even in beta, is worth absolutely nothing.

June 3, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Several Apple fans contacted Sneak to complain about an earlier item comparing Mac OS X to German panzers. Sneak had noted that Apple codenames Jaguar, Panther and Tiger were in prior use as the names of Teutonic tanks. Finger-wagging Mac fans accused Sneak of conveniently forgetting about Mac OS X 10.0 - codenamed Cheetah - and Mac OS X 10.1 - codenamed Puma - claiming that these two pussycats would have dissolved any ideas about Apple's fondness for goose-stepping and leather coats. But sadly it is the complainers who are remiss, having neglected to Google the Cheetah self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicle (basically a tank that shoots upwards). And the SdKfz 234 Puma, which was a German eight-wheeled armoured car (basically a tank with tyres) used during World War II. Sneak is not sure what this proves, other than the fact that Sneak is never wrong and that Apple may well be running out of big-cat/German-tank codenames.

June 2, 2004 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Even the infinite resources of Google are not able to clear up the origin of the vernacular phrase "gone for a Burton", meaning to die, to be ruined, or to disappear without trace. Some say it refers to Burton suits, issued to demobbed military men during World War II, with a short logical hop seeing the phrase applied to those leaving the forces in a more abrupt fashion. Similarly, it might be RAF slang from the same conflict, referring to Burton's ale. Aircrew would, of course, retire to the bar for a pint after a successful sortie and, by extension, be surely gone for a Burton even if they were missing in action. Whatever the true root, one thing is certain. As Sneak has mentioned in earlier items, the codename of a project can have an uncanny influence on its success or failure. So Microsoft probably oughtn't to have picked Burton as the codename for its upcoming Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Unless, of course, it hopes to see the product take the Longhorn route to market....

June 2, 2004 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is there any end to the abuses young people will inflict upon themselves in the pursuit of fun? Sneak hears that patrons of Barcelona venue the Baja Beach Club can ditch both their membership card and credit card if they elect to have an RFID chip implanted in their arm. The plus points are the ability to jump the queue at the door, and the ability to rack up a drinks tab by flexing your biceps at the scanner-equipped bar staff. The negative sides are rather more numerous: the chip probably hurts going in, you won't have any control over the data stored on it, and the scar might ruin your tattoos. Plus, nobody seems to have given much thought to getting the chip out again when, as does happen, the place ceases to be a cool place to hang out. Then there is the prospect of accumulating hundreds of the things if the idiotic idea actually catches on. "Is it my shoulder, knee, nipple or earlobe that gets me into the bingo? And which buttock was it that has all my Tesco points?"

June 2, 2004 Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)