Cooking Sama

Make new signs boys

I expect to see the speed limit for the bruce highway between cairns and innisfail will soon be reduced to 80km/h or possibly 60km/h. Why you ask? Well, some people have died.

Now I may sounds a little heartless here, but every time you strap yourself into one and a half tons of metal, and travel only inches away from other people in tanks traveling at a combined speed of 200km/h, people are going to die. Sorry, but it is that simple. To think otherwise is foolish.

Reducing the speed limit seems to be default behaviour for the far north branch of the department of main roads (or whatever they are called this week). Just look at what happened on the Kuranda Range: Speed limit dropped to 60, 2 overtaking lanes removed and only after a number of complains was the speed limited increased to a measly 70 on the long uphill overtaking lane. All this when the speed limit for the (more dangerous) Gillies Range is still 80.

Another fine example of bureaucrats that obviously live to the south of the city is the reduction of speed limits of the roundabouts to the north of the city. Firstly, they are completely un-enforceable - police cannot issue a ticket within 100m of a speed zone change, and cannot issue them on corners. Secondly, 60? seriously? the roads were all designed for 80, so why do they suddenly need to be 60? If you are too stupid to understand how roundabouts work, and cannot take them at a speed that everyone else seems to be able to, go and use the redlynch bypass.

Swine Flu - Don't believe the Hype

Here are some facts to consider about the current “swine flu pandemic” being hyped up by the media. 
Just like horse flu was. 
Just like bird flu was. 
Seeing a pattern here?

• “Flu” or Influenza is not the same as the “Common Cold”.
 
• A “pandemic” does not indicate the danger of the disease, rather that it is present in more than one country (technically it is more than one W.H.O. Region). There is a constant chicken pox pandemic.

World View

• There have been 18,023 reported infections of H1N1 (swine flu) so far in the world. 114 People have died. That is a death rate of 0.6% (source)
• There are 10’s of millions of infections of normal seasonal flu per year. 500,000 people die worldwide from normal, seasonal flu per year. (source)
• Japan is treating it as the normal seasonal flu, and has reopened all schools. (source)
• Swine flu not more dangerous than normal, season flu. (source)
  • There is mounting evidence that the symptoms are milder than health officials feared. As of May 27, 2009, for instance, despite 342 confirmed cases in New York City, most had been mild and there had been only 4 confirmed death from the virus. Similarly, Japan had reported 279, mostly mild flu cases, and no deaths, with their government now reopening schools, stating that the "virus should be considered more like a seasonal flu." In Mexico, where the outbreak began last month, Mexico City officials lowered their swine flu alert level as no new cases had been reported for a week.

Australian View

• 501 People have swine flu in Australia as of now. None have died.
• Last year, several hundred thousand people contracted normal, seasonal flu. Approximately 2,000 died from the normal seasonal flu. (source) 

H1N1

• Unlike normal seasonal flu, very few people are immune to swine flu. However, People who contracted flu prior to 1957 may have some immunity.
• 40% of Tasmanians (200,000 people) are expected to contract swine flu (source)

What should you do?

• Relax! This is not the end of the world.
• You will probably get the flu this year, it may be normal flu, it may be swine flu. You probably won’t be able to tell the difference.
• If you plan on taking herbs to treat the Flu, remember: 
• Echinacea is a preventative herb, not a cure. You must be taking it for days/weeks before you get sick for it to be effective. (source)
• Garlic may be of use to boost the immune system. (source)
• Vitamin C is important (source)

Klingon Antivirus

Our routine monitoring of sub-space transmissions alerted Sophos that the loss of the Klingon battlecruiser Klothos was not due to Romulan incursion into the Khitomer system, but a result of trying to remove VBS/PeachyPDF-A from the battle computer using M'swoN'kar after Commander Kor opened an attachment from the system S'cam-419.

Immediately our Product Marketing away team embarked on a mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and flog them Network Access Control solutions. Sadly they chose Qo'noS as their first destination and when their severed heads were beamed back to Sophos, the engineering team created this software, not in a spontaneous display of gratitude to the Klingon race (as the Register would have you believe) but to honour their memory.

Linkage

Latitude works!

A pleasant surprise when I woke up today. An update seems to have been pushed to the HTC Dream in Australia overnight that enabled Latitude on Google Maps.

What is latitude? In short it is a location sharing program that sits on top of Google Maps on your phone. It uses GPS and/or Cell Tower Triangulation to detect your location and share it with the friends of your choosing. It is of course, also shared with Google.

If you are bumming around in a shopping centre and want to know if any of your friends are as well, it is as easy as firing up the app.

So why are google doing this? Well the most obvious reason is location based advertisement, which, like advertisement in games, will be much more important when Augmented Reality becomes commonplace.

The question now is... where is my cupcake?

Prototype Holodeck

Startrek-esk holodecks may not be too far away.

Watch as the guy suspend dis-belief at about 0:47 and automatically try to balance on the wall. Then pisses himself laughing for being stilly on camera.

Channel 10 to axe The Simpsons

There are kids alive today that do not remember a time before the Simpsons was on TV. It will be a rude awakening then, when they turn on Channel 10 and find a "a chatty [news] presentation heavy on sport and with regular headline updates" replacing it.

In unrealated news, searches on The Pirate Bay and Mininova for "The Simpsons" rose 286% this week*.

*Like all good statistics, this figure may have been made up on the spot.