Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Science & Technology’ Category

One of the challenges that people face as they get older is the increasing number of health problems that tend to crop up. The question, of course, is what to do about them.

In most cases these start as relatively mild problems. So mild in a lot of cases that people can wait quite a long time before they go to see their doctor about them which can make them a little more serious issues by then of course but not necessarily serious in a dramatic way.

For instance, if you’re like most people in being a little overweight and not taking as much exercise as you should then chances are that you’ve higher blood pressure than you should have for your age (it’s something that goes up as you get older). Go to the doctor and, if it’s high enough, chances are they’ll prescribe some medication to get it down to where it should be. The snag is that, in most cases, this medication is a “for the rest of your life” deal which is obviously not such a great idea if you can avoid it. And, you can usually avoid it in this case if you’re prepared to put the effort into it. That effort entails getting that weight down, taking more exercise, reducing your salt intake and taking charge though measuring your own blood pressure. Sadly, most people just don’t bother to put that effort in yet the effort required, in most cases, is minimal. After all, it’s not that difficult to change from normal salt to the “low salt” variety, we can all fit a little walking in and blood pressure monitors are very cheap these days.

In terms of mental health, if recent studies are anything to go by, it seems that similar options are open. We’re seeing the first of the anti-dementia drugs these days but they’re likely to be “for life” deals as well. As with the exercise for your body, those recent studies seem to indicate that exercising your mind tends to, at least, alleviate dementia. Surely it must be a better plan to exercise your mind than to go onto medication?

Thanks to the free wifi service offered in McDonalds it seems to be attracting an increasing number of itinerant bloggers.

Almost every time we’ve been in lately (and, yes, we’re one of that band of McD bloggers whilst we wait for our ADSL connection) we’ve seen someone whipping out the laptop in a relatively quiet part of the restaurant. Thus far, our record is four separate surfers but I’m sure that’s a record that’ll soon be broken.

It’s not really surprising that they’re attracting these folk: after all that word “free” is quite a pull. What is more surprising though is that the majority of these people are lugging around full size laptops rather than running with the likes of my trusty Aspire One. After all, at under £200 for quite a usable machine it’s not out of the question to buy one pretty much just for the holidays and these days you can even get them “free” with some broadband packages.

Is it a worthwhile marketing strategy for McD though? Well, in that the restaurants obviously need a connection of some sort for their credit card machines it’s largely a no-cost service for them so there’d appear to be no downside in offering it. Moreover, few of the itinerant surfers leave without buying something so it would appear to be all upside for McD at the moment. Whether that would continue to be the case were significant numbers of surfers to start using the stores is another matter. It certainly works fine if there are a handful of people using the service but if there were, say, 10 or more then a) the seats are going to be taken up and b) the service is going to slow down. Still, at the moment, it seems like a great idea.

Thanks to the Times it seems that bloggers no longer have the priviledge of anonymity. To be fair in the case of Nightjack the police who he worked for were closing in on him and would probably have worked out who he was fairly soon even without the aid of the Times.

However, now that the Times have removed the anonymity for bloggers, perhaps it is time that the same cloak of anonymity was removed from newspapers too? After all why should the foreign correspondent who wished to remain anonymous be allowed to do so by the Asia Times (no relation to the London Times as far as I know)? Sure, chances are the Chinese would have thrown them out of the country or perhaps something a little less subtle, but after all if Justice Eady can “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity” how much more so does that apply in the case of newspapers? Can we take it as read that the practice of having anonymous columnists will be ended forthwith?

Now, I’ll grant that there were special circumstances in the case of Nightjack in that Richard’s blog was a little too real and appears to have compromised some cases that he talked about but that’s a separate issue. The key think is that Justice Eady’s comments are way too far reaching. Taken to their ultimate conclusion and you could easily see the end of criticism in totalitarian states which, thanks to blogging, was finally finding a voice of sorts where previously it had none. The situation of newspapers is no different: why should their sources be protected any differently? After all, they’re talking to a news outlet so why should they have any expectation of anonymity?

Why should newspapers be allowed the protection of anonymity when bloggers have lost it?

Oh, you thought that you had some personal privacy? Sorry, it seems that you’re wrong and that you ARE being watched.

For example, if you’ve found this post by searching with google then they’ll have recorded that search against your name if you were logged in with your google account. If you’ve found it via StumbleUpon then they’ll have recorded that too. Both are “to enhance your browsing experience” or words to that effect but they certainly remove any privacy that you thought you might have in your Internet browsing.

If you’ve you’ve been using the Internet for a while no doubt you’ve commented on some forums or blogs by now. All those comments are available to everyone. Oh, you used a false name, did you? No good because the software will have recorded the IP address from which you made the comment and that can be linked to you. Ah, but your ISP allocates random IP addresses every time you login so you’re OK. Well, no, because the ISP records who gets what IP address so, yes, that comment could be linked to you.

Still, at least your e-mails are private. Not really. The Internet is structured as a network of linked computers so every e-mail you send will have gone through a series of computers to reach its destination and every one of those computers could easily record the contents and who sent it.

It seems like we’ve finally got the surveillance of 1984 and all we’re missing (in most of the world) is the totalitarian regime. Still, perhaps if we wait a few years we’ll have the complete set.

Since online photos are generally only around, say, 300 pixels by 200 ie 60,000 pixels, you might think that it doesn’t really matter what camera you choose for taking photos intended exclusively for online use.

In theory, that might be correct but in reality it’s a theory that doesn’t hold much water.

First off, if you take photos of fast-moving objects such as in a car race you’ll soon find that a compact digital is very hard to use because there’s quite a delay between pressing the button and the photo actually being taken. Try the same thing with a digital SLR and you’ll find that the photo is taken almost instantly. The difference is very noticeable and makes taking images of cars in races and similar very easy vs virtually impossible.

The larger image size lets you crop out parts of the image without reducing the quality as displayed or printed. To be fair, the increasing resolution of even quite cheap cameras these days sometimes overtakes that of low end SLRs so this point is less of an issue than it was even last year and probably by next year both types of camera will have similar resolution.

There’s also the issue of accessories that are available for SLRs which you simply can’t get for compact cameras. The single thing that’ll make the most noticeable difference to your photos is probably the ability to use bounce flash on an SLR which eliminates red-eye but goes way beyond that.

Finally, even if the compact camera has the same resolution as the SLR, the larger lens on the SLR makes a considerable difference. So much so, that it’s quite noticeable even in images shrunk down for the Internet. Consider the two images here. The larger flash has obviously made quite a difference and the flat feel of the photo taken with the compact is replaced with a more 3D quality. However, look at the detail in the two photos: the door on the SLR photo is much clearer.

What about the cost though? Well, these days the increasing sophistication of the compacts is taking their price upwards whilst the SLRs are generally getting cheaper. Net effect is that, at the moment, you’re looking at paying around 50% more for an SLR vs a good compact.

The biggest plus point of the compacts is that they are small and therefore, in some cases, you may find that it’s much more practical for you to take photos on a regular basis with one as you’ll clearly not be carrying around an SLR everywhere.