Another twist in the story today. Russia said (threatened ?), that it will 'not support any attempt to use force to resolve the situation.' Wether or not they mean 'interject if' is not too clear, but lets hope that it doesnt come to that.

But why is Russia saying this? 

I think they are trying to get in Iran's goodbooks, because if they want nukes, they can get them. Or at least you would have thought so. They have worked on their nuclear programme for over 20 years now, must countries cracked it in that time. The only way that theyre going to get nukes is off the black market.

So what happens next ?

The security council is going over a draft proposal trying to get other countries to back them, possibly by some kind of blockade, ie denying Iran access to certain materials. I think this would constitute the 'force' Russia spoke of. 

 This will either blow over or end up in a very nasty situation, with the UK and US screwing up another middle eastern country. 

Is this a clever, hyped up play by the US and UK to get their hands on a little more oil? Not that theyve done that before… 

Technorati:  Iran   Oil  

This is not what I was expecting after writing that blog post about google

Seeming as the title of blog mentions 'photos' I think its time I started to put up my best ones =) 

hehe, sorry about the cliche =p

I was reading a bbc article earlier today,about the american movie industry trying to get torrentspy shut down.  Again, this is an example of consumers doing what they want, because the industry wont do it. Other examples are the reselling of gig tickets on ebay. Industry does not like this shift of power, as it forces them to be innovative and to cut prices.

 So, AMI (american movie industry) wants torrentspy shut down. Why ? Because they are in breach of copyright. Torrntspy's lawyers have hit back with the fact that their site does not actually host the illegal files. Which is quite true and a valid point.

The AMI is fat and greedy. An actor / actress being paid millions for a film. That money has to come from somewhere….

What they dont seem to relise is that the problem will not go away. After supernova got shut down, mini-nova and several other 'nova' torrent sites sprung up. Theres no way they can stop file sharing, as theres just so many ways of doing it. You dont se ethe AMI taking on MS over file sharing on MSN….  

They dont seem to realise that they can make money off this. What needs to happen, is rather than charging the consumer,  to put adverts in the film, like on tv, have a cut to an advert. Many more people will watch it as its free (GCSE economics, as price decreases, demand increases), and they can charge people more for adverts, so it all balances out =)

 Viva la torrent !

Technorati:  torrent  film   

Im making some progress withinstalling slackware 10.1 onto my thinkpad 560,

1. Partitioned the hard drive using cfdisk, now I have root and Linux swap =)
2. Discovered that fstab and mtab do not contain the pcmcia cards. This means I somehow have to add the pcmcia card to this (these?) files in order to install from the CD drive. Screw insalling from 50 different floppies.

 Problems atm:

1. Working out how to edit fstab (just though about it, can probbly use vi)
2. Working out what tp put in fstab

 At this rate should be done in a couple of months =)

I like this TV show. Its cheesy, funny, and has a simple storyline. And its British =p

 The storyline is almost predictable, but the ending, youll never see it coming! Mickey always has some crazy scheme to pull the gang out of the hole they dig for themselves!

Briliant!

SCRAM jets. A bbc artice got me thinking about them and just how practical they would be.

They work by taking in air, compressing it so much that it ignites, and throwing it out the back to create thrust. They only work after they have reached mach 5 therefore requiring a vehicle to accelerate them to such speeds.
The bbc website said that they could be used to get satellites into low orbits, which sounds like a good idea. However, I think that these will mainly in military applications, eg high speed interception / bomber aircraft.

The bbc website also says that it could be used in high speed passenger aircraft. I think theyre wrong:

• In order to make the SCRAM jet work, the aircraft needs to be accelerated to mach  5.  This would be incredibly uncomfortable for most people, and even dangerous. You would beed a health exam before you flew. Not going to happen.
• If you want to accelerate slowly up to mach 5, youre going to need a hell of a lot of fuel. This would make for a very big aircraft, which would have to be designed as none exist.
• Two new aircraft would be needed. After the accidents with concorde, which only did mach 1, I cant see many governments wanting to put up the money.

So SCRAM jets, good military and scientific use, but I cant see its commercial aspects.

Technorati:  SCRAM

Ive used this quite a bit while trying to install slackware 10.1 on my thinkpad 560, which ive almsot done =)

Heres what to do:

Type: su

enter root password

Type: fdformat -n /dev/fd0

/dev/fd0 is the location of the floppy drive. The disk will now be formatted

Technorati: Linux diskettes floppydisks format

Gerald put me onto yum, a program for linux. It works from terminal and can be used to install most programs, and also to update your system.

To install a program:

Type: su

then enter your root password

Type: yum install program

where program is the program you want =) Yum will then chunt away to itself installing your program.

To update your system:

Type: su

enter your root password

Type: yum update

and yum will do its thing.

Unfortunately I cannot remember how I installed yum, but if I find out I will post it =)

Technorati: yum  linux  terminal

Things im up to at the moment:

1. Putting linux onto a Thinkpad 560. More difficult than it seems because I formatted it rather than leave windows on and install over the top. Now I cant use the CD drive and to use the floppy. Currently searching for a small floppy / several floppy distro of linux, probably slackware 3.1. Learning a lot about how linux works just by researching this, eg Lilo and mounting floppy disk images.
2. Making my rocket. I now have the drainpipe I need for the main body of the rocket. If I keep the weight down to under 1kg, it will accelerate at 50m/s^2 to a final speed of 1.5km/s and a height of 5 km. Cool huh ?

 So thats whats keeping me occupied these days. That and this blog =)