Less Radiation

The Times has an interesting article today about Barack Obama’s Blackberry.

Apparently the president of the free world loves his Blackberry, but those sneaky spooks at the Langley puzzle-palace have been unhappy about his Blackberry’s security since he became president (I bet they paid very close attention to it before he won the election, funny some people aren’t they).

For the past few months he’d been using a Windows-based Sectera Edge Smartphone, which costs $3500 & is practically indestructable – it’s also fully NSA approved… Apparently the user can switch between secure & non-secure mode at the push of a button, but why do that? Surely that leaves room for user error? ‘Nuke Tehran now, oh shit I thought I was in secure mode’…

Anyway, the free world can sleep much easier now as Obama has taken delivery of a Blackberry 8830 international model (a snip at just $550 off contract). It comes with custom software from Genesis Key Inc that encrypts everything. This souped-up model has been dubbed the ‘BarackBerry’, and thoughtfully it’s been decided that his close family will also be given them.

Incredibly, El Presidente may have to wait up to 50 minutes for his push-emails to arrive at the BarackBerry – as the NSA will be scanning them for malware! (Like it really takes more than a few seconds to do this).

I suppose we should be grateful that the new president at least has opposable thumbs & a functioning pre-frontal cortex… (Even I  don’t read kids’ books upside down, so why should George Bush get away with it? Hillbilly.)

New Scientist magazine reported last week that the US military have got a prototype of a new weapon. It’s a high-power laser that ionises the air between the weapon and target, the plasma channel this creates then acts as a waveguide for a stream of microwave radiation, this radiation then destroys the electronic ignition/trigger system in a vehicle or bomb. Clever stuff indeed, we’re just glad we’re not operating the bloody thing!

On a brighter note, this week’s New Scientist reports that the Obama administration are getting rid of some of the more pie-in-the-sky defence ideas. Apparently they’ve given up on some of the more wild ‘Star-Wars’ defence shield ideas. The massive-laser-mounted-on-a-plane idea has been shelved for now.

Britain’s six largest power companies are to create a new body to facilitate the installation of 26 million new electricity meters & 20 million new gas meters. Starting at the end of 2010.

These new meters will presumably have built-in 3G wireless Modems which will allow for closer monitoring of our electricity usage. Thousands of meter reading jobs will be lost.
Benefits could be numerous too. Discounts will be given to people running washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers during the night. It should be pretty easy to have a web page showing your energy consumption – which would be interesting! It’s also hoped that it would encourage people to go for Solar Panels, Wind Turbines & Domestic CHP Boilers.

Downsides: They reckon the scheme will cost £10 Billion to implement, and £100 million a year to run. And guess who’ll be paying…

If the scheme can smooth out the electricity generation curve it will be worthwhile, and it’s no doubt the future of grid-based supply. It would however be nice to think that most of us will be selling our surplus electricity back to the grid by the time this project is finished, from solar panels on our rooftops.