The Register decided to investigate claims that as of the last revamp of Barclaycard's web site a few weeks ago Mac users were no longer able to use the site to pay bills. A spokesman from the Barclaycard press office explained that Barclaycard's systems had recently been upgraded to support a new version of Windows, and this had in turn caused problems with Macs which led to the (temporary) withdrawal of support for the Mac. Which prompted just one last question from The Register's intrepid correspondent:

El Reg: That's great. Can you tell me more about your upgrade? Which change in Windows are you talking about?

Barclaycard spokesman: Netscape 7.

*Pause*

El Reg: Ok thanks. Thanks for your time.

Would anyone care to take a guess what really broke their Mac support? Anyone?

(Just to complicate matters, I've been using Safari on my Mac to access the Barclaycard site all along without any problems at all. Whether this is just because I never tried to use a particular feature of the site I can't say.)

Scotland on Sunday published the first example I've seen this year of one of the standard pre-Olympic journalistic rituals: an article about the bacchanal that takes place in the Olympic village.

At the Albertville winter Olympics, condom machines in the athletes' village had to be refilled every two hours. And in Sydney the organisers' original order of 70,000 condoms went so fast that they had to order 20,000 more. Even with the replenishment, the supply was exhausted three days before the end of the competition schedule. (For the record, athletes who were in Sydney report that the Cuban delegation was the first to use up its allocation.) Salt Lake City in 2002 went even bigger: 250,000 condoms were handed out, despite the objections of the city's Mormon leadership.

"There's a lot of sex going on. You get a lot of people who are in shape, and, you know, testosterone's up and everybody's attracted to everybody," says Breaux Greer, a shaggy-blond Californian who competed in the javelin at the Sydney Games.

"It's not an orgy," says one alpine skiing champion, Carrie Sheinberg, "but it is socially vigorous."

"Socially vigorous." I like that phrase.

Of course, it's not just that everyone in the village is young and fit: there's a body type to suit just about every preference. Former Olympic kayaker Terry Kent makes the village sound like something out of a science fiction novel:

Kent remembers sitting in the village, watching athletes walk through the door and playing a game of Guess What They Do. "The bikers have skinny little upper bodies, farmer tans and massive, clean-shaven thighs. Invert them and you get the kayakers, who have skinny little legs and massive backs and shoulders. The seven-foot-tall giant who ducks under the doorway entering the cafeteria is probably from basketball. The seven-foot giant who smacks his head on the door frame is definitely a rower; they don't have that hand-eye co-ordination thing. The kids running at the rowers' ankles with the high-pitched voices are gymnasts. It just goes on and on. Being at the village is like taking your place in a wild anatomical parade seen nowhere else on the planet."

[Via plasticbag.org linklog]

Unfortunate Amazon typos: #5,450,423 in a continuing series.

[Via Dave Barry]

The Times has a story about Puppy the World, a Tokyo store which rents out dogs by the hour:

As Hanako Iida, a college student browsing the dog menu, explained: "It is just such a perfect way to spend a date. I can walk along with my boyfriend and we can pretend that we own a cute dog together. I would really love to own a dog, but I live with my parents, and even a little one would set off my Dad's allergies."

Fun as it is to imagine a puppy as the perfect accessory for a date, the story does eventually reveal the much more straightforward reason the shop makes the dog hire service available.

[Via The View From Here]

Back on the usual weekly schedule:

• eiffel detail from daily dose of imagery gives a nice sense of just how many individual bits of metal make up that iconic structure.
• I'm not sure that I'd feel comfortable walking across the Ponte Di Salti bridge, but it's nice enough to look at from a safe distance.
• The Cloudbuilders have been hard at work this summer.
• The Bubble Nebula is another example of an object it's safer to contemplate from a distance than be near to.

You'd have thought that The Flubber Fiasco would have discouraged film companies from going all out to produce tie-in merchandise. Millennia hence, that puddle of Flubber will probably still be sitting there, oozing out of the ground every time the weather gets a bit warmer than usual.

[Via Apothecary's Drawer]

For anyone who is a parent, is contemplating becoming a parent, or is very glad not to be a parent: Ian Frazier's Laws Concerning Food and Drink:

Laws When at Table

[...]

When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within; I say to you, do not so, even if your brother or your sister has done the same to you. Eat your food only; do not eat that which is not food; neither seize the table between your jaws, nor use the raiment of the table to wipe your lips. I say again to you, do not touch it, but leave it as it is. And though your stick of carrot does indeed resemble a marker, draw not with it upon the table, even in pretend, for we do not do that, that is why. And though the pieces of broccoli are very like small trees, do not stand them upright to make a forest, because we do not do that, that is why. Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other, nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass.

[...]

Class.

[Via MetaFilter]

I know every weblogger in the western world has already linked to Rodeohead, a bluegrass take on a medley of tracks by Oxford's finest, but I only got round to listening to it this morning. Guaranteed to put a smile on your face, or your money back.

If you've been getting Internal Server Error messages whilst trying to access this site over the last few hours, don't worry: the problem was at this end. Everything appears to running smoothly again now.

(Note to self: next time you edit your .htaccess file, make doubly sure you haven't done anything stupid. Then check again, just to make sure.)

From the Truth is Stranger Than Fiction department:

Through prayer, milk and a banana, a 73-year-old Lafayette grandmother soothed a robber to sleep, according to Lafayette police.

[...]

Now read on…

[Via MemeMachineGo!]

Not only is this year's World Science Fiction Convention taking place in the same city as the Democratic party's national convention, but the Worldcon's web site happens to have a very similar address to that of the DNC. Which inspired the Worldcon to come up with Why Noreascon Four is Not Like the Democratic National Convention:

1. We're not $10 million over budget. We don't even have a $10 million budget.

[...]

36. If we rewrite history we label it as fiction or "alternative history".

[...]

69. At N4, discussions on the security threats imposed by weapons of mass destruction will include paranomaisiacs, watching the sky for inbound meteors, and gamma ray bursters.

[...]

While I'm on the subject of the Worldcon, Howard Waldrop's article about the Retro Hugos pointed out that a surprising number of the nominees are still around to pick up their awards for work they did fifty-one years ago. Not that I expect that Sir Arthur will come over from Sri Lanka, but it's good that he's still around to find out how highly a generation of fans mostly(?) born since 1953 rates Childhood's End and The Nine Billion Names of God.

[Worldcon list via Boing Boing]

Kirsten Dunst's suggestion that perhaps Spider-Man might die in the third instalment of the series seems to have touched a nerve. (See also some of the hysterical comments following that Ain't It Cool News story. Calm down, people…)

Spider-Man 2 lives up to all the hype. It's got a bit of everything: seriously impressive action scenes, characters who show every sign of having spent the last two years having a life instead of sitting round in stasis waiting for the next instalment of the series, corny but effective speeches about heroism, some nice slapstick humour, highly effective performances from Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina, J K Simmons and Kirsten Dunst, and some horrifying moments reminiscent of director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films. Oh yes, and a cameo from Bruce Campbell. Even the recap-of-the-first-film-in-comic-book-form title sequence (which was spoiled slightly for me this evening by the projectionist failing to actually line up the projected image with the screen for the first minute) was nigh on perfect.

So is Spider-Man 2 really the best superhero film ever? For me, that title would still be held by X-Men 2. But I'll freely admit that I'm influenced in part by the fact that I'm more of an X-Men fan that a Spider-Man fan anyway; there's not much in it at all. Marvel should count itself lucky that its Hollywood partners have found not one but two capable creative teams who've been given free reign to make a faithful-but-not-too-literal big-screen translation of the comic books. I just hope Hollywood remembers this track record and holds its nerve when the forthcoming Fantastic Four film dies a horrible, very public public death at the box office…

The Register reports another example of corporate myopia:

[...]

As was explained so coherently to the owner of Shiremail.com, Tarrant Costelloe, in a letter from the lawyers representing all three parties, Addleshaw Goddard: "The SHIRE name is well-known in the UK and elsewhere, to readers of the Lord of the Rings books (and others) and the goodwill in the name has been achieved through sales of such books."

"The incorporation of the SHIRE name into a domain name by you is a misrepresentation to the public that the domain is connected to the Lord of the Rings books and/or films. In particular, the registration by you of the domain name constitutes a representation to persons who consult the Whois register that you are connected to or associated with the name registered and thus the owner of licensee of the goodwill in the name, which of course you are not."

[...]

Because as we all know, Tolkien made up the word "shire" from whole cloth.

Granted, Mr Costelloe also runs a site called Planet-Tolkien.com about the author's work, but since the lawyers from the Tolkien estate have already decided to let that site stay up it seems particularly daft for them to then go after another of Costelloe's sites which happens to use a common English word in its title which also happened to have been used by Tolkien as a place name.

[Via Boing Boing]

Can I just share a gem of a comment from a Barbelith thread about this year's Big Brother?

Having watched last night's highlights show, Deep-Fried Koala cube observed:

Oh my god. That walk around the garden with Michelle and Stu last night. Don't women recognise that face? That's the

"Oh, shit. She's getting serious and I don't give a shit anymore. Nice tits, though. Why doesn't she just dump me? I can't dump her. I'm too nice. I'm really bad at being nasty. Oh, she's crying now. Nice arse. Maybe a hug will help. Why do they have to go on about everything. Nice tits, though."

face. Why do only men recognise that face? Or is it just me? It's the classic "I'm too nice to be a bastard, so I'll fuck people up even more," face: I used to see it in the mirror for years until I grew up a bit and got slapped by responsibility.

WHY DON'T PEOPLE RECOGNISE THIS FACE?

aaaauuuggghhh.

Sorry, back to you Ganesh. I feel better now.

It was their rapid circumnavigation of the garden while they talked that got to me. I'm sure they were getting faster and faster as the talk went on.

While I'm on the subject of last night's show, I've got to say that Victor is every bit as evil as Ahmed is selfish: I mean, "I think you need to go kick ass, boy" was such a helpful comment to make to Jason.

Is anyone else worried by this report that police are about to start tests of a US-designed system which will project a narrow-focus electro-magnetic pulse designed to disable the electronics in the average modern car's engine in order to bring car chases to a quick end?

It's not that I have any problem with the idea of a stolen car or a getaway car being brought to a halt, but if I were using a computer in the vicinity or, worse yet, dependent upon a heart pacemaker, I'd be very nervous of the backwash from this sort of technology. I know the makers say it's a tight beam rather than the 'traditional' spherical shockwave, but if it's sufficiently broad and powerful to flood a car's engine compartment and knock out the electronics it's got to be wide enough for a little spill-over. I hope the testing phase will be long and thorough.

[Via qwghlm.co.uk]

I wonder if air-guitar aerobics will catch on?

[Via sashinka]

Jascha Hoffman has written a fascinating article for Legal Affairs about the science-cum-art of reconstructing car crashes.

[...]

With the right physical evidence, reconstructionists can determine how fast a car was going and whether the driver was braking or swerving in the moments before impact. Sometimes, they are called on to make grimmer determinations – in a truly bad wreck, it can be difficult to tell who was driving the car. In some crashes, the force of impact does all the work: The person with the brake pedal's pattern etched into the sole of his shoe was probably the driver.

Other incidents are trickier to decipher. In a case this spring, a reconstructionist testified that a woman was driving when she and a Hartford businessman careered out of control on Connecticut's Route 9. The attorney for the woman, on trial for manslaughter, claimed that it was the man who was driving. The lawyer suggested that the woman's injuries, including a ruptured left breast implant, were consistent not with driving but with performing oral sex on the late businessman when he lost control of the car.

[...]

Think of it as CSI (either version) without the creepy/annoying lead actor.

[Via Arts & Letters Daily]

A Slashdot poster pointed out two articles describing attempts to develop software which is capable of analysing sports footage and identifying what's going on in order to automate the process of creating a highlights package. Apparently having this done manually is extremely costly, so there's considerable incentive to automate the process as much as possible.

Sports events offer a relatively simple target for computerised analysis, since they frequently take place on a clearly defined field of play and to some degree it's possible to assign significance to events depending upon where on the pitch they're taking place. The various projects also try to pick up on cues from the commentators' voices to figure out when they're getting excited. (I can't help but think that that might prove a bit tricky to deploy in practice; I'm sure we can all think of commentators who operate at such a high pitch of excitement from the moment the match starts that it's quite tricky for humans to figure out when something significant has happened, never mind for a computer.) There are all sorts of other issues requiring work before this technology can be deployed; figuring out which members of the teams are making significant moves and which are just wandering about waiting for the ball to come their way, spotting players in muddy outfits on a rainy day, figuring out when the ball is out of play. It's a fascinating problem.

The Microsoft Research article ends with some suggestions for further applications of this technology:

By hitting the highlights of baseball games, we get to view only the best parts of multimedia life. And who knows what's next? Maybe political speeches will become shorter, or the eleven o'clock news will last only 5 minutes, the witty banter between news anchors edited out.

You know, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with a piece of software editing a politician's speeches. And I'm guessing the average politician would feel the same way; I foresee a raft of laws being passed across the developed world outlawing the application of automated editing to political speech…

[Via Slashdot]

If you've got an active imagination and you're scheduled to fly anywhere in the next few days, you probably shouldn't look at Gwyn Cole's Air Travel… Oops! page. That first image is particularly impressive – it must have taken real skill to get tangled up like that. Or possibly just a lot of luck.

[Via Exclamation Mark]