Sports jocks library goes digital
BOOKS on paper 鈥� are they obsolete? The Cushing Academy, a New England co-ed prep school founded in 1865, is phasing out its library鈥檚 20,000 books and spending nearly $500,000 on a new digital 鈥渓earning center鈥�. A hefty $42,000 of that will go to pay for three large flat-screen displays. Another $50,000 will go to build a coffee shop, including $12,000 for a cappuccino machine, .
Curious what sort of institution would take the lead in marching into the brave new world of all-electronic books, Feedback turned to a famous web search engine, which duly unearthed an impressive list of past pupils . While it includes figures as diverse as Hollywood star Bette Davis and His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the king of Bhutan, the list focuses mainly on eminent members of the US National Hockey League, the National Football League and World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly called the World Wrestling Federation).
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Feedback is impressed. If this is what a library of 20,000 books can do, who knows what the academy鈥檚 digitally trained alumni of the future will achieve?
鈥淭he Hovis bread yeast that Joan Schneider bought back in August bears the message: 鈥淏est before Mar 10 9075 11:55鈥�. Joan told us about it then, but we thought the story, like the yeast, could wait鈥�
EYEBROWS raised, a colleague forwards an email promoting a which announces: 鈥淭he total number of internet users worldwide is 1,596,270,108鈥�. Surely it would be at least 1,596,270,109 by the time we鈥檇 finished reading the sentence?
Feedback, despairing of online marketeers鈥� numeracy, was sorely tempted to reduce the number by 1, forthwith and forever.
Effect of alcohol on random numbers
CAN people generate random numbers? Not just the quasi-random numbers that students jot down when they don鈥檛 know the answers, but truly random numbers that don鈥檛 follow any discernible pattern at all?
鈥淚t is 鈥榳ell known鈥� that people are very poor random number generators,鈥� as researcher William Bains puts it 鈥� or it was, until in 2005 Navindra Persaud that when he asked people to call out numbers, the sequence seemed genuinely random.
Feedback thanks the editors of Really Magazine for to Bains鈥檚 novel effort to resolve the issue by examining the effect of environment. First he had student volunteers call out numbers for 60 seconds in 鈥渁 relaxed social setting, usually a pub鈥�. The results were not truly random. To see whether mental concentration might play a role, he tried again, this time with volunteers repeating the task after drinking a couple of pints of beer. Sadly, he still didn鈥檛 get random numbers.
However people are trying to generate numbers, he concludes, they use 鈥渁 mechanism that is not easily distracted鈥�. But Bains is not about to give up. He wants to see what happens when volunteers are really drunk, he writes in (vol 70, p 186) 鈥� 鈥減roviding the ethical issues in doing so were addressed鈥�.
ANOTHER random number comes up supposedly under the Firefox banner. We were as surprised as James Nicholls was to read how popular claims the browser is. Downloading version 3.5 would, it says, enable us to 鈥渏oin the over 500.000.000 million people worldwide enjoying a better and faster web browsing鈥�.
Were they counting the bacteria on our keyboards as 鈥減eople鈥� enjoying the program, we wondered?
Then the non-English punctuation and grammar led us to ask: whose site is this? We looked it up. In contrast to the , the . And whoever they are, their website appears to be gathering information on visitors. Beyond that, we remain puzzled.
FINALLY, a colleague of Feedback went along to the long-awaited launch of Windows 7, which Microsoft is now offering given that their last release, Windows Vista, turned out to be, er, not quite a roaring success.
To the obvious discomfort of the massed assembly of Microsoft folk, a marketing boss from the Dixons Group, a leading European electronics retailer, went on stage and cheerily revealed, 鈥渨e sold more pre-orders for Windows 7 in three weeks than we sold copies of Vista for the whole of last year鈥�.
Even more embarrassed was an unfortunate emissary from Sky, Rupert Murdoch鈥檚 satellite broadcasting company. Three times Microsoft called him to the stage to demonstrate how Sky鈥檚 TV programmes could be viewed on a Windows 7 PC. Three times the connection failed. Wisely Mr Sky had a Plan B: a pre-recorded demonstration. But Microsoft鈥檚 closed-circuit TV cameras had great difficulty relaying the recording to the hall鈥檚 large screens.
We left the event feeling a whole lot better. If Microsoft still has trouble with cameras and internet connections, then it鈥檚 no wonder we mere mortals do too.