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Rimnet, the Radioactive Incident Monitoring Network, is a £12
million scheme to monitor the effects on Britain of any nuclear emergency
that occurs abroad. A network of radiation dosimeters is connected through
British Telecom’s Global Network Services, the international digital data
network.

Feedback feels obliged to pass on to RIMNET the experiences of a New
Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ correspondent, who uses the GNS system whenever he is overseas
to send electronic mail back to base. One day last year, in Seoul, South
Korea, he found GNS stubbornly refusing to answer or connect for over 12
hours. Worse still, there was no reply from what is supposed to be a 24-hour,
365-day help line, which BT runs for the Far East from Hong Kong. A complaint
went right up to BT’s chairman, Iain Vallance, whose office said there would
be an investigation. That was six months ago and nothing further has been
heard.

Something similar happened again in Nevada earlier this year. The GNS
system went on selective strike, answering only around one call in ten while
leaving other calls to ring and ring in vain. We hope it is just coincidence
that one GNS failure was in Nevada, traditional site for America’s underground
nuclear tests, and the other was in Korea, where the North is suspected
of developing nuclear weapons and is making bellicose noises towards the
South.

* * *

As Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham may have had
more influence on the course of events in Britain than most Cabinet ministers.
The following passage from an article by Ingham in The Daily Telegraph therefore
gives some cause for concern: ‘The country needs 50 000 megawatts of electricity
each year. To produce one megawatt, you need three (wind) turbines. Multiply
50 000 by the 3000 you would need to produce 1000 megawatts, and you can
kiss goodbye to this green and pleasant land.’

Remember, this man was helping to run the country.

* * *

The only term for photocopying in Eastern Europe is ‘Xeroxing’, as agitated
Xerox sales teams are discovering on their forays to the new markets. You
would think it would make business easier, but apparently it doesn’t.

So entrenched is the term that you hear people talking about a ‘Canon
Xerox’ and a ‘Panasonic Xerox’, whereas a ‘Xerox Xerox’ not surprisingly
leaves them scratching their heads. Which is all very frustrating for the
American firm, which is already struggling hard enough for market share
with its Japanese competitors, Canon and Panasonic.

* * *

Short memories, they have in the world of shipping. It is seven years
since the Zeebrugge disaster, when the roll-on roll-off ferry the Herald
of Free Enterprise capsized off the Belgian coast. Now Britain’s Chamber
of Shipping is welcoming something known as ‘roll-over relief’ – which turns
out to be a tax incentive for ship owners.

* * *

Every day brings some new promise of data and entertainment superhigh-ways,
but there are still few clear ideas of what exactly we will do with them.
One plan gaining popularity is to give subscribers cheap access to the kind
of virtual reality video games that need several hundred thousand pounds’
worth of hardware and software to run. A single computer at the control
station would serve many subscribers simultaneously, giving people in different
places the chance to play against each other without leaving their homes.

At Philips Research Laboratories in Redhill, Surrey, they are busy developing
superhighway technology, and have installed one of these computers, made
by world leader Silicon Graphics. A test program lets the games player drive
round a town, as if in a car, steering with an ordinary computer mouse.
The effect is remarkably realistic, and it would be easy to put the car
in a chase with other players.

But, sadly, the PRL researchers have now found what may well be a fatal
flaw in the whole idea of superhighway gaming. When the computer is connected
to an international network, the digital signal has to travel so far that
it is delayed by a quarter of a second. This may not sound much, but video
games rely on very rapid responses, and even this slight delay completely
throws the player off balance.

Philips’s researchers admit to holding out very little hope of rewriting
the laws of physics to make the signals travel faster.

* * *

A reader who notices that sort of thing has spotted an anagram of the
name of the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Efficiency and Effectiveness (that’s
the one who has been told to privatise all the government’s research labs).
Sir Peter Levene becomes ‘Evil Serpent ‘Ere’.

* * *

Antarctica formed the theme of a recent exhibition at the Queen Victoria
Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. It included a couple of
stuffed huskies and a wooden sledge of the type pulled by the dogs. So it
was natural that when Ursa and Morris, two huskies from Australia’s Mawson
Antarctic station, arrived in Tasmania for a visit, they should be taken
to the exhibition so that people there could see what a real husky is like.

This was possibly a bit of a mistake. According to a report in The Australian,
Ursa and Morris went straight over to the stuffed dogs and rubbed noses
with them. Then they went over to the sledge, cocked their legs and peed
over it.

After that, it was back to the stuffed dogs. Ursa and Morris had now
decided these were territorial rivals. Ursa grabbed one of them by the scruff
of the neck, ripped off its ear and shook it about. Morris jumped in for
the kill, hurling the stuffed dog off the platform so that it landed, legs
akimbo, on the floor.

Then, ‘happy that they had re-established their dominance’, Ursa and
Morris strutted off. They have since been moved to Melbourne, ‘far away
from stuffed dogs and sleds’.

* * *

The St Petersburg Times reports that a Californian manufacturer of designer
underwear has given up its freephone line and has instead got itself an
Internet e-mail address, in an attempt to reach its twentysomething target
group. Joe Boxer’s advertisements now read ‘Contact us in underwear cyberspace;
Internet joeboxer @jboxer. com’. The company says that it gets between 15
and 20 messages a day.