vivweb01

  Many of us who still use a pc will, sooner or later, find they need to share larger files  with others. If these are  more than ca 10MB in size, this can present problems. The traditional, and probably still the most widely used, method of transferring smaller files to someone else is via an email attachment. This has two associated problems…the first (and perhaps best known because of the trouble it can cause) is that all mail systems prohibit attachments above a certain size, and this limit can be as little as 5 MB or even less. Even a medium-sized Word document with illustrations or images within it can easily exceed this limit, and audio and video files will almost always be above it, unless they are very short.   This results in 'offending' mail messages being rejected and not reaching their destination, something which is not always apparent to the sender.  The other, and less widely appreciated, issue is that emails are eminently ‘hackable’ (see r...

  Editors note: I wheel this blog out periodically when drought threatens to strike again, as it is doing now, despite one of the wettest winters I can remember. The main problem with our drought resilience is that UK doesn't seem to be able to 'hold its water' nowadays...or is it perhaps we're using too much of the stuff cooling all these new data centres ? One way or another, we need a bit of rain....AI won't save us if the raw material in question isn't there to do the job. Here's hoping the rain gods will read this and oblige again! ------------------- On present evidence, and despite a welcome shower or two over the Bank Holiday weekend (when else would they fall?!), I think we just might….. Those of us old enough to remember the excesses of the 1970s will recall one of the most notable of its meteorological ones - the ‘great drought’ of ’76. Contrary to popular belief, this was even more extensive and prolonged than the current one, with both a dry...

  A midst all the discussion about the perils of global warming, there has been no mention recently of when we might expect the start of the next Ice-Age.... This was a topic that hit the headlines some years ago and was all the rage for a year or two before fading into obscurity. It is probably no coincidence that this media fade-out coincided with the increased coverage in the media about global warming and its wider implications for our future well-being. But should we be so quick to dismiss the possibility of  a much cooler future ? There is now no doubt that our global climate is warming – and doing so quite rapidly. There is also little doubt that our large-scale release of greenhouse gases since the dawn of the industrial era in the early 1800s will have contributed significantly to this process. However, despite the views of some environmentalists, our planet's atmosphere is a chaotic and unpredictable beast, and the jury is still out on whether ‘man-made’ clim...