The Negative Side

Well, we do live in interesting times.

The G8 and G20 are coming to a Canadian city. Darn it. Vastly inconvenient, and probably somewhat dangerous, too. Not to mention expensive.

Here's is one interesting and negative technology angle: I heard on the the radio that our government - federal? provincial? - is considering jamming cell phone signals in the downtown area during the meetings. Not enough to ask people who work in business dress to dress casually instead so they do not become targets of violent anti-business protesters. No...cell phone communications will be disrupted so violent anti-business protesters (or worse) can't set off bombs. And the upside of hosting these conferences is...?

Next item on the weird side: The World Cup starts tomorrow (or so). I heard on the radio that Twitter is trying to gear up for the onslaught of people cheering on Twitter in real time...the figure I heard is 65 million of them. Is that expected TV viewers? Fans? Twitterers? All at once? Talk about jamming! How will the system handle that? And the network of systems? How does that compare, I wonder, to regular volume? Maybe the government won't have to do anything because Twitter traffic alone will impede cell phone communications (or smart phone communication at least) during the G8 thingy. I guess it will force a kind of rush on improving the technology once the problems are revealed, and that will at least be interesting.

The marigold says nervously:
The more I hear the news, the more I want to read...hmmm. Dickens? No. Austen? No, not quite. Tolstoy? Noooo. Thackeray. Yes!