I have spent some time trying to get the data transfer working between the Palm Desktop 4.2.1 on my Mac and my Sony Clie. After one of the latest OS X updates (I don’t know exactly which one), I started get the error message _Transport Monitor Could not complete your request (16)_ each time the Mac booted and I couldn’t activate hotsync from the Palm Desktop hotsync / setup menu. Every time I set hotsync to _active_, the error message flashed up and the radio button flipped back to _disabled_.
I didn’t find any useful information in Google – most people with similar problems had had success after completely deleting and reinstalling the Palm Desktop, but this didn’t work for me.
I finally discovered that if I disabled the usbmodem_port under _connection settings_ (under hotsync / setup), I could activate hotsync and synchronize normally. After one successful synchronization, I was able to reactivate the usbmodem_port with no further ill effects. Hopefully this might help anyone else with a similar problem.
To mark the 152nd annivesary of the existence of the Italian State Police, the House of Sant’Agata Bolognese has donated them a Lamborghini Gallardo police car complete with flashing lights and medical equipment including a special defibrillator which performs electrocardiograms and automatic diagnoses of arterial pressure and the presence of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood.
Not surprisingly, it will be the only Lamborghini in service with the police.
(via gizmodo.net)
There are some interesting articles about Toyota in this month’s press – unfortunately if you want to read them in full, you are going to have to buy the magazines or pay to download the article from the Internet. Toyota is an interesting company because it focuses on getting the best out of its staff and its suppliers.
I’ve summarised some of the main points from both articles below.
Read More »
A big thanks to Ole Saalmann, who let me know a couple of days ago that the Diba’s internet banking now works with Apple’s Safari web browser! He’s right – I just tried it out. That’s a huge improvement as previously it didn’t work with any of the browsers I had on my Mac, and I had to fire up a PC when I wanted to use the internet banking, which was a pain as the PC is in the cellar. One less reason to keep a Windows PC!
The families and lawyers of the US soldiers who have been accused of abusing and maltreating Iraqi prisoners say they were only following orders.
This was also the defence of the Germans prosecuted by the Allies (USA, USSR, Britain and France) for war crimes at the International Military Tribunal at Nürnberg nearly 60 years ago.
At the end of April, the World Trade Organisation ruled that the approx. $3 billion / year subsidy that American cotton farmers get from their government is illegal. The EU also subsidizes its farmers heavily – both the EU and the USA spend a total of $1 million / day on agricultural subsidies. And the WTO is expected to rule against an EU subsidy to sugar farmers soon.
While it’s unlikely that either the EU or the USA will accept the decisions lying down – the talks in Cancun broke down last year because the richer countries refused to reduce farming subsidies – it would be much better in the long term, if they were to give in gracefully.
Subsidies distort trade and prevent the Third World countries from developing their economies though agriculture. At the same time consumers in the richer countries pay too much – not only for the subsidized goods that they buy, but also to reduce the price that the rest of the world pays for the exported surplus. If the Third World countries’ economies were able to develop though producing and exporting agricultural goods, resulting in more jobs, we would be encouraging an environment which was less likely to breed the levels of discontent that result in people being prepared to (suicide-) bomb the countries which they perceive as being the reason for their poor living conditions.
Of course, this is not the only driver for the terror attacks we have seen increasingly since the 1990’s. Nonetheless, a number of suicide bombers do come from communities where living conditions for many are poor, such as Palestine or Morocco, and we certainly aren’t doing ourselves a favour by encouraging large differentials in the standard of living around the world.
Update (2004-05-10):
The EU announced today (subject to the rest of the EU convincing France) that it intends to cut farming subsidies.
Mobile phones are getting more and more versatile.
On the one hand, you can use a modern cell phone, such as the O2 Xda II (above) to capture the material for your photoblog, like Ute does at Lemming’s Trail. The blog concentrates on Ute’s journey to and from work; like me, she works in the city center in Frankfurt and many of the photos are of scenes I see nearly every day.
On the other hand, you can use the same phone to replace an expensive, difficult to install, taxi call processing system – as described in The Inquirer. The London cab company in question, Xeta, has reduced installation costs by 25% and is more flexible as a result of swapping their dedicated terminals and PMR radio links for the new system, which also provides GPS navigation for the cabbies.
X-ray of the embedded nailsI don’t think you can get much luckier than Isidro Mejia, a construction-site worker, who stumbled into a colleague who was operating an automatic nail-gun. The gun shot 6 nails into him – including three in the brain and one in the spinal column. He was successfully operated on over serveral days and has already partially recovered. If the nails had been in even slightly different positions, blood vessels would have ruptured, resulting in his death.
There has been quite a lot of interest in the new Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius hybrid-powered cars.
But did you realise that if such a vehicle is involved in a crash, it can pose a deadly risk to rescuers? The cars contain a network of high voltage cables (500V), which run through the doors – often cut open if people have been trapped inside. In the USA, rescue services are now being trained to cut open the roof, rather than the doors and wear rubber boots and gloves when releasing victims from hybrid vehicles.
Comments working now…
I hadn’t noticed comments were broken – I’ve just fixed the problem by installing the latest daily build from WordPress.