June 25, 2008
Always a big fan of big cameras on the streets of Blighty to scupper the nefarious dealings of UK Wasters plc, Guru notes that top boffins have developed a CCTV camera that allegedly 'listens' for signs of trouble.
Good news then for the UK's honest traders and users of civic amenities.
Dave Brown (no doubt a pseudonym for the much more dynamically named and easy-to-track-down-in-a-hoodie, John Smith) from the University of Portsmouth, says the system uses 'artificial intelligence' - that's robots, that is - to enable the camera to 'hear' shouting and the sound of breaking glass.
All very well and good, if it weren't for the obvious flaws in the system.
For surely any self-respecting - and, admittedly, that's probably quite hard for most of them - yob from the UK's miscreant community, would simply enlist a band of the great unwashed to do some jeering and glass smashing while they stove in the window of the nearest digital camera shop to avail themselves of the latest in security camera hardware.
In a parallel (not to say parallel universe) development, New Scientist reveals that even more boffins have reported that crocodile mums on the Nile respond to the sound of their young before they've even hatched from the eggs.
Trouble is, being boffins - ie, not known for their social skills or awareness of anything non-boffin - they've gone and created a generation of even-angrier-than-usual crocs, by tricking the green scaley mums into thinking their children were there when they had been replaced by 'speakers'.
Now even Guru can sense that having your offspring replaced by a cone-in-a-box will be traumatic for both the mother and child, no doubt leading to erratic behaviour, outbursts of anguish and generally destructive character traits... and for what?
We now know that crocodiles are... um... animals and that they... err... communicate. It's not exactly rocket science - but it is pointless science.
Unless, that is, the boffins could manage to bang their heads together and somehow combine the Portsmouth and Nile experiments so that the crocs who were separated from their mums at a young age could be somehow built into CCTV towers to 'respond' when there is the slightest sign of trouble in Portsmouth city centre.
The hoodies would then know what had hit... sorry, bit them.
Posted for your edification by Guru on June 25, 2008 9:32 AM
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