Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/02/27/letters_2702/

KGB maps discovered in Jesus's coffin

Who got the most mail, this week?

By Lucy Sherriff

Posted in Bootnotes, 27th February 2007 16:57 GMT

Letters Why not kick off with the obvious big story of the week? Yes, James Cameron finds the tomb of Christ. We had upwards of a trillion responses on this one, but very few were actually written in anything approaching comprehensible English, so we've trimmed the pile, somewhat.

One theme that has troubled many of you, though, is the question of confirming identities using DNA analysis. Who, you wondered, were they comparing the samples to?

We have worked this one out: to obtain a comparative sample, one merely needs to wait for the transubstantiation of the Eucharist during communion and, presto! You have your sample for comparison...

On with the mail box:

DNA analysis is used to compare unknown DNA with known DNA to attempt an association. In this case, what is the known DNA? or did this analysis just establish that this is a family unit with the right names, more-or-less.

PS I thought DNA didn't survive in dead & decomposed material.

John


So I'm assuming he's seen or read the DaVinci Code, and didn't want the hero to be a woman.. Still I wonder if the son of Jesus had super powers or a magic sword that lights up when orcs are near.. no?.. probably meant to free us all from the Matrix then.

Andy


"it has taken this long to decipher the names and to confirm the identities using DNA analysis".

WTF?

Did they do a direct comparison with someone in particular (TB the PM would no doubt be humble enough to think its him), or just a trawl through the increasingly large database run by ukpolice.plc

Once the ID of any descendant IS confirmed (as appears to be the case) then maybe HMRC will be after unpaid duty and interest for the "water into wine" tax avoidance dodge.

Charles


While I was reading your story on Cameron's 'documentary', I had a feeling of 'deja vu' that prompted me to look at my bookshelves. As a matter of fact, the plot you're exposing is the basis of Kathy Reich's novel "cross bones". This novel is loosely based on the same findings that prompted Cameron to make his film. Moreover, Kathy Reich being a real scientist, she states exactly why in the event of such a finding, no scholar would ever dare certifying besides a mere statistical 'probability' that such a tomb would be Jesus' one.

Not having seen Cameron's opus, I can't vouch for its entertaining qualities. But the aforementioned novel is really worth reading, at least just to understand the impossibility to assert any authenticity, and at least has no other ambition than being a good thriller.

Regards,

MV


Do you think this is real or not? You seem to be very sarcastic when it comes to this.....it seems as if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God....I have seen other articles on this matter, and yours is the best I have seen by far. It seems to be on the side of Christianity and not James Cameron.

Buddy


When will the tomb be up for sale on eBay, and by the way I have the original basket used by the Easter Bunny!...

John


Shock news: developers have a difference of opinion over our take on Microsoft ordering ROM removals:

I'd like to take issue with your last paragraph - I'm an owner of a HTC Universal (cost €900) and a HTC TyTN (cost €700). I think I share the sentiments of many other users of XDA-Developers, when I say that I would LOVE if there were paid upgrades available to Windows mobile, made available by carriers or device manufacturers. They are it seems to greedy for this, and intead they want you to buy a new device. Imagine as a busy IT consultant, how much I'd rather simply spend a little money (far less than an hours earnings, in the rare case that I've seen upgrades offered!) rather than spend hours browsing message boards, and trying to divine whether a particular ROM upgrade will destroy my expensive phone. I would like nothing more than to see these upgrades being made available -that, combined with timely updates, would see XDA-Developers return to its status as hobbyist adventuring, instead of a vital resource than thousands of desperate owners are turning to. Let me know what you think!

Regards,

Colm


You would be doing the XDev community a favor by considering the publishing of this XDA petition page. I would never have purchased a Smartphone or HTC Wizard without this resource and if this is a permanent removal, I never will again. I'm not alone in this. My Wizard (Cingular) has supported functionality, ei, flawless WIFI g, stereo bluetooth, much more with complete stability for a long time.. Among the reasons for my purchase. Cingular's latest ROM does not support (and likely never will) these functions. Cingular's ROM was almost unusable. Having to remove the battery to unlock daily, etc. I'm still running a single instance of WM5 and don't consider it an act of piracy at all. Without XDA Developers WM5 would not have the market penetration they have and if Microsoft persists they will kill the platform.. Thanks for reading and here's the link..

http://www.petitiononline.com/xdadevs/petition-sign.html

Stan B.

Is the Google machine really going to challenge Microsoft on the desktop? You are not so sure:

Good write up overall. But something is missing.

Last 3(4?) companies I have worked for all had some sort of confidentiality agreement, IOW most of information I receive inside of company may not leave company/company intranet.

I have polled the web based idea with several managers, and all were (best described as) "afraid" of any issues of information being leaked to outside. There is no trade secrets/etc involved - it just companies (1) obliged under law to implement necessary safe guards for information to be not misused (that might be EU specific) and (2) often license technologies from other companies and obligation to use information solely under conditions of license. If one puts information on somebody's else server - one automatically loses capability to guarantee something.

Last but most important is: customer management. Last thing any business wants is to jeopardize customer relationship due to information leak to competitors. (Recall early years of Linux and how business was afraid even to mention that they use Linux inside - to avoid the wrath of Microsoft.) That being said, I frankly see little use of web-based suits in business at moment.

Ihar

P.S. Try to imagine simple case of "industrial espionage". Google hacked and confidential documents with customer list are copied and sold to competitors. Who's responsible for that? Google who has being hacked? Or business who had given its documents to Google? The answer is also very unclear.


I think you are missing one of the biggest reasons why Windows and Office continue to have a desktop dominance in business - and why therefore Google Apps is pretty doomed. I used to be Head of IT in some large organisations - up to 5000 people - so I have a reasonable idea about this.

Lets start with Office. The IT department will assess something like OpenOffice and figure out that it isn't bad at all.

Then they will start talking to users. Most people won't mind that the spreadsheet application isn't quite as good as Excel. Then they will make it to the finance department and they will say no - we have to use Excel. They will have very strong reasons to stick with the feature set of Excel - reasons you can't argue away by a few pounds less in license fees.

The same will happen elsewhere - the sales force will insist on having PowerPoint, Secretaries will point out that all the company letter formats for headed notepaper would need redoing - and you will find they don't quite work properly in OpenOffice.

In the end, you have to decide between a homogenous environment that costs a little more, or installing multiple apps. The latter costs more to support so you drop OpenOffice. Excel is always the killer app though - no-one does spreadsheets as well as Excel. I remember the first desktop environment I had to support (inherited from the previous head of IT) was Corel Office (Word Perfect etc.) - but we had had to integrate Excel with it (Lotus 123 wasn't good enough). Eventually we had to drop WordPerfect for Word, just to stay with Excel - despite the fact that at the time WordPerfect was the better App.

With Windows its the same. 90% of your users could use something else - like Linux. But the remaining 10% all need something that will only run on Windows - like Visio, or AutoCAD, or Visual Studio, etc. You are then stuck with either deploying a mixed environment (and suffering the support nightmare) or sticking with Windows.

The reason you are stuck with Windows and Office is simply because, at the moment, on the desktop, they are the only set up on which you can do everything you need to.

Unfortunately, in the long term, this is a self-fulfilling prophesy. People develop the new software for windows since that is the platform with 90%+ market share. People continue to use windows because that is the platform with all the new software on it.

Dave


Yay, the sale of the century: the KGB puts its maps up for sale:

This story about UK maps was interesting to me because I used to be a navigator in the U.S. Air Force, and I spent three years flying F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers around the U.K back in 1975-1978. I also have a Certificate of Advanced Study in GIS, computerised mapping, from the University of Denver.

Our USAF maps were clearly marked that they contained information from the British government, and they were to be destroyed upon disposal. The main reason was because of all the information about low-level flight hazards such as transmission lines and antennas. At that time, our military attack tactic was to fly low-level to try to stay under SAM radar. Since my base in East Anglia kept aircraft on 15-minute nuclear alert as a threat to Eastern Europe, we practiced flying approved low-level routes in England and France. We also flew a low-level route in the Netherlands until a guy in my squadron hit a civilian small plane and killed the civilian pilot.

On a side note, you can give a pilot a map but you can't make him use it. Another guy in my squadron was flying a low-level check ride near the Lake District when he ran into bad weather and started climbing and turning back. He hit a support cable for a 1200-foot TV antenna that was clearly marked on the map. The cable cut off about three feet of his right wing, but he managed to return to base and land safely. I doubt that he passed the check ride.

Phillip


You horrible cynics are not impressed by a boffin's attempts to ascribe advanced mathematical intuition to Islamic tile designers:

Absolute unadulterated wibble. Just what to expect when some clowns university thesis guides scientific 'fact'. The designs are the word allah, made into a pattern, as it is/was considered the only acceptable adornment for religious sites. I am no quasiblahblah mathematiciam but I guess if you repeat the same word in print, it will make a 'pattern'. Perhaps they should go for a guided tour of a mosque before publishing this gushing, childish bollocks. The guide would be only too pleased to explain this patterning, and he won't even be in a wheel chair with a robot voice. I really get fed up with these revisionist scientists and their grovelling bullshit; 'China invented food', ' Eskimos discovered the moon', leave it in the Sunday Sport where it belongs.

Graeme


When is a plane not a plane? When it's not been delivered yet. OK, not funny, but this was:

I can just imagine the phone call: UPS: "Where the hell are our A380s?" Airbus: "We shipped them last week. Haven't you received them yet? We emailed you a tracking reference..." <g>

Steve


Online retailer Ebuyer was caught borrowing content from a rival. In much the same way that Homer Simpson borrows lawn mowers from Ned Flanders:

Great story - it's about time this issue was highlighted. We run a number of websites including www.laptospdirect.co.uk and www.directtvs.co.uk (turnover of £75m) and have an ongoing problem with one of our competitors which provides continual frustration - they simply copy everything we do. I have tried the legal route but it is expensive and fruitless.

As well as copying our business ideas, the company pinched our staff, copied our systems and even tried to copy our logo. On a daily basis they keep coming back to copy our content. It is like being burgled but knowing they have the keys to keep coming back for more with no abilty to change the locks.The end result is tha the company is a mirror image of ourselves.

Whilst I welcome honest competition, the law to protect my business from rogue traders is very weak - it is primarily there to benefit consumers

Regards,

Nick Glynne Managing Director Easy Computers www.easycom.co.uk


Triskaidekaphobia is alive and well in airline logo design:

Oh no!!! Now the Chinese people can't fly on this airline, since "14" in Cantonese sounds like "Sure Death". Would you like to fly on the Sure Death airline?! 8-)

B0fh


Sheep, glorious sheep, all up on a website. Find the one you fancy most...

"Which means, of course, that they're almost certainly Australian" From a resourcing point of view they could also be Welsh :-)

Peter


This is to say thank you for your article on adultsheepfinder that you published last wednesday. We werent ready for the publicity actually our servers went down really quickly because of too many hits, but now everything seems to be back in order.

Thanks again we're glad you got the joke and helped share it.

Cheers

Keith Brosnan, AdultSheepFinder


Giant squid found in New Zealand waters. Calamari for everyone!

Have you noticed how the BBC always trots out the same size comparison graphic whenever there's a giant squid story? Obviously this will have to be altered when there are insufficient people around who remember how big a Routemaster bus was. Somehow comparing a giant squid to an extra long (and presumably burning) Bendy Bus just doesn't have the same impact...

Mike


And in relation to a story about Vista, we get a rare pat on the back:

I like that word 'embuggerance' - must make a mental note to use it in conversation!

Robin

Do that. We'll be back with more from you later in the week. ®