south africa

Chris Knight's avatar

See
this?  It’s an enlargement.  The originals are about the size of modern printed currency…

 

I first saw this at a Boy Scout camporee in September of 1985.  I
was a brand new full Boy Scout.  They were handing out life-size copies
of this: A ten shilling note used during the Siege of Mafeking during the Boer War in South Africa.

It dates back to 1900.  Colonel Robert Baden-Powell, who later started the entire Scouting movement, had these
printed up and used in place of scarce real currency.  After the siege was
lifted and true money started flowing again these were redeemable for
actual ten shilling coins.

My friend and grandfather figure Doc Lewis told me about all that.  The “shillings” they were handing out during the camping event were
copies of an actual siege note that our local Boy Scout council had in its possession.

I’ve
been ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Telkom is the largest provider of Internet service in the country of South Africa. You’d think that data delivery would be especially speedy over its network, right?

Well, Unlimited IT wasn’t satisfied. So on Wednesday it conducted an experiment: using an 11-month old carrier pigeon to send data from the company’s office near Pietermaritzburg to the city of Durban, 50 miles away. A data card was strapped to the pigeon’s leg and sent on its way. As Winston the pigeon was flying out the window, Unlimited IT began transmitting the same data via the Internet to the Durban location.

Winston the pigeon arrived 1 hour and 8 minutes later. The data was downloaded upon arrival. The complete transfer took 2 hours, 6 minutes and 57 seconds.

By that point, Telkom had only delivered four percent of the same data!

(I don’t think my old 14.4 modem was that slow…)...

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Chris Knight's avatar

According to this story on Wired (which I first found via Slashdot), a robotic cannon being tested by the South African military went haywire last week and started shooting at everything on its own. Nine people died and fourteen others were wounded.

Here’s some of the account…

SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known…

Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army’s Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.

Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,” he said. “It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of

...
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