The week in your words: Microsoft seige, Linux fightback and ants

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 16 May 2008 at 16:59

"I saw a documentary a couple of years ago that showed the harm done by ants to traffic-light control systems. They cause a fair few crashes apparently. The clever people on the programme explained that there is something in the electrical fields created by this kit that attracts the ants."

And the trivia didn't end there, with scdlewis upping the ante (sorry, but you knew it was coming): "Red fire ants cause a similar problem. When they're electrocuted they release "alarm products" which brings more ants, and then they're electrocuted."

Despite this wealth of ant-based learning, Gindylow still had questions - and what questions they were.

"Surely this adds a new twist to the whole Terminator war of the machines concept? All we do is breed up a few billion ants, and we won't need Arnold Schwarzennegger," he notes sagely.

"This also leaves a number of important questions un-answered. Do the ants prefer Intel or AMD flavour? Which operating system creates the most ant-attractive EM field? How much is a hermetically sealed double skin with cavity Titanium Alloy Computer case, with a built in Firewire powered UV high Voltage Ant Zapper?"

Good questions and the first person with the right answers wins a PC Pro-trained ant swarm of their very own. We can't say fairer than that.

See you next week.