WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
My regular schedule got badly messed around this week - threats of rail strikes, first on, then maybe, then definitely, then off - and we finally shipped our product in my real life job, which meant working weird hours.
The combination meant that my regular schedule for tracking stories went to the wall, but in spite of that I managed to pick out a few things that readers might be interested in.
By the way, have you even had a techie sneer at you for not knowing some arcane thing about your computer? Well now you can get your own back because TechRepublic has just published details of the ten most foolish mistakes IT professionals regularly make. The URL is in the Scanner section - enjoy!
Shorts:
The latest RFID brainwave from the boffins at London's University College is just great - add radio chips to airline tickets and install hi-definition CCTV in airports. The people who came up with this wheeze are expecting it help speed up things at the airport by allowing the airlines to track their passengers. Yes, it could do this, though since passengers don't have individual radios on which they can be called, the airline would still have to resort to the tannoy to make last calls for boarding.
The real problem is that it would enable the petty bureaucrats that control airport security to indulge in even more personally intrusive security theatre.
Security theatre is when high profile, usually inconvenient, 'security measures' are applied to prove that something is being done. Inevitably, the measures add nothing to the security of citizens.
It's perhaps worth reflecting on the fact the 9/11 highjacking could have been prevented by the security people at Boston's Logan airport simply applying the security rules that were already in force! There was no need for all the extra rigmarole that airline travellers currently have to suffer.
http://Mail.computing.co.uk/cgi-bin1/DM/y/euG20BsjfA0TXA0DNVq0Ej
Gloomy news for Intel employees - 10,500 redundancies over the next nine months. And possibly the truth is that Intel was so far ahead in the chip market that it got complacent. Did I hear someone say that no one ever got fired for buying computers with Intel Inside?
I suspect the former powers that be at Intel just assumed that they were so big and commanded such a large proportion of the market, that it didn't matter if Intel chips ran hotter than the opposition, or if they were slower and later moving to 64-bit.
They also failed to understand that the rise of Open Source software meant that there were plenty of people out there writing 64-bit software for Linux long before Microsoft started even thinking about a 64-bit version of Windows. The result was that AMD chips became the chips of choice for Linux high end servers.
In the mean time, 'scuse me, because I just need to make some breakfast toast on my Intel dual core processor...
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=8053358-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
There's a fabulous quote from security guru Bruce Schneier in Wired this week. He is explaining why Microsoft takes up to a month to issue vital security patches out to its users, but it can patch a hole which allows Windows Media Digital Restriction Management (DRM) to be stripped off media files within three days.
Commenting on the fact that the patch had already been circumvented he speculated on how long it would be before Microsoft issues another patch, and how long to circumvent that patch. The answer was:
"Certainly much less time than it will take Microsoft and the recording industry to realize they're playing a losing game, and that trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet."
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71738-0.html?tw=wn_index_6
The big news of the week was all about Hewlett-Packard PI-droids snooping on HP's board members and journalists to find out who told CNET news about HP's strategic planning. It appears that board member and journalist telephone records were illegally obtained by the investigators pretending to be the people they were investigating. In the US this is known as 'pretexting' - I've no idea why, it sounds like something teenagers would do!
Needless to say, word of this dodgy operation eventually leaked out. Red faces all round, and maybe even some time in the nick for the perpetrators. Who knows, maybe we will even see the unceremonious firing of yet another HP CEO.
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=8767825-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=8740673-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
Coda: Lithium-Ion Batteries - more than meets the eye
I covered the matter of the Sony exploding batteries and the Dell and Apple battery recalls a couple of weeks ago. I have picked up an interesting piece of information in Risks Digest since then. It was a report of an interview with a professor at Kyoto University who is an expert on battery technology.
From what he had to say, it seems the problem is not necessarily entirely Sony's fault. Yes, they did have a problem with their manufacturing process which resulted in metallic fragments short circuiting some of the batteries, and, yes, they are responsible for that.
However, it turns out that Dell and Apple are operating very fast recharging cycles for the batteries - and one of the problems with such rapid recharging is that the high concentration of lithium ions (remember lithium is a metal) can cause the formation of tiny whiskers of lithium. These can pierce the plastic separator between the positive and negative electrodes in exactly the same way as the Sony metal fragments, causing what is euphemistically called 'catastrophic failure'.
[ Source - Risks Bulletin]
Scanner: Other stories
Ten most foolish mistakes of IT pros
http://newsletters.zdnetuk.cneteu.net/t/139606/921984/207004/0/
UK Dept of Work & Pensions cancels UKP 139 million IT processing system
http://Mail.computing.co.uk/cgi-bin1/DM/y/euG20BsjfA0TXA0DNVr0Ek
SEC investigating over 100 firms for backdating
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ezEf0FypUC0FrK0Ek8p0E1
CA anti-virus flags Windows component as malware
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?r=314&ctl=13CE36F:
215D3E184FC552DC445896DD025E6092EFF29049075316B4
Industry divided over future of hard drives
http://newsletters.zdnetuk.cneteu.net/t/139606/921984/207005/0/
Billy Bragg makes MySpace admission
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/01/bragg_myspace_admission/
Research at Argonne helps Abbott Labs develop anti-HIV drug
http://www.physorg.com/news76606766.html
Yawning public puts convergence on skids - survey
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/04/mobile_digital_music_so_what/
Hackers winning DRM 'arms race'
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/ezFB0FypUC0FrX0ElFF0A8
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barbara and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
10 September 2006
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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