WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Hmm, I think we are creeping towards the summer slack period for stories. You, my faithful readers need not worry. Like any journo worth his, her, or its salt I am more than capable of making up fillers which have only the most tenuous relation to reality.
For now though we have real stuff for you. And you would be amazed at some of the stuff that doesn't exactly fit this newsletter that I pick up doing the research for Winding Down. For instance, Westminster Council (that's the local council that covers central London) is going to spend 15 million UK pounds (about US$30m) fitting new lanterns to its 15,000 street lights. The council estimate this will save them 20,000 UK pounds a year. That means it will take them 750 years (till 2757) to break even on the deal! I'm impressed that the politicians can actually take a long term view, but I can't help but wonder what the Westminster tax payers think of this use their money.
I was also able to note that the latest contribution to the war on terror by the UK was to blow up a sex toy. After a mail package was heard making a suspicious noise the local bomb-squad was called in. They blew up the package in what was described as a 'controlled explosion', before discovering that it contained a battery driven vibrator and a packet of chocolate drops. No doubt terrorists always arrange for their letter bombs to make buzzing noises...
(URLs for these two items in the 'Scanner' section)
No new news on the patent front this week, but my cheese on toast patent application is still pending its way through the system.
And, as far as everything else goes...
Shorts:
Two completely opposite methods of dealing with sports fans' desire to view their chosen sports are currently in competition with one another. In the blue corner we have the lords of the baseball circuit - Major League Baseball (MLB). Last year they came up with the novel idea that subscribers should pay multiple times if they wished to watch the games on multiple devices. Now they are threatening to let slip the dogs of law onto startup Slingbox over Slingbox's 'placeshifting' technology.
Slingbox have a rather neat product that lets you access your cable or satellite TV box from remote locations, using a computer or mobile device. Very Cool!
Not in the view of the MLB's chief enforcer, Michael Mellis, who made the rather sinister statement, "there's no guarantee that Slingbox will be around next year. It's a start up."
True, it is a startup. So what? The point is that Slingbox itself is irrelevant at that level. The technology is out and there is no way now to put it back into Pandora's box. So that's the blue corner - the MLB.
And in the red corner is the National Basketball Association (NBA). The NBA takes a diametrically opposed view to the MLB. They see Slingbox as a way of cementing fan loyalty by making it easier for fans to watch the matches. In fact NBA commissioner David Stern went as far as to invite Slingbox to demonstrate the product at last year's NBA Tech Summit.
So who would you rather have running your favourite sport - Major League Baseball or the National Basketball Association?
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=38747761-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
I notice that Toshiba is planning to start using AMD chips in some of its laptops. Toshiba, like Dell a former staunch 'Intel only' producer, is finally starting to multiple source its processors.
Toshiba doesn't often come out as number one in comparative reviews, but it has something much more important going for it - word of mouth recommendations about its legendary reliability. I used the same Toshiba Tecra as a Linux development machine for over seven years, and in that time it was never switched off!
A month or so ago I replaced it with a new Tecra M3, not because there was anything technically wrong with the original machine, but because it is now too slow (850 Mhz processor) to handle modern development tools. I also have Toshiba Satellite Pros from the same period hanging around in full working order. When ever anyone asks me for a recommendation, I always suggest Toshiba as the first stop.
But I digress. One thing I have noticed about the M3 (which was formerly my Windows development machine) is that it runs hot - very hot. In fact, so hot that I keep it on a cake rack to make sure it gets plenty of air circulation. I strongly suspect the Intel processor as being the cause, and hopefully, the cooler AMD processors will help ameliorate this problem.
In the mean time, this is one laptop you don't balance on your lap!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/30/amd_toshiba_chips/
Microsoft have just launched a new 'tabletop' computer - a snip at around US$10,000 a pop. This is not a computer that goes on the desk (or table) top, it's supposed to be a computer that is the desk (New marketing slogan there, Microsoft - "The Computer that thinks it's a Desk!"). ZDNet has a bunch of pictures demonstrating all the things you can do with it - it doesn't have a keyboard by the way, which severely limits its functionality, given the still primitive level of voice recognition. The pictures clearly indicate that what we are looking at is definitely a (US$10K) solution looking for a suitably expensive problem.
I particularly liked the picture of a middle aged man doing finger painting on the machine. Perhaps it could be marketed as Microsoft's modern day answer to the venerable Etch-A-Sketch!
http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=38719944-c7c7501e315f199c0a0afb08de29c458-bf&s=5&fs=0
While we are in the realm of lost solutions, let me draw your attention to the latest in reading technology - an alphabet made up entirely of colors! This brainstorm from one Lee Freedman has been 35 years in the making, the original idea occurring to him at the 1972 Mardi Gras. (I think there was something rather more potent than just burning grass in the air that day!)
Your first thought might well have been like mine - this is a solution for people suffering from synesphesia. But no - it is being pushed as a way of getting children to read and write by being 'cool'.
Yawn...
How about paying decent wages to attract and keep good teachers in our schools? I'm sure that will teach kids to read and write (incidentally, imagine having to keep changing the colour every letter as you write) much better than learning a coloured alphabet which then has to be unlearned and a new one learned to communicate with the world at large.
In the meantime, would it surprise readers to know that Mr Freedman has applied for a patent?
And if you are in any way colour blind, don't even ask!
http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=38723358-c7c7501e315f199c0a0afb08de29c458-bf&s=5&fs=0
I note that the elements indium and hafnium, used in semi-conductors and LCD displays, have joined oil as things that will run out soon unless we curb our appetites. According to 'New Scientist' the former two elements will run out in 2017, while zinc will all be gone by 2037. Am I worried about this?
Nah! Heard it all before.
These scares crop up at regular intervals, and almost inevitably are proved wrong. Why? because their initiators don't understand that as deposits run out the price increases, making previously uneconomic deposits viable to mine. Of course, the material costs more, but that, in itself, has a number of effects. First, the finished goods become more expensive so the demand for them goes down, meaning that the deposits last longer.
Alternatively, running low on known deposits is enough to trigger research into cheaper ways of extracting previously uneconomic deposits, with the result that the useable amount of the element gets revised upwards, pushing back the 'running out' date.
Finally, if the element gets expensive enough, manufacturers figure out alternative ways of producing the same effect. All three of these processes have happened time and again in the past, and I don't see any likelihood of that changing in the foreseeable future.
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e8MA0HiOOq0G4V0FIMJ0Ee
Great news on the e-mail front. 'Spam King' Robert Alan Soloway, one of the members of Spamhaus's 'worst of the worst' list of criminal spammers, has been arrested. Since he was arrested the number of spams has dropped by 6 billion messages - 8%. It's still high at 74 billion instead of 80 billion, but every little helps!
Soloway is charged with fraud, identity theft and money laundering. Unfortunately, this sounds a bit like getting Al Capone on tax charges. One can but hope that these charges are genuine - especially the last one, which sounds suspiciously like something thrown in to help plea bargaining. I want to see this guy put away for breaking the law, not on charges which look dodgy... Also, didn't I read somewhere about inmates of Federal prisons being allowed to access the Internet as part of their human rights?
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e8MA0HiOOq0G4V0FIMI0Ed
The Register has an amusing report about Larry Lessig explaining to a convention of copyright collectors, authors, and sundry creative, that he and his Creative Commons organisation have no objection to copyright owners earning a pittance from their garret toiling. This was not an easy task, especially as it's well known that most of Larry's Creative Commons colleagues are vehemently opposed to any form of copyright...
From the sound of it, he wasn't exactly successful, but it was a brave try :)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/31/lessig_vs_authors_cisac/
Geek Toys:
At last, after a long barren period, a geek toy worthy of the name! It's a six shooter replica that functions as a remote control. Don't like the crud currently on the box? Take aim, pull the trigger, and, voila, a new channel or a complete absence of TV. All from the comfort of your own couch, no effort required. Comes with a special presentation gold-effect sheriffs badge...
Yeee-haw!
http://www.firebox.com/index.html?dir=firebox&action=product&pid=1822
Scanner: Other stories
Westminster blows £15m to save £20k
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/31/street_lamp_recalculation/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6700915.stm
Bomb squad disables suspect sex toy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/30/suspect_device/
NEC staff caught faking orders, taking kickbacks
http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=38723357-c7c7501e315f199c0a0afb08de29c458-bf&s=5&fs=0
Data protection watchdogs' letter to Google goes public
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/31/data_protection_letter_google/
Microsoft would lose patent rights under new Linux license terms
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e8MA0HiOOq0G4V0FIHJ0EZ
Bulldog fingers sacked employee for credit card scam
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/29/bulldog_injunction_credit_card_data/
Cyberattack in Estonia - what it really means
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=38747763-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and DJ for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
3 June 2007
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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