WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
It's August already. I'll probably take a break later this month, but I haven't decided when yet. We have a holiday coming up at the end of August, so it will probably be at the end of the month.
That being the case, I guess we'd better get straight down to business...
Shorts:
I had a good laugh about the latest looney statement from Apple trying to justify its miserable attempts to persuade the US Copyright Office that hacked phones usable on networks that Apple hasn't authorised (jailbroken as they are referred to in popular parlance) shouldn't be allowed.
According to the Apple exaggeration machine this could lead to drug dealers making anonymous phone calls and - gasp - crashed cell phone towers! Yes, I kid you not, they really do claim it will crash cell phone towers.
The idiot claims are made in response to a suggestion from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that cell phone owners ('licensees' as Apple prefers to call them) should be given an exemption from the notorious DCMA so that they can put the applications that they want, rather than what Apple wants, on their phones.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/apple_jailbreaking_patent_office_response/
And talking of Apple there is a fascinating analysis by Anil Dash about the cost of Apple's secrecy culture, and its prospects for being able to keep this up in the near future. Apple's culture has been in the news over the last week as more information comes to light about the sad suicide of a young Chinese engineer over the misplacing of a new prototype iPhone device.
Anil works his way through all the usual excuses for Apple's secrecy - favourable press coverage, lead time on new products, and a tightly controlled brand - and demolishes them one by one. He then goes on to look at the increasing difficulty likely to be faced by Apple as the current fad for 'transparency' catches on and becomes something more that just a bright idea.
Anil's thesis is that the secrecy enshrouding Apple is not just morally and financially costly, but is likely to become even more so in the future, and he makes a very good case for his views. Well worth a read.
http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/apple-secrecy-does-not-scale.html
I don't know about other people out there, but I seem to be getting a lot more non-English language spam these days. What seems to have happened is that the spammers are starting to use automatic translation software to target German, French and Netherlands users of the internet. I dread to think how these translations are coming out - 'The pen of my aunt has surrendered to the cheese,' perhaps.
Anyway, while most of the rest of us are dealing with a mere 90% of our mail being spam, the afflicted European users have their levels driven up to something in the region of 95% or more. Not very nice at all.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=7805
Wow! The moguls of the big media companies are starting to get really brazen these days. Their lawyer, Steven Matalitz has told the US Copyright Office that he sees no reason why those who pay for DRM music should expect to be able to play it for as long as they want.
Basically he is arguing that if music is sold that requires authorisation from a server before it can be played, then there is no obligation on the part of the seller to keep that server going. The fact that customer paid for the music is, apparently, irrelevant.
I wonder if big media would take a different view if they were required to refund the full price to the consumer when the purchase became unusable?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/big-content-ridiculous-to-expect-
drmed-music-to-work-forever.ars
It seems to be a nostalgia week this week with the end of Gizmodo's '79 celebration. To wind it up they've got a set of pictures of things that were extant in 1979 - the Cray-1 supercomputer (about as powerful as my current video card), a Microsoft program on a tape cassette, Concorde, the CBM Pet, an 8088 chip, and Speak and Spell.
Those were the days - walking 20 miles through the snow in bare feet with my box of punched cards for my pascal's triangle program...
http://gizmodo.com/tag/gizmodo-79/
http://gizmodo.com/5321463/bill-gates-my-1979-memories
Ah yes - this was the one I've been waiting for: 'Amazon ate my homework!'
This week a 17-year old launched a class action against Amazon over the infamous Nineteen Eighty Four deletion affair. Long time readers will recalled that a few weeks back Amazon remotely deleted some ebooks, including the George Orwell classic, from customers' Kindle readers.
This crass piece of behaviour meant that all the notes that high school student Justin D. Gawronski had made linked to the book in his Kindle were rendered useless. Amazon had, indeed, eaten his homework. While the suit seeks monetary relief, the main part is the really important bit, because it seeks to prevent Amazon from again deleting books from Kindles.
That would be an important precedent, which if it were granted would have ramifications for other powerful companies that presume to be able to reach into your computer and make changes. I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed that such a precedent is indeed established. This is one case that I will be keeping close tabs on.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-my-homework/
The creators of the much hyped Wolfram Alpha search engine - oh, sorry - 'computational knowledge engine' - have been claiming for some time that it will change the world of search engines. So far there hasn't been much evidence of that, but maybe we are all looking in the wrong place?
The engine is indeed innovative, it turns out, but not in what it does, rather in what it claims to own. It seems that the small print makes the claim to copyright on all the results of its searches. This is not something that it occurred to anyone else running a search engine to claim before. Frankly I doubt if any will be inspired to do so now. Still, it'll probably get the beast a footnote in the history books. In the mean time, its attempt to protect its self-proclaimed 'copyright' by fixing it so people can't cut and paste results will make it a classic candidate for the dustbin of history!
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/how-wolfram-alpha-could-change-
software-248?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2009-07-30
Sky web site has a pretty freaky story about DIY bio-hackers - people who whip up new genetically engineered bacteria in their kitchens. I don't know if this scares you. It certainly worries me. On the other hand I've no idea how you could stop it. The apparatus needed is cheap and easily available, the details of how to do are available all over the web, and there are plenty of people out there who are naturally curious.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Homegrown-Scientists-Creating-
Genetically-Modified-Bugs-At-Home-With-The-Help-Of-Ebay-And-YouTube/
Article/200907415350502?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_
Region_2&lid=ARTICLE_15350502_Homegrown_Scientists_Creating_Genetically_
Modified_Bugs_At_Home_With_The_Help_Of_Ebay_And_YouTube
Do you use Skype? I do, and I know many other people who use it both at work and for personal calls. In fact, it's currently the biggest international carrier of calls. Well it seems that all this may be coming to an end soon. Skype's owner is eBay, they bought Skype from its founders for US$2.6 billion four years ago. However, there was one piece of the core technology they didn't buy, instead they licensed it from the founders.
Now the founders are proposing to revoke the licensing agreement, and if they do that it will effectively shut down Skype, since eBay have been unable to develop any alternative technology, and do not foresee being able to do so in the near future. Currently eBay are battling in the English High Court to try to force the founders to allow them to continue using the technology.
How eBay could purchase Skype without including all the bits is beyond me, but it seems that's what they did. I think this is probably going to zap the proposed floating of Skype as a separate company next year
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/shock-threat-to-shut-skype-
20090731-e3qe.html
Finally in this section, two snippets from the Black Hat 2009 security conference. The first is a report on how to hack the new 'smart' electric meters that are being installed over the next few years. The hack consisted of a 'worm' which can replicate itself from one meter to the next, eventually rendering the meters inoperable and causing power outages.
The second, was a demonstration of how to make yourself an unlimited card for San Francisco's 'smart' parking meter system. It works too - gives you a card with US$999.99 credit on it. Clearly smart people trump smart cards!
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/black-hat-2009-how-hack-parking-meter-
786¤t=7&last=8#slideshowTop
http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=218700250&cid=nl_tw_security
Geek Toys:
I think age must be creeping up on me. Wired published a list of one hundred things your kids may never know about. I knew about nearly all of them! There was a ten minute nostalgia session about such goodies as 8-track cartridges, 5-inch floppies (actually I can remember using 8-inch floppies!), paper yellow pages, manual typewriters (with Tippex and carbon paper), and - best of all, using a slide rule. We won't go into the bit about trying to figure out where to put the decimal point in your slide rule result!
Take a look and see how much you remember out of these 100 items.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-things-your-kids-may-never-know-about/
Oh and while you are at it, have a look at this report by a 13-year old about how he swapped his iPod for an old fashioned Walkman for a week. It's a classic tale of misunderstanding, struggle and perseverance. It took three days before he realised that the tape was recorded on both sides, and that the metal/normal switch was not for playing heavy metal. There was also the 'massive' size of the Walkman to take into account...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8117619.stm
OK. This is nothing to do with things digital, but I can't resist, and neither will any true geek. It's a set of slides of the Anak Krakatoa volcano erupting. The pictures are truly amazing, and are especially interesting, because the volcano is on the site of the famous 1883 Krakatoa (which is located -west- of Java, incidentally!) eruption. Indeed 'Anak Krakatoa' means 'child of Krakatoa' in the local lingo.
The 1883 eruption wiped out 165 nearby towns and put half a cubic mile of ash and dust into the atmosphere. The current activity is not quite so violent, but still spectacular. Take a look...
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Anak-Krakatoa-Child-Of-Krakatoa-
Volcano-Erupts-Lava-Ash-And-Dust-In-Indonesia-Sunda-Straits/Media-Gallery/
200907415349669?lpos=World_News_News_in_Picture_World_News_Region_
0&lid=GALLERY_15349669_Anak_Krakatoa%2C_Child_Of_Krakatoa%2C_Volcano_
Erupts_Lava%2C_Ash_And_Dust_In_Indonesia_Sunda_Straits_
Scanner: Other Stories
Opera chief: history will silence Unite doubters
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/opera_unite_interview/
UK Met Office refuses to disclose station data
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6618
EMI quits selling CDs to indie record stores
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86637/emi-quits-selling-cds-to-indie-record-stores/
Drum roll for the first robotic gamelan orchestra
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090731/tc_nm/us_robot_orchestra_tech_life_1
DRM for news? Inside the AP's plan to "wrap" its content
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/drm-for-news-inside-the-aps-plan-
to-wrap-its-content.ars
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Lois, Paul, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
2 August 2009
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! 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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