WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Well, this is it - a short Winding Down prior to the summer break. No Winding Down for the next thee week. No Winding Down, in fact, until Sunday September 16.
I realise that this is going to be hard for readers to cope with, but be brave. If you survive this year, then by next year we will have our Winding Down Addiction Clinic on line, running a three week residential therapy course.
As the French king, Louis XV, once said, "Apres Winding Down, le deluge".
Shorts:
Pity the poor users of CA's eTrust anti-virus software. The last automatic update went rogue and not only labeled bits of itself as being infected with something called 'StdWin32', it also decided chunks of the operating system were infected, and moved everything it didn't like off to quarantine. The result? A completely disabled computer.
This is the second update problem for this product in as many months, but what can you expect from a company that has been known sack a male programmer for having long hair, and admitted that was the reason at the subsequent industrial tribunal!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/ca_auto_immune_update/
I see that the bottom is continuing to fall out of the video game market. July was the fifth straight month in which sales fell. They fell 29% year on year, and over 27% down from the previous month. The previous month, June was itself down 31% from the previous June.
There are some 'big' titles coming out between now and Xmas - 'Madden 10', 'The Beatles: Rock Band', 'Halo 3: ODST', 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2', and 'Guitar Hero 5'. Notice anything these titles have in common? None of them represent anything new.
They are all more of the same.
To my mind, the question is, if people already have the originals, and there is a slump on, resulting in a shortage of cash (or potential shortage from future layoffs), are people going to buy more of the same?
Which reminds me. In an article I spotted the other day - it was in an online game trade rag, but I don't remember which one - I saw the suggestion that salvation for video games was to stop striving for original material completely. I think we are already close to that stage. And what was to be offered in its place? 3D high definition versions of the old eight-bit games!
Welcome to the wonderful world of 3D Breakout!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10309560-235.html?tag=nl.e703
Note: To make the following item easier for twits to read, it has been split into 140 word segments using the vertical bar symbol ('|'). | Twitter a botnet controller? Surely not! But it appears to be true. A security researcher looking into the Distributed Denial of Service (DDo | S) attacks suffered by Twitter discovered a botnet control/update account. Once alerted to the possibility, he was able to find a couple of | other accounts that looked very similar.
So now we have the possibility of a whole new conspiracy for twits to twitter about - maybe the | DDoS attack was an attempt by a rival botnet gang to disable the botnet using Twitter as a control? For my money it's gotta be better than a | lone Georgian hacker. |
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/twitter_master_control_channel/
I see HP are in court again. This time, though, it's their own salesmen that have hauled them in. It seems that 'Omega', HP's sales commission tracking software, is not calculating commissions properly. The program was originally written by DEC (hands up anyone who remembers DEC), who were then taken over by Compaq, who proceeded to use it for their sales commission calculations. This ancient and venerable program was then put into use by HP when it, in its turn, took over Compaq.
I wonder if it's been figuring out the commissions wrongly all along? That's a lot of wrong commissions if it has! In the meantime, three former HP employees have got together and filed a suit against HP alleging that anything up to 50,000 employees may have been shortchanged by this long running piece of errant software.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/10/sales_reps_sue_hp/
OK, this final item of the section has nothing to do with anything digital. Quite to the contrary, it is completely about a real commodity you can touch, feel and drop on your toes - GOLD. Yes, gold. It seems that, with the slump continuing, and the threat of inflation caused by the likes of the USA and the UK printing vast quantities of money, those who can afford it are turning to gold to protect their lucre.
And this is causing a crisis for the Swiss banks. They're running out of storage space for the gold! My heart bleeds for them, but I do understand their serious problems. Taking everything into account, and even allowing for the possibility of getting a hernia, I'd like to volunteer to take the excess gold off their hands. I'm sure I can find a use for it. In fact I can think of several uses for it, all extremely nice, that don't involve squirrelling it away in foreign banks!
http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Swiss-banks-have-no-space-left-
for-gold!-19698-3-1.html
Homework:
I guess you've all seen the scam e-mails - all in block caps and requesting 'URGENT ASSISTANCE'. Well maybe not - a surprisingly large number of people still fall for what is known in the trade as Nigerian 419 fraud, and send off their money. It seems that the slump is making people even less cautious, and that even more people are getting bilked by the lure of easy money.
But who are these people, often sitting behind a computer in Lagos, Nigeria, who run, and profit from, these scams? The Washington Post has an interesting interview with some of them. Two things emerge - US citizens are the easiest to scam, and that the reason most scams succeed is greed on the part of the mark. It's a sad comment on society.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2009/08/06/
AR2009080603764.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter
Geek Toys:
Now, here's a pretty little toy for my geek friends - a do it yourself flying spy drone! If you've ever been jealous of the state's monopoly on spy drones, now is your chance to have one of your own. The drone was put together by a bunch of French engineering students, and demonstrated at the recent Defcon hacking conference.
The 27-inch remote controlled quadrotor flew round the car park taking pictures of unsuspecting passers by. It weighs about three and a half pounds and can carry a payload of just over two pounds - in this case the payload was a camera. It cost 5,000 Euros (about US$7,000) to build and it is a slimmed down version of a bigger machine which is capable of providing real time, high resolution, geo-referenced images.
I guess the question of who will watch the watchers, is being answered with a resounding 'We all will!' However, don't expect a DIY Hellfire missile kit on the market any time soon...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/spy_quadrotor/
Scanner: Other Stories
Legally blind: RealNetworks and Microsoft shafted by the courts
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/legally-blind-realnetworks-
and-microsoft-shafted-courts-430?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2009-08-12
Small is beautiful (and successful) for newspapers
http://www.physorg.com/news169052837.html
US bank deposits checks via iPhone camera
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/10/usaa_iphone_check_deposit/
The case against Apple (AAPL)
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-case-against-apple-2009-8
Torrents and physical ownership score high for music fans
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/music_survey/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Lois, 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
16 August 16009
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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