WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Next week is the start of August, holiday time in the UK, and thus the perfect time for me to take a week off from Winding Down. Well, I think it's perfect, anyway.
Actually, I really like it in London in August. Most of the inhabitants - especially those with children - flee to parts foreign, leaving the city in a relatively relaxed state. You can sit on the public transport on the way to work, the pavements (sidewalks) aren't so crowded, and there's room to move in the department stores. Even better, you stand a chance of eating out without having to plan it weeks in advance.
Sheer luxury!
Shorts:
I, personally don't use Facebook, but I know a lot of people who do. Over the years I've been struck by the fact that most of them also seem to, how shall I put it, hate is probably too strong a word, dislike the way it's operated, shall we say. In spite of this Facebook continues to grow in leaps and bounds, while MySpace traffic continues to dwindle.
I always wondered whether the dislike I perceived, and the occasional public rows over Facebook's ongoing attempts to monetize the private information it collects, was just a storm in a teacup, or something more pervasive.
Thus I was interested to see that in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, the rates for Facebook and MySpace were more or less the same those for airlines and cable companies! I think this could fairly be said to place them squarely into the 'necessary evil' category, which explains a lot.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366730,00.asp
What do Apple, Sprint, Samsung, and Cellco all have in common? Give up? They are all being sued for trying to claim patents that have expired! In Apple's case four of the patents referenced in the iPod documentation expired even before the iPod was launched. This, it seems, is a no-no under US law, and, no doubt, an opportunity for lawyers to make a fast buck. I guess the lesson is that you can either pay lawyers up front to check it out, or you can pay them later when they sue you. Either way the only winners are the lawyers...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/21/apple_patents/
Star Wars might be closer than you think. It looks like the US Navy and its contractors Raytheon have made some sort of breakthrough in the use of solid-state lasers to shoot things down. A rather grainy black and white video purporting to show the laser shooting down a drone, was shown at the recent Farnborough International Air Show.
Actually, it looks like something out of a 1950's sci-fi B-movie, and there is no indication that the drone is catching fire because of a laser pointed at it. Still that's about what you would expect, since you can't normally see a laser beam unless it's pointed at you (children, don't try this at home, or it may be the last thing you ever see). That said, I would have expected a company the size of Raytheon to be able to provide a reasonable quality color video of a breakthrough of this nature, so what's going on?
Actually, I would expect this sort of breakthrough to happen via a navy. One thing you really need for this sort of activity is powerful lasers - in this case six lasers making up a total of 32 kilowatts, and the power plant to run them. One thing modern warships do have is power - lots of it, in a portable format. Anyway take a look at the Scientific American article and see what you think of it.
Oh, and by the way, note the ludicrous 'artists impression' of the weapon at the start of the piece - it portrays the laser beam as a solid bar of red light! If you really want to know about a 'solid bar of light', then I recommend reading Arthur C. Clarke's early novel, 'Earthlight'.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=laser-downs-uavs&sc=CAT_TECH_20100721
Bad news if you are connected in any way with Boston (USA) Southshore Hospital. It just managed to lose no less than complete personal information on 800,000 people. The information vanished while being shipped to a contractor to be destroyed. An unnamed information security firm has determined that specialized hardware, software, and technical knowledge would be needed to access the information in the files. Sounds to me just the sort of skills and equipment the sort of hackers who would be interested in the information would have in abundance.
And what information was on the files? Oh, nothing important, just a few bits and pieces, like names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, medical record numbers, patient numbers, health plan information, dates of service, diagnoses, treatments relating to hospital and home health care visits, not to mention the traditional catch all, 'and other personal information'...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/20/hospital_files_
with_data_of_800000_are_missing/
Something interesting is happening in the eBook world. The works of a number of well known authors are going on to Amazon as eBooks, bypassing the publishing houses completely. Authors involved include Philip Roth, John Updike, and Martin Amis, not to mention the estates of a number of dead authors such as William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson.
The dispute between publishers and authors over royalty payments for eBook versions of their works has been festering for some time. Roughly speaking the publishers are offering 25%, while the authors, who point out the massively reduced costs to the publishers want 50%. Many of the publishers claim they already have the digital rights to their authors' books, even if the contracts were signed before digital book existed!
That, though is not the real problem - which is Amazon's desire to completely own the digital book market place, cutting out the publishers completely. In a sense this move plays into Amazon's hands, although since it is only a two year exclusive, the situation is not as bad as it might be.
The question authors need to ask themselves is this. If Amazon becomes the major publisher (and this week it announced that it sold more eBooks than hardback books in the last quarter), will it to use that position to squeeze the authors even more than the conventional publishers do?
At the moment we have the following:
Author ->Agent->Publisher->Warehousing->Distribution->Retail->Reader
What Amazon wants to see is:
Author->Amazon->Reader
Frankly, I don't envy the authors, whichever way this works out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/22/authors-bypass-publishers-ebooks-amazon
I'm sure you will have all heard of WikiLeaks, the web site that releases information that governments, companies, and climate scientists, would prefer you didn't know about. If you would like to know a little more about how it works and why it does what it does, then you will like this 20 minute TED interview with WikiLeaks public spokesman, Julian Assange.
http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks.html
End of an era. Last week the last roll of Kodachrome ever produced was processed in Parsons, Kansas. Interestingly enough it was used by photo-journalist Steve McCurry to take pictures of a tribe in India that is facing extinction, just like the film itself.
As Paul Simon sang:
'Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah'
Kodachrome gave a lot of photographers, both professional and amateur, the opportunity to create something special.
Kodachrome 1935-2010 R.I.P.
http://www.kansas.com/2010/07/14/1403115/last-kodachrome-roll-processed.html
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/kodachrome-lyrics-paul-simon/929e50784b
2fafbb4825698a000b5995
Homework:
Last April satellite services operator, Intelsat SA, lost control of its geosynchronous satellite, Galaxy 15. You probably read about it at the time. Galaxy 15 is unique in that although it's not responding to commands, it's still re-broadcasting anything it picks up on its specified channels, and it won't turn itself off. So, as it drifts near other satellites, it causes interference, even though most of them can move out of the way to avoid a physical crash.
The geostationary band of space round the Earth is one of the most crowded areas up there. The reason is simple physics. In order for a satellite to stay in orbit around the planet it needs to go at a certain speed. Too fast and it escapes from the Earth completely; too slow and it crashes down and (hopefully) burns up in the atmosphere. The speed you need to stay in a given orbit depends on how high that orbit is. The geostationary band is the place where the speed you need to stay in orbit matches the Earth's rotational speed, so you stay above the same spot on the surface all the time.
As you can imagine, a lot of people want satellites in that band. What I didn't realize, however, until I read a fascinating piece in 'The Space Review' looking at the problems Galaxy 15 poses, is that the band possesses its own equivalent of the legendary Sargasso Sea. There are two of them in fact, one over the Indian sub-continent, and one over North American. They are caused by irregularities in the Earth's gravitational field, and these are the places where it is strongest. Eventually all uncontrolled satellites that stay in the band end up above one or other of these points, just like wrecks drifting in to the Sargasso!
The space review article is well worth a look if you want a lay person's view of how it all works. It covers a lot more than I have space for here - and no, there isn't any maths...
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1634/1
Geek Toys:
How do you keep your data center cool at the South Pole? You might think it's the one thing you wouldn't have to worry about, but apparently, that's not the case. Add to that the problem that you can only physically get to it during the warmest four months of the year. Clearly handling the data from the south polar IceCube Neutrino Observatory is not for wimps!
Want to know more? The take a look at the video which is a ten minute interview John Jacobsen, one of the people responsible for keeping the data flowing. I don't think I'll ever complain again about the time I had to fly from London to New York to sort out a dodgy disk drive array...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9VUk9xB6co&feature=channel
http://icecube.wisc.edu/info/explained.php
OK, OK. So you don't like leaving your game of networked Quake for any reason. So... I've got just the thing for you, coming on the market soon. A digital food printer called 'Cornucopia' (A pretty corny name, if you ask me). The machine 'prints' the food directly onto the serving tray by mixing it from ingredient containers. The food is them cooked or cooled on the tray. Just hook it up to your computer and order your poison to be printed. Yuck - but ideal for geek tastes!
http://www.physorg.com/news199080001.html
Scanner:
There's a hole in this possible earthquake pattern
http://www.physorg.com/news199042420.html
US testing pain ray in Afghanistan
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/u-s-testing-pain-ray-in-afghanistan/
Wal-Mart radio tags to track clothing
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704421304575383213061198090
.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories
World’s first molten salt solar plant produces power at night
http://inhabitat.com/2010/07/22/worlds-first-molten-salt-solar-plant-produces-power
-at-night/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, 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
25 July, 2010
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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