WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
It's been quite exciting this week here at Winding Down HQ. Reports are coming in of an amazing archeological dig just round the corner in Syon Park. Excavations for a new luxury hotel in the park (not, I'm sad to say, for massive extensions to the Winding Down media-industrial complex) revealed an almost pristine Roman settlement, chunks of Roman roads, and a Roman burial ground.
Syon Park is already a fascinating historical place (it was a monastery before Henry VIII decided on the Dissolution of the Monasteries*), with the original test building for the Crystal Palace as its conservatory. It's very popular for weddings, I hear.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11773202
http://www.syonpark.co.uk/
But I digress...
It's the 20th anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web next month. Twenty years. Seems like only yesterday (at this stage the author paused to lean heavily on his zimmer frame and run a walking stick along the park railings, making a noise that exceeded that specified in the anti-nuisance laws).
Be that as it may, I'd draw your attention to an important article by one of the founders of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, arguing that, like democracy, the web needs defending from people and institutions that would like to keep other people's share of it for themselves. It's a fairly long piece, but well worth a read.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web
Shorts:
I mentioned last week that Google gave all its staff a 10% pay rise. Actually, it turns out that it wasn't quite accurate. It seems that top executives didn't get a 10% rise - instead they got a 30% pay rise. CEO Eric Schmidt, and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, got their usual US$1 a year - but don't be under any illusions, their Google stock is worth more than any pay would be!
It will be interesting to see to what extent the recent round of pay increases will make it easier to keep high grade talent from defecting to competitors. Google has become a massive company and as such has attracted the attention of regulators in all sorts of countries. Their requirements, which Google is starting to understand cannot just be flouted, even by Google, mean that the internal regime is bound to become more formal and tight in order just to meet the legal requirements.
As this process continues the working conditions that attracted top talent - loose structure, little or no bureaucracy, flattened hierarchy - start to vanish, and with the demise of those condition, high grade talent starts to take its share of the pie and move on, or the talent itself degrades and team leaders become motiveless millionaires having cashed in their stock options.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-google-execs-big.html
Ever wonder what computing is like for astronauts? E-mail only three times a day, and browsing at dial up speeds according to an interview with astronaut Clayton Anderson who spent five months on the ISS in 2007. And that's not all - you only get to use well out-of-date laptops, because of the time required to make sure that they work reliably in space. It can't be easy to use a keyboard in zero gravity, where each key press pushes you away from the keyboard; you need to firmly anchor yourself before starting a session! Have a look at Silicon.com's interview:
http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2010/11/17/how-nasa-astronauts-use-
it-on-the-international-space-station-39746616/2/
Anti-'piracy' lawyers in the UK appear to be on the verge of getting their comeuppance at the hands of the regulator. The UK Solicitor's Regulation Authority (SRA) said last year that it would take action against the firm of Davenport Lyons for knowingly sending out letters to innocent people as part of an anti-piracy campaign. Daveport Lyons isn't the only firm in the regulator's sights, ACS:Law is also being investigated for similar practices, and one of the ACS:Law lawyers, Andrew Crossley, has already been referred to the Solicitor's Disciplinary Tribunal over the letter.
Of Davenport Lyons the SRA said that the two lawyers, "knew that in conducting generic campaigns against those identified as IP holders whose IP numeric had been used for downloading or uploading of material that they might in such generic campaigns be targeting people innocent of any copyright breach."
Nice to see the boot on the other foot for a change. Maybe this will curb the enthusiasm for harassing innocent people in an effort to get them to pay to avoid the hassle and expense of fighting a court case.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/362980/anti-piracy-lawyers-knew-letters-
targeted-innocent-people
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/360565/file-sharing-lawyer-bullies-face-tribunal
You probably read (or saw) the alarmist FUD about China hijacking '15% of the internet' last April. The original source was a report to the US Congress which reported that, 'For a brief period in April 2010, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm "hijacked" [their quotes] massive volumes of Internet traffic.' It sounds like a good story, but sadly way off the mark. One reliable estimate puts the volume of traffic involved at something nearer 0.015%. Actually, it could quite easily have been a mistake by someone in the Chinese telecom company updating the domain system. What it really shows is the need for a better Domain Name System, which is rapidly becoming the internet's very own 'single point of failure'.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/cybercrime/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=228300097&itc=ref-true
http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2010/11/china-hijacks-15-of-internet-traffic
With all the agro going on about the US TSA with its see through scanners and license to grope facilities, I'd point you to a couple of excellent pieces on the issue. The first is a summary piece by Bruce Schneier which has some very comprehensive links to other related sources. The second is a report of a call by the security boss of Amsterdam's Schipol airport, Marijn Ornstein, calling for an end to yet more investment in new technology to 'improve' airline security.
As Ms Ornstein pointed out, "If you look at all the recent terrorist incidents, the bombs were detected because of human intelligence not because of screening... If even a fraction of what is spent on screening was invested in the intelligence services we would take a real step toward making air travel safer and more pleasant."
I think the TSA have finally taken a step too far, judging by the push back, and I suspect they will have to eventually come to an accommodation. In the meantime I can only quote the indomitable Mae West, "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/12/airport_security_scanners/
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html?nc=96
Homework:
Those of you who are uncertain about 'quantum mechanics' will probably not want to read about yet another thought experiment involving in putting cats in boxes, especially when it involves two characters called Alice and Bob (where have I heard those names before?). It's about the link between uncertainty and action at a distance, and I'm not going to explain it here, because I need to read it at least another eight times before I will feel up to explaining it!
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/jono/uncertainty-nonlocality.html
Geek Toys:
Rifles that shoot round corners are old hat these days, so how about a camera that takes photos round corners without poking bits of itself around the aforementioned corner? The camera uses a laser, firing very short bursts of light that can reflect off an object, then off a second object around the corner before reflecting back to the first object and being captured by the camera. Computer algorithms then use the information in the reflection to reconstruct the scene, which would not otherwise be visible. The camera is still under development, but would probably make a nice geek Xmas present for next year!
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/11/17/Laser-camera-sees-around-corners/
UPI-39981290042558/
Scanner:
Microsoft breaks petaflop barrier, loses Top 500 spot to Linux
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/microsoft-breaks-petaflop-barrier-loses-top-5
Google agrees to delete Street View data in Britain
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-google-delete-street-view-britain.html
Rapid warming boosted ancient rainforest
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rapid-warming-boosted-ancient&
WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20101115
Huge victory for .co domain. Go Daddy makes it default choice for new registrations
http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/11/13/huge-victory-for-co-domain-go-daddy-makes-it-
default-choice-for-new-registrations/
* The phrase Dissolution of the Monasteries always leaves me with a mental picture of Henry VIII pouring acid on the buildings...
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
21 November, 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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