The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: November 27, 2011

Official News page 9


WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton

I hope all my readers had a nice Thanksgiving. The only sad point for me was the news that sci fi author Anne McCaffrey had died. Although she was best known for her dragon series, Anne McCaffrey almost single handedly changed the way in which women were portrayed in science fiction. My favorites? 'The Ship Who Sang', closely followed by 'The Crystal Singer'. RIP.

I guess we are now well into the Christmas period, so I'll have to start looking out for geeky gifts to suggest that my readers give me for Xmas. But in the meantime, on with this week's little offering...


Shorts:

Did you know that "Blue Devil Block 2" is being upgraded to include two lots of FOENEX in order to provide better C4ISR? No? Neither did I until I read it in the register, so it must be true...

Actually, if it comes to that I also had no idea what C4ISR, Blue Devil Block 2, or FOENEX were either. Who needs security with acronyms like these - the opposition will never be able to figure it out. So you wanna know what this is about? Well, I'm reliably informed that Blue Devil Block 2 is a 370 feet long "C4ISR aerial fusion node"! So now you know.

This reminds me of the old adventure games:

"Get Devil Block."
"You haven't said which color Devil Block you want."
"Get Blue Devil Block."
"You haven't said which number Devil Block you want."
"Get Blue Devil Block 2."
"You can't get that because it's unfused."
"Get Devil Block 2 with aerial fusion node."
"You didn't say which aerial fusion node you wanted to use."
"Get Devil Block 2 with C4ISR aerial fusion node."
"It's too big to fit in your backpack..."

And so on.

Well, for those of you who haven't looked it up on Google by now, Blue Devil Block 2 is a giant blimp - seven times the volume of the itsy bitsy little Goodyear ones you sometimes see floating around in the sky. The US Department of Defense commissioned it as a "Command, Control, Computers, Communication, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance" platform, hence the C4ISR acronym. Gone, it seems are the innocent and carefree days of yore, when a simple C3 (Command, Control, and Communication) sufficed. Frankly, I'm glad I'm not a US armed forces tech weenie who has to sit in the largest object in the sky with the opposition knowing that if they shoot it down their enemy will be in chaos.

And what of our old friend FOENEX? Ah, well that's the really interesting bit. It's a DARPA - the US mad boffins department - project to use lasers for communication. More to the point, lasers that have a bandwidth similar to that of fiber optics. Obviously, at the moment it's a military thing, but in the long run, if it works, I can see a lot of applications for the technology. For the record the acronym actually stands for "Free-space Optical Experimental Network Experiment"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/22/blue_devil_big_safari_adaptive_optics_tech/

Scientists at the University of Washington and Aalto University in Finland have designed a contact lens that can project a pixel on to the wearer's retina. Only one pixel so far - but the geeks among you will instantly realize that that's enough to allow a binary information flow. For the record, the world is divided into 10 types of people - those who know binary, and those who don't...

The device uses an antenna that collects power emitted by an external device, along with an integrated circuit that stores energy, then transfers it to a transparent sapphire chip containing a single blue LED. In order to overcome the focusing problem, the contact lens has a built in set of Fresnel lenses which can focus the pixel onto the wearer's retina. Very neat. I look forward to the next step of getting multiple LEDs onto the lens without blocking the vision in that eye completely!
http://www.gizmag.com/contact-lens-projects-images/20588/

Those of you having problems with the US legislators' penchant for forcing ISPs to filter out content that they, or the people who pay their election expenses, don't like, may wish to take a look at a recent European Court of Justice ruling. The case concerned SABAM, a Belgian management company responsible for authorizing the use by third parties of the musical works of authors, composers and editors, trying to force the Belgian ISP Scarlet to filter content sent to its customers.

The Belgian courts backed SABAM, and so Scarlet appealed to the European Court. The European Court's ruling included a very interesting explanation on why it considered filtering illegal:

"The Court finds that, in adopting the injunction requiring Scarlet to install such a filtering system, the national court would not be respecting the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to intellectual property, on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business, the right to protection of personal data and the right to receive or impart information, on the other.

Accordingly, the Court's reply is that EU law precludes an injunction made against an internet service provider requiring it to install a system for filtering all electronic communications passing via its services which applies indiscriminately to all its customers, as a preventive measure, exclusively at its expense, and for an unlimited period."

Obviously, European Court rulings don't apply to the USA, but the precedent might be useful when arguing against the likes of the proposed SOPA legislation!
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/24/eu-court-rules-isps-cant-be-forced-to-filter-out-illegal-content/

And while on the subject of the EU and copyright, the European Commission VP for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes made some interesting comments in a speech she gave to the Forum D'Avignon. After noting that despite the pictures of starving artists regularly rolled out by the media industry, "97.5 percent of one of the biggest collecting society's members in Europe receive less than … 1,000 Euros a month for their copyright works."

She then used this information to make the point that copyright as it now stands is failing to deliver the economic rewards that are supposed to be its aim. She went on to say, "citizens increasingly hear the word copyright and hate what is behind it. Many see the current system as a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognize and reward." It's not very often you find such a highly placed politician with that level of clarity about what is going on!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/20/punters_hate_copyright/


Homework:

Ever wonder how the passing of the season would look from earth orbit? NASA have put together a set of time lapse photographs that show exactly that - take a look, it's rather interesting.
http://www.petapixel.com/2011/11/25/time-lapse-of-satellite-photos-shows-the-passing-of-seasons-on-earth/

Incidentally, the National Geographic is currently running its annual Photo Contest and it has a number of the entries on its web site. They really are well worth a look. My favorite? Difficult to make a choice, there are so many brilliant photos, but here are two of my favorites - for sheer landscape, picture number 11 and for social commentary, picture number 29.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/11/national_geographic_photo_cont.html
?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed2


Geek Topics:

Pssst! Got a spare US$348,000? Then take a little trip over to Kickstarter, where a group of engineers, known as Lightning Foundry, are trying to raise just that amount to build a 10 storey high Tesla Coil, in order to study lightning. They expect it to be able to throw lightning bolts anything up to 250 feet away. Assuming they can raise the cash, it's going to be built in San Francisco and then transported to Nevada for testing. Smaller prototypes built by the Foundry have already generated some interesting real world applications, included a limited use of beamed power to drive a stripped down electric car. I'd love to see it in action!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/22/engineers_funds_largest_tesla_coil/

Are you one of those people who likes knowing what's flying over your head? If you live in the USA then Wolfram Alpha's new tracker is the place to go! Just input "flights overhead" into the search box, the site will return all the planes that are currently over your position, their altitude, angle, and slant distance. just click on the flight and it will tell you more information than you ever wanted to know, and a map of the flight plan showing the current position is also available. Very nifty! Definitely the mother of all flight trackers...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57327546-17/wolfram-alpha-launches-the-coolest-flight-tracker-ever/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&tag=nl.e703


Scanner:

Where are they now? Tracking the trajectories of classic developers
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6553/where_are_they_now_tracking_the_.php

Living-in-nature pod can be transported to the mountain peak of your choice
http://www.gizmag.com/transportable-leap-nature-pod/20599/

Golden Gobblers 2011: The biggest birdbrains in tech (Robert X Cringely at his best - Alan)
http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/golden-gobblers-2011-the-biggest-birdbrains-in-tech-179857?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2011-11-23

The rise and fall of Bitcoin
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/1

What got you interested in technology? IT's rich and famous share their memories
http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2011/11/16/what-got-you-interested-in-technology-its-rich-and-famous-share-their-memories-39748104/


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
27 November, 2011

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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