WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
We've got quite a selection for you this week: Grace Hopper, the Galaxy S4, Amazon's bid for control of the .books domain, 3D scanners, resveratrol, global warming, sea level rises, Cthulu, and some superb engineering photos. There are URLs pointing to spooky action at a distance, Kenya's high tech voting, Apple internal documents, and Microsoft's Surface device.
Did you know - wait a minute, this isn't high tech - no but it's the internet - oh, OK then.
I'll try again. Did you know that one of the first trains into Leningrad, when the German siege was lifted in January 1943, contained nothing but cats, destined to fight the horde of rats plaguing the city! I though you would all like to know since at least 80% of the readers of this newsletters are believed to be LoLcats...
And now for something completely different.
Shorts:
This Saturday is International Women's Day. No doubt a lot of techies will be celebrating the life and times of Ada Lovelace, but I'd like to recommend an article in 'The Register' about Admiral Grace Hopper, who had a lot more influence on the computing community than Ms Lovelace. Not only did Grace Hopper invent the first compiler, and was instrumental in the development of the COBOL language, but she also popularized the habit of calling program errors 'bugs', after she found a moth in a relay! There's a picture of the said 'bug' in the article.
You can find more details if you point your browser at the URL.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/09/iwd_grace_hopper/
The high tech the event of the week has got to be the launch of the Galaxy S4. And did it live up to the hype? Well sort-of. Physically it doesn't look a lot different. In hardware terms there is a slightly bigger screen, a million extra pixels, a 13 Mega-pixel camera, and a more powerful processor. There's also a slew of new software. I especially liked the sound of the eye tracking software that checks to see if you are reading from the screen before dimming it.
The screen size is getting to be nearly as big as my Galaxy Note, and now it seems that these large screens are par for the course. Only 18 months ago, when I used my Galaxy Note on the subway the other travellers would gawp at me as though I had started using a 10" iPad as a phone - now no one even takes a first look, let alone a second.
I'm not going to repeat everything that all the pundits said during and after the launch, although I admit I did like the headline on Galen Grunman's blog - 'Samsung Galaxy S4 tries to out-Apple Apple, out-Google Google'. The URLs give a selection of the comments. You'll probably find the first two URLs most useful, they are a comparison with the Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5, respectively.
http://www.gizmag.com/galaxy-s3-vs-galaxy-s4-specs-comparison/26667/
http://www.gizmag.com/iphone-5-vs-galaxy-s4/26680/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/samsung-galaxy-s-4-tries-out-apple-apple-out-google-google-214614
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57574450-94/samsung-unveils-galaxy-s4-5-inch-display-available-in-april/?tag=nl.e498&s_cid=e498&ttag=e498
http://www.gizmag.com/samsung-confirms-galaxy-s4-event-date/26388/
I see that Amazon is attempting to extend its control over the nascent online publishing industry by making a bid for a control of a number of top level domains, including ".book," ".author" and ".read". If they succeed, this will not be a good thing. I don't particularly like the conventional book publishers, as far as I'm concerned they are no better than the music and movie industry when it comes to ripping off their customers and suppliers (with a few honourable exceptions), but allowing a single book publishing and retailing company to control such valuable domains is not a healthy situation.
I hope this won't come to pass, but, frankly, I'm not holding my breath...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/11/amazon_top_level_domain_bid_for_author_book/
I've mentioned 3D printers a number of times in this newsletter, now that the prices are dropping to the level where they could become a household object in the same way that 2D printers have over the last 20 years. The problem is that while getting suitable input together for a 2D printer is easy - just type it into an editor, or scan it in - for a 3D printer you need a CAD model, and making those is a specialist skill, not something that's taught at school.
Now, however, help is at hand from two different sources. The first is from MakerBot who make the 'Replicator' range of 3D printers. They have announced a 3D scanner which will allow you to produce CAD drawings of small objects, which can then be used to feed into the printer to make replicas of the original. Alternatively, you can tweak the drawing to make new object based on the original. It's an interesting concept, and a prototype is already on show. Once it goes into production, I'll let you all know.
The second source is nothing less than Microsoft's Kinect device. Microsoft are in the process of extending the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit to allow it to create 3D models, by moving the sensor around the model. This will allow much larger objects to be modelled than the MakerBot system, which relies on putting the object onto a spinning platter. The main problem with the Microsoft version is that it will probably only work with Windows 8! But we shall see. Like the MakerBot, the system is not yet ready to go into production, but it is definitely not just hype. I'll keep you informed about when it comes out.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/09/makerbot_digitizer_scanner/
http://www.gizmag.com/kinect-fusion-3d-modeling/26569/
Homework:
Regular readers will know that I usually try to keep an eye on the provenance of the stories I draw your attention to. Thus when I found a story in Gizmag, headed "Researchers find molecular switch to make old brains young again", the ultra-hype warning bells stared ringing loudly. I asked Barb, who has a medical research background, and is a much better online researcher than I am, if she would find out where this came from and what the real story was...
The result of her research is in the second of the two URLs. Basically, the hype came from non-scientists reading the published review of a laboratory experiment to see if the chemical resveratrol, found in red wine and dark chocolate (which happen to be two of my '5-a-day' foods) would increase the activity of a bunch of proteins called sirtuins. Sirtuins are known to increase the lifespan of yeast, worms and flies.
There are significant difference in the physiology of yeasts, worms and flies, and that of humans, so unless you want to go through that machine in the SciFi movie 'The Fly', it's not going to be something that happens in the near future.
Why not take a look at the articles, while I take a quick breakfast of dark chocolate washed down with a large glass of red wine...
http://www.gizmag.com/molecular-swicth-old-brain-young/26565/
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/03March/Pages/Anti-ageing-miracle-pill-claims-unfounded.aspx
Here's an interesting little snippet for the climate watchers among you. It seems that the Earth managed to be significantly hotter than it is now for several thousand years, around the time of the first of the Egyptian pharaohs. Interestingly enough, there didn't seem to be a significant rise in the level of the oceans as a result.
Why is this interesting? Because the predictions are that a rise in the sea level is the inevitable result of polar ice melting because of rising temperatures. Could the putative rise in sea level of a meter or more be an example of over-hyping something to drive up the funding for research? Inquiring minds want to know!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/11/holocene_was_warmer/
Oh, and while we are on the subject of Global Warming, I came across an interesting graph the other day that will make you wonder just what is going on (scroll about halfway down the article the URL points to). I'm sure you've seen the so-called 'hockey stick' graphs showing the recent rise in temperature, and the predicted dire increases. What you may not realize is that only the top degree or so is actually being shown, which makes the rise so far, such as it is, seem a lot bigger.
The graph I'm looking at shows same set of average temperatures, but the axis is drawn from zero degrees Centigrade, which puts the fluctuations in the average temperature in perspective. Interesting, very interesting...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/9919121/Look-at-the-graph-to-see-the-evidence-of-global-warming.html
For Geeks:
Here's a little something for the Cthulu addicts among you (especially the ones with large, old, creepy, creaky houses): octopus chandeliers! It's just the thing for those who would like to have a cephalopod on the ceiling, though it might tend to make visitors go mad...
http://io9.com/5989794/octopus-chandeliers-add-the-right-touch-of-tentacle-to-any-decor
On a more mundane note, I'd like to point out some great pictures of engineering feats taken over the last year. My Favourites? Numbers 17, 22, 28, 32, and 36.
http://enr.construction.com/photocontest/2012/detail.asp?itemid=1
Scanner: Other stories
Quantum "spooky action at a distance" travels at least 10,000 times faster than light
http://www.gizmag.com/quantum-entanglement-speed-10000-faster-light/26587/
How Kenya's high-tech voting nearly lost the election
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/03/09/173905754/how-kenyas-high-tech-voting-nearly-lost-the-election?ft=1&f=1001
Apple ordered to surrender coveted docs in iOS privacy lawsuit
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/apple_must_explain_meager_document_delivery_in_privacy_case/
Redmond slashing Win8, Office OEM rates for small devices
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/06/redmond_slashing_oem_pricing/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and George 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
17 March 2013
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.
