WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
A large collection for you all this week. Google glasses, Google Keep, a rare earth mega-find, the CyberBunker botnet attack on Spamhaus, Portuguese media demand Google pay for links, Massive Open Online Courses, why phone cameras lack the oomph of full sized cameras, ESA’s Planck satellite data puzzles scientists (that’s a good thing, by the way), hi-tech sights of the UK (yes, there are some), and the books that shaped today’s IT Pros. And if that’s not enough, there are URLs for an EU study on illegal music downloads, spy drones in the US, patents and open source, iPads in education, concrete jewelery (heavy man, really, heavy), and tracking criminals via Facebook and Instagram.
Phew - that should give you something to read over the Easter hols!
Here in the UK, winter - next winter - has come early. Last year Easter came with hot, bright, sunshine, this year it comes with snow. Unsurprisingly, more people than ever before are flying to warmer places for Easter. I, of course, would have done the same, but loyalty to my readers, and the thought of them having nothing to read over Easter, kept me here, slaving over a hot keyboard to deliver the 468th edition of Winding Down...
Which reminds me. Next month I will be out of town for two issues, since I am attending the International Standards Organization (ISO) C++ committee meeting in Bristol. I’m currently wading through something in the region of 100 papers about what should be in the next version of the C++ standard. (Yes, I know we only just produced a new version, but we didn’t get everything we wanted into that one - we ran out of time!) So, this means there will be no Winding Down on 14 and 21 April.
Shorts:
You may have heard of the mega-dorky looking Google Glasses, which certain nerds are already using to remain online permanently. They project a stream of data which functions as an overlay to whatever you happen to be looking at. They are also capable of recording what you can see and hear, and storing it on Google’s cloud servers for later retrieval.
Lots of tech journalist have been raving about how brilliant the experience of wearing these pieces of equipment is (apart from their uber-geek look). But what few people are discussing is the experience of other people within range of the glasses. If you are in range of the video and audio recorders, then everything you say or do will be recorded. If you add to that the rapidly developing field of facial recognition and social media tagging, you have a recipe for the total destruction of privacy.
At the moment the glasses are so unfashionable and dorky that most people wouldn’t be seen dead in them. But I’m sure that will change as the technology matures, and fashion designers take a hand. If they really do catch on, then there will be dozens of them recording you from all angles everywhere you go. And of course the people wearing them will find them so useful that they will want to continue wearing them in the house...
If Google succeeds in this project then we will all - men and women - end up wearing Burqas every time we leave the house!
http://creativegood.com/blog/the-google-glass-feature-no-one-is-talking-about/
http://www.infoworld.com/t/internet-privacy/smile-youre-google-glass-whether-you-it-or-not-214568
And while we are on the subject of Google, I note that they have yet another new service, Google Keep. It’s a note taking and organizing application that runs on Android Phones (v4.0 and above) and in the desktop browser. It looks like it could be very useful, if you only put stuff on it you don’t mind Google processing, of course. In fact it looks ideal to go with my Samsung Note phone, and I’ll try it out, and let you know how I get on with it.
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/google-keepsave-whats-on-your-mind.html
I’ve mentioned before that contrary to the panic being created in the popular press, the rare earth elements in the periodic table are neither rare, nor earths. They are merely extremely dirty to refine, leaving some nasty toxic residues. The Chinese, the world’s major supplier, for many years, recently decided to stop exporting the stuff, which is what caused the panic.
The result has been the opening of previously closed down mining and separation facilities in the West. Now, however, the Japanese have reported finding an “astronomically” high level of rare earth deposits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Indeed when the levels were first reported, it was assumed that there must be some mistake, but further investigation revealed that this was not the case. As Yasuhiro Kato of Tokyo University explained, “... this discovery could help supply Japan with 60 per cent of its annual needs merely with the contents of a single vessel.”
So, it doesn’t look like we are going to run out of the rare earths needed for hi-tech manufacture any time soon, or be held to ransom by China hording its supply.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/japan_rare_earth_discovery_bad_news_china/
And talking of panics, the press has been full of scares about Botnet attacks bringing the Internet to its knees (or the digital equivalent thereof). It didn’t, of course, but the story - originally in the New York Times - sounded like good material for the press. What happened is that a dispute between a hosting company called CyberBunker and an anti-spam organization called Spamhaus escalated to levels not seen before, and CyberBunker used a set of compromised computers (aka ‘bots’) to launch the biggest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack yet seen.
The trouble started when Spamhaus added CyberBunker to its blacklist of spamming sites, a blacklist used by many major online companies. CyberBunker retaliated with the DDoS attack. The DDoS attack was unforgivable, if understandable. Spamhaus are in a position to destroy the business of any online organization or individual, and they are not only the sole judge and jury, but also the executioner. Appeals against its blacklisting are slow and cumbersome and can take days - in a business where seconds count. If Spamhaus’s activities were offline they would probably be called vigilantes.
The problem is that there are no ‘legal’ authorities to replace them online, and it is undoubtedly the case that their activities have massively restricted the amount of spam sloshing around the internet. Of, course, spam would not be so easy if appropriate technical measures were taken by those involved in running the internet. The measures required were laid down in a paper published 13 years ago, and had those measures started to be integrated into equipment at that stage, we probably wouldn’t need the likes of Spamhaus to guard against spam.
Perhaps now, the powers that be will sit up and take notice, although the more likely outcome is that the money needed will be just poured into the cyberwar establishment public trough.
http://betabeat.com/2013/03/why-your-internet-has-been-slow-spam-dispute-sparks-one-of-the-largest-ddos-attacks-in-internet-history/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57576947-83/how-the-spamhaus-ddos-attack-could-have-been-prevented/
https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jeremyepstein/how-much-does-a-botnet-cost-and-the-impact-on-internet-voting/
I see the Portuguese media are starting to follow the French example, and demand that Google pay them for the privilege of linking to their articles. Yes, being able to link to the media is valuable to Google, but that value pales beside the value of Google search links to the media. The thing that surprises me about this whole idiotic dispute is that Google doesn’t charge the professional media for providing links to the media’s stories!
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22882798/portugal-media-demands-google-pay-news
Homework:
Scientific American has a large article on the effects of Massive Open Online Courses, aka MOOCs. As a participant in one, which has thousands of students, I was interested in what it had to say. It seems that such learning is causing a major shakeup in the way educators think, and, of course, it’s providing learning researchers with mounds of information they never previously had.
I recommend reading the article if you are at all concerned with education or learning. It makes for a fascinating tale about how traditional university practice may be overturned in the not too distant future.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=massive-open-online-courses-transform-higher-education-and-science&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20130320
Ever wondered why the umpteen mega-pixel camera in your smart new phone doesn’t seem to give you as good a picture as your friend with a much cheaper regular camera? It’s because to get good digital pictures there is a trade-off between the efficiency of sensor technology, lens quality, and image sensor size. In a camera phone, you are trading off the size of the sensor, so it fits into the camera, even though you are cramming more and more, smaller sensors onto it to get the extra mega-pixels.
Real cameras, of course, have more space for their sensors, and so do not need make the same levels of trade off as phones. You can find a full explanation at the URL, but in the meantime, just remember that, contrary to what you have been told, size matters!
http://www.gizmag.com/camera-sensor-size-guide/26684/
The universe, it seems, has not yet revealed all its secrets. The latest data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite has come up with two things that the currently accepted theories cannot explain. The first is that one half of the sky is better ‘lit’ than the other half. I use the term ‘lit’ very loosely here, since what we are looking at is microwave radiation - in this case the residue from the early history of the universe.
The other problem is that there is a ‘hole’ in the radiation which is much larger than any such hole should be, according to theory!
Well, that should keep the cosmologists on their toes for a while longer...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/21/esa_planck_cold_spot/
For Geeks:
Those of you thinking of visiting the UK in the near future might like to take a look at a series ‘The Register’ is running on historical tech sites in the country. The first two are the historic Jodrell Bank radio telescope (still the third biggest steerable one in the world), and the site of LEO, the world’s first business computer, which was used to keep track of stock inventory for J Lyons tea shops all over the UK. (Incidentally, if you want to come to the UK - or leave the USA, come to that - you’ll need a little booklet called a passport, paper, not at all digital. Ask your mother, she can tell you about it.)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/geeks_guide_jodrell_bank/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/geeks_guide_leo/
InfoWorld have an interesting little slide show featuring books that they claim ‘shaped today’s IT pros’. It’s a pretty good stab at it, I either have, or have read from cover to cover 11 of the 15 books they chose (in case you’re wondering some of them I no longer have on my shelf because they are the sort of books borrowed and not returned...). Of the four I haven’t read, only one, ‘The Soul of a New Machine’, is actually on my reading list. I could think of others I would have added, but with this sort of thing you could go on for ever. I’ll let you speculate on which ones are the other three that I haven’t read
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/93202/tech-canon-the-books-shaped-todays-it-pros-215416?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2013-03-29
Scanner: Other stories
EU Study indicates that illegal downloads do not have a negative effect on music purchases
http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC79605.pdf
As spy drones come to the U.S., we must protect our privacy
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=spy-drones-come-us-we-must-protect-privacy&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20130326
Patents in the service of Open Source (Google pledge)
http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/
iPads in education: Not actually evil, but pretty close
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/26/ipads_in_school/
Austrians develop hi-tech jewellery made out of concrete
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/25/concrete_jewellery/
High-Tech NYPD unit tracks criminals through Facebook and Instagram photos
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130325/new-york-city/high-tech-nypd-unit-tracks-criminals-through-facebook-instragram-photo
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi 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
31 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.
