The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: October 7, 2007

Official News page 13


WINDING DOWN

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

It was an interesting week, in an odd sort of way. The band Radiohead announced that it was allowing its fans to set their own price for the digital download of their upcoming CD. Mind you, the sort of people who like Radiohead are likely to cough up a decent wad anyway.

Over here in the UK we also discovered that 95% of the cameras in this CCTV infested isle are actually illegal. What a surprise!

Across the channel in Holland the Dutch have just decided, wisely in my opinion, to abandon e-voting in favour of the manual pencil and paper version. At least you can recount bits of paper if there are arguments about who won.

Kim Jong Il, leader of the glorious (and starving) North Korea has declared himself an Internet expert. Maybe he should get together with Al Gore to duke out the question of who actually invented it?

Before we move on to the 'serious' news though, I thought I'd better let you all know that there will be no Winding Down next week, because I will be out of town over the weekend.

And so to the main course...

 

Shorts:

Nice to see that Linux is still making stealthy inroads into government computers. The latest to announce a major open source project is the Swedish National Police. They are building a system using Linux, MySQL and JBoss. The consultant in charge explained that over time it would save the equivalent of '400 fully equipped police cars'. I'm not sure this interesting new unit of monetary measurement is going to catch on, but I could be wrong :)

http://mailman.sys-con.com/t/92707/15399271/5107/0/

And in the interests of 'equality', I have to mention that eBay's chief information officer reported at a symposium that at his previous job with Washington Mutual, 'The vast majority of the threats we saw were rootkitted Linux boxes...' Unfortunately, he didn't quantify the problem, and he didn't give any indication of whether the compromised machines were that way because of operating system bugs or for other reasons. (Comparing the number of Windows bugs with bugs found in Linux plus all Linux applications has long been a favourite tactic in certain arenas.) This appears to have been a throwaway remark which I suspect he may be called on - and I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with the fact that Microsoft was sponsoring the symposium.

(This item was passed on by one of my readers, whose name I managed to lose. Let me know who it was and I will give credit next issue!)

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/scrt/CD0B9D97EE6FE411CC25736A000E4723

Meanwhile the numbers are in from European PC market watcher Context. Sales of the home version of Vista have zoomed up. No surprise there, since it's virtually impossible to buy a home PC with anything else - like XP - loaded on it.

The really interesting news, though, is in the market where people have a choice between XP and Vista. In that market XP sales are double Vista sales. Ooops... Now, I wonder what the US figures are like?

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/vista_business_sales_bad_xp_good/

The Department of Homeland Security managed a major blunder this week. A misconfiguration in its e-mail lists resulted in a spam storm which revealed the e-mail addresses of all the subscribers! It all started when a subscriber tried to change his e-mail address and used the 'reply-to-all' button instead of sending it to the list admin. His e-mail was faithfully send to all subscribers (one has to ask why it is that anyone can post to a list that is supposed to be sending out the DHS's Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report).

The subscribers were, not unnaturally, annoyed and a number of 'reply-to-all' stroppy responses were rapidly dispatched. I'll leave the resulting escalation to your imagination, and just point out that at some stage in the blitz, all the subscriber addresses that are normally hidden became visible. What a shambles.

http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBDlQ0HiOOq0G4V0FYq80EJ
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/dhs_email_list_storm/
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000305.html

If you think the Boston police overreact to teenagers wearing flashing LEDs, then you should try the lot we have over here in London. On Monday the Metropolitan Police sealed off three streets in London's central Soho district to investigate a suspected chemical terror attack. It turned out to be a Thai chef brewing up chilli sauce (Nam Prik Pao for the Thai food aficionados). Eventually a Hazardous Area Response Team Unit and firefighter wearing breathing apparatus, located the giant cauldron containing 9lb of dried chillies.

A number of questions are unanswered. If they really thought it was a chemical terror attack, why did they only close three streets? If they didn't really think it was a terror attack, why did they close any streets? Still I suppose it makes a change from shooting down innocent people because you think they might be suicide bombers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/thai_sauce/

As regular readers will know, I've always maintained that the Wikipedia is the world's biggest source of urban legends. This week obituarists from the BBC, and the UK newspapers the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, the Stage, and no less than Reuters did a cut 'n' paste job for the obituary of composer Ronnie Hazlehurst. Needless to say some of the info they picked up was inaccurate - possibly even a hoax - crediting him with a song he had no part in writing.

Now, repeat after me: 'I must not take obituary information from the Wikipedia, unless it's for Ayn Rand...'

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/wikipedia_obituary_cut_and_paste/


Geek Toys:

Forget the iThingies - just take a look at Sony's latest offering: the 'world's first' OLED TV. It's due to go on sale in December - just in time for Xmas. The 11 inch display screen is just 3mm - yes three millimetres - thick, and it has a really cool 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. And, as a bonus, it's networkable. It has a 10/1000Mbps ethernet port, along with a USB connector and an HDMI port. Very nice. 'Be the first one on your block...'*

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/01/sony_talks_first_oled_tv/


Scanner: Other stories

Dutch pull plug on e-voting
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/01/dutch_pull_plug_on_evoting/

Retailers and credit card industry clash
http://www.physorg.com/news110781861.html

Mobile mast website in jeopardy
http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/ ACFC4A74EE069B7080257369004B9185?OpenDocument

Hackers hit back at iPhone update
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/03/iphone_update_response/

Tiny tin 'whiskers' imperil electronics
http://www.physorg.com/news110812295.html

Almost all CCTV systems illegal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/01/most_cctv_systems_illegal/

Radiohead lets fans choose CD price
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/01/radiohead_digital_giveaway/


*Country Joe and the Fish - 'Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag'


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Dj, Fi, Lois, and someone whose name I managed to lose (!) for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
7 October 2007

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. 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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