The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: November 9, 2008

Official News page 12


WINDING DOWN

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

I don't normally comment on overtly political issues, but this week was election week, so I'll make an exception...

I've been reading with some amusement the drivel from non-US political 'analysts' about the implications of the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. Almost without exception they have missed the point that Mr Obama is first and foremost a citizen of the United States, culturally, politically, and economically.

Mr Obama's accession to the presidency is not a free ride for anybody; his first responsibility is to the people and the constitution of the United States, and I have no doubt that he takes that seriously and will do whatever he considers necessary to advance the interests of his country. In the meantime those African countries who seem to be using Obama's political victory as a reason to slip into a cargo cult mentality, need to think very carefully about exactly what they are doing.

On a totally different subject Winding Down will be a little erratic over the next few months, because of other commitments. There will be no edition For the next two weeks (16 and 23 November), or on 7 December. Then over Christmas, there will be no issue on 28 December or 4 January.


Shorts:

There were a couple of stories from Infoworld that I was going to draw your attention to - for instance a piece on what life would be like if the forthcoming incarnation of Windows fails to take off. Unfortunately, as is typical of these big sites, they use a lot of third party sites to bring in advertising and the like, and one of them, JS-Kit.com wasn't replying at all. My browser just stalled when it got to pulling material off this site, so I just junked several potential pieces of news.

As far as I'm concerned, sites get 30 seconds to download, if I'm in a generous mood, and then I move on. You'd think that sites would keep an eye on the performance of their sub-contractors, but this happens all too often. I wonder how many page views a big site like Infoworld loses because of this sort of thing?
[Source: various attempts to access Infoworld]

The Germans are revolting - against Google, that is! The village of Molfsee is using a local ordinance to bar Google's 'Street View' cars from taking pictures in their town. The state in which it is located (the fabulously named Schleswig-Holstein) has a downloadable sign reading 'No pictures for Google Street View' on one of its sites. The signs can be printed out and placed on citizens' front lawns.

I have to say that my sympathies lie entirely with those opposing this vile practice of Google's. It represents a massive intrusion of people's privacy, and I have yet to see any justification for the practice. This seems to be typical of Google's habit of turning annoying schoolboy wheezes into huge intrusions of people's personal lives. Good for the citizens of Molfsee - I hope other follow their example.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,587546,00.html

Spotted any delays in the response times from the Internet these last couple of weeks? Yes I know there were problems on election day, but I'm talking about the period before that. If you did have delays, then it was probably due to a squabble between Sprint and Cogent. The two of them are at odds over whether Cogent should pay Sprint for carrying traffic from Cogent.

The story is different according to whose statement you look at. Unsurprisingly, Sprint says it's Cogent's fault, and Cogent says it's Sprint's fault. Sprint has taken Cogent to court over unpaid bills. Cogent says Sprint is in breach of a contract to allow Cogent to use Sprint's network for free. Who is in the right? I've no idea, but the decision of Sprint to disconnect Cogent caused all sorts of problems as traffic tried to route around the 'hole' in the network.

Sprint have now temporarily reconnected Cogent to their network, presumably under pressure from the other affected networks. How long the reconnection will last is anyone's guess. Lets hope these guys get their act together and sort out this mess soon.
http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3829291/121542020/148595/0/
https://www.sprint.net/cogent.php

Now here is, finally, a good solution to the copyright problems of people posting clips of TV shows on the Internet. A firm called Auditude have developed a system of identifying the snippets and then weaving in advertising for the copyright owners and telling the viewers whose program they are watching. Auditude's software overlays the video with the information and also provides links to online places to buy episodes and related merchandise.

That's really neat, and a win-win-win situation for viewers, copyright holders and the service the snippets are posted on. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it actually works, and that the studios and the services that show clips will take this on board. One hopeful sign is that Warner Brothers have already signed on with Auditude. Definitely the way to go!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/clip-piracy-solution-a-
nobrainer/2008/11/04/1225560788495.html

And talking about 'intellectual property' - which is not really 'property' and frequently far from 'intellectual' - there was an interesting Federal Court of Appeals case last week which backed a decision by the US Patent Office ruling that you can't patent a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. This has much wider implications - for instance, in these circumstances it is unlikely that Amazon could have obtained its notorious 'one-click' patent.

The case, which will undoubtedly go up to the Supreme Court, establishes closer controls on the patenting of business methods and software. This, to my mind, is to be applauded and maybe the first step in a process to return some sort of sanity to the whole issue of business and software patents.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/31/us_court_of_appeals_federal_circuit_
business_method_patent_decision/

Continuing the copyright/patent theme, I see that the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's is to start selling a service offering unlimited DRM-free songs that you can download, for 99 UK pounds (about US$160) a year subscription. The songs are all MP3 and once downloaded, they can play on any MP3 compatible player.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/31/datz_unlimited_music_bundle/

There was a classic example of what not to do on a social networking site this week when Virgin Atlantic sacked 13 of its cabin staff after they posted remarks insulting Virgin passengers on Facebook. The problem is that with no physical presence on a social networking site, people feel they are in a 'safe' and private place and say things they would normally never say in public. The consequences, as in this case, can be devastating. Once something is put onto the net, you can never erase it, and that applies not just to copyright owners, but also to 'ordinary' people.

Social networks are not like sitting in a bar, much as they would like to give that impression, and much as it's part of their ambience. Take it from me, I've been involved in running multi-player games for over 20 years, and in that time we've seen it all from the broken friendships and lost jobs because of incautious remarks, to real life husbands turning up on doorsteps with shotguns threatening in-game 'husbands'. Have fun, but don't ever mix real life and virtual life.
http://www.physorg.com/news144732148.html


Homework:

Wired magazine has published a rather strange interview with physicist Richard Muller who has published a book about the sort of physics the new president needs to know. I'm not sure what Mr Muller's political position is, but some of his statements are very peculiar. For instance, he is an advocate of 'clean coal'. This is a hoary chestnut that is regularly pushed by politicians representing run down coal mining areas in an effort to get federal funding to regenerate their depressed areas. No one has yet come up with a workable way of doing it.

Then there is the statement that "Plutonium is a thousand times less poisonous than botulism toxin, the active ingredient in botox." Yes, chemically this is true, but misses the point. The fact is that chemical poisons like botulism can be diluted until they are harmless. Unfortunately, radioactivity is more intractable - you can't dilute it, physically small amounts of radioactive materials in the body are just as dangerous as larger amounts. All in all it's a very weird article.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/physics-the-nex.html

The hardware freaks among you will really like the 20 odd page review of Intel's new Core i7 processor series in HotHardware this week. It's a quad core chip complete with hyperthreading that gives an effective eight cores. I guess that with half a dozen of these in your PC you might even be able to run Windows Vista, or the currently being developed Windows 7 (described by one journalist as Vista with lipstick), at a nearly acceptable speed.

Take a look if you are into these sort of hardware stats.
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-Core-i7-Processors-Nehalem-and-X58-Have-Arrived/

Ubiquity has an interesting interview with Frans Johansson, author of the book 'The Medici Effect'. I reviewed this book, which I enjoyed, a while ago. The book is about the effects of work done at the intersection of different academic disciplines. The interview gives a good flavour of what the book is about. If you haven't read the book then I'd recommend looking through the article to get a different perspective on how scientific breakthroughs are made.
http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/


Scanner: Other Stories

It's time to plug the television into the Web.
http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBM730FypUC0FrK0Gx8j0ER

How to combat the botnet army
http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3829291/121542020/148598/0/

Judge orders White House to produce wiretap memos
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081102/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/warrantless_wiretapping

New malware technique bypasses traditional defences
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBMye0HiOOq0G4S0GxDz0Ep

Virtual heist nets over half a million bank and credit card accounts
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/10/virtual_bank_heist_nets_500000.html

Electronic voting machines tested by record turnout
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBNDD0HiOOq0G4W0GybE0E7


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Lois 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
9 November 9008

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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