WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Well here we are back again, just as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas finishes. The main theme of the show seems to have been an absolute conviction that we all want 3D-TV, and we are all prepared to wear weird spectacles in order to watch it.
I'm not sure what planet all these electronics companies come from, but I suspect the 3D-iness of recent popular films has gone to their heads. Now I'm not a big TV watcher - give me a computer game, any day - but most of my friends watch the box, and what they want is not ersatz 3D, but good quality content. What's point of watching crud in 3D, arguably that would be even worse than watching crud in 2D!
So CES is predicting that the future is 3D. What other popular predictions are doing the hi-tech rounds? Well, for a start there is a lot of hype about what is known in the trade as 'Cloud Computing'. Basically this mean storing a lot (and I mean a lot) of your data on other people's storage accessed over the internet, and manipulating the data over the internet, just bringing down the results when you've finished. Sounds great, but it has its problems, and I will be taking an extended look at this issue in the not too distant future.
Another prediction is that server virtualization is really going to take off. This is one prediction I definitely agree with. I use virtualization all the time on my laptop. I used to need several machines to develop my online game. Now I have an underlying Windows system, a Linux system which I use to develop and run the game server code. This runs on its own virtual machine on top of the Windows system. I also have a second virtual machine which is used to try out other operating systems. Virtualization is another topic I will be looking at in more depth in the future.
Apart from that I was delighted to find out that cellphone wielding mice are less likely to get Alzheimer's. I also discovered that the UK Labour Member of Parliament for West Ham, Lyn Brown, claimed expenses of 37.85 UK pounds (about US$60) for 'Hire of Tardis and catering'. At least we now know how politicos manage to predict the future!
Oh, yes. And I understand that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has developed a Twitter based earthquake detection system. There is, I am assured, no truth in the rumour that the only thing it has detected so far is a storm in a teacup...
Shorts:
As the last gasp from yesteryear I thought I'd draw your attention to this collection of radioactive gifts from the early 20th Century. I don't know about anyone else, but the radiendocrinator, radioactive 'health' water and radium chocolate made me particularly cringe. It makes you wonder what current health fads are going to turn out to be dangerous in the future, as scientific knowledge advances. Hot gifts indeed!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=radioactive-products&photo_id=C19ED9B7-C872-1B63-7632AD152188AB9C
Thinking of buying a new computer from Best Buy? Before you do, take a gander at this article on "The Consumerist" web site. It turns out that Best Buy's 'optimisation' program, for which they charge extra, not only does little to improve the performance of the computers they are selling, but in at least one case resulted in over 30% worse performance.
Given that the 'optimisation' costs an extra US$39.99 this doesn't exactly sound like a bargain to me. However, as a twist in the tail, it's worth noting that none of the Best Buy shops that were visited or rung up had the non-optimised version, so if you want a computer from Best Buy, be prepared to argue against paying for the so-called 'optimisation'.
http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumerist-investigation-best-buy-optimization-is-a-big-stupid-annoying-waste-of-money.html
I'm pleased to note that here in olde London town we are moving out of the stone age with respect to public data. Our mayor, Boris Johnson, is making 200 sets of public information available on a new website called the London Datastore. I realise that this is nothing special for my US readers where information collected at public expense is (by law, I think) available free of cost.
Our government officials have a very different attitude, however. They consider that anything they have collected should either be considered top secret, eat before reading spy stuff, or a way of making extra money for their department by charging the public to peruse it.
These walls have gradually started to crumble following a number of high profile cases over freedom of information. The classic case was that of the expenses of our Members of Parliament, who for some time now have been under the impression that the laws they pass don't apply to them! Mind you, it's only a matter of time before the bureaucrats move over to that time honoured method of dealing with uppity proles, by flooding them with so much information that it is difficult to pick out the salient points!
http://www.kable.co.uk/london-datastore-07jan10
Here's the ultimate copyright claim. The Mexican government is trying to squeeze cash out of Starbucks for using images from Aztec and pre-Aztec artifacts. Hmm... Let me see, the Aztec civilisation was at its height in the 13th and 14th centuries, pre-Aztec was, by definition before that. So that means we are probably talking about a thousand years for the pre-Aztec symbols and maybe six or seven hundred years for the Aztec stuff.
Presumably, somewhere in the depths of the central American jungle a little widow from Teotihuacan is waiting for the copyright fees due on the symbols that her husband chiseled into the bathroom door of their apartment.
Or maybe, just maybe, this is an early peek at the provisions of the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) that our lords and master have been negotiating in secret. In which case we can all relax, a thousand years of copyright protection means that Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse is safe from these wicked copyright pirates until some time around 2910...
http://money.canoe.ca/News/Other/2010/01/06/12373111-ap.html
Exhibit one: Survey - IT job satisfaction plummets to all time low. The survey reports that key employees are just waiting for the recovery to get out of their current jobs and move on to somewhere where their talents can be properly used.
Exhibit two: Survey - Software engineer rated almost best job of 2010. Actually, they were beaten only by actuaries in the survey. For the record, the worst jobs were lumberjack and roustabout.
So there you have it. Those of us in the IT trade have just about the best jobs going, and are totally dissatisfied. Who was it said that the grass is always greener on the other side?
Actually, if you know a bit about the trade, it does make some sense. IT companies in general have little or no loyalty to their workers, and almost no one gets internally promoted. If you want to get promoted you find a new job. Unfortunately, the slump means that this strategy is much more difficult because there are many fewer new jobs to go to.
There is also the point that although the salaries are pretty reasonable, most of the better IT staff work because they are interested, and move on when there is nothing more new for them to do. Being stuck in a boring job is their definition of hell, and being expected to work late to fix problems caused by dork managers is not high on their list of priorities.
And as most managers will tell you there are few things more disruptive than a high level, bored, software engineer (except maybe a bored system admin!).
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_BESTJOBS2010_20100105.html
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143194/Surveys_IT_job_satisfaction_
plummets_to_all_time_low
Homework:
China has just launched a new train, the fastest on Earth - so far. At an average speed of
217mph it will cover the 633 miles from Guangzhou to Wuhan in 2 hours 45 minutes, down from over six hours. That's less time than we spent stranded in the Channel tunnel last time we took the Eurostar train!
Let me see... that would be San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 90 minutes, or New York to Chicago in just over three and a half hours - and all walk on, walk off, with no airports. Definitely worth thinking about.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/12/28/china-unveils-the-worlds-fastest-high-speed-train/
Look out if you live in Arizona - EnviroMission Ltd is planning to build two solar updraft towers in the state. What, do I hear you ask, is a solar updraft tower? Conceptually, it's easy to grasp. Imagine a greenhouse with a chimney on top of it. The air in the greenhouse is warmed up, because the sun's rays can get in, but the heat part of them can't get out (just like the one in your garden). The hot air expands, and becomes less dense and so flows up the chimney. So now all we need to do is to stick a turbine in the chimney to take advantage of the airflow, and voila - electricity for the toiling masses!
So much for the theory.
What you are actually talking about here, for each of the plants, is a greenhouse covering four square miles, and a chimney nearly half a mile (2,400 feet) high. That's big, and a scale that's difficult to comprehend. The URL has some pictures, the ones at each end of the strip give the best feel for the size.
What the downside of this method of generating electricity is, apart from littering the landscape with four square mile greenhouses (I wonder how many tomatoes you could grow in a four mile square greenhouse?) and half mile chimneys, I don't know, but if EnviroMission can raise the US$750 million cash to get started we will soon be finding out.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/06/enviromission-plans-massive-solar-updraft-
towers-for-arizona/
Geek Toys:
I hope all of you geek readers out there got what you wanted for Christmas. For me the one that got away was the Stellar Window from Fairy Devices. It's software and a USB sensor that turns tablet PCs into a window on the sky. Hold it up to the sky and you get an accurate sky map of the stars you are looking at. it even works indoors! 3D-specs? Phooey - I want one of these!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=2009-sciam-gadget-
guide&photo_id=98229A02-94E1-61CA-F3AF6F802407671F
Scanner:
Black soot might be the main culprit of melting Himalayan glaciers
http://www.livescience.com/environment/091214-black-carbon-himalaya-glacier.html
The best (of the worst) patent claims of 2009
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/28/top_patent_applications_of_2009/
Choo-Chooing along to aid in the measurement of neutrons
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/science/29train.html?_r=3&ref=science
USGS develops Twitter-based earthquake detection system
http://ecopolitology.org/2010/01/07/usgs-develops-twitter-based-earthquake-
detection-system/
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
10 January, 2010
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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