The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: January 17, 2010

Official News page 11


WINDING DOWN

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

Sometimes I despair of my own country, but then I remember that the government is not the same as the people. A case in point was relief for the Haiti earthquake. As I read the news there were reports of aid flowing in, so many millions from the US, so many millions worth of equipment from France going via Guadeloupe, and so on. At the very bottom was a note that the UK government had announced that it was sending an 'assessment team' - just as soon as they could sweep the snow off the runway at London's Gatwick airport. An assessment team, I ask you, what on earth did they think they were going to find? Perhaps they want to find out how many bankers there are for them to give money to...

Fortunately, it also reported that volunteer teams of UK firefighters, whose speciality was rescuing people trapped in collapsed buildings, were already on their way to Haiti. This was, of course an entirely voluntary effort completely unconnected with the government. Had the government been involved, they would probably have had to complete an 118 page 'risk assessment' form before being allowed to go...

One thing I must warn readers about, though, is all the fake spam and dubious web sites soliciting donations for, and purporting to provide news about, the disaster. Ignore them, and go to the web site of a charity you know to give donations. See also the story in the Shorts section, which has the proper URL for the web site of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.


Shorts:

I see that account hacking has got so bad in World of Warcraft (WoW), and is now tying up so many staff, that it seems almost certain that Blizzard are going to make it mandatory to use an authenticator to log in. Authenticators are those things that look a little like a USB stick, but with a display on one side that generates a number for you to use to log in. Some of you may already have one of them for accessing your bank account.

These things are more secure, and they are OK, as long as only one or two companies use them. Imagine, though having to keep (say) 15 of them on your key ring! And, of course, there is always the problem of losing your keys, which will take the authenticator along with it. Of course, unless the finder has all the other log on info, it won't compromise your account, but it will mean that you will be locked out for several days, until a new one can be physically shipped to you.

The idea is fine as a temporary measure, but it will need to be superceded once too many applications start using it.
http://www.wow.com/2010/01/08/blizzard-giving-serious-consideration-to-mandatory-
authenticator/

Well, after sifting through the final reports from the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas, a few things have emerged as possible harbingers of the future. USB 3.0 for a start - this new version ups the data transfer rate to zoom along at 4 Gbits/sec. The hardware to handle this is already coming on to the market and will soon be appearing in new models of computers.

Smart books, sort of ultra-thin, souped up, netbooks, and tablet computers look like they might be in like for a major breakout in the near future. I suspect that they will be competing for the same market, though - and that whichever is successful will take a large chunk of the nascent e-book market. Maybe the successful one will be a hybrid tablet/netbook style computer?

Other than that, and my belief, expressed in last weeks issue, that 3-D TV isn't going anywhere in a hurry, there didn't seem to be much that could be said to be about to break out in a hurry.
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222300525&cid=NL_eet
http://www.physorg.com/news182702980.html

The Haiti earthquake generated a burst of compassion and generosity around the world, something which restores the faith in the humanity of people. Sadly, it also generated the registering of a large number of fake charity domains and phishing e-mails, claiming to be raising funds for the relief effort.

The best advice I can give on this problem is to go direct to the web sites of the charities that you already know of in your own counties, or to that of the IFRC, which is the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Alternatively, make a payment through any facilities your bank may have organised. Whatever you do, -don't- under any circumstances click on a link in a begging letter, no matter how authentic it looks!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/14/haiti_earthquake_scam_warning/

It used to be the case that in medieval times, once a year, the village peasants would drag a plough up to the steps of the local church to be blessed by the priest. This day was known as Plough Monday.

Here in the UK, one vicar, at least, has decided to update the ceremony. Cannon David Parrott, the vicar of St Lawrence Jewry church in the heart of London's financial district, noting a distinct lack of farms, let alone ploughs, performed the ceremony on a symbolic pile of laptops and smart phones, thus invoking the blessing of the almighty on the tools of the trade of city traders and brokers!

It's a nice try at bringing the Church of England into the 21st century, but I don't think it's going to have much effect in this massively secularised country where giving 'Church of England' as your religion is a polite synonym for atheist.
http://www.physorg.com/news182432052.html

Google was in the news a lot this past week. In fact nearly a third of the articles I marked as possible for Winding Down seem to be about some aspect of Google. The launch of Google's Nexus One resulted in a deluge of complaints about lack of support. Google are notorious for making it difficult, if not impossible, to contact them, short of turning up at Fortress Google and hammering on the portcullis (and even then you are more likely to be deluged with red hot ones and zeros than to receive an answer).

This time though, they are selling a physical item, not a service, or some free software, and the rules are different, very different. Looking into my magic mirror I foresee serious problems for Google in the near future, if they don't start to take the local consumer protection critters seriously.

Then, of course, there was Google's announcement that it was stopping its censorship in China, and threatening to pull out of China altogether following a sophisticated cyber-attack on Goggle facilities in the country. Google, which was not the only Silicon Valley company targeted in the attack, didn't actually accuse the Chinese government of orchestrating the attack, but that seems to be the general consensus at the moment.

The views on why Google might pull out, seem to be divided. Obviously there is a moral issue, and Google does have its 'Do no evil' mantra (although it's never been clear to me whether this applies to what Google does to other people, or what other people do to Google...). But there are sound business reason, both for pulling out of China and for staying in. I suspect that these were fairly finely balanced and that the latest attack may have tipped the balance into making things just not worth the agro.

Although this is the highest profile threat there has been, it is the case that there have been previous decisions by companies to pack up and quietly leave China over this sort of issue. However, whether Google will carry out their threat is a moot point. It may be that the threat is part of a negotiating ploy to obtain more freedom of operation. If that's the case, I think it's doomed. The Chinese leadership are a very pragmatic bunch, but there are certain things that threaten their ability to remain in power, and losing control of what information is available in the country is one of the primary threats to their hegemony.

And as a final snippet in this saga, readers might like to note that the main vector for the attack reported by Google was ...Ta Da... a previously unknown vulnerability in all versions of Internet Explorer! Black helicopter experts, conspiracy theorists, and alien abductees please form an orderly queue...

Nexus
http://www.pcworld.com/article/186399/google_faces_deluge_of_nexus_one_
complaints.html

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/01/google-learning-that-users-want-
real-support-for-nexus-one.ars

http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000664.html
http://www.infoworld.com/t/smartphones/googles-nexus-one-bait-and-switch-
game- 635?page=0,0&source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2010-01-13

China
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID
=222300673&cid=nl_tw_security_2010-01-13_t

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10433538-265.html?tag=nl.e498
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10434721-245.html?tag=nl.e703
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID
=222300848&cid=nl_tw_ebiz_2010-01-14_t

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10434110-265.html?tag=nl.e703
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/14/cyber_assault_followup/

When I was a kid I used to love going shopping with my Mum in the big department store in Plymouth (the nearest big city), where they had one of those fabulous pneumatic interdepartmental communications systems. My younger readers have probably never seen one of these, they went the way of all old-fashioned methods years ago, but what happened was as follows.

When you bought something, the clerk would take your money and write out a note of the purchase. They would then pack it into a brass cylinder about 3-4 inches in diameter and about 8 inches long and stuff the cylinder into a capped pipe. There was a sort clunk-whoosh noise, which I loved, and then after a short pause, a whoosh-thud, and the clerk opened the pipe and there was the cylinder with your receipt and change in it. I can tell you that to an inquisitive eight year old, this was the very definition of real, functioning, magic!

Which is all by way of an introduction to telling you that pneumatic tubes are back! Not this time in shops, more's the pity, but in some hospitals where they are used to move samples and medicines between departments. It's a fabulous idea, and I can imagine that it saves an enormous amount of walking and time on the part of the hospital staff.

Sadly, though, the cylinders (plastic, not brass) now just arrive with a swoosh, no thud-clunk. It seems that clunking damages the contents, so the engineers figured out how slow the speed on arrival! Elsewhere in the network, the carriers (about a foot long in this case) can travel at up to 18 mph. That's quite a lot faster than walking, and much less effort. It also means that the surgeons can get blood samples to the lab (they have a direct connection in some hospitals) and results back in time to use the information.

I think it's an amazing new use of what was cutting edge technology in the 19th century. A classic example of thinking out of the box!
http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2010/january/tubes-0111.html


Homework:

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just use a single telephone number to access not just the phone but VoIP services like Skype, email, chat, web sites, and the plethora of other digital communication. Well the good news is that the technology exists to do this and it's called ENUM! The bad news is that it isn't being implemented because the big telcos think (probably correctly) that it will cut into their revenue.

How this will pan out I'm not sure, the technology is stable, and I'm sure people would like something like this if they knew it was available, but not many people know about it. However, Ars Technica has an interesting article on the subject, which is suitable for anyone with a casual interest in the topic. I'd recommend it, if you'd like to get some idea of what's possible.
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/01/enum-dragging-telephone-numbers-into-
the-internet-age.ars


Scanner:

Electronic Arts lowers 2010 guidance as sales weak
http://www.physorg.com/news182453294.html

Half of all data centers understaffed, Symantec survey finds
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/111110-data-centers-understaffed.html

Legislators worldwide asking questions about ACTA
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4671/125/

Online poker study: The more hands you win, the more money you lose
http://www.physorg.com/news182532748.html

Study: Average game development costs as high as $28m
http://www.develop-online.net/news/33625/Study-Average-dev-cost-as-high-as-28m

US court revives antitrust suit on music downloads
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100113/media_nm/us_antitrust_ruling


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
17 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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