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EARTHDATE: February 28, 2010

Official News page 12


WINDING DOWN

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

Well, here I am, back with a bunch snippets for your delight. A little bit less than usual, but never mind the quantity, feel the quality!

I don't know what it is about English weather, but I'm starting to believe the story about the British Empire being founded by people trying to get some warmth and sunshine. Since I started work, I think it has rained every day, except for the days when there was sleet or snow. No wonder a majority of people in this country are highly cynical about global warming...


Shorts:

Here's a question that would be good in a trivia type quiz: Who was the first person to raise the issue of 'information overload' as being a problem for people bombarded with information? For a bonus point, when was it?

Give up?

OK, I'll tell you. It was the Swiss Scientist, Conrad Gessner in 1565! Yes, really. He was talking about the effects of the printing press unleashing unmanageable floods of information on an unsuspecting world.

There were earlier rumblings. Socrates, for instance, was worried about the fact that writing would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories." There were also those who, in the eighteenth century, were unhappy about people getting news from newspapers instead of from the pulpit. Then there was the denunciation of radio for disturbing the balance of children's excitable minds.

And as for the 21st Century - how about a CNN report that "Email 'hurts IQ more than pot.'" Or maybe the UK tabloid the Daily Mail with a piece on "How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer." And for the very latest scare look up Nicolas Carr's influential article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" on Google...

So, next time you read a 'Shock!! Horror!! We're all doomed by the xyz new technology', just remember - been there. done that.
http://www.slate.com/id/2244198/pagenum/all/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/

I guess it had to happen now that GPS technology is so extensively used - GPS Jammers. It doesn't take much to jam GPS signals. The satellites that send the signals are a long way away, and operate at low power. Given that a GPS 'jammer' was used in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies some ten years ago (great motorbike chase, by the way), it seems amazing that criminals have only just started using them.

Apparently, most of the jamming kit is produced in China (where else), and illegally imported into Western countries, where it has been used to foil in-vehicle tracking systems in hijackings and thefts. The equipment may also have been used to foil GPS-based road charging in Germany, something that was introduced for trucks in 2005.

More worrying than small handheld jammers with a power output of a couple of watts and a range of a few metres are more powerful ones. It has been estimated that a 20 watt jammer could jam GPS signals over a river estuary, or a whole airport complex.

When it comes down to it, an awful lot of modern travel and distribution systems (including food deliveries for urban areas) now rely on the incredibly fragile GPS satellite network. Now that the criminals have discovered the easy potential for disruption, which, incidentally, has been known by those involved in the GPS business for many years, maybe the authorities will start to sit up and take notice of this real threat, rather than illusory threats of having the internet 'taken over'.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/23/car_theft_gps_jam/

And while we are on the subject of threats to Western infrastructure, let's take a quick look at drone aircraft. As we all know the US has developed these critters into, if not exactly war winning weapons, then at least highly effective, if somewhat indiscriminate, weapons of assassination. Police forces in the UK are also using them for surveillance. The authorities in this country have an absolute fetish for spying on their citizens - but at least they're not yet equipping them with hellfire missiles. Well I don't think they are, anyway.

Getting back to the subject, Wired magazine has a piece pointing out that it's possible to build home made versions of these drones for less than US$500. Because they don't have much of an infra-red signature, you can use regular SAMs to shoot them down. Apparently they can be taken out with a Patriot missile, at a cool US$3 million a pop, but that's not really an option given the financial disparity. I suppose you could try using air superiority fighters to take them out, but trying to hit something so slow moving would be very difficult. Maybe a shotgun would work on a low flying one, if its controller were foolish enough to get into range...

So, it looks like most, if not all western countries have little or no defence against a mass assault by souped up drones. I wonder what sort of 'incident' it will take for the powers that be to wake up to the threat!
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/01/from-geekdad-pr/

As this week's Winding Down goes to press news is still coming in about the Chile earthquake, but it's clear that at 8.8 on the Richter scale damage is going to be massive.

Chile, in spite of being one of the world's more seismically active areas, has some of the worlds largest astronomical observatories in the Andes mountains. Because of this, it occurred to me that the telescopes must have some sort of special facilities to handle these sort of quakes. It turned out that they do indeed. (I used Google to find this, presumably dropping a point or two of IQ in the process... )

The URL at the end of this short points to a piece explaining how the 23 ton mirrors of the four 8.2-metre telescopes of the VLT array on Mount Paranal are capable of being very rapidly lifted free in the event of an earthquake. Fascinating stuff!
http://edgeofphysics.com/blog/chile-earthquake-and-telescopes


Geek Toys:

I always suspected that iPhone owners are dodgy characters, but now my suspicions about the owners of these highly prestigious (and mind blowingly expensive) geek toys have been confirmed. It seems that something like four in every six iPhone insurance claims are suspect. And when a new model comes onto the market, it's even worse - there was a 50% rise in claims the month the latest model, the iPhone 3GS was launched . Supercover Insurance, who cover iPhones, point out that many damaged models received by the company show evidence of at least six hammer blows!

As Carmi Korine, director of Supercover Insurance put it, "Most iPhone owners can only go for so long realising that they're a generation behind the latest must-have spec before they resort to extreme measures."

Definitely a bunch of geeks!
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/iPhone-Upgrade-Insurance-Hammer-Car,news-5845.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/iPhone-Owners-Commit-Fraud-For-
Newest-Model/Article/201002215548757?lpos=Business_First_Technology_Article_
Teaser_Region__0&lid=ARTICLE_15548757_iPhone_Owners_Commit_Fraud_
For_Newest_Model


Scanner:

PleaseRobMe website reveals dangers of social networks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8521598.stm

On Crete, new evidence of very ancient mariners
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16archeo.html

Malicious spam jumps to 3 billion messages per day
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/malicious-spam-jumps-3-billion-messages-day-021610

Sony, LG, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba accused of price fixing
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9162979/Sony_LG_Samsung_Hitachi_
Toshiba_accused_of_price_fixing

Who will clear the seabeds of WWII mines for gas pipelines?
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/02/16/who-will-clear-the-seabeds-of-
wwii-mines-for-gas-pipelines-robots/


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Jason, 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
28 February, 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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