The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: March 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

Normally Winding Down production is fuelled by caffeine. The week however, we have an issue fuelled by nothing less than Yoga Bunny Detox. This was recommended by a co-worker, and I confess that I couldn't resist a name like that. It's also the only drink I've ever come across that has a long list of what it -doesn't- contain! Taste? Hmmm... a bit like a sort of very weak ginger beer. Still, presumably, imbibing one of these after chain-drinking Java coffee will remove all the nasties, in the same way that a diet cola removes all the calories from the eight slices of pizza you've just eaten :)

In the mean time here are a few bits and pieces for your Sunday reading.


Shorts:

Worried about getting a virus on your smart phone? Never fear, Vodafone have just the thing for you - ready infected smart phones! It seems that its Spanish subsidiary managed to ship 3,000 HTC Magic phones with infected microSD cards. No one seems to know how the Mariposa botnet agent managed to get onto the cell phones.

The problem was spotted after Vodafone shipped one of their infected phones to a representative of Panda Security. This was thought to be a one off until a security consultant at S21Sec also received an infect phone. Even so, Vodafone is still in denial, referring to the whole affair as "isolated and local". I doubt if those who paid for the phones look at it in quite so cavalier a way.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/19/voda_spain_mariposa_latest/

Just how behind the times I am was brought home to me 18 months or so ago, when I had a new CD player delivered to my then work place, the now defunct Skill Gaming. I had a bunch of the games programmers and artists clustering around it because they had never seen one before! The couldn't believe people still played CDs...

Well, people do still play CDs - quite a lot of them, actually - and the Universal Music Group have just decided that a cut in prices may well help to boost sales. Starting next month it will be running a six month test of lower CD prices for new CDs. Single CDs will have suggested list prices of $10, $9, $8, $7, and $6 dollars. The hope is that increased sales will more than make up for the reduction in price.

You never know, it might even cut 'piracy' as well!
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i56ed42b9a46f8554
e2671afccecca01b

I see that a decision in a Spanish court has upheld that P2P file sharing is still legal in Spain. The judge in a case in which the local music industry group, SGAE, tried to take down a small BitTorrent and eDonkey site, ruled that P2P networks in and of themselves didn't violate copyright. He also pointed out that linking to content that might be infringing is not the same as distributing that content.

Looks like Spain may one of the last bastions of common sense on this issue.
http://www.barcelonareporter.com/index.php?/news/comments/p2p_file-sharing_
legal_in_spain/1503100727pm

Thunderbirds are go! The US military wants to build a robot subterranean mole capable of strikes against underground bunkers. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is looking for help in building this brainchild of 1930s pulp science fiction, which it calls a 'Robotic Underground Munition' - RUM for short.

It requires its RUM to be able to "avoid, traverse, neutralize or defeat natural and man-made obstacles". I have visions of minefields sunk deep into the earth as defences from this improbable vehicle. Sadly, however, I'm unable to think of a way to get a joke about RUM-babas into this piece...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/15/mole_missile/

One of the more interesting stories from China eclipsed by the Google v. The Chinese Government spat is the news that Go Daddy, the world's largest domain name registration company, plans to pack up and go from China. The reason is that new rules from the Chinese Communist Party require applicants to provide photographs and extensive personal information.

Sounds good, doesn't it. But then so did the Google stuff until you realise that Google only has a small part of Chinese market. In the case of Go Daddy I suspect that the cost of implementing the new rules - which must be large if the documents supplied are to be verified properly - played a large part.

Let's face it. The primary duty of companies is to their shareholders. Unless the company is run by crooks - think Enron - this means that decisions are taken not for moral reasons, but to increase shareholder value. You can influence companies with moral arguments, but only by making a failure to follow that moral imperative reduce shareholder value. Usually this is done by persuading the government to pass laws with massive fines for non-compliance, or by a successful boycott of the company's products.

We may yet see more western companies pulling out of the Chinese market for 'moral' reasons. Take it with a pinch of salt and look at the cost of doing business in that market instead.
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/us-internet-company-quits-china-20100325-r004.html

I was shocked - SHOCKED I tell you - to read that the 'very existence' of the United States of America is under threat, according to FBI top cyber-agent Steven Chabinsky.

Perish the thought that angling for a bigger budget might be the cause for this dramatic warning issued recently at the Federal Office Systems Exposition in Washington DC. Mr Chabinsky wears a lot of different hats. He's the chair of the National Cyber Study Group, the director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force and assistant deputy director of National Intelligence for Cyber, and a Cyborg in his own right. Ok skip the last one, I made that up!

Unfortunately, the silly hype obscures some quite sensible comments in his peroration. In particular, his point that "...given enough time, motivation and funding," he said, "a determined adversary will always - always - be able to penetrate a targeted system..." is very much to the point.

In the meantime, the FBI, like the UK's 'intelligence' community, is trawling for wannabe cyber warriors who can as Mr Chabinsky put it, "talk the talk".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/24/us_under_cyber_threat/

Some of the best stories in recent years have come from Wikileaks, and now it's published a two year old, 32 page document showing that the US Army considers Wikileaks to be a "counterintelligence threat", and discussing actions to deal with the perfidious web site. It's not clear whether the proposed solutions, such as hacking the web site, were ever implemented.

Wikileaks is far from perfect, but it is important, as journalist Robert X Cringely points out, because the mainstream media can no longer be trusted to break these sort of stories about governments and other organisations breaking the law. One of the greatest achievements of democracy was that it replaced the rule of man with the rule of law. The achievement of Wikileaks is to help the continuous struggle to keep it that way.
http://wikileaks.org/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/did-uncle-sam-try-kill-wikileaks-690?
page=0,0&source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2010-03-15

Finally a little snippet about the antics of the UK British Computer Society (BCS). Over the last few years they've been trying to re-invent themselves as a medieval crafts guild, and become the gatekeepers of who can work in the industry. This hasn't gone down very well with quite few members of the BCS, who object to the committee blowing a cool five million UK pounds (about US$7.5 million) on the make-over.

The agitators got together to produce a petition calling for an Emergency General Meeting to kick out the ruling committee. And what do you know... It was rejected by the committee on the grounds that it was electronic, and therefore didn't have -written- signatures. Truly medieval - as in 'XXX Fred Bloggs, his mark'.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/24/bcs_emergency_meeting_kerfuffle/


Homework:

Science news has an interesting piece on the misuse of statistics in science. Claims have been made that over half the findings in published research may be flawed, because of a failure to understand and use statistics correctly. The claim is disputed, but it's pretty worrying, especially when you realise that a lot of these medical science statistical studies are used to drive government policies, such as giving statins to older people to prevent heart attacks.

I'd recommend reading this article, because it explains the problems in a way in which non-scientists can understand. That's no mean achievement for a subject which is so frequently counter-intuative!
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/57091/title/Odds_Are,_Its_Wrong


Scanner:

A day in the life of a programmer
http://i.imgur.com/pdpIk.png

MIT researchers enable self-assembling of chips
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/339837/mit_researchers_enable_self-
assembling_chips/

Sarah's Law review skewed by handpicked sample
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/26/csord_review/


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
28 March, 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.


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page