WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
It's hot I tell you - hot, hot, hot. But since it's never hot in England, we don't have air conditioning in trains, buses, offices or in homes. While it does save on the electricity, this attitude does little to help maintain productivity in our sagging economy. By 3pm most people are struggling to stay awake, and the internet grinds to a halt as everyone surfs the internet mindlessly, because that's all they are capable of. One day, perhaps, we will learn that the times they are a-changing. Then again, based on past experience, perhaps not.
So here are some things for you to read about. Some cool, some not so cool, but, hopefully, something for everyone...
Shorts:
I have in my hand a piece of paper... Unlike Neville Chamberlain's piece of paper, this one isn't signed by Mr Hitler. Instead it's a brochure from a well known company that specializes in selling printer ink. They have an offer that symbolizes the lunatic situation with the cost of printer ink and toner. If you buy two sets of four toners (ie the four colors), they'll give you a free Dell 1320CN color laser printer!
Someone once calculated that volume for volume, inkjet ink was more expensive than Krug vintage champagne, and it's clear that a similar situation applies to laser toner. I checked on Amazon UK - the printer costs 121 UK pounds (US$182). One has to wonder what sort of profit there is on the toner to sustain this sort of give away!
[Source: company brochure]
What is it about politicians that means they can't keep their collective noses out of other people's business? Here in the EU, the European Parliament, has passed a resolution demanding that search engine companies keep details of peoples' searches for two years for possible analysis by the authorities. This is fairly obviously not aimed at the big boys, like Google, who keep the information until forced to delete it by privacy laws, but at privacy orientated search companies like Ixquick who deliberately keep no record of people's searches.
The excuse is, of course, to catch child pornographers, but as Alex Hanff of Privacy International pointed out, "I spent eight years helping law enforcement track down online sex offenders and never once did we see a case where search engine data was useful." A public campaign is being started to prevent this measure becoming law.
[Source: Caspian Newsletter]
And here's something else that I didn't find on the net. One of last month's New Scientist mags (I'm a little behind with my reading at the moment, as you can see) contained a piece about DNA logic gates. It seems that researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have succeeded in forming XOR logic gates from short strands of DNA. DNA has been used to form logic gates before, but the new method is much more stable, and re-usable.
The article waxes enthusiastic about the possibilities for injectable computers which would control the flow of drugs. Well yes, that may sound brilliant, but for me, the $64K dollar question is: what happens if the program in the injectable computer has a bug in it? I think I'll let someone else try this out first...
[Source: New Scientist 5 June 2010]
In an impressive example of the power of technology properly applied, Carnegie Mellon Innovations Lab (CMIL), NASA and the US Geological Survey were able to help the Santa Clara DA's office solve a murder case that went cold in 1991. The problem was that the car in which the victim was last seen went missing and was never found, and the case against the suspect was dismissed for lack of evidence, since there was also no body and no gun found. Recently, information came to light that the car had been dismantled and the parts buried in an large abandoned car lot in Alviso, an area with an enormous amount of buried metal, far too much to dig all of it up or use a standard metal detector.
The team used a Senseta MAX 5.0A Rover, an autonomous ground vehicle, to perform a magnetic survey of the lot, using search algorithms developed by NASA and CMIL to search for parts that matched those of the missing car. The were successful, and on being confronted with the evidence the suspect confessed and was convicted of manslaughter.
Nice work!
http://www.physorg.com/news197817510.html
If you would like to see some really nice computer rendered pictures, then take a look at a selection of the top entries for UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering's rendering algorithms contest. From my point of view, what's particularly nice about the whole thing is that the rendering algorithms were written in C++, the language that I use to write my programs! Definitely the way to go...
http://cse-ece-ucsd.blogspot.com/2010/06/cse168-rending-algorithms-
first-second.html
There's an interesting opinion piece on the Australian PC Authority web site suggesting that PCs are about to make a come back for hard core gaming. A lot of studios have stopped producing games for PCs because of the piracy problems, but now there are indications - the success of digital distributor Steam, for instance - that PC gamers will buy games, and that the market has more to offer than originally suspected.
One of the key reasons is that display hardware and software on the PC is advancing in leaps and bounds, while it is static and starting to look old on the consoles. Already PC windows game display hardware and software is two generations ahead of consoles, which essentially use DirectX 9, while the latest PCs use DirectX 11. The introduction of Microsoft's Kinect, and Sony's 3D PlayStation 3 titles are intended to extend the life of the current console machines, which means that by the time the next generation of consoles come out the current generation will be even further behind.
In the mean time those who have been making games for the PC market will be well placed to take advantage of the hardware and software on the new generation of consoles. Sort of a win-win proposition for those who know what they are doing. I hope this analysis is correct, because most of the games I play on my PC at the moment fall into the 'oldie, but goldie' category...
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/218829,opinion-is-pc-gaming-set-for-a-
comeback.aspx
I'm sure my US readers will want to take a look InformationWeek's slide show of the 12 worst government web sites! Pride of place goes to the US Army Special Operations Command web site, which features a central motif of obscure army unit symbols, and an ultra wide bar of times in different time zones all ticking away, but which seems to have no purpose other than to extend the site horizontally to three times its natural width. It also features drop down menus that obscure other parts of the site (a not uncommon problem, I have to say) and massively inconsistent use of upper and lower case letters.
http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/government/info-management/
showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225402205&pgno=1&isPrev=
It's not very often I see stories about IT helping 'da workers' maintain the living standards, usually it's about IT making them redundant. This week, however, it's different. It seems that after an appeals court in California ruled in favor of a plan by the Governator to reduce the salaries of state employees to the federal minimum, the word went out to make it so.
Unfortunately, or otherwise, depending on whether you are a taxpayer or a government worker, the decision immediately hit an IT roadblock. It seems the state is still using payroll software written in the 1960s, and last updated in 1970. That's a long time ago. And it can't handle the changes required until it gets a major overhaul, which wouldn't be ready until 2012. There's a lesson here about keeping software up to date and not letting it rot for forty years...
http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/state-local/showArticle.jhtml
?articleID=225702383&cid=nl_tw_software_2010-07-06_t
GPS maker TomTom have produced a hilarious set of video adverts for their latest Star Wars themed voice series. Have a look at this video of the studio engineers trying to cope with Yoda's inversion of grammar while recording his directions, as the video you play.
http://jalopnik.com/5582519/yoda-recording-his-tomtom-gps-voice-this-is
Remember that case against Microsoft that was settled in 2007 for a cool US$179.5 million? It was based on the idea that Microsoft's anti-competitive conduct caused consumers to pay more for software between 1994 and 2006. Well the settlement includes a massive US$75 million in attorney fees, and now attorneys for the 23 states involved are going to court to try and get a cut of the fees from the attorney who originally filed the case. What was that old saying, 'When thieves fall out...'?
http://www.physorg.com/news197659641.html
John Markoff, an author for whom I have a lot of respect, has a short piece in the New York Times which is well worth reading. It's about anonymity and the internet. It looks at the problems and some of the proposed solutions in the light of the recent Obama administration proposals.
The piece doesn't come down in favor of any particular solution, but it does also draw attention to an equally pressing problem - that the very fabric of the internet itself assumes that all the information it uses to run itself is trusted. That's an increasingly contentious assumption. It is possible to fix this through technical means, but first standards have to be agreed, and then it would probably take about ten years to replace all the existing equipment.
The problem is that we don't have ten years, and no one really has much in the way of ideas for an interim solution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/weekinreview/04markoff.html?_r=3
Bill Snyder has an interesting piece in InfoWorld, that may be a harbinger for the future. In it he argues that the time when the likes of Amazon and eBay can continue without paying state taxes is coming to an end, and that this is rightly so.
His premise is based on two things. The first is the fact that internet retailing can no longer be considered as a sickly start up needing tax breaks to survive. The second is the yawning deficit faced by local government bodies as a result of the lost taxes - currently estimated at something between US$52 billion and US$56 billion over the whole of the USA. That's a lot of money.
There's also the fact that as more and more items can be purchased over the internet (here in the UK Amazon is moving into selling beer and groceries, for instance), local businesses are placed at a major disadvantage.
Of course, no one likes paying taxes, either, although we all like receiving the services provided. The big online retailers will undoubtedly fight tooth and nail to prevent having to pay tax, since a large part of their success is intimately tied up with being tax free. I suspect though, as Snyder predicts, the combination of the economic downturn's effect on tax revenue, and the obvious fact that the big online players are very successful, is likely to turn the tables on those who seek to retain the status quo.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/why-its-time-tax-internet-
sales-547?page=0,1&source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2010-07-08
Homework:
This week's homework is to watch a short, but fascinating video from TED about the 3D Atlas of the Universe project. It's presented by Carter Emmart, who coordinated the artists, scientists and programmers who have built a complete 3D visualization of the known universe.
There's no truth in the rumor that superstring theory physicists are waiting for the 12D version before they pass comment on the project...
http://www.ted.com/talks/carter_emmart_demos_a_3d_atlas_of_the_universe.html
And while we are looking at videos from TED, if you are in the mood for a scary glimpse of how dangerous the ocean food chain can be for humans as well as for the likes of top predators like dolphins, take a look at this somewhat longer piece narrated by marine biologist Stephen Palumbi.
http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_palumbi_following_the_mercury_trail.html
There's trouble at t' mill, or at least in t' labs, since a new accurate way of measuring the mass of the proton, building block of the atomic nucleus, shows it to be 4% lighter than it was though to be. Oooops! There's a lot of science that depends on calculations with the old value, so this result has really put the cat amongst the pigeons, with a scramble to repeat the experiment.
Does this mean, I hear you ask, that everything as we know it is going to shrink by 4%? I doubt it. and in any case, how would we know, since all our measuring tools would also shrink by 4%, and give the same reading. (Any one who can spot a logic error in the last statement can award themselves a gold star and ten house points.)
What it does do, though (if it's accurate), is to throw a spanner in the works of either all the calculations made with the old results or the theory of quantum electrodynamics. It will be interesting to see how physicists manage to explain this one away!
http://www.physorg.com/news197727820.html
Geek Toys:
Here's a cool geek toy for the summer heatwave - a robot that can go and open the fridge and fetch you a cold beer - not just any beer, but the beer you specified. Willow Garage, builders of fine hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications, have produced a version of their PR2 robot that can do just this. Not only that, but they produced the necessary software in a week! Take a look at the video and be jealous, very jealous...
http://singularityhub.com/2010/07/07/willow-garage-robot-fetches-beer-
engineers-rejoice-video/
http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us
If Robots R Not U, then how about Lego? On July 2nd Lego celebrated the opening of its New York Rockefeller Center store with the final assembly in the plaza of a 16 feet tall, two ton, Big Apple that 17,000 people helped to build. The store itself houses Lego versions of a number of classic New York landmarks and scenes. My favorite was the Lego version of The Rockettes! (btw, my spelling checker suggests this should be 'The Brochettes') Have a look at the gallery of pictures.
http://dvice.com/archives/2010/07/30-photos-of-cl.php
Scanner:
Banned for life from the Miami-Dade Metrorail
http://stretchphotography.com/blog/2010.07.01/banned-from-metro/
Professor warns that the Great Australian Firewall is undemocratic
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/07/aus_firewall_filters/
Crack the code in Cyber Command’s logo
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/solve-the-mystery-code-in-cyber-
commands-logo
http://isc.sans.edu/tools/reversehash.html
Review: Dan Bricklin's Note Taker HD puts the "Pad" in iPad
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=225702272&cid=nl_tw_software_2010-07-06_t
NSA to spy on critical infrastructure, says WSJ
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/nsa-2/?utm_source=
feedburner&
utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+
(Top+Stories+2))
iTunes accounts hacking more widespread than initially thought. The facts, and what you should do.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/07/04/appstore-hack-itunes/
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
11 July, 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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