WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
This week was a milestone in the very short history of the Internet, and a lesson to those who still believe that the net is somehow too big/vital/dangerous for governments to turn off. The Egyptian government did indeed turn off the Internet in its country, in an effort to make organizing opposition more difficult.
There are, of course, ways around it, but they are difficult and require some technical expertise. And alternatives are springing up, like ham radio.
But the question being asked is, could it happen here? (By 'here' is usually meant the US and Europe.) The answer is probably, but the real question is 'Why would the government of a technically savvy developed country cut off the Internet?' Doing so would do immediate and enormous damage to the economy of any western government foolish enough to try it. And even more to the point, it would make it much more difficult to track down the ring leaders of whatever it is that provoked the closing down!
The Egyptian government can shut down the Internet in Egypt precisely because it isn't part of the nation's critical infrastructure - it's an optional extra. It's notable that the one Internet provider still available in Egypt is the one used by the Egyptian Stock Exchange! Whether Egypt would still be able to close their Internet down in (say) 30 years time is entirely debatable.
In the meantime, here is a URL to help you keep an eye on the situation.
Robert Cringely's analysis (in the 'Scanner' section) is also worth a read.
And now on to other matters...
Shorts:
Here's an interesting little snippet from the Huffington Post web site. It claims that 60% of AOL's profits come from customers who don't understand the devices they are using. The article uses the term 'Misinformed Customers', but that implies, wrongly that the company is deliberately giving customers wrong information, which doesn't seem to be the case.
AOL, it seems gets 80% of its profits from dial-up subscribers, many of whom have cable or DSL, but don't realize that they needn't pay an additional US$25 a month to get online and check their e-mail.
Time to have a word with mom 'n' pop, and grandma 'n' grandad I suspect.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/21/aols-dirty-little-secret-
_n_812307.html?ir=Business
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-cancel-aol#start-by-clicking-the-
link-aol-on-the-top-left-1
Declaration of interest: I am one of the organizers of the ACCU annual security conference to raise funds for the trust that runs the UK's WWII codebreaking site at Bletchley Park. A short while ago equipment and expertise was donated by Hewlett-Packard which is allowing millions of stored documents to be catalogued, digitized and made available online.
Recently, the process uncovered a decrypted message that showed that the efforts by British and US intelligence to convince the Germans that the Normandy landings were a diversion, and that the 'real' landing would be in the Pas de Calais area, succeeded. The message, sent a few days after the landings, showed that the German High Command was holding back resources, including Panzer divisions sorely needed by its troops in Normandy, in order to counter what it thought was the true invasion. Amazing stuff. And I'm happy to see that despite all its troubles Hewlett-Packard is still capable of helping out. Good work!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12266109
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
http://accu.org/index.php/conferences/accu_conference_2009_security
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/index.html
And while we are on the subject of intelligence work, I note that US investigators haven't been able to find any links between Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking secret information to WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, WikiLeaks front man. It looks like Manning just loaded the stuff onto CDs and handed them over, or sent them off. Which means there's no electronic trail to follow!
Interesting, to say the least, and food for thought for would be leakers. Oh, I don't doubt that even if Manning hadn't been such a blabbermouth he would have been fingered eventually. I seriously doubt that there weren't logs of his accessing all the documents he leaked which would have turned up in an audit. But after that? End of trail. In this case we know, of course, where they ended up, but that won't always be so.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/25/assange_cant_be_tied_to_manning_says_report/
I'm not on Facebook. Neither, I suspect will quite a number of other people be after they become aware of Facebook latest wheeze. It's planning to allow corporates to use subscriber information to make Facebook users into sponsors in adverts for their products. And no - you don't have any choice, and no you don't get paid.
I'm not sure how much it would cost for companies to get celebrities to do this, but I would guess it would run into at least into six figures. So Facebook gets income, the companies get cheap sponsorship, and the users of Facebook get...
http://gothamist.com/2011/01/25/no_opting_out_of_facebook_using_you.php
And while we are on the subject of Facebook, reading my Evening Standard on the subway going home last Friday, what should I find but a piece on Facebook. It was in the business pages and revealed that nine in ten customers of the Bloomberg financial data group believe the Facebook is overvalued. In fact over half of those questioned believed that Facebook's recent valuation by Goldman Sachs signaled the "beginning of a dangerous new bubble".
I'm sure that readers will remember Goldman Sachs as one of the banks that had to be bailed out by the government in the last financial crisis. Currently, Facebook isn't required to give out much public financial information, since it isn't a public company, and it has less than 500 investors. So Goldman Sachs is running an investment scheme soliciting money from investors which will go into a fund, and the fund, counting as only one investor, will invest in Facebook. A wizard wheeze to evade the rules.
As it happens, in spite of the blunders they've made over the past years, the US financial regulators aren't entirely blind to what's going on and put their foot down. So now only Europeans are allowed to be stupid enough to invest in Facebook via Goldman Sachs!
The question is, of course, "Why are Facebook afraid of having to open their books?"
[Source: Evening Standard, paper edition]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#TARP_and_Berkshire_Hathaway_investment
Oh and one last thing before I move off the topic of Facebook. PCMag has a neat little piece by John Dvorak entitled "Why I Don't Use Facebook". It's a perfect explanation of why I personally have no use for the service, even leaving aside security concerns!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375715,00.asp
Yahoo! (Remember Yahoo!? It's still there.) has a piece on the military value of the moon. When I was a teenager quite a lot short sci-fi stories featured the moon having military value - probably a reflection of the then current state of the Cold War. After that the theme seemed to drop away.
Now, the suggestion is that the question of the moon's military value might indeed by back on the agenda. The reasons for this are to do with the improvements in technology over the past 20-30 years.
Bases on the dark side of the moon would make ideal hidden launch pads for stealth rockets designed to knock out near earth orbital assets, for instance. Then there is the point that the moon has important resources - water and helium-3 - the latter unavailable on Earth. The suggestion has even been made that a nation controlling the moon could deny other nations access to space.
It's a worrying thought.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110125/us_ac/7701122_does_the_moon_
have_military_value
Homework:
For a long time researchers have been trying to find out the cause of what is known as the 'Late Permian' extinction. The event happened about 250 million years ago, and wiped out 95% of life in the sea and 70% of the life on land.
Now researchers from the University of Calgary's Department of Geoscience working with research scientists at Natural Resources Canada have found what looks proof that the extinction was called by coal fires on an unprecedented scale.
It all started with the most massive volcanic eruptions in recent (well relatively recent) history, in what is not known as the Siberian Traps in northern Russia. The volcanos cover an area of two million miles (larger than Europe) and were thrust up through coal beds which they immediately set on fire. Toxic ash from the resulting conflagration has been found as far afield as the Canadian arctic, and would have rendered the oceans nearly uninhabitable, as well as the gasses generated contributing to the Earth heating up at that time.
I guess the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name that caused so much disruption to travel recently wasn't such a big deal, after all!
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-gun-world-biggest-extinction.html
Meanwhile, in North Carolina State University they've been looking at computer memory and have come up with an interesting flash/DRAM hybrid memory, which could have striking implications for computer power usages. The memory consists of dynamic RAM memory, which needs regular refreshing to make sure it doesn't lose its contents. Piggy backed onto this is flash memory which only works at a slightly higher voltage. Flash memory is the stuff you get in cameras, USB sticks and the like - you don't need an electric current going through it to keep the contents.
The concept is simple, when the running program isn't using a chunk of memory you write the DRAM contents into the flash memory and turn off the current to that memory. When the program needs the memory again, you copy the flash back into DRAM and away we go. Neat, and as I say simple.
The devil though is in the details. Apart from designing manufacturing to bring the costs to a competitive level, there is the question of how you know ahead of time which memory isn't going to be used for long enough to make it worth while switching to flash. Then of course you need to know ahead of time when the program is going to need the memory again, given that it takes time to read from flash into RAM. It's not insurmountable, but it will take time. Still my guess is that it's a technology worth keeping an eye on.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4212372/-Universal--memory-aims-
to-replace-flash-DRAM
You may have heard of the Antikythera Mechanism. It was built by Greek engineers in 100BC, and lost aboard a ship that floundered soon after. It was recovered from the shipwreck in 1901, but no one had the faintest idea what it was supposed to do, mainly because it was so badly corroded.
In 2006 its function was finally revealed using high resolution X-ray tomography. It is an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision. Some have gone as far as to describe it as the world's first scientific instrument.
Now a fully functioning replica has been build out of Lego, and a video on You Tube provides a description of how it works.
Absolutely fascinating!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPVCJjTNgk
Geek Toys:
Warning: contains implied criticism of Apple/Steve Jobs. There's an interesting piece in InfoWorld about the new Galaxy Tab from Samsung. The 7-inch Android tablet is a near competitor to the iPad. After reading conflicting reviews of the beast the author decided to try one out for himself. His view was, to my mind at least, probably the nearest I've seen yet to a balanced view. First he thinks that, in spite of the barracking from Apple about the uselessness of 7-inch screens, Apple will bring out a 7-inch version of the iPad, and the rest of the manufacturers will bring out a 10-inch version.
He found that the 7-inch form factor, which fits his pocket nicely is just what he needs for his work. I on the other hand will wait for a 10-inch form factor, because I want to be able to look at diagrams on it - and I don't want anything tied to iTunes.
One final thing, I thought, was fascinating. The author, once he has his own Galaxy Tab (rather than the review copy) is planning to dispense with his smart phone and get a 'dumb' phone like the Jitterbug, since his mobile computing power will have moved over to the tablet. You know, I might just follow that lead once I get a tablet that fits my needs...
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/galaxy-tab-great-tablet-the-cant-do-
apple-crowd-450?page=0,0&source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2011-01-26
And now a little something for geeklings who are Dr Who fans. A battery powered ride-in Dalek! Just make sure you don't exterminate auntie by mistake!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2011/jan/28/doctor-who-
dalek-ride-on-toy
Scanner:
Robert X. Cringely - Cairo mania: Egypt cuts off the Net
http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/cairo-mania-egypt-cuts-the-net-807
Larry Page's Google 3.0
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_06/b4214050441614.htm
Sony v. Hotz: Sony sends a dangerous message to researchers -- and its customers
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message
The rise and rise of the cognitive elite
http://www.economist.com/node/17929013?story_id=17929013
China blocks ' Egypt' on Twitter-like site
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/china-blocks-egypt-on-twitter-like-
site/story-e6frfkui-1225996626566
Could Amazon's bulk-email service spawn spam and malware?
http://infoworld.com/t/web-services/could-amazons-bulk-email-service-spawn-
spam-and-malware-428
A Kinect Princess Leia hologram in realtime
http://www.i-programmer.info/news/144-graphics-and-games/1932-a-kinect-
princess-leia-hologram-in-realtime.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Raptor, 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
30 January, 2011
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.
| 
