The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 13, 2011

Official News page 13


WINDING DOWN

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

As you can see from the previous line, it's the day before Valentines Day. Don't bother to try and eat out tomorrow evening, unless you've booked a table, and if you have booked, be prepared for serious eye strain after trying to read the menu by the light of a flickering candle...

The more geeky among you, not having any one to take out, may instead like to spend the evening listening to 'Computer Love' by Kraftwerk. Here is a seven and a half minute version <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caXWqvyJtz0>, and, since it's Kraftwerk, you can probably find a version that lasts all evening if you dig around long enough!

A number of people have asked me why I don't use bit.ly to shorten the URLs in this newsletter. Well there are a couple of reasons. First using the full URL means you can see exactly where you are going, using bit.ly gives you no information - you could be directed anywhere. Secondly, and this is what you are not usually told, .ly is a Libyan domain. Do you really want your URL click to go through a company run by the eldest son of the Libyan president, Muammar-al-Gaddafi?

R.I.P. Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, makers of fine minicomputers in the 1960s and 70s. The minis were a massive innovation in their time, but Olsen failed to understand microcomputers, and by so doing doomed DEC to decline. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Ken Olsen, 1977
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2011/02/08/dec_founder_olsen_dead/page2.html

I have what is known in the trade as a Declaration of Interest: I am avoiding commenting on the Sony PlayStation 3 Hack because the company of which I am the CTO has a professional relationship with one of Sony's divisions.

In the mean time, apropos of nothing, before starting on your eagerly awaited read of my magnificent weekly missive, you might like to amuse yourself by taking a peek at this cartoon by New Yorker Magazine cartoonist Mathew Diffee...


Shorts:

How long does it take to send 500 gigabytes over the Internet? Would it be quicker to walk? How about homing pigeons? Low-tech magazine has an article on exactly this issue. Given that the information density of hard disks is increasing by 100% a year, while the capacity of the Internet is only increasing by 30-40% a year, it's starting to look as though it might be worth just loading a truck with hard drives!

I'm not going to give you the detailed calculations here, they're in the article, but if you walk (10hrs/day, 5 km/h) with a 500 gigabyte hard drive in your backpack, then it's faster than DSL as long as the distance is less than 1,255 KM (761 miles). Pretty impressive, huh? Well, within a few years a carrier pigeon using (say) a 2 TerraByte micro SD chip fastened to its leg would be able to fly to the opposite side of the world faster than DSL! SD chips are currently only a couple of gigabytes, but their capacity is rising rapidly and much faster than the Internet speed is rising.

As Andrew Tanenbaum once pointed out, “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway”.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/02/sneakernet-beats-internet.html

Here's something very strange - a typeface called 'Glorifying Terrorism'. I was a bit stumped by it when a reader pointed it out to me, but the story is that it was designed for a publication by the same name. The book was created in response to the UK government's incredibly vague terrorist offence of the 'glorification of terrorism' in 2006.

In fact, it's so vague that large numbers of sci-fi writers could be hauled off to jail for their published books! It consists of original work from a line up of some of the top sci-fi writers, and features the above mentioned typeface. The law is an ass - no doubt about that, but I'm not sure I would have called a typeface by that name. Still, it takes all types to make up the world. Hopefully, the new UK government will avoid some of the excesses of its predecessor.
http://www.feorag.com/freestuff/glorifying-terrorism.html

One of the things revealed by the last round of WikiLeaks documents was the rather interesting snippet that some US diplomats believe that Saudi oil reserves could be overestimated by as much as 40%. This implies that the output of conventional crude oil could peak within the next ten years. Among other things this implies that the Saudis will not be able to keep down the price of oil by increasing their output for very much longer.

Of course, this is speculation, but oil and mining companies are notorious for overestimating their reserves in order to keep up their share price. In the middle eastern countries dependent on the black stuff, the issue would become one of national security. We shall see whether the reports are accurate in due course, no doubt.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2011/02/10/WikiLeaks-
Saudi-oil-reserves-overstated/UPI-16841297339421/

I see that the French have come up with a new cell phone tower box. What's amazing about it is that they have reduced the size from that of a filing cabinet to that of a Rubik's cube. The net effect of this is not only to make cell phone towers so much less visually intrusive, but to cut the cost of ownership of the things, making areas that are currently not economically viable able to have regular cell phone coverage. Nice work.
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/02/07/alcatel-lucent-shrinks-cell-tower-to-a-cube/

Finally in this section, a useful little piece debunking some of technology's most pervasive myths, ranging from "Cell phones cause plane crashes" to "More bars on your cell phone mean better service" by way of "You should regularly defrag your hard drive". Take a look - you might just be surprised!
http://www.infoworld.com/t/consumer-electronics/technologys-biggest-myths-
197&current=1&last=14#slideshowTop


Homework:

I think most people have heard of Rosie the Riveter, but have you heard of the math Rosies who acted as computers for ballistics calculations and as the programmers for the legendary ENIAC computer? No? I'm not surprised - the story was effectively lost after the Second World War. It only surfaced by accident after a chance comment from two of the women involved to film maker LeAnn Erickson. There's going to be a documentary film and a book about it later on this year, and I'd urge anyone interested in the history of computing to look for them when they become available.
http://us.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/08/women.rosies.math/index.html?hpt=C1

There were a couple of interesting reports from the other side of the global warming debate this week. The first was that in the last 60 years emissions of aerosols - not the tin cans, but very small particles of soot and dust, etc - have increased rainfall in the rain forests of the Amazon and Central Africa. The result has been decreasing wind speeds in the tropical Atlantic and less extreme weather events.

The second piece came from polar ice experts at Hamburg's Max Plank Institute for Meteorology, disputing the idea that there was a 'tipping point' at which the Arctic ice cap would vanish forever. They calculate that even if the ice completely melted, it would only take two years to recover, because open water allows heat to escape more easily than when it is blanketed with ice.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/07/aerosol_rainfall_amazon/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/no_tipping_point_for_arctic_sea_ice/

You may have thought the Vikings specialized in rape and plunder, but it seems that this is not the case. They also indulged in trade and sightseeing. We know this thanks to some thirteenth century travel guides recently interpreted by Reykjavik University's Gisli Sigurdsson. The most interesting bit is about Scotland which is described as being full of dangerous natives who speak an incomprehensible language and with awful weather! Based on my own experiences when I lived in Scotland as a teenager for a while, I can confirm that little has changed...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/6212823/Vikings-were-warned-
to-avoid-Scotland.html

Finally, take a look at these images from 'Gizmag'. They are the first pictures of intact viruses, imaged by a new technique using the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser. Stunning!
http://www.gizmag.com/lcls-used-to-obtain-virus-and-protein-images/17809/


Geek Toys:

All the reports indicate that the Pentagon's Judge Dredd style XM-25 computer smart gun is going down a bomb (so to speak) in Afghanistan. I've mentioned this 'gun' before. Actually it would be more accurately described as hand held artillery! It does actually fire shells rather than bullets, albeit small ones.

Five of the prototypes were sent to the frontlines for troops to try out, and they love them. So much so, that they don't want to give them back now that the test period is up! At the moment there are no plans to produce any more, and both the weapon and the ammunition have to be hand made. I doubt if you'll find one advertised on e-bay, so if you really want to stand a chance to try out this ultimate geek toy, you'll need to join the army...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/xm25_astan_reports/


Scanner:

Senator Wyden asks what is up with Homeland Security domain seizures
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110202/23363812934/senator-wyden-
asks-wtf-is-up-with-homeland-security-domain-seizures.shtml

In-app purchases in iPad, iPhone, iPod kids' games touch off parental firestorm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/07/AR2011020
706073.html ?hpid =topnews&sid =ST2011020706437

Terror in the north: Canada loses grip on reality
http://www.infoworld.com/t/regulation/terror-in-the-north-canada-loses-grip-
reality-364?source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2011-02-07

'Tree Octopus' proves journalists no smarter than 13-year-old Americans
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/07/tree_octopus_research_new_literacies/

Italian white van man nudges sound barrier - €165 fine for hitting 1,230 km/h
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/fiat_sound_barrier/


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Lois, 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
13 February, 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.


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