WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
And yet another issue of Winding Down hits the zeros and ones of the digital presses. Environmentalists might like to take note that we use 100% recycled electrons and no positrons were harmed in the making of this newsletter.
So, I guess, we might as well get right down to business!
Shorts:
I didn’t cover the new iPad3, it wasn’t necessary, because everyone else did - at length... I would, however, make one comment on the new screen. I think that its a game changer. Not so much on the iPad itself, but on all other devices. Apart from anything else, development upward from its current small screen will bring down the prices of large high resolution screens in a few years time, a decade at the most.
Even if such screens were available now, it would take video card hardware designers a couple of years to catch up. And as for software to take advantage of it, add another couple of years! Still you have give Apple the credit for giving us a glimpse of the future for computing appliances.
http://www.gizmag.com/new-ipad-3-display/21906/
Wow! Mega-screwup over here in the UK by Barclays Bank. They’ve been issuing their Visa customers with contactless cards - the sort you can wave over a card reader instead of having to feed it into the machine. Unfortunately, they didn’t encrypt the information, and now a couple of researchers have found that readers built into the latest mobile phones can take the unencrypted data from the cards in just one swipe, even when the card is in your wallet and pocket!
Since about 13 million people have been issued with these cards by Barclays Bank, there’s something of a problem. Even the Information Commissioner, the official guardian of people’s personal data, whose department is not exactly known for lightening fast reflexes, has taken note and is making threatening noises. Barclays Bank, I’m given to understand is ‘concerned’.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9163969/Barclays-contactless-cards-exposed-to-fraud.html
And while we are in England, I have to tell you I was shocked to learn that the Metropolitan Police Force (that’s the London police) will be using state of the art software in its Special Operations Room as it looks after the city’s Olympic Games security. State of art, that is, in the 1980s. Yep, the software, MetOps, is a messaging and recording system that was installed in the 1980s.
It’s not even linked to the police central communications center that dispatches police to incidents. Its inadequacies are rumored to have caused some of the problems that resulted in the lack of policing during the rioting last year. I wonder if I should dig out my old Commodore 64 for them to use as a backup?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/19/met_police_will_use_1980s_
software_during_2012_olympics/
The latest piece of insanity on the copyright front comes from Belgium, where the rightsholders group wants to charge libraries for reading books to children! About the only good thing is that the group in question, SABAM, have a record of losing every battle on copyright that they have taken to court. Previous legal battles have included trying to force ISPs to install filter to prevent the illegal downloading of files (they lost), and trying to force social networking companies to prevent illegal trading of digital music (they lost). I guess you could say they’re a bunch of losers! I certainly can’t see them winning this one. The only problem is that someone will now have to waste time, energy and money seeing off these looneys. I wonder if the Belgian legal system supports the concept of vexatious litigants?
http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/03/13/belgian-rightsholders-group-wants-to-charge-libraries-for-reading-books-to-kids/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation
I won’t be giving you any more URLs from the New York Times in the foreseeable future, I’m afraid. That’s because it is raising the bar on its paywall even higher. I was always a bit unsure whether to do so previously, but now that you can only read 10 articles a month without subscribing it’s not worth linking to. Sad, but it’s their decision, and they think they can make it work. Only time will tell, but I suspect they may have difficulty keeping their existing nearly half a million subscribers.
http://allthingsd.com/20120320/new-york-times-makes-its-pay-wall-harder-to-jump/
Homework:
Last week I mentioned the Startram orbital launch system. I see that there is a similar system - but along the ground - proposed for fast terrestrial travel. It’s called ETT, which stands for Evacuated Tube Transport. No, it’s not where the driver throws everyone off the London Underground train short of their destination. It’s a system of maglev propelled trains traveling fast (very fast) in a vacuum tube.
Of course, this isn’t suitable for use on your average commuter journey, this is for long distance journeys. From New York to Beijing in a mere two hours, for instance. On a long haul, like NY to Beijing, the train would accelerate at one gravity for about three minutes, by which stage it would be traveling at 4,000 mph (6,500 KPH) and would then coast until it was time to slow down. Shorter trips would only accelerate to 370 mph (161 kph).
The secret lies in the vacuum - because there is no air resistance, you only need driving power for the first 100 miles, after that it just coasts along. You’d have to be pretty sure of the vacuum, though. Slamming into air at 4,000 mph, would not be nice. Even if the train itself survived (unlikely), the deceleration forces involved would reduce the passengers to a gruesome paste spread over the car walls.
I’ll be interested to see how both ETT and Startram get on. Both of them are serious, achievable engineering, based on current engineering practice, though the financial obstacles are formidable.
http://www.gizmag.com/et3-vacuum-maglev-train/21833/
One of the things that’s really useful is to run the math on politician’s promises. You’d be surprised just how little sense some of their pronouncements make. Or then again, maybe you wouldn’t... Currently the cure all, in the US, for rising gas (petrol for my UK readers) prices is more drilling in the US itself. As it happens this has been tried before, so we can look at the figures, and see if reductions in cost and increased US oil production go hand in hand.
Associated Press did exactly that. The produced a statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted, gasoline prices and US domestic oil production. And guess what? They found that there was no statistical correlation between the cost of fuel at the pump and the amount of oil coming out of US oil wells. So, now you know, but I doubt that the evidence will be enough to convince any of the presidential hopefuls, because the argument for more oil production sounds so obvious.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/03/22/ap-gas-prices-analysis/
Even wanted to design radio circuits? (I know this is the sort of thing my readers dream of...) You might be interested in a free experimental on-line adaption of the undergraduate analog design course that MIT is currently providing. If you’re in for this, then take a look at the URL.
https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/
Geek Stuff:
Here’s an interesting little video. It’s a piece by cyber-illusionist Marco Tempest, showing and explaining some of his tricks. I’m not going to spoil it by telling you what the tricks are, but here’s the URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17478070
Scanner: Other stories
Can fast reactors speedily solve plutonium problems?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fast-reactors-to-consume-plutonium-and-nuclear-waste&offset=2
Burning Ice: The next energy boom?
http://www.miller-mccune.com/environment/burning-ice-the-next-energy-boom-40425/
$100 to fly through the airport security
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303863404577
281483630937016.html
Cybercops traced Toulouse massacre suspect through IP address
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/22/toulouse_manhunt/
The shocking truth about defibrillators
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/the-shocking-truth-about-defibrillators/0
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
25 March 2012
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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