Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: December 1, 2013

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news

by Alan Lenton

Quite a little potpourri for you this week. The flight UTA772 memorial, NSA and the rest of them, LG creepy TVs, Google Books 1 – Authors Guild 0, sculptures made of tires, the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, and ESEA bit-coin mining. For those who crave a little more there are URLs pointing to internet gambling, a (no longer) secret copyright treaty, cops and robbers using Google Earth, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, using our star as a starship, and satellites looking at the Earth’s magnetic field. Phew, that should keep the search engines happy!

Our Christmas publication schedule is now out, and basically it says that there won’t be an issue next weekend, but we will be back for the following two weeks (the 15th and the 22nd) and then we will be off until Sunday January 12th, when we will be returning with a hangover.

Shorts:

Map Reference: 16°51’53N  11°57’13E
Flight: UTA772
Date: Tuesday, 19 September 1989, 13:59 local time

On this date a bomb exploded on board the a French DC-10 airliner flying from Brazzaville in the Congo to Paris. The plane came down in the middle of the Sahara Desert, and there were no survivors from the 170 passengers and crew. The incident is not that well known, but the victims were not forgotten by the families.

In 2007 relatives of the victims built a memorial to those who died, at the site of the crash. You can see the memorial that they built on Google Earth/Maps, just feed in the map reference. You can also see, in pictures, the story of the building of the memorial, at the URL.
http://www.amazingoasis.org/2013/11/i-noticed-this-tiny-thing-on-google.html

Meanwhile the state, and not just the US state in all its various manifestations, continues to rummage around in other people’s electronic communications. There’s been a lot of talk about the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) spying on its own citizens as well as those of other countries. What is not being talked about, is the fact that all the other countries are also spying on their own citizens, and, of course on US citizens. Why US citizens aren’t kicking up a fuss about this I don’t know.

The spy organizations have always spied on other countries, friends, neutrals and foes. It just happens that the NSA, belonging to the richest country in the world, has more resources to do its work than any other country. If you didn’t realize that, then I’ll let you into another ‘secret’ – the military organizations of all countries have contingency plans not just to invade their enemies, but also to invade their ‘friends’ as well. Just in case they need protecting from themselves, you understand.

In the meantime here are a few URLs to help you keep yourself informed on what’s going on on this front...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57612322-83/google-were-bombarded-by-govt-requests-on-user-data/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/14/web_giants_cry_foul_over_doj_refusal_to_budge_on_fisa/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57612899-38/court-order-allowing-nsa-data-collection-program-revealed/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/14/google_hands_spooks_twice_as_much_data/
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/nsa-spying-will-ultimately-benefit-us-all-231124
http://www.infoworld.com/t/encryption/welcome-the-era-of-encryption-default-231332

Of course, state security agencies are not the only ones electronically watching what you do. There are plenty of other commercial organizations taking an interest in what you do (Hi Google!), however, most of them don’t actually watch you in your living room as you watch the box with friends and family. Note that I said ‘most’, not all. For it turns out that smart TVs from LG do indeed log details of just what you’re watching – and then phone home to tell uncle LG all the details!

One has to wonder what other smart TVs are pulling similar tricks. In the meantime LG, having had the gaff blown on them, are saying that they will provide an update that will stop it, as soon as possible, however long that may be. Also we can assume that the likes of the NSA are intercepting the transmissions back to LG – spies spying on people spying on people so to speak. I’m reminded of the nursery rhyme called Siphonaptera, aka ‘Fleas:

Big fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite ‘em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so, ad infinitum.

And the great fleas, themselves, in turn
Have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still,
And greater still, and so on.

I think you probably get the idea. In the meantime don’t forget to wave to LG when you switch the telly on!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/20/lg_smart_tv_data_collection/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/22/lg_tv_spying_statement/

Homework:

“In my view, Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders. It has become an invaluable research tool that permits students, teachers, librarians, and others to more efficiently identify and locate books. It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books. It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life. It facilitates access to books for print-disabled and remote or underserved populations. It generates new audiences and creates new sources of income for authors and publishers. Indeed, all society benefits.” U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in his summary judgment in favor of Google and against the US Authors Guild.

This little brouhaha has been going on for a very expensive eight years so far, and the result in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit represents a massive defeat for the Authors Guild. The case hinges around whether the it is ‘fair use’ under the copyright act for Google to digitize books and make snippets of those books available in its search results.

A lot of water – and cash – has flowed under the bridge in the last eight years. In that time Google has done many things that I disagree with, but this is definitely not one of them. As the judge rightly pointed out, everyone will benefit from this, including the authors supposedly represented by the Authors Guild.

I trust that the members of the guild are going to start asking their officials some hard questions about where their money went.
http://gigaom.com/2013/11/14/google-wins-book-scanning-case-judge-finds-fair-use-cites-many-benefits/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57612336-93/judge-dismisses-authors-case-against-google-books/
http://business.time.com/2013/11/15/google-just-won-one-of-its-most-important-victories-ever/

And now for a little culture with, perhaps, a slightly ecological slant on it. What do you do with the thousands of old car tires that are dumped every day? Burning them is not recommended, unless you enjoy being roughed up by angry neighbors and hit with large fines by the powers that be. The days when the Vietcong turned them into sandals are long since gone, so what you need to do is to turn them into animal sculpture.

And that’s exactly what sculptor Yong Ho Ji does. And the results are amazing! Take a look at the URL and you will see what I mean. Incidentally, many sculptors make their objects out of the most amazing things, so there are also URLs for sculptures made from pencils, bicycles, and a crocheted locomotive...
http://indulgd.com/amazing-animal-sculptures-created-from-tires-by-yong-ho-ji/
http://indulgd.com/jennifer-maestre-pencil-sculptures/
http://indulgd.com/3144-bicycles-sculpture-by-ai-weiwei/
http://indulgd.com/crocheted-locomotive-by-olek/

For Geeks:

As part of the 50 years of Doctor Who celebrations The Register have taken a look at the history of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, and in particular the work of Delia Derbyshire who actually created and put together the sounds that make up the Doctor Who theme. It’s a fascinating article, complete with photos of the equipment used.

And for the curious, yes, I am old enough to remember how to edit music and sounds on my old 4-track Akai reel-to-reel, using a non-magnetic razor blade and little aluminium block that acted as a guide to cutting at 90 and 45 degrees!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/19/doctor_who_theme_elements_examined/

By the way, do any of you out there work in the computer games industry? Yes? OK – just a little warning, be very careful with your ‘hidden’ easter eggs. You may remember the problem such activity caused Rock Star a few years back. That was nothing compared the little affair that just hit game company ESEA.

It turns out that one of the employees added a little GPU bit-coin mining routine to the code, which was eventually deployed over some 14,000 PCs. the US regulator took a dim view of this sort of activity and slapped a US$1 million on ESEA. Needless to say, the employee was fired (without being able to collect the ill-gotten gains). But I don’t think this is going to be the last time someone tries something like this, though not in the games business for a while at least.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/20/esea_gaming_bitcoin_fine/

Scanner: Other stories

Internet gambling: Play at your own risk
http://www.itbusiness.ca/blog/internet-gambling-play-at-your-own-risk/44701

Secret draft copyright treaty leaked: Meet the Trans-Pacific Partnership
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/13/wikileaks_posts_tpp_text/

Pictured: the ‘real site’ of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/archaeology/10470443/Pictured-the-real-site-of-the-Hanging-Gardens-of-Babylon.html

The Star as Starship
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=29572

Robot swarm positions itself over Earth ... to probe our magnetic field
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/27/swarm_satellites_in_position_to_begin_mapping_earths_magnetic_fields/

Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.

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 Thunderbird spam filter...

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
1 December 2013

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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