WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Another mixed bag to keep you going over the next week: more on the SnoopWall app, the FCC and net neutrality, quick-setting concrete, kids and tablets, slow brains, booth babes, a history of commercial aviation, magnetic monopoles, revenge, and Build with Chrome. When you’ve finished with that lot, you can sample URLs pointing to the “Shopping cart” patent, a South Korea hacking, a Microsoft hacking, IoT cyber attacks, Windows 8.1 GDR 1, and the Tunguska object.
Shorts:
Last week I drew people’s attention to ‘SnoopWall’. Judging from the experience of one reader, my final comment – who will watch the watchers – was more pertinent than I realized. It’s not that the app doesn’t do what it says, it’s that it has no instructions or meaningful controls. It installs a proxy and changes the settings of your apps without telling you, or, more to the point, asking your permission.
Clearly the app was written by the ‘Don’t worry, trust us’ brigade, something that wasn’t mentioned in the enthusiastic Register review I cited. The Register is usually pretty good, but after this I’ll be more critical about their reviews.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/07/app_to_manage_android_app_permissions/
In the middle of last month the Federal Appeals Court told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that its net neutrality rules weren’t legal. Mostly they weren’t legal because previously the FCC had decided not to classify broadband providers as common carriers.
There’s lots of fussing about this result and what it means for net neutrality. But that misses the point. The ruling also effectively gave the FCC the authority to regulate the whole of the US chunk of the Internet by confirming that it had regulatory powers over the broadband providers. The FCC have just got to do it under the correct bit of their Congressional authority.
The ruling took an area that was somewhat murky and clarified the FCC’s powers. Arguably, though it may have lost the case, the FCC has come out of the dispute in a lot stronger position of power over the internet. The rules just thrown out were promulgated at the behest of net neutrality activists. I suspect this constitutes one of the clearest illustrations of the old saw, ‘Be careful what you wish for, or you might get it.’
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57617199-38/appeals-court-strikes-down-fccs-net-neutrality-rules/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57617242-94/why-you-should-care-about-net-neutrality-faq/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57617576-38/worried-about-net-neutrality-maybe-its-the-fcc-that-should-really-concern-you/
What do you do when your hi-tech control room is flooded out with a foot of quick setting concrete? That’s what happened to the control room for the London Underground’s Victoria subway line a couple of weeks ago. To clear it out would need pumps, and those would take time to bring in and set up – and the concrete would set long before the pumps could even get there.
Fortunately, there was one person present who knew how to stop the concrete setting – pour sugar into it, to disrupt the chemical reaction that causes setting. Within a very short space of time a relay of workers was buying up bags of sugar at the nearest supermarket and rushing them back to the control room. In the event, it worked for long enough to get pumping equipment in and clear the sludge out of the room. It took all night to rewire the affected sections, but the subway was back in operation the following morning.
So, now you know what to do if your Network Operations Centre ever gets flooded with quick setting ready mix concrete!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545152/Bungling-workers-accidentally-pumped-cement-London-Underground-control-room-tried-slow-setting-process-throwing-bags-SUGAR-sludge.html
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/workers-bought-sugar-from-supermarket-to-slow-cement-flood-farce-on-victoria-line-9081168.html
Homework:
One of the stories I picked up a couple of weeks ago is timeless and fascinating. It’s about the usefulness of ‘booth babes’ at IT shows. For those of you who’ve never been to a trade show, it is common practice for those hiring booths at the show to also hire attractive young women to drape around their booth. The aforementioned young women are usually dressed in revealing outfits purporting to relate to the vendor’s product in some way.
The booth babes are not expected to know anything about the products being sold, they just have to lure in the prospects...
The problem is that no one has ever done a formal study on whether this technique works. Do you get more people stopping by your booth? Are they the right sort of people – the ones with a budget to purchase your sort of software? Are they more likely to buy your software as opposed to someone else’s, if they can take selfies surrounded by attractive young women? (More to the point what are their wives going to say about it when they find the picture on the mobile phone, or even Facebook!)
There is, however, some informal evidence that booth babes simply don’t work, and that is the topic of the URL for this item. I found it really interesting, in spite of the fact that the publisher couldn’t resist the opportunity to drape the article with pictures of booth babes! Take a look (at the words – the pics are optional), I think you’ll find it interesting!
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/
This URL has nothing to do with hi-tech, but I’m getting old enough that I want you to be aware of it... As the headline puts it so magnificently, “Older Brains Found to Slow Due to Greater Experience, Not Cognitive Decline”. So there – if I pause before replying, it’s my superior experience that I’m bringing to bear on the problem!
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/01/older-brains-found-to-slow-due-to.html
Here’s an interesting little snippet for those of you with an educationalist bent. Two-thirds of young children in the United States now have access to an e-reader or tablet, but only half of them actually use the device to read. That’s not all. Those that did read on the tablet/e-reader only did so for about five minutes, as oppose to spending half an hour with a printed book.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center which did the research also found that the parents were under the illusion that 44% of the time the children were viewing ‘screen media’ it was educational. Although to be fair, they didn’t actually put it in those terms. Reminds me of all those parents who bought their children ‘eductional’ home computers in the 1980’s, only to discover that the overwhelming use was for playing computer games...
http://www.businessinsider.com/kids-arent-reading-on-tablets-2014-1
On a different note I came across a two part article in the Space Review, looking at the history of commercial aviation in the USA, as a possible model for future commercial space exploration. I think those of you who are interested in space exploration will find it a really interesting read. Recommended.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2438/1
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2442/1
Yes! Magnetic monopoles, which I introduced as an item on the trading exchanges of my Federation 2 game some 28 years ago, have finally been created by researchers using a Bose-Einstein condensate. OK, they still haven’t found naturally occurring monopoles yet, but that’s because we’ve barely started exploring the solar system, let alone other star systems.
I must check on the other non-existent things that the exchanges sell...
http://phys.org/news/2014-01-physicists-synthetic-magnetic-monopole-years.html
http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/guide/trading/commod.html
For Geeks:
I know a large number (for some definition of large) of readers are IT people, so I thought I’d draw your attention to InfoWorld’s latest slide show, entitled, ‘Revenge is a dish best served electronically’. As you can probably guess it’s about people who used their IT skills to take revenge for something their company did which they objected to. People in positions of responsibility in IT can wreak havoc – I’ve seen that myself on occasion – but I’d suggest you note that in all the cases the culprits ended up in court.
Remember, you may be ever so clever, and hide your tracks well, but there are always only a very limited number of people with the skills, the motivation, and the opportunity to do that sort of damage. Just because some anonymous hacker working out of Ulan Bator is unlikely to get caught, it doesn’t mean the same applies to a disgruntled insider...
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/138385/revenge-dish-best-served-electronically-12-cautionary-tales-235431
Oh No! Coming soon to a Chrome browser near you – a ‘Build with Chrome’ plugin that lets you use WebGL and your graphics card’s acceleration software to build 3D virtual Lego things. And you thought Minecraft was a time sucker? In the immortal words of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “B-B-B-Baby, you just ain’t seen n-n-n-nothin’ yet”.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/30/google_helps_out_dreadfully_underexposed_lego_brand_with_chrome_app/
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/You-Ain’t-Seen-Nothing-Yet-lyrics-Bachman-Turner-Overdrive/8EAF399C4D03372948256DE3002060ED
Scanner: Other stories
“Shopping cart” patent rolls to a halt at the Supreme Court
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/01/reviled-shopping-cart-patent-rolls-to-a-halt-at-the-supreme-court/
Nearly half of South Korea hacked in insider data theft
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/20/korea_personal_details_card_breach_20_million/
Hackers steal law enforcement inquiry documents from Microsoft
http://www.securityweek.com/hackers-steal-law-enforcement-inquiry-documents-microsoft
Proofpoint uncovers Internet of Things (IoT) cyber attack
http://www.proofpoint.com/about-us/press-releases/01162014.php
Leaked screenshots show changes coming in Windows 8.1 GDR 1
http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/leaked-screenshots-show-changes-coming-in-windows-81-gdr-1-235429
Tunguska object came from Mars say Russian boffins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/28/tunguska_object_came_from_mars_say_russian_boffins/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wayne%27s_Musical_Version_of_The_War_of_the_Worlds
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Asti, 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
2 February 2014
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.
