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

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: March 16, 2014

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WINDING DOWN

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

by Alan Lenton

For our 500th edition we bring you the Web's 25th birthday, details of the Target credit card heist, a look at Apple and the watch market, fake computer generated academic papers, a European flights map, an earth wind map and gas lighting. Since you are likely to finish that before the end of your first coffee of the morning, there are also URLs for material on the missing plane, a new SOPA type initiative, migraine prevention and the UpStanding Desk.

Yep, it really is our 500th edition. It wasn't a very auspicious start. Edition zero was published three days before 9/11. I nearly didn't continue, business as usual didn't seem quite right. In the event, however, life goes on, and I continued from two weeks after the attack.

I've no idea how many people read it, but there are about 250 people on the mailing list, and presumably they would have cancelled if they were fed up with it! For the record, on average, since it started, I've managed to bring out 10 issues every 13 weeks, which is not bad going.

And I've managed to avoid giving you a long list of all the predictions I made that came out correct, while ignoring the ones that were completely wrong...

Shorts:

Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web, which is 25 years old this month. Note that it's the web, not the internet that is 25... Radio DJs the other day kept refering to Tim Berners-Lee as the inventor of  the internet, which made me gnash my teeth. By the trip home in the evening, someone had obviously had words, because the DJs were now taking pains to explain that Tim BL invented the web not the internet.

It would have been OK if they'd left it at that, but one of them felt compelled to explain that the internet was something that ran on top of the World Wide Web! Grrrr!

Regardless, here are  a few classic pages from the web of yore and a paean to the benefits brought to us all by the net. (Note - make sure you have a pinch of salt available before you read the latter ...)
http://podcasts.infoworld.com/slideshow/143576/happy-web-day-25-websites-25-years-238205
http://www.gizmag.com/www-25-anniversary/31175/

I just read what must be the most stunning report on a data breach ever. It was the one at Target last November. It seems that not that long before the breach Target had installed a major new security system from a well-regarded security company called FireEye, for a cool US$1.6 million.

The FireEye system detected the breach on November 30th as the hackers uploaded a program to move the captured card data off Target's computers. FireEye has facilities to automatically delete suspicious programs it detects, but they were turned off. The monitoring centre in Bangalore picked up FireEye's warnings and passed them on to Target's security centre in the US - where they were ignored!

Incredible. Especially when you consider that even the company's standard antivirus software - Symantec Endpoint Protection - was also reporting suspicious behaviour  for several days around Thanksgiving.

You need to read it yourself; as I said at the start, it's the most stunning report of a hack I've ever come across, and given the lack of sophistication by the hackers, it's got to be classed as one of the most easily preventable.

The CNet report has the short version, while the Bloomberg one has the full story, which it's well worth taking the time to read.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57620289-83/how-target-detected-hack-but-failed-to-act-bloomberg/
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-13/target-missed-alarms-in-epic-hack-of-credit-card-data#p1

Homework:

Rumours abound that Apple is about to move into the watch market. Will they or won't they? I have no idea, but from Apple's perspective it would make sense. Apple have built their reputation on creating new markets, but they haven't created one for a number of years, and sales are flattening out in existing markets as other players catch up and undercut.

It might make sense from Apple's point of view, but an interesting look at things from an outside point of view was published in Forbes last month. I'd commend it to readers for two reasons. First, because it is a classic example of how analysts work to reach their public positions on commercial events, and second because of its exemplary use of figures to back up its conclusions.

You might like to see if you can spot the weak points in the arguments, and then browse through the comments to see what issues other people pinpointed. Disclaimer: I worked with the author, Clem Chambers, in the 80s and 90s.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2014/02/07/iwatch-and-i-wonder-how-apple-can-move-the-needle/

There's an interesting piece in the UK's Guardian newspaper about computer generated fake papers flooding academia. The original computer generated fake paper was a hoax perpetrated in 2005 to expose dodgy scientific conferences. The program used to write the fake paper, SCIgen, was then made available for free download, and from that moment on fake papers took off.

They are so pervasive now that more than a hundred fake papers were discovered to have been published by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). The problem is not merely that academics want to publish hoaxes, it's also that there is an enormous pressure to publish if you want to build a career in academia.

This results in two big, big problems. On the one hand there is the computer generated fakes, and on the other there is the problem of faked results, which have had such a high profile recently. Add to that the highly lucrative nature of scientific journal publishing and scientific conferences and you have the potential for major upsets.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia

Incidentally, my introduction to the weird world of academia came when I was an undergraduate sociology student. I handed in a paper about how industrial workers cope with the boredom and alienation of work by using their employer’s time, tools and materials to surreptitiously produce their own craft pieces, known in the trade as 'foreigners'. (This was in the 1970s, when there were still industrial workers in Western countries.)

The paper was marked as 'D', so I asked my tutor why. She replied that I hadn't cited any academic references. So I pointed out that this was research done by me in a year I'd taken out and worked in several light industrial factories. My tutor just looked completely blank. Apparently it had never occurred to her that someone might write a paper based on empirical research rather than just re-hashing what others had already done! Of such stuff is academia made.

For Geeks:

I love a good data map - they highlight things in a unique way - and I've got an ace one for you from NATS, the air traffic control people based in the UK. It's a video of all the European flights over a 24 hour period. It uses real data, and is cleverly done. I rate it right up there with the Earth wind animated map! (Click the nullschool URL if you haven't seen the windmap yet.)
http://vimeo.com/88093956
http://earth.nullschool.net/

Here's a little treat for retro fans - a house built 99 years ago, with all the gas lighting restored. The only difference is that the owner is using acetylene gas instead of coal gas. Take a video trip around the house...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LArIvPCiMdc

Scanner:

Malaysia missing plane: Automated signals offer more clues (esp read the last part, labeled 'Priority' AL)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26583787

SOPA backers seek to restrict online rights again -- but this time outside the law
http://www.infoworld.com/t/intellectual-property/sopa-backers-seek-restrict-online-rights-again-time-outside-the-law-238424

This migraine preventing space tiara was just approved by the FDA
http://io9.com/this-migrane-preventing-space-tiara-was-just-approved-b-1543210546

UpStanding Desk offers affordable way to work on your feet
http://www.gizmag.com/the-upstanding-desk/31211/

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
16 March 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/index.html.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.

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