WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we look at Microsoft’s attempts to provide acceptable cloud services in the EU, the UK’s new spy bill, heavy metal and punk are soothing, 1,000 early music recordings – free, an exploding rocket, ten tech firsts, an expensive watch, and transport in London. The Scanner section features a bunch of URLs about Microsoft that I didn’t want to burden the main text with, a spy manual for middle management (supposedly for WWII, but my experience indicates they are still using it to sabotage people’s work), US broadband providers and deceptive speeds, colliding universes, Wi-Fi jamming crackdown, and finally H1-B visa abuse.
Hope you like it...
Shorts:
Microsoft think they have found a way to handle the recent upset about the EU so-called ‘Safe Harbour’ agreement, which was recently nixed by the courts over here. They plan to build a version of their Azure cloud system over in the EU – in Germany to be exact. The system will still be Azure but it will be run by a third party trustee.
It’s an interesting model which on the surface would seem to have two advantages from Microsoft’s point of view. First it means (at least theoretically) that the data doesn’t physically leave the EU, thus making it more ‘trustworthy’ in the eyes of European businesses who have been unnerved by the Snowden revelations. Second, it (again theoretically) gets Microsoft off the hook when US courts order the company to provide data held in the EU.
Personally, I wouldn’t hold my breath over either of these use cases. I doubt that many EU business will be convinced, though some who don’t care may opt to use it as a legal fig leaf, and I certainly don’t think that the US courts are going to be fooled one little bit by the fact that the German operation is being run by a ‘trustee’, rather than directly by Microsoft.
Who knows, we may yet see Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella doing the perp walk and working on the chain gang!
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/11/microsoft-trustee-model-for-cloud-mistrust/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZdvVnMXCc
It wouldn’t make much difference here in the UK. The Tory government would prefer to completely ban encryption, but fortunately for everyone it has discovered that it’s just not possible. Apart from anything else, it would make online purchases completely impossible.
Encryption was one of the things that escaped when Pandora opened her box!
Even so the new bill is really draconian. Apart from anything else the Secretary of State will be able to order companies to introduce security vulnerabilities into their software (“back doors”) and then bind those companies over to perpetual secrecy on the matter, with punishments of up to a year in prison for speaking out, even in court. There have been suggestions that it could have been worse, but it is difficult to imagine how. And no doubt the recent killings in Paris will reinforce the determination of the government to proceed with the bill, even though it would have made no difference in the case of something like the Paris killings.
But I guess the bill is about what you’d expect from a bunch of computer illiterates whose idea of a night out as teenagers was to get together as a ‘dining’ club and go out and completely trash restaurants and humiliate women.
http://boingboing.net/2015/11/10/uk-government-can-secretly-ord.html
https://conspicuouschatter.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/uk-draft-ip-bill-the-last-policy-discussion-about-surveillance-before-the-mass-gagging/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/05/ipb_reaction/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/21/bullingdon-club-five-things-we-know_n_8169064.html
Homework:
Good news for aging rockers like myself! Recent research shows that if you were an avid listener to heavy metal and punk rock in the 1980s, then you were significantly happier in your youth and better adjusted that current college age students, or middle aged comparison groups. Given that most research claims that listening to punk and heavy rock makes you angry and aggressive, this brings a breath of fresh air to the debate. Well not so much a debate – more like opinionated people shouting at one another with no one listening.
Actually I have as much doubt about this study as I do about ones finding punk and metal causes aggression. There are so many other variables, for instance the social and economic climate at the time, that the chances of separating out one particular variable are minimal. Won’t stop me quoting this study if I hear someone railing against heavy metal and punk music, though!
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/punk-heavy-metal-music-makes-listeners-happy-and-calm-not-aggressive-according-to-new-australian-study.html
Do you like free music recordings? Well try this lot for size – and it’s all legit. The University of California-Santa Barbara Cylinder Audio Archive have made more than 10,000 of their cylinder recordings available digitally! The recordings originally made on Edison cylinders have been digitized and are now available on the net, complete with a searchable database! Fascinating stuff for the early music buff and a reminder for the rest of us that recorded music has been around for more than a century.
http://www.openculture.com/2015/11/download-10000-of-the-first-recordings-of-music-ever-made-courtesy-of-the-ucsb-cylinder-audio-archive.html
Geek Stuff:
Looking for a spectacular way to blow the last US$200 million of your dotcom windfall in just a few seconds? Then point your browser at the URL at the end of this piece for a set of amazing stills of Orbital Science’s Antares rocket exploding on take-off earlier this year! It didn’t exactly do the launch facility a lot of good either...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/07/nasa_images_of_antares_rocket_exploding/
On a slightly more positive note, InfoWorld just produced a slide show of 10 IT firsts that you’re probably unaware of. For instance, did you know that the first company to have a CIO (Chief Information Officer) was Bank of America in the same year as my Federation 2 online game first went live – 1986. Obviously it was to cope with its customers paying to play my game :)
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3002236/business/o-pioneers-10-enterprise-it-firsts.html
Apple watches, phooey! Kid’s stuff! If you want to be ahead of the crowd and make the iboys and igirls jealous, then I have just the Android watch for you. The Swiss made Tag Heuer Connected. It’s a snip at a paltry US$1,500 – what more could you want? Be the first one on your block to show that you are a real class act!
http://www.gizmag.com/tag-heuer-connected-android-wear-smartwatch-details/40296/
London:
Our subway system is getting crowded. Very crowded. Last month on one day (October 9 to be precise) it carried a record breaking 4.7 million customers. That’s 1.6 times as many people as there are in Wales. Trouble is, it wasn’t designed to carry nearly 5 million customers a day, and it’s bursting at the seams. The worst place is Oxford Circus station – that handles around 100 million passengers a year. And of course, all attempts to extend the capacity result in a loss of capacity while the extensions and improvements are being made! You just can’t win...
So my advice for would be tourists wanting to see old London town is twofold. Assuming you are in the central area, take a bus and go upstairs – you can see a lot from that vantage point, so long as you aren’t in a hurry. Alternatively, if you feel fit, try walking – the centre of London is surprisingly compact. I wouldn’t advise overseas tourists to try cycling in London, though. The place wasn’t designed for cyclists, and even the locals find it quite dangerous enough, but if you aren’t a Londoner and you are used to driving on the wrong side of the road, it can be really nasty!
http://www.cityam.com/228715/on-one-day-last-month-the-london-underground-carried-more-passengers-than-the-population-of-wales
Scanner:
Yet more Microsoft stuff:
Windows 10 growth stalls during October
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/02/windows_market_share_october_2015/
Microsoft drops unlimited OneDrive storage after people use it for unlimited storage
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/microsoft-drops-unlimited-onedrive-storage-after-people-use-it-for-unlimited-storage/
Microsoft Windows 7 Pro: Halloween Horror for PC makers next year
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/03/windows_7_pro_31_oct_2016_cutoff_date_halloween/
Get Windows 10? Microsoft’s push comes to shove
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3001448/microsoft-windows/got-windows-10-microsoft-push-comes-to-shove.html
Other stuff:
The early spy manual that turned bad middle management into an espionage tactic
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-early-spy-manual-that-turned-bad-middle-management-into-an-espionage-tactic
US broadband giants face ‘deceptive speed’ probe in New York
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/26/us_broadband_speed_probe_new_york/
Have we seen signs of another universe colliding with ours?
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2015/11/have-we-seen-signs-of-another-universe.html
Feds spank naughty Hilton, M.C. Dean in Wi-Fi jamming crackdown
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/03/fcc_fines_hilton_in_wifi_throttle_investigation/
The fix is in: Proof that H-1B visa abuse is rampant
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b-visa-abuse-is-rampant-in-tech.html
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
15 November 2015
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.
