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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 3, 2016

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton

We’re back again with the best picks from all the stuff I marked as interesting over the last two weeks. Apple v FBI (again), Cubetto, DMCA take-downs, Shakespeare, a steam powered Raspberry Pie, 25 useful Windows tools, and Shakespeare (again) – this time with archeology. Scanner – our round up of URLs – brings you USB-C and Amazon, hand over your source code, Oculus Rift, augmented reality, Microsoft copies malware, extinction and banks, and proposals for more secure e-mail.

OK – that’s Winding Down ready to go, now I need to have a look at an email I just got from Berry Bros and Rudd suggesting that I might be able to win my own weight in wine!
http://www.bbr.com/win-your-weight-in-wine

Shorts:

One of the more interesting, and perhaps lesser known facts in the Apple v FBI ‘crack this phone or else’ saga is that question of how often the 1789 All Writs Act is used by the FBI. The FBI has claimed that this is strictly a one-off affair. However, it looks like they’ve been telling porkies. The ACLU recently took a look at this claim and found no less than 63 ongoing cases against Apple and Google using this Act. And there are another 13 possible actions involving the Act.

That doesn’t look to me like a one off case, especially when you note that FBI director James Comey is a big fan of the All Writs Act, telling Congress that he has used the old legislation many times in the past for a variety of cases!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/30/fbi_wants_63_more_phones_unlocked/

Homework:

This looks interesting – a way for children to learn coding using wooden blocks. It’s called Cubetto and it’s on Kickstarter. What’s more as I write, it has pledges that are nearly 13 times its goal of US$100,000, and there are four days still to go. I’m not a teacher, so I can’t comment on the viability of the idea as a teaching method. But it does sound interesting.

What I do have is a somewhat dubious view of the current ‘every child must become a computer coder’ mania. You could say the same about any topic – should we say that every child must become a poet? Or an oceanographer? Actually, I think that ‘every child must become an astronaut’!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/primotoys/cubetto-hands-on-coding-for-girls-and-boys-aged-3

Three of the US top copyright scholars have recently published the results of a major study on abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) take down procedure. The results bear out the worst fears of those who criticised the act for its lack of penalties for those who wrongly demanded that material be taken down.

Among other things, based on a random sample of 100 million take down requests, the study shows that:

One in 25 (4.2%) of the requests were fundamentally flawed because they targeted content that clearly did not match the identified infringed work.

Nearly a third of the remainder (28.4%) had characteristics that raised questions about their validity.

More than 15% of the requests raised questions about whether they complied with the most substantive statutory requirements.

7.3% (about one in fourteen) raised questions about potential fair use.

Note that where requests for take down had multiple problems, they were only counted once, not multiple times.

The DMCA (a result of heavy lobbying by media big business) has been in operation for 20 years now. Recently, with the rise of crappy software used to search the internet and issue take down notices, the situation has become much worse. But those who issue the notices don’t care. Why should they? It doesn’t cost them anything if they get it wrong. The cost is to the unfortunate who was wrongly targeted, in getting his, or her, material back into place.

Of course there is an easy fix to this problem. Just ensure that the body that makes the take down request proves it, and pays if it proves to be incorrect. The current situation is a complete reversal of justice. Instead of the accuser being require to prove the defendant, who is initially presumed to be innocent, is guilty, the defendant is required to prove that the they are innocent, having first been presumed to be guilty!
http://boingboing.net/2016/03/30/landmark-study-on-the-effects.html
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2755628 [Note: this is an abstract. It includes a link (PDF) to the full paper – all 160 pages of it – but it is interesting!]

Geek Stuff:

Now here’s an interesting use of network visualization. A set of visualizations for 11 of Shakespeare’s tragedies. So – if you want to know who was connected to whom when Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, this URL is the place to go!
http://www.martingrandjean.ch/network-visualization-shakespeare/

How about building a nifty little steam powered Raspberry Pie as a project? A Swedish school boy has just created one as a school project. Like The Register, who reported it, I suspect a little help from the teachers or parents. I always came top in the metalwork class at school, but even I would have had difficulty with some of the parts. (My best achievement: forging the swords for the school play – Macbeth. Real steel swords, properly tempered and blued. Macbeth and Duncan had to really learn to use them safely – even though I didn’t put an edge on the blades...)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/18/raspberry_pi_powered_by_mini_steam_engine_video/

InfoWorld has a good roundup of 25 useful tools for Windows 7 and 8.1. Of the suggestions made I already use Chrome browser, Windows Defender, Gmail, Malware Bytes, VLC, Paint.net, 7-Zip, and HWiNFO, all of which I can recommend. I might well try out some of the others in due course.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3045995/microsoft-windows/top-25-free-tools-for-windows-7-and-81.html

London:

If you’re in London in the not too distant future, and you love the work of The Bard (Shakespeare for the uninitiated), then you might just like the tours of the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive in Hackney. It’s a working location, so there are rules about not bringing in food etc, but you get to look at the world of Shakespeare and handle artefact’s found at the sites of London’s Elizabethan theatres – just don’t drop them! There’s regular Saturday tours costing £9.00 per person. Looks a really interesting combination of theatre and archaeology.
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/london-wall/whats-on/events/?event_id=64810

Scanner:

Amazon to bad cable slingers: USB-C yourself out: Retailer bans sales of dangerous connectors
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/30/amazon_sez_usbc_yourself_out/

US government pushed tech firms to hand over source code
http://www.zdnet.com/article/us-government-pushed-tech-firms-to-hand-over-source-code/

Oculus Rift review-gasm round-up: The QT on VR
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/29/oculus_rift_review_roundup/

Will augmented reality headsets replace our monitors?
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2016/03/will-augmented-reality-headsets-replace.html

How Microsoft copied malware techniques to make Get Windows 10 the world’s PC pest
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/17/microsoft_windows_10_upgrade_gwx_vs_humanity/

Is old tech putting banks under threat of extinction?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35880429

IETF group proposes better SMTP hardening to secure email. At last
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/22/ietf_group_proposes_better_smtp_hardening/

Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Andrew, 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
3 April 2016

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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