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

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: June 4, 2017

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WINDING DOWN

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

I seem to have a lot of material stacked up for you, so here is a selection for this week’s reading... First off is an analysis of some of the problems faced by big public bodies, taking the UK’s National Health Service as a typical case. Apart from that we have material on who is publishing CIA and NASA secrets, more trees on Earth than we thought, Picasso’s Guernica, Star Wars and movie theatres, photoshopping WannaCrypt, and a superb picture of the Crab Nebula. URLs in the Scanner section point to important archaeological finds in Europe, a look at Nest’s new smart cam, a new blue pigment, drone skydiving, the birth of a black hole, the octopus motif as a propaganda tool, and a nasty ‘fix’ from Netgear.

And now I’m off to blow the £5 note (US$6.45) that I won in a packet of Walkers Crisps (chips to my US readers), while you all read my wonderful prose!

Analysis: The WannaCry attack and the UK National Health Service – a case study

One of the more notable victims of last month’s ‘WannaCry’ ransomware attack was the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Lots of fingers were pointed at the individual health organisations who were still using Windows XP and hadn’t paid to have them kept up to date. Entirely correct, but it’s not quite as simple as it seems.

The last Labour government paid out billions of pounds to large IT consulting firms to produce a new overall IT system for the NHS, but nothing they produced worked – money down the drain. One thing that did work, however, was a deal with Microsoft to take responsibility for the maintenance of all Windows machines in the NHS for UK£65 million (about US$84 million) a year – a price which was pretty reasonable considering the hundreds of thousands of computers (many of them using XP) scattered throughout the NHS.

By the time the Conservative/Liberal coalition took power the waste had become a national scandal. Looking for something to do about it, they discovered that they were tied into long term contracts with the consultancies. So what did they drop? They cut the central deal with Microsoft, and left the already overstretched local organisations to carry the can without any increase in their budget allocation from central government.

The obvious thing for local organisations to do was to cut their own local deal with Microsoft, and extend their IT departments to handle things. Unfortunately they didn’t have the cash to do that. An alternative would have been to upgrade the XP systems to something that was supported by Microsoft. However, it’s not that simple. In fact upgrading would involve three extra problems.

The first, of course is the straightforward cost of buying the upgrades – no money available. However, even if they could afford the upgrade, it’s arguable whether the older machines XP is running on could handle the newer systems. So that means the purchase of a lot of new computer hardware – money not available.

Second, assuming the money was available to upgrade the operating system and the new computers, there was no money to upgrade the programs that ran under XP – both the programs purchased commercially, and the ones written in house.

Finally, and this was the real killer, the NHS has lots of medical equipment bought in the early 2000’s that only interfaces with XP. Fifteen years may be a long time for Microsoft, but it’s only a fraction of the working lifetime of much medical machinery. The NHS couldn’t afford to buy all new equipment, and the equipment manufacturers were, understandably, reluctant to spend resources rewriting the interfaces for older machines.

I don’t particularly like the bureaucrats who run the local NHS organisations, but, if you were in their position and you had the choice of using a large amount of money to upgrade all the computers and replace perfectly good existing machinery, or buy some new equipment that would enable your staff to make faster diagnoses, handle new problems, and deal more expeditiously with patients, which would you go for?

The problems listed above are typical of those facing large organisations. They’re probably more acute in the case of the NHS, but they apply to many large public organisations. It’s very easy, especially for techies, to point fingers and say “I told you so!” when security fails. But they are not the ones at the sharp end.

Sadly, until software producers become liable for damage caused by flaws in their software, we aren’t going to see much change.

Shorts:

There’s an excellent piece by security guru Bruce Schneier on the Lawfare site about who is publishing CIA and NSA secrets. Schneier goes through the details and ends up with the conclusion that it isn’t cybercriminals, it’s a state, and that the most likely one is Russia. I’m sure you won’t be surprised by that, but what really makes the article a worthwhile read is the way in which he considers and eliminates all the other options. Definitely a good read!
https://www.lawfareblog.com/who-publishing-nsa-and-cia-secrets-and-why

Homework:

It turns out that the planet has many more trees than we thought. Why is this important? Because it is one of the things that goes into the calculations of climate change. Satellite imagery has improved considerably since the original calculations were made. So, using Google Earth, researchers have looked at what are known as ‘dry lands’. Dry lands make up around 40% of the Earth’s surface, and the better imagery available shows that there are 45% more trees in the dry lands than previously assumed.

The problem was caused by the fact that trees in dry land areas tend not to grow in forests, but in small clumps and as individuals scattered around. The old imaging technology had difficulty distinguishing these smaller footprint items from the general background. So in global terms this means that we have 10% more trees on the planet than we thought, and we have the opportunity to expand that even further, with careful husbandry.

Exactly how much difference this is going to make in the long run I don’t know, but I can predict that the climate change evangelists will continue to predict doom, and the other side will continue to deny it. Everyone else will just go about their business...
http://newatlas.com/forest-discovered-plain-sight/49504/

Picasso’s Guernica is getting a lot of publicity at the moment – it’s the 80th anniversary of Picasso completing it. As you probably know, its subject is the German terror bombing of the village of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War. It’s considered to be one of, it not the, most significant anti-war pictures ever published. With that in mind I thought you might appreciate this snippet from the UK’s Guardian newspaper:

In occupied Paris, a Gestapo officer who had barged his way into Picasso’s apartment pointed at a photo of the mural, Guernica, asking: “Did you do that?” “No,” Picasso replied, “you did”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/pablo-picasso-guernica-spain-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

Geek Stuff:

I’m not really a movie person, but as a techie I was fascinated by a piece in ‘The Register’ about how George Lucas, via ‘Star Wars’ revolutionised the movie theatre (cinema, as we call them in England) business through his use of sound. I think you’ll also find it interesting.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/26/star_wars_new_hope_40_lucas_revolutionises_cinema_sound/

Pictures:

WannaCrypt isn’t really funny, but I had to laugh at these photoshopped versions – especially the Commodore 64 one...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/29/wannacrypt_photoshopping/

There are a lot of pictures of supernova relics out there, but in my opinion the multiwavelength picture of the Crab Nebula recently released on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day archive is one of the best. Take a look for yourself!
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170511.html

Scanner:

Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/22/europe-birthplace-mankind-not-africa-scientists-find/

Nest leaves competition in the dust with new smart camera
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/31/nest_leaves_competition_in_the_dust_with_new_smart_camera/

The first new blue pigment in over 200 years will become a crayon
https://hyperallergic.com/381591/the-first-new-blue-pigment-in-over-200-years-will-become-a-crayon/

Drone skydiving: Would you take the plunge?
http://newatlas.com/skydiving-drone-video/49519/

Birth of a black hole witnessed as star vanishes without a bang
http://newatlas.com/vanishing-star-skip-supernova-black-hole/49725/

The octopus, a motif of evil in historical propaganda maps
https://hyperallergic.com/375900/the-map-octopus-a-propaganda-motif-of-spreading-evil/

Netgear ‘fixes’ router by adding phone-home features that record your IP and MAC address
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/21/netgear_updates_router_with_phone_home_feature/

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
4 June 2017

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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