WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
It's a very thin issue this week - there wasn't all that much to report on. I guess we are into the silly season, but the silly stuff hasn't yet turned up. It may well be that I took the traditional summer break too early this year :)
Notwithstanding, here are the few odds and ends I did pick out this week.
Shorts:
Yahoo (The name stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", by the way) recently reported on the research being done in Europe to create software that would make it possible to remotely take control of an aircraft from hijackers.
These people must be out of their tiny minds!
At least at the moment you have to get on an aircraft and break into the cockpit to take control of it. This software would create a situation where you could hijack an aircraft without ever going near it. What if would-be hijackers get hold of a copy of the software? What if hijackers seize one of the centres handling the taking control of aircraft?
The people responsible for thinking up this crazy idea should all be loaded into an aircraft while a five year old has fun flying it from the ground using their software...
http://tinyurl.com/zdyel
On an entirely different subject, Dell are to recall over four million laptop batteries. That's an awfully large number of batteries, but there have been reports about Dell laptops spontaneously combusting floating around for some time now. Dell now admit that they have had reports of six incidents of batteries exploding and causing the laptops to catch fire since June. Take a look at this picture of a Dell laptop exploding.
This is the biggest recall of potentially defective electronic components in history - and it may only be the start. It turns out that Sony, who make the batteries, also supply the same batteries to other manufacturers, including Apple, HP and Lenovo (who took over the ThinkPad range from IBM). I suspect that in a short while we are likely to hear the sound of heads rolling at Sony's Q&A department!
http://ct.cnet-ssa.cnet.com/clicks?t=4917325-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/08/16/dell_battery_problems/
CA - the company formerly known as Computer Associates, not the state of California - reported a 64% drop in net income in the first quarter compared with the same quarter in the previous year. The result is that it is cutting 1,700 jobs, that's 10% of its work force.
I can't say I'm going to grieve over CA's problems. It was once aptly described as the bottom feeder of the IT business, building itself up by hoovering up smaller companies in the same line of enterprise related business. And, more to the point, it used to (and may still do, for all I know) sack male staff for having long hair. Such barbaric behaviour is totally unacceptable!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/15/ca_q1_2007/
Personal Losses:
US - Florida: The Florida Department of Transportation suffered the theft of a laptop containing the unencrypted personal details of 133,000 residents. Information on the laptop includes the inevitable social security numbers, plus driving license information and airline license information. It took two weeks for the information to be made public, and it seems unlikely that those affected will be offered free fraud monitoring services.
Scanner - Other Stories:
Florida laptop loss sparks ID theft fears
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/11/florida_laptop_theft_flap/
DHS warning on latest Microsoft patch
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/08/09/HNmspatchdhs_1.html
Celebrating the PC's 25th birthday
http://ct.enews.deviceforge.com/rd/cts?d=207-141-2-28-255-12100-0-0-0-1
Trolltech woos developers with 'Open' Linux phone
http://ct.enews.deviceforge.com/rd/cts?d=207-141-2-28-255-12076-0-0-0-1
HSBC Bank flaw
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=411576&in_page_id=
Apple goes all Intel all the time
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/07/apple_xeon/
Which Operating System will arrive first - Windows Vista or the Mac Leopard?
http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=3806847-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barbara, Fi and Gael for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
20 August 2006
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. 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.
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