WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
One sad event I'd like to draw your attention to is the death of Dennis Ritchie the inventor of the 'C' programming language and the co-inventor of the UNIX operating system. Without these two breakthroughs, the late Steve Jobs would have not been able to build the empire of Apple, since they underlie all modern computing. RIP, Dennis Ritchie.
One other bit of news - I'm afraid I'm going to be working next weekend, so, readers, you will all have to survive a weekend without your fix of Winding Down. I'm sorry, but just occasionally real life intrudes on the digital.
This week, however, we are in business with some snippets for your edification, delight, and information...
Shorts:
The abysmal depth of technical ignorance of government bureaucrats in the UK never ceases to amaze me. The latest blunder is by the UK Ministry of Defence (yes we really do spell it with a 'c' over here). Some one had the bright idea that the best way to redact (remove sensitive information from) a document was to make the background the same color as the text. A quick cut and paste of the PDF document, and there was the supposedly deleted text, all about air defense and air traffic control systems. I suspect that the person responsible won't be prosecuted under anti-terrorist legislation for aiding terrorist activity - our magnificent police force are much too busy harassing innocent people photographing their children in public places.
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/10/09/how-redact-pdf-air-defence-radar-secrets-spilled/
TorrentFreak has a really fascinating piece on a panel discussion between Miramax CEO Mike Lang and Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. Among other things they conclude that 'piracy' is not all that much of an issue, provided you give people what they want. Much more of a threat are digital monopolist distributors like Apple. Take a look, but note that the video is the full one hour discussion, not just a clip!
https://torrentfreak.com/digital-monopolies-a-bigger-threat-than-piracy-says-miramax-ceo-111004/
For the last week or two the technical press has been full of eulogies (and a few less than complementary rants) about the life and times of the late Steve Jobs. I've been waiting out the storm, and now it's dying down I'd like to suggest that the two parter on Steve Jobs by Rik Myslewski in 'The Register' is probably the most balanced I've come across, so I thought you might like to take a look at an even handed view of a man who exemplified the curate's apple - good and bad in parts...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/06/steve_jobs_bio_1/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/10/steve_jobs_bio_2/
I mentioned the Predator drone virus that seems to have hit the US drone aircraft fleet in recent weeks. Rumor is seeping out that it may not in fact be a virus at all. It might just be an internal Department Of Defense (note this one has an 's', not a 'c' because it's US spelling!) program that keeps an eye on what other people are doing... Maybe this is just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing!
http://techzwn.com/2011/10/predator-drone-virus-could-be-internal-monitoring-system-analyst/
Anyone visiting New York City before 23 October should take a trip to the Lincoln Center and take a gander at the latest free exhibit outside it. It's a 37.5 by 4.3 meter digital data-visualization wall provided by IBM. It's linked to a hundred sensors throughout the city and displays a changing smorgasbord of information about the city. For instance, how much water is lost on the way from the reservoirs to the city, traffic patterns, or how much solar power is not being tapped in the city. I rather wish I could see it before it finishes. Maybe they'll bring it to London sometime soon.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ibm-think-city-research-exhibit&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_TECH_20111011
If you want to look at something really jaw dropping, take a look at the URL for this story. It includes a video taken at the Swiss Press Club which held a launch for the Global Innovation Index. After the CEO of the Internet Society and the head of CERN explained how important it was that the web's underlying technology hadn't been patented the Director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) took the microphone. He explained that, quite to the contrary, the web would have been much better off if it had been patented and if everyone who used it had to pay a license fee! His talk starts at 0:49:50 on the video - it has to be seen to be believed.
http://boingboing.net/2011/10/08/wipo-boss-the-web-would-have-been-better-if-it-was-patented-and-its-users-had-to-pay-license-fees.html
Homework:
One of the more worrying problems in today's society is the serious growth of drug resistant bacteria. Few people alive today can even remember the period before antibiotics were discovered. In those days people died of what we think of now as quite mild illnesses. Even with an understanding of antiseptic measures, surgery was a hazardous affair, and epidemics regularly swept countries.
There are two problems facing us on this front. The first is biological, bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to older drugs, and that resistance transfers itself to other bacteria with frightening rapidity. The second is economic. The financial incentive to even research new antibiotics has decreased to a level where very few new antibiotics are coming on to the market.
The financial problem is that it much more lucrative to research drugs like statins, used to prevent heart disease, than antibiotics. Think about it - you normally take antibiotics for a week, two at the most, but someone on a statin is on it for the rest of their life. Two weeks of sales or thirty years of sales. It's hardly surprising that the drug companies take the latter option.
Miller-McCune have just published an interesting (non-technical) discussion of the problem which I'd recommend, since it is something which will sooner or later affect all of us.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/among-antibiotics-resistance-knows-no-bounds-36126/
I once went to the dentist in New York (and a very good dentist he was too). I filled in a general health questionnaire, gave it back to the receptionist, and left my partner in the waiting room while I went in for some treatment. The receptionist read through my questionnaire and asked my partner, 'What's it like to be with an alcoholic?'
Apparently the fact that I drink alcoholic drinks every day makes me an alcoholic! Actually, I usually drink a glass of wine with my evening meal, and maybe a gin and tonic on some weekend afternoons in the summer. It's a purely cultural thing. If I'm alcoholic, then so is virtually everyone in Europe! Thus it was with some interest that I read an interesting piece on the BBC website about drinking by social anthropologist Kate Fox.
She makes an interesting case that people's behavior when they are drunk is not actually caused by the alcohol itself, but by people's expectations of what drunken behavior is. This has interesting implications for anti-drinking campaigns. If you tell people that alcohol causes you to lose your inhibitions and become violent/promiscuous/anti-social/etc then that is what people will expect to do when they are drunk! Time I suspect for those who fund the propaganda to change the message.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317
Geek Toys:
Not so much a toy, but of interest to geeks, is a rant from a lowly Google droid about the difference in how Amazon and Facebook are, compared to Google, and how Google's current initiatives are doomed to fail unless Google pulls its socks up. It was supposed to be a private note, but as we all know, there is no privacy on the net - sooner or later everything gets out. (I'm told that this is because Internet Protocol packets are small, and that this allows them to squeeze through teensy weensy gaps between the bricks in the firewalls.) Regardless, it makes interesting reading, and the main thrust of the idea - the difference between a platform and an application - is one I hadn't considered before.
Although the piece is more than a little critical of Google's current activities - including Google+, on which it was posted - to the world instead of close friends, Google have magnanimously allowed it to stay up. When I was at college we called this 'repressive tolerance'!
https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
Feeling the pinch as a result of a few bad investments? Looking for a new career to make a few pennies to buy a new phone/table/laptop/computer/mainframe? I have just the career change for you. Become a professional patient. Yep. Really. The demand for people to act as patients to help train doctors is high. Of course you have to wear one of those stupid hospital gowns that leaves the wind whistling up your backside, buy, het, what other chance have you got to release your inner thespian?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/demand-is-high-for-standardized-patients/2011/10/07/gIQA2PChiL_story.html?hpid=z4
Scanner:
Royal Navy halts Highlands GPS jamming: exercises knocked furious fishermen off course
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/11/gps_jamming/
PayPal founder invests in floating autonomous cities
http://www.gizmag.com/paypal-billionaire-invests-in-floating-autonomous-cities/19915/
IRS audits Google for funneling profits to Ireland
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/13/google_irs_audit/
Upgrades to extend B-52 Bomber's lifespan until 2044
http://www.gizmag.com/b52-upgrade/20098/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
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 Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
16 October, 2011
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.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
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