WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Well we’re back with an eclectic collection of bits and pieces for you this week. We’ve got material on free speech, the Sony hack, the legendary TravelWest hack, a Verizon cloud outage, a new cancer study from John Hopkins University, Thog’s masterclass, sci-fi technologies that have come to pass (well nearly), a 1,000mph rocket car, breaking the sound barrier photos, and London’s Thames barrier. This week’s Scanner section is all about Google and its enemies – and there are no shortage of them – Hollywood, the MPAA, the EU, and the big ISPs, to name but a few!
I’m sure, like me, most of you have been following the tragic events in Paris over the past week. A number of people asked me what my views on free speech are. So I thought I’d share them with you, since it’s time for people, especially ones like me that publish material publicly, to stand up and be counted. I’d like to make it clear that I’m firmly in favour of free speech. I think it’s a fundamental part of a free society.
And what is free speech? I’ve seen some pretty convoluted and weaselly definitions of free speech, but actually it’s very simple. Free speech is the right of other people to say, and publicize, things that I don’t like – no ifs, no buts, no maybes. See? it’s not at all complicated. Sometimes it’s not nice, sometimes it’s very distressing, but without it we don’t even have the possibility of a free society.
And now, on with the newsletter...
Shorts:
The Sony hack is still rumbling on. No one, except the powers that be, believe that it was the North Koreans. The most likely culprits, according to those who know what they are talking about, seems to be an insider or insiders, perhaps in conjunction with an external script kiddie hacking group. Judging from the shambles of Sony security, the lack of proper backups, and the absence of a workable disaster recovery plan, it was something just waiting to happen. High level heads should be rolling on this one! Oh, and one response from Sony was to try to suppress publication of the internal material appearing on the internet. Obviously they’ve never heard of the Streisand Effect.
Here’s a selection of URLs covering some of the issues involved:
http://gawker.com/a-lot-of-smart-people-think-north-korea-didnt-hack-sony-1672899940
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/24/no-north-korea-didn-t-hack-sony.html
http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/sony-hacked-by-n-korea-hacktivists-ex-employee-or-all-of-the-above/d/d-id/1318418
http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/deconstructing-the-sony-hack-what-i-know-from-inside-the-military/a/d-id/1318493
https://securityledger.com/2014/12/new-clues-in-sony-hack-point-to-insiders-away-from-dprk/
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/sony-threatens-to-sue-twitter-unless-it-removes-tweets-containing-hacked-emails
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
I see that Muslin extremists don’t always succeed. Over the new year they attempted to bring western civilization as we know it to a grinding halt by hacking the UK’s TravelWest website. Sadly, for them, the site is not, in fact the hub of a world-wide aero-travel control system. It’s the name of a bus company servicing the West of England!
Thus, their success was limited to merely making it difficult for the locals to find bus and train times, cycle routes, and traffic updates. I think perhaps the ‘Darkshadow Muslin Hackers’ should rethink their career choices...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11321499/Bristol-bus-timetable-hacked-by-terrorists.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/02/bristol_bus_timetable_website_defaced_militants/
Some people just don’t get it. Take Verizon for instance. It’s trying to establish its cloud computing service against stiff competition from the likes of Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft. So what does it do? It’s shutting the service down for two days for ‘maintenance’ work. What idiots. The whole point about cloud computing is that it is a 24 hour 365 day a year thing, with downtime measured in single digit seconds.
No one in their right mind would ever use Verizon cloud computing after this little faux pas!
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2865802/verizon-warns-enterprise-cloud-users-of-48-hour-shutdown.html
Homework:
Now here is a bit of interesting news. As someone who regularly gets harassed by members of the medical profession about lifestyle issues, I was fascinated to read about the results of a major study of cancer. If the results are anything to go by, the majority of cancers are caused by bad luck, not genes or lifestyle choices. It seems that the bulk of cancers are caused by random DNA mutations that occur when stem cells divide.
This means that getting cancer is bad luck, rather than something avoidable, in most cases. Of course, there are certain cancers that are caused by things we do – smoking cigarettes and lung cancer for instance. Those ones aside, the study suggests that one of the things we should do is to pay more attention to finding ways to detect cancer at an earlier stage, when it is easier to cure.
This is an important study by reputable scientists, at a reputable establishment, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. So it is worth considering what the researchers have to say, and making a considered assessment of their methods and discoveries. However, given the way in which the results overthrow conventional wisdom, I suspect there will be a lot of resistance from the health establishment. To me it makes a lot of sense, but your mileage may be different.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11320497/Most-cancers-are-caused-by-bad-luck-not-genes-or-lifestyle-say-scientists.html
To cheer you up from the post-Christmas blues I thought I’d reproduce a copy of the ‘Thog’s masterclass’ section from one of the recent editions of the UK’s Sci-Fi fanzine, ‘Ansible’. ‘Thog’s’ is a selection of grammatical howlers from Sci-Fi/Fantasy books, sent in by readers. My younger readers may want to try out some of these on their English teachers...
Thog’s masterclass:
- Quickness of the Hand Dept. ‘... he laughed, and before I could stop him, stroked my face with the speed of light.’ (Debbie Johnson, Dark Vision, 2014) [AR]
- Neat Tricks. ‘He stood tall, in fact even taller than he usually was.’ (Ibid)
- Like a Huge Springing Beast Dept. ‘The redhead springs deep and soars through the air. Flying like a spread-eagled amoeba ...’ (Kieran Shea, Koko Takes a Holiday, 2014) [AR]
- Dept of Useful Add-Ons. ‘He rose to his spare elbows.’ (Charles E. Gannon, Fire with Fire, 2013) [AL]
- Shock of Hair Dept. ‘His ginger hair with its generous dashes of grey sat on his head like an electrified cat.’ (J.D. Robb [Nora Roberts], Strangers in Death, 2008) [O]
- Dept of Punchy Opening Lines. ‘At first there was only the cold, the Stygian inky iciness that held every muscle of his body in thrall and made his thoughts flow with the turgid slowness of treacly molasses.’ (Wilbur S. Peacock, ‘Spider-Men of Gharr’, Summer 1945 Planet Stories) [MFD]
http://news.ansible.uk/a330.html
Geek Toys:
InfoWorld have one of their slide shows illustrating Sci-Fi technologies that are just about here – take a look; you’d be surprised how many there are, though I think they are pushing the envelope by including faster than light travel...
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2606741/computer-hardware/146149-Science-vs.-fiction-15-sci-fi-technologies-that-are-almost-here.html
It’s not faster than light, but a rocket car traveling at 1,000mph sound like a possibility. The problem is that it seems to only go at 1,000mph. ‘Scuse me sir, are you aware that the speed limit on this highway is 50mph?’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/02/bloodhound_supersonic_car_could_have_crashed_in_2014/
And while we are on the subject of speed, take a look at these shots of a US Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter plane breaking the sound barrier. Really cool!
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/550361/Super-Hornet-fighter-jet-breaking-sound-barrier-photographs
London:
London’s Thames barrier is a genuine wonder of the world. Most people don’t realize it, but London is actually built on a reclaimed swamp, and a lot of the eastern part is former water meadow. Until the mid-20th Century, there was regular flooding every time a North Sea storm surge forced the waters of the Thames back up along the river. In early 1952 a particularly bad surge caused widespread flooding and a number of deaths, and because of this the government finally got their act together to do something about it.
The result was a lot of strengthening of flood defenses along the river, and the Thames Barrier. The barrier is an amazing piece of engineering that allows ocean going ships through to the dock further up the river, but can be raised to stop surges getting through. When the barrier units are not stopping floods, they lie flat on the bed of the river.
The barrier is a fantastic sight. It looks almost like a set of sails gleaming in the sunshine. Sometimes they raise it for testing, and if you happen to be visiting London when that happens it’s well worth taking a trip down to Woolwich to watch it. A bunch of us went down there a few years ago during a test – there were loads of people there, many picnicking on the grass. A child got his head stuck in the railings and had to freed by the fire brigade who, it seems, have a device for getting children’s heads out of railings!
The raised barrier was an impressive sight. On one side, the water was up to within a couple of feet of the top, on the other side the river looked completely empty. I’ve not seen anything like it before or since!
https://www.gov.uk/the-thames-barrier
http://londonist.com/2015/01/secrets-of-the-thames-barrier.php?showpage=1#gallery-1
Scanner: Google v. Hollywood, ISPs, and sundry others:
Project Goliath: Inside Hollywood’s secret war against Google
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/12/7382287/project-goliath
The MPAA’s attempt to revive SOPA through a state attorney general
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-mpaas-attempt-to-revive-sopa.html
The MPAA’s secret plan to reinterpret the DMCA into a vast censorship machine that breaks the core workings of the Internet
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141217/17533629473/mpaas-secret-plan-to-reinterpret-dmca-into-vast-censorship-machine-that-breaks-core-workings-internet.shtml
Don’t make Google the whipping boy for others’ failings
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2860682/techology-business/dont-make-google-the-whipping-boy.html
A shadowy consortium opposes your Internet privacy
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2855738/internet-privacy/consortium-opposes-your-privacy.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and Lois 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
11 January 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.
