WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
To paraphrase the Grateful Dead, what a long strange week it's been. I'm changing jobs and this was my last week at the old job. Time to move on, and a frantic scramble to finish the projects I'm working on, ready for hand over.
Meanwhile, in the wider world, everything seems to be happening at once. Dell is now (I think) listening to what its customers want, and looking into the possibility of providing PCs with Linux instead of Windows. How soon that will materialise is anybody's guess. but don't hold your breath.
Then there was the unfortunate glitch in the navigation software of the new US F-22 'Raptor' fighter. A dozen of the first ones were on their way to be deployed at Okinawa, but when they crossed the International Date Line, the navigational computer locked up, and they had to visually follow their tanker aircraft back to Hawaii! I guess the someone forgot to mention in the navigation program spec that the planes would be flying outside the western hemisphere...
In other news, ThinkPad maker Lenovo has had to recall 200,000 batteries, our old friends SCO lost another US$1 million in the first quarter, Microsoft was threatened with new fines by the EU, and its supposedly secure Xbox 360 console was cracked.
While this was going on researchers in the UK and Switzerland discovered that ads featuring celebrity endorsements were less effective that those featuring ordinary people. Most bizarre of all, former Canadian defence minister Paul Hellyer went public with demands that governments of the world release and use alien technologies from crashed UFOs to halt global warming. I wonder what he knows that the rest of us don't?
Shorts:
When Microsoft finally settled its class action case with Comes in Iowa a couple of weeks ago, several gigabytes of material about Microsoft dirty tricks suddenly disappeared from the Internet. Microsoft lawyers must have heaved a sigh of relief at the time. Too soon, my friends, all too soon. The Register ran a story about the disappearance last week, and guess what? Most of the material has now reappeared on the P2P network Bittorrent where it is currently the hottest item downloaded. Nice one!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/microsoft_archive_goes_torrent/
The UK's Office of National Statistics is finally hauling itself into the second half of the 20th century. It's just figured out that calculating the state of the UK's economy by counting things like steel output and machinery produced is not very accurate for a country that is basically a service economy. So... From now on it is going to include the purchase and development of software as investment instead of consumption. And to make amends for its previous tardiness, it plans to go back and recalculate all the figures for the last 35 years! That should keep a whole bunch of statisticians in work for some time to come - maybe they plan to include the production of nation statistics in the country's output figures?
http://Mail.computing.co.uk/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e4zz0BsjfA0Xxi0Dmjh0Ef
I mentioned EMI's talks to digital retailers about unprotected MP3s in an analysis piece on DRM last week. Sad to report, those talks appear to have stalled and been broken off, amid rumours of a take over of EMI by Time-Warner. Where EMI will go from here is difficult to predict, since a number of merger proposals have been stymied by anti-trust authorities in the past. I don't think it will make a great deal of difference to my conclusion that in the long term, maybe even the medium term, DRM will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/emi_drm_talks_breakup/
In a spat reminiscent of the punch up over revelations about vulnerabilities in Cisco routers a few years back, organisers of a conference have been forced to pull a talk because of legal threats.
The talk was one that pulled together existing material to show how to build an RFID hacking and cloning tool. Such a tool would be useful for allowing would-be intruders to penetrate areas of buildings 'protected' by RFID entry cards. While RFID may be useful for inventory control, it isn't secure in its basic form. Needless to say, though, many firms, unfazed by this problem, produce RFID access cards which can easily be cloned.
One such company, clearly worried about the effect on its cash flow of a demonstration of how easy hacking these cards is, opted to silence criticism by legal methods, and succeeded in bullying the conference organisers into pulling the session. So, there wasn't a session on an RFID hacking tool at the Black Hat security conference in Washington this week, courtesy of HID Corp.
Strange, isn't it, how some companies would rather pay lawyers to suppress information, that pay engineers to fix the problem!
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=166D9A4:
215D3E184FC552DCF64CA0C1D9070CE5EFF29049075316B4
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/28/black_hat_rfid_demo_pulled/
Homework:
Interested in the fight against terrorism and the security measures that your government is implementing? Then you may like to have a look at a new major piece by security guru Bruce Schneier. The article, which runs to about 30 pages of printout, is possible draft material for a new book on the psychology of security, and deals the difference between the perception of threats and risks and their actuality.
Although rather longer than I normally recommend, it is surprisingly easy to read and is free of technical jargon. Schneier has obviously been researching material on how the brain perceives things, and how we as humans are motivated, and the paper contains some fascinating insights and information.
Highly recommended.
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0702a.html
Welcome to Windows for Warships. Well actually, it's Windows 2000, but that's the white hot heat of technical revolution for the UK's armed forces. The Register just published an interesting analysis of the decision and consequences of recent decisions to go with Windows software for Royal Navy ship command systems.
Leaving aside obvious remarks about blue screens of death, the piece has a number of interesting things to say - many of which are applicable to navies somewhat more advanced than our battered remnant of a once powerful fleet. Oh and this one is only six pages long :)
An interesting read.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/26/windows_boxes_at_sea/
And here's another little read for those not exactly enamoured of Windows - a comparison of Windows Vista with the Mac OS X. The piece concentrates mainly on the user experience, and makes some telling points. I think Mac owners will be smirking into their screens after reading through this comparison. On the other hand, it does say that Windows Vista is better than Windows XP. Not a conclusion I would agree with, but that's another story!
http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=
Z2VXQ1HMAMP4CQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=196800670
Geek Stuff:
First off a toy for the office oriented geek - a sticky tape holder with a built in USB hub! I'm not sure why anyone would have a real use for such a beast, but I imagine it would confer a whole slew of cred in the right circles!
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/02/21/sticky_tape_usb_stick_holder/
And finally, something for a real geek to dream about - a 388 inch screen for your Nintendo Wii console! A video published on You Tube shows the Wii hooked up to the local cinema screen. Watch it on your 38 in widescreen HDTV and cry :)
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/02/21/whopping_widescreen_wii/
Scanner: Other stories
Will Google come to regret getting involved in YouTube?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/01/google_youtube_copyright_protection_delays/
UFO science is the key to halting climate change, claims former Canadian defence minister!
http://www.physorg.com/news91888237.html
Xbox 360 cracked
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/01/xbox_hack/
Efficiency of celebrity endorsement questioned
http://www.physorg.com/news91904772.html
EU warns Microsoft of new fines
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/01/ms_eu_fines/
Graphene transistor promises life after the death of the silicon chip
http://www.physorg.com/news91891899.html
SCO loses another $1m in Q1
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/02/sco_q1/
Americans given a five-year extension to obtain digital ID cards.
http://ct.news.com.com/clicks?t=32454405-18a32f6148453f76b7d88f6b914d69a0-bf&s=5&fs=0
Lenovo recalls 200,000 ThinkPad batteries
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/03/01/lenovo_sanyo_battery_recall/
Patent reform tops list of tech concerns
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=166D99A:
215D3E184FC552DCF64CA0C1D9070CE5EFF29049075316B4
Security flap over support Active X controls bug
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/27/supportsoft_activex_controls_vuln/
Dell to Linux users - not so fast!
http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=1671C41:
215D3E184FC552DC76B705E667F66D66EFF29049075316B4
http://update.techweb.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e4zl0HiOOq0G4W0E5lA0E5
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barbara, Fi and DJ for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for material to alan@ibgames.com.
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
4 March 2007
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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