The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 15, 2009

Official News page 11


WINDING DOWN

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

It was a quiet week this week. I don't know why. Maybe the Conficker virus has taken over all the computers that issue press releases. Or perhaps all the electronics firms have gone bust. It could even be that someone has been using Dial-a-Smite on the PR firms.

At least the snow has gone away and things have warmed up a bit. All that's left of the snowman the kids built in the communal area is a small mound to remind us of our mortality.

I did, however, manage to dig out a few interesting snippets, without having to resort to complete fabrication, so here is your (nearly) weekly fix...


Shorts:

Friday the 13th this week saw quite a celebration for geeks. No, it had nothing to do with zombies, or unfortunate happenings. This was a one off happening, and it occurred at 23:31:30 UTC/GMT (3:31:30 pm PST). At that time, Unix time was exactly 1234567890.

You may not have heard of Unix time, but it is the basis of nearly all time that runs on computers. It is the number of seconds that have elapsed since midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on January 1, 1970 (know to the cognoscenti as 'the epoch'), not counting leap seconds.

Unix time will run out of memory space on 32-bit computers in 2038. However, most software is being upgraded to use a 64-bit number, and that won't run out until after the sun goes cold! I'm not too worried about that, since I probably won't be around at that time.
http://www.1234567890day.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

I used to be worried about personal information going adrift on lost or stolen computers. Now I have something more to worry about, since discovering that the US Los Alamos National Laboratory has managed to lose 80 computers - 13 of them in the last year.

This is a trifle worrying, to say the least, given that Los Alamos is a major centre for 'national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing', as the press release put it. For 'national security' read nuclear weapons...
http://www.physorg.com/news153825475.html

Microsoft are getting flack from their shareholders over the amount of money they are pouring into Research and Development (R&D). In 2007, the last year that figures are publicly available, Microsoft spent US$7.5 billion. To give you some idea of the scale, in the same period Apple spent US$782 million, Oracle spent US$85 million, and Google spent US$2 billion.

In other words, Microsoft spent nearly ten times more on R&D than its nearest rival. OK, so Microsoft is bigger than Apple, but shareholders are starting to notice disturbing facts like Apple increasing its revenue by US$8 billion, while Microsoft with ten times the R&D 'only' managed to add US$9 billion to its revenue.

Many of the shareholders seem to think they're not getting value for money on their shares, and are asking questions about the value of all this money spent on R&D. I think they're probably being unfair. Increasing revenue when you hold a very large share of the market is not easy.

Though I have to admit that US$7.5 billion is rather a lot of money to spend on a department whose main product has been an animated paperclip!
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/38350

This week when I accessed the famous Wikileaks site, the first thing that came up was a plea for donations to extend the number of servers they use, because they are overloaded.

I'm not surprised. This week they added nearly 7,000 quasi-secret reports (127,000 pages) from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). I say quasi-secret, because they are not classed as secret, but they just aren't, or haven't previously been, available to the public.

The CRS is Congress's research arm, and the reports it prepares carry a great deal of weight with members of Congress. Members can, and sometimes have, published the reports for their constituents to read, but this is fairly rare. A number of open government lawmakers - for instance John McCain and Patrick Leahy - have fought for years to make the reports public, but without success.

Now Wikileaks has published all of them. Including the politically embarrassing ones. Have fun finding out what your congress critters 'forgot' to tell you!
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Change_you_can_download:_a_billion_in_secret_
Congressional_reports

I see the Conficker virus got into the Houston municipal court computers last week. Hundreds of machines were affected and the whole system had to be shut down for several days while it was cleaned up.

The virus is estimated to have infected some 10 million computers world wide, including the UK and French defence systems and New Zealand's government health department.

You can tell how much agro this virus is causing from the fact that Microsoft has placed a bounty of a quarter of a million dollars on the heads of the perpetrators. So, if you fancy a fistful of dollars...
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6250411.html
http://www.physorg.com/news153686753.html

I see that Cuba has launched its own Linux distribution, called 'Nova'. Somehow I think this is one market that Microsoft isn't going to be too worried about, especially given that most Cubans only have access to a computer at their workplace or at school.

I wonder why they didn't call the distribution 'Che'?
http://www.physorg.com/news153686610.html

Hmm, I think the days of really cheap computer memory may well be over soon (at least for a while). Figures just released indicate that the DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) manufacturers between them lost a cool US$7 billion last year. (Hey! That's nearly as much as Microsoft spent on R&D.)

Look for cheap memory as what is already in the pipeline works its way through, and then an increase in price as the manufacturers close facilities, and the quantity manufactured drops. I guess now is the time to buy a new computer and stuff it with memory!
http://www.eetimes.eu/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213402227&cid=NL_eetuk

The FBI are investigating a US$9 million ATM scam in which crooks hit 49 cities simultaneously, including Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Moscow and Hong Kong.

The crooks accessed 130 different ATMs in 30 minutes, using 100 different cards. What's more, somehow or other, they managed to evade the limits on how much you can take out in one day.

The bank involved - RBS WorldPay - was hacked and the information obtained allowed the crooks to duplicate cards for use in the heist. The bank has confirmed that the affected card holders will not be held responsible for the unauthorized transactions. I guess that's the least they could do!
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/090202_FBI_Investigates_9_Million_ATM_Scam


Homework:

With the launch of Amazon's Kindle 2 e-book reader, the debate over the much predicted demise of the paper book has again raised its head. This is the correct time for the debate, since the technologies of book readers - long life, lightweight, batteries and e-paper are maturing rapidly

Inevitably, there are comparisons with music and the decline of physical music media under the onslaught of MP3 players. However, the figures speak for themselves. In the UK book sales grew from 2.7 billion UK pounds to nearly 3 billion (US$4 billion to US$4.5 billion). Not exactly dot com boom sized sales, but very far from the gutting that the music industry suffered.

There are a couple of interesting things to note while looking at this.

The first is the qualitative difference between music and books - especially fiction. Music only requires partial attention - you can have it on in the background while you do other things. It is this that makes portable MP3 players possible.

Books on the other hand require undivided attention. I'm 'listening' to music radio while I write this week's Winding Down, I couldn't read a book and write my scintillating prose at the same time, though. This qualitative difference is what makes the likelihood of electronic books repeating the success of MP3 players far more doubtful.

And there is one other thing to take into account. Whatever her other failings, JK Rowling has introduced a whole new generation of children to the joys reading books! You may not like her style, content, or litigiousness, but no one can take that achievement away.

I suspect it has already had a profound effect on the propensity to read books of the generation now entering their teens, and that is the generation that will make or break e-books in the coming years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/02/are_you_still_reading.html

There's an interesting article by MacArthur fellow Carl Safina in the New York Times about evolution and 'Darwinism'. Basically it suggests that we stop talking about evolution as Darwinism. Darwin wasn't the inventor of the idea of evolution, he was merely the first to write a popular book about it.

Linking evolution to Darwin's name all the time detracts from it being science, and knocks out all the work that's been done since that time. It also devalues Darwin, whose output was much more than just 'Origin of the Species'.

Well argued, and worth a read.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/science/10essa.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

The Times Online has an interesting article about the genesis of the Boeing 747, which was 40 years old this week. As it happens a lot of the people involved are still alive and were able to talk about it.

There are so many Boeing 747s around now that we often forget what a breakthrough it was at the time. A lot of people watching the first take off on February 9th 1969 were not convinced that an aircraft weighing 160 tons could fly. Now, 1,400 jumbo jets later, it seems obvious, but at the time it was far from being so. At one stage Joe Sutter, the director of engineering on the project actually consulted veteran aviator Charles Lindbergh on the design.

And the 747s are still flying, a tribute to the fundamental physical and economics soundness of the original design.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/
transport/article5689482.ece


Geek Jobs:

Fancy a bit of freelance work? I have just the job for you! The US National Security Agency (NSA) is rumoured to be offering 'billions' for anyone who can figure out how to reliably tap into Skype instant messaging and voice traffic. The NSA's real problem is that being peer-to-peer the traffic is distributed, so they can't just tap into it at an exchange.

Got any bright ideas about how to get over this? Just mention it on a regular non-Skype call and the spooks will come flocking to your door!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/

I got a fascinating e-mail the other day. Was I interested in a job as a 'teleport test engineer'! It was a genuine job too, not spam. As it happens I'm uniquely qualified for this post, since I just put teleporters into my sci-fi game, Federation 2.

However, on reflection I decided to decline the offer. Well, I mean to say, what if it failed the tests and you arrived without a head? Would they send the head on later for reattachment? I definitely think I'll pass on this one.


Scanner: Other Stories

Animal rights vs. rodeo DMCA takedown fight settled
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/shark-vs-cowboy-dmca-fight-settled.ars

Social networking dangers exposed
http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/02/09/Social_Networking_Dangers_Exposed_1.html

Apple's restriction-free music downloads create pause
http://www.physorg.com/news153599790.html

FTC warns of "day of reckoning" for online advertisers
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/ftc-warns-of-day-of-
reckoning-for-online-advertisers.ars

FTC kills fraudulent online check-processing operation
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/38348


Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, lois, 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
15 February 2009

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


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page