WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
As I write this the Metropolitan Police here in London are looking for a missing taser and some cartridges. Their user, a firearms officer, put the aforementioned weapon and ammo on top of his police car and then got in the car and drove away. Police advice is to call them if you find it, but don't touch it. Some hope. I suspect the police are worried about someone using their own weaponry on them!
Still it's nice to see we aren't the only ones whose officials are capable of blundering - I see that NASA managed to flog off a bunch of computers to the world at large without wiping sensitive data first. An old programmer once told me that what we have is a race between programmers seeking to make their software more idiot-proof and evolution seeking to create better idiots...
Shorts:
One fascinating little snippet I found this week was a piece about the world's smallest legible font. Designed specifically for use on mobile phone LCD screen it can fit the first 500 words of the Declaration of Independence into a cellphone 320x240 pixel screen. It's readable too. Invented by Ken Perlin, who is the director of NYU's Games for Learning Institute, the font is just five pixels high.
So, how does it do it? By using a neat trick, of course! What you see as a single colored pixel is not in fact a single pixel, it's made up of a strip of red, green and blue pixels, each a third of the size of what your eye sees as a single pixel. If you have a powerful enough magnifying glass, you can actually see this by looking at the screen through it. Perlin took advantage of this to write a program that made the form of each letter as visually distinct as possible, using the RGB strips. Once the program had finished he carefully tuned each letter by hand to get the maximum clarity. Take a look - it's really interesting, if a little eye-bending!
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662778/the-worlds-smallest-legible-font-for-an-
lcd-screen
There's a brief, but interesting piece, by security guru Bruce Schneier about the relative costs of terrorism and the counter measures we are employing to defeat it. He points out that the recent printer cartridge bomb plot cost its perpetrators only around US$4,200, while the amount spent on security in its aftermath cost many times more than that. And we make it even worse by panicking and heaping on even more useless pieces of expensive, and unproven, tech equipment.
The way things are going al Qaeda need only schedule one minor event a year - which doesn't have to work, just be different enough to provoke a new round of fear and expense - to drain the economies of the west, not to mention eliminating the personal liberties of its citizens.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/causing_terror.html
TMCnet has the results of nifty little survey of which mobile phones people lust after. With smart phones now making up to 30 per cent or more of the market, depending where you live, the time is indeed ripe to find out just what people want, by asking them which phone they are planning to get for their next phone.
Not very surprisingly, Apple came out on top with 35 per cent, while Android came second with a respectable 28 per cent. What was surprising, however, was that it turns out that there was a noticeable difference between genders. Women, it seems, prefer the iPhone, while men plump for the Android platform. Why should this be? I've no idea, but now I come to think of it, it tallies with my personal experience. I think the advertising people will be looking very closely at these figures...
http://fixed-mobile-convergence.tmcnet.com/topics/mobile-communications/articles/
122546-men-from-android-women-from-iphone.htm
Here in the UK, the new-ish Coalition government has come up with a way to handle scientific advice that it may not like. In this case it's the misuse of drugs. Last year the government sacked the head of its Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, for disagreeing with the government's policy. The resulting argument included the resignation of six other members of the panel.
This gave rise to a wider row about the role of evidence based policy, and the rights of government scientific advisors, who often do the work for free, to remain independent of the administration. The current administration is having none of this sort of agro. It's introduced legislation that removes the need to seek advice from annoying scientists before deciding what to do. Hardly surprising really, when you consider that all the major figures in the government are scientific illiterates.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/06/science_advice/
And talking of scientific illiterates. A diabetes researcher has just discovered a 'new' method of mathematical integration. Dr M. M. Tai had an article in Diabetes Care magazine describing a method of calculating the area under a curve by dividing it into small strips, calculating the area of each strip and summing them. He modestly calls it "Tai's Model", and the article has already been cited 75 times by other medical papers.
Only one problem. I was taught to use this method at school when I was 14. It's actually called the trapezium rule, and it was my introduction to the mathematical field of calculus! I don't know for sure how long this method of calculating the approximate value of a definite integral has been around, but I would hazard a guess that it's probably been around at least since Newton and Leibniz came up with the principles of integration in the late 17th century. This would make Dr Tai a mere 300 year too late in his discovery of the method!
http://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-researcher-discovers-
integration-gets-75-citations/
The UK banks came out with an interesting snippet of information this week. We in the UK have passed a landmark in that we now spend more money using a debit card, than in cash. Could a cashless society be at hand? Probably not - at least not for a while. Cash is just too convenient for a whole series of things, especially small purchases.
However, I have noticed that in pubs - usually one of the bastions of the cash society - more and more people are using their cards to pay for drinks these days. Hardly surprising, I guess, given the cost of the humble pint these days.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/03/debit_cards/
Finally something useful from the bureaucrats of the EU. They plan to change their directive on electronic signatures to ensure that e-signatures from different EU member states can be communally recognized. It wants electronic invoices to become the predominant way that businesses across the EU bill each other. This latest effort is a step in that direction. I'm impressed, I didn't think they had it in them. Maybe there is hope for the EU, after all.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/eu_to_change_e_signatures_laws/
Homework:
Good news from scientists at the University of Missouri. They've figured out a way of making nano sized gold particles using the common spice cinnamon, instead of the very toxic chemicals normally used. Gold nano particles have many medical uses - especially in the treatment of cancer, so being able to create them with relatively benign chemicals is a big step forward for the environment. Nice work!
http://ecoseed.org/technology/innovations/article/27-innovations/8519-cinnamon-
replaces-toxic-
chemicals-in-nanoparticle-production
The Internet is running out of addresses. How many times have you heard this over the last decade? Well this time it's true, I'm afraid. In spite of all the workarounds thought up by very clever people, the old address system is on its last legs, with only an estimated 100,000,000 addresses left. That may sound a lot, but that's less than three months worth at current usage rates. In fact, as I write this it's 7am UTC on the 12th of December 2010, and there are 100,046,112 addresses left.*
The situation is bad enough that even the ISPs are starting to take note and moving over to the new IPV6 addressing system, which, I'm told, has more than enough addresses than will be needed. Strangely enough, that's what they said about the current IPV4 addresses when they first came out with it...
http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html
NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have come up with an interesting result from their current climate model. It suggests that other models are not accurately modelling the effect of rising CO2 levels on plants. You can read the details in the URL, but I have no doubt that this result, which lowers the temperature rise forecast, will be denounced by those wedded to the idea of a catastrophe in the making. Sadly the whole debate is now so polarized that it's almost impossible to dig out the data on which models are run or algorithms on which they are based.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_
degrees_warming/
Geek Toys:
Still looking for Xmas stocking fillers? How about Verbatum's Clip-it? It's a USB stick that doubles up as a paper clip. I guess you could store e-mails on it and clip their printouts together as well! Hmm... Anyway they look quite neat, and at less that US$9 for 2GB version they are at least affordable.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/24/verbatims-clip-it-is-a-usb-drive-with-
paperclip-ambitions/
However, for true geek gifts I can but refer you to the web site of Hammacher Schlemmer, which has such gems as 400-piece jigsaws of topographic maps based on your address, a VHS to DVD converter (older readers will know what VHS is), and Live Action Infrared Skeet Shoot. My personal favourite is the 50' Snowball Launcher!
I've been a fan of Hammacher Schlemmer ever since I was introduced to their New York Shop in the late 1990s. With the slogan 'Offering the Best, the Only, and the Unexpected for 162 years', they are indeed the best place to get quirky gifts (especially for yourself). Now excuse me, please, while I go an try out the Fog Ring Launcher - described as a 'hand-held vortex generator' - I've always wanted a vortex generator!
http://www.hammacher.com
Scanner:
Police appeal for missing Taser - shocking loss, but stunning Christmas present
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/taser_missing_in_action/
Dark forces gunning for Google
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/8184065/Dark-forces-gunning-for-
Google.html#
Flat screen makers fined €649m for price fixing
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/flatscreen_cartel_fines/
Fighting real-time information overload
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/soa_webservices/show
Article.jhtml?articleID=228800087&cid=nl_TW_networking_2010-12-10_text
NASA sells PC with restricted Space Shuttle data
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/nasa_disk_wiping_failure/
* It's just coming up for 9am UTC as I finish this newsletter and the number now reads 99,940,253...
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
12 December, 2010
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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