The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 24, 2011

Official News page 12


WINDING DOWN

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

Sad news for Doctor Who fans this week - Elisabeth Sladen, who played the doctor's companion Sarah Jane Smith in 1973-75, has died from cancer at the age of 63. Sarah Jane was one of the most popular companions, and recently had her own series for children - the Sarah Jane Adventures. A lot of children - and grown ups who were children in the early 70s - will be very sad at the passing of one of the most loved members of the cast.

But, the show must go on...


Shorts:

Story of the week has to be the iPhone location tracking scandal. For those of you who have been living on Mars, it was revealed that later versions of the iPhone keep a log of locations you have been visited while carrying the phone. The current log (a secret file called consolidated.db) is then transferred to your computer when you sync the phone. Why is this so worrying? After all police can get this information from your mobile phone provider.

The difference is that in the case of mobile provider information, the police require a warrant issued by a member of the judiciary, and to get that they have to provide a good reason, and possibly evidence of wrongdoing. If you get detained, even if you are not prosecuted, there is nothing to stop them going through your phone while it is in their possession.

Should anyone ask you what you have to hide when you object, just ask them if they would object to you putting a web cam in their bathroom and bedroom. If they refuse, ask them what they've got to hide...
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/21/the-iphone-tracking-fiasco-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/apple-iphone-secretly-records-owners-every-move-20110421-1dpab.html

The other big story this week was the failure of Amazon's cloud services, resulting in a number of high profile sites - including Reddit and Foursquare - vanishing from the web. There have always been doubts about trusting your computing services to the cloud, but the convenience has often outweighed the dangers. So, now we know what happens.

The problem started on Thursday and there are still some problems today (Sunday), although Amazon appear to be dealing with things. I suspect this is going to be a wake-up call for companies that have vital services on the cloud, and it will undoubtedly provide fuel for the Cassandras who have been predicting gloom and doom.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-amazon-failure-sites-internet.html

The Space Review has an interesting, and rather worrying, discussion of the problems caused by solar flares (also called solar storms) as the solar cycle reaches a new peak in its eleven year cycle. While I had some idea of its effect on earth orbit satellites, I have to admit that I hadn't really thought through the implications.

I covered the problems caused by GPS jammers a few weeks ago, what hadn't clicked was the fact that solar flames can have the same effect by heavily ionizing the upper atmosphere, so the GPS signals can't get through. Then there is the fact that commercial transatlantic airliners are using polar routes much more frequently. Solar storms tend to cause radio blackouts at the poles, and the recent class X solar storm caused flights to be re-routed, increasing flight times, and fuel costs. It also caused people to be bumped from their flights.

The real problem though, is that there seems to be very little planning by the very people whose services will be disrupted solar storms. In the case of GPS that will be shipping navigation, ATMs, electrical distribution networks, and in-vehicle GPS navigation to name but a few. To give you some idea of the scale, in 1859 a powerful solar storm affected telegraph systems around the world, some of them were even set on fire by the storm! The last solar maximum was in the early 2000s, and since them we have put massive numbers of new satellites into earth orbit. And we really depend on those satellites. Lets hope the powers that be and the satellite operators start taking solar storms seriously.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1783/1

I had to smile at the latest wheeze from a group of Swedish file sharers. They've founded a new religion - Missionary Church of Kopimism, who hold CTRL+C and CTRL+V to be sacred symbols! They are hoping to be recognized officially as a religion by the Swedish government. I suspect some hard praying to their deity may be needed to achieve this. On the other hand, some 390,127 people in the UK declared that their religion was Jedi in the 2001 census. That's more than put down Sikhism, Judaism, or Buddism. In fact no less that 2.6 per cent of the population of the seaside town of Brighton are Jedi.*
http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-await-official-recognition-of-new-religion-110410/


Homework:

Who is Manuel Ortiz Braschi? Do a search for his name in the Kindle store and you get no less that 2,879 hits! Quite an achievement for a single person, don't you think? Mr Braschi is one of the premier exponents of a new generation of e-book content farmers. Material is scraped off world wide web sites, assembled into an e-book format and placed in an e-book store. It can be very lucrative, and readers have no idea that it is stolen material.

To see how lucrative it is, lets take Mr Braschi as an example. Suppose he puts all of his books on sale on Amazon at 99 cents. That means he will get 33 cents a sale from Amazon. Now, suppose he sells an average of 20 copies of each title. Not an unlikely figure, it's a small enough amount for some people to take a punt on an interesting sounding title. So our enterprising 'author' will receive 2,879 x 20 x 0.33 = USD$19,001.40 cents according to my calculator. (OK it's a bright yellow Visual C++ .net calculator, given to me by Microsoft as a freeby at a conference, but it doesn't seem to have any bugs in it!)

Pretty good going, huh? And, do I hear you ask, "What if a book gets a bad review pointing out that it's ripped off content?" Easy - just withdraw it and resubmit it with a different title! Boy, what a shambles. and now there's even software to automate the process...
http://www.impactmedia.co.uk/blog/search-marketing/are-ebooks-the-new-content-farms-2901/
http://www.publishingtrends.com/2011/03/the-kindle-swindle/

The Hubble Space Telescope is now an adult - it was 21 this month, and to celebrate the event NASA has released a fantastic picture of the Rose Galaxy. Take a look and see what I'm talking about!
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/hubble-rose-gallery.html

This week's featured TED video is a moving piece by liver transplant surgeon Susan Lim about the move from transplanting whole organs to just transplanting cells to help the damaged organ mend itself. I'm not going to say any more, since it would amount to a spoiler. Don't skip this one - you will appreciate it.
http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_lim.html


Geek Toys:

Now I'm really jealous! the UK's Daily Telegraph reporter David Leafe got to play with the controls of London's iconic Tower Bridge. It is the ultimate Meccano set, and he was allowed to raise the bridge to allow a ship to sail under it. The Corporation of London has just completed major restoration works on the bridge, and is about to run a competition to celebrate. The prize winner will be to be allowed to open the Bridge, just like David Leafe. Really cool! I realize that most of my readers being the USA, you will have to fly over here if you win - but it's worth it, just to get the bragging rights!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/8459219/Tower-Bridge-a-towering-boys-toy.html


Scanner:

Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) dies
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13137674

This tech bubble is different
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_17/b4225060960537.htm

Antigravity could replace dark energy as cause of Universe's expansion
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-antigravity-dark-energy-universe-expansion.html

To tug hearts, music first must tickle the neurons
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19brain.html?_r=2&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all

Six Windows 7 nightmares and how to fix them
https://www.infoworld.com/d/microsoft-windows/six-windows-7-nightmares-and-how-fix-them-655&current=1&last=7#slideshowTop

* Note: Establishing religious affiliation is always difficult in the UK, since most of the people who claim to be 'Church of England' are in fact atheists. That is to say that they never go to church and God is simply irrelevant to them, and not a part of their lives. This has been a problem for the church since at least the 17th Century. In the 19th Century they actually resorted to sending missionaries into the working class areas of the big cities!


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
24 April, 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.


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page