WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week’s offerings include Microsoft vs. the Feds, the BBC and the Australian government, a nifty little utility called HWiNFO, the Spratly Islands, Sir John Franklin’s doomed expeditions to find the North-West Passage, wearable hi-tech (including the Tweeting Bra), a delicious new Dell monitor, a gigantic 110-inch curved TV screen from TCL, and a fantastic microphone array from acoustic-camera.com. And as if that’s not enough there are URLs pointing to Google’s new Parkinson’s spoon, Twitter raising money, Nancy Pelosi urging the FCC to classify broadband as a utility, nightmare sci-fi virtual realities, a peek inside an ISIS terrorist’s laptop, and an ant sized radio.
I hope you like it. It’s a pretty varied collection of material, but I’m sure most of you will find something in it to entertain and inform!
And now...
Shorts:
I’m pleased to see that Microsoft is fighting the attempt to force it to hand over user emails held in one of its overseas data centres. Last July they were ordered by a judge to hand over the emails, but they have since refused to do so. Now they have been found to be in contempt of court, but are still refusing to hand over the email.
As far as the last bit goes there is more to it than reaches the eye. Microsoft are appealing against the original ruling, and having been found in contempt of court means that the appeal will be expedited. You can tell there is something funny going on, because in this case there were no penalties applied. Normally, at least in the UK, you either get a rolling fine that goes up until you do as you are told, or you get banged up until you have ‘purged’ your contempt!
Presumably, then, the case will go to court real soon now. I’ll let you know what happens...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/01/redmond_holds_out_on_email_handover_order/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/10/microsoft_contempt_of_court/
This one is such a doozy that I can only quote the first paragraph of the article:
‘In a submission to the Australian Government on the issue of online piracy, the BBC Worldwide indicates that ISPs should be obliged to monitor their customers’ activities. Service providers should become suspicious that customers could be pirating if they use VPN-style services and consume a lot of bandwidth, the BBC says.’
More to the point, government authorities should be monitoring the BBC bureaucrats for further signs of insanity, with a view to having them sectioned if any turn up...
http://torrentfreak.com/bbc-isps-should-assume-heavy-vpn-users-are-pirates-140908/
On a more mundane topic, do you, like me, want to know what’s going on under the hood of your Windows desk top computer? I do, and since Microsoft abolished allowing those dinky little information utilities I used to have all down the right hand side of the screen, I’ve been bereft of information.
Now however, I’ve found a new toy that tells me what I want to know. It’s a neat little free app called HWiNFO which gives you massive amounts of info about the machine it’s running on, and, if you ask it nicely, it will do some real time system monitoring. Just the thing for people like me who get completely paranoid if anything I ask the computer to do takes more than a few seconds without a response!
http://www.hwinfo.com/
Homework:
This isn’t exactly hi-tech, though it’s certainly interesting low-tech with a geopolitical twist. Some of you may have heard of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. For those who haven’t it’s a group of small islands lying to the south of China between Vietnam and the Philippines. They lie in a chunk of water that’s claimed by China – and by Vietnam, and by the Philippines, and I would guess Taiwan as a matter of principle.
It’s strategically a very important area, and that means that other powers – such as the US – feel it impinges on their interests too. Its South Reef has already been the scene of fierce fighting in 1988, when China took it from the Vietnamese, who were driven off the reef with 70 dead.
At regular intervals there is sabre rattling in the area with ‘test’ launches of rockets, and incursions into the area by naval vessels. Now, however the wily Chinese have come up with a new strategy: building new islands off the reefs of the South China Sea to establish a presence.
The URL is a story about a reporter that went looking for the Chinese ships involved and of what he found there, including new islands and ones under construction. The story isn’t very well presented, but it is interesting and gives some insight into developments in an area many consider to be a likely flash point in a new war.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29107792
In the mid-19th century wooden ships reached their apogee, soon to be superseded by the screw driven iron ship. And in 1845 Sir John Franklin set off with two British navy wooden ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, to find the legendary North West Passage. He was never seen or heard again, becoming a magnet for all sorts of conspiracy theories. A large number of expeditions were launched to find him, but little was found.
Over the years since, some information has surfaced. It has become clear that the ships were trapped in the ice near King William Island. Running out of supplies, the crews set off over land to find a settlement. Notes were found in various cairns scattered throughout the north-west, but no sign of the ships was ever found, although a few skeleton, believed to be the remains of crew members, did turn up.
Until now.
Now Canadian divers working with archaeologists have found the remains of one of Franklin’s ships. It looks in pretty good condition as well, especially when you consider that it’s around 160 years old and made of wood. It is, as the Guardian article points out, one of the most sought after prizes in marine archaeology. As yet there is no indication which of the two ships has been found, but, no doubt that will be rectified soon.
In the meantime, watch this space for more information as it becomes available!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/09/british-ship-1845-franklin-expedition-found-canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin’s_lost_expedition
For Geeks:
Wearables are all the fashion at the moment. I think it’s an attempt to turn pure dorkiness into high fashion. Still, if that’s your thing feel free to go ahead, and to help you InfoWorld have produced a slide show of some 21 creations you can wear. I have to say that I nearly snurfed my coffee when the ‘Tweeting Bra’ slide came up... And, if anyone decides to try out the cat ears that read your brainwaves, do let me know the results. Oh, and include a picture, of course!
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/163388/21-weird-and-wacky-wearables-youll-actually-want-249870
And now for something a little more serious. I want to talk about screens – monitor and television screens...
Dell have just brought out a new monitor, a 27-inch monitor. So what, you might say. Ah but the resolution is what counts on this one – 5120x2880 pixels resolution. That makes them the smallest pixels on offer so far. Mind you, with a total of 14,700,000 (14.7 million) pixels to move around, anyone trying to use it will need a powerful graphics card. There’s no price yet, but the figure of US$2,500 is currently being bandied around. I want one!
On the other hand if big TV screens are your turn on, then you will want to direct your eyeballs in the direction of the world’s first 110-inch Curved 4K TV, the China Star Curved Ultra-HD TV from TCL. The 3,840 x 2,160 resolution curved LED display boasts a high image depth that’s said to create a “near glasses-free 3D effect” and offers a reflection-free 55 degree field of view from 3m (10 ft) away. Pretty impressive, I thought. No price or availability information yet, but I’m sure that won’t be too long in coming!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/06/new_dell_5k_monitor_and_stuff/
http://www.gizmag.com/tcl-110-inch-curved-uhd-tv-ifa2014/33720/
OK. So you are more into sound than vision. In that case I have a little something that the sound guy at work, Marek, drew my attention to.
How does a 120 microphone/channel array grab you? Sounds like something out of a 1970s Grateful Dead concert!
Actually it has a real engineering and building information management (aka BIM) use for pinpointing the origin of spurious sounds and mapping the acoustics of buildings. Awesome. While I would like the 120 mic array for the next time I attend a webcast, I’m not greedy. In the circumstances I would settle for a mere 32 channel array...
http://www.acoustic-camera.com/
Scanner:
Google buys firm behind spoon for Parkinson’s patients
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29155888
Profitless Twitter: We’re looking to raise $1.5... yes, billion
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/11/twitter_debt_offering/
Nancy Pelosi urges FCC to reclassify broadband as a utility
http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/8/6123801/pelosi-urges-title-ii-classification-of-broadband
9 nightmare sci-fi virtual realities that are closer than you think
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/163531/9-nightmare-sci-fi-virtual-realities-are-closer-you-think-250160
Found inside ISIS terror chap’s laptop: CELINE DION tunes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/11/dell_on_earth_inside_the_worlds_most_dangerous_laptop/
Ant-sized radio ready for the ‘Internet of Things’
http://www.33rdsquare.com/2014/09/ant-sized-radio-ready-for-internet-of.html#ixzz3DH3uXgNN
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb, Fi and Marek 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
14 September 2014
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.
