WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
Fewer but slightly longer stories this week: robo-calls, smart watches in exams, the ultimate ladle, and cyclists in London – followed by URLs about losing digital records, the secret of Stradivarius violins, a bike path with a difference, disabling your web cam, US air traffic control, and a DoS attack with a difference.
I’m afraid there won’t be a Winding Down next week because I’ll be out of town again, but I promise you I’ll try and make up for it the week after. And now for this week’s tantalizing selection...
A Short
I gather that not only those of us in the UK, but also US citizens suffer unwanted and annoying calls from cold callers and robo-calls. They’re a serious nuisance over on this side of the pond too. However, recently the powers that be are beginning to take action against these menaces. The first thing is that new regulations are coming in that will result in fines of up to UK£500,000 (about US$737,200) for companies involved in nuisance calls and texts. That’s a good start, but we will wait to see how hard the authorities are going to be in practice.
The second is news of a raid on just such a company by our Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The Information Commissioner is our privacy and data protection watch dog. Apparently the company raided – which had documents and equipment seized – is believed to have made between four and six million recorded telephone calls a day about debt management or payment protection insurance. Note that that’s every day, not in total. Now the ICO is following up looking for information about where the company got its information, and trying to ensure it isn’t sold on to other similar scum. Definitely the way to go!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/12/nuisance_call_ico_raids_call_centre/
http://news.sky.com/story/1433679/huge-fines-to-tackle-menace-of-cold-callers
Homework:
A lot of universities already ban phones in exam situations, but now, I see, they are starting to ban watches as well, because ‘smart’ watches are starting to come on to the market. I guess Apple are to blame for the current bout of paranoia. Actually, with the current generation all they have to do is to insist the students arrive two hours before the exam is due to start, and the watch batteries will be dead during the exam!
Joking apart, this is only part of an ongoing battle which started with students snaffling answers to coursework questions off the internet. There is now quite a thriving industry in programs to detect such plagiarism. This ‘arms’ race is starting to look suspiciously like the music business’s efforts over copyright, and we all know how successful that hasn’t been.
It’s a classic case of trying to treat the symptoms, rather than dealing with the underlying problem. The problem is that, traditionally, you ascertained whether a student understood what he or she had been taught by a system of practical exercises (eg engineering students using theodolites), written papers and written exams. The practical exercises are fairly safe for the time being, though the results could be open to collusion.
The problem is that, in a connected society, written papers and even written exams are no longer a means for tracking understanding. Obviously something better is needed. One tried and tested way of doing this has been in operation in the Universities almost since they were founded – the ‘Viva Voce’ (it’s the Latin for ‘with living voice’).
What it means is that you have to defend verbally what you have written. This already happens with higher degrees. Expanding it to lower levels would make it much easier to tell who understands what they’ve written, and who just mindlessly copied. At the coursework level, it means picking a student at random out of the group to verbally defend their essay, and at the exam level requiring each student to verbally defend one or two answers chosen at random.
I’m not saying this is the only alternative, just that there are alternatives to fighting a losing battle against ‘cheating’. All that’s necessary is a mind open to new ideas, and after all that’s what our higher education facilities are supposed to be about, isn’t it?
http://www.androidheadlines.com/2015/02/universities-starting-blanket-ban-watches-fear-smartwatches-will-aid-cheaters.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_exam
Geek Stuff:
OK guys – this non-hi-tech piece of kitchen ware is high on my must have list! Even a techie must fall for something cute once in a while. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a cat picture? Nope. It’s a Loch Ness monster soup ladle! You’ve got to see it to understand – point your browser at the URL now...
http://www.findmeagift.co.uk/gifts/ototo-nessie-soup-ladle.html
London:
London is a very busy city. Its streets, originally designed for horse, foot and horse-drawn wagon traffic, is now the province of lorries, cars, buses, motor-cycles, pedal cycles, skate boarders and pedestrians. Most of the time people using those streets manage pretty well. Unfortunately, when someone doesn’t obey the rules, or is careless, the results can be deadly.
The (pedal) cycling population of London has exploded over the past decade, and this is causing problems, since in reality there is very little separation between the motorized traffic and the cyclists. The pedestrians are, in general, not too badly off, since virtually all the streets have pavements (sidewalks for my American readers).
The problems with cyclists are compounded, because collectively they have a problem similar to that of the internet – trolls. Like the internet trolls, cycling trolls are only a small part of the population, but they cause problems out of all proportion to their population size. Cycling trolls jump red lights, ignore pedestrian crossings, ride along the pavements, weave in and out of the traffic, ride in groups spaced out across the road instead of single file, and generally break the traffic laws.
In particular they have a nasty habit of sliding up on the inside of cars and lorries waiting to make a turn at the traffic lights. This a particular problem in the case of lorries who can’t see them, and a number of cyclist have been crushed to death as the lorries make their turn. The deaths are devastating both for the bereaved and for the drivers who often get, unfairly, blamed for the accident.
There have been a number of proposals for dealing with this problem, the latest being a proposal to restrict the speed limit to 20 mph. This proposal gained a lot of laughs from Londoners – the last figures I have for the average speed of traffic in central London is 8.98 mph! Unfortunately, most of these proposals (like the one just mentioned) fail to address the two key problems – anonymity and a lack of separation of different categories of traffic.
Thus, (finally getting to the point here) I was really interested to read about a proposal to use the abandoned tunnels that riddle London to create cyclist and pedestrian highways. This would separate the cycles from the motorized traffic. I’m not so sure about having pedestrians using them. To be blunt, as a pedestrian shopping on my local high street I’ve been nearly knocked down by cyclists ignoring lights etc, far more frequently than by cars.
It won’t solve the anonymity problem of course, but to my mind it represents a bold attempt to go some way to deal with part of the problem. I can only hope that it becomes a reality – though I suspect it won’t look quite as elegant and brightly lit as the artist’s impressions displayed in the article!
http://www.gizmag.com/london-underline/36052/
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/london-streets-performance-report-q1-2012-13.pdf (look for the London Streets | 3. TRAFFIC SPEEDS | Traffic Speeds in Central London – it’s on page 14 in the version displayed on my screen)
Scanner:
Records of 21st Century could be lost forever
http://news.sky.com/story/1427131/records-of-21st-century-could-be-lost-forever
Violin-fiddling boffins learn that ‘F-HOLES’ are secret to Stradivarius’ SUPERIOR sound
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/15/violin_acoustics_f_holes_mit/
Van Gogh-Roosegaarde Starry Night bike path
http://blog.gessato.com/2014/11/17/van-gogh-roosegaarde-starry-night-bike-path/
How to disable your web cam (and why you should)
http://www.howtogeek.com/210921/how-to-disable-your-webcam-and-why-you-should/
US air traffic control ‘vulnerable to hackers’ says watchdog
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/09/air_traffic_cyber_security/
http://www.cringely.com/2015/03/09/the-sky-is-falling-and-the-faa-isnt-ready/
This guy’s light bulb performed a DoS attack on his entire smart house
http://fusion.net/story/55026/this-guys-light-bulb-ddosed-his-entire-smart-house/
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi 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
15 March 2015
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.
