Quotulatiousness

February 21, 2010

It sounds like the correct answer to the legal question

Filed under: Law, Railways, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 19:07

It’s surprising that a dispute over the use of open source software in a model railway application would be the one to set the legal precedent, but that is what happened here:

Although some people viewed it as a tempest in a teapot, the long-running legal case Jacobsen v. Katzer stirred up some seminal open source issues. We first reported on the dust-up all the way back in August of 2008, noting that the dispute centered around — of all things — model train software.

Specifically, Jacobsen had developed JMRI, the Java Model Railroad Interface project. When Katzer built the code for the project into proprietary model train software, deleting existing copyright notices within the code, Jacobsen filed suit. Now, settlement documents are available online, and the end of the dispute points to a final victory for open source licenses.

The settlement documents show that Katzer will pay Jacobsen $100,000 over 18 months, cease using the JMRI code, and not attempt to register domains using the JMRI name. Previously, the legal dispute had gone all the way to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which is the last legal stop before the Supreme Court. As Lawrence Lessig noted in a post, when the Court of Appeals upheld the Artistic License that governed the use of JMRI, it was “an important victory” for free licenses. Lessig noted that the decision had broad implications for many open source licenses.

Just because someone allows the use of source code freely does not mean you can, in effect, file off the serial numbers and pretend that it’s all your own work . . .

H/T to Craig Zeni for the link.

February 18, 2010

Artillery in Afghanistan

Filed under: Military, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

The most useful artillery for US troops in Afghanistan is reported to be the HIMARS rocket launcher system:

HIMARS carriers only one six MLRS rocket container (instead of two in the original MLRS vehicle), but the 12 ton truck can fit into a C-130 transport (unlike the 22 ton tracked MLRS) and is much cheaper to operate. The first HIMARS entered service in 2005, about a year after GPS guided rockets did.

The 680 pound GMLRS (guided multiple launch rocket system) missile is as GPS guided 227mm rocket that entered service six years ago. It was designed to have a range of 70 kilometers and the ability to land within meters of its intended target, at any range. This is possible because it uses GPS (plus a back up inertial guidance system) to find its target. Two years ago, the army tested GMLRS at max range (about 85 kilometers) and found that it worked fine. This enables one HIMARS vehicle to provide support over a frontage of 170 kilometers, or, in places like Afghanistan, where the fighting can be anywhere, an area of over 20,000 square kilometers. This is a huge footprint for a single weapon (an individual HIMARS vehicle), and fundamentally changes the way you deploy artillery in combat.


HIMARS: High Mobility Artillery Rocket System

February 2, 2010

Haiti still at high risk of further quakes

Filed under: Americas, Science, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 17:27

Wired discusses the results of NASA’s first UAVSAR 3D image of the devastated area:

NASA’s radar-equipped jet has returned its first 3-D image of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This false-color image clearly shows the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault extending east of the city.

The image supports a Jan. 21 U.S. Geological Survey report that suggested the section of the fault (indicated by the black arrow above) nearest to Port-au-Prince (yellow arrow) did not slip significantly in the magnitude 7 Jan. 12 earthquake.

The new image, taken by JPL’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar attached to a modified Gulfstream III jet, shows that the ground rupture moved westward from the epicenter. The section of the fault in the image did not rupture, a situation that increases the risk of another significant earthquake in the future.

[. . .]

The colors in the image, which shows a swath of about 12.5 miles, are the result of three different radar polarizations that make vegetation appear green, water appear blue and urban areas look reddish.

January 27, 2010

Apple’s latest . . . marketing mis-step

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:53

AdRants has a bit of fun with Apple’s choice of name for its latest rapture-of-the-nerds tech device:

Apple Introduces New Feminine Protection Product: The iPad

According to an explosion of tweets following Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPad, the device’s new name isn’t going over so well:

– For now the iPad’s really exciting, but wait until they release the iTampon

– iPad: You only need to plug it in once a month

– Wow – its the iPad. Wonder if it comes in 2 sizes (maxi and mini)

– I guess it’s Apple’s “time of the month”

– The Apple iPad: for all your heavy (work) flow days

– Our little iPod has hit womanhood

– To recap: the iPad will come with an iRag (to keep it clean) + some iBruprofen (to keep it working smoothly) + iWings (protection plan)

H/T to Virginia Postrel, who wrote “And so the jokes begin…Apple needs more female marketers”.

Update: Francis Turner sent a link to the official announcement photo.

More serious coverage of the new product from The Register.

January 24, 2010

Canadian infantry to get new personal equipment

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:25

Strategy Page reports that the Canadian Forces will be introducing new equipment for infantry soldiers next year:

Canada is joining its NATO allies in providing its infantry with new basic equipment, including electronic gear that, until quite recently, no one saw the troops getting for a decade or more. The Canadian gear set is called ISSP (Integrated Soldier System Project). The first components of ISSP will be issued next year. ISSP contains the usual elements of improved infantry gear. New uniforms, that incorporate improvements the troops have been demanding for years, plus new helmets and protective vests, that are lighter and provide improved shielding from bullets and fragments. New communications gear gives each soldier a link with everyone in his unit, while individual GPS is something troops have already provided for themselves. As other armies have discovered, the troops have already bought a lot of the new gear that is now proposed for the new standard issue.

A lot of this new stuff is commercial, with the military taking the best and most appropriate gear designed for outdoor living. This is particularly true of stuff marketed to the demanding mountain climbing and winter sports enthusiasts. Canada isn’t plunging into unknown territory here. The U.S., France, Germany and most other major NATO countries have already gone this route, and left a lot of practical experience in their wake. Thus the major goal is to get all the most useful gear, and reduce the weight of stuff the infantry have to carry into combat. It’s much easier to find new gear that works better, than it is to find stuff that’s lighter, and still gets the job done.

This is very good news, although there’s always a trade-off between “useful stuff to have” and “weight to be carried”. Modern computer gear is far lighter than it used to be, except for batteries, but there’s always the temptation on the part of the planners to add “just one more” neat bit of kit to the burden already being humped across the field by the infantry.

There’s also the challenge of making the technology both useful and as non-distracting as possible. As Robert Heinlein wrote back in the late 1950’s, “If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets he has to watch somebody a lot more simply equipped — say with a stone axe — will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a Vernier.”

January 22, 2010

There should be a special hell for this scam artist

Filed under: Britain, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:36

A report from the BBC on a “bomb detection device” widely sold in the Middle East, which does nothing at all:

A BBC Newsnight investigation has found that a so-called “bomb detector”, thousands of which have been sold to Iraq, cannot possibly work.

Leading explosives expert Sidney Alford told Newsnight the sale of the ADE-651 was “absolutely immoral”.

“This type of equipment does not work,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind betting that lives have been lost as a consequence.”

Questions have been raised over the ADE-651, following three recent co-ordinated waves of bombings in Baghdad.

It sounds like the ADE-651 is a combination of tech-look crap and new age marketing crap:

Iraq has bought thousands of the detectors for a total of $85m (£52m).

The device is sold by Jim McCormick, based at offices in rural Somerset, UK.

The ADE-651 detector has never been shown to work in a scientific test.

There are no batteries and it consists of a swivelling aerial mounted to a hinge on a hand-grip. Critics have likened it to a glorified dowsing rod.

And if that’s not enough whiff of flim-flam for you, how about this claim?

The training manual for the device says it can even, with the right card, detect elephants, humans and 100 dollar bills.

Update: The Guardian reports that the managing director of the firm has been arrested today.

January 21, 2010

And yet more on passwords

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:11

This is becoming a quarterly topic around here. Imperva has done some statistical analysis of the 32 million passwords which were exposed in the Rockyou.com security breach:

Key findings of the study include:

* The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as “brute force attacks.”

* Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password is “123456”.

* Recommendations for users and administrators for choosing strong passwords.

“Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes,” explained Imperva’s CTO Amichai Shulman.

The report identifies the most commonly used passwords:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

So there you go — all the tools you need to be a world-class password cracker.

January 19, 2010

A round-up of current “non-lethal” weaponry

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:16

Strategy Page looks at some new developments in the non-lethal weaponry category:

Israel has developed a new non-lethal weapon; the Thunder Cannon. Light enough to be mounted in a cart, it uses a new Pulse Detonation Technology that combines LPG (liquefied natural gas) with air to create a sonic boom in a cannon type barrel. Each burst moves forward at 2,000 meters per second and lasts 300 milliseconds. The cannon generates 60 to 100 bursts per second. One 27 pound (12kg) canister of LPG can create 5,000 bursts. A PDA size control unit does the mixing and detonation. The cannon is effective, at hitting people with these sonic bursts, at ranges of up to fifty meters (152 feet), and eventually double that. At ten meters or less, the burst can cause injury, or even be fatal. Anyone hit by the sonic bursts feels it, and hears it. It’s disorienting, and most people exposed to it flee the area. The technology was first developed to chase birds away from crops. It has been very effective at that. The military version can be mounted on vehicles, and fitted with a nozzle that can calibrate the shockwaves for special mission requirements. [. . .]

The problem is that, non-lethal weapons are not one hundred percent non-lethal, and not nearly as effective as proponents would like. But people love to call them non-lethal, because such devices are intended to deal with violent individuals by using less lethal force. A classic example of how this works is the Taser. A gun like device that fires two small barbs into an individual, and then zaps the victim with a non-lethal jolt of electricity, the Taser has been popular with police, who can more easily subdue violent, and often armed, individuals. Before Taser, the cops had a choice between dangerous (for everyone) hand-to-hand combat, or just using their firearms and killing the guy. While the Taser has been a major success for non-lethal weapons, for every thousand or so times you use it, the victim will die (either from a fall, another medical condition, use of drugs or whatever). This has been fodder for the media, and put Taser users, and non-lethal-weapons developers, on the defensive. Naturally, the manufacturers of these devices want zero deaths, and the users want a device that will bring down the target every time, at a price (for the device) they can afford to pay. There’s no way of satisfying all these demands, but it makes great press, insisting that someone should make it so.

Of course, the media also — rightly — points out cases where police officers use their Tasers like wands of domination . . . Tasering in situation where there’s no need for it or using the Taser like they’re playing paintball with the victim. There’s no need to blame the technology when it’s misused by “professionals”.

January 15, 2010

Why China won’t be able to corner the rare earth market

Filed under: China, Economics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:36

Tim Worstall looks at the importance of rare earth to the modern electronics industry, and why China’s ongoing attempt to corner the market won’t work in the long run:

The Chinese government is trying to corner the rare earths market and that isn’t good news for the tech business. Those with good memories of Chemistry O Level will know what the rare earths are: the funny little line of elements from Lanthanum to Lutetium at the bottom of the periodic table, along with Yttrium and Scandium, which we usually add to the list.

The reason we like them in the tech business is because they’re what enables us to make a lot of this tech stuff that is the business. You can’t run fibre optic cables without your Erbium repeaters, Europium, Terbium and Yttrium are all used to make the coloured dots in CRTs, the lens on your camera phone is 25 per cent Lanthanum oxide (yes, really, glass is made of metal oxides) and without Neodimium and Dysprosium we’d not have permanent magnets: no hard drives nor iPod headphones.

[. . .] it is still true that we get all of them – apart from Scandium, which is a rather different little beastie – from the same ore. In fact, we tend to get them not just from the same ore, but from the same mine: Bautou in Inner Mongolia (that’s the Chinese part, not the independent country).

And that’s where our problems really start. Over the past couple of decades China has been cracking down on small mines, usually in the name of environmental policy. That even may have been the real reason, as rare earth mines can be messy things. The outcome is that now 95 per cent of the earth’s supply comes from this one mining complex and the Chinese Government has just announced export restrictions.

So, if they have a monopoly on 95% of the world supply, why won’t it hold up? Because in spite of the name, they’re not as rare as all that . . . and there are substitutions that can be made for some or all of the current application needs. By restricting the supply and/or driving up the price, China will spur new competitors to enter the field and new sources of rare earths to be developed. In the short term, it will definitely create price increases (which, of course, will be passed on to the consumer), but in the medium-to-long term they will create a vibrant competitive marketplace which will almost inevitably drive the prices down below current levels.

Isn’t economics fascinating?

Among it’s other cool features, the iPhone can help you survive in the wilderness

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:24

Well, sort of:

If you scan the list of top iPhone apps, you might be forgiven for thinking that the device, like adolescence, is mostly for playing videogames, making rude noises and connecting to Facebook.

However, a more thorough examination of the digital delectables on offer in the app store will reveal that, far from being merely a plaything that receives phone calls — as long as you don’t live in rural Montana or my neighborhood — the iPhone is actually a hard-core survival tool.

Imagine that you’re stranded on your stock desert island, charged with surviving until the Globetrotters, your superiors at FedEx or the Smoke Monster finds you. And suppose that, for some reason, this island is equipped with a USB port for charging.

Well, then, as long as you have your trusty iPhone, you needn’t fear hypothermia, malaria or starvation. You just need the right apps. Let’s take a look, shall we?

January 10, 2010

You can get too passionate about . . . fonts

Filed under: Humour, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 22:23

H/T to Virginia Postrel.

January 4, 2010

Sony’s latest consumer mis-step

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:44

Dark Water Muse treated himself to a new bit of electronic kit over the holidays, a Sony Reader Touch. He wasn’t best pleased by the purchase:

The Sony Reader is an all but useless device, certainly at its current price point. Especially if you already happen to own a portable electronic device capable of rendering common document and media file formats — got a smart phone? Got a netbook or laptop? Then you’re already living the dream that is merely Sony’s Reader Touch nightmare.

DWM gives the Sony Reader Touch negative 1 out of 10. Truly impressively bad, particularly when measured on a scale of +1 to +10.

How does DWM compute negative one? Read on.

Only the newly arrived on H. G. Wells’ Time Machine could find utility in a Sony Reader. Or if you’re too proud to admit you fucked up by buying one in the first place and prefer to go to your grave, Sony Reader over your heart (trust DWM when he says, any friends you might still have after becoming a Sony Reader Touch owner, or surviving relatives, want to see it buried with you too), rather than get your money back.

DWM returned his Sony Reader Touch after making extra special efforts to try and modify his relationship to reading text with it. He wanted the Sony Reader to work. He was willing to tolerate “a little” deficit in the reading experience, if only to avoid having to slaughter one more tree to feed his hunger for crime novels. But, feeling disappointed and defeated, DWM sent his Sony Reader Touch back to from whence it had come (extruded from that great product anus behind so many retail consumer products).

I’ve got a couple of dozen books on my iPhone, but I consider them to be “emergency” reading . . . for those times when I don’t have internet access. It’s great that the iPhone can work as a small ebook display, but the key word here is “small”.

December 23, 2009

Tornado to the rescue!

Filed under: Britain, Railways, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:44

With all the winter weather in England this week, the railways are struggling to cope. One of the newest locomotives didn’t have any problems with the snow and ice:

TornadoInSnow_22Dec09

Passengers were rescued by a steam locomotive after modern rail services were brought to a halt by the snowy conditions in south-east England.

Trains between Ashford and Dover were suspended on Monday when cold weather disabled the electric rail.

Some commuters at London Victoria faced lengthy delays until Tornado — Britain’s first mainline steam engine in 50 years — offered them a lift.

They were taken home “in style”, said the Darlington-built engine’s owners.

iPhone fans “suffering from Stockholm Syndrome”

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

I think it’d be safe to say that Victor Keegan‘s inbox will be overflowing with anguished defences of the iconic iPhone after this article:

The iPhone isn’t perfect
With most examples of new technology, the owner’s desire to be seen at the cutting edge blinds them to admit any faults

When hostages defend their kidnappers, it is known as “Stockholm syndrome”. Something similar happens to iPhone users, according to the Danish analyst Strand Consult, when they fall so in love with the device that it blinds them to its defects such as a poor camera, lousy battery life for heavy users and no Bluetooth facility that can transmit photos.

This provoked a predictably outraged response from iPhonistas, but the truth is that a kind of Stockholm syndrome happens not just with iPhones but with most examples of new technology where the owners’ desire to be seen at the cutting edge irrationally blinds them to admit any faults.

There are lots of things you could call the iPhone, but “perfect” certainly isn’t one of them. I’m very happy with my iPhone, but the camera isn’t as good as the one I had on my old Treo 600 (introduced in 2003) and the battery life is quite significantly worse. I don’t use Bluetooth, so that deficiency isn’t important to me.

December 22, 2009

Wikipedia shows its biggest innate weakness

Filed under: Environment, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:40

James Delingpole shows the built-in bias of the Wikipedia editing team presents a very restrictive view of AGW and the CRU hacking/leak:

If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal from the accompanying article. It reads more like a damage-limitation press release put out by concerned friends and sympathisers of the lying, cheating, data-rigging scientists.

Which funnily enough, is pretty much what it is. Even Wikipedia’s own moderators acknowledge that the entry has been hijacked, as this commentary by an “uninvolved editor” makes clear.

Unfortunately, this naked bias and corruption has infected the supposedly neutral Wikipedia’s entire coverage of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. And much of this, as Lawrence Solomon reports in the National Post, is the work of one man, a Cambridge-based scientist and Green Party activist named William Connolley.

Wikipedia is a useful resource, but (as with the mainstream media) you have to take into account the built-in bias both on how issues are covered, but even the issues that are allowed to be presented.

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