Quotulatiousness

December 21, 2009

The evolution of the smart phone

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

Charles Stross looks at the rapid changes in the mobile computing and telephone markets brought about by the smart phone:

Pre-2005, digital mobile phones typically ran on GSM, with GPRS data limited to 56kbssec, or Verizon’s CDMA. This badly choked their ability to do anything useful and internet-worthy. By 2005, the first 3G networks based on WCDMA (aka UMTS) began to open up. By 2009, 3G HSDPA networks can carry up to 7.2mbps. The modem-grade data throughput of the mid-noughties smartphone experience has been replaced by late-noughties broadband grade throughput, at least in the densely networked cities where most of us live. (I am not including the rural boondocks in this analysis. Different rules apply.)

To the mobile phone companies, 3G presented a headache. They typically offered each government billions for the right to run services over the frequencies freed up by the demise of old analog mobile phone services and early TV and other broadcast systems; how were they to monetise this investment?

They couldn’t do it by charging extra for the handsets or access, because they’d trained their customers to think of mobile telephony as, well, telephony. But you can do voice or SMS perfectly well over a GSM/GPRS network. What can you do over 3G that justifies the extra cost?

Version 1 of their attempt to monetise 3G consisted of walled gardens of carefully cultivated multimedia content — downloadable movies and music, MMS photo-messaging, and so on. The cellcos set themselves up as gatekeepers; for a modest monthly fee, the customers could be admitted to their garden of multimedia delights. But Version 1 is in competition with the internet, and the roll-out of 3G services coincided (and competed) with the roll-out of wifi hotspots, both free and for-money. It turns out that what consumers want of a 3G connection is not what a mobile company sees fit to sell them, but one thing: bandwidth. Call it Version 2.

Becoming a pure bandwidth provider is every cellco’s nightmare: it levels the playing field and puts them in direct competition with their peers, a competition that can only be won by throwing huge amounts of capital infrastructure at their backbone network. So for the past five years or more, they’ve been doing their best not to get dragged into a game of beggar-my-neighbour, by expedients such as exclusive handset deals (ever wondered why AT&T in America or O2 in the UK allowed Apple to tie their hands and retain control over the iPhone’s look and feel?) and lengthening contractual lock-in periods for customers (why are 18-month contracts cheaper than 12-month contracts?).

December 18, 2009

Odd . . . my phone is ticking

Filed under: Randomness, Technology — Nicholas @ 12:45

I just went into my office to hear an odd ticking sound. At first I thought it might have been a cooling fan on my desktop computer, but it turned out to be coming from the cordless phone sitting beside the tower. When I picked up the handset, it started ringing. I checked that it wasn’t really a call (no, normal dialtone when I turned on the line). Then, when I hung up, the phone started ringing continuously.

I finally got it to stop ringing, but it’s back to ticking. There’s no user-replaceable battery in the handset, so I’ll have to let it run down completely and recharge again to see if it’s just a battery issue or if the phone has gone bad. Irritating either way.

More on passwords

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:58

The Economist‘s Tech.view correspondent confesses to password laxity:

He admits to flouting the advice of security experts: his failings include using essentially the same logon and password for many similar sites, relying on easily remembered words—and, heaven forbid, writing them down on scraps of paper. So his new year’s resolution is to set up a proper software vault for the various passwords and ditch the dog-eared list.

Your correspondent’s one consolation is that he is not alone in using easily crackable words for most of his passwords. Indeed, the majority of online users have an understandable aversion to strong, but hard-to-remember, passwords. The most popular passwords in Britain are “123” followed by “password”. At least people in America have learned to combine letters and numbers. Their most popular ones are “password1” followed by “abc123”.

I’ve written some carefully considered advice on passwords, which is still as valid today as it was in those dark, distant days of October.

December 15, 2009

Nanny state now to come with pop-up warnings

Filed under: Britain, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Just in case you British internet users weren’t already aware, the government may start including pop-ups whenever you access an out-of-country social networking site. Nice of them to at least warn you that your internet usage will be monitored for quality and customer satisfaction (the customer in question is the government, BTW):

The ACPO document, obtained by The Register, suggests the government may “minimise or discourage or give ‘pop-up’ warnings as regards to communications services within the online environment where there is evidence, presented to a Circuit Judge or Secretary of State, that allowing the public access or use of specific communications services could make them vulnerable to fraud, the theft of personal information or other attack”.

ACPO does not explain the technical details of its plan, but points out that “measures already exist to minimise the availability of potentially illegal content”. However, it cites the Internet Watch Foundation’s blacklist of international URLs carrying indecent and abusive images of children, suggesting a parallel list of social networks, forums and real time messaging sites judged to be risky could be created.

The proposal was drawn up by ACPO’s Data Communications Group. The group is chaired by Jim Gamble, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which is responsible for policing paedophiles on the internet.

Women in IT jobs

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:28

According to a recent study, the reason there are not more women in the IT sector is that they’re put off by the ubiquitous cans of Coke and science fiction posters:

There’s more research out this week on the vexed question of why there aren’t more women in the field of computing and IT. According to the latest study, such seemingly harmless habits as putting up sci-fi posters or leaving cans of Coke about can be much more offputting than one might think.

“When people think of computer science the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science fiction memorabilia and junk food,” says Sapna Cheryan, a junior trick-cyclist at the university of Washington, America. “That stereotype doesn’t appeal to many women who don’t like the portrait of masculinity that it evokes.”

Cheryan and her colleagues arranged multiple experiments and surveys among hundreds of non-computing-subjects students at Washington uni. Questionnaires were filled in in different rooms — one previously prepared with a science fiction poster, games kit and Coke cans; one instead with “nature” and “art” wall graphics, books and coffee cups. This stage dressing was ostensibly not part of the tests, but nonetheless it had a powerful effect on decisions by the ladies taking part.

December 9, 2009

“There is no app for that”

Filed under: History, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:06

Alex Tabarrok looks at the Chilean “Cybersyn” project:

Cybersyn was a project of the socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and British cybernetic visionary Stafford Beer; its goal was to control the Chilean economy in real-time using computers and “cybernetic principles.” The military regime that overthrew Allende dropped the project and probably for this reason when the project is periodically rediscovered it is often written about in a romantic tone as a revolutionary “socialist internet,” decades ahead of its time that was “destroyed” by the military because it was “too egalitarian” or because they didn’t understand it.

Although some sources at the time said the Chilean economy was “run by computer,” the project was in reality a bit of a joke, albeit a rather expensive one, and about the only thing about it that worked were the ordinary Western Union telex machines spread around the country. The IBM 360 two computers supposedly used to run the Chilean economy were IBM 360s (or machines on that order). These machines were no doubt very impressive to politicians and visionaries eager to use their technological might to control an economy [. . .] Today, our perspective will perhaps be somewhat different when we realize that these behemoths were far less powerful than an iPhone. Run an economy with an iPhone? Sorry, there is no app for that.

Cybersyn_stage

[. . .] The control room is like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in another respect–both are stage sets. Nothing about the room is real, even the computer displays on the wall are simply hand drawn slides projected from the other side with Kodak carousels.

Hyping space travel

Filed under: Space, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:09

Colby Cosh finds the marketing hype from Virgin Galactic to be more than a little over the top:

I continue to be awestruck at Sir Richard Branson’s gift for hype. On Monday he rolled out Virgin Galactic’s “SpaceShipTwo”, dutifully described by Wired magazine as “the first commercial spacecraft” and “the first commercial spaceship”. This must be galling for the folks at the spaceflight research firm SpaceX. In July of this year, to little fanfare, they successfully put a Malaysian satellite into low earth orbit using a privately designed and built unmanned rocket, the Falcon 1. This is definitely commerce, and RazakSat is definitely up there in space, bleeping away in Malay. Surely everything else is Bransonian semantics?

SpaceShipTwo, despite the name, is an airplane — a very sophisticated and impressive airplane, designed to make brief suborbital hops after being carried aloft by another airplane. Branson’s hundreds of more-money-than-they-know-what-to-do-with customers are buying the aviation experience of a lifetime, one that nobody returns from unmoved. But it will be an aviation experience. “Space” is defined in custom, international law, and Virgin marketing literature as “high enough that airplanes mostly don’t work anymore”. To get there as an airplane passenger, by virtue of a few seconds of rocket boost tacked onto a conventional flight, seems a little like a technical cheat — the equivalent of trying to join the Mile High Club by oneself in the john.

Apple pulls entire line of apps after systematic bogus reviews

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:06

It’s certainly not the only case, but it’s good to see that Apple is willing to police their App Store:

Bogus reviews have landed Chinese iPhone app developer Molinker in deep trouble, resulting in all 1000-plus of its apps being removed and banned from the App Store. This is great news for consumers who are tired of downloading subpar apps based on inflated reviews, and bad news for companies looking to shill their products with internal misdeeds.

The App Store is simultaneously the strength and the weakness of Apple’s control of the iPhone development market: it’s the only approved channel for non-jailbroken iPhone users to access new applications, but it’s not scaling well to the demand (or the supply). It’s a victim of its own success, in many ways.

I’m sure that Apple will eventually come up with a winning revamp for the current App Store, but as it is right now, it is not serving customers or developers particularly well. The review system, which Molinker was actively gaming, is one of the weaker links, but there are lots of other issues that become more irritating as there’s more apps available, but no easy way to find them.

December 4, 2009

PayPal detects phishing attempt . . . from PayPal

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:34

You know those bogus emails you get pretending to be from PayPal, including poisoned links? If you’re the conscientious type, you forward them on to the anti-phishing folks at PayPal, right? You’ll usually get a response saying something like You’re right, it does look suspicious:

Banks and financial institutions are fond of lecturing customers about the perils of phishing emails, the bogus messages that attempt to trick marks into handing over their login credentials to fraudulent sites. Yet many undo this good work by sending out emails themselves that invite users to click on a link and log into their account rather than going a safer route and telling users to use bookmarked versions of their site.

The problems of the former approach are neatly illustrated by a blog posting by Randy Abrams, a former Microsoft staffer who is now director of technical education at anti-virus firm Eset. Abrams complained about the inclusion of a link in an email from PayPal as it looked rather too much like a phishing email.

I’ve noticed a number of rather more sophisticated phishing attempts in the last couple of weeks, which makes this PayPal error all the more dangerous . . . because it lowers peoples’ wariness about other legitimate-seeming messages.

November 27, 2009

A cure for complacency

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:47

John P. Avlon wants to shake your complacent attitude to the threats to everyday life:

First your cell phone doesn’t work. Then you notice that you can’t access the Internet. Down on the street, ATMs won’t dispense money. Traffic lights don’t function, and calls to 911 don’t get routed to emergency responders. Radios report that systems controlling dams, railroads, and nuclear power plants have been remotely infiltrated and compromised. The air-traffic control system shuts down, leaving thousands of passengers stranded or rerouted and unable to communicate with loved ones. This is followed by a blackout that lasts not hours but days and even weeks. Our digital civilization shudders to a halt. When we emerge, millions of Americans’ data are missing, along with billions of dollars.

This scenario may sound like the latest doomsday blockbuster to come out of Hollywood. But each of the elements described above has occurred over the past decade as the result of a cyber-attack. Cyber-attacks are an accelerating threat, still without generally accepted terminology, effective deterrents, or comprehensive legal remedies. They are weapons of mass disruption, used by adversaries cloaked in anonymity, that could prove at least temporarily crippling to the digital infrastructure of modern society. This kind of attack is attractive to America’s enemies, not only because it allows weaker entities to take on far stronger ones but because it turns our technological strength into a weakness.

November 26, 2009

It’s not a protective force field . . .

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:35

. . . but if it provides a useful degree of protection against splinters and shell fragments, it’s certainly worth testing in a combat zone:

The U.S. Army has developed shell proof wallpaper. The fabric is applied, like wallpaper, on the inside of troop work and living quarters, in areas where the enemy fires rockets and mortar shells into the area. Thus when fast moving fragments or debris hit the structure, the new material, called X-Flex, stretches and halts, or slows down, the fast moving object. This makes it much less likely that anyone inside the structure will be killed.

Over the last five years, the U.S. Army has gone to great lengths to protect troops in camps. Tight perimeter security has kept suicide bombers, and terrorists in general, out of the camps. But there are still rocket and mortar attacks. These usually cause few casualties, but those that do occur are the result of shell fragments or debris coming through the walls.

If it works as well in real life application as it apparently has done in controlled testing, it’ll be a welcome addition to the defenses.

Damning with not-so-faint damns

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:11

A clearly impartial and unbiased advance review of James Cameron’s Avatar, due for release in December:

Budgeted at a reported $237m (£143m), Avatar is Cameron’s first dramatic feature since the record-breaking Titanic, back in 1997. The film is a science-fiction fantasy set on a verdant planet called Pandora and following the adventures of a US Marine played by Sam Worthington. Cameron shot the film on his own patented “fusion digital 3D camera system” and experts argue that the results take 3D techniques to a whole new level. [. . .]

The reviewer, however, begs to differ, describing the film as “alienating” and “weird”. Moreover, he/she argues that its pioneering visual technology is liable to induce nausea in the viewer. “The problem is with cutting in between 3D focus points and perspective,” the mystery critic writes. “The mind cannot adjust to it without a buffer — thus, Avatar is literally vomit inducing.”

Even the review’s praise comes with a sting in the tail. “There are some beautiful moments [in the film],” it concedes. “But overall it’s a horrible piece of shit.”

November 25, 2009

I thought Obama was going to be better than Bush on privacy issues

Filed under: Government, Law, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:04

Perhaps I was misinformed:

The Obama administration is seeking to reverse a federal appeals court decision that dramatically narrows the government’s search-and-seizure powers in the digital age.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Justice Department officials are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its August ruling that federal prosecutors went too far when seizing 104 professional baseball players’ drug results when they had a warrant for just 10.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 9-2 decision offered Miranda-style guidelines to prosecutors and judges on how to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights while conducting computer searches.

Kagan, appointed solicitor general by President Barack Obama, joined several U.S. attorneys in telling the San Francisco-based court Monday that the guidelines are complicating federal prosecutions in the West. The circuit, the nation’s largest, covers nine states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

November 24, 2009

Friendly reminder to UK readers: you do not have a right to remain silent

Filed under: Britain, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

A fascinating story about a case in Britain where the government’s shiny new powers under Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) have been used to jail a schizophrenic man for refusing to divulge the passwords to access his files:

The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.

His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.

The 33-year-old man, originally from London, is currently held at a secure mental health unit after being sectioned while serving his sentence at Winchester Prison.

In June the man, JFL, who spoke on condition we do not publish his full name, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment under Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). The powers came into force at the beginning of October 2007.

[. . .]

Throughout several hours of questioning, JFL maintained silence. With a deep-seated wariness of authorities, he did not trust his interviewers. He also claims a belief in the right to silence — a belief which would later allow him to be prosecuted under RIPA Part III.

November 23, 2009

Digital Economy Bill should be called Digital Disenfranchisement Bill

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:16

The proposed British legislation called the “Digital Economy Bill” is going to be very bad news, says Charles Stross:

I’m a self-employed media professional working in the entertainment industry, who earns his living by creating intellectual property and licensing it to publishers. You might think I’d be one of the beneficiaries of this proposed law: but you’d be dead wrong. This is going to cripple the long tail of the creative sector — it plays entirely to the interests of large corporate media organizations and shits on the plate of us ordinary working artists.

Want to write a casual game for the iPhone and sell it for 99 pence? Good luck with that — first you’ll have to cough up £50,000 to get it certified as child-friendly by the BBFC. (It’s not clear whether this applies to Open Source games projects, but I’m not optimistic that it doesn’t.)

Want to publish a piece of shareware over BitTorrent? You’re fucked, mate: all it takes is a malicious accusation and your ISP (who are required to snitch on p2p users on pain of heavy fines) will be ordered to cut off the internet connection to you and everyone else in your household. (A really draconian punishment in an age where it’s increasingly normal to conduct business correspondence via email and to manage bank accounts and gas or electricity bills or tax returns via the web.) Oh, you don’t get the right to confront your accuser in court, either: this is merely an administrative process, no lawyers involved. It’s unlikely that p2p access will survive this bill in any form — even for innocent purposes (distributing Linux .iso images, for example).

As I’ve said before, we’re rapidly moving to a world where it will be difficult to have a normal life without network access . . . this bill will create a new underclass of non-persons, all to benefit the dinosaurs of the media conglomerates. And introduced by a _Labour_ government, no less.

We are already at the point where it is a reasonable and sensible thing to say that access to the internet is a human right (at least in the west). Mandelson’s three strikes provision will deny innocent people access to the internet (for all it will take is accusations that do not need to have proof), which for more and more people will be the practical equivalent of being exiled from the country. No internet access would mean children can’t get access to school work, parents can’t get access to their bank accounts, and everyone will be cut off from large parts of their social circle (more and more people depend on email, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to stay in touch).

Due process? That seems to have been lost in the rush. Proportionality? That’s been gone for years.

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