Quotulatiousness

November 26, 2009

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.

November 20, 2009

Thinking about the Singularity

Filed under: Science, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

For some of you, this will be old hat (ancient history, even). For lots of people, however, the notion of a technological Singularity will be new — and disturbing in a way that hokey woo-woo New Age 2012 Mayan calendars ending is not. Glenn Reynolds writes about it in the December issue of Popular Mechanics:

For some time now, futurists have been talking about a concept called the Singularity, a technological jump so big that society will be transformed. If they’re right, the Industrial Revolution — or even the development of agriculture or harnessing of fire — might seem like minor historical hiccups by comparison. The possibility is now seeming realistic enough that scientists and engineers are grappling with the implications — for good and ill.

When I spoke to technology pioneer and futurist Ray Kurzweil (who popularized the idea in his book The Singularity Is Near), he put it this way: “Within a quarter-century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it.”

Even before we reach that point, Kurzweil and his peers foresee breathtaking advances. Scientists in Israel have developed tiny robots to crawl through blood vessels attacking cancers, and labs in the United States are working on similar technology. These robots will grow smaller and more capable. One day, intelligent nanorobots may be integrated into our bodies to clear arteries and rebuild failing organs, communicating with each other and the outside world via a “cloud” network. Tiny bots might attach themselves to neurons in the brain and add their processing power — and that of other computers in the cloud — to ours, giving us mental resources that would dwarf anything available now. By stimulating the optic, auditory or tactile nerves, such nanobots might be able to simulate vision, hearing or touch, providing “augmented reality” overlays identifying street names, helping with face recognition or telling us how to repair things we’ve never seen before.

Of course, there are some very scary scenarios as well: you think it’s bad when your email address or bank information gets hacked? How much worse will it be when you’re wearing your immersive technology 24/7? And how much worse again when you’re not wearing it at all, but have it embedded in your body? Being “hacked” then becomes life endangering, not just inconvenient. Charles Stross has written a few books exploring different possible futures (particularly Glasshouse and Halting State, both excellent and highly recommended novels, BTW), and it’s just possible that he’s being too optimistic.

Destructive technologies generally seem to come along sooner than constructive ones — we got war rockets before missile interceptors, and biological warfare before antibiotics. This suggests that there will be a window of vulnerability between the time when we develop technologies that can do dangerous things, and the time when we can protect against those dangers. The slower we move, the longer that window may remain open, leaving more time for the evil, the unscrupulous or the careless to wreak havoc. My conclusion? Faster, please.

November 17, 2009

F-35B to be too hot to handle?

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:59

Well, handling isn’t really the issue . . . it’s landing where there’s some strong concern for US Navy carrier captains:

It’s now official. The new generation of high-tech hovering aircraft — namely the famous V-22 “Osprey” tiltrotor and the upcoming F-35B supersonic stealth jump-jet — have an unforeseen flaw. Their exhaust downwash is so hot as to melt the flight decks of US warships, leading Pentagon boffins to look into refrigerated landing pads.

[. . .]

The jarheads* will want to operate their new machines from their existing helicopter-carrier amphibious assault vessels, which can’t practically be torn apart and refitted with massively reinforced upper decks as this would be likely to make them capsize. Similarly it would be extremely difficult to refrigerate the whole deck from beneath.

Hence the Marines would like someone to invent “a system that can be installed on top of the existing decks”, capable of resisting the hot breath of the F-35B and less than one inch thick. It should also, of course, be tough enough not to suffer any damage from the aircraft landing on it. This miracle fridge-sheet assembly should be covered with “thermally stable non-skid” finish — this latter perhaps incorporating “amorphous metal coatings”.

November 16, 2009

Harrier replacement moves to next stage

Filed under: Britain, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:28

The F-35B has been delivered to an American base for testing of its vertical take-off and hover capabilities:

The F-35 “Lightning II” B model will, like other versions of the same aircraft, offer supersonic performance and stealth technology – a combo so far offered in only one aircraft in the world, the famous F-22 Raptor ultrasuperfighter. But the F-35B, unlike its tailhook and normal-runway counterparts, is also equipped with a central lift fan mounted in a shaft through the fuselage and can swivel its jet exhaust downwards too.

This means that an armed and fuelled F-35B should be able to make a very short takeoff run to get airborne and then, having burned fuel and perhaps released weapons, make a vertical landing supported entrirely by engine thrust. This Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing (STOVL) capability has so far been offered in the Western-aligned world only by the famous Harrier, originally developed in Britain and now in service with the RAF, the Royal Navy and the US Marines.

Of course, Britain’s interest is moving toward being purely intellectual . . . the bookies are offering long odds on Britain ever commissioning even one of those two new aircraft carriers, never mind both of them. Back story here, here, and here.

Orwell vs. Huxley

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:07

Victor sent me this link with the cryptic comment “Oh shit”:

Orwell_vs_Huxley

November 13, 2009

Red light cameras are great . . . for increasing traffic fine revenues

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:09

For driver safety, not so much:

In Los Angeles the LAPD claims accidents are down after they installed cameras, but are they telling the whole truth or just trying to make money off motorists?

We crunched the numbers and the results may surprise you.

“Your data is shocking to me,” Sherman Ellison said.

Ellison is a ticket attorney and part time judge, who believes the cameras are there for one reason.

“No question. Purely a revenue generating device,” Ellison said.

Is it money or safety? We wanted to know actual numbers of accidents at red light camera intersections to see if they really went down.

When we asked, the LAPD became very defensive. The sergeant in charge told me in an e-mail, “The city would hope that it is the goal of KCBS/KCAL to discuss the positive aspects of the photo red light program.”

So we filed a public records request. The department charged us more than $500 for a computer run. When we got the numbers back, they told a different story.

We looked at every accident at every red light camera intersection for six months of data before the cameras were installed and six months after.

The final figures? Twenty of the 32 intersections show accidents up after the cameras were installed! Three remained the same and only nine intersections showed accidents decreasing.

If the reason for installing red light cameras was to increase public safety, they’re a failure. If, however, the real reason for installing them is to increase municipal revenue streams, they’re a slam-dunk success.

November 10, 2009

Military ATV usage

Filed under: Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:17

I can understand the attraction of riding an ATV, as carrying a full pack and combat gear is exhausting, but I would have thought the noise of the vehicle would make them tactically useless:

ATVs (all terrain vehicles) have proved particularly useful, and popular in Afghanistan. There are many models in use, all of them militarized civilian vehicles. The British use a militarized versions of the Yamaha Grizzly 450. Basically, the Grizzly is a four wheel, 628 pound, cross country motorcycle. This ATV is six feet long and 3.5 feet wide. In addition to the driver, there are racks on the bike that can carry another 175 pounds. In addition, the vehicle can tow a trailer carrying another 350 pounds of cargo. Top speed, on a flat surface, without a trailer, is about 75 kilometers an hour. Cross country, it’s usually about half that, and a bit less if a trailer is being hauled.

Four years ago, the British Army bought 250 of the Grizzly 450s, and these were very popular with the troops in Afghanistan. There they are used for patrolling, and hauling supplies to troops in isolated positions. The army is paying $41,000 for each bike, although that includes a trailer, spare parts and technical services. The civilian version goes for about $8,000 each.

November 8, 2009

Aussie iPhone owners rickrolled

Filed under: Australia, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 18:56

The horror, the horror:

The attacks, which researchers say are the world’s first iPhone worm in the wild, target jailbroken iPhones that have SSH software installed and keep Apple’s default root password of “alpine.” In addition to showing a well-coiffed picture of Astley, the new wallpaper displays the message “ikee is never going to give you up,” a play on Astley’s saccharine addled 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Tricking victims in to inadvertently playing the song has become a popular prank known as Rickrolling.

A review of some of the source code, shows that the malware, once installed, searches the mobile phone network for other vulnerable iPhones and when it finds one, copies itself to them using the the default password and SSH, a Unix application also known as secure shell. People posting to this thread on Australian discussion forum Whirlpool first reported being hit on Friday.

November 6, 2009

Contrarian opinion on the iPhone

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:04

You can’t accuse Flora Graham an Apple fangirl:

To quote a few of her sharper lines:

* Say What?
Call quality on the iPhone is pathetic, and it’s mostly because of the tiny speaker. It has to be aligned with your ear canal with the accuracy of a laser-guided ninja doing cataract surgery, or else the volume cuts down to nothing as the sound waves bounce uselessly around your ear shells.

* Dropped Calls and Data Gaps
If, like Will Smith in Enemy of the State, you’re trying to avoid the eagle eye of Big Brother, the iPhone. could be for you. It drops calls, fails to connect and doesn’t even ring sometimes — not for everyone, but more often than any other phone we’re currently using.

* You Can’t Answer If it Doesn’t Ring
Perhaps the worst of the iPhone’s problems is its ability to sit there stealthily and ignore incoming calls. With no ring or vibrate to clue you in, your friends and family are redirected to voicemail . . . or just treated to silence. If you’re in a two-iPhone family, it can be a case of the deaf leading the mute.

* The iPhone Might Burn Your Face Off
According to our ultra-sciencey test, it is extremely unlikely that the iPhone will burn your face off… Nevertheless, pressing a large, flat surface to your cheek is always going to be sweaty . . . Thus the current trend for people to walk down the street with their phones on hands-free, yelling into the mike at the bottom while they hold the rest of the phone away from their faces.

However, she does still acknowledge the real reason I still love my iPhone (even acknowledging much of her criticism):

If the iPhone is inaudible, unconnected, on fire and out of battery, why is the thing so popular? The fact is, although the iPhone is the worst phone in the world, it’s the best handheld computer there is.

November 5, 2009

If the “I’m a Mac” guy bothers you . . .

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:19

. . . you’ll find that he’s a pretty accurate characature of soi disant typical iPhone users. A non-scientific poll of 445 iPhone and Blackberry users found more d-baggery per square metre than anywhere outside an Abercrombie & Fitch ad:

. . . iPhone users consider themselves to be extrovert intellectuals who know a lot about the media but find a lack of high-tech gadgets to be a turn off.

35 per cent of iPhone owners said they would find a partner with out-of-date electronics a turn off, though a quarter have dumped someone who was spending too much time playing with their phone.

33 per cent of those with an iPhone have used a text message or e-mail to break up with a partner — which is harsh, though nothing beats fax for that sharing-the-pain experience. When it comes to good news electronics are, apparently, out: none of those polled would propose marriage by text or e-mail.

When not dating, 20 per cent of iPhone users admitted to frequently watching adult material on their 3.5-inch screen, and more than 60 per cent consider themselves to be extrovert.

November 3, 2009

Being “a bit boring” is part of his shtick

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:54

Colby Cosh looks at “Frygate”:

I realize I’m late to the party, but I didn’t find out until today that the remark which made Stephen Fry melt down was that his tweets were “a bit boring.” Really? Look, we all adore Stephen Fry, especially those of us who are ungainly, neurotic, and a little old-fashioned, so I hope someone will explain to him gently that he is a bit boring — not only his tweets, but just all-around. QI wouldn’t have a premise in the first place if it weren’t somewhat difficult to be interesting; Kingdom was served with rather overgenerous lashings of scenery and mopeyness; and Fry’s impeccable gadget reviews, considered strictly as entertainment, would try the patience of anyone who doesn’t add up the grocery bill in hexadecimal. Being just a little boring — presenting the perpetual risk that he might go on just a little too long about number theory or the battle of Stamford Bridge — is essential to the unostentatious delightfulness of Stephen Fry, just as a soupçon of boringness is essential to the charm of a warm woollen sweater or a newspaper comic strip. (OK, bad example. No newspaper comic strips now being printed possess any charm at all.) Nobody needs Stephen Fry to be a source of unpredictability or chaos. I would argue that any institution whose merits are obvious and whose utility is uncompromised is, by definition, a bit boring. Volvos? Boring! Vin Scully? A little boring at times! Oatmeal cookies? Lovely, if they’re the sort of thing you’re into, but they don’t exactly send anybody’s pulse racing, do they?

November 2, 2009

Is the printed book nearing end-of-life?

Filed under: Books, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:59

Terry Teachout considers the wonders of the printed book and contemplates its looming obsolescence:

Regular readers of this blog know that I believe the printed book to be well on its way to ultimate extinction. As I put it in a “Sightings” column written in 2006, a year before the introduction of the Kindle:

The printed book is a beautiful object, “elegant” in both the aesthetic and mathematical senses of the word, and its invention was a pivotal moment in the history of Western culture. But it is also a technology — a means, not an end. Like all technologies, it has a finite lifespan, and its time is almost up.

On the other hand, I have yet to buy a Kindle, and at the moment I have no plans to do so. This is partly because I prefer to wait until the kinks are ironed out (I’ve never been a truly early adopter) and partly because, like most middle-aged authors, I remain enamored of the sheer physicality of the old-fashioned printed book.

[. . .]

So am I really a closet Luddite, a technological Moses who can’t bring himself to enter the promised land of the e-book? Maybe. Six years ago I declared myself to be “open, at least in theory, to the possibility of abandoning the book-as-art-object.” Now that technology has finally caught up with me, I find myself unexpectedly unwilling to put my money where my mouth is. Yet I believe no less firmly than ever that the printed book is a technology whose time has come and gone. Am I, then, a hypocrite? Or merely a middle-aged man who, like most middle-aged men, is reluctant to put aside the youthful things that remind me of myself when young?

I find myself in the same position as Terry . . . I’m not a leading edge early adopter, but I’ve been eager to “get to the future faster” for most of my life. I still remember Usenet when it was “the internet” as far as most people were concerned. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t consider my email far more important and urgent than “snail mail”, and I was a fan of “telecommuting” back when 2400 baud was “high speed”.

And yet . . . I don’t want to give up the book. I just got back from a book-buying spree in Stratford over the weekend, and don’t plan on buying a Kindle any time soon. I’ve got ebooks on my iPhone, but I consider them “emergency” reading material . . . when I don’t have a physical book to hand.

Am I also a luddite?

I hasten to point out that I no longer own any long-playing records or cassettes, and that I spend more time listening to music on my MacBook and iPod than on my CD player. No doubt the time will also come when I spend more time reading books on a Kindle, or something like it, than reading the handsomely bound volumes shelved in my living room. Not for me the self-conscious posturing of those curmudgeonly poseurs who wail Change and decay in all around I see! at every opportunity.

I had largely gotten out of the habit of listening to music until I got my iPhone last year. Since then, I’ve bought more CDs and MP3s than in the ten years before. I’ve still got a few vinyl LPs and a large collection of cassettes, but they’re just gathering dust.

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