WINDING DOWN An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news by Alan Lenton July 12, 2009 [This is a sub_script_ion mailing list. Details about how to stop receiving it are at the foot of the email.] Did you know... that about 12,000 laptops a week are lost in US airports? Yes, that really is every week. Not only that, but 40% of the losses happen at security checkpoints! Of the rest, only about a third are reclaimed by their owner, and the rest are sold off. That means every week nearly 5,000 laptops are sold off with all their files intact! And what about the 40% (again nearly 5,000) that go missing at security checkpoints. I think it's time I listened once more to the Clash version of 'Police and Thieves'. While I'm doing that, here's this week's Winding Down for your reading pleasure. Shorts: A few weeks ago, I drew attention to the dubious way in which battery life times were obtained for advertising laptops. Reader Alison, who works programming digital devices wrote in to point out that this sort of behaviour is not restricted to the laptop industry. She writes, It's not just laptops that have dodgy battery test results - most consumer electronics that run off batteries have similarly skewed tests. Digital radios made by a popular, well-known brand are tested for battery life by tuning to a particular station and setting the volume to about a third with the backlight off and any energy saving options enabled (even the really irritating ones).  This probably isn't as bad as laptops, but it's still not terribly realistic. The other thing most people don't realise is that most battery tests are run with brand, spanking new battery packs.  All battery technologies deteriorate over time (some faster than others), so a battery pack that has been cycled between empty and charged a number of times will have less capacity than a new one.  So although your new gizmo may get X hours initially, that's likely to tail off quite substantially over time. [Source: letter to Winding Down author] I see that reports are starting to filter in to the effect that  Apple's new iPhone, the 3GS, is suffering from heat problems. It's not the usual problem of digital device batteries exploding in a fit of pique. This is more of a vampire problem with the machines disliking the sun. The phones seem to have a very narrow operating temperature range, or at least a relatively low top end. If you leave them out in the sun and they warm up too much then they shut themselves down! That doesn't seem to be a very nice thing to do. What if you needed to ring the emergency services? Or what if someone needed to get hold of you urgently? Perhaps you need to have a second phone for summer outdoor use? But that's not all. It seems that a more traditional battery problem is rearing its head. A number of 3GS users have been complaining about scorch marks on the back of their phones after they became very hot (this is not out in the sun, btw). Looks to me like the phone is having old fashioned battery problems, as well as the new ones. Though, I confess that having looked at the picture uploaded by one complainer, I couldn't detect any scorch marks. Since I'm color blind to certain shades of red and green, though, this is probably not surprising. http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/07/03/iphone_overheating_warning/ I note that New York State is taking legal action against tagged.com, who it charges stole the identities of more the 60 million internet users world wide, by sending them emails that raided their private accounts. Tagged's activities were a classic piece of what's known as 'social engineering. When a new user signed up, Tagged would raid their address book and send out messages to all the contacts in the address book, inviting the recipients to view photographs from the original user . Once the contact clicked on the _link_, they would be taken to the tagged site, and asked to sign up so they could see the pictures. After they signed up they never did get to see any pictures, but the recipient's address book would be raided for contacts and the cycle would start again. If Tagged's own figures are to be believed, 80 million people fell for this scam. Interestingly enough, one of the founders of tagged, Greg Tseng, also founded a site called Jumpstart Technologies. In 2006 it was fined a cool US$900,000 by the Federal Trade Commission for illegal spamming. http://www.physorg.com/news166377499.html http://www.oag.state.ny.us/media_center/2009/July/july9a_09.html A few months ago, I mentioned that the police here in England are experimenting with helmet mounted web cams and GPS tracking equipment to  provide a record of what the officers are doing - something which would provide a measure of legal protection for both the police and those with whom they interact. Unfortunately, it seems that there is a problem - the equipment has, on more than one occasion, broken out in flames! The police are, understandably, wary about this. I doubt that the public are particularly happy either. I can just see it, Excuse me officer, could you direct me to Cut Throat Alley*? Certainly sir, it's just... Whoosh! And the would be questioner is left staring at a carbon smear on the road. Most disconcerting. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/06/police_headcam_fireballs/ Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have shown that it's relatively easy to predict social security numbers using information gleaned from public government sources, commercial data_base_s and online social networks. I have to say that my immediate reaction was, 'Who needs government sources and commercial data_base_s when you have social networks?' Nonetheless it is true that the tendency of various organisations to use social security numbers as identification is causing severe security problems, and no amount of official pleading seems to be able to stop it. The numbers are just too convenient. I have a solution, one that's been suggested before, but one whose time has, in my estimation, come. It's very simple. Just publish all social security numbers online. They are already so badly compromised that they provide no security whatsoever, so there is nothing to lose by making them public. Once they were public, anyone treating them as a secure identifier would be up for immediate public ridicule, humiliation and roasting, not to mention an extremely expensive class action if anything went wrong! http://www.physorg.com/news166119879.html One of the more interesting news reports this week was that a high level programmer working for Goldman Sachs was arrested for nicking a copy of the code that automates the firm's high volume trading on stock and commodity markets. Apparently the programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, copied the code to a server located in Germany <cue sinister sounding Tangerine Dream electro music and was about to leave the country when he was apprehended in Newark Airport. My take on the whole thing? I think it's a clever sting by the secret service to have someone pretend to steal the code that dropped Wall Street so far into the mire that a large chunk of its top firms went bust. The idea is to restore the ascendancy of Wall Street in international markets by persuading other countries to install the same software that zapped Wall Street. Then everyone will be in the same boat, but Wall Street have more bail-out money than any other country can afford. One day they will make a film about this called 'The Aleynikov Squiggle'. The proceeds will be used to pay off the national debt! (Now you know how computer game designers come up with the ideas for games.) http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135216/Programmer_steals_Wall... Bad new for users of McAfee software this week. A bug in an update caused the anti-virus software to identify Windows system files as 'viruses' and wiped them out, resulting in PCs and servers that were no longer able to boot up. No wonder people are so hesitant about installing 'security' (or any other types) of updates. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/03/mcafee_false_positive_glitch/ Homework: I came across a rather neat way of protecting on-screen data from 'shoulder surfing' the other day. It's from a firm called Oculislabs. The only hardware it needs is a standard web cam. The software uses the cam to monitor your eye position and as soon as it detects that you are not looking at the screen, it blurs whatever is being displayed. But that's not all. The software also looks out for anyone behind you who might be looking over your shoulder. If it finds someone engaged in this pastime, it flips open a small window on the screen and displays their face for you. It's a neat idea, but I can think of possible problems, especially in a busy environment with a lot of to-and-fro movement. If any readers have tried this out, I'd welcome an assessment of just how well it works in practice. Much as I like the concept, I have a sneaking suspicion that it may well be only of use in a small number of fairly restricted environments. http://oculislabs.com/Products/PrivateEye.html By the way, do you use visual aids like PowerPoint (oops - I originally mistyped that as PowerPint)? A thread on the ACCU mailing list recently raised the question of which one is best and, lead, naturally, to a discussion of whether such audio-visual aids are necessary or desirable. Considering how all pervasive they are, I was surprised to find a high level of dislike being displayed by list members. Most people seem to regard them as at best a necessary evil, that one is forced to use because it's 'expected'. I know they make me fall asleep if they are just bullet points which the presenter merely reads out. Code is useful, but then I don't listen to the presenter, because I'm figuring out what the code is doing. Anyway, there were a couple of good URLs mentioned in the discussion which I thought I would share with you all. The first is a PowerPoint remix, about why PowerPoint doesn't work. I particularly liked the bullet point 'only slightly better than 1982 Pravda propaganda'. The second is the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. 'Nuff said! http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000931 http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/ There was an interesting report on AScribe the other day. Researchers at Stanford have managed to build a light emitting diode on silicon, using germanium. This probably doesn't sound much, but it holds the promise of being able to build micro-lasers on-chip to connect components together, instead of using _meta_l wires. The result would be faster, cooler, and more efficient chips. While this is only the start, and we are not likely to see practical applications for a number of years yet, this does represent an important break through. http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20090708.093824 The death of Michael Jackson the other week showed up a key weakness in the web sites that his fans flocked to for news and retrospectives. The sites themselves managed to keep up with demands for information. The problem was that the sites of the companies that serve the adverts couldn't. Most of the big commercial sites have long since outsourced their advertising to specialist companies, rather than handle the adverts themselves. Since there are relatively few advert serving firms, the delays also affected anyone else (like me) who happened to be using the web for other non-Jackson pages. You can tell if the adverts are outsourced by watching the status bar at the bottom of your browser, which will usually show the main text of the page coming down from the URL that you clicked on, then there is a pause (usually brief) and the ads start coming down from the third party ad server. Since browsers usually need all the material before they can start to display the page, surfers often have to wait longer than they would otherwise need to so the ads (which will be ignored, anyway) can be downloaded. Information Week is, I have noticed, particularly bad. In the past I have frequently shrugged and passed on one of their stories, simply because the page gets stuck for more than 10 seconds bringing down the ads. Why companies whose income depends on the income from ads would let it out of their control in this way is something I've never been able to fathom. [Source: Writer's personal experiences] Geek Toys: OK - now here is a car for those geeks who have more money than they need left in their bank accounts; the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport. It's a real bargain (a 'snip' as we say over here) at a mere US$2.1 million. Now some of you might think that's a trifle on the expensive side, being the equivalent of seven Ferrari 599s, but just look at the specs. It's a convertible with a top speed of 253 miles-per-hour, zero to 60mph in 2.5 seconds (feel that acceleration on your eyeballs, man), and a turbo- charged 8-litre 16 cylinder engine. This little baby not only laughs at police cruisers, it's also faster than their helicopters! The only downside is that its built in navigation system is Microsoft Windows _base_d. Still given everything else it has, you could probably overlook that tiny flaw. Winding Down Health Warning: Do not drive the car around with women wearing hand painted long scarves sitting in the passenger seat... http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_veyron_convertible This was obviously invented with geeks in mind. Ready boiled hard boiled eggs! We in England are famous for our creativity, and now our very own Happy Egg Company has produced another first. For the equivalent of a mere US$2.50, they will hard boil two free range eggs for you , and deliver them to your nearest supermarket for you to pick up. It makes a change from ready roasted chickens. (Which came first? The roast chicken or the boiled egg?) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/07/preboiled_eggs/ Not a toy, but there was good news for geeks last week with the publication of a report showing that caffeine can help combat Alzheimer's disease! The amount needed is the equivalent of drinking two cups of strong coffee, five cups of regular coffee, 14 cups of tea, or 20 cans of cola (they've obviously never heard of Jolt).  As a drinker of 5+ cups of coffee a day, I'm smirking all the way into my old age. What I want next is some research that shows smoking large cigars cures arthritis... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/5749060/Coffee-could-cu... Scanner: Other Stories Cops swoop on e-crime gangs after banks pool intelligence http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/08/williams_acpo/ Daniel Schmitt of WikiLeaks interviewed http://www.gulli.com/news/wikileaks-daniel-schmitt-2009-07-05/ Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/26/copyfraud/ Microsoft warns of serious computer security hole http://www.physorg.com/news166121280.html *I didn't make the name up, it's a leafy lane just round the corner from where I live in Isleworth, London, England. Its name appears on very early maps of the area, so it was probably given its name for good reasons! Acknowledgements Thanks to readers Barb, Fi, Jason, Lois, and to Slashdot's daily newsletter for drawing my attention to material used in this issue. Please send suggestions for stories to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter... Alan Lenton This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it 12 July 2009 Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist. His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan. Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.