techno-culture

Declan McCullagh has an interesting post about Obama VP-pick Joe Biden’s record on the tech front. Not great — he came in near the bottom of C/Net’s ‘technology voter’s guide’. Seems the anti-privacy legislation he pushed was directly responsible for PGP, for which thanks, kind of…

Biden’s bill — and the threat of encryption being outlawed — is what spurred Phil Zimmermann to write PGP, thereby kicking off a historic debate about export controls, national security, and privacy. Zimmermann, who’s now busy developing Zfone, says it was Biden’s legislation “that led me to publish PGP electronically for free that year, shortly before the measure was defeated after vigorous protest by civil libertarians and industry groups.”

He’s been strongly pro-Hollywood in the P2P/copyright battles. Biden has also sometimes supported net taxes, and filters in libraries and schools. As McCullagh points out, such stances contrast with some of Obama’s promises, to revise copyright for example.

I heard Dr Harrington on the radio the other day — his newly discovered, ancient species of aphid preserved in amber was bought for £20 on eBay, so he had wanted to give it a scientific name reflecting that: Mindarus ebayii. Sadly, a more sober scientific tone prevailed and the powers that be named the aphid after him instead: Mindarus harringtoni.

I had thought it would be rather nice to call it Mindarus ebayi,” said Dr Harrington.
“Unfortunately, using flippant names to describe new species is rather frowned upon these days.”

Anyone else going to the fabulous Thursday opera in the park lunches at the city council buildings on Wood Quay? I missed last week’s event but saw the first, Cosi Fan Tutte, and today was La Boheme. The lawn around the amphitheatre was simply packed, with all types — young, older, old; tourists, residents, people from offices, cyclists passing by that came to check it out, small children. Fantastic atmosphere and wonderful singing and it is quite efficient to get an opera in an hour! The famous duet between Rodolfo and Mimi and then the closing death scene get me every time — the music is so beautiful and I cannot help it, I get choked up. It is one thing if you are at home and can quietly wipe away a few tears, or are in the dark at the opera, but in a park in daylight! I had to bite my lip to keep from sniffling away. Next week is The Barber of Seville — can’t wait! Hope the rain holds off — it started coming down 30 minutes after today’s production, and we got some lovely sun during the show.

Two years in the making, the documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, tonight on BBC1’s Primetime at 9pm, promises to be explosive stuff. Already it has had wide advance coverage in the UK press, with the BBC reconsidering whether it will continue to broadcast the famous Crufts dog show after 42 years, on the basis of the documentary’s findings that breeds have become more distorted and unhealthy due to close line breeding (in which sires and dams can be bred to their own offspring, and siblings to each other, a practice forbidden in the Swedish kennel club) and disregard for health.

One of the dogs featured is my own much loved breed, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. I own a dog with the debilitating neurological condition syringomyelia, believed to affect at least a third of all cavaliers and one basis for this evening’s programme, and out of concern for breeder lack of interest in addressing the problem or informing puppy buyers, I created my SM Cavalier Infosite to raise awareness (as a result I now have the distinction of being widely hated by many breeders, which is not necessarily a bad thing in some of those cases, but I am also widely supported by many health-focused breeders ashamed of how many of the clubs, especially regional clubs, have dealt with the problem). We’ve also had a very feisty discussion of the documentary on my CavalierTalk.com discussion board. I met the producers when they were working on this documentary and am looking forward to seeing what they have produced this evening. I believe it will be riveting stuff.

So Apple just surpassed Google’s market cap. An old boyfriend of mine (’old’ as in, someone I knew from way back) asked me around the multi-coloured iMac stage if he should hang on to a bunch (a large bunch) of Apple stock. I said yes (probably after shrugging). If he did, he’s one happy guy these days. Of course I was only guessing, like anyone else, whether the company would do well. It hadn’t invented the iPod yet. But with Steve back at the helm, it had already started to do some pretty interesting things. 

Today’s leader in the Irish Times (written by me ):

IF ANY doubts remained about the urgent need for a national data disclosure law, they will have been banished by the revelation that the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office failed to disclose - for 16 months - the theft of a laptop which included personal details of 380,000 social welfare recipients.

The comptroller’s office also revealed that 106,000 of the records included highly sensitive bank account data. None of the data were encrypted, an appalling disregard for this most basic of digital security provisions. And while it was said there was no indication the information had been used in a compromising way, such assurances will provide little comfort to the 380,000 individuals whose information is exactly the kind of material that quickly makes its way on to criminal websites, where it is sold in cheap bundles to hackers and identity thieves.

Such incidents are becoming more, rather than less, common. In April, Bank of Ireland finally told Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes that three laptops with details of 31,500 customers had gone missing up to 10 months earlier. Those data weren’t encrypted either. A month later the bank said it was investigating another allegation that a laptop had been stolen in 2001.

The Government must recognise that the public is well past the point of believing such occurrences are rare events. Nor will people accept that long-delayed disclosures of such losses by the organisations involved is just a trivial oversight. It is time to force organisations to immediately reveal such losses. The Government should introduce the type of legislation pioneered in California five years ago (and now copied in 40 more states).

California’s laws require organisations to immediately inform affected individuals when personal financial or medical information is lost. Initially seen as an oddity, it forced the disclosure of some of the biggest national data breaches and hacking incidents in the US, because Californian customers had to be told about them if their names were associated with any of the records. Once this happened, organisations quickly found they had to reveal the full extent of data breaches.

Thanks to the law’s name-and-shame effect, it has helped compel organisations to adopt better data protection standards. And such a law allows people to close accounts immediately and otherwise protect themselves from the sloppy stewardship of their private details, rather than wait months, even years, to find their account details might have been sold on. Irish citizens deserve such protection of their personal information.
© 2008 The Irish Times

I am out at CityWest Hotel — that camp temple to poor decorating taste — where 1200 internet whizzes are meeting at one of the IETF’s three annual conferences for working out internet standards. Plenty of buzz, and some very interesting looking sessions that I don’t have time to attend during the week-long event, and superb internet connectivity thanks to sponsor Alcatel-Lucent (whatever their current company woes they do a mean conference network!). I am just waiting for the plenary session on IPv6 to begin. You know your life is kind of sad when you are actually looking forward to listening in to such a thing on a fine sunny summer’s evening.

I do have to laugh though at the coffee break treats. In a sure sign that Dublin hotels are learning what the geeks like at conferences, the offerings are coffee, tea, cartons of chocolate milk and regular milk, and bags of M&Ms and Maltesers. In a chocoholic moment not experinced since I was about 9, I opted for chocolate milk (with straw) and a bag of Maltesers. Ugh! But strangely satisfying.

What with the economic slowdown, there’s been plenty of blather in the news lately about food prices in Ireland and the lack of competition blah blah blah. Or rather, how the ‘competition’ doesn’t seem to include Lidl and Aldi because many Irish people are reluctant to shop there! The more fools they — while some own brand stuff is a bit cheap and scary(just as it is at Tesco) I love Lidl and Aldi biscuits, fruit and veg selection, cheeses, sweets, cereals, juice, antipasti, nuts… and now my friend denise has pointed me to the delights of the Irish-based Lidl Treats blog.

As an outsider, I must say I have thought it pretty darn funny that people will shop at Dunnes — the original bargain store, which used to stock mostly very cheap quality everything in their food stores and really mediocre fruit and veg in particular, always Class 2 a few years ago (though that has since changed) — and turn up their nose at Lidl, which stocks a lot of good to excellent quality items (and some crap ones!) at lower prices than the usual shops.

As long as I have lived in Ireland, though — over 20 years — the Irish have been remarkably price-UNsensitive, willing to pay price premiums with very little fuss, while wondering why everything costs more (because YOU are willing to pay it!). I used to spend time regularly in Belfast and the choice and value was far superior there in supermarkets, and I’ve always been amazed that people are willing to pay for drink what they pay in the Republic. People like to complain, but not do anything about it — or they’d switch telecoms and mobile providers, avoid the pubs where pints cost €6, and shop at Lidl and Aldi.

Well, this is certainly one way to get back at not just your boss and colleagues, but pretty much large groups of innocent people. The guy allegedly not only had the IT system rigged for collapse, but had a secret computer room for controlling networks. Oh, and a locked cabinet full of modems for running a private network rigging the whole mess. His attorney says he is being unfairly scapegoated by colleagues jealous of his geek abilities and that the modems were “for the sole purpose of maintaining the system”.

I am delighted with the the very idea of this 6′7″ gangly ‘professional flatulist’ whose stage act consists of playing his ‘trouser trumpet’ (a ‘back catalogue’, as ’twere, that includes the Flight of the Bumblebee, the Spice Girls’ Wannabe and Da Doo Ron Ron), smoking a cigarette in an unconventional way, and, as Guardian writer Martin Kelner politely puts it, “firing a dart into a balloon in a way not sanctioned by the Professional Darts Association”.

This article, which details Mr M’s talents, as well as noting his battle with Phil Collins to obtain the rights to fart out In the Air Tonight, is the funniest thing I have read in ages. Hooray for unconventional skills and what Mr M calls “the universal language”. It’s true — the fact that Mr Methane was hired recently as the star act for a posh oil executives dinner only underlines the fact that we never lose our enthusiasm for the gaseous art, whether age 5 or 50 (out of respect for my own extended family, I will not offer details of how fart machines have formed a central theme of several recent family reunions, amusing both kids and adults ).

I only wish I were going to the Edinburgh Festival, where I would rush to see Mr M’s pub act.

I see a company called Slydial has come up with a service to allow people to drop directly into someone’s voicemail when ringing their mobile. They offer a number of mostly amusing scenarios when this might be useful:

Appease your family
Your Aunt June sent you a sweater for your birthday. You need to call her to thank her but you don’t want to listen to her go on and on about her recent hip replacement. Instead just leave her an appreciative voicemail that she can share with her bridge club.

Handily it’s always been possible to do this on Irish mobiles — most anyway — just by adding a ‘5′ before the main number, after the prefix — eg dial 086 5 1234567. I’ve been using this sneaky feature for years. As Slydial notes, not talking to people, but making it look like you tried to, is often extremely useful. It’s also great for times when you want to leave a quick message but don’t want to interrupt someone or get them when you suspect they are in a meeting.

The Guardian has a worrying piece this morning about a university research project in Bath that tracks the movement of people using Bluetooth. While the research itself is seemingly benign — even, arguably, beneficial, says the researcher in this blog post – the notion that millions of people can potentially be easily tracked in this way — and that lots of people downloaded the open source software to do so — is alarming. It isn’t so much what is being done at the moment with the data — the researchers say it could give a good understanding of crowd movements for better understanding the way a flu epidemic might spread, for example — it is an important insight into what could easily be done simply by merging in a bit more information from other databases as each Bluetooth connection is apparently identified by a unique serial number. I would want to better understand how this could be used  – or better yet, see this revelation about what is already happening help create more anonymous Bluetooth connections — before I’d shrug this off as a ’so what’ situation. There’s a brief (6 minute+) audio clip further exploring the topic here. This explains how it works. Yikes.