technology

Beautiful Thesis

Today I picked up the proof version â?? including the cover â?? of my thesis. It looks great. I took pictures but forgot to bring the camera cable home with me. So I will have to put pictures online later. But there is another problem. The systems administrators have threatened to do important updates to all the servers. Everything will be down during the weekend. This means I will not have access to the blog until Monday morning!

So despite the fact that I have no pictures to prove it you will have to accept that I have a beautiful thesis. Also without my blog for the weekend I shall be spending the whole time proof-reading (well almost all the time).

As always the link to the latest draft is here – if you can reach it between the systems work.

Posted on by mklang

Steal This Film

Steal This Film is more than a website that seems to scream out its message! It is also the first part of a documentary series on filesharing. This first part focuses on The Pirate Bay and in particular on the raid on their servers. The documentary seems interesting â?? natural bias towards pro-filesharing but the creators are open about this:

In 2006, a group of friends decided to make a film about filesharing that *we* would recognise. There have been a few documentaries by ‘old media’ crews who don’t understand the net and see peer-to-peer organisation as a threat to their livelihoods. They have no reason to represent the filesharing movement positively, and no capacity to represent it lucidly. We wanted to make a film that would explore this huge popular movement in a way that excited us, engaged us, and most importantly, focussed on what we know to be the positive and optimistic vision many filesharers and artists (they are often one) have for the future of creativity.

Posted on by mklang

Hope or Hoax

Based upon the principle â?? if something seems to be too good to be true it often is. What can one say about a free energy technology which could power everything from mobile phones to cars.

From their website:

Steornâ??s technology produces free, clean and constant energy. This provides a significant range of benefits, from the convenience of never having to refuel your car or recharge your mobile phone, to a genuine solution to the need for zero emission energy production. It also provides a secure supply of energy, since the components of the technology are readily available.

The technology is in a constant state of development. The company has focused for the past three years on increasing power output and the development of test systems that allow detailed analysis to be performed.

Steornâ??s technology appears to violate the â??Principle of the Conservation of Energyâ??, considered by many to be the most fundamental principle in our current understanding of the universe. This principle is stated simply as â??energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change formâ??.

Steorn is making three claims for its technology:

  1. The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
  2. The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
  3. There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).

The sum of these claims is that our technology creates free energy.

The question of whether this is a hoax or a new hope.

This comment on the news comes from Collision Detect: But as Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber notes, Steorn hews perfectly to the “seven warning signs of bogus science” laid out in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago. To wit:

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Posted on by mklang

Tech-Junk

In April I wrote a short entry about the growing problems of high-tech trash. One way of understanding the problems is to look at Chris Jordan‘s photographs of our discarded tech-junk. Take a look at the piles of cell phone chargers or the sea of cell phones. These photographs show how quickly yesterday’s technology of desire becomes tomorrows garbage – and next weeks environmental crisis.
There seem to be few solutions to what we should be doing with our discarded high-tech junk but some companies are working on small scale remedies to the problem. Recellular is a company that buys and sells used mobile telephones in bulk. While this does not really prevent high-tech junk it at least ensures that we get the most milage out of our technology before it ends up in the pile.

Obviously a good first step, but what do we do next?

Posted on by mklang

Dude, where is Tibet

About a week ago my untech brother discovered Google Earth. He also told me that Tibet and Lhasa were not there. I put this down to his lack of ability to use the software. But today an article in The Register proves him right. Google Earth have apparently â??mislaidâ?? Tibet.

Does this prove that Google is trying hard to please Beijing? Not sure…

So anyway I owe my brother an apology.

Posted on by mklang

Four Million Laptops

According to the BBC the computer company Dell will recall over 4 million laptops. Four million. 4 000 000. Thats a lot of laptops…

Do you think that someone at Dell pushed the button?

The reason for the recall is that the laptops run the risk of bursting into flames when they are overheated. This was photographed when it happened at a conference.

Posted on by mklang

Illusory Technology Politics

The Pirate Party today announced the launch of the “World’s First Commercial Darknet” through a Swedish company called Relakks. From the press release:

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

But before anyone gets too excited it’s not the first and it’s not really that innovative. Read more on Relakks security page (in Swedish).

As the P2P blog points out this announcement has more to do with political spin than with technical or legal innovation. Besides sounding really cool there is nothing new here. This can only be interpreted as a sign that the Pirate Party are learning the political ropes really quickly. First rule of politics: It’s ok if you don’t do anything as long as it sounds like your are doing a lot.


From the movie: Wag the Dog

P2P blog also questions whether the users of the system are actually protected in reality. Or whether this is only an illusion. They support this question by pointing to weaknesses in the legal information at Relakks and also bring into question whether Relakks has the position, determination or will to defend file-sharers.

Yes I am grumpier than normal. My excuse is that I am sitting late into the night working on my thesis…again!

Posted on by mklang

Powering the Flat Screen

The flat screen TV trend shows no sign of diminishing in either Sweden or the UK. According to this article in the Guardian Online a flat screen TV is sold every 15 seconds in the UK. The problem is that the flat screen plasma can use up to four times as much electricity as the old-style cathode-ray tube models.

If we connect this with our other home entertainment trends (set-top boxes, digital video recorders, DVD players etc) home consumption of electricity is on the rise.

Dr Joseph Reger, chief technology officer at Fujitsu Siemens Computers in Munich, Germany, said: ‘If all the [plasma] TVs were on at the same time, you would need something that produces 2.5 gigawatts. That can be done today with around two nuclear power stations.’

The discussion in Sweden is changing slowly but the main thrust of the energy policy has been to close nuclear reactors for safety reasons and fossil fuel based producers for environmental reasons. As a reaction Sweden is buying more energy from other countries. In particular from low-cost Eastern European countries. Which means that either we move the polution out of sight or we attempt to place the nuclear risks in countries which may not be able to afford to be too particular.

As usual someone else is paying the initial price of our consumption. Eventually the bad news will reach our shores.

Posted on by mklang

Social Innovation

It’s a sad truth that most of the world needs technology to resolve immediate serious mundane problems. But most technology development is focused on gadgets.

John Voelcker has chosen 10 innovative technologies which are aimed at solving chronic problems. The article Creating Social Change – 10 Innovative Technologies appears in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Summer 2006)

  1. A self-contained toilet that treats waste without water or chemicals, protecting precious drinking water from contamination. www.eloo.co.za
  2. An inexpensive kit that turns smog-belching two-stroke engines into cleaner-burning, fuel-efficient sources of power. www.envirofit.org
  3. Small-scale solar power systems that not only produce electric power, but also generate cash by enabling people to set up their own home-based businesses. www.selco-india.com
  4. An electricity-free food preservation system. www.malnutrition.org
  5. A prestigious U.S. university is making many of its academic courses available on the Internet where users can learn from them â?? free. www.ocw.mit.edu
  6. Volunteers have developed a solar-powered microfilm projector that will help tens of thousands of Africans learn to read this year. www.designthatmatters.org/k2
  7. A team of Cuban and Canadian scientists has invented an inexpensive vaccine that could save the lives of half a million infants each year. gndp.cigb.edu.cu/
  8. Low-cost eyeglasses that wearers can tune without the aid
    of an optometrist. www.adaptive-eyecare.com
  9. A Pakistani organization is selling ergonomically correct weaving looms that let adults create the same intricate rugs that children now make. www.ciwce.org.pk
  10. A Brazilian nonprofit is rolling out telecenters that provide Internet access, telephone service, computer training, and other technology-based services to the poor and working class. www.cemina.org.br, www.radiofalamulher.com

This is a good list. I disagree with nr 5 since there are several universities offering similar schemes. In addition I do not believe that it has the same impact and importance as the rest of the list. This is becuase I do not think that by making learning material available people will automatically learn.

Don’t get me wrong – I am sure that these kinds of material are of great value to teachers at other universities since they can take the ideas and adapt them to fit their own classrooms. It’s just that I don’t see that this is on par with clean water, waste disposal and helping poor people access technology.
Despite my complaints – lists such as these are important since they help us open our eyes to the fact that we could all be thinking about solving important everyday problems.
(via Question Technology)

Posted on by mklang

Anti-RFID designs

RFID chips have been around for some time without really taking off. The main discussions have been in specialised privacy or technology discussions. This changed when the plans were launched to add RFID to passports. These plans have raised many concerns from privacy activists. These concerns have only increased now that the planned passports have been demonstrated as not being particularly secure. They have already been both hacked and cloned.

For the security aware: companies are now beginning to offer wallets, or a DIY version made from duct tape. Or why not special designs for clothes. All of which prevent RFID products from being read. The fundamental principal is to create a Faraday Cage effect around the RFID antenna to block the readers.

This is the same principle (as used by the stereotypical crazy-man) of wearing a tin-foil hat to prevent aliens/government from scanning the brain… here is a research article showing the inefficiency of the tin-foil hat.

Background material:

Ari Juels “RFID Security and Privacy: A Research Survey” Research Report, RSA Laboratories, September 2005.

Matt Ward & Rob van Kranenburg “RFID: Frequency, standards, adoption and innovation” JISC Technology and Standards Watch, May 2006.

Ann Cavoukian “Tag, Youâ??re It: Privacy Implications of RadioFrequency Identification (RFID)Technology” Information and Privacy Commissioner Ontario, February 2004.

Posted on by mklang