Movie Entertainment Is Now Ubiquitous, Constant and Changing

Film, like the railways, is one of those industries that a few years ago nobody would have predicted would get a new lease of life, and how! through technological evolution.

Up to digital, film had reached the limits of what it was capable. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey still seems quite effective today, but the end of film effects are limited and seem like something out of the ark.

I was talking to a young person recently about how wonderful it was when self-recording was first available. We could record a TV programme or film on TV and watch it again and again at our leisure. A revolution! To pause live recordings and replay while recording something seemed like complete fantasy.

How We Watch
Those old enough to remember queuing at the cinema to see the latest film that was only on for a week and sitting in smokey theatres watching, or waiting for years till it was released for TV, will know how far things have come.

When you could buy a film on VHS cassette and play it on your videoplayer, and then video-recorder, the new possibilities seemed endless. Home entertainment as a concept was born. It is now in its early school years.

Film in cinemas has rarely been so popular. Blockbusters costing millions to produce, often through their amazing effects, pull in millions at the box offices. Many are released to DVD very near cinema showing, so can be bought or rented very quickly. There are whole TV channels now devoted entirely to showing movies. The game shifts constantly.

While people still illegally download pirated films, the fact is that legal downloads to devices are rising and will continue to become mainstream. People watch film on TV, tablet and smartphone, at home and on the move.

The choices are dizzyingly varied and as broadband speeds accelerate and whatever follows the internet and high-definition become commonplace, so the film industry will change yet again. What is certain is that consumers will continue to want more choice all of the time.

How Films Are Made

Computer generated imagery (CGI) has been part of our entertainment lives now so long that nobody bats an eyelid, merely expects it to reach evermore spectacular heights. Films like Westworld (1973) was pretty clever in its images of the robot-human interface, but small beer now. Star Wars, Jurassic Park and then the Matrix movies each pushed effects boundaries a little further.

Then followed digital animation, and digital animation with CGI and another old idea given a fresh impetus – 3D films, of which Avatar remains the most incredible.

Chris Nixon, writing on A Technology Society (January 2013) suggested that people will not tell the difference between CGI and reality in a few years, when watched in HD. He described how streaming channels in real time puts the computer (in all its forms) at the heart of the home entertainment industry now.

He showed how the rapid transmission of large amounts of data have made realistic things like video sharing and music downloads a matter of course. He said, ‘we are entertained by the internet itself, sampling videos on YouTube, playing games, surfing, shopping in ways that were unimaginable just 20 years ago. We rely on our computers not only to perform tasks, but also for entertainment. We download for later, instant message and chat, and fill up our free time online.’

‘On the move’ has taken on a whole new meaning, as literally people access it all anywhere and everywhere. Personalised music is like drawing breath. Playing games online is food and drink to swathes of the population. Computer processing speed and capacity is still not yet reached total potential.

So That’s the History Lesson, What’s Next?

All the previous in this post was to describe an exciting new artform being developed as entertainment, premiered at the English National Opera in April 13. Sunken Garden is described as a new ‘occult-mystery-film-opera’ composed by Michel van der Aa, from the Netherlands, and British fiction writer David Mitchell.

It is a ‘dark fantasy about a garden hungry for human souls’. Mitchell is also responsible for ‘postmodern’ works including Ghostwritten (1999) and Cloud Atlas (2004), about chance, time and space, which has been made into a movie (2012).

The garden idea seemed suited to a musical and visual treatment, and so it became an opera. Not so much perhaps for the trad opera buff but the fan of experiment in music, arts and technology. The garden is a portal between worlds, inspired by CS Lewis’ Narnia book The Magician’s Nephew. Avatar’s 3D work also had an influence.

Sameer Rahim, reviewing the work in the Sunday Telegraph (7 April 2013) quoted Mitchell, ‘in fiction it’s my job to describe the vertical pond. In libretto (the opera story line) you just write that a vertical pond appears and thousands are spent making that real.’

That’s what film does, makes things seem so real they might as well be real. In a way, it’s what it has always done. It’s just that now we really can’t tell the differences. Does it matter if it’s all good entertainment?

Finally, whether all that will trigger the Wow! moment, may depend on your age.

Available, related things:

A Technology Society, Chris Nickson, Technology & Films,  January 2013

Forward to the Past as Polaroids Make a Comeback, 25 March 2013

The Benefits of Seeing Transparency Clearly in the Digital Age, 6 November 2012

How Technology Serves the Past, Present and Future, 14 September 2012

Could Computer Over-Reliance Be the Death of Us All? 30 July 2012

Image: Vera de Kok

Now Robots Have Their Own World Wide Web!

Many stories about technology at first glance seem to come from the furthest reaches of science fiction. Many turn out to be very much fact.

Now it emerges that there is an internet for robots!

Rapyuta Is the Name

European scientists led by the Eindhoven University of Technology, six research institutes have created a ‘giant cloud space where robots can access a standardised knowledge base and exchange information with one another.’

Also involved are Philips Applied Technologies, the University of Stuttgart, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Spain’s University of Zaragoz and Germany’s Technische Universität München. The project, funded by the European Commission, took four years and had a budget of €5.6 million (US$7.45 million.)

The thinking behind the concept is simple enough. Lighter and simpler robots with minimum computational power onboard can be made which can access the information repository and exchange experiences as needed for particular tasks.

The goal, according to MSN (February 2013) is a WWW for robots, ‘a giant network and database where robots share information and learn from each other about their behavior and their environment.’

It’s bringing to life the old expression, ‘experience is the best teacher.’ They believe it will pave the way for ‘rapid advances in machine cognition and behaviour, and ultimately, for more subtle and sophisticated human-machine interaction.’

Evidently this logical next step is capable of inter-changing knowledge between different types of robot class.

The enterprise’s website proclaims RoboEarth ‘offers a Cloud Robotics infrastructure, which includes everything needed to close the loop from robot to the cloud and back to the robot.’

All Human Experience At Robot Disposal

The information in the database is generated by both humans and robots from actual experiences in a machine-readable format. ‘Data stored in the RoboEarth knowledge base include software components, maps for navigation (e.g., object locations, world models), task knowledge (e.g., action recipes, manipulation strategies), and object recognition models (e.g., images, object models).’

In technical terms they say: ‘RoboEarth offers components for a ROS compatible, robot-unspecific, high-level operating system as well as components for robot-specific, low level controllers accessible via a Hardware Abstraction Layer.’

All sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it? Especially in industrial settings where simple tasks save human energy, resources and time.

But if we think beyond that, is it a slippery slope in the end, in reality?

Plug in to:

RoboEarth

MSN: Nobody be alarmed, but the robots have their own internet now….  11 March 2013

IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine: RoboEarth - A World Wide Web for Robots (2011)

RoboEarth Blog

RoboEarth on YouTube

And new tabs for:

The Cloud and The Crowd Could Save the Cyberworld from the Cyber Crime Blitz, 27 March 2013

After Robot Soldiers and Robot Surgeons, Stand Up for Robot Teachers, 5 March 2013

What If the Cloud Was a Country, How Green Would It Be?, 20 February 2013

When Science Catches Up With Science Fiction, 14 November 2011

Defence and Technology, 6 March 2012

Image: JoseMariaRS

Sometimes Things Can Get Just Too Big

We as a nation are still living with the outcome of the ‘banks are too big to fail’ philosophy and are likely to be for decades to come. The twist on it that ‘banks are too big to care’ has not yet caught on in popular conscience, but perhaps it will.

What about online enterprises in our great digital age? Are they just like call ‘services’ where they say ‘your call is important to us’? Plainly it isn’t important to them, or they’d have more staff answering calls.

It may that they are impersonal and automatic. It may be that sometimes people’s complaints can be seen as just irritants from malcontents who fail to catch the fire or vision of the business ‘mission’.

But there is more and more evidence that sometimes the internet, and web-based businesses, get so big that they become laws unto themselves. They become so powerful that what people think or suffer is of no consequence at all.

Google are so arrogant in that regard, its alleged, that it’s impossible to speak to anybody in person to complain or ask a question. They say they have thought of everything through their FAQs. So there.

Microsoft in the Dock of Opinion

Not part of the usual suspects of Amazon, Google and Facebook, Microsoft have just offended many Brits, particularly those who care about precious resources.

The Microsoft research centre in Cambridge is a seven-storey glass-fronted building of which the company is immensely proud. It is certified as ‘excellent’ by the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method.

But locals who live nearby have complained that the technological giant is blighting their sleep, devaluing their homes by lighting up the building all night ‘like Disney World.’

Microsoft say lights operate manually and through motion sensors and comply with planning conditions to reduce ‘impact on local and global environments.’ They claim ‘impeccable’ environmental credentials.

Residents dismiss this, saying they never turn lights off, that nobody is visible in the building all night and they should learn to be good neighbours. One posted on Twitter, ‘For a company full of PHDs, you’d think they’d have worked out light switches.’

With no promise to at least investigate, the dispute goes on. Goliath is right because it says it is.

Bank of America As a Lesson

Washington Times - ‘social journalism from independent voices – published in February 2013  a story by Priscilla Jones about Bank of America as ‘too big to care’. The punchline was that they ‘serve lawsuits, not customers.’

Jones said of Bank of America that its sins have been widely reported. They craft laws to ‘the chagrin of customers and taxpayers that are protected in court by well-funded lawyers and enforced by politicians they help keep in office.’

She referenced US Justice Depart ‘sluggish wrist-slaps over loan hustles, defrauding customers through loan modifications scams and government largesse of $100 billion ‘without precedent’.

The latest ‘song and dance’ is to pay out ‘billions of dollars for offenses it says it didn’t commit to compensate for bank fraud it claims never happened.’ American taxpayers fork out because the bank, yes, ‘is too big to fail’.

It’s not a uniquely American problem or scenario. Tottering on bankruptcy, the result of incompetence, wrong decisions, national fraud wrapped up in legal niceties, whole countries are now, we’re told, ‘too big to fail’. Just ask EU taxpayers.

But then, ask the taxpayers for their views is the last thing that happens, even in a democracy where taxpayers are voters.

Mumsnet Stops Being All Mumsy

When the social website for women began, it was a British website for parents, which hosted a range of discussion forums. Parents-to-parents, peers-to-peers gave advice, warnings and provided a voice to mothers who often were house-bound raising children for long hours a day.

It has grown and grown. It has a record of tripping up politicians. David Cameron has fallen foul of mothers’ views. Some of the comments are funny, some outraged, but it has been a voice for women and to be applauded for that.

Of course there have been keenly fought differences of opinion. Co-founder Justine Roberts said, ‘people can be critical, but for every opinion there is usually a counter one’.

Sounds fair and balanced. However, nowadays most people no longer subscribe to ‘I don’t like your opinion but I will defend to the death your right to say it in free country.’ Some views you are not allowed to articulate. Some you shouldn’t have at all.

Amanda Holden, would-be National Treasure, was slammed online by many Mumsnet users for going back to work just three weeks after giving birth. She hit back, as people would expect from the fiery Britain’s Got Talent judge by slamming Mumsnet users for ‘their negativity’.

She divided opinion, with many defending her, others criticising ‘spitefully.’ Meaiouw! But this is more than a claws out, women-to-women spat.

One time Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins said that some people will do anything to put down women with an interest beyond babies and breastfeeding’. She argued that Mumsnet has ‘grown up to become a monster.’

And that’s the point. It is now a major website, with power and authority and an interest not so much in controversy, but in attracting users to follow the arguments online.

Check out Mumsnet rules where you are free to ‘talk on any subject you like.’

I’m not against it in any way. I like people to hold different opinions as I do believe in genuine diversity without an ‘approved line.’ Approved by whom? The majority? Mmmm.

What do YOU think?

Related debating topics:

Facebook Enriches the English Language, If Not Our Wallets, 6 March 2013

Net Giants Will Always Overwhelm, Control and Suck People Dry, 26 February 2013

The Role of the iParent in the Age of the iChild, 25 February 2013

Time to Cage the Twittering, Tweeting Bird of Internet Freedom, 22 January 2013

The Internet Is Simultaneously Both Good Cop and Bad Guy, 8 January 2013

Amazon Is Not Yet Quite the Biggest Beast in Retail Jungle, 10 December 2012

The Internet Has Created a New Frontier in Lite-Tax Paying, 29 October 2012

The Rise of iDemocracy, the Fall of Big Brother Thanks to Digital Technology, 17 October 2012

Image:Eva Rinaldi

Things That Cause Modern Rages Are Plentiful

1. Google

And how they are allegedly defying laws in various countries on data protection and privacy. Their 2012 changes to terms and conditions that allow them to combine information from 60 different sources to build master profiles of each user, are to be investigated by the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Holland together. Google ignored regulators’ demands to reverse the plans.

2. Google
For defending their policy and claiming not to be breaking any laws. A spokesperson said; ‘we have engaged fully with authorities throughout the process and we’ll continue doing so going forward.’ The hate is the phrase ‘going forwards’. It’s meaningless.

3. Cold callers
All unsolicited callers and so-called courtesy callers who bother us at home are now in the firing range of regulators. Unwanted calls are a plague of modern life, it seems, but they can be frustrating, irritating and intrusive.

Various ideas are circulating on how to deal with them without just hanging up, such as:

• being excessively polite in replying,
• asking for cold caller’s home number and when not given it ask why they have abused your home number;
• entering into an academic debate about the meaning of ‘courtesy’ and
• quoting Section 179, subsection (c) of the Telecommunications (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 2009. There isn’t one.

I’m grateful for these suggestions from Max Davidson (Daily Telegraph, 3 April 13). What he didn’t take account of was cold callers’ new use of pre-recorded voice sales pitches which you can’t interact with, you can only hang up on.

4. Spam
Any unwanted sales pitch sent to you by whatever means is spam. Hard to get rid of, much like scum on dirty water. But what is really a pet hate is companies who spam you with the pathetic justification that you subscribed at some point in time past. If they do allow you to unsubscribe, they then send you another unwanted email to tell you.

And WHY are you ‘successfully’ unsubscribed?

And WHY does it take up to 28 days to get you out of their system?

And why do they get away with having you with different first part URLs, like sales@, fred@ or info@ on many different lists of theirs???

5. Comments
If you blog anywhere, they are grateful for comments from readers. Often you are pitifully glad. I have heard of people who go on somebody else’s device just to comment on their own stuff. It helps the ratings, of course and maybe some will click on a Google Ad or two while there. But the real hate is how bots or actual people plant comments on your site in their thousands.

They are praising you, your jokes, your knowledge or whatever. But they are from companies – taxihiretexas; seoenginesmubia; viagraphilippines or sex_in_moscow and so on. You know then they are just hoping you will approve and allow their links to stay on your site which helps their own Google rankings.

Apparently people are paid to plant these stupid, cluttering, sad adverts.

6. Device Pre-Hype
Don’t you get sick of all the build-up in the media and the internet before a new product is launched. This or that new gizmo which will save the world… and blah, blah, blah.

Latest culprit is Apple: ‘Apple’s long-awaited television will hit the shops later this year.’ It will sell at around £1650, boasts a 60-inch screen and will feature iRing, control by pointing. Wow, hold me down.

Is that this calendar year, fiscal year, academic year? No matter. Another story or two will come out before it does appear. Then when it does, the world will go, yeah, yeah, we knew all about it in advance anyway.

And how many times can you read about Facebook poised to enter the smartphone market? Many more times before it announces its ‘home on Android’ that will showcase mobile social networking features. Well, well, yawn, yawn.

7. Signing Devices
In an age when the finger or thumbprint has been all but replaced by biometrics, including voice, earlobes, eye scans and now we learn that everybody’s breath is unique so breathalysers are the next security hope… why do parcel couriers insist on handing you a faffy little remote screen?

That is reasonable, and signing is the state of their technology so far. BUT WHY THE STUPID TINY LITTLE BIT OF PLASTIC ON A STRING TO SCRAWL YOUR SIGNATURE?

Is that really the best they can do as you stand shivering on your doorstep fumbling with the awkward thing? Almost enough to persuade you to go to a shop and buy the goods in person? Steady on!

8. Online ordering
Don’t you hate it when you order online because the local store doesn’t have it in and then you wait in for an entire for them to deliver it…. like a laptop and software. We ordered one but when it came the software card hadn’t been activated so was useless. A phone call to Argos informed us we had to take the card to a store, for security!!!!

What a company. They send you a laptop you can plug in and after a few moments start using without any more security than they already have extracted from you but will not send you a functioning card to install software.

If they follow Jessops, MFI, Woolworths, Comet, Blockbuster will anybody be surprised?

9. Updating
Don’t you get fed up with how everything has to be constantly updated and the latest. Gadgets, systems and soap powders that work perfectly for you are suddenly ‘updated’ with an implication that they are ‘improved’ and you’re a dork if you weren’t crying out for it. Windows 8 is a classic example of a needlessly complex, unwanted system.

10. Confirming
There can’t be many more irritating things to hear than, ‘could you just confirm your address, for me.’ Or your password, or name or whatever. It’s a pseudo security safeguard. Let’s ban it.

I still love the story of a little old lady some years ago when the banks started demanding confirmed identities, even if they knew you personally.

After queuing in the bank she had used for 40 years, she reached the counter was asked to confirm her identity. She whipped out her handbag mirror, looked at herself and yes, ‘Yes, that’s me.’

And as for, will you something ‘for me’, don’t get me started. Sit there, pop your number in, ‘for me’. No, they’re patronising and unnecessary words.

So, why not get in touch with your views, we wont ask you to confirm your ID, update your data or order from us online. Unless you want to.

Image: Emergency Brake

Bitcoin Currency Replacing Real Currencies?

As recently as March, MBF Blogs wrote about ticketless transport and the increasing moves toward a cashless society.

What We Said Then

Some businesses and certainly HMRC will welcome electronic payments as easier to monitor and process than grubby cash transactions. Other people will mourn the passing of paper money and coins which have been integral in the evolution of our entire economic system.

We asked what happens when there is a breakdown/failure of the system?

We cited some doom-mongers alarmed about the advent of the cashless society. Patrick Henningsen wrote on Global Research (November 2012) a cogent argument about why it rings alarm bells.

It’s worth rehearsing that discussion:

‘A world without cash is ruled by technocrats overseeing plastic and RFID chips working smoothly. It is a sterile world for Henningsen. It’s a dystopic impersonal future like that depicted in the 1970s sci-fi classic, Logan’s Run.

He said that people expected it to be slow creep as the sheer volume of cashless transactions grew and they make cash redemption more expensive. Why do you think supermarkets offer customers ‘cash-back’? So they have less actual cash to count and bank.

He is among conspiracy theorists who reckon the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent events are part of an engineered plan to introduce a range of parallel currencies as forerunners of what he called ‘a new global electronic currency.’

If there is a collapse of the Euro or a return to some of their old currencies within Europeans states, then they will all be in electronic versions, not paper and metals. If the US dollar ceased to be the reserve currency of the world, it would be reintroduced electronically.

Henningsen picks up the view that such crashes will be deliberately brought about as ‘the perfect storm for the introduction of a major global digital currencies, and this will do nothing but fast-track our entry into the new cashless society.’

The whole argument is that it is more sinister than it sounds, this cashless society thing. The electronic future will be controlled by a faceless handful of clever people with their fingers on the buttons.’

What Now Then?

A recent new development is that of the economic meltdown of the Cypriot banking system and the interest of the Russians. The gas and oil reserves that Cyprus lays claim to have always explained the interest of Russia in wanting to ‘help for a price’ the small island.

Oh, and Russian businesses are believed to have over €19bn stashed away in Cypriot banks, lured by their previous high interest rates!

Internet searches show that the Russians, followed by Estonia, the USA and Finland are the most assiduous in looking for items about virtual currency. Pundits believe it signals a fundamental shift in people’s trust of paper and coin currencies.

This particular one is called the Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, Get Used to It

It is an online, virtual currency, designed to facilitate trading. It has no government or central bank to underpin it, nor gold reserves to back it up. Some observers regard it a sort of international ‘online cooperative.’

To prevent more Bitcoins being ‘created’ to cause devaluation (no quantitive easing here), there is an upper limit of just 21 million. No more Bitcoins can exist than that.

The rules were apparently set out by a figure called ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ in 2009. Very little data is available on that person or group of people. But, nonetheless, the creation is taking off. Scarcity drives up the value and price, just like gold. Users refer to ‘mining’ Bitcoins to liken it to gold.

If a hacker found a way of making more, the world would still know exactly who owns and where are the 21 million. They are tracked online. However, for the individual owner or speculator, if they were stolen, there is no Government-backed safety net scheme, such as the £85,000 protection limit covering approved British banking institutions.

When the idea really takes off, and the world is soon awash with a range of digital currencies, then Governments will have only themselves to blame for deliberately debasing the old ‘real’ currencies. That and the inevitability, alas, of cashless societies.

Image: CASASCIUS

Buildings Come in All Shades of Green

After the long winter and a disappointing spring, MBF Blogs looks forward to a good summer with those of you minded to make your house more green or even build your own eco-viable dwelling, well catered for.

What would the perfect green house look like?

Green technology, while still evolving, now encompasses everything from materials developed through advanced technology, generating power to non-toxic cleaning products.

According to Green Technology the goals that inform development in this rapidly growing field include:

• Sustainability – meeting the needs of society in ways that can continue indefinitely into the future without damaging or depleting natural resources. In short, meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• ‘Cradle to cradle design – ending the ‘cradle to grave’ cycle of manufactured products, by creating products that can be fully reclaimed or re-used.
• Source reduction – reducing waste and pollution by changing patterns of production and consumption.
• Innovation – developing alternatives to technologies – whether fossil fuel or chemical intensive agriculture – that have been demonstrated to damage health and the environment.
• Viability – creating a centre of economic activity around technologies and products that benefit the environment, speeding their implementation and creating new careers that truly protect the planet.

The Appliance of Green Science

For most observers and active participants in greening, science can lead the way, coupled with relentless technological progress:

• Energy: 
Perhaps the most urgent issue for green technology, this includes the development of alternative fuels, new means of generating energy and energy efficiency.
• Green building: 
Green building encompasses everything from the choice of building materials to where a building is located.
• Environmentally preferred purchasing
: This government innovation involves the search for products whose contents and methods of production have the smallest possible impact on the environment, and mandates that these be the preferred products for government purchasing.
• Green chemistry
: The invention, design and application of chemical products and processes to reduce or to eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances.
• Green nanotechnology: 
Nanotechnology involves the manipulation of materials at the scale of the nanometer, one billionth of a meter. Some scientists believe that mastery of this subject is forthcoming that will transform the way that everything in the world is manufactured. “Green nanotechnology” is the application of green chemistry and green engineering principles to this field.

What will future, green-perfect buildings look like?

Huffington Post has produced some startling images to whet our appetites.

They argued that ‘as architects continue to envision the utopian cities of the future, one thing is certain: innovation means sustainability.’ Architects and designers are relentlessly pursuing design strategies that manage to mitigate the toxic byproducts of our consumption habits, while maximizing our use of sustainable energy sources.

They said that meeting these challenges means ‘more deeply integrating green technologies like wind and solar power, natural climate controls and space-age materials in to the building processes.’

Urging you to see their ‘pretty mind-blowing’ pictures of the /most disruptive designs in the green building space’, they point out sustainability and aesthetic innovation.

Eco-Houses Big Business

If you list all the things that interconnect in a new green eco-home (or even retrofitting an old house), it is green technology business second only to device manufacture:

• insulation – eg loft or cavity wall insulation
• heating
• draught-proofing
• double glazing
• renewable energy technologies – eg solar panels or wind turbines
• recycling
• new materials using new technology and often old designs
• efficient use of water and other resources
• energy friendly appliances
• smarts meters and smart technology
• any more?

It is a possibility that in twenty years, more people will be employed in these industries than anything else. Who says the future isn’t green?

Other links:

Government’s Green Deal

What If the Cloud Was a Country, How Green Would It Be?, 20 February 2013

No Green Credentials for Computer Scammers and Internet Pirates, 23 January 2013

Have Yourself a Merry, Green Christmas If You Can, 25 December 2012

Do Emails Cost the Earth? 20 July 2011

Image: Maclemo

Digital News Is All the News Now, On Every Topic

Any cursory glance around the media from good old newsprint to the rolling 24 hour media machines, reveals a staggering 70% of the items to inform, educate and amuse us are directly or indirectly related to the advance of technology in general and digital in particular.

9 Recent Examples from One Day’s News

1. *** The short-lived Assistant Police and Crime Commissioner for Kent, 17 year Paris Brown caused a rumpus by allegedly posting crude comments about her private life on Twitter.

She was appointed to ‘represent young people’s views in policing’ and she may well be doing that. Personal comments on her sex life, drug taking and alcoholic abuse while at work may be what young people want to hear about and share.

But many voters in Kent felt two things. One, that social media is not appropriate for such revelations and two, £15,000 is too much salary for the role! She finally agreed and resigned in floods of tears. There, there!

2. *** April’s Aintree race had a story from the sidelines about how an internet bookmaker was apparently the victim of a £20,000 extortion scam run by Iran and including mysterious Russian hackers.

Cyber-extortion has recently joined the list of cybercrimes that are on the relentless growth. Hacked customer data is at the heart of it and police fear that many companies simply pay up to their blackmailers rather than risk their customers knowing security has been compromised.

3. *** From the world of health, patients who access the General Medical Council website to check doctors’ records are unaware that details of medical practitioners before October 2005 are not shown.

That may not matter much, but it transpires that dozens of doctors have been discioplined for criminal convictions, botching operations and general regulatory infringments. Many are now practising again, secure in the knowledge their pasts are secret. Patients want clarity, though.

4. *** Of course another bad Facebook story is doing the rounds. Users of the hungry social media giant are quietly being charged a tenner for sending a message to celebrities and other people not in their friendship circle.

It appears that Facebook is trialling a sliding scale of fees depending on the perceived popularity of the celebrity. So a message to Tom Daley costs £10.68 but to Laura Trott is a modest 71p.

Other Facebook issues:

Facebook Enriches the English Language, If Not Our Wallets, 6 March 2013

Facebook Is Bad for Your Health, But Good For Your Self-Esteem, 29 January 2013

5. *** Don’t let’s forget Amazon in the news.  The Kindle and other e-readers have created new markets for writers, and many are excited about that development. However, it is reported that Amazon’s plan is to exploit its’ current 60% domination of the digital book market by eliminating rivals.

Amazon’s workings control every single bit of the process increasingly, from actual production through to selling and reselling, and certainly how they are promoted/discussed/reviewed.

They bought up IMBd and developed it to add knowledge to films and TV shows; they monitor traffic (100 million regular users) to sell films, box sets and other advertising. Data from IMBD also helps their Lovefilm rental business.

They have acquired Zappos, online shoe sellers and Diapers.com, baby retailers … and so it goes on. We knew all that, but it’s always good for a recycled news story to raise concerns about Amazon’s growth.

Also a good read:

Is a Kindle the Best Way of Firing the Reading Habit? 19 December 2012

6. *** Estimates on the number of road users by 2035 in a government survey are sky-rocketing. They predict the number of cyclist will decline, apart from major cities, despite the beneficial Olympic/Paralymic legacy.

Instead, we will see van traffic on motorways and trunk roads increase from 12 billion a year to over 20 billion, with cars up to 90 billion.
There are all sorts of reasons for this, but the main one is a direct consequence of online shopping growth requiring many more deliveries.

Another bike/road story:

Cycling Rides Up a Storm of Controversy, 27 February 2013

7. *** The pace of development of 3D printing picks up with news that the US Navy is print parts for planes and ships now, in a bid to save money and to make more efficient repairs.

3D printers can now print real objects in a wide variety of materials, including metal, concrete and plastics. They are thinking big, and planning to replace engine parts, cutlery and even, it is reported, replacement body parts for injured military personnel.

Should the NHS be planning the same thing? In the USA one man has already had 75% of a replacement skull 3D printed from high-performance thermo plastic and fitted!!

Previous story:
Late Christmas Pressie: A 3D Printer, 19 December 2011

8. *** Couples approaching retirement can now go online and take a Relate survey to ‘put their marriages to an MOT test’. They feel it is an effective preparation for ‘silver separation’ from work and careers.

As many people, especially men, find themselves defined by their work, it makes sense to consider how they will relate to their nearest and dearest. Even if they have to work much longer than previous generations.

9. *** And even unto death, the internet is ready to serve. Author Iain Banks has revealed he has but a few months left to live via the web and is keeping followers posted. Many observers think this reflects man’s ancient need to deal with death in some sort of ritualistic way, if not always religious.

it certainly shows how the web is people’s first and often only method of communication these days.

The Net and Death:
Will Your Digital Afterlife Make a Good Novel After You Are Dead? 10 September 2012

Image: Michael Beaton

Was this once again, science fiction becoming reality or a hyped up tale on a slow news day?

The Movie(s)

In this top-quality innovative film, Inception, according to IMBd, ‘A skilled extractor is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible.’

In this case, it meant that Leonardo DiCaprio went into people’s dreams in order to change the past to affect the future. It was basically a time travel story, but wrapped up in such incredible effects that it soon became a classic movie of the new genre.

Scientists today are not suggesting entering people’s dreams nor influencing their outcomes. At least not yet.

There are many films dealing with memory, amnesia, changing memories that stick in the mind. Spellbound (1945), Momento (2000), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Total Recall (1990), Dark City (1998), The Bourne Trilogy (2002-2007), 50 First Dates (2004), Finding Nemo (2003), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) spring to mind, as far as I can recall.

The Dream Catcher

Throughout history the importance of dreams and nightmares has been acknowledged. The day dreamer is condemned in the school classroom, but praised when they dream up a new invention or solution to a problem.

Besides influencing art, writing and music, dreams have affected people’s people and whole psychological profiles. And they still do, in most cultures.

The sleeping person often shows outward signs of inner struggle, turmoil, journeying, terror or conflict. The notion that dreams can be captured somehow and used to replay later, or be helpful in predicting the future has till now remained on the future to-do list.

The term goes back to some Native American cultures, where a dream-catcher was a handmade object like a hoop decorated with sacred feathers and beads, that was meant to figuratively and in some cases literally ‘snare’ the dreams.

So What Have They Invented Now?

They can read dreams by an MRI scanner monitoring brain activity. So is it down to interpretation rather than actually knowing what is inside a dreamer?

Volunteers were regularly woken and asked to describe the images they’d seen in the first moments of lighter sleep. Whatever they said was then matched with their brain parts scanned as active, and grouped into ‘broad categories’, like words or books or people.

Photos from the web were then shown to them until they found corresponding images. The Japanese scientists then discovered they were 60% accurate in predicting the images of each volunteer.

Presumably that will improve as they get ever bigger banks of images and perhaps the same volunteers are susceptible to the same dreams. The recurring images, fears, worries and dreads often crop up when we go to sleep stressed. Fear of work situations, people, losing a child/parent or anything.

They concede they are a long way from tuning in to intimate dream details (sighs of relief from many people), but they claim it is a ’key step.’ Dr Robert Stickgold, Harvard Medical School neurologist told Science journal ‘ ‘up until this moment, there were no grounds on which to say we don’t just make up our dreams when we wake up…’

He said it as if we shouldn’t make up our dreams on waking. What if we do? Does it matter?

Shouldn’t we be leaving well alone in people’s private thoughts, unless they are mentally ill and/or ask for help?

Goodnight, sweet dreams!

Image: www.dreamcatchermagazine.co.uk
Native American Dream Catchers

Broadband Is All About Fast Speed, Competition, Money and Innovation For months in most of the non-metropolitan areas of Britain, stories have appeared in the media reporting the slowness (but steadiness) of the progress towards faster broadband.

For months in most of the non-metropolitan areas of Britain, stories have appeared in the media reporting the slowness (but steadiness) of the progress towards faster broadband.

It’s All About Breadth

Broadband expert at uSwitch.com, Marie-Louise Abretti has warned that British netizens living in the rural areas are stuck in ‘rural ghettos’. Much of the country has shot ahead with faster speeds, rural not-spots haven’t. This has given rise to another newspeak loved phrase, ‘the level playing field’ demand.

Recipients of fast service are unaware that the same level is unavailable across the entire country. Their speeds go on improving. While that is welcome, it is because, not surprisingly, they are in very commercially viable areas.

Other commentators have lined up to sound similar warnings, including the perennial media favourite, ‘postcode lottery’. But there are businesses we need in quiet areas too, jobs and local investment depend on it just as much as inner cities do.

We’ve reported before on a scheme to transmit wireless internet services from church towers and possibly other high structures. This is Norfolk, Wispire, is continuing to grow and offer relief to more parishes, but there is a long way to go yet.

It’s All About Speed

In Suffolk, for example, Suffolk County Council has confirmed that BT engineers have begun the rollout of ‘Better Broadband’ in the more rural locations.

This is part of a £40m contract due for completion in 2015. Every property will get speeds of at least 2Mbps while 85% will get so-called superfast speeds of 24Mbps.

Speed is what businesses and residents want, wherever they are located, it seems, and politicians are responding to that demand. Heady figures suggest growth to the local economy of at least 20% and around 5000 new jobs.

Not to be outdone by their neighbours, 45,000 Norfolk businesses and homes in Norwich, Costessey and Great Yarmouth are set to benefit from BT’s national investment programme to bring super-fast broadband.

It is part of a £2.5bn national scheme, with new fibre optic cables running from exchanges to provide service to fibre-to-the-cabinet systems in streets. If the promised 80Mbps materialises, it will revolutionise both business effectiveness and home-working.

It’s All About Money

‘Super Connected Cities’ has £150 million of taxpayers’ cash earmarked for connectivity is another example of pots that are available to push digital connections. Some people, such as Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media has said that the money should be spent on ‘ensuring consumers and businesses have the skills to make the most of digital, rather than looking at speeds.’

So, it’s all about skills to use it then? Well partly. But money is still a key factor. The EU has raised eyebrows at the British Government’s plans to help the market deliver ‘contiguous coverage’ across the nation.

Culture Secretary Mrs Maria Miller has determined on a mix of speed and widespread network working together to to achieve ‘complete reach and ubiquitous access to highspeed’. She calls it Britain’s unique selling point (USP). On eCommerce, we lead the world.

Others may disagree, but it’s powerful politics and economics. More jobs and competitive companies need it and need it now.

It’s All About Competition

Certainly this is the other side of the debate about speed and connectivity. Chief Executive of TalkTalk, Dido Harding, was given an entire article in the Daily Telegraph of 1st April to argue that ’to become a world leader in broadband, we must prioritise competition.’

She said that neither speed nor infrastructure together would support long-term digital development of our economy. There has to be more to win against the larger economies of the USA, India and China.

We have more Brits online than most comparable countries. Yet still 8m adults have never used the internet.

She showed how the success of the copper broadband market was due to effective regulation that balanced need for investment and ensured competition. Fierce competition, she said, has brought ‘lower prices and more innovation in products and services.’

This in turn generates take-up, skills in use, further innovation and investment and business growth which generates more jobs. And more taxes. She warns against complacency and urges the powers that be to enshrine proper competition to give choice, low prices and new markets in law.

So, that’s what it’s about. A lot of different things, every one of them probably equally important.

Image: Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier

Be Careful What You Are Talked Into Doing to a Webcam

Many people and most politicos, it seems, are unable to resist the appeal of social media and microphones left turned on when they make jackasses of themselves. Easily done, if you don’t keep your wits about you.

But now comes news of a scam that works on the arrogance, greed, lust and possible stupidity of some people, mainly men. Or, as one female famously put it, ‘men only think with their lower part, not their upper brain’.

Internet Blackmail

West Yorkshire Police are investigating the case of a 20 year old man who was chatting online to what he assumed was a woman from California on holiday in the Philippines. Things were progressing along the lines of getting to know you, finding lots in common. She looked at his Facebook page.

She then upped the stakes and offered to talk on Skype. So he saw that she was an attractive lady, just his type. He added her to his Facebook friends. The conversation became more sexually angled and she said she would strip for him…. but only if he did it first!

So, of course, he did.

Turning Nasty

She then threatened to upload the video she’d taken to YouTube unless he paid $200 into an online account which was based in the Philippines.

To concentrate his mind and demonstrate she was serious, His Facebook friends’ list, including his mother, sister, uncles and cousins were the next target and she said they’d all get the images of him undressing unless the money was transferred.

As is the way with blackmailers, they always want more. She repeatedly called him over two days demanding more money. Then he called in the police.

Det Sgt Michael Casey told the media, ‘due to the sensitive nature of the scam I believe a large number of similar offences will have taken place across the world with a significant number never being reported.’

All Around the World

The scam is not confined to Britain. CNN reported in February 2013 that in Singapore there is a ring or rings of online scam artists who use attractive women to ‘friend’ victims on social sites, ‘seduce them into cybersex on webcams and then threaten to post images online unless they pay up.’

In most cases, these women undress first to put the victim at complete ease, often encouraging them to perform sex acts to the screen (and camera). There were 50 cases reported in 2012 alone.

CNN reported Graham Cluley of Web security firm Sophos who warned that if such a scam spreads, it could encompass more than just blackmail. He said that eager victims could be persuaded to click on a dodgy link and find their who computer compromised in seconds.

Singapore Police issued  a warning about befriending strangers on social networks, giving out personal details or ‘performing compromising acts’.

Graham Cluley put it more succinctly: ‘Be careful out there, and keep your trousers on, chaps.’

Other scams to watch out for:

Hidden Charges Are the Sting in the Tail of Online Shopping, 4 December 2012

Scams Are Out to Get You, Online and Off, 21 May 2012

Image: Simon Wedege Petersen