Networked Networks Are Prone to Epic Failure

A recent post from Wired takes a complexity look at the fragility of networks which are inter-related and thus increase their fragility.... a useful post:

Networks that are resilient on their own become fragile and prone to catastrophic failure when connected, suggests a new study with troubling implications for tightly linked modern infrastructures. Electrical grids, water supplies, computer networks, roads, hospitals, financial systems - all are tied to each other in ways that could make them vulnerable. Most theoretical research on network properties has focused on single networks in isolation. In reality, many important networks are tied to each other. Anecdotal evidence hints at their fragility, but the underlying mathematics are largely unexplored.

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Word War III: Google vs. Governments

More on Google.... (as if there isn't already enough!)... now that information protection and government requests are becoming more visible on the discussion forums.. it might be that,

In the end, Google will become a regulated quasi-utility. It's easy to suggest why this should happen, but profoundly difficult to imagine how. Yet where there's a will, the political elites will eventually find a way. The key challenge for Google involves slowing down the process. Arguably, this now matters more to shareholders than new product development. Regulated companies make smaller profits than you'd otherwise expect.

Read more at - 'Word War III: Google vs. Governments'

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Google and Library of Congress archive tweets

Tweeting or Twittering has become a much publicised phenomenon recently... what with the protests in Iran; Chavez daily Tweets; and Obama's not-so-nice threats.... well, now the whole message archive is getting the Google treatment:

Every single public tweet, dating back to the very first missive posted on March 21, 2006, will now be housed in the government's Library of Congress. Plus, Google is making the Twitter archive searchable. The Library of Congress -- which boasts millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections -- announced on Wednesday (via Twitter) that is has acquired all public tweets in the Twitter archive. "Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data," wrote a Library of Congress representative in a Facebook note.

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Mobile Lives

Hot off the press! A new book just published (May 14th, Routledge) called 'Mobile Lives' by Anthony Elliot and John Urry. It's description is ideal for this New Mobilities blog:

How should we understand the personal and social impacts of complex mobility systems? Can lifestyles based around intensive travel, transport and tourism be maintained in the 21^st century? What possibility post-carbon lifestyles?

In this provocative study of "life on the move", Anthony Elliott and John Urry explore how complex mobility systems are transforming everyday, ordinary lives. The authors develop their arguments through an analysis of various sectors of mobile lives: networks, new digital technologies, consumerism, the lifestyles of ‘globals’, and intimate relationships at-a-distance. Elliott and Urry introduce a range of new concepts – miniaturized mobilities, affect storage, network capital, meetingness, neighbourhood lives, portable personhood, ambient place, globals – to capture the specific ways in which mobility systems intersect with mobile lives.

Also - another new book has just hit the market which may be of interest to some readers of this blog. It is titled UNDERSTANDING TOURISM by Kevin Hannam and Dan Knox, Sage 2010 and contains a very interesting mobilities view of tourism with useful student-friendly text and exercises.

Just thought I would pass it on!

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First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality

More on the virtual theme..this time with a physical body element that gives a new depth to the avatar phenomenon:

European researchers have used immersive virtual reality in the first experiment to show that body ownership can be transferred to a virtual body. A first-person perspective of a life-sized virtual human female body that appears to substitute the male subjects' own bodies was sufficient to generate a body transfer illusion. The results support the notion that bottom-up perceptual mechanisms can temporarily override top down knowledge. resulting in a radical illusion of transfer of body ownership. The research also illustrates immersive virtual reality as a powerful tool in the study of body representation and experience, since it supports experimental manipulations that would otherwise be infeasible.  

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The real world of Second Life

It's been a while since I last blogged about Second Life...and the avatar antics in that world... well, now there seems to be a more detailed look..at both 2nd and 1st Life!

What are we to make of an adult man who leads an online life in which his avatar is an 11-year-old girl?

Inhabitants of Second Life, the online virtual world where this man/girl hangs out, are not troubled by such questions. The ability to explore alternative identities is what attracts many people there in the first place.

For the rest of us, we can find some answers in Life 2.0, a carefully-produced documentary about the real physical lives of Second Lifers.

Filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff, who has a background in television science documentaries, either worked hard to track down the right subjects or got very lucky. Their stories are engrossing and, in one case, remarkable. The result is a calm and tender account of Second Life and its impact on three American families.

Aside from the adult who plays at being a child, Spingarn-Koff follows a working-class Detroit woman who makes her living selling clothes and buildings in Second Life. She was earning a six-figure income until another Second Life resident began cloning her products, prompting one of the first lawsuits aimed at protecting "property" in a virtual world.

The film's third strand is a portrait of a man and woman who meet in Second Life and eventually separate from their partners and move in together in the real world.

Second Life is genuinely strange, so it is easy to think that the extremophiles - such as the folks who take on animal avatars and seek out virtual sex with other virtual "furries" - define the place. But Spingarn-Koff's film succeeds because it ignores the oddness and focuses on the people behind the avatars, and what Second Life means to them. Somehow it makes Second Life seem both bizarre and rather ordinary.

Read original article at 'The real world of Second Life'

Hack attacks mounted on car control systems

Now this is interesting news: it seems that the computer systems used to control modern cars are 'very vulnerable to attack', according to new expert research:

An investigation by security researchers found the systems to be "fragile" and easily subverted.
The researchers showed how to kill a car engine remotely, turn off the brakes so the car would not stop and make instruments give false readings.Despite their success, the team said it would be hard for malicious attackers to reproduce their work.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Stefan Savage from the University of California-San Diego, and Tadayoshi Kohno from the University of Washington set out to see what resilience cars had to an attack on their control systems."Our findings suggest that, unfortunately, the answer is 'little,'" wrote the researchers from the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security.

The researchers concentrated their attacks on the electronic control units (ECUs)scattered throughout modern vehicles which oversee the workings of many car components. It is thought that modern vehicles have about 100 megabytes of binary code spread across up to 70 ECUs.

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Topologies of Travel

A new publication on the Topologies of Travel is available. It is based on the conference of the title which was held in June 2007 at the University of Trier. 

The text in pdf form can be downloaded here

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South Korean children face gaming curfew

Well, this is not too much of a surprise given the recent baby death of a couple in South Korea who raised a virtual child online.... yet it could become draconian in its implications:

The South Korean government is introducing policies aimed at curbing the amount of time children spend playing online games. The first involves barring online gaming access to young people of school age between 12am (midnight) and 8am. 

The other policy suggests slowing down people's internet connections after they have been logged on to certain games for a long period of time.The Culture Ministry is calling on games providers to implement the plans.It is asking the companies to monitor the national identity numbers of their players, which includes the age of the individual. 

Parents can also choose to be notified if their identity number is used online. 

"The policy provides a way for parents to supervise their children's game playing," Lee Young-ah from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism told Reuters.

Read more at - 'South Korean children face gaming curfew'

Illegal Downloaders Face Life Internet Ban

A very sneaky Bill was passed just before the UK Parliament was dissolved. It purports to state that ilegal downloaders could soon be banned for life from using the Internet:

The Digital Economy Bill is aimed at stopping people illegally downloading copyrighted material from the internet.

However, critics of the Bill argue that it could have far greater powers and be used to censor and block free speech by whichever political party is in power.

The Bill was rushed through during the "washout" period before Parliament is dissolved.

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Beijingers get back on their bikes

It seems that not only are 'bikes back' on the Beijing streets but that electric bikes are the new hot thing... especially with those conjested streets:

Office worker David Dai is one of a growing army of Beijing residents returning to two-wheeled transport. But the 28-year-old does not rely on his own pedal power - like hundreds of thousands of others, he has bought an electric bike. These battery-powered, and virtually silent, machines have become increasingly common on the streets of the Chinese capital. With roads often clogged with cars - there are now four million vehicles in Beijing - they offer a speedy way to get around. But not everyone seems to like them: government officials are unsure about how to deal with this explosion of electric bicycles.

Congested streets

China used to be known as the "kingdom of bicycles". In the 1980s, four out of five commuters pedalled to work on them in Beijing. But as the capital's residents became richer following economic development, they ditched their bikes for four-wheeled transport.Recent statistics suggest that only one in five city residents now use an ordinary bicycle to travel around.

In a matter of just a few years Beijing has gone from a city with few private cars to one where traffic jams are commonplace. But many Beijing residents are now buying electric bicycles to avoid wasting time on congested streets. "It takes only 10 minutes to ride my electric bike from home to work," said Mr Dai.

 Read more at - 'Beijingers get back on their bikes'

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Secret Service Investigating Twitter Accounts Calling for Assassination

Twitter is back in the news; yet this time it is for assassination rumours... not only does this tell us that posting on Twitter is not going to be private (duh) but also that there are many alphabet agencies peeping in...

The Secret Service is investigating two Twitter account users who made threatening comments about President Obama following the House of Representatives vote on health care legislation.
  
 @Solly_Forell, who says he is an “authentic African American” on his Twitter page, allegedly posted comments about assassinating President Obama over the weekend. And he’s not the only one.

Another Twitter user with the account name @THHEE_JAY also tweeted about assassinating the President.
Secret Service Spokesman Malcolm Wiley tells Fox News that Secret Service does not have the luxury of discounting threats against the President and the agency is aware of the postings and is currently investigating.

Original source - 'Secret Service Investigating Twitter Accounts Calling for Assassination'

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Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game

Now here is a warning shot across the bow of viritual 'life games' such as Second Life - the possibility of escapism from real life with threatening consequences:

South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl. The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.

"I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven," the husband is quoted as saying on the asiaone website.

According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean police said the couple had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online. The game, similar to Second Life, allows players to create another existence for themselves in a virtual world, including getting a job, interacting with other users and earning an extra avatar to nurture once they reach a certain level.

"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap. "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."

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Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

Wired has an interesting post on 'hacking cars', which could point to future 'issues' if/when manufacturers start to install remote disabling devices into cars... hackers know how to get their own back!

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

“We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven’t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car’s ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle.

Read more at - 'Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely'

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Looks can't kill but might control your phone

Now here's a scenerio: 'we may have to get ready for another odd sight: people who quickly flick their gaze sideways and roll their eyes for no apparent reason. They'll be controlling their phones or their music players'. Yep...and  this was demonstrated at the Mobile World congress in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010:

They'll be controlling their phones or their music players. NTT DoCoMo has created headphones that sense eye movements. For instance, you can look from right to left to pause your music. Look right, then right again, to skip to the next track. Roll them clockwise to raise the volume.

The headphones look much like regular earbuds, connected by a cable to a phone. They sense the movements of the eyeballs by measuring tiny changes in electric charge. It turns out that the cornea, the outer surface of the eyes, has a positive charge. When you look left, the resulting shift in the electrical charge can be detected as far away as the ears. And no, this is not the source of the expression "electrifying gaze."

Read more at 'Looks can't kill but might control your phone

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A Global Social Network Without The Language Barrier!

Now here's a really smart idea...transgressing the main barrier hampering social networks - the language barrier. So why not just translate each other in real-time? Well..... it looks like a solution has arrived:

The Mojofiti website, now in its second round of Beta testing, allows you to build a profile, make friends, form groups, and start a blog – your standard social networking tools. The twist is in a series of tabs on the left of the screen bearing the flags of different nations. Click on a flag and everything on the site is instantly translated into any one of 27 different languages. That blog post you just wrote, it’s in French now. Or maybe you want to read your friend’s profile in Korean. Easily done. The real innovation, of course, is not that you can arbitrarily translate your text into another language, but that you have access to thousands of other users without having to worry about their native language. I type in English, you type in Tagalog, our friend types in Farsi – it doesn’t matter. We each read in our own native language as our content is translated automatically in real time. Mojofiti uses text translation to pry open social networking and fit the world inside.

Now, Mojofiti is really a compilation of different technologies all rolled into one. The website harnesses the power of Wordpress, Buddypress, and Google’s machine dictionaries. Yep, let’s make that very clear, Mojofiti uses Google text translations to power its site. That means that Mojofiti has all the same limitations (and capabilities) of the Google tool you’ve come to expect. Great speed, great range, but sometimes there’s trouble with slang, idioms, subtlety, and precise intent. It’s a good tool, I use it all the time, but Google translation does have its imperfections and you can expect them to carry over to Mojofiti. That being said, after exploring this new social network I never felt like I ran into any more problems with language than I would on any other site. The occasional sentence poorly translated into English was indistinguishable from how people write on the Internet anyway.

Read more at - 'A Global Social Network Without The Language Barrier – Mojofiti'

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Augmented Identity

Technology Review has a post on a new phone application that 'lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, the prototype software combines computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.'  Now there's a combination! It's a confluence of mobile technologies to frame each identity:

"It's taking social networking to the next level," says Dan Gärdenfors, head of user experience research at TAT. "We thought the idea of bridging the way people used to meet, in the real world, and the new Internet-based ways of congregating would be really interesting."

TAT built the augmented ID demo, called Recognizr, to work on a phone that has a five-megapixel camera and runs the Android operating system. A user opens the application and points the phone's camera at someone nearby. Software created by Swedish computer-vision firm Polar Rose then detects the subject's face and creates a unique signature by combining measurements of facial features and building a 3-D model. This signature is sent to a server where it's compared to others stored in a database. Providing the subject has opted in to the service and uploaded a photo and profile of themselves, the server then sends back that person's name along with links to her profile on several social networking sites, including Twitter or Facebook. The Polar Rose software also tracks the position of the subject's head--TAT uses this information to display the subject's name and icons for the Web links on the phone's screen without obscuring her face.

Read more on 'Augmented Identity'

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Cyberwar declared as China hunts for the West’s intelligence secrets

It seems that cyberattacks coming out of China have been rapidly escalating...and the West is starting to get concerned over secret intelligence:

Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyberwar attacks originating in China. The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states. 

Nato diplomatic sources told The Times: “Everyone has been made aware that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.” The sources said that the number of attacks had increased significantly over the past 12 months, with China among the most active players. 

In the US, an official report released on Friday said the number of attacks on Congress and other government agencies had risen exponentially in the past year to an estimated 1.6 billion every month.

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English into Spanish as you speak

Speaking in foreign tongues is now a pretty slick reality, thanks to this new iPhone application:

Jibbigo is a new iPhone app that can translate English speech into Spanish—and the reverse—all without going online. You simply launch the $25 app and speak into your iPhone's microphone and the translation is played over the speaker. It's like having a live interpreter in your pocket, without requiring that said interpreter also be a contortionist.

On the iPhone 3GS, the app can handle translating both languages simultaneously, to facilitate conversations. Users of earlier iPhone models need to choose which direction they'd like to translate when they launch the app, and restart it to switch. As a slick bonus, the app handles all its translation duties on the iPhone itself, and doesn't need an Internet connection at all.

According to the developers, the Jibbigo app isn't limited to certain phrases and expressions; it's armed with a dictionary of 40000 words, and performs well if you limit yourself to one or two sentences at a time.

Read more at - 'New iPhone app translates English into Spanish as you speak'

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DARPA kick-starts flying car program

More on the military pursuit of their ideal terrain and air vehicle.... but will it ever take off?! (yes - pun intended!)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will this month hold its first Proposers' Day Workshop in support of a flying car program it will begin this year known as the Transformer (TX).  The goal of the TX will be to build a flying vehicle that will let military personnel avoid water, difficult terrain, and road obstructions as well as IED and ambush threats by driving and flying when necessary.

DARPA said the vehicle will need to be able to drive on prepared surface and light off-road conditions, as well as support Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) features. The TX will also support range and speed efficiencies that will allow for missions to be performed on a single tank of fuel. DARPA said the TX will "provide the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats by providing the operator unimpeded movement over difficult terrain. In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable."

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