We were walking in the Fens the other evening when a double rainbow appeared, one of which appeared to terminate at the Anchor Inn at Sutton Gault. It seemed like the kind of omen that should not be ignored, so we had dinner there, and it was as good as ever.
In the battle for military resources, the Taliban are a useful ally
Terrific Guardian column by Simon Jenkins. Excerpt:
The one straw at which ministers and generals will grasp is that as long as the war lasts, it helps them lobby for money. Ever since Nato lost its reason for existing, its task has been to find a purpose. It has dragged out the insane Afghan conflict for 11 years. Why stop now? In the one battle that matters to a modern army – the battle for resources – the Taliban is not an enemy but an ally.
What do officials say nowadays to the relatives of the 433 British and 2,000 American who have died fighting in Afghanistan. Do they say they have avenged the dead of 9/11, taught the Taliban a lesson, “sent a message” to militant Islam, helped rebuild a poor country? They cannot surely be repeating Gordon Brown’s line, that their deaths are making Britain’s streets safer. London now has to be patrolled by armed policemen, and a billion pounds spent protecting the Olympics.
The truth is that British troops are dying in Afghanistan because no British government has the guts to admit they are there to no purpose. Military lobbyists shelter behind the “bravery of our boys” to sustain defence spending. No party dares question the war or its objective, for fear of demeaning heroism. The war is not mentioned at party conferences. Money is poured into drone bombing, despite its manifest counter-productivity. The coalition claims to be “training” a 350,000-strong local army and police force, but knows them to be unreliable, a new Taliban in the making.
Left turn ahead
On reflection…
… I’ll stay there again.
Marketing (il)logic
Sometimes, one wonders if marketing people have any grasp of elementary logic. Consider this quote from a report headlined “Many Windows 8 Tablets Will Sport a Keyboard.”
Samsung showed off the latest version of its Slate tablet, a grayish device with a bright touch screen measuring 11.6 inches at the diagonal. It comes with a pressure-sensing stylus called the S-Pen, and will sell with an optional detachable keyboard that uses magnets and latching hardware to stay in place. Unlike most of the devices shown at the event, the Slate had a price and release date: it will be available October 26, the same day Windows 8 launches, for $749 with the keyboard and $649 without.
Allison Kohn, public relations manager for Samsung Electronics America, said the company decided to pair the tablet with a keyboard to help users carry around fewer gadgets. “It simplifies your lifestyle, being able to consolidate your devices,” she said.
So: Samsung provides 1 tablet + 1 keyboard in order to “consolidate” the lives of people who currently carry 1 iPad?
A quarter of US adults now have a tablet computer
Wow! How things change. From the PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ).
Over the last year, tablet ownership has steadily increased from 11% of U.S. adults in July of 2011 to 18% in January of 2012, according to PEJ data. Currently, 22% own a tablet and another 3% regularly use a tablet owned by someone else in the home. This number is very close to new data, released here for the first time, conducted in a separate survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project on July 16 through August 7 2012 that found 25% of all U.S. adults have a tablet computer.
And over half of those tablets are iPads.
Oh yeah?
The Jesus Phone
25 years on
25 years ago today, IKEA opened its first UK store (in Warrington).
The spy in your pocket
Intriguing (and scary) research paper entitled “PlaceRaider: Virtual Theft in Physical Spaces with Smartphones”. Abstract reads:
As smartphones become more pervasive, they are increasingly targeted by malware. At the same time, each new generation of smartphone features increasingly powerful onboard sensor suites. A new strain of sensor malware has been developing that leverages these sensors to steal information from the physical environment (e.g., researchers have recently demonstrated how malware can listen for spoken credit card numbers through the microphone, or feel keystroke vibrations using the accelerometer). Yet the possibilities of what malware can see through a camera have been understudied. This paper introduces a novel visual malware called PlaceRaider, which allows remote attackers to engage in remote reconnaissance and what we call virtual theft. Through completely opportunistic use of the camera on the phone and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs rich, three dimensional models of indoor environments. Remote burglars can thus download the physical space, study the environment carefully, and steal virtual objects from the environment (such as financial documents, information on computer monitors, and personally identifiable information). Through two human subject studies we demonstrate the effectiveness of using mobile devices as powerful surveillance and virtual theft platforms, and we suggest several possible defenses against visual malware.
PetaPixel has a useful summary of the essence of the idea:
The app, designed by Robert Templeman of the US Naval Surface Warfare Center and scientists at Indiana University, can run secretly in the background of any smartphone running Android 2.3 (after an unsuspecting “victim” launches the app, of course). It makes decisions on when to surreptitiously snap photos based on things like time, location, and orientation.
Useless images (ones that are too blurry or dark) are filtered out, while the rest are beamed to a central server, which creates virtual 3D spaces based on the content of the images. These 3D spaces can then be browsed by the person behind the malicious “hack”.
The whole thing isn’t just conceptual: the scientists actually gave infected phones to 20 oblivious test subjects, who were asked to use the devices like they normally would in office environments. The results were pretty crazy: 3D models were successfully obtained from every one of the 20 subjects, and it was easier to glean sensitive information from the 3D models than from the original photos.