Radioactive Communist Zombies

World Running Out of Internet Addresses?

It's a disaster 30 years in the making.

You see, the interent address for this blog is not radioactivecommunistzombies.com, it's 68.178.232.100.  That's called the IP address and there's only about 232 million of them left.

Thirty years ago, the current standard in IP address was developed and it was called IPv4.  But no one then imagined it couldn't be enough IP addresses.  As Fox News reports:

When the IPv4 protocol was developed 30 years ago, it seemed to be a reasonable attempt at providing enough addresses," carrier relations manager at Australian internet service provider (ISP) Internode John Lindsay told the Herald.

"Bearing in mind that at that point personal computers didn't really exist, the idea that mobile phones might want an IP address hadn't occurred to anybody because mobile phones hadn't been invented [and] the idea that air-conditioners and refrigerators might want them was utterly ludicrous."

So John Lindsay is predicting the world runs out of IP addresses in 340 days (July 1, 2011).

There is a solution but it's painful.  It's called IPv6 and it would give every human on Earth more than 4 billion IP addresses each.

Problem is, switching every device over to IPv6 would require all devices connected to the internet to be reconfigured or upgraded.  That's every personal computer, every server, every smart phone, every video game system, every other thing connected to the internet.  And that's going to be tough.

The stop gap measures:

In the meantime ISPs may force multiple customers to share IP addresses, which may lead to common applications, such as Gmail and iTunes, ceasing to work.

There are also fears a black market of IP addresses may spring up.  Don't know how that would work, but it might be interesting.  Hang on to those IP addresses, they might be going up in value.  I also have no idea how you might do that.

Access to Computers Lowers Test Scores

(And I still don't have an education category)

Computer access for students in public schools is improving, accordingto edweek.org:

In 1998, instructional computers in public schools were far less numerous than today. On average, the ratio of students to computers was about six (6.3) to one . . .

Eight years later, in 2006, students in all types of schools have gained much better access to instructional computers, and the "digital divide" has substantially diminished over time. On average, 3.8 students share a single instructional computer . . .

This is generally viewed as a good thing.  But it may not be.  According to a Stanford University study access to computers lowers tests scores.  The Wall Street Journal Real Time Economics blog reports (I think it's free):

“Students who gain access to a home computer between fifth and eighth grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math tests,” [the economists] conclude. The effect is modest, they say, but statistically significant. Other studies, they say, are finding similarly discouraging results.

The theory is, playing on the computer is crowding out study time.  Is that also happening at school now that there's more computers there?  As more kids have more access to computers and broadband will we see worse test scores than we have now, which are pretty abysmal compared to other countries?

Hacking into Kitchen Appliances

It seems almost nothing is safe.  According an article on Fox News, anything with a internet connection, Wifi, Bluetooth, cell phone signal, or even GPS receiver can be hacked.  They've done it to cars and phones and printers, home security systems, digital cameras, and even blenders (albeit, a one connected to a home network).

And the ultimate hack: when the computer-human interface becomes a chip in your brain . . . (I see a science fiction story here!)

But this is a real and growing problem.  Hacking your computer or your cell phone is inconvenient, hacking your car could be deadly.

This almost brings out the Luddite in me.  Do I really want my blender to be hackable?  Or my car?  Think we need to solve the problem of how to stop hackers before we wire our lives too much.

Border Agents Can Not Seize Laptops Anymore

(Hat tip Instapundit)

There has been for at least two years now a policy that border agents can seize the laptop or other electronic device that travelers bring into the country.  And they could hold those devices almost indefinitely while they perused them for something bad.

Well, no more.  A federal judge has ruled against the government:

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in the Northern District of California rejected the Obama administration's argument that no warrant was necessary to look through the electronic files of an American citizen who was returning home from a trip to South Korea.

"The court concludes that [the] search required a warrant," White ruled on June 2, referring to a search of Andrew Hanson's computer that took place a year ago. Hanson arrived San Francisco International Airport in January 2009.

This is a good thing.  Border Agents were randomly selecting people for more extensive searches and then seizing electronics to see if there's anything incriminating on them.  The government argued that 4th Amendment protections don't apply to electronics coming across the border.  The judge found that argument "unpersuasive."

I'm all for catching terrorists and child pornographers.  But this was an abuse of power, nothing more.

Is Digital Better Than Paper for the Environment?

Have you gone "paperless" to help the environment?  Get your bills through email and/or read your news online?

Well, you may not be helping the environment as much as you think.  Or much at all, really.  In fact, you may be doing worse damage than if you used paper.

That according to Don Carli writing for PBS.  You see, it all depends on where your electricity comes from (links original):

There is growing recognition that digital media technology uses significant amounts of energy from coal fired power plants which are making a significant contribution to global warming. Greenpeace estimates that by 2020 data centers will demand more electricity than is currently demanded by France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany combined. What is less widely known is that mountaintop-removal coal mining is also a major cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the pollution of over 1,200 miles of headwater streams in the United States.

If your goal is to save trees or do something good for the environment, the choice to go paperless may not be as green or simple as some would like you to think.

So, your electronic gizmos might be devastating the environment.

Chances are that the electricity flowing through your digital media devices and their servers is linked to mountaintop-removal coal from the Appalachian Mountains. The Southern Appalachian forest region of the U.S. is responsible for 23% of all coal production in the United States and 57% of the electricity generated in the U.S. comes from coal -- including the rapidly growing power consumed by many U.S. data centers, networks and consumer electronic devices.

So I guess you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.  But I do know this: the paper industry is very conscientious about replanting trees.  After all, that's what they need to stay in business. 

So maybe paper is the better choice.

Netflix to Delay Some New Releases

A couple weeks ago I complained that Netflix wasn't releasing movies at the same time as Amazon (and others) were selling them.

Well, apparently, it's part of a dealNetflix has made with the studios.

Netflix, the Los Gatos Internet DVD rental pioneer, is gaining movies and TV shows from two big Hollywood studios — Fox and Universal Studios — for its online instant-streaming service.

The catch: It agreed Friday to delay new releases as long as 28 days after the "street date," giving the studios time to rake in receipts from sales directly to consumers before they're available on Netflix.

DVD and Blu-ray copies of Twentieth Century Fox's hit movie "Avatar," for example, will be sold in stores April 22, but will be released four weeks later to Netflix subscribers. They'll be able to watch Fox shows such as "24" through Netflix instantly online.

(Interestingly, my Netflix Queue lists "Avatar" as "unknown" release date.)  Apparently they already had a similar deal with Warner Brothers which is the cause of the movies I complained about being delayed.

I'm sure there are people who would be very unhappy to have to wait four weeks to see a new release and the access to instant online watching of some movies and TV shows wouldn't compensate. 

I'm trying to decide if I'm one of them.

Netflix's Latest Trick

I've been a member of Netflix since January of 2002.  I've been throttled and I've managed not to be throttled through judicious sending back of discs.  I've found (on the 3-at-a-time plan I'm on) that if I only send back two discs a week, I usually don't get throttled.  (Throttling is where Netflix doesn't send you new releases right away but makes you wait for them, sometimes a long time.)  And two discs per week is what I calculated (long ago) is how many I need to watch and send back to make Netflix cost about the same as going to the local video store. 

I learned that if I get discs back to Netflix on Monday, I usually get the new releases that release on that Tuesday sent to me (unless I'm being throttled).  Getting the movies back on Monday means sending them on Saturday (from where I live). 

I really like Netflix (which is why I've stayed with them so long).  I like that I can get old movies, television shows (right now I'm going through the first season of Fringe), and new releases.  I like the convenience that the only trip I need to make is to the mailbox. 

But now Netflix seems to have a new trick.  According to ads I've seen and Amazon.com, The Blind Side released on DVD and Blue-ray March 23rd.  But according to my Netflix queue, it releases April 20th (as shown in this screen capture; click for larger version):

And according to Amazon.com, Sherlock Holmes releases this coming Tuesday, March 30th.  But according to my Netflix queue, it releases sometime in April (most likely April 27th):

 

So what is this?  Is this their new way to throttle me or are they doing this to all customers?  It's a bit confusing.  So while I really like Netflix, I still have to say caveat emptor when it comes to using them.

The Loss of Medical Privacy

Ever worried about what you told your doctor might leak out and cause you embarrassment or other problems?  According to Deborah Peel, writing in the Wall Street Journal (sub may be required), it's common:

I learned about the lack of health privacy when I hung out my shingle as a psychiatrist. Patients asked if I could keep their records private if they paid for care themselves. They had lost jobs or reputations because what they said in the doctor's office didn't always stay in the doctor's office. That was 35 years ago, in the age of paper.

Now imagine all your medical records are electronic, able to be hacked into, shared, mistakenly revealed.  That's a problem, and just one problem with Obamacare.  Electronic medical records are touted as solving all sorts of problems.  But:

But electronic medical records won't accomplish any of these goals if patients fear sharing information with doctors because they know it isn't private. When patients realize they can't control who sees their electronic health records, they will be far less likely to tell their doctors about drinking problems, feelings of depression, sexual problems, or exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. In 2005, a California Healthcare Foundation poll found that one in eight Americans avoided seeing a regular doctor, asked a doctor to alter a diagnosis, paid privately for a test, or avoided tests altogether due to privacy concerns . . . Electronic record systems that don't put patients in control of data or have inadequate security create huge opportunities for the theft, misuse and sale of personal health information.

And do you really want the government to have access to your health records?  You know it'll come to that, sooner or later.

There are solutions:

The solution is to insist upon technologies that protect a patient's right to consent to share any personal data. A step in this direction is to demand that no federal stimulus dollars be used to develop electronic systems that do not have these technologies.

But they would require the Congress and President to do something they probably don't want to do: then they couldn't have control over you.

Cellphone Laws Do Not Reduce Crashes

Remember when using a cellphone while driving was supposed to be a bad as driving drunk?  So some states, including Washington State, have mandated no hand held cell phone usage while driving (it's still okay to use a hands-free device).

The Wall Street Journal today has a piece (sub might be required) about how those cell phone bans have not reduced crashes:

[A] study released recently by the Highway Loss Data Institute and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety . . . found no significant reduction in accident claims in states that have banned the use of hand-held cellphones behind the wheel.

Really!

In New York state, for example, the legislature forbade motorists to use hand-held mobile phones while driving in November 2001. Driver phone use fell by an estimated 47%, the HLDI/IIHS study found. Yet while monthly collision claims in New York did show a decline after the ban, that drop had actually begun before the ban was enacted.

In California, a hand-held cellphone ban became law in July 2008. But HLDI found "no notable change was apparent" because of the ban. Likewise, accident claims in Connecticut and Washington, D.C., didn't show a significant change in accident claims after the bans, or compared to other states that had no cellphone bans.

So why are we banning cellphone usage while driving?  Because politicians always have to DO SOMETHING about any problem, perceived or real.  And thanks to this study, we're probably in for more politicians doing SOMETHING:

Some in the safety community say the failure to see lower crash rates suggests stronger enforcement is needed. Others suggest that the ban on holding a phone doesn't attack the real problem, which is the distraction of talking to someone who's not in the car. The study's results could give ammunition to those who say that future legislation or regulation on distracted driving needs to have a broader focus than just holding a handset.

In other words, ban cellphone usage even with hands-free devices.

Now Washington State has a ban on texting while driving which I completely agree with.  But banning cellphone usage totally just doesn't make sense.  Unless you're also going to ban smoking, eating, and talking to people in the car while driving, too.

Risk of "Crippling" Cyber Attack

The United States is at risk of a crippling cyber attack that could "wreak havoc" on the country because the "technological balance" makes it much easier to launch a cyber strike than defend against it, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday.

Yeah, like you couldn't read this blog!

But seriously, as Fox News reports(you decide), a cyber attack would be devastating if it interrupted internet:

"Attacks against networks that control the critical infrastructure in this country ... could wreak havoc," Blair said. "Cyber defenders right now, it's simply the facts of the matter, have to spend more and work harder than the attackers do, and our efforts frankly are not strong enough to recognize, deal with that reality." 

Think how much business gets done in this country via internet (email, ecommerce, VIOP, etc.).  But that's not all that happening on the internet:

Blair also told Congress Tuesday that the Internet is providing the fuel for the growing problem of "homegrown radicalization." 

"That ... has been one of the most dangerous uses of the Internet," Blair said, explaining that foreign groups are using the Internet to organize attacks, give instructions and arrange financing.

Which just goes to show, most any technology is a double-edge sword.  It can be the must useful thing in the world, but it can also harbor dangers.