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Police to probe phone hack claims

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:12:58 -0500

The police are to investigate claims of widespread mobile phone hacking by the News of the World, following calls for an inquiry into the affair.

The Guardian says the paper's reporters paid private investigators to hack into "thousands" of phones, including one owned by ex-deputy PM John Prescott.

Met Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has ordered a senior officer to "establish the facts" on the case.

Mr Prescott said "many many" questions needed to be answered on the claims.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Geek heaven

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:38:20 -0500

Digital Planet
Alka Marwaha
BBC World Service

With broadband connections ten times faster than the US and 90% of the population owning mobile phones, it is not surprising that Japan has its own "Electronic Town".

Called Akihabara, it is the centre of "otaku" or "geek" culture in Tokyo.

In the district it is possible to buy anything from spy cameras to underground computer games.

"Tokyo is the hot bed for new electronics in the whole world," said Serkan Toto, Japanese correspondent for the Tech Crunch news blog.

"Japan is a very advanced technology-wise, it's a nation of early adopters."

Taking a tour

Japan's electric town is a covered market stockpiled with any and every kind of electrical component a dedicated geek could dream of.

Technology consultant, Steve Nagata who is also known as the "King of Akihabara" took Digital Planet presenter Gareth Mitchell for a stroll through the streets of the district.

First stop as Radio Street - a must for the hackers and makers among Japan's cadre of geeks who are seeking components to start or finish an DIY electrical project.

"You can buy anything you need, if you want a wire connector or a plug, you can find it here. Ready made or all the parts that you need to build it yourself," said Mr Nagata.

"You can come here and build to your heart's content," he added.

For Mr Nagata Japan's long-standing obsession with technology springs from a wish to understand what is behind lots of gadgets.

"It comes from a deep interest in things around them and wanting to find put how things work and know what each component does," said Mr Nagata.

Under surveillance

Akihabara hosts more than just component shops. Finished goods are on sale too. Those willing to rummage can find anything from old radio tubes to audio recorders, high end surveillance equipment and the low end too such as a tie with a built-in camera.

"This is a very big part of Akihabara, the surveillance equipment with every kind of camera from professional grade to little teeny cameras that you can stick into all sorts of different things," said Mr Nagata.

"The equipment itself is legal but how you use it may definitely run afoul of certain restrictions.

"You really never do know when someone is watching you," he added.

"This is very much a labour of love, something that they do out of their affection towards a particular character or style of gaming"

Steve Nagata

Download the podcast

As might be expected Akihabara reflects the thriving underground, homemade software culture in Japan.

"This is a garage software industry for anyone from individuals to small clubs or a company that produce and sell unlicensed software," said Mr Nagata.

"There are exact lookalikes to completely original software, this stuff is just as impressive as major console software."

The products cost less then the titles from the major gaming brands but, said Mr Nagata, making money is not the main aim for the folk behind the software.

"This is very much a labour of love, something that they do out of their affection towards a particular character or style of gaming," said Mr Nagata.

"It's their attempt to fill the world with something that they want to exist in it.

"This underground amateur culture has always been a big part of Akihabara and 'otaku' culture, back from home made comic books, now moving into homemade hardware and software."

Digital Planet is broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday at 1232 GMT and repeated at 1632 GMT, 2032 GMT and on Wednesday at 0032 GMT.

You can listen onlineor download the podcast.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

New 'cyber attacks' hit S Korea

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:14:48 -0500

By John Sudworth
BBC News, Seoul

South Korea is experiencing a third wave of suspected cyber-attacks - co-ordinated attempts to paralyse a number of major websites.

One of the country's biggest banks, a leading national newspaper and the South Korean spy agency appear to have been targeted.

Some reports suggest the attacks might be the work of North Korea.

South Korea and the US reported similar attacks earlier in the week, with the White House and the Pentagon targeted.

The South Korean government, and the country's internet service providers, are still trying to fight off what appears to be a deliberate attempt to shut down major websites that began earlier this week.

In what is known as a "denial of service" attack, thousands of virus-infected computers are hijacked and simultaneously directed to a particular site, overwhelming it with the sheer volume of traffic.

Cyber defence

A third wave of attacks is now reported to be underway, slowing down or paralysing the internet operations of large organisations including a bank, a national newspaper and the South Korean spy agency.

The agency is reportedly the source of the speculation that the operation may have been instigated by North Korea or its sympathisers.

The United States is the only other country to have been affected by the cyber attacks, where the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department are all said to have been targeted.

While undoubtedly causing inconvenience for the organisations, and their customers, the attacks affect only their public websites, and present no other security threat.

Despite the speculation, no evidence has been produced to prove a link with North Korea.

But some reports suggest it has a long-established military unit, employing up to 1,000 skilled computer hackers.

In response to the ongoing disruption, South Korea has announced that it will speed up plans for a cyber warfare unit to counter such threats.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Play mates

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:05:53 -0500

Nick Ryan
BBC News

There is no doubt that for many, online games such as World of Warcraft (WoW) are an escape from family and friends.

But for others, time-pressed, divided families, those divorced, living away from their loved ones, or simply with grown-up children, these games are increasingly being used to stay in touch.

They are becoming a natural way to maintain family ties because so many people play them. Many now boast player bases that number in the millions. Also they are no longer are the preserve of teenage boys. Grown-ups play them too. The average age of the regular gamer is 25 and it has been estimated that up to 30% of the 11 million WoW players are women.

THE LOVERS

Professional musician Marcus Miller turned to Warcraft when he felt his life was falling apart.

"There came a point about two years ago where the band I was in just finished recording an independent album and I was sacked due to my relationship with the keyboard player, my girlfriend at the time, ending. I became depressed, renouncing both music and relationships."

"I played World of Warcraft more with the free time I had because of the escapism it brought. My problems didn't seem so bad if I had something to take my mind off them."

Whilst out "questing" in the game, he found himself talking to another Warlock character, who appeared to have bought some items he'd manufactured.

"Over the course of a few days we quested together, and as we did conversation would start to turn to real life and what we do when we're not playing WoW. It was around this time that we established the other's gender and to me it felt like I'd met someone I could like. I felt the first blush of a potential romance. However, she lived in Greece and I in England."

Over the weeks they swapped e-mails and their conversations took on a more erotic turn leading, as he put it, "to as I'm sure you can imagine cybersex."

"I suppose in the back of my mind for a short while I did wonder if she was being perfectly honest regarding her gender but once we spoke on the phone I was delighted to hear her perfect English, spoken with a very cute Greek accent."

"Over the course of around six months we became very close and decided that we should meet. We made a plan, and for one long weekend in August 2007 we actually met."

"It was slightly surreal to meet in real life, but not really awkward beyond the first 30 minutes or so as we got to know each other really well beforehand."

Now they talk to each other regularly over headsets, and using webcams whilst playing, and the relationship has been going from strength-to-strength, visiting each other in England and Greece every few weeks.

"I think we fell in love before even meeting and the Internet, or particularly MMOs, can provide an unbiased and safe way to act out and test the emotional water before risking as much personally. We 'roleplayed' falling in love and real life followed."

"Coming from someone who has met girls in many different settings - at work, in clubs and bars, through friends, even reaping the benefits of being 'a guy in a band' - meeting someone through WoW has been a real eye opener."

"In fact, the romantic in me would suggest that the chances of meeting 'The One' in your very own home town are slim. And what with the world becoming smaller and more accessible, this is becoming more and more common."

THE STUDENT

James Dugdale was a student at Lincoln University until 2008. As he now puts it: "I'm living in a house with three of my friends from Uni ... trying to get a games design portfolio together, and trying to write a novel to try and kick-start a creative career."

An MMO veteran, Mr Dugdale said he approached most of them "purely for the gaming experience".

"WoW being the only real exception," he added. "I was actually approaching WoW as a world as much as a game. I look at these games both as videogames, and as social platforms."

He regularly met with his guild in real life, and had made many friends through the game. He chatted away to his old university friends inside Azeroth, the game world, even though distance now separated them in the real one.

It also allowed him to stay in touch with his parents, living several hundred miles away in Gillingham, Dorset.

"Whilst I occasionally keep in contact with my parents via phone, I have far more contact with my younger brothers via World of Warcraft. Both of them have characters in my guild, The Haven, and the elder of the two, 16, has raided with me on numerous occasions."

"Sometimes messages from my parents are relayed via my brothers through the game," he said. "If the message is short enough to not warrant a full phone call. There is sometimes as much communication with my parents via my brothers in-game than there is via the phone. Sad, I know, but I don't phone home all that often these days."

"Finally, two of my dearest friends live in Holland, and whilst I didn't actually know them until I met them through WoW in the first place, it is now my main method of communicating with them until I can raise the funds to go see them again."

"Bad communities often cripple big online games, and bad gameplay can cripple the communities. But I believe the communities are multiplying and growing, and that we're going to see that become a more and more important strength in the social aspect of the games."

THE FAMILY

One Portuguese businessman, who prefers to remain anonymous, met his wife 15 years via Telnet which then migrated to a shared interest in an online game Lineage.

Five years after moving to Florida, where he worked as an IT consultant, he returned to Portugal for his grandfather's funeral.

"My grandfather was the owner of a family business that employed more than 1000 people, now leaderless. I was given the opportunity to take control: I was bored with the job I had and the income was going be a lot bigger, so the idea appealed."

But his oldest child was in school and doing well; his wife and other two children didn't speak Portuguese.

"After much talking with my wife, we came to the conclusion that we were gonna try it: I was going to come back to Portugal, work here and go to Florida every chance I had."

"And that's where World of Warcraft came into the scene," he said. "I can even play it from my office, on my laptop anywhere, and spend as much time as I can with my wife online."

The two play together with their children, and meet and talk virtually as often as they can, via the game.

"So every day, me and my wife spend all the time talking, using Skype when I'm at work and have time to play together, or just talking. At night I log on my webcam and we even have dinner together as a family."

"My oldest is already eight and can play it with us... he is a hunter of course! The youngster already sits with mom and watches her play too."

He described the game world as a community or a neighbourhood.

"WoW helps our family in the sense that it allows us to keep things in common. It allows us to have a theme of conversation for hours. I don't want to bore my wife with stupid work problems every day, because that's what I would do. And looking at the webcam saying 'sooo how was your day' can only take me so far. WoW changed that."

He said he would pay 10 times his monthly subscription fee to have the service he felt it provided him.

"I am sure the day I go back home to Florida, will be the day we will play a lot less WoW. But it has served his purpose."

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Thousands send text messages to Obama before Africa visit

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:38:57 -0500

US President Barack Obama has received thousands of text messages about Africa after he asked people to send questions before his trip to Ghana on Friday.

Mr Obama will answer a number of texts - which will be selected by journalists from Senegal, Kenya and South Africa.

The White House says there have been messages of support and criticism.

Before his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as president, he warned the continent there would be no investment without good governance.

The president's media adviser, Macon Phillips, told the BBC's Network Africa programme he wanted the messages to be part of a "continental conversation".

Mr Phillips says people can text whatever they like - questions, criticism or just general comment.

"What we can do is look at all these responses and find trends and popular issues and it gives us a better understanding of what people are thinking about," he said.

"There's much greater value than just question and answer - it's yet another way for us to see what's happening on the ground."

The White House has set up local SMS short codes for people to send their messages:

• Ghana - 1731

• Nigeria - 32969

• South Africa - 31958

• Kenya - 5683

Elsewhere, the number are: 61418601934 and 45609910343.

It has also set up Twitter feeds and blogs on a special page.

Mr Obama's decision to visit Ghana has annoyed some in Nigeria - by far the most populous country in Africa.

Some Nigerian politicians believe the president should also have visited Abuja.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Hardware makers support Google OS

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:28:14 -0500

Google has announced which hardware firms have pledged to build machines that will run its Chrome OS.

The search giant said it was working with many firms on Chrome OS hardware including Acer, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

The software is designed to work with the web and Google said it was most likely to appear on smaller portable computers known as netbooks.

The browser-based operating system will be released to the public in 2010.

Web futures

In a blog post announcing the hardware partners, Google said that the code for the Chrome OS would be open sourced in late 2009. Google said that the software will be free to download and use.

The first netbooks that can run the software will be ready in late 2010. Since Asus launched the first netbook the cut-down computers have proved hugely popular.

Analyst firm Gartner predicts that 80% more netbooks will be sold in 2009 than sold in 2008. However, so far, the small computers only make up 8% of the total PC market.

The Chrome OS will be designed to work with Intel chips that appear in the vast majority of desktop PCs, laptops and netbooks as well as the Arm chips that power most of the world's mobile phones. Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, who both build devices based around Arm chips, were also unveiled as partners on the Chrome OS project.

In a blog post announcing some of the hardware partners, Google also said it was working with Adobe on the operating system. This could turn out to be significant because of the wide use of Adobe's Flash software.

Flash is used to power many multimedia websites but Adobe has been working hard to extend its capabilities via the Air technology and make it more web-centric too. Microsoft is developing its Silverlight technology to do a similar job.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Mobile broadband notspots mapped

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:12:29 -0500

There are still significant notspots when it comes to 3G mobile coverage in the UK, regulator Ofcom has revealed.

It has pledged to investigate why some places, particularly in rural areas, are still failing to get any coverage.

It also said it will investigate mobile broadband speeds, which vary tremendously in different areas and at different times of day.

Between February 2008 and February 2009 there were two million new connections to mobile broadband, said Ofcom.

3G (or Third Generation) services allow people to connect to the web via a wireless network, either using a phone, a dongle or datacard which can be plugged into a PC or a laptop.

In the UK such services are offered by operators such as Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and 3.

But there are questions about how reliable these services are and whether they can provide the speeds needed by consumers.

More spectrum

Research from broadband communications firm Epitiro recently found that the average download speed achieved with mobile broadband was just under 1Mbps (megabit per second).

"if mobile networks are going to become one of the key routes to the internet for million of users, they're going to need to build more six-lane highways to replace those B-roads where the traffic keeps getting stuck."

Rory Cellan-Jones
BBC technology correspondent

Read the dot.life blog in full

At 0300 this average rose to 1.8Mbps, illustrating that contention issues - how many people use the service at any given time - plays a big role in limiting speed.

On average mobile broadband users were only getting a quarter of advertised speeds, found Epitiro's study.

Increasingly consumers are dropping their fixed line phones in favour of mobile. While mobile calls increased by 11 billion minutes during 2008, the number of minutes on fixed lines fell by 8 billion.

Consumers are getting increasingly data-hungry. In 2003, just 1% of revenue per mobile connection came from data but by 2008 that rose to 6%, according to Ofcom.

The Digital Britain report pledged to free up more 3G spectrum, which should improve coverage.

Consumer Focus, an organisation dedicated to campaigning for a fair deal for consumers, welcomed Ofcom's review of the mobile market.

"Some consumers find themselves excluded from mobile communications due to gaps in 3G coverage or the market's failure to make new technology accessible to all," said Audrey Gallacher, telecoms expert at Consumer Focus.

She felt that Ofcom could do more to make it easier for consumers to sign up to mobile broadband.

"Accessing the best deal in a market where mobile operators offer a bewildering array of over 200,000 different tariffs is a real challenge," she said.

"With mobiles now treated as an essential service rather than a luxury, there is more pressure than ever before on mobile companies to give consumers a fair deal and make mobile services accessible to all," she added.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Google v MS

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:57:16 -0500

ANALYSIS
By Tim Weber
Business editor, BBC News website

So at long last Google is making its move. Promising a lightweight but fast operating system - Chrome OS - the internet search company is poised to strike at the heart of Microsoft's software empire.

The Windows operating system is Microsoft's cash cow, powering about 90% of the world's personal computers, and as a result accounting for the majority of its profits.

The benefits are wider, though. Every Windows desktop comes with an invitation (and at times the imperative) to use other Microsoft software and services.

This, in turn, hobbles Google's ambition of organising all the world's information, and making money on the back of it.

After all, most people's computer experience is bogged down with frustration - from the time it takes to start a computer, to software conflicts, and worries about viruses and malware (or for Apple Macs the cost of buying a computer).

Clash of business models

Google promises to change all that by stripping desktop computing to its basics. Your PC won't have to do the heavy lifting, applications will run in your browser instead, powered by Google's huge server farms.

It comes down to a clash of business models. Microsoft earns money by charging customers a one-off fee for its operating system, probably $20 for its old Windows XP software, and a rumoured $150 for Windows Vista and the forthcoming Windows 7, which is due to go on sale this autumn.

Google is unlikely to charge for Chrome OS. The company wants you to get online fast, have a whale of a time... and use as many Google services as you can: from search to email, social networking to photo sharing, word processing, to watching films on YouTube.

It is yet another incarnation of the company's "Google everywhere" strategy.

Google, the software firm

Chrome OS also shows what you can achieve when you sit on a huge cash pile, attract some of the world's best software engineers and - most importantly - start with a blank slate.

Google has a track record. Not that long ago the firm announced that it was developing an operating system for smartphones, dubbed Android (which is distinct from Chrome OS).

Microsoft executives that I spoke to back then were dismissive, arguing that Google was underestimating the complexity of such a venture. But already Android is in many ways a more accomplished piece of software than version 6.1 of Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

Google is helped by the fact that unlike Microsoft it has no need to worry about compatibility with legacy software.

That, however, could also be the Achilles heel of Chrome OS.

Consumers who want to buy a Chrome OS computer will have to start with a blank slate as well. Any software that they hold near and dear is unlikely to be compatible with the new system.

And they have to limit their ambitions. If you play computer games, do heavy-duty video or picture editing, or need any kind of specialised software, then you'll return to the shelves heaving with Microsoft powered PCs or Apple Macs.

Timing is everything

As you make your buying decision, you will have this niggling worry that one day, maybe, you will need to use some software that simply can't run in your browser. The advertising campaigns of both Apple and Microsoft will have a great time stoking these worries.

Google's announcement comes at an interesting time. Microsoft is poised to launch its news operating system Windows 7. Unlike its predecessor Vista, Windows 7 is proven to be a good fit for ultraportable netbooks, currently the fastest growing segment of the PC market.

So Chrome OS, due in mid-2010, may come either at just the right time, as the economy recovers and consumers go shopping again, or it may come too late, with Windows 7 already firmly hogging the market.

Chrome impact

In the end, Google's strike may not cut deep into enemy territory.

Chrome, the web browser, is still stuck at a tiny market share of 1.2%. Android is available on just two or three phones, not enough to really make an impact.

Google Apps - productivity software to handle spreadsheets and word documents - has just come out of its "beta" test phase, but look around you and you will find most people still using Microsoft Office.

The one field where Chrome OS may make a difference is the market for the open source Linux operating system. Chrome OS will use bits of the Linux kernel, the link between the computer hardware and the Chrome browser running on it.

Google is bound to make Chrome OS much more user-friendly than most "distros" or versions of Linux available right now. Instead of slaying Microsoft, Chrome OS might corner the segment of the consumer space that might have been Linux's.

No doubt, Google's charge with Chrome OS will needle Microsoft. But we won't know for years whether it will deliver a mere pinprick, or is the fine point of the dagger at the heart of Microsoft.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

'Anytime' tourism advice launched

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:55:41 -0500

Visitors to Aviemore and the Cairngorms are to be able to access tourist information anytime using three Bluetooth terminals.

Aviemore and the Cairngorms Destination Management Limited said the service was the first of its kind in the UK.

It added that holidaymakers were no longer dependent on when tourist information centres opened.

Bluetooth is a technology that lets computers and mobile phones to communicate by radio.

The destination company said visitors to the area who activate the Bluetooth reception on their mobile phones would be able to find details of local summer events from 10 July.

No spam

If successful the scheme will be expanded to give information on last minute room availability, things to do, places to eat or drink, events listings for the area and local promotions.

Users will have the option to accept or reject the free content via their mobile phone.

Aviemore and the Cairngorms Destination Management said the system was set up so that no spam will be sent out from the terminals.

It does not rely on mobile phone coverage, which can be a problem in the Highlands.

The three trial terminals will be based around Aviemore - one in the town centre, one at Rothiemurchus Visitor Centre and one in the car park at Cairngorm Mountain.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

TalkTalk drops ad tracking firm

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:41:08 -0500

UK internet service provider TalkTalk has pulled the plug on its agreement with online behaviour tracking firm Phorm.

It follows news earlier in the week that BT had no immediate plans to use the service.

Phorm has developed technology which collects information on web use in order to better target adverts but it has proved extremely controversial.

The loss of its key partners saw Phorm's shares tumble by more than 50%.

Phorm said that TalkTalk, the second biggest broadband provider in the UK behind BT, had ended its agreement with the firm.

TalkTalk's plans were not as advanced as BT which had undertaken three trials of the technology.

"The directors note that this relationship had not extended to any form of trial in contrast to BT and some international internet service providers," a statement from Phorm read.

It also noted that "privacy was not a factor" in BT's decision to pull the plug on the technology.

Virgin Media, which also expressed interest in the system, was still reviewing it, according to Phorm.

Phorm is currently trialling its software with South Korea's largest ISP and is in discussion about the use of the technology with ISPs in 15 other countries.

Shares in Phorm slumped a farther 13% following the announcement.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Open secret

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:44:33 -0500

We need to teach people the principles of data security, says Bill Thompson.

"It must be tricky to be an advocate of transparency when your job involves selling serious encryption tools to government departments, large and small companies, hospitals and people who are concerned about having their bank account details hijacked from a home PC.

After all, the point about good encryption software and the systems that surround it is that they provide a way to keep your secrets secret, while open government and the effective regulation of financial services would seem to require the widest possible dissemination of all sorts of operational data, from MPs expenses to bank investment portfolios.

And once something is on a website, in an e-mail or available for inspection through a published program interface, then it is no longer secret, however well the copy on your internal network might be protected.

Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive of encryption specialists PGP Corporation, believes that openness and secrecy are actually two sides of the same coin, and that the fundamental question concerns the ways organisations and individuals manage their data so that they can decide on policies for disclosure and stick to them.

He also thinks that the best way to make companies and businesses take data security seriously is to make them aware of just how much it costs them when they are careless, which is why PGP sponsors the independent Ponemon Institute to produce an authoritative survey of how companies use encryption, how many data breaches they suffer and how much it costs them.

"Computerised data processing is not going to go away, and the proliferation of mobile devices, portable data storage and online access means that the problem of data leakage is not going to go away either. "

Bill Thompson

Dunkelberger was in London this week to launch the latest report on UK data breaches, which found that 70% of UK organisations have had at least one incident in the past year, with public sector respondents admitting to an average of 4.5 breaches per organisation.

Separate research by Ponemon estimates that the average cost of incidents is £60 per record lost or £1.7m per organisation, and of course the wider impact on people's lives as they have to change bank details or clear their credit records is also significant.

Human error

Over half of the data breaches that feature in the Ponemon report were caused by staff error, with people losing computers or data storage devices, deliberately breaking procedures because they did not understand their importance or simply making mistakes that the systems developers had not anticipated.

Whatever its flaws, computerised data processing is not going to go away, and the proliferation of mobile devices, portable data storage and online access means that the problem of data leakage is not going to go away either.

And recent moves towards more openness between organisations and more transparency in both public and private sectors makes it impossible to simply lock the data up in a corporate vault, however well constructed.

The tension between openness and security has always existed, and modern technologies do not change the fundamental reality that once a secret is shared then it is less of a secret.

The best way to keep a computer secure is to disconnect it from the network and unplug the power, but this also makes it rather less useful, so any sensible data management policy has to accept that perfect security is not possible and have procedures to mitigate the impact of the inevitable leaks and failures.

A good system should also allow for effective disclosure. A proper MPs' expenses system would not have relied on scanned receipts, released as thousands of pages of PDF files with potentially sensitive data blacked out by hand, but have been built around a database in which all data was stored, cross-referenced to original documents for verification.

Releasing the expenses data would then only have required changing the permissions on a few database tables.

Of course, explaining this to MPs would have taken a lot of effort, because few of our elected representatives have any background in computing or any real understanding of the principles of systems thinking.

We can't be too hard on MPs. Data security is a complex area that involves hard mathematics and complicated software and requires an ability to think clearly about the inter-relationships between multiple overlapping systems, only some of which are computer-based, and few us have the necessary training to do this.

But if we are going to have a network society that relies on computer-based systems then everyone needs to understand how those systems operate and how they are put together. Just as a democracy can only really function if the citizens are actively engaged in the decision-making process and not merely turning out to vote every few years, a wired world needs people who appreciate what is being done in their name.

Geeks v users

At last weekend's OpenTech conference, I talked yet again about the growing divide between the geeks, who can code and know about computers, and the users who simply take what systems they are offered and work with them.

OpenTech was a conference about getting things done, not just talking about it, so we decided that every new member of Parliament elected at the next general election should be taught the basics of programming, so that when they come to vote on expensive IT systems they at least know how computers work.

We might even persuade them all to use encryption sensibly on their office computers, laptops and phones, and to use digital signatures for their e-mails.

It may be a small start, but it would be a start. And once MPs are doing data security properly it might offer a good model for the rest of us.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Sheffield in broadband fast lane

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:20:46 -0500

Homes in Sheffield are set to benefit from super-fast broadband as H2O Networks begins work on a city-wide fibre network.

The network will run via the city's sewers and follows similar schemes in Bournemouth and Dundee.

The network will be laid in a 15km ring around the city and will build on an existing fibre network which serves luxury flats and student accommodation.

It will offer speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second).

H20 Networks is planning to roll out fibre to around a dozen cities across the UK, although in each case it will be only be providing the infrastructure and will rely on service providers to offer the broadband to consumers.

No internet service provider has yet come forward to act as an agent.

The network in Sheffield is due for completion by the end of September.

BT has also announced the start of its £1.5bn fibre plans, which will see speeds of up to 40Mbps available to around 40% of homes by 2012.

It will be rolling out fibre to the cabinet technology, which means laying new cable to thein order to juice up peoples' connections

It will be rolling out fibre to the cabinet technology (FTTC) - which provides a fibre connection as far as the familiar green boxes on the corner of streets but still relies on copper wiring for the so-called last mile between the cabinet and the home.

Trials of FTTC have begun in north London and Cardiff.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Jackson boost

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:28:52 -0500

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Michael Jackson's memorial service is being seen as helping to solidify a new era for the internet.

Analysts and industry watchers said the power of the web was displayed in its ability to let people interact, share and also produce content on the day.

Global web traffic was as high as 33% above normal during the event at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

"The web lets us connect and see the story from multiple views unlike TV," said Mashable's Ben Parr.

"This is more than a turning point. It's about giving users more than one view as well as opportunities to not only be a consumer but a producer.

"I have seen people with their iPhone 3GS's recording video from inside the Staples Center and sharing it with the world," said Mr Parr who is an associate editor with Mashable, the world's largest blog focusing on social media.

Mr Parr said he believed this service would turn out to be one of the biggest events on the web.

Akamai, which delivers more than 20% of the world's internet traffic, said it was the second-largest day on its network. The company reported nearly four million visitors per minute as of 10am pacific time, around the time the ceremony started at the Staples Centre.

The biggest day was on 25 June when news of Michael Jackson's death first hit the web. Over 4.2 million global visitors per minute visited news sites that day.

"Mass experience"

At Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site, a total of about one million users posted around 800,000 status updates related to online broadcasts hosted by CNN, E! Online, ABC and MTV.

The company said that even though there were 1.8 million updates with the word "Obama" during the president's inauguration, that event was known about and planned for months in advance.

"The site has become a central place to view the news about Michael Jackson and share in a tribute to his life and the mourning of his death," said Facebook's Elizabeth Linder.

Ustream said the memorial was the "largest ever" event hosted by the site. It served 4.6 million video streams from around the world in partnership with CBS. Viewers taking part in the chat rooms left over 12,000 messages per minute.

On the BBC traffic also increased but not to a record setting amount.

The Corporation's Gareth Owen said "while more users than normal tuned into the BBC's live coverage on the web, it was about a third of the traffic that tuned in the day after Michael Jackson died."

Yahoo said the ceremony was the single most streamed in its history with 5 million total streams.

"I thought the first screen became the second screen and the web won out over TV," said Mark Ghuneim, founder of Trendrr which tracks and reports on social and digital media.

"The immediacy of the live web and its ability to let people collaborate and share was better than watching it on the tube. The TV showed itself as a much more isolated experience.

"Michael Jackson had the effect of bringing people together and it was another of those mass experiences that acted in the same way as the presidential inauguration but in order of magnitude world-wide. This was a great day for the real live web," said Mr Ghuneim.

But not everyone agrees that it was a slam dunk for the internet.

"The web gets bragging rights for having broken the story of Michael Jackson's death on the TMZ entertainment site," said Professor Robert Thompson, the director of the Center for Popular Television at Syracuse University.

"I don't know of any internet or website that was actually there with their cameras covering the Staples event. You might have watched on the web but the pictures were still coming through the traditional pipes provided by television."

Performance

Throughout the star studded ceremony, a host of firms kept track of how well the web performed in the spotlight and under pressure from the tens of millions of people tuning in to watch online.

"In general the internet held up very nicely," said Imad Mouline the chief technology officer for Gomez Inc, a website performance measuring company.

"There were no major issues and fortunately we did not see any huge impact across the board as far as the internet was concerned. There was some slowing and rebuffering of internet feeds and some news sites took longer to load their homes pages," Mr Mouline told the BBC.

While the company would not name the seven news sites it monitored, it said that the time it took for a site to load its home page had slowed. Response times ranged from 6.5 seconds to 18.5 seconds compared to a normal span of 3.5 seconds to 7.3 seconds.

Keynote System said it also saw some slowing down but that overall the internet performed well.

On the day that Michael Jackson died the web was overwhelmed as fans and well-wishers rushed for information and confirmation of his passing.

At one point Google News thought it was under attack and put out an error messaging that warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"Over-covered"

Not everyone has been impressed by the floods of attention and headlines devoted to the Michael Jackson story.

A Pew Research Center Poll published last week found that 64% of those surveyed said Jackson's death has received too much coverage.

"I would say this have been over-covered," agreed Professor Thompson from Syracuse University.

"It was an important story but it was a cultural story. Michael Jackson was a force and influence in the late 20th century.

"I don't think there would be that many people, including myself, who would say this deserved to be covered in a way that knocked every other story off the screen here in the United States," Professor Thompson told BBC News.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Social security

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:59:51 -0500

By Daniel Emery
Technology reporter, BBC News

The perils of putting personal data on Facebook were made painfully obvious when the wife of John Sawers - the next head of MI6 - put details, photos, and information about him and his family on the social networking site.

Lady Sawers revealed the location of the London flat used by the couple, the whereabouts of their three grown-up children, and the address of Sir John's parents.

There were also photographs of the future spy chief on the site, forcing the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, to do a tour of TV studios, saying: "You know he wears a Speedo swimsuit. That's not a state secret."

According to IT security firm, NCC Group, UK intelligence agencies are concerned that Facebook and other social networking tools are "ruining" the spy industry, as finding new recruits without an online trail becomes nearly impossible.

But is that the case The question was put to Crispin Black, a former intelligence officer for both the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office and ex-intelligence analyst with the Joint Intelligence Committee.

"In the old days, you would take any incriminating photos or files and lock them in the attic," he said.

"These days' it is more difficult; it's not unusual for people to do things at university, perhaps while drunk, and for someone to take a snap on a mobile phone and upload to the internet."

Up front

Mr Black says that old photos are not such a huge problem as a person's look and habits of dress change over time. Recent photos, especially if you're a field operative, would not be good but, says Mr Black that rarely happens.

"Providing you front up during the vetting process, it usually doesn't matter. They will then know what sort of person you are.

"What they usually say is if any of these people [ex girlfriends etc] ever get in touch with you or start to cause trouble, then just tell us," he said.

Once you are in the service, personnel have to be discrete about their work. No one ever says they work for MI5 or MI6; agents instead say they work for the Ministry of Defence or Foreign Office respectively, although they are allowed to tell their close family the truth.

So if the rules on operatives - once they are in the service - keeping a low presence online are clear, why would the wife of a very senior spy put personal details on a social networking site without any privacy measures

Mr Black says the problem for Mr Sawers' family was that they had been living in diplomatic circles for almost 20 years.

"Mr Sawers was an ambassador for Egypt, which makes him a very public figure.

"But life in the intelligence services is a more secret world and once in they have to keep a low profile, although these days you don't need to live a double life.

"The stuff on the beach is harmless, but the Facebook entry also had address and personal information and that is a very different thing," said Mr Black.

Mr Black said there could well be people - from foreign agents to home grown lunatics - who might "want a pop at C" the name the head of MI5 is given.

By giving away information, in this case the address of Mr Sawers parents and his children, that could enable someone to threaten Mr Sawers or his family.

"Stella Rimington did a similar thing once," said Mr Black. "She had to be relocated for her own protection.

"Cock-ups happen, but when it comes to security the bill comes to the tax payer.

"Relocating someone from an address in Chelsea isn't cheap and the national mood at present is that we're under financial pressure, so things like this do not help."

A more serious problem, said Mr Black, was when soldiers serving in Afghanistan or Iraq posted photos or videos to social networking sites.

"Snaps or film taken by serving forces could reveal vulnerable locations in a base, while a Twitter line could provide information to the enemy.

"In the old days, this was the sort of stuff the IRA would kill for, today an enemy could scan some photos and gain an insight into a base," said Mr Black.

"And that poses a real security headache."

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

O2 signs Palm Pre exclusive deal

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:17:42 -0500

Mobile operator O2 has won an exclusive deal to sell the Palm Pre in the UK.

O2 said the phone would be available in the UK in time for the winter holidays. No details have been given of how much it will cost when it goes on sale.

The Palm Pre smartphone is seen as a rival to Apple's iPhone because of its web-centred operating system and innovative interface.

In the UK, O2 has had an exclusive deal to sell Apple's iPhone handset since November 2007.

Competition time

The deal between O2 and Palm covers the UK, Ireland, and Germany.

Announced in January 2009, the Pre went on sale in the US in June on the Sprint network.

At launch, the phone cost $199.99 (£129), after a rebate, and buyers were tied into a two-year contract when purchasing the phone. About 300,000 Palm Pre phones are now thought to have been sold.

On this side of the Atlantic the Pre may turn out to be more expensive than direct currency conversions might suggest.

Those who want to find out more information can register to receive updates as the official launch date nears.

The Pre has a rounded design, slide-out Qwerty keyboard and a touch screen. Many functions can also be used via gestures made on a motion sensitive zone beneath the screen.

Palm has said the operating system for the Pre has been built with the web in mind, so it automatically organises contacts and information accessed via the handset.

The web focus of the Palm Pre has led many to portray it as a rival to the iPhone. The rivalry got more intense in early June when Apple unveiled the iPhone 3GS which had a faster chipset inside.

Competition is also coming from the HTC Hero - a touch screen phone built around Google's Android operating system.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Kill or cure for pirate radio?

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:29:30 -0500

Zoe Kleinman
BBC News Online

For years pirate radio has sailed along just below the radar.

Typically it takes the form of a blistering burst of hardcore dance music when you least expect it, followed by a "shout out" that is so shouted out it is almost incomprehensible.

Pirate radio has never been less loved. It is a far cry from the heyday of Radio Caroline in the 1960s, or Ireland's hugely popular pirate networks Radio Nova and Sunshine 101 that were big in the 1980s.

Now it faces a new adversary: the digital switchover.

Filling the void

The Digital Britain report, published by the government on 15 June, recommended that all national radio broadcasters cease to broadcast on FM in 2015. If the government accepts these recommendations it will leave only local community services on the analogue airwaves.

It will mean that well-known frequencies such as 88-91FM (BBC Radio 2) and 106.2FM (Heart FM in London) will fall empty.

Will the pirates will move in to fill the void and entertain DAB refuseniks with mainstream offerings instead of the usual drum n bass

It is possible to imagine a spectrum full of illegal networks jamming FM with popular show-tunes, phone-ins and love songs, think some.

"If an opening is available for any length of time, someone will take a run at it," believes Robbie Robinson aka Robbie Dale, who set up Dublin's pirate music station Sunshine 101 in September 1980.

Legitimate concern

"When we switched from AM to FM the audience came with us. Technology always moves people on"

Clive Dickens, Absolute Radio

James Cridland, head of technology for Audio and Music at the BBC, agrees that it's a legitimate concern.

"FM transmitters are cheap and easy," he says. "We could see an explosion of unlicensed radio, although I assume the government would look after the broadcasters with licences."

Clive Dickens, chief operating officer at Absolute Radio, does not think that the pirates will come to rule the FM airwaves. He thinks the future for piracy, if there is one, is online.

"There's this romantic vision of people taking over the airwaves. But why do that when you can do it on the internet and attract millions of people rather than a few thousand in, say, Croydon" he asks.

"When we switched from AM to FM the audience came with us," he said. "Technology always moves people on."

Better late than never

Radio critic Paul Donovan also believes that it wouldn't be worth the pirates' while to take over.

"Any audience for anything still going out on FM will necessarily be pretty small post-switchover," he says. "No switchover will be permitted until most listeners are listening on DAB sets."

Mr Donovan thinks it is unlikely that the nation will be ready for that big change as early as 2015. He predicts that 2025 is a more believable time frame.

Regulator Ofcom too has suggested that the timetable be tied to milestones in the use of digital radio sets. Only when 50% of listening is done on digital radios will the countdown to switchover start.

Ofcom estimates that about nine million DAB radios have been sold in the UK and 32% of households are thought to be DAB enabled.

By contrast Clive Dickens is optimistic about the earlier date.

"2015 is a realistic date," he says. "The radio industry talks down the success of DAB but consumers like it, and it works. I think in 2010 - 2011 we will see a huge take up."

Whenever the switchover happens, if they can't beat them, the pirates could always join them. Most of the software required for a DAB station can be found and downloaded at no cost on the internet.

Nobody has done it - yet - but perhaps it will be the fledgling platform's first badge of honour. "When the pirates set up a DAB station then we'll know DAB has really arrived," says James Cridland.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Jackson memorial sale crackdown

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:02:44 -0500

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Efforts by those trying to sell tickets they won to the Michael Jackson memorial service are being thwarted.

Hours after lottery winners collected their passes, postings went up on Craigslist and eBay offering tickets to the highest bidder.

Some were offered for as much as $25,000 (£15,450) before being pulled or flagged by users.

"eBay will not allow Michael Jackson memorial service tickets to be listed on the site," eBay told the BBC.

"When found, eBay will remove them immediately. We believe it is inappropriate to allow the sale of tickets for the Michael Jackson memorial service," the e-mail concluded.

Some fans were so outraged by those cashing in on an event honouring the King of Pop that they bid up tickets to absurd sums like $100m (£62m) on eBay.

On Craigslist, similar advertisements were soon flagged by users for removal.

"Users very quickly flag off ads that are inappropriate, look fishy, or are miscategorised, and that is what we are seeing happening with regards to Michael Jackson," Craigslist spokesperson Susan MacTavish Best told BBC News.

"This is an example of community response in action," she said.

The majority of postings that remain on the site's Los Angeles page are ones from fans who did not win tickets in the lottery as well as some that decried the actions of sellers trying to make a fast buck.

"Thank you for trying to make money off of an icon's death," wrote one irate Craigslist user.

Another person warned "Trying to sell your MJ tickets YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL THEM! It's illegal (Called scalping and punishable by imprisonment.)"

"Beneath contempt"

It has been estimated that 1.6 million people applied to the online lottery for tickets to attend the service at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

The organisers AEG Live, which owns the Centre and had backed Jackson's London concerts, distributed 17,500 free tickets to the memorial via e-mail. The lucky ones had until 6pm last night to pick up their prized passes.

Each winner was given two tickets and while a special bracelet for the event was immediately placed on the ticketholders wrist, AEG spokesman Michael Roth confirmed they can give their second bracelet to anyone they like.

"Theoretically the second wristband can be sold," admitted Mr Roth.

"We are hopeful that they (the winners) have these vouchers because they are a fan and it's meaningful to them and they would also invite someone who it would also be very meaningful to them."

A Jackson family spokesman Ken Sunshine criticised those who would seek to make money out of the event.

"This is a memorial. Words can't describe how horrifying it is that people are ostensibly trying to do that. It's beneath contempt," said Mr Sunshine.

Streaming live

The tickets will admit 11,000 people to the Staples Centre plus 6,500 to the Nokia theatre overflow section next door.

With a star studded line up that is said to include Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher and Brooke Shields scores of TV stations plan to stream the event live over the airwaves and the internet.

The world's biggest social networking site Facebook is teaming up with CNN while rival MySpace is taking its feed from AEG Live.

The service will also be shown on five main US television networks and the BBC is planning to stream it live in the United Kingdom. Plans to show the event outside the UK are being considered.

It is believed the service, which is scheduled to begin at 10am Pacific coast time, could be the biggest event in the web's history.

Certainly it will be a major test for the internet which slowed on the day Michael Jackson's death was announced. At one point Google News was so inundated by queries it thought it was under attack.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Digital champion targets the poor

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:43:46 -0500

The poorest six million Britons who are not online will be the main focus for the UK's digital champion.

In her first public speech since being appointed, Martha Lane Fox spoke about her priorities.

Although 17 million Britons do not have net access, Ms Lane Fox said she wanted to concentrate on the six million "at the bottom of the pile".

Familiarity with the web would help these people learn, save money and compete better for jobs, she said.

Life-changing

Speaking at the Reboot Britain conference in London, Ms Lane Fox said she considered herself "lucky" to be asked by the government to be digital champion and given the job of getting people online.

In her first two weeks in the job, Ms Lane Fox said she had been visiting some of the government's UK Online Centres to meet people who were only now just getting to grips with the web.

Those on the wrong side of the digital divide were disadvantaged in many ways, said Ms Lane Fox. Studies showed, she said, that those familiar with the web earned more, performed better in job interviews, could save money by shopping online and had an easy route to keeping their skills fresh.

Among those 17 million Britons not online was a group of six million who were "the most socially and economically disadvantaged people we have in this country", she said.

"We are really going to focus, I hope, on the six million that are at the bottom of the pile. Partly because that's the right thing to do and partly because we know quite a lot about these people - who they are and where they live.

"I am sure we can put our arms around the problem," she said.

"It should matter to all of us because 80% of government interactions are with the bottom 25% of society," said Ms Lane Fox. "By keeping that 25% offline you are inherently keeping the cost of government high."

Ms Lane-Fox said inspiring people with technology should help to motivate them to take it up and get more out of it.

"It's the incredible human stories that show how it can be transformational in people's lives," said Ms Lane Fox.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Phorm shares fall as BT opts out

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:44:55 -0500

Shares in the online ad firm Phorm have fallen by a third after BT said it had no immediate plans to use the service that tracks online behaviour.

Phorm serves up adverts related to a user's web browsing history, which it monitors by taking a copy of the places they go and search terms they look for.

However, it came in for considerable criticism from privacy groups and prompted an EU investigation.

The firm's shares were down 34.74% at 315p at 11:40 BST.

Phorm builds a profile of users by scanning for keywords on websites visited and then assigns relevant ads.

It has proved controversial because it scans almost all sites a user visits and there is an ongoing political debate about how a user gives consent.

Phorm had conducted trials of its technology with BT, which it marketed as Webwise.

On hold

A spokesman for British Telecom, Mike Jarvis, told the BBC that they were not completely closing the door on Phorm's Webwise service.

"We're interested in this area [targeted online advertising] but for now we have no immediate plans.

"It's more a case that we have other stuff to work on - Project Canvas, rolling out the fibre network and so forth - so we've taken a step out of Phorm and will see how it develops.

"[Our decision has] nothing to do with cost or privacy, it's about resources and priority," he added.

In April, Amazon blocked Phorm from scanning its web pages to produce targeted advertising, as has the UK government, citing privacy concerns.

Phorm declined an interview request, instead issuing a statement saying its activities "remain ongoing" and that it was looking forward " to creating the conditions necessary for UK ISPs to move to deployment".

"We continue to focus considerable effort on faster moving overseas opportunities," the statement read.

"In so doing we have already minimised our dependency on the deployment by any single ISP or in any particular market.

"In addition to making excellent progress in South Korea, we are engaged in more than 15 markets worldwide including advanced negotiations with several major ISPs."

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Billions stolen in online robbery

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:22:39 -0500

Space trading game Eve Online has suffered a virtual version of the credit crunch.

One of the game's biggest financial institutions lost a significant chunk of its deposits as a financial scandal started a run on the bank.

One of the controllers of the bank stole about 200bn kredits and swapped them for real world cash of £3,115.

As news of the theft spread many of the bank' customers rushed to remove their virtual cash.

Space scandal

The theft from EBank took place in early June but only now have details emerged about the amount of money stolen and why it was taken.

The theft was carried out by EBank's chief executive, a player known as Ricdic, now known to be a 27-year-old Australian who works in the technology industry. His full identity has not been revealed save that his first name is Richard.

The stolen kredits amounted to 8% of the 2.6tn that Ebank had in its virtual vaults.

"Basically this character was one of the people who had been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money," Ned Coker, of Icelandic company CCP which runs Eve, told the Reuters news agency.

Eve Online has about 300,000 players all of whom inhabit the same online universe. The game revolves around trade, mining asteroids and the efforts of different player-controlled corporations to take control of swathes of virtual space.

It has now emerged that Ricdic used the cash to put down a deposit on a house and to pay medical bills.

"I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it," Ricdic told Reuters. "But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation."

Ricdic has now been thrown out of the game as trading in-game cash for real money is against Eve Online's terms and conditions.

The rules governing play within Eve would not have sanctioned Ricdic if he had simply stolen the cash and used it in the game, nor if he had bought kredits with real dollars.

The scandal is not the first to play out in Eve Online. In early 2009 one of the game's biggest corporations, called Band of Brothers, was brought down by industrial espionage.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

MySpace 'suicide bully cleared'

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:32:24 -0500

A US judge has indicated that he will overturn the conviction of a Missouri woman accused of "cyber-bullying" a 13-year-old girl who later killed herself.

Lori Drew was alleged to have posed as a teenage boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to Megan Meier.

After the fake boy "dumped" Ms Meier online, she committed suicide.

Drew, 50, was found guilty of illegally accessing computers last year, but Judge George Wu said he was tentatively

acquitting her.

If Drew were convicted for breaking the social networking site's terms of service, "you could prosecute pretty much anyone who violated terms of service," he said.

'Public symbol'

Prosecutors alleged during the trial that Drew had set up the phony MySpace account in order to find out if Megan Meier was spreading rumours about her daughter Sarah.

Posing as "Josh Evans", she started an online relationship with the 13-year-old, before apparently staging a falling-out and sending a message that "the world would be better off without" her.

During court proceedings, Drew's lawyer argued that "the government's case is all about making Lori Drew a public symbol of cyberbullying".

"The government has created a fiction that Lori Drew somehow caused [Megan's] death, and it wants a long prison sentence to make its fiction seem real."

But federal prosecutor Tom O'Brien said he stood by his decision to prosecute.

"I'm proud of this case," he said. "This is a case that called out for someone to do something. It was a risk. But this office will always take risks on behalf of children.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Mixed results for green IT goals

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:54:03 -0500

A majority of public sector employees do not know about environmentally friendly IT targets set out in government's Greening ICT Strategy.

The strategy calls for government IT to be carbon neutral by 2012, with office carbon emissions down 11.5% by 2011.

A Cabinet Office group chair on the issue says there are scattered trends toward compliance with the strategy.

However, a survey of IT managers in the public sector showed 60% did not know there were any targets to aim for.

The report, titled "The Path to Green Government", was produced by environmental charity Global Action Plan and commissioned by networking giant Cisco.

It is estimated that information and communication technology (ICT) accounts for one-fifth of the Government's carbon emissions. The Greening ICT Strategy was intended to put the government in a leadership role in the sustainable use of ICT.

A large proportion of carbon emissions can be blamed on the manufacture of new equipment, so a principal focus of the initiative is to make the best use of existing equipment.

However, there is more to the plan once procurement is slimmed down, according to Cisco's head of public sector Neil Crockett.

"There is another, much bigger debate about how ICT can enable other things to happen, like building management, travel reduction, flexible working," he said.

'Pockets of excellence'

The Global Action Plan study was conducted by direct surveys of ICT managers in the public sector - local and national government, education, healthcare and so on - as well as a questionnaire in the magazine Computer Weekly.

Some 60% of respondents said that they were unaware of the Greening ICT Strategy, and among those who were aware, nearly one-third said that they had made no changes to their own ICT usage and procurement, and had no plans to make any such changes.

The problem, according to Global Action Plan director Trewin Restorick, is poor collaboration and knowledge sharing across the sector.

"government electricity usage is continuing to rise, and it is likely that one of the big reasons for this is the proliferation of computers, laptops, chargers, lobby televisions and the air conditioning of server rooms"

Rebecca Willis, Sustainable Development Commission

"What we saw was pockets of excellence, areas where the public sector is making both cash savings and carbon savings through smarter use of ICT," he told BBC News.

"But what we discovered was that those pockets of activity tended not to be part of a wider strategy within the public sector. They were very much piecemeal initiatives, which suggests they were being driven by keen individuals."

One straightforward route to knowledge sharing is that between IT managers and those who pay for the energy that the equipment consumes; more than two-thirds of respondents said that they were neither responsible for paying for the energy, nor did they see the bill.

Less than half had calculated their department's "carbon footprint".

"For an ICT manager, if they're not paying the energy bills - which are both volatile and going up - they have no interest in knowing what the long term impact of the product is," he said. "So you get managers buying stuff without thinking about utilising the assets they've got."

While the longer term goal to ameliorate the effects of climate change are a driving force for compliancy, in 2010 the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs' Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme will come into effect.

Under the scheme, each large private sector business and public sector organisation will tally up its carbon emissions, with a price tag of 12 pounds per tonne of emissions. Organisation will be placed into league tables; depending on where they fit, they will or will not get the money back.

The concern is that public sector money can, if the sector performs badly, be siphoned off into the private sector - a loss both in monetary and in ideological terms.

"'Health service money goes to Tesco's' is not a great headline," said Mr Restorick.

Groundswell

Catalina McGregor, chair of the Cabinet Office's CIO/CTO Council Green ICT Delivery Group, said a report from her office due for release in late July will comprehensively detail how each department is doing in unprecedented detail, from intelligence departments all the way to museums.

While its results are mixed, she told BBC News that signs of progress were widespread and that Mr Restorick's assessment may be a bit wide of the mark.

"I'm a little gun-shy to say that folk aren't working well together, because they are," she said. "It's very rare that something central is taken up by local [offices] to this extent on a voluntary basis. It's true that there are no 'big sticks', no incentives, no budgets; but there is a groundswell of support for the green ICT programme."

Rebecca Willis, vice chair of the government's green watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission, pointed out that despite commitments from government, signs of overall change were still lacking.

"The Greening ICT Strategy is an encouraging step towards making government IT more sustainable," she told BBC News.

"However, government electricity usage is continuing to rise, and it is likely that one of the big reasons for this is the proliferation of computers, laptops, chargers, lobby televisions and the air conditioning of server rooms. It's clear that ambition levels need to be raised."

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Vodafone restarts Carphone deal

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:53:56 -0500

Carphone Warehouse is to restart selling Vodafone mobile phone contracts, three years after Vodafone pulled the products from the retailer.

Vodafone stopped allowing Carphone Warehouse to sell its range of pay monthly deals in 2006 after a dispute over how much commission it had to pay.

Vodafone instead signed an exclusive deal with Carphone Warehouse's main High Street rival Phones4U.

Its contract deals will return to Carphone Warehouse stores on Tuesday.

'Benefit'

"This agreement marks a continued strengthening of our relationship, and will benefit both businesses and their customers," said Carphone Warehouse chief executive Charles Dunstone.

"Vodafone needs the help of this independent to drive share of gross connections up/churn down"

Citigroup analysts

Despite the removal of Vodafone's contract deals, Carphone Warehouse has still been able to sell Vodafone's pay-as-you-go products over the past three years.

Vodafone's contract deals will now be available from its own stores, Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U.

Commentators welcomed the news that Vodafone had ended its stand-off with Carphone Warehouse.

"It is clear that Vodafone's withdrawal from Carphone Warehouse did it no favours," said Citigroup analysts.

"Its UK contract churn [of customers leaving] is now over 20%. Vodafone needs the help of this independent to drive share of gross connections up/churn down, in our view."

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Traffic rockets to Twitter site

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:44:57 -0500

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter

The number of people visiting Twitter increased 22-fold in 2008, according to an internet monitoring company.

According to Hitwise, the site, which is used by celebrities like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry, is now the fifth most viewed social networking site compared with the 84th last year.

Ninety-three per cent of Twitter's growth has happened in 2009.

Director of Research at Hitwise Robin Goad said: "If people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones were included, numbers could be higher."

Another measure of Twitter's popularity is its jump in the overall internet rankings.

Last year it was the 969th most visited site on the web. It's now the 38th most visited website.

"If anything, the service is even more popular than our numbers imply," said Robin Goad.

"We are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website.

"If people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications like Twitterific or Tweetdeck were included, the numbers could be even higher.

"Media coverage of the site has escalated significantly this year and high profile celebrity endorsements likes Ashton Kutcher have come rolling in."

Micro-blogging site Twitter has also had a major impact on so-called 'citizen journalism', when members of the public use the site to break major news stories or updates such as the terror attacks in Mumbai or the recent protests in Iran.

But the social networking website still has some work to do to catch the likes of MySpace, Bebo and Facebook.

The number of people using Facebook has risen above the 20 million mark this year in the UK and 200 million around the world.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:33:18 -0500

By Daniel Emery
Technology reporter, BBC News

The new owners of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay say users will be paid for sharing files.

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF's Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal file-sharing was to make something more attractive.

"We're talking about next-gen file sharing so you can create revenue from storage and internet traffic optimisation," he said.

According to Mr Pandeya, GGF's chief executive, the business model for The Pirate Bay would be that it continued to be a file-sharing site. The only difference - at least in terms of content - would be that the files would be hosted legally, rather than stolen from copyright holders.

"We're a listed company so everything we do has to be legal; content providers need to be paid and have their wishes and demands met," he said.

Freebie beater

Mr Pandeya said that one of the biggest hurdles in overcoming illegal file-sharing was that there was zero cost to the users, while legitimate sites required users to pay for content. The only way to make something more attractive than free was to pay users to share files.

"We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money," he said.

"More than half of all internet traffic is file sharing and P2P [peer-to-peer] traffic and buying Pirate Bay gives us one of the biggest sources of traffic.

"We can then use this massive network of file-sharers to help [internet service providers] reduce overload.

"Let's say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site - which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP - we can take that song and put it out on P2P.

"The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn't have a million people all grabbing a file and - for the users who share that song - a payment for putting that file on the P2P network."

Mr Pandeya said that while they would be paying content providers and file sharers, there was money to be made from helping ISPs cope with overload.

"We've been working with ISPs for over a year and we can cut their costs - when the system becomes overloaded - by 90%.

"All ISPs have this problem and it is one we can fix," he said.

Computer grid

The company is also looking at harnessing the storage capacity and processing power of the file-sharing community, creating a powerful grid of P2P-linked computers.

However, GGF said that the technology to drive this was still in its infancy.

"This technology is new. For now, we're outlining our intentions and asking users to have faith," said Mr Pandeya

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Cost of texting abroad falls

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:20:01 -0500

The cost of sending text messages from your mobile phone when you are overseas in the European Union has come down.

The maximum charge for sending a text is now 11 euro cents ($0.15; 9.4p) plus sales tax.

It is the first time that text charges have been capped. The previous EU average was 28 cents.

The price of making a call is capped at 43 cents a minute, down from 46 cents, while the price of receiving a call is capped at 19 cents, down from 22 cents.

"The roaming-rip off is now coming to an end," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.

The cost of transferring a megabyte of data is capped at one euro.

Also, mobile operators have been forced to charge for calls by the second after the first half minute, instead of rounding up to the nearest minute.

Many mobile operators have fought against the new caps, which are expected to significantly reduce their profits from roaming charges.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Engaging with the internet

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:51:58 -0500

The Digital Britain report offers a lot to work with, says Bill Thompson.

"We live in a largely digitised country, so in one sense the Digital Britain report is an exercise in ensuring that the legal and regulatory system catches up with the lived reality for most of the UK population rather than a visionary document describing a far-distant future.

As such it is a serious attempt to ensure that government makes the best possible use of the network in serving us all, and that businesses offering access to the internet or providing services and content over the network are regulated, rewarded and cajoled as necessary to ensure that the UK does not fall even further behind the rest of the industrialised world.

READ THE DIGITAL BRITAIN REPORT

Digital Britain report(3MB)
Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.

I criticised the interim report when it was published in January because it had been written behind closed doors and offered few opportunities for consultation and engagement for those outside the charmed circle of invited experts.

But it is clear that Stephen Carter and his team have listened to and taken notice of the extensive debate around their initial proposals. The result, though far from perfect, offers a good basis for work on the detail of implementation and legislation, and there are clear signs that those who want to engage will be able to do so.

There are suggestions on how to liberalise and improve access to wireless infrastructure, with potentially transformative proposals to shake up spectrum allocation to build a next generation mobile network offering 50Mpbs in cities and 5Mpbs in rural areas.

There is a confirmed commitment to delivering a universal 2Mbps (megabits per second) fixed-line broadband service to the whole country by 2012, and a six pound a year levy on existing copper telephone lines to pay for the 'final third' next generation coverage if the market cannot deliver. Two megabits per second is too slow for me, but universal service offers so many opportunities for engagement that it's definitely worth having.

And there may even be 'cultural tax relief' for games developers and distributors, on the lines of the model that has made Canada such an attractive place for UK developers to move to.

The report comes on a day when the importance of the internet and the services it supports has been drawn to the attention of the whole world.

"Unfortunately the proposals to limit file-sharing are less well considered and seem to be hopelessly optimistic, or perhaps to betray a naivety about how the internet works. "

Bill Thompson

The protests over the election results in Iran have depended on Facebook, YouTube and of course Twitter to get their message to the world, put pressure on their own government and organise their activities.

Just last week the French Constitutional Council of France halted the government's plans to give a new authority the ability to cut the network access of internet users accused of copyright violations because "the internet is a component of the freedom of expression".

In the UK the Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in the The Times today that "a fast internet connection is now seen by most of the public as an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water."

Locking content

The view of the network as a utility and as a tool for expression is a very different one from that put forward by the dominant players in the so-called 'content industry'.

Record companies, film studios, newspapers and the TV broadcasters have all lobbied hard for the UK government to shape its internet policy around their interests.

They want copyright laws to be strengthened so they can lock up any and all content. They want anyone who dares to challenge their business to be kicked offline, fined and locked up. They want a world in which they control what can happen.

Fortunately that pressure seems largely to have been resisted, and the real thrust of the proposals is about getting everyone online and ensuring that the network is there to be used in ways that support creative expression, new forms of industry and new models of engagement.

Funding news

The Digital Britain of the report is one in which all have access, not one where we try to preserve old industrial models.

When it comes to newspapers the report notes that 'Digital Britain is at the beginning of a new and possibly disruptive wave of local news, generated by communities for communities using free online media'. It recognises that 'government and business will need collaboratively to devise new ways of funding the news' without simply promising subsidies to the existing players who have failed to adapt to the network reality and have sought protection and subsidy.

The debate about the future of public service broadcasting includes many progressive ideas, and both the decision to make Channel 4 more than just a broadcaster but turn it into 'the open new media authority providing the seed-corn for creative innovation in the multi-media world', and the message to the BBC that the license fee does not belong to it are all good ones.

Unfortunately the proposals to limit file-sharing are less well considered and seem to be hopelessly optimistic, or perhaps to betray a naivety about how the internet works.
Ofcom is to be asked to oversee efforts by UK ISPs to reduce what they term 'illegal file-sharing' by 70%, initially through notifying those accused of downloading material or revealing their names and addresses to rights holders so that they can be prosecuted.

If this doesn't work then Ofcom may then be granted power to oblige ISPs to limit bandwidth or block specific protocols, presumably in the hope that doing this will deter or stop downloads. But this proposal ignores the fact that work is already going on to develop new file sharing technologies that are encrypted or disguise addresses more effectively. Ofcom might well hit its 70% target just because everyone moves away from BitTorrent without actually reducing the number of files shared over the net.

However the fact that the BPI boss Geoff Taylor found it necessary to accuse the government of 'digital dithering' for refusing to allow rights holders to have internet users cut off - the same proposals that have just been thrown out in France - is a good sign indeed.

In the end public service broadcasting and the protection of the content industries matter far less than the promotion of universal access and the creation of tools and services that encourage everyone online to demonstrate their own creative potential.

Networked world

A digital Britain is not one in which we are all sitting glued to our screens watching the same sort of television programming that we could have had on a cathode-ray set in the 1970's, downloading blockbuster movies or listening to more dull music made by rich popstars whose only real interest is their property portfolio.

It is one in which universal access allows us all to be fully-fledged citizens of a networked world that offers opportunities for creative expression and communication instead of the passive consumption of packaged content. There's a glimpse of that world through the Digital Britain report, and it is one that those of us who already live a networked life need to clarify, share and work to build.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Of pixels and paintbrushes

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:17:22 -0500

Bill Thompson, back from the Venice Biennale, reflects on digital art and its relationship with technology.

The 53rd Venice Art Biennale has just opened, a massive exhibition of contemporary art from around the world that takes over large parts of the city every two years from June to November.

The event is a showcase for the new, the experimental, the exciting and the just plain weird.

And I do mean weird.

There's a semi-submerged Russian submarine in the Grand Canal, an Icelandic artist is going to spend the next six months painting a series of bad portraits of a cigarette-smoking model, and a group of Nordic artists are exhibiting a very life-like corpse floating face-down in a swimming pool while a group of naked men sit on deckchairs nearby.

Early look

In all, 77 countries are taking part, many of them exhibiting their work in purpose built pavilions in the public gardens of the Giardini while others can be found in the former shipyard of the Arsenale or scattered across palaces and warehouses throughout the city.

As well as the national pavilions there are 44 associated exhibitions and events, and nearly 100 individual artists have been invited to show work in the central "Making Worlds" exhibition.

"The new technologies may offer exciting tools to work with and new ways of reaching audiences, but they can also have unexpected side effects when an artist wants to create an aura of mystery around their work.."

Bill Thompson

The four days before the opening day are the vernissage, when entry is reserved for curators, artists, politicians, collectors - especially the wealthier ones - and, at the bottom of the pecking order, journalists.

And because so much contemporary art depends on digital technology for its creation or display, since 2005 I've been invited to go to Venice with the producer and presenter of the World Service radio programme Digital Planet to make a special show the Biennale and the many ways technology is affecting artistic practice.

Four days is not nearly enough time to see everything, of course, but some careful reading of the catalogue and the press releases put out by the participating countries offers an initial sense of what is going on.

Fortunately there are many opportunities to share insights and ideas with friends and colleagues over drinks in a bar or on a crowded vaparetto between venues.

While there was a lot of interesting art, I saw little that attempted to explore our use of or reliance on technology itself, and the only two pieces I encountered that seemed to have any connection to digital technology for its own sake were rather disappointing as neither was working when I visited.

The animatronic cat in the German pavilion didn't move at all, while a movement sensor that was supposed to turn off the ultraviolet lights shining on Alexey Kallima's mural "Rain Theorem" in the Russian pavilion, making the sports crowd he has painted on the wall disappear as you walk towards it, didn't seem to notice I was there.

Video games

I was left waving my hands in the air in a piece of impromptu performance art that clearly failed to impress the other people in the room.

I didn't see any work that tried to engage with the internet, either. In 2007 Sophie Calle explored the power of communication through e-mail, but this time I didn't spot anything similar, and neither Dropstuff.org's online art show or the grand "Internet Pavilion" are part of the official festival.

One area where digital technology has had a massive impact on the art world is of course in film and video, where high definition video cameras and editing tools are being used by many artists to create moving image work, and it was here that I really felt the impact of the new technologies.

There seemed to be more screen-based work than in 2007, and in general I felt that the artists using video had chosen it because they had something to say, and not - as in the past - because it was a cool new toy to play with.

The Biennale isn't all video, of course. Dave Moutrey, director of Manchester's Cornerhouse arts centre, told me that he had seen a lot more painting than last time, so I've clearly been selecting work that might have a "digital" theme and missing the paintings and sculptures.

The high points included the artfully constructed short films of Canadian artist Mark Lewis, who uses back projection to induce a sense of perceptual dislocation in the viewer, and the expertly constructed explorations of the nature of belief and evidence for psychic phenomena from Susan MacWilliam in the Northern Ireland pavilion, as well as Shaun Gladwell's elegiac and touching depictions of the outback in the Australian Pavilion.

I was also taken aback by "Dark Days", John Cale's astonishing, evocative and painfully honest attempt to explore his Welsh past, an audio-visual work that uses the cavernous space of a former brewery to amazing effect.

Better tech

One reason the screen-based work is more impressive than 2007 is, I think, because the technology itself has improved so much.

The cameras available to video-based artists today aren't just high-definition, they also have much better image processing electronics built into them, so what they capture is richer and offers more to work with.

The editing tools are two or three generations on from those used last time, too, and of course the hardware has more than doubled in speed, meaning that editing is more fluid and large jobs like rendering a final version of a piece can be done much faster, encouraging more experimentation on the part of the artist.

And the actual presentation is enhanced by the high-intensity projectors that are now commercially available. As Mark Lewis explained, this meant he could show his work to an acceptable quality in the glass-fronted Canadian pavilion, while John Cale's work was so clear you could see the rain falling across the valley in his slowly panning views of Wales.

The new technologies may offer exciting tools to work with and new ways of reaching audiences, but they can also have unexpected side effects when an artist wants to create an aura of mystery around their work.

Although Steve McQueen has tried to create an aura of mystery around his film "Giardini", which is showing in the English pavilion, the beautifully shot sequences of life in the Biennale gardens when the show has left town lose some of their mystery when anyone who wants can search Flickr for similar photos taken by many other people, including a set I shot myself in December 2007.

In art, as in journalism and politics, the network brings down boundaries and encourages openness, and this poses a significant challenge to those who rely on mystery, obfuscation or secrecy in any sphere.

The Digital Planet Venice special is broadcast on Tuesday 8th June. Details on the programme page. It is also podcast.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Can't connect, won't connect.

Mon, 11 May 2009 10:18:22 -0500

Poor wireless reception is symptomatic of a much bigger issue, says regular columnist Bill Thompson

"The BBC's technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, must be hoping that his neighbours don't decide to have a larger family.

He recently spent ages setting up a high-speed wireless network (wi-fi) at home, documenting the whole tortuous process on the BBC Technology blog, but all his hard work could apparently be ruined by a single baby listener.

The intercoms that let parents listen in to every snuffle, sob and cry operate in the same frequency band as wireless networks and can generate so much interference that they make the wi-fi unusable.

The television re-broadcasters that many people use to watch satellite TV in the bedroom (without having to install a second set-top box) also use the same frequency, because it is one of the few areas of the radio spectrum that does not require a licence; they too can slow down wi-fi speeds or make it hard for a computer to make a connection with a local network.

These unwelcome findings about interference come from a detailed survey by Mass Consultants, carried out on behalf of the telecoms regulator Ofcom, as part of its investigation into how radio spectrum is currently used and should be allocated in future.

" I can see 18 networks apart from the one I'm connected to, so I can vouch for the scale of the problem"
Bill Thompson

They found that in central London, the number of overlapping networks attempting to use the same channel was a significant problem, and that in some areas nine-tenths of the available bandwidth was being used by wi-fi nodes advertising themselves or doing general housekeeping, with only one-tenth actually available for user data.

Outside major metropolitan areas the real problem was interference from other devices using the same frequency ranges.

As I write this in a café near Holborn I can see 18 networks apart from the one I'm connected to, so I can vouch for the scale of the problem in London!

Wi-fi is far from robust in normal circumstances, as anyone who has wandered around a house with a laptop looking for a spot that gets a decent signal will testify.

Back in 2006, consultants AirMagnet got some useful pre-Christmas publicity when it announced that reflections from tree baubles and tinsel could cut wireless signal strength by a quarter in a well-decorated home.

But these findings reveal both the growing popularity and importance of wireless networks for home and business net use, and the urgent need to do something about it. Imagine how nice it would be if most wireless networks were suddenly five or even 10 times faster and generally reliable.

There is, of course, a simple if somewhat radical solution to the problem of having to squeeze wi-fi, baby alarms and TV re-transmitters into the same frequency range as remote controls, children's toys and many other devices. We could get rid of them, or at least, the ones that cause trouble.

The problems arise because the devices are analogue and use a wider band of frequencies than their digital counterparts. On top of that, the signals are far more variable than digital signals expected by a wi-fi receiver, so if we made them all digital, we could design them so as to not to interfere.

Of course this won't happen, because owners won't accept that the analogue devices they've already paid for and used for years have to be sacrificed in the name of a bright shiny digital future.

I can see their point, even if part of me just wants to sweep their old technologies away in favour of an uncluttered wireless world.

Another solution would be to move wi-fi away from the currently unregulated 2.4 gigahertz frequency band it uses, but here we face much bigger issues than the objections of parents and sports fans.

Vast tranches of the radio spectrum, from 9 kHz to 275 GHz, is taken up by radio and television, both the older analogue transmissions that are currently being switched off and the newer digital services that replace them: DAB and digital terrestrial television.
If we got rid of the analogue and the digital services and replaced the whole thing with a high-bandwidth wireless network service then we would have more than enough room for laptops and baby listeners.

Yet even if Ofcom decided this was a good idea - and it won't - there is an international dimension to the issue as the International Telecommunication Union's Radiocommunication Sector has the task of ensuring that the many systems in use do not interfere with each other.

Much of the ITU's work is about balancing competing desires, but there are also real physical limits on what can be done. Some frequencies, for example, are used by remote sensing devices in satellites because they are characteristic of water or growing plants, and obviously these can't be changed by administrative fiat.
But as with so many established practices and procedures, from copyright law to the regulation of the financial markets, digital technologies both create new opportunities and challenge or undermine current practice.

The ability to make perfect digital copies has led to the crisis in the music and film industries, and the availability of digital communications channels is causing us to question the wasteful use of spectrum by analogue devices.

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that we'll see a wholesale rethink of the way spectrum is allocated, and the lack of political will means there is little chance that those pushing for deregulation of broad swathes of the spectrum will have any success. We will have to live with dodgy wi-fi for a while yet."

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

How bad is Facebook for you?

Tue, 05 May 2009 04:50:29 -0500

Regular columnist Bill Thompson probes media reports that Facebook usage affects grades

"The examination period is always stressful, both for those sitting GCSEs, A levels and the International Baccalaureate and for their parents and siblings who get 'second-hand stress' without even a certificate to show for their efforts.

My friends and I used to revise together, hoping that it would create enough social pressure to keep us working through the evening, but being in the same room is clearly no longer required. My daughter, in the midst of IB exams, and my son, facing GCSEs next week, have email, instant messaging and of course Facebook and other social network sites to keep in touch with their school mates and share revision tips and exam guidance.

Some revising schoolchildren probably found their access to Facebook severely curtailed last month, however, after The Sun revealed that those who checked the site every day dropped a grade in their studies while heavy users were doing as little as an hour of school work a week.

The story was far from exclusive to The Sun, as a quick search of Google News reveals. It made dozens of papers and websites, including The Times, The Calgary Herald, and The Australian, which told its readers that "Facebook fixation harms student grades" and referred worried readers to a Sydney University-based group called "I want to sue Facebook if I fail university".

Social networking scare stories are becoming increasingly popular, perhaps because the internet remains strange and mysterious despite its popularity while the long term impact of the network on our society is only just becoming apparent.

Cancer risk

" The research which looked so conclusive in the pages of The Sun is actually far from definitive. "
Bill Thompson

Journalists, who probably have more to fear from the growth of social tools and conversational media than most, may also be keen to highlight the dangers of the new technologies.

So we see absurd stories like the Daily Mail's recent claim that "using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer", stories that entertain and frighten readers in equal measure by combining carefully selected psychological research with unfounded speculation to create a tale that has no basis in fact but aligns perfectly with widespread fears about new technologies.

This could also explain the love-hate relationship with Twitter in the press, where the service is a dull and tedious celebrity circus one day, and a cool way to stay in touch the next.

Facebook's impact on academic grades seemed to be different, however, as it was backed up by some real science. The findings were based on a survey of 219 students at Ohio State University carried out by doctoral student Aryn Karpinski and Adam Duberstein of Ohio Dominican University and presented to a prestigious meeting of the American Education Research Association, which is as scientific as the media gets.

But of course things are never as straightforward as they seem, and the research which looked so conclusive in the pages of The Sun is actually far from definitive.

Karpinski's presentation, "A Description of Facebook Use and Academic Performance Among Undergraduate and Graduate Students," was not an invited peer-reviewed paper but a less formal poster session at the conference. The data showing a correlation between Facebook use and academic performance had not been published, and most of the news coverage seems to have been based on reading the abstract of the session without looking at the detail.

"Very basic"

The press coverage prompted further investigation, and in an article for the online journal First Monday Josh Pasek, Eian More and Eszter Hargittai describe how they analysed data from other studies to see if Facebook did have the claimed effect on grades. They found no support for Karpinski's findings, noting instead that "if anything, Facebook use is more common among individuals with higher grades."

Karpinski then defended her work, noting that "my exploratory study and subsequent poster presentation were very basic. I merely planned to do this... to get some ideas and network with more experienced researchers in this area." She also took the time to consider the methods used in the other surveys, offering a detailed and technical critique that demonstrates just how complex this area is. This is real science, and it has to be done if we are to establish a sound basis for our understanding of these new technologies. Talking about coding methods and regression analyses may not be exciting for headline writers, but it is at the heart of this current debate.

None of the newspapers and websites that were so keen to exaggerate the original claims seem interested in following the real scientific debate, with the honourable exception of Carl Bialik in the Wall Street Journal who was careful to discuss the limitations of the original research and said right from the start that the area needed more study.

The press move on to another scare story, the impression that Facebook is bad for your studies remains, and the detailed research that will help us understand the emerging network society remains unread and unremarked upon. Perhaps we will have to wait for the semantic web and intelligent search, so that anyone calling up a dodgy article about the dangers of social networking is forced to review the latest academic research before they proceed.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

JournalismLabs: New BBC Weather site

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:45:26 -0500

Press Red: Building plans

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:40:07 -0500

A nation of programmers?

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:47:36 -0500

Computer skills must mean more than word processing, says Bill Thompson.

"I've had my own website for 15 years now, running on a wide variety of different computers.
I started off with some space on the Pipex WorldServer, a large - for the time - system that offered web hosting back in the days when getting online was a dark art and I was lucky enough to work for one of the early commercial internet service providers.

On leaving Pipex I moved over to Cityscape, another Cambridge-based provider from the early days. When it went out of business I set up a server at home for a while before relocating the hardware to a shelf in the corner of a friend's office, where he was happy to offer bandwidth and a power supply for a very modest monthly payment.

Three years ago I moved the whole thing again, this time onto a virtual server at Bytemark, one of the many small hosting companies that offer friendly and reliable server space for all sorts of organisations.

A virtual server is a way to get lots of different sites on one physical computer. From the outside you can't really tell, and when you log on to the virtual server it acts just like a real box, but it's a lot cheaper to run and you get the benefit of having serious hardware, a secure power supply and an easy way to upgrade.

"Far too many people who use computers every day, and have them in their homes, aren't even capable of applying the system updates that Microsoft and Apple automatically send out"

Bill Thompson

If you run your own computer, even a virtual one, then you also have to take responsibility for keeping it up to date. Mostly this involves applying patches, checking system logs and other relatively straightforward tasks, but servers, like cars, sometimes need a proper service.

And so it was that I spent a happy couple of hours on Saturday morning stripping down my website, backing up the blog installation files, database and key configuration files, and then doing a complete rebuild, or 're-imaging' as it is called.

It all went remarkably smoothly, and installing the latest version of Debian Linux went without a hitch. I spent most of the time copying the gigabytes of data from my home server back to the site because uploading is still slow thanks to the asymmetric nature of UK broadband services.

The configuration files for the virtual servers went in smoothly, and I even managed to trick the MySQL database management system that holds all my blog posts to let me simply copy my files by creating an empty database of the same name and then overwriting it with my backups - far faster than importing everything.

BILL'S LINKS

Bytemark on rebuilding your server

Rory Cellan-Jones on Digital Britain

Donald Clark on the British Library meeting

Apart from a ten minute hiatus when I failed to get the web server to restart because I'd forgotten to create the folders where it writes its log files, there were no problems and I managed to get to the cinema to see the excellent 'In The Loop' for the noon performance, as planned.

One reason it went well was that Bytemark's systems made it easy, but it also helped that I'm trained to do this sort of stuff. I've got a master's degree in computer science and have had 25 years of experience in the industry, including a period as managing editor and systems administrator for The Guardian's first website back in the mid-90's.

Far too many people who use computers every day, and have them in their homes, aren't even capable of applying the system updates that Microsoft and Apple automatically send out, leaving them with buggy and insecure systems vulnerable to all sorts of attack.

Even though we rely on our computers for so much there is still a sense that understanding how they work is an optional extra, something that really only needs to be reserved for the geeks or those whose work absolutely requires it.

Last Friday the actor and self-confessed 'technophile' Stephen Fry was one of the more interesting contributors to a rather self-serving debate about Digital Britain held at the British Library.

He offered an analogy between the early days of the motor car and the current development of a network society, noting that there were no agonised debates or high-level task forces convened to discuss the rollout of the car, so perhaps we should be more relaxed in our attitude to going digital.

We might not have seen our cities damaged beyond repair in the interests of improving traffic flow if we'd stopped to think, of course. But even if the network is going to happen with or without government intervention, the end result is that most of us, most of the time, will be using computers to carry out activities that are pretty central to life in the modern world.

And if we do not understand how they work then we will be in trouble.

There are many reasons for knowing a bit about how cars work. You can tell if there's something wrong, and avoid driving a dangerous vehicle. You can decide whether the mechanic suggesting a thousand pounds worth of repairs is ripping you off. And you can even do some things yourself.

It's almost 50 years since the writer CP Snow gave his famous lecture about the 'two cultures' at Cambridge University, where he outlined the dangers that come from the lack of understanding between literary intellectuals and the scientific community. Today things don't seem as bad, and there is clearly a much greater awareness of and interest in popular science.

Unfortunately a new divide has opened up, that between those of us who know enough about our computers to look under the bonnet from time to time and those who use them without any real curiosity or awareness.

The results could be far worse than being ripped off by unscrupulous engineers who offer them unnecessary upgrades, because these digital tools will increasingly shape society. Those whose understanding of IT stopped at learning how to use bold font in a word processor will be at a significant disadvantage, one that we should work hard to overcome before it is too late.

We don't need a nation of programmers, but we do need to be confident that everyone knows what programmers do and what programs look like.

Bill Thompson will be speaking about the new two cultures in a lecture at the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge University on May 27th, part of the University's celebration of its 800th anniversary.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

BBC Internet: More BBC HD

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:53:41 -0500

Code-cracking and computers

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:05:34 -0600

By Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News

Bletchley Park is best known for the work done on cracking the German codes and helping to bring World War II to a close far sooner than might have happened without those code breakers.

But many believe Bletchley should be celebrated not just for what it ended but also for what it started - namely the computer age.

The pioneering machines at Bletchley were created to help codebreakers cope with the enormous volume of enciphered material the Allies managed to intercept.

The machine that arguably had the greatest influence in those early days of computing was Colossus - a re-built version of which now resides in the National Museum of Computing which is also on the Bletchley site.

Men and machine

The Enigma machines were used by the field units of the German Army, Navy and Airforce. But the communications between Hitler and his generals were protected by different machines: The Lorenz SZ40 and SZ42.

The German High Command used the Lorenz machine because it was so much faster than the Enigma, making it much easier to send large amounts of text.

"For about 500 words Enigma was reasonable but for a whole report it was hopeless," said Jack Copeland, professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, director of the Turing Archive and a man with a passionate interest in the Bletchley Park computers.

The Allies first picked up the stream of enciphered traffic, dubbed Tunny, in 1940. The importance of the material it contained soon became apparent.

Like Enigma, the Lorenz machines enciphered text by mixing it with characters generated by a series of pinwheels.

"We broke wheel patterns for a whole year before Colossus came in," said Captain Jerry Roberts, one of the codebreakers who deciphered Tunny traffic at Bletchley.

"Because of the rapid expansion in the use of Tunny, our efforts were no longer enough and we had to have the machines in to do a better job."

The man who made Colossus was Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers, who had instantly impressed Alan Turing when asked by the maverick mathematician to design a machine to help him in his war work.

But, said Capt Roberts, Flowers could not have built his machine without the astonishing work of Cambridge mathematician Bill Tutte.

"I remember seeing him staring into the middle distance and twiddling his pencil and I wondered if he was earning his corn," said Capt Roberts.

But it soon became apparent that he was.

"He figured out how the Lorenz machine worked without ever having seen one and he worked out the algorithm that broke the traffic on a day-to-day basis," said Capt Roberts.

"If there had not been Bill Tutte, there would not have been any need for Tommy Flowers," he said. "The computer would have happened later. Much later."

Valve trouble

Prof Copeland said Tommy Flowers faced scepticism from Bletchley Park staff and others that his idea for a high-speed computer employing thousands of valves would ever work.

"Flowers was very much swimming against the current as valves were only being used in small units," he said. "But the idea of using large numbers of valves reliably was Tommy Flowers' big thing. He'd experimented and knew how to control the parameters."

And work it did.

The close co-operation between the human translators and the machines meant that the Allies got a close look at the intimate thoughts of the German High Command.

Information gleaned from Tunny was passed to the Russians and was instrumental in helping it defeat the Germans at Kursk - widely seen as one of the turning points of WWII.

The greater legacy is the influence of Colossus on the origins of the computer age.

"Tommy Flowers was the key figure for everything that happened subsequently in British computers," said Prof Copeland.

After the war Bletchley veterans Alan Turing and Max Newman separately did more work on computers using the basic designs and plans seen in Colossus.

Turing worked on the Automatic Computing Engine for the British government and Newman helped to bring to life the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine - widely acknowledged as the first stored program computer.

The work that went into Colossus also shaped the thinking of others such as Maurice Wilkes, Freddie Williams, Tom Kilburn and many others - essentially the whole cast of characters from whom early British computing arose.

And the rest, as they say, is history

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Accelerating the modern age

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:09:40 -0500

It has often been said that change is the only constant in the 21st Century.

And there is little doubt that the restless tone of these times is something that the web has helped to accelerate.

But the only reason that the net and the web can cope with that punishing pace is thanks to work done four decades ago by British mathematician Donald Davies at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

On 5 August 1968 Dr Davies gave the first public presentation of work he had been doing on a method of moving data around computer networks called "packet switching".

The idea may sound mundane but, said John Pethica, chief science advisor at the NPL, the modern world would be a lot slower without it.

The internet, mobile phone networks and fixed line phones now all use the principles Davies and his team established to cram as much data as they can down the cables and wires making up the world's telecommunication networks.

Clogged pipes

Dr Pethica said the urge to find a better way to handle data emerged when computer networks were almost unheard of.

At that time making a phone call involved creating a dedicated circuit between the handset of a caller and the person they wanted to chat to.

"A lot of people realised that point-to-point was going to be a big problem, even for telephones even before they thought about computers," said Dr Pethica. "The problem was how you turn it away from that."

The problem with human speech is that most of it is made up of silence - be that the pauses between words, time taken to breathe or gaps when one person waits for another to speak.

Using most of a telephone network to transmit silence is not a very efficient use of that resource. Far better would be to find a way to fill the blank spots with the moments from others calls when those folk were speaking.

Dr Pethica said many in the computer world in the late 60s were thinking about how to solve this problem.

"There were other ideas around, like Paul Baran at Rand, but they were nowhere near as useful as what Donald Davies did in terms of size of packets and nodes," said Dr Pethica.

"It was Donald who had the idea of making a set of nodes that you send packets of data to that find their own way through," said Dr Pethica.

The insight of Dr Davies and his team was to slice data, be that a chat on the phone, an e-mail or a picture, into separate pieces or packets. These are then put on the network and rely on the intelligence of nodes in the network to help them wend their way to their destination. Once there they are re-assembled into the right order.

Future proof

Dr Pethica said Davies' team worked out the mathematics that optimised such an approach - an idea that has proved its usefulness by still being in use today.

Error correction schemes included in the technology helped it cope with the poor quality of phone lines in use in the late 1960s, said Dr Pethica. In more modern times those schemes help ensure data makes it across the busy lanes of the internet.

Davies and his colleagues went further than just establishing the concept for packet switching - they also build the first computer networks and proved their ideas could work.

"They had a whole series of early computers at NPL that they turned in to a local area network (Lan)," said Dr Pethica. He pointed out that the NPL scientists built such a network far in advance of the day when such things would become the common way to link up machines in an office.

"The important breakthrough that he and his team made was to build the Lan and make it work," he said.

Even before Dr Davies presented his work publicly, news of it had spread through the international computer science community.

As a result he was invited to talk about it to a team from the US Advanced Research Project Agency (Arpa) working on the fledgling internet. The principles he established were rolled in to the technology to make that network function.

Dr Pethica said packet switching idea was developed with an eye on the future and how a computer network might grow. Forty years on the scalability in the Dr Davies insight is still proving its worth, he said

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The history of UK computing

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:59:11 -0500

The computer seems the very essence of the modern world, especially as the gadgets we sit before and carry around shrink as fast as they become more powerful.

But if truth be told the computer has had a long and honourable history that stretches back to the closing years of the World War II.

And, say conservations and computer history enthusiasts, Britain played a big part in the development of the modern computer.

"The layman when asked about the introduction of steam power will usually reel off Newcomen, Watt and Trevithick," said Chris Burton, of the Computer Conservation Society.

"But when it comes to computer pioneers they are absolutely baffled," he said. "They have no idea."

Foundational work

When pushed, he said, they might be able to remember the name of Alan Turing but few know of any others beyond that.

Turing established the conceptual and philosophical basis for the rise of computers in a seminal 1936 paper called "On Computable Numbers". But it took a large cast of engineers and scientists to solve the real world problems that arise when those ideas are turned into whirring, clicking reality.

At Bletchley Park forerunners of modern computers were built to help the Allies crack German codes.

Although Turing worked at Bletchley and helped create the Bombe that cracked messages enciphered with Enigma machines he had little to do with Colossus - a programmable machine that tackled the encrypted messages sent by the German High Command.

Conceived, designed and built by Tommy Flowers, Allen Coombs and Max Newman, the first Colossus was working in 1943 - three years ahead of the rival pioneering American machine known as Eniac.

For a long time the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (Eniac) was better known than Colossus because the Official Secrets Act prevented those that worked on it talking publicly about their achievements.

Kevin Murrell, a trustee for the National Museum of Computing where a rebuilt Colossus is housed, said Bletchley was just one of the locations where the UK's computer pioneers did their influential work.

Colossus, he said, amounted to about one-third of all effort being put into those early machines. Similar pioneering efforts were underway at Manchester and Cambridge.

Cakes and computers

At Cambridge, Maurice Wilkes and his colleagues were working on the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (Edsac) - another recognisably modern machine that used tubes of mercury five feet in length as a data storage medium.

Edsac ran its first programs in 1949 and was developed to act as the heart of a number crunching service for Cambridge scientists.

The creation of Edsac was backed by baking and catering giant J Lyons which bought a copy of the finished machine and turned it into the world's first business computer - the Lyons Electronic Office (Leo).

"It was the first programmable computer that went into routine operation," said science writer Georgina Ferry, author of a book about the genesis of Leo.

"What was innovative about Leo was not the hardware," she said, "but the systems and the way they used it."

John Pinkerton, David Caminer, Ernest Lenaerts, Derek Hemy and others at Lyons pioneered the use of computers in the dull repetitive tasks formerly carried out by legions of clerks. One of its first roles was to calculate how much each worker at the hundreds of Lyons tearooms was to be paid.

Steadily more and more of those basic tasks were studied by Caminer and his team and broken down into steps Leo could replicate. In the process Caminer and his colleagues created systems engineering.

"Leo led the world in business computing," she said.

Big baby

At the University of Manchester engineers such as Tom Kilburn, Freddie Williams, Geoff Tootill, Alec Robinson, Dai Edwards and others worked to create what became the Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) or Baby.

The Baby was recognisably modern electronic computer because it could easily be re-programmed to carry out different tasks. By contrast older machines either just carried out one function or had to be re-wired to change what they did.

A replica of the original Baby now resides at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

"When we wrote the proposal to build the replica machine an explicit goal which was to re-run the first program as a tangible tribute to the pioneers that brought this about," said Chris Burton who led the effort to re-build the SSEM.

Mr Burton said none of them had any idea about the influence their work would have.

"They did it to help engineers, forecasters and scientists to do their calculations," he said. "They had no idea of the fantastic proliferation that we have had since.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

One tonne 'Baby' marks its birth

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:09:59 -0500

By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Sixty years ago the "modern computer" was born in a lab in Manchester.

The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or "Baby", was the first to contain memory which could store a program.

The room-sized computer's ability to carry out different tasks - without having to be rebuilt - has led some to describe it as the "first modern PC".

Using just 128 bytes of memory, it successfully ran its first set of instructions - to determine the highest factor of a number - on 21 June 1948.

"We were extremely excited," Geoff Tootill, one of the builders of Baby told BBC News.

"We congratulated each other and then went and had lunch in the canteen."

Mr Tootill, and three other surviving members of the Baby team, will be honoured by the University and the British Computer Society at a ceremony in Manchester.

Number cruncher

Baby was the successor to machines such as the American ENIAC and the UK's Colossus.

ENIAC was built to calculate the trajectory of shells for the US army, whilst Colossus was used to decrypt messages from the German High Command during World War II.

Both computers were able to be reprogrammed but this could involve days of rewiring. Baby was designed to overcome this limitation.

"It was the earliest machine that was a computer, in the sense of what everyone today understands a computer to be," explained Chris Burton of the Computer Conservation Society (CCS).

"It was a single piece of hardware which could perform any application depending on what program you put in."

The key to this ability was its memory, built from a cathode ray tube (CRT), which could be used to store a program.

"It was an extraordinary analogue for today's DRAM (dynamic random access memory)," said Mr Burton.

Electrical charges on the screen of the CRT were used to represent binary information. A positive charge represented a one and a negative charge a zero.

"It really must have been an extraordinary, exciting and heady time"
Chris Burton

A metal grid attached to the screen read the different charges. A graphical representation - dashes for a one and dots for a zero - was displayed on a second CRT wired in parallel to the memory device.

"The operator peered at the monitor tube and he could see the same patterns as in the storage tube," said Mr Burton.

The memory gave programmers a total of 1024 bits, or 128 bytes, to play with. This had to store both the program and all of the data to be crunched.

By comparison, a modern 1GB DRAM chip can store around 8 billion bits.

Dashing times

However, the size of the memory did not prevent the Manchester University team writing relatively complex programs.

"You can write very sophisticated and interesting programs even with that limitation," said Mr Burton.

"They're not efficient, but nobody was talking about efficiency, it was about feasibility."

The first program was written by the late Tom Kilburn to work out the highest factor of a prime number.

"We used this, of course, to test the machine," said Mr Tootill.

"It took it a very long time, so we had our leisure to see how the circuits were working - to see if any were on the verge of failure, that sort of thing."

Because of the limitations of the display the team tested the machine using prime numbers.

"If you give it a prime number to try then the highest factor of that is one," said Mr Burton.

"If what they saw when they ran the program was a one - in other words, a dash when everything else was dots - then bingo, they knew it was working."

The team eventually refined their techniques, writing more complex programs and adding to the computers memory.

Baby morphed into the Manchester Mark I and eventually the first commercial general purpose computer, the Ferranti Mark I.

"It really must have been an extraordinary, exciting and heady time," said Mr Burton.

A working replica of Baby is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Get your up-to-date fix of blog posts about all things digital

Wed, 21 May 2008 06:53:11 -0500