Farewell Ray Tomlinson

The internet will be a bit sadder place as e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson passed away.

By: Ringo Bones 

The internet pioneer and e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson passed away on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at the age of 74 of an apparent heart attack. The US computer programmer came up with the idea of electronic messages that could be sent from one network to another back in 1971. His invention included the ground-breaking use of the “@” symbol in e-mail addresses, which is now standard. 

Ray Tomlinson has sent what is now regarded as the first e-mail while working in Boston as an engineer for the research company Bolt, Beranek and Newman. The firm played a big role in developing an early version of the internet, known as Arpanet. However, Tomlinson later said he could not remember what was in that first test message, describing it as “completely forgettable”. His work was recognized by his peers back in 2012, when he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. 

45 years after the first ever e-mail was sent, such form of internet communication has become so ubiquitous that it has even become a topic of political contention – i.e. US Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s ongoing e-mail scandal. And despite of the widespread popularity of “newfangled” social media networks that only began during the first decade of the 21^st Century, sending messages and other electronic files via e-mail is still the de rigueur method used by some due to its ease of use in relation to its security in comparison to upstart social media accounts. Will e-mail accounts like those pioneered by Ray Tomlinson as we know it still be around 50 years from now or will it be finally superseded by some much improved version wholly different from what we currently use? 

Apple Versus FBI iPhone Fight: Setting A Dangerous Legal Precedent?

The legal tussle seems like foreshadowing our increasingly “Orwellian Present” but is the current Apple versus FBI iPhone transcend mere legal rigmarole and sets a dangerous legal privacy precedent?

By: Ringo Bones 

The ongoing legal fight between the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Apple over a specific iPhone 5C owned and used by one of the Islamic State inspired terrorists involved in the San Bernardino, California massacre that happened back in December 2015 is setting up a dangerous legal precedent to everyone who holds dear their right to privacy and civil liberties. The FBI justifies their right to access the “locked contents” of the particular iPhone 5C citing that it is necessary to keep Americans safe from future attacks but is it really that cut-and-died? Other leading tech companies like Google, Amazon and others have sided with Apple in preserving their customers right to privacy and it also raises another question if the rumors are true that the FBI already has the world’s top “White Hat Hackers” working for them – would asking Apple to provide them with a back-door access to the San Bernardino iPhone 5C proof of laziness in the part of the FBI in performing its day-to-day law enforcement related telecommunications forensic duties? 

Currently, the federal government seeks a dramatic extension of a 1977 Supreme Court case of New York Telephone to cover ever-evolving technologies. But lawyers in Apple’s camp argue that it is dangerous to extend that limited endorsement of judicial power over third parties to situations the U.S. Supreme Court never could have envisioned. From a legal perspective, what the FBI currently wants for all intents and purposes sets up a dangerous legal precedent because the federal government’s demand here, at its core, is unbound by any legal limits. It would set a dangerous precedent, in which the federal government could sidestep established legal procedures authorized by thorough, nuanced statutes to obtain users’ data in ways not (yet?) contemplated by lawmakers. 

The way the iPhone 5C’s security feature works is that it automatically erases all of the phone’s data contents after 10 invalid password attempts are entered. But are “White Hat Hackers” currently in tenure of the FBI have the requisite skills to sidestep this clever security set-up? After all, there are rumors circulating out there that the tenured coders at Apple who made possible the clever anti-hack safeguard of the iPhone 5C has “allegedly” based their codes on those “500 to 600 US dollar unhackable phones” that were made by Lockheed Martin and Boeing back in 2005 that had been issued on critical VIPs working for the US State Department.

The European Data Relay System: An Improved Space Based Data Superhighway?

Dubbed by the press as the “space based laser” will the European Data Relay System improve the global monitoring of the Earth’s environment and natural disasters?

By: Ringo Bones 

When the “first node” of the European Data Relay System (EDRS) space based lasers – a relay satellite that was launched on a Russian Proton rocket from the famous Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan back in January 30, 2016, many see it as a quantum leap on how it can now improve on how civilian firms acquire images taken from orbital space and its transmission to ground stations. At present, it can take hours to get pictures taken from Earth observation satellites down to ground stations due to the inherent data bandwidth limitations of microwaves currently used to transmit digital photographic data between observation satellites in Earth’s orbit to ground stations even though microwaves and the lasers used in the new EDRS network of satellites both travel at the same 186,000 miles per second / 300,000 kilometers per second velocity. 

Initial testing by the European Space Agency’s industrial partner – Airbus Defence and Space – shows it should be possible for the system to put pictures on the desks of people who need them on the ground within 20 minutes of those images being acquired which before the newfangled system used to take several hours of wait time. By way of comparison, the European Data Relay System’s space-based laser or “laser link” provides 90 to 100 times the normal internet speed currently being used in homes of major metropolitan areas around the world. For some applications – such as the monitoring of pollution incidents, illegal fishing or ocean piracy – the time saved could be critical to formulating and achieving an effective response.   

“The European Data Relay System (EDRS) could open up a new horizon to what I would call quasi real time Earth observation.” says Magali Vaissiere, the European Space Agency’s director of telecoms. “EDRS has been in development for more than 10 years. Getting satellites to talk to each other via a narrow laser beam is no easy task,” says European Space Agency project manager Michael Witting. With a successful connection, data will move at a rate of up to 1.8 Gb per second. 

Mainland China’s World Internet Conference: An Exercise In Online Hypocrisy?

Though it was touted as Beijing’s promotion of how the World Wide Web should be run, but last week’s Chinese World Internet Conference nothing more than an exercise in online hypocrisy? 

By:  Ringo Bones 

When last week’s Mainland China’s World Internet Conference was reported by the BBC back in December 16, 2015, many around the world see it as the Beijing government’s “world view” on how the global internet community should be run – i.e. the right of each country’s government’s right to impose hard line online censorship. Ever since Xi Jinping became Mainland China’s head-of-state, the country’s internet laws were further tightened by the Beijing government. In Mainland China, spreading supposed “wild rumors” via the internet – especially if it is a pro political opposition themed – carries a mandatory 7 year prison sentence. But despite the Beijing government’s expressing its right for world internet isolationism, was last week’s “Mainland China’s World Internet Conference” nothing more than an exercise in on line hypocrisy. 

Despite Mainland China being currently the world’s largest online population given that an estimated 650 million or more Mainland Chinese citizens are now regular internet users. Unfortunately, the “free world’s” top social networks and entertainment and educational sites – like Facebook, You Tube and Google just to name a few – can’t be accessed on Mainland Chinese soil thanks to the “Great Firewall Of China”, which sees to it that the rest of the free world’s internet traffic won’t be accessed on Mainland China. So effective is their “Firewall” that even relatively harmless content – like the trailer of the movie Garfield: A Tale Of two Kitties” that was released to the World Wide Web some years ago got automatically blocked in Mainland China because the Beijing government approved firewall – in the guise of their “Green Dam Youth Escort” - apparently mistaken the color of Garfield’s fur as the vestments of the Dalai Lama and thus flagging the movie trailer as a “rebellious Free Tibet message”. 

And even though there might be some merit to the Beijing government’s argument that “all countries should be allowed to make its own rules with regards to internet traffic within its sovereign territory”, what’s politically and philosophically hypocritical – from a Western point of view – on Beijing’s internet governance is that they are actively sponsoring unscrupulous hackers that actively attack and commit digital vandalism and other much worse cyber-attacks to political activists – especially exiled Chinese dissidents now residing in more democratic countries – setting up sites that criticize current human rights violations and other social ills on Mainland China. One that has gained notoriety over the years was the Unit 61398 of the Beijing 50 Cent Cyber Army where a few even have United States Federal Bureau Of Investigation arrest warrants issued against them for performing brazen cyber attacks on official US Government websites. And by the way, the Baidu Driverless Car – the Beijing government approved version of the Google Driverless Car – debuted in the Mainland China World Internet Conference. 

Does Christmas Lights Slow Down Your Wi-Fi’s Speed?

Though there are a number of probable reasons from an electrical and electronic engineers’ perspective, but can Christmas lights actually slow down your home Wi-Fi’s speed? 

By: Ringo Bones 

At the time of writing, America’s right-leaning Evangelicals has yet to call this latest study as a conspiracy by the telecommunications industry to launch a “war against Christmas”, but a lot of people find it disconcerting that the most de rigueur indicator of the Yuletide Season – Christmas lights or as the Brits call them fairy lights – can actually slow down the speed of your home Wi-Fi. Worse still, quite a number of us now use broadband technology to stay connected with our loved ones through the internet and the Yuletide Season is one of the peak seasons of the year for such activities and a Wi-Fi slowdown is the last thing we need. 

In a recent research study results released by watchdog Ofcom, Christmas tree lights    / fairy lights can actually slow down your Wi-Fi’s data transfer speed and the results were in conjunction with the new app that they recently released that can check the “health” of your home broadband. The app samples Wi-Fi’s wireless signals to see if the data is flowing uninterrupted from routers to smart-phones and tablets. The app is released alongside research results, which suggests Wi-Fi in six million homes and offices participating in the Ofcom study were not running as fast as it should. 

According to the study, what causes the slowdown is the interference caused by the solid state power supplies used in modern electronics that are not transformer isolated from mains which forms the power supplies of most modern LED based Christmas lights / fairy lights that also power the electronics that makes them blink and the “singing chip”. Radio frequency emissions from baby monitors and microwave ovens can also significantly slow down Wi-Fi data transfer speeds said Ofcom in a statement.