Space X to resupply the International Space Station

This past week the world enjoyed images of the retired space shuttle Enterprise headed for New York city.  It was a nice finish to that long program, but also a reminder of coming changes in how Earth conducts space missions.

Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, will test fire its Falcon 9 rocket's engines on 30 April.  Then on 7 May it will attempt to launch into space, and then possibly dock with the International Space Station (ISS).  The Dragon vehicle on top of the Falcon rocket will carry a load of supplies for the ISS, in case the docking maneuver is successful.  If it all works, the Earth will enter a new era in space where private companies may replace government programs.

Right now, the ISS relies on Russian, European and Japanese vehicles for resupply.  Having three options is a good thing, but the costs per mission are high, and none of the three vehicles are re-useable.  The advantage of SpaceX's Dragon vehicle is that it is re-useable, and less expensive.  For instance, the European ATV cargo ship costs 300 million USD to build, while SpaceX will charge NASA only 133 million per resupply run.  If the Falcon can dock with the ISS, SpaceX is slated to carry out 12 of these missions, designated Commercial Resupply Services (CRS).

What's particularly remarkable is that SpaceX only formed their company ten years ago, back in March 2002.  In 2010, they became the first private company to launch a vehicle into orbit and then return it safely to Earth.  This fast-paced development makes one wonder what they can do in the next decade, and if private companies can work in space more efficiently than government programs.   

There are a lot of 'ifs' here.  If the Falcon can dock with the ISS and unload its supplies, it will mean the ISS won't have to rely on the Russian, European and Japanese vehicles.  The bigger picture is that space exploration may transition from a government-only arena to a partnership between private companies and governments.  Will this lead to private corporations dominating space? Or will governments always think that national security interests force them to remain involved? A lot of interesting questions will be answered.

[On 30 April, SpaceX.com will feature a webcast of the engine tests on the Falcon 9 rocket at 2:30pm ET.]

(This post uses data from the SpaceX website, and this article from Dave Klingler at Ars Technica.  The pic of the Falcon 9 rocket is from SpaceX.)

The CISPA Bill and the Threat to Your Rights

It hasn't been long since the SOPA bill failed in the US congress, and yet our elected officials have already brought forth a new bill:  the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA (HR 3523).

CISPA is about sharing your information between the US government and private sector entities.  A key provision is that the bill says both the government and the private companies cannot be held liable for any harm that comes to you because of this sharing.  

Instead of getting a search warrant from a judge, this new bill allows the government to 'encourage' companies to cooperate freely in sharing your online data.  This isn't just about reading your email to make sure you're not a terrorist.  Consider the data flow when you use Internet banking, or pay your health insurance online, or read favorite news sites, or shop on eBay or Amazon, or post on Twitter, or watch funny cat videos on YouTube.  Is that anyone's business besides yours?

Yet the bill already has over 100 sponsors in the House of Representatives.  What are they thinking?

Ever notice how often you hear the words "...for security purposes..."  And not just in the airport.  We hear that a lot now.  Everything is "for security purposes."  It uses the threat of terrorism to justify the loss of privacy and individual rights, and apparently this ploy is very effective with members of Congress.

A particularly interesting point is the list of companies that supportCISPA.  Do you have phone service with ATT or Verizon? Do you have a Facebook page? Essentially, these companies are saying they don't care about protecting your data.  Other members of the list include the huge contracting companies in the military/industrial complex like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  These companies rely on the constant flow of cash from the US government to develop new technologies and weapon systems.

If you are a US citizen, take a moment and hit this link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  It has a handy tool where you can enter your zip code and send a Twitter message to your congress person.  Or you can scroll down and read a graphic explaining CISPA. 

If you're not a US citizen, take a moment to think about the laws in your own country.  Are they making you safer, or simply giving your government more power over you?

I am against terrorism.  Attacking innocent people to achieve political or religious goals is wrong.  But in the rush to secure ourselves we are giving up our freedoms.  And governments around the world are using the threat of terrorism to exert more control over their citizens.  Trading safety for tyranny is a bad choice.

Read more at the EFF site here.

University of Chicago's robot-powered Mansueto Library

In May, the University of Chicago's new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library will open to the public.  What's special about this library? Robots.  Robots retrieving books from a 55-foot deep underground facility.  (Please see video above.) 

The library is really two physical parts--an above ground reading room that can hold 180 people, and a below ground storage area.  The reading room is a glass-enclosed ellipse with tables and computers.  The storage area is a chilly 60 degrees Fahrenheit warehouse that looks like something from the movie The Matrix.

Just as there are two physical parts, there are two approaches to resources--traditional books, and digitized books.  Like several other universities, University of Chicago has partnered with Google to digitize their collection, but they now have the capability to digitize their own books.  This process will typically take about 30 minutes.  They also have the equipment to clean and preserve old books, and even rebind them if they're falling apart.

What's interesting is that while they're embracing the future, they aren't abandoning the past.  Some schools have moved their printed collections to off sites, but this makes retrieval slow.  The Mansueto Library uses a high-density storage technique to hold the equivalent of 3.5 million volumes in one seventh of the space it would take in conventional rows and stacks.  Also, warehousing the books underground makes it easier to maintain the right temperature and humidity level to preserve them long term.

You wouldn't want a human to have to climb a 50-foot ladder to grab a book, but a robotic crane can do so quickly and safely.  When a student requests a book from storage, it only takes about fifteen minutes for the system to retrieve and process it.

A lot of people will visit this new library, however, only librarians are allowed to go down into the underground storage area.  I wish the library would offer tours, and let guests can see how the robot cranes work.  It would help people imagine how robots might help in their own lives and businesses. 

(The library site is here.  The video is from YouTube.)

Google, Its Future, and the Business Cycle

I read an article titled "The Education of Larry Page" by Brad Stone in the Bloomberg Businessweek magazine that made me think about two things:  the future of Google, and the business cycle.

For people like me who use Gmail, Blogger, and Google Search, the future of Google matters.  Larry Page came back to lead the company he co-founded with Sergey Brin, and it's interesting to see how his vision for this industry giant will play out.

Under Page, Google has reorganized itself into seven divisions:  Search, Ads, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Commerce, and Social Networking.  To some degree, these correlate with what you see on the Google start page--above the search window and the button to download the Chrome navigator, you see You+, Search, Images, Maps, Play, YouTube, News, Gmail, Documents, Calendar, and More.

Since 50% of smartphones use the Android operating system, Google appears to be doing well in the phone arena.  Also, they're trying to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, probably for the many patents that deal would bring.  Google is also still the dominant search engine, which means their Advertisements division is making them lots of money.

In other areas, the giant has staggered.  While their Google+ social network already has 100 million members, those members only spend 3 to 4 minutes per month on the service.  Whereas Facebook members spend 7.5 hours a month, and Facebook has 850 million users.

There is also controversy--Google's move to combine results from their search engine with Google+ content raised concerns at the US Federal Trade Commission.  In both Europe and the US, there are questions on whether their search engine results favors their own content, which may pose an anti-trust problem.  Even their Street View cars have become suspect because these roving vehicles may have gathered data from the wireless home networks they pass.

If you go to the More section of the Google start page and click "Even More," you'll see all sorts of interesting products and services, many of which are Google versions of other popular applications.  As a company with a lot of smart people (30,000 employees) backed by a lot of money, they can afford to experiment with all sorts of things.  But just because you can doesn't mean you necessarily should.  It's funny that on their "What we believe" page, number 2 on their list of maxims is, "It’s best to do one thing really, really well."  And yet over the last several years, it appears they've tried to do 50 different things well.

All of this leads me to a question:  Are the cycles of business like the lives of animals (including humans)? Is there a predictable cycle of birth, growth, stability (and perhaps even dominance), then decline, replacement and death?

Companies grow so fast now.  In the late 1990s, Google was the cool new search engine that only hard core techies knew about.  Now it's a corporate colossus facing tough competition, and the suspicion of governments and privacy advocates.  Has the entire cycle sped up in the Information Age? In the 1800s if someone built a railroad empire or a shipping company, it took time, and some day their grandchildren would end up running it.  Now companies rise fast, but do they fall fast, too?

(The Bloomberg magazine is the April 9 to 15 issue.  The pic is from maasaimara.com, and yes, I used Google Images to search for it.)

Math Makes Our World Work

I saw a brief video on New Scientist and it made me think of the movie The Matrix.  Inside the Matrix, everything Neo saw was the product of a vast program.  But outside the Matrix, the free people watched numbers trickle down their computer screens and knew the Matrix was all just math and lines of code.

The video is a quick overview of some of the formulas that enable our world to function.  Like citizens of the Matrix, we can't see these invisible math calculations, and yet they constantly take place all around us.

If you have a cellular telephone, you can't see the signal between the cell tower and the phone, yet you hear your friend's voice.  You can't see the signal your satellite TV dish receives, yet you watch your favorite team play.  And inside your house, the small router next to your computer sends out its unseen WiFi signal to your laptop, ereader or tablet. 

Math enables all these invisible transactions.

The video discusses waves because so many things we do involve the sending and receiving of signals in wave form, like radio.  To enable this, we needed the contributions of mathematicians Fourier, Bernoulli and d'Alembert, plus Maxwell's work on electricity and magnetism.  They in turn used principles of physics from Newton.  Each generation builds on the hard work of those who came before.

So next time you use your cell phone, realize that math is useful for all sorts of cool things.  And encourage those around you to learn more about math.

(The pic is from the Matrix Online game from back in about 2005.  Found here at IGN.  Also Wolfram Alpha has the actual equations, but not much explanation.)

Chip and PIN Credit Cards: Why your next credit card will have a chip in it.

If you take your credit card out of your purse or wallet and look at it, you'll see it has a magnetic strip on the back.  You're probably used to this because you have to line the card up the correct way when your swipe it through the reader at the gas station or ATM.  But if you live in Europe, your credit card has a chip in it, and when you use the card you must enter a PIN number with it.

Why do Visa cards in America have a strip, but in the United Kingdom or Italy they have a chip? (On the card above, the chip is the gold rectangle in the upper left.)

Years ago, Europay, Mastercard and Visa joined forces to produce the EMV standard--a new type of card with a microprocessor chip embedded in it that stores encrypted data.  Their idea was to fight fraud.  For instance, in an American restaurant you hand the server your card, and they take it off to the register, swipe it, and bring you the bill to sign.  In Europe, the server brings a mobile reader to your table, you zip your card through, and input your PIN number to pay the bill. 

When the EMV system was introduced in the United Kingdom, it made a big dent in fraud, or at least forced criminals to try other methods.  So why hasn't it come to the United States?

There are two reasons, and of course they have to do with money.

The first is the cost.  If every merchant, from the small mom-and-pop pet store to the huge grocery store chain, has to replace their current readers, the cost of the new EMV reader is a real concern.

Another problem is that producing a card with a chip costs more than producing a card with a magnetic stripe.  Multiply that cost by the number of customers you have, and you can see how banks might be reluctant to replace all those cards.

The second big reason is liability.  Currently in the US, if someone steals your credit card number, you're only liable for the first $50.00.  And often your bank covers that cost to keep you happy so you won't switch to another bank.  The banks would like to shift that cost off their backs and onto the stores and you. 

By issuing a new EMV style card with a magnetic strip as a backup, banks will cover themselves.  The cards will work on the new machines around the world, and if they're put into an old machine, the magnetic strip will serve as a backup so the sale will still go through.  The key is that the bank will no longer take responsibility for fraud if the magnetic strip was used, and will shift the cost to the individual store.  And if your PIN is misused, the bank will charge you for the loss.

There is also the question of whether the chip and pin cards are truly more secure.  A card with a chip in it will probably be harder to clone than a simple magnetic strip card, which may help cut fraud.  Also, if someone steals your EMV card, they can't use it if they don't know the PIN number. 

Will this eliminate fraud? No, criminals will always try new techniques.  For instance, in countries that use chip and pin cards, fraudsters have learned to do 'card not present' scams by using the card over the phone or the Internet.  But this is a never ending cycle, and does not invalidate the gains made by using the encrypted EMV card.

Customers in the US will be seeing these cards soon.  Visa plans to issue EMV cards in 2012, and Mastercard in 2013.

I imagine EMV will finally become the worldwide standard, but how long will it last as more people use their smart phones to make purchases?

(I found very helpful material in articles in The Economist, Bankrate, and PC Magazine.  The picture is from: MerchantAccount.)

(For a fascinating look at the criminal practice of credit card cloning and fraud, read KINGPIN by Kevin Poulsen.)

(If you find this article useful, please support this blog by purchasing one of my novels.  Thanks.)

What is the Deep Web?

During research for my recent post about Dark Nets, I came across the term Deep Web and wondered what that meant. 

The Deep Web is the part of the Internet that is not indexed or catalogued by search engines.  In other words, search 'bots for services like Bing and Google and Duckduckgo haven't crawled through these areas and noted their addresses and locations, so they don't show up in search engine results.

A picture of an iceberg is often used to illustrate this idea, with the smaller, above-water section representing the Internet we all use, and the larger, below-water section as the Deep Web.  It's a useful image, but I don't know if it's accurate because no one seems to know how big the Deep Web is.  It may be bigger or smaller than the regular Internet.

What does the Deep Web contain? While the articles I found all agreed that being non-indexed defines Deep Web content, they did not agree on what that content is.

For instance, one article explained that much of the content is dynamic--pages that are constantly updated and changed like airline flight information or breaking news stories--while much of the regular Internet is static.  An example of this is a database where you can only retrieve information with a query. 

There are also fee-based sites that you must pay for before being able to access.  The article mentions subscription services used by libraries, but I would guess a lot of pay sites are for pornography.  The article also points out the dynamic content of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, but users must only be friends or followers to access them.

This all sounds fairly benign.  In contrast, another article I found describes a far different Deep Web in which anonymity is king, and criminal transactions for drugs, credit card numbers and child pornography thrive.  The article has a screen shot from a popular drug sale site that lists all sorts of illegal drugs for sale in varying amounts from anonymous vendors.  The author also wisely warns people that if they go wandering around the Deep Web they may find sickening child pornography.

Thus the Deep Web may be anything from a business database to an illegal file sharing site.  While I normally supply links to my sources, in this case I'm not because some of them provide instructions that will only tempt people to explore.  The regular Internet is vast, with many resources available to you, so you need not view the Deep Web as something you're missing out on.  And if what I read about much of the content is true, you're better off avoiding it altogether.

(The pic of a sewer is from:  benmayfield.wordpress.)