It’s a really terrible pun, and I ought to be ashamed of myself, but I’ll let it stand. The story here is that Apple has begun to fit new production runs of its various products with a rather unusual type of screw. Such a fastener makes it more difficult for people, owners in other words, to open the devices. Apple calls the new thingy a ‘pentalobular’ fastener, because it has five roundish sections each of which looks, sort of, like the petal of a flower or something. The accompanying link to The Economist’s blog on tech stuff, Babbage has a picture of the new screw. Critics say that Apple is just trying to make it tougher for owners to get inside their gadgets to change the battery. Battery changing in Apple outlets is a nice little sideline for the company and brings in not a few bucks, especially when you consider that battery life on these things is not especially robust and that people use them heavily. A buck is a buck, after all. And if swapping the pentalobulars for the traditional Phillips head raises the bar just that little much needed to discourage DIYers, that’s good for the outfit, no? Babbage points out, that while true, this is not the whole story. Apple devices pack a lot of components into very small spaces, and clumsy fingers, clumsily holding sharp tools, can do a lot of damage inside. So, the screw swap may be a somewhat paternalistic but not entirely misguided effort to protect people from their worst enemies-themsleves, while making a shilling or two in the bargain. But, as is so often the case, the fix is only partial. A company is already providing a by-pass kit with the tools needed to get the PL screws out and replace them with Phillips heads. Read on.

Screws

Today, in 1921, a play called R.U.R. opened in Prague. It was written by a man named Karl Capek, and it contained characters that have become staples not only of our fiction but also of actual daily life. And of course I’m referring to ‘robots’. The term comes from a Czech word that means something like ‘compulsory service’ or ‘forced labor’. And, of course, once launched on the stage in Prague, robots marched on throughout the 20th century, taking all kinds of forms, starring in movies and TV shows, apppearing on comic book covers and the like. We have actual robots all over the place today. Not the lumbering ‘mechanical men’ of SciFi, but devices that do useful things and go to places which are too hostile to human biology. It all started today, in a theater in Prague.

RUR

Remember that movie BRAZIL? It was a dystopia, in which a modern society runs along, sort of, on technologies from the 1930s and 40s, and everything is kept going by repair guys? They find ways around problems; a little tape here, a valve twist there, and things totter along for a while longer. Of course the repairs are made at somebody else’s expense. The repair guys fix your hot water by taking some from a neighbor, and when s/he complains, they fix it by taking from somebody else, and like that. But, at no time is the entire system replaced with anything new. Well, that’s what will happen with the Internet, says an article posted on Technology Review. The last addresses in the current naming scheme will soon be assigned, and that will be that. The internet will be full-up. No more. So, what happens? Well, for a while, nothing. Various tricks and patches have been and will be applied to mitigate the effects of this saturation. Something called NAT, for Network Address Translation, is already on the scene and will get a bigger role in the future. Crudely put, NAT allows more than one client to share an IP address. Years ago, too long ago for most readers of these lines to remember, there was something called party line telephone service. Two, or more, customers shared the same line. If you picked up the phone, you might easily hear somebody else talking. If you shared a arty line with some chatterbox, you could be better off going down to the drugstore to use the pay phone. Party line service was a lot cheaper than private line, but had those inconveniences. Some clowns, with nothing better to do, would lift their receivers and just listen in on the conversations of their neighbors. The point here is that NAT operates roughly the same way. You are sharing an IP address with one or more other users. This all could get very messy. If one of your secret sharers’ runs a porn site, or a phonus bolonus stock scheme, there is no way to tell that it’s not you the gendarmes are after. The blame for this falls on all of us, as usual. Version 6 of the IP protocol has not been implemented because of all the technical and financial ‘dislocations’ that would ensue. ‘Dislocations’ is economist-speak for Bad Things. Stalling on the implementation of IPv6, and the desire to avoid the D word has made planners, network execs (who get paid on the basis of quarterly earnings, not on far-sightedness or intelligent planning) dodge the bullet(s). Because we didn’t want the D word stuff, execs, regulators, planners and others tried to keep us happy. Like Dickens’ Mr. Micawber, the were hoping for something to turn up. But, it didn’t . So, we can experience a long, slow, decline.

Decline

The cliche of the detective story of the so-called Golden Age of mystery fiction was that The Butler Did It. Well, change the subject to Printer and you have a lively topic of conversation at digit-heads conventions. It seems that the ordinary, taken-for-granted, sit-in-the-corner printer can be the source of much mischief. Printers have become more capable over the last several years, and can now do quite a few things more than just print. This increase in capability comes at a cost: the printers now found in many offices are really “online”, and they’re connected to some part of your organization’s network. Otherwise, what’s the point? It seems that the beady eyes of the criminal classes are starting to look at printers as a way to penetrate and compromise an organization’s set-up, take over machines and even user their memories to store data. Security interests are waking up to the problems brought on by the newer models of printer and are starting to develop countermeasures, but the pros think the manufacturers have been far too casual about security, and they should be thinking about this way before the final design hits the factory floor.

Printers

It’s all over the Interwebs and the story is getting more exegesis than the tale of Noah at a convention of Bible scholars. Larry Page, one of Google’s founders, is back in the saddle. Eric Schmidt, who took over some years ago as CEO will still be around and have a major role. Page is quoted as saying that Google needs to get a certain something called “start-up spark” back from whatever pawn shop they put it in when G became a Super Big Company. The place has to be more nimble and agile, etc. It’s become too bureaucratic and structured. Right now, Google is like the Pentagon, and Page wants it to be more like Lawrence of Arabia. Or something. First of all, I think Schmidt is on the way out. “One rug is space enough for four beggars to sleep, but the whole world not room enough for two sultans”, as the proverb has it. So, Mr. Schmidt can start packing up his trophies. It won’t be right away. Second, I don’t think a big company can be nimble and agile, so if this is really is what Page is after, he will be disappointed. Third, the word is that Google was stunned at the success of Facebook and Twitter and feels they should have had competing systems in place to get some of that action. Maybe. Or Maybe people there got tired of the doughnuts wSchmidt was bringing to the meetings. The “analysts” have to write about something, and talk about things on their broadcasts, blogs and so forth. The temptation is strong to inflate the story, and speculate on possible motives that just aren’t there. Maybe Page just wanted to come back to work. Still, it’s unusual to have big changes such as this, in the absence of a corporate crisis or looming criminal indictment. Some folks in Google Land are unhappy, and will be joined by many others I fear. I hope they saved some money.

Google

There is a search engine called Duck Duck Go, DDG for short. No, there really is. It’s small. A start up. It has a staff of one and an administrative structure of one, and they are the same person. DDG would, of course, like to be much bigger, but there are certain obstacles in the way. One of those obstacles is called Google, which DDG considers its prime opponent and competitor. Google doesn’t seem to be very worried about any threat from DDG. But DDG is going after Google big time, and in its home town too. Well, in San Francisco anyway. DDG rented a big billboard in downtown SF, where there is a lot of motor traffic, and had a simple message to all passing by: DDG Doesn’t Track. Google Does. OK, that’s it. That and a picture of a duck. The point is to stress the fact that DDG does not forward a searcher’s query to the web site the search selects. Google’s machine does do this, and it enables sites to pair particular users with particular kinds of questions. This is great for advertisers who want to sell you foot balm, or pliers or some high-tech gizmo. It’s not so good for other things, such as privacy. If you happen to think that it’s nobody’s business if you need foot balm, or even don’t need it but are just curious about what such a thing might be, then you are at a disadvantage. And this is where DDG slips in the knife. The claim is that DDG will do all that the G does, but without all that tracking stuff. Traffic went up, a lot, in the period after the four-week trial of the billboard. Will this turn out to be the match that lights DDG’s rockets? I can’t say, but it seems rather unlikely to me. On the other hand, start up companies with goofy names such as Yahoo! and what’s the other one, oh, Yeah, GOOGLE seem to have done rather well.

Duck