technology – Page 6 – The Daily Opinion

Did Dinosaur Farts Cause Global Warming?

It seems strange to be talking about heating the world on your own, but there may be something to it as another group of animal has already managed to do it: the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs supposedly managed to heat the planet through their flatulence.

The Liverpool John Moore’s University, the University of London and the University of Glasgow came together to carry out a study on this, and they published their results in the science journal Current Biology.

They investigated the wind output of the cows of today, came up with a figure, and then scaled it up to match the Sauropods from millions of years ago. For those not in the know, Sauropods are the type of dinosaurs with long necks, large bodies, and small heads; just think of the brontosaurus.

They then compared the output of one Sauropod and scaled it up to match the estimated population of the dinosaurs. This then led to their final figure that the dinosaur population produced a massive 520 million tonnes of gas each year; which is handy for heating the world.

This may seem like a massive figure, but what we have to remember is that these animals were simply gigantic. They were taller than most of our buildings and the tops of trees could barely reach a Sauropod’s shoulders.

But why do these gases supposedly heat up the earth?

The answer is that whilst the gas produced from one’s rear-end is filled with many things, it also contains traces of methane. And methane is a greenhouse gas that heats up the earth. If you have lots of this then, in theory, the whole planet can be heated up by a population of dinosaurs. And its effects are well-documented as the Earth was supposedly ten degrees Celsius hotter than it is today, previous studies demonstrated, even if they didn’t know exactly why this was the case.

Furthermore, what we have to remember is that livestock and its methane emissions have been shown to have an impact on the global temperature. Granted, it pales in comparison to the impact that humans and their technology have on the environment, but it’s still there.

520 million tonnes a year is what they produced back then, and an estimated 500 million tonnes are what we have now. This may seem like there was very little difference between the two, however the difference is in who is producing it. The 520 million tonnes came purely from the dinosaurs themselves, whereas the 500 million tonnes is from everything currently on the earth. This can only mean that there would have been millions and millions more tonnes of unaccounted emissions in the time of the dinosaurs.

Obviously technology isn’t the only method used when heating the world. There are going to be more questions than ever now, though. If the dinosaurs could eclipse our emissions with all our technology then surely the potential impact of global warming isn’t as large as we initially feared? Perhaps there really is something to the argument that the current weather patterns are only as a result of the natural environment cycle of the Earth?

Google Intentionally Collected Private Information From Street View Cars

It seems that Google has again forgotten its own mantra of “Don’t be Evil”, as the search giant has once again found itself in hot water, this time after using unprotected Wi-Fi networks to collect such private data as text messages, emails and names.

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report shows that Google knew Street View cars were collecting myriad personal information over two years, despite Google’s claims that it was an accident. The FCC report shows that Street View’s coding engineer not only knew the software could collect “payload data”, but told two colleagues – one of whom was a senior manager – that he had deliberately designed it to do so. However, despite the admission from the engineer, the FCC is still debating whether or not other Street View engineers knew of the collection – although the coding engineer produced a report to the team in 2006 in which he explained payload data would be collected, the team’s defence is that they didn’t read it and thus were entirely ignorant of what was going on, and Google has staunchly stuck to its line that the data collection was “inadvertent”.

The FCC report explains that: “For more than two years, Google’s Street View cars collected names, addresses, telephone numbers, URLs, passwords, email, text messages, medical records, video and audio files, and other information from internet users in the United States.” The FCC is also claiming that Google deliberately withheld the email in which the coding engineer discussed data collection with a senior manager, and has ordered Google to pay a $25,000 fine for obstructing the investigation by not releasing such information.

The report goes on to say that “Google’s supervision of the Wi-Fi data collection project was minimal … indeed, it appears that no one at the company carefully reviewed the substance of Engineer Doe’s software code or the design document.”

Aside from censoring the names of Google employees, the search giant has released the report in full, with a spokesman saying that: “We decided to voluntarily make the entire document available except for the names of individuals. While we disagree with some of the statements made in the document, we agree with the FCC’s conclusion that we did not break the law. We hope that we can now put this matter behind us.”

While the FCC has said Google didn’t break any laws, and Google wants to move on, such privacy advocacy groups as Electronic Privacy Information Center are demanding further investigation. EPIC’s executive director Marc Rotenberg has said that “Google’s rogue engineer scenario collapses in light of the fact that others were aware of the project and did not object.”

It cannot be proven conclusively one way or the other that Google as an entity did or didn’t know about the data collection, but it doesn’t bode well either way for the company – can users trust a company that either collects their personal data willingly, or one that doesn’t know what its own products and services are doing?

A Look at BlackBerry 10

With RIM in dire straits but insisting on forging ahead with its own operating system, BlackBerry 10 has been anticipated for some time, and has now had its first public showing.

So what’s new? From a design perspective, it seems that RIM has pretty much had a look at what’s on the market and made a conglomeration of other operating systems. The grid of widgets (seen below) looks remarkably like Nokia’s MeeGo on the N9 and also Windows Phone, while the notification bar and icons along the bottom look intriguingly like Nokia Belle, its latest update to the Symbian platform (both MeeGo and Belle are also shown below for comparison).

BB10 — The grid looks strikingly similar to MeeGo, while the notification and shortcut bars look very similar to Nokia Belle

n9_multitasking — Nokia N9 running MeeGo

While mentioning comparisons with Nokia, it also has to be noted that the hardware showcased for BB10 had no front-facing buttons, much like the N900 and N9. The PlayBook also lacked buttons on the screen, and it’s good to see this approach to phones continuing.

One of the things shown off at BlackBerry World was BB 10’s “flow”. Unlike the approach of Apple, Microsoft and Google, BB 10 does not pause apps or hang them in a suspended state, but rather leaves them running in real time just as they were on the PlayBook. Without a physical button to bring up the multitasking panel (which is used in iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian and Android), BB 10 implements it by having the user hold their finger down and then slide to the right to see the last few apps that were used.

The benefit to a real-time multitasking ability of course is the opportunity to carry out tasks without missing a beat. Whether you’re composing an email or waiting for a video to load, you can do something else and then go back to it without any lag or needing to start from scratch, just like working on a computer. CEO Thorston Heins said that “Everything you have going on keeps running real time in the background. No other platform can do this.” This isn’t entirely true, however. It could be argued that BB 10 will be the only mainstream OS to offer it, but Heins can’t erase from history the fact that Maemo 5 and MeeGo both did and do offer exactly the same thing, and Symbian, one of the largest operating systems in the world, also offers it. So while it’s a very welcome feature indeed, Heins shouldn’t adopt the Steve Jobs path of claiming everything he did was invented by his company.

Another feature showed off was the new keyboard, which is a departure from BlackBerry’s signature physical QWERTY. While it doesn’t look like anything special, it is apparently a smart keyboard by customising itself to how you use it, recommending words it thinks you are most likely to want to use.

Another neat feature introduced was camera rewind, which basically lets you zoom in to a picture and rewind it in time. This means that the user can fix closed eyes or something else ruining a photo.

So how will it fare? BlackBerry 10 looks promising, bringing the software up to par in some cases, and exceeding the competition in others. While it’s a stretch to say that RIM is the only company to have software that lets users multitask in real time, and the design looks more than a little inspired by Nokia’s offerings, it’s encouraging to see a company stand up and continue that trend, acknowledging that with phones being used increasingly like computers, they should act like it too.

The Art of Losing

I don’t want this to sound like one of those ‘I remember when it was all fields round here’ rants, but I do think our modern society is in danger of losing something precious. There’s nothing wrong with the digital world in itself. There’s nothing wrong with a virtual world for entertainment, escapism or even education. The trouble for me is when it starts to dominate every aspect of life. We are losing the tangible world. Yes, that smelly, dusty, world of touching things. We take our five senses for granted and they don’t have as much fun these days.

Take down a book from a shelf in an old second hand bookshop and open a page. Ah, that glorious smell, equal to any rare orchid. Pull out a vinyl from its sleeve and listen to the click of the needle when you put it in the groove. Move characters round and roll the dice on a shiny new board game.

Ok, so we can store six trillion books or whatever on the Kindle and streaming music is easy and we can select the individual tracks we want and so on. We have gained. Of course we have. But we are losing something too. We have even seen the Borders and HMV chains crash. Almost three in four independent record stores have shut their doors over the previous decade. High streets up and down the land are in decline. They were already competing against out of town retail parks before the internet came along. However, certain independent bookshops and record shops still thrive, probably because they offer something different that the online transaction can’t replicate. Staff get to know their customers and it’s an opportunity for shared interests and experiences. Independent video stores will have to offer that same personal interaction to survive against the onslaught of DVDs by post and movies through streaming.

Now, I must declare my hypocrisy. I shop from Amazon. I buy from iTunes. Hell, I’ve even got my own eBook for sale. I’m just as much to blame for the closure of shops as anyone. I’m just as much to blame for our dislocation from reality. Kids growing up today are totally dependent on what they see on a screen. I’m not advocating some sepia-tinged vision of rosy-cheeked children playing with mud pies all day, but come on. If it isn’t on a screen, it doesn’t exist. Six year olds have mobile phones, their TV in the bedroom stops them from getting to sleep and they’re allowed to play their hand-held games at the dinner table. At the dinner table, don’t you know! Digital versions now exist for classic board games, such as Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit and Cluedo.

What warped sense of reality are we living in that we come home to a virtual fireplace displayed on the TV? Mmmm, feel the cosy warmth from those virtual flames. No time to look after a pet because you’re sitting in front of a computer all day? No sweat; just order a wall mounted virtual aquarium or adopt a virtual version of your pet of choice. Your online dog, cat or turtle is waiting for you to bond with it and have lots of virtual fun!

I see a future. Record shops, bookshops…in fact, any shops are a rarity, like quaint olden days museum pieces preserved for the ‘nerds’. The physical world is the domain of social anthropologists. We don’t touch anything. We don’t have to. We don’t even need keyboards anymore; we just talk to our computers and phones and all our devices to get them to work. We work with our screens, socialise with our screens, shop with our screens and play with our screens. In the comfort of our homes, we virtually warm ourselves in front of our virtual fire and we express our sentimental side by seeing to the needs of our virtual pets. Perhaps we’ll have a virtual partner. We can turn him / her off if they annoy us.

I am in the last bookshop on Earth and I’m clutching the very last copy of a first edition David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I can smell that heavenly, musty smell. I can feel the pages that a craftsman lovingly put together. I read the words of the world’s greatest storyteller as he intended the words to be read. But the book turns into an electronic reader and it feels cold and hard in my hands. The weight of lost bookshops and libraries weighs heavily on me and I sink to my knees. Later that day, I relax in the comfort of my living room and turn on my wall display. Selecting from the menu, I tell the device to display the virtual bookshop.

Alas, it will come to pass. We can’t put the genie back in the lamp. The American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, wrote, “the art of losing isn’t hard to master”. Oh, yes. We do it so well.

Schools Put Girls Off Playing Sports

No, it’s not because they would much rather be making their man a sandwich in the kitchen, it’s because of their treatment at an early age. I think that all of us will remember those old-fashioned PE lessons where some old man/woman who obviously couldn’t teach would scream and yell things at the fat kids because they couldn’t bench press one of their peers over the banister of the stairs. And this is apparently what has put many girls off of sport.

The research carried out by Loughborough University measured the differences in attitudes to sport between girls and boys. The figures showed that around 60% of girls and boys aged eight did at least five hours of exercise each week.

However, for 14-year-old girls this had been halved down to 31%, whereas 50% of 14-year-old boys completed at least five hours of exercise a week. In other words, this means that girls are generally being put off sport by the time they reach the middle of their high school education.

Common complaints included things like many girls weren’t confident of their sporting ability in PE lessons, they didn’t like exercising in front of boys, and they felt that teachers generally didn’t pay attention to those with less sporting ability.

All of these things are valid complaints as we all know that those who are useless at the conventional sports, such as hockey and football, are going to be laughed at by their peers. This only leads to a lack of self-confidence and a reduction in their desire to continue with sports of any kind.

Let’s look at another complaint. They don’t like exercising in front of boys. In the past this wouldn’t be a problem as being a gentleman was more of the done thing. That doesn’t happen now because now you have sex-charged maniacs who think that it’s ok to sexually harass members of the female gender. I’m not talking about rape or anything physical, I’m talking about the verbal abuse and the other comments that girls all around the world, and of all ages, have to put up with on a near daily basis.

And finally, the fact that teachers generally won’t pay attention to those girls who are no good at sport is something that has persisted for generations. The only way many of these teachers can motivate those who are not interested is to scream at them, and that only pushes them further away. The solution to this problem is that you need to find teachers who can actually teach PE lessons, as screaming is the sign of a teacher who can’t teach without descending to the motivational techniques of the white supremacist who drives a vehicle to work which runs off the bodies and broken dreams of an African-American family.

Screaming teacher — WHICH PART OF NON-STOP 16 MILE RUN DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?!?!

As the research suggests, people need to accept that not everybody is interested in competitive sports. But it’s still important to remain as fit as possible, and this doesn’t have to come as a result of competitive sports. Walking, cycling, and dance classes are all perfectly valid forms of exercise.

Moving away from the main point, though, I will admit that the reduction in the number of people carrying out regular exercise is going to be partially down to the fact that our society isn’t one that encourages physical activity. Most of the technical advances of the last 30 years have been great, but they have also been simultaneously directing people towards doing less physically.

So all of this can’t be put at the feet of what happens in schools.

Google Drive Doesn’t Respect Your Privacy

With DropBox, Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, no one really expected it to be long before Google brought out its own cloud-storage offering – after all, Google does have a history of relentlessly hopping on the bandwagon. Quite why anyone will use Google Drive over the other options is something of a mystery though, for a few reasons. Firstly, at this point, the people who are using cloud services already have an account with one of the others, and Google Drive is unlikely to offer functionality that the others can’t. Secondly, it offers 5GB free storage, which is more than DropBox’s 2GB but far less than the huge 25GB Microsoft offers with SkyDrive. With a DropBox app on Android, even Google’s own customers won’t require a subscription to Google Drive – unless, of course, Google does what it did to Twitter in its search engine and drop it in favour of Google+ for real-time search updates. It’s unlikely though, as that would mean barring the DropBox apps, which could alienate users. Storage capacity and offerings aside, what’s most worrisome about the new service is it showcases that Google still hasn’t adjusted its opinion on owning its users’ content, as PC World has also reported. Below is an image displaying the privacy policy for DropBox, SkyDrive and Google Drive:

With Google up to its usual tricks, will its claim to your data put you off its service in favour of a more established service from a company that acknowledges your content is your content?