High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover

Wired has an absolutely fascinating story about how the U.S.’s border security paranoia has unwittingly made it very difficult for spies to use false identities. With biometric checking in effect, the days of a spy entering a country on a false passport are quickly coming to an end.

The increasing deployment of iris scanners and biometric passports at worldwide airports, hotels and business headquarters, designed to catch terrorists and criminals, are playing havoc with operations that require CIA spies to travel under false identities.

Busy spy crossroads such as Dubai, Jordan, India and many E.U. points of entry are employing iris scanners to link eyeballs irrevocably to a particular name. Likewise, the increasing use of biometric passports, which are embedded with microchips containing a person’s face, sex, fingerprints, date and place of birth, and other personal data, are increasingly replacing the old paper ones. For a clandestine field operative, flying under a false name could be a one-way ticket to a headquarters desk, since they’re irrevocably chained to whatever name and passport they used.

“If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you can’t go again under another name,” explains a career spook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains an agency consultant. ”So it’s a one-time thing — one and done. The biometric data on your passport, and maybe your iris, too, has been linked forever to whatever name was on your passport the first time. You can’t show up again under a different name with the same data.”

via CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover | Danger Room | Wired.com.

The costs of jury service

I found out yesterday that the jury duty I almost had to perform was for the Kathy Taft murder case. While I was willing to serve, I am feeling very fortunate today not to have been tapped for this case. I work as a contractor and get paid by the hour and the contracting firm that employs me would’ve only paid for the first 40 hours of jury service. The Taft case will likely drag out for months, putting us in a significant financial bind. The $50 a day with which the court would’ve compensated me would not have come remotely close to bridging the gap. This all aside from the emotionally traumatic impact the case will have on all its jurors.

If these factors often weed out good juror candidates, what does that leave for our justice system? What can be done to allow people like me to serve without the risk of putting us in the poor house? Should trials be shortened solely to minimize the disruption on jurors, or would that be denying the defendant his or her due process rights?
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Young Americans not driving? Why would they?

I was mulling over the last post about young Americans not feeling the need for cars and I think I have one idea why.

It used to be that if you were a kid curious about the world we live in, you’d have go out and explore it. This usually required a car of some sort. Things are radically different now. Through the magic of the Internet (and 500+ channel cable/satellite TV), the world now comes to the kids! Kids nowadays can find out far more information on places and people than I ever could as a kid growing up. Outdated, dead-tree encyclopedias and magazines only take one so far.

While there’s still no substitute for actually being there, technology today can get one pretty close. With so much exploring available at their fingertips, kids can take their time deciding where they want to go.

Young Americans not buying cars

Wow. Transformational. The world is truly going to look a lot different very soon.

Kids these days. They don’t get married. They don’t buy homes. And, much to the dismay of the world’s auto makers, they apparently don’t feel a deep and abiding urge to own a car.

This week, the New York Times pulled back the curtain on General Motors’ recent, slightly bewildered efforts to connect with the Millennials — that giant generational cohort born in the 1980s and 1990s whose growing consumer power is reshaping the way corporate America markets its wares. Unfortunately for car companies, today’s teens and twenty-somethings don’t seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They’re not even particularly keen on driving.

The Times notes that less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998. The fraction of 20-to-24-year-olds with a license has also dropped. And according to CNW research, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, a far cry from the peak of 38 percent in 1985.

via Why Don’t Young Americans Buy Cars? – Jordan Weissmann – Business – The Atlantic.

Cheap Thoughts: focused magnetic fields

Magnetic lines of force

I’ve been thinking that there must be a way to focus magnetic fields to very precise shapes. As I drove to work this week, I imagined my car driving through such a field in a way that my car’s speakers vibrated from the field’s effects, creating sound as the car moved through it. I think it would be a neat trick to get sound from a car’s speakers independent of whether or not they’re connected to anything!

For a while I’ve been thinking that perhaps magnetic fields could be used as antennas. Rather than have a big, metal dish to collect signals toward a focal point, a magnetic field could be generated that would invisibly reflect radio signals toward a focal point. By strengthening or weakening the field, the virtual dish could be expanded or contracted as needed, raising or lowering the gain.

Magnetic fields are circular in nature and the challenge would be how to create a parabolic shape with a field. I also have no idea if a magnetic field can even be made to reflect radio signals. It’s an interesting idea, nonetheless.

Update 25 March: I am reminded that a device exists that can beam sound to a remote location, only for this one the receiver isn’t just a speaker, it’s a human brain! Behold MEDUSA, which makes use of the microwave auditory effect.

Paul Allen funds studies of the brain

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is putting $500 million of his fortune into looking for the “essence of humanity” in our brains.

I sent him an email explaining that, while the brain is indeed fascinating and worthy of study, it is nothing but the hardware. The software (what makes us who we are) is the mind. You ain’t gonna find the “essence of humanity” in the jumbled nerves of the brain.

If Mr. Allen really wants to find what makes us human, he’ll fund some studies of consciousness.

I’ve always been fascinated by the workings of the human brain. I’m awed by its enormous complexity. Our brains are many magnitudes more advanced in the way they work than any computer software ever invented. Think about this: We can teach students to program computers in a couple of years of school. But even with a lifetime of learning, at present we are far away from fully understanding the brain.

via Billionaire Paul Allen Pours $500 Million Into Quest To Find The Essence Of Humanity In The Brain – Forbes.

Digiboo DVD download kiosks

Movie Booth DVD download kiosk

Remember last year when I spied that intriguing DVD download kiosk in the Seattle airport? Looks like it is similar to the kiosk service put together by a startup company called Digiboo, according to a news story today.

The rental service, from Santa Monica, Calif.-based Digiboo, is being introduced at a time when consumers are shifting away from movie rentals to online movie streaming. Whether the Digiboo kiosks mark the next evolution in watching video, or just another dead end like the Betamax VCR, they illustrate the enduring allure of the movies even as technology morphs them into new forms.

[snip]

The first kiosks were installed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Next up: the Seattle and Portland airports, Thomas said. If the concept is successful, thousands of kiosks will be put in a variety of public places, he said.

I thought initially today that the booth I saw might have been a Digiboo booth but the article seems to indicate that Digiboo hasn’t been installed at the Seattle airport after all.

I guess the mystery remains as to who owns the DVD download kiosk at SEATAC.

Update 12:10 PM: I did a little Google sleuthing and believe the “Movie Booth” kiosk I saw was from a company called LightSpeed Cinema in Los Angeles. I found one press release from December 2008 that mentions that LightSpeed Cinema is Santa Monica-based, as is Digiboo. Are these companies one and the same? I’m guessing they are and the DVD kiosk I saw in Seattle is an early Digiboo model.

Here’s Digiboo’s website. Also, this press release offers more details on the company.

Why the world is running out of helium

My friends at N.C. Nearspace are aghast at the skyrocketing cost of helium used to fill their balloons. One of the planet’s most irreplaceable resources, helium may vanish completely from Earth within 30 years, and the primary cause is a 1996 law passed by Congress. Read more about this crisis from the Independent (UK):

It is the second-lightest element in the Universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons. But helium is also a non-renewable resource and the world’s reserves of the precious gas are about to run out, a shortage that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions.

Scientists have warned that the world’s most commonly used inert gas is being depleted at an astonishing rate because of a law passed in the United States in 1996 which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas – by far the biggest store of helium in the world – must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children who love to watch their helium-filled balloons float into the sky.

via Why the world is running out of helium – Science – News – The Independent.

Update: Looks like I posted about this before, but it bears mentioning again.

Cheap Thoughts: phone numbers

Alex didn't need no numbers

This week’s reminder that 10-digit dialing is coming to the Triangle made me wonder why we even use phone numbers anymore. With all the smartphones, voice dialing, and Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) systems in place, having to remember a 10-digit number to call someone seems … quaint.

The VoIP system I have at home can easily handle phone numbers made of digits, of course, but it can also handle calling using a SIP address that looks more like an email address (sip:phone@pbx.markturner.net). In fact, my phone calls can be routed entirely over the Internet, never touching a traditional phone switch (or as they’re known by phone geeks, the “public switched telephone network”).

Imagine having to remember the “dotted quad” IP addresses of all the Internet sites you want to surf. It would be pretty futile, wouldn’t it? Smart people like Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris dreamed up the Domain Name System (DNS) years ago so humans could remember words (www.markturner.net) instead of numbers (67.217.170.39). Why haven’t we applied the same thinking to phones by now?

Back in the day, one “dialed” phones by picking up and telling the human operator at your local phone company office who you wanted to talk to (“Ruth, get me Pennsylvania 65000“). There’s no reason now why one couldn’t simply do the same now, only talking to a computer operator. In fact, AT&T actually has some of the best voice-recognition technology of anyone.

It is 2012, almost a hundred and forty years since Alexander Graham Bell patented the first telephone. In this day and age we should be creating fewer phone numbers, not more!

NC Medical marijuana backers try to make their cause heard

I hope more people speak out favorably on this cause.

Margaret Wakefield is not a college student nor does she sport dreadlocks and Birkenstocks while chatting about how the world should focus more on peace and love.

Despite her clean-cut appearance, Wakefield is a vocal leader for, what some may find, a surprising cause — medical marijuana.

Wakefield’s mother died from cancer a year ago, and the life-changing event has made her very open and passionate about allowing people suffering from chronic illnesses to use cannabis as a form of treatment.

“If I had known then what I know now … (my mother) would have had some to smoke everyday,” said Wakefield, a member of the North Carolina Cannabis Patients Network.

via Medical marijuana backers try to make their cause heard.